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The Rivalry: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and the Golden Age of Basketball
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List Price: $15.95
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Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.3230922
EAN: 9780812970302
ISBN: 0812970306
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 432
Publication Date: 2006-09-26
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: 2006-09-26
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Editorial Reviews:
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A BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN ACCOUNT OF THE NBA’S GLORY DAYS, AND THE RIVALRY THAT DOMINATED THE ERA
In the mid-1950s, the NBA was a mere barnstorming circuit, with outposts in such cities as Rochester, New York, and Fort Wayne, Indiana. Most of the best players were white; the set shot and layup were the sport’s chief offensive weapons. But by the 1970s, the league ruled America’s biggest media markets; contests attracted capacity crowds and national prime-time television audiences. The game was played “above the rim”–and the most marketable of its high-flying stars were black. The credit for this remarkable transformation largely goes to two giants: Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain.
In The Rivalry, award-winning journalist John Taylor projects the stories of Russell, Chamberlain, and other stars from the NBA’s golden age onto a backdrop of racial tensions and cultural change. Taylor’s electrifying account of two complex men–as well as of a game and a country at a crossroads–is an epic narrative of sports in America during the 1960s.
It’s hard to imagine two characters better suited to leading roles in the NBA saga: Chamberlain was cast as the athletically gifted yet mercurial titan, while Russell played the role of the stalwart centerpiece of the Boston Celtics dynasty. Taylor delves beneath these stereotypes, detailing how the two opposed and complemented each other and how they revolutionized the way the game was played and perceived by fans.
Competing with and against such heroes as Jerry West, Tom Heinsohn, Bob Cousy, John Havlicek, and Elgin Baylor, and playing for the two greatest coaches of the era, Alex Hannum and the fiery Red Auerbach, Chamberlain and Russell propelled the NBA into the spotlight. But their off-court visibility and success–to say nothing of their candor–also inflamed passions along America’s racial and generational fault lines. In many ways, Russell and Chamberlain helped make the NBA and, to some extent, America what they are today.
Filled with dramatic conflicts and some of the great moments in sports history, and building to a thrilling climax–the 1969 final series, the last showdown between Russell and Chamberlain–The Rivalry has at its core a philosophical question: Can determination and a team ethos, embodied by the ultimate team player, Bill Russell, trump sheer talent, embodied by Wilt Chamberlain?
Gripping, insightful, and utterly compelling, the story of Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain is the stuff of sporting legend. Written with a reporter’s unerring command of events and a storyteller’s flair, The Rivalry will take its place as one of the classic works of sports history.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Very Impartial Accunt Of These Guys
Comment: What I most appreciated about this book was the objectivity of the author John Taylor. You don't find this often this day: a totally unbiased account of people. Here, we see the good and bad of Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Red Auerbach along with other notables of the 1950s and 1960s NBA.
Taylor simply points out the things that happened to Wilt, Russ, Bob Cousy, Jerry West, Tom Heinsohn and others, letting us - the reader - make up our own minds about these people. One thing for sure: you never get a boring account of anything that happened or was said by guys like Chamerberlain and Auerbach. Some of things those two did were unbelievable!
Almost all the stories in here are amazing and even if you think you know a lot about these famous basketball players, you'll be surprised at all the new inside information provided in this book - all of it very interesting and impartial.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Winning vs. Stats
Comment: I bought this book as a nice summer read for a Celtics fan. When I started following the NBA, Bill Russell had just retired 2 years earlier and Wilt Chamberlain was just about done, although his Lakers were making the NBA Finals almost every year. Big Men still ruled the NBA (Reed, Unseld, Cowens and a young Abdul-Jabbar.) It was a great era for the league. This book describes how it came to be.
I was expecting a rehash of Russell's championships with Boston vs. Chamberlain's stats. I got that and much, much more. Taylor's tremendous research gives us a feel for what the NBA was like just prior to Russell's graduation from USF. And that was basically a minor league, with drafty old arenas and many smaller cities having teams (Syracuse and Fort Wayne anyone?)
Once Red Aurbach, Bob Cousy and finally Russ arrived on the scene, both the Celtics and the NBA took off. With Russ it was clearly always about winning. With that, he,and Red were both a bit leary when Wilt became eligible for the NBA in 1959, despite 2 straight Finals appearances.
It soon became evident that Wilt cared as deeply for himself and his stats as Russell did about his championship rings. Russell, perhaps the greatest winner in sports history (11 NBA titles in 13 years, 2 NCAA championships, and an Olympic Gold Medal) did not care what his stats were, and neither did Red. Wilt always did. He fought with coaches and went through a bunch during his career, and was traded twice. Russ was a lifelong Celtic, and his only 2 coaches were Aurbach and himself.
The book gets into personalities, and social scenes. It describes the racism that was rampant in the late 50's, and how it affected the NBA as blacks came to dominate the league. The social contradiction of Boston as a racist city (something Russell has never let go of, with good reason) to the pioneering Celtics (first black NBA player, first all black lineup, and Russell himself becoming the first black head coach in all of American professional sports)stands out.
Taylor is hard on Chamberlain, but when one reads the comments made at the time by Wilt and those around him, it's easy to see why. Wilt never really got it, and Russell still feels it. It's about being a winner. And this book is cleary that, a winner.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Surprising Glimpse at Early NBA
Comment: As "old-school" fans cringe at the ever-increasing pyrotechnics of arena presentation and the changing style of gameplay in the NBA as unprofessional, Taylor uses the Chamberlain/Russell rivalry to tell the story of an early NBA that makes the recent theatrical release of "Semi-Pro" seem like a documentary and should set those "old-school" fans straight about the professionalism of the early NBA.
Taylor tells the story of a league that would make Slap Shot's Reggie Dunlop proud. The NBA of the 50's was - according to SI's Ray Cave - a "brawling, hustling, cigar-in-the-mouth and eye-on-the-till game." Mix in the Jim Crow south and league integration and kaleidoscopic changes in franchise names, cities and personnel, and you have a calamitous witch's brew.
From Red Auerbach sucker-punching an opposing owner on the court during warm-ups, to the incessant racism black players faced at games, in hotels, and restaurants across the league, "The Rivalry" seems early on to be the story of a failed pro basketball league that could not possibly have become today's NBA.
Then, marketing gold arrives in the form of two world-class athletes of titanic proportions who would go on to wage a bigger-than-life rivalry that would span almost two decades and eventually take on - literally - a Hollywood aura of bi-coastal bad blood that continues to this day. And, along the way, Taylor gives some really enjoyable insight on these two athletes, their teams and cities. Further, in some really wonderful asides, Taylor gives the reader a glimpse at the depth of thought and research he put into the subject (i.e., a great - if too brief - discussion of the rise of TV as a driver of NBA popularity, and the effect of commercial jet travel on the league's expansion).
The book is paced well and is among the finest long-form sports writing I have read. A jacket quotation acclaims Taylor's work to rival "anything by Halberstam or Feinstein," and I would agree that it compares very favorably with their best stuff; and, really surpasses some of their weaker efforts.
Taylor's access is startling. There are moments in the book where his omniscient narrator crawls inside the heads of his subjects and it isn't until you cross-check those moments with the handy footnote system at the back of the book that it becomes clear just how much research Taylor compiled and how many interviews he was able to complete.
As a weak point, I would say that Taylor does a cursory job of getting inside Russell's head and finding an explanation for some of the great center's thoughts, actions and opinons both from the 60's and into the mid-90s. A lot of the well-trodden ground (i.e., Boston as "the most strictly-segregated city in the country") is just taken for granted and not explored any more deeply. And while - unlike Russell - it doesn't feel as though it wants for digging, the portrayal of Chamberlain is stark and unflattering. And, even while focusing on these two greats, Taylor does reserve plenty of space for thoughtful and often flattering portraits of other stars, including Jerry West, Tom Heinsohn, Elgin Baylor, Bob Cousy and Alex Hannum.
I highly recommend the read and look forward to picking up some of Taylor's non-sports stuff too.
JAW
Customer Rating:
Summary: Russell and Chamberlain
Comment: Silly for me to say this but on the paperback cover, there is a picture of Chamberlain shooting over Russell, and it looks like Wilt is smiling as he shoots. I think the difference between the two men was that Chamberlain was pursued when he was a boy whereas Russell was a walk-on at USF - that most likely made Russell work harder for everything he got and made him more determined to prove himself to the world - in a word, Chamberlain was coddled all his life. I have always wondered why Wilt's playoff stats "dipped" in comparison to his regular season stats; maybe this is the reason why. The Celtics always being victorious in the championships was of course due to the fact that Russell was always surrounded by better players - compare Havlicek to Chet Walker or Bob Cousy to Guy Rodgers - and I'm convinced Chamberlain would be filling Russell's shoes if he were surrounded by those same Celtics. A very good book by Taylor - it details the times, the social commentaries, and the state of the NBA.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Rivalry
Comment: David Letterman talked about this on his talk show and I placed it on "My Wish List". I just received it and I am sure it will be a very good read.
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