Loose Balls The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association

by Pluto, Terry

• ISBN13: 9781416540618
• ISBN10: 141654061X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-11-06
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

What do Julius Erving, Larry Brown, Moses Malone, Bob Costas, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the Slam Dunk Contest have in common? They all got their professional starts in the American Basketball Association.The NBA may have won the financial battle, but the ABA won the artistic war. With its stress on wide-open individual play, the adoption of the 3-point shot and pressing defense, and the encouragement of flashy moves and flying dunks, today's NBA is still -- decades later -- just the ABA without the red, white and blue ball.Loose Ballsis, after all these years, the definitive and most widely respected history of the ABA. It's a wild ride through some of the wackiest, funniest, strangest times ever to hit pro sports -- told entirely through the (often incredible) words of those who played, wrote and connived their way through the league's nine seasons.

Author Biography

Terry Pluto is an award-winning sportswriter who writes primarily for The Plain Dealer. He was a sportswriter for the Akron Beacon Journal from 1985-2007. He has twice been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and twice been honored by the Associated Press Sports Editors as the nation's top sports columnist for medium-sized newspapers. He is an eight-time winner of the Ohio Sports Writer of the Year award and has received more than fifty state and local writing awards. He is the author of twenty-one books, including The Curse of Rocky Colavito, Unguarded, and Loose Balls. He lives in Akron, Ohio.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Cast of Characters

Year-by-Year Standings and Franchise Histories

ABA Team Logos

Prologue

Opening Gambits Birth Pangs

The Ball

The First Jumper

The Shakeout Begins

Finding Players

Opening Tip

The 3-Pointer

Larry and Doug

The Hawk

Bad Times in Oakland

First-Year Notebook: 1967-68The $1.3 Million Glass Ring: An ABA ""Success"" Story

The Leaders Crumble

Second-Year Notebook: 1968-69Saved from the Brink

Washington: First in War, First in Peace, and Third in the Western Division?Sideshow in Miami

Third-Year Not

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.