E book Assessment
Magic within the Air: The Fable, the Thriller and the Soul of the Slam Dunk
By Mike SielskiSt. Martin’s Press: 368 pages, $32If you purchase books linked on our website, The Instances could earn a fee from Bookshop.org, whose charges assist unbiased bookstores.
Chances are high you’ve heard of Julius Erving and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. You would need to be culturally illiterate to be unfamiliar with Michael Jordan. However I’d guess cash that you just don’t know the story of Jack Inglis, who shares area with the legends in Mike Sielski’s new e-book “Magic in the Air.”
Inglis performed professional basketball within the World Conflict I period within the New York State League and Pennsylvania State League. This was when basketball courts had been wrapped in wire fencing, or cages (therefore the usage of the phrase “cagers” to explain basketball gamers). Inglis, an excellent athlete for his day, was identified to climb up the fence alongside the basket, seize a move with one hand, and drop it into the ring from above. It was, as Sielski writes, “an early version of the slam dunk.”
That is the type of hoops historical past you didn’t know you craved, and which Sielski’s quick break of a dunk examine delivers in abundance. However “Magic” does greater than present juicy tidbits. In lacing up a vigorous historical past of the slam dunk, Sielski, a sports activities columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer who writes together with his career’s attribute taste and aptitude, digs into the social and racial implications of sports activities’ most enjoyable play. He makes use of the tales of key athletes and moments to color a much bigger image of a sport’s evolution from earthbound (and moderately sluggish) competitors to sky-high (and really quick) exuberance. “Magic in the Air” honors the dunk as a terrific feat of American improvisation, in all probability not as vital as jazz however not fully dissimilar.
Mike Sielski, creator of “Magic in the Air.”
(Bob Zilahy)
Like most revolutionary developments, the rise of the dunk struck worry within the institution’s coronary heart. The NCAA even banned the dunk from 1967 to 1976, which, when you concentrate on it, is remarkably silly: Hey, let’s get rid of essentially the most kinetic a part of the sport, the play that makes followers stand and cheer like no different. As Sielski writes, “The rule seemed first and foremost a way to squelch the individual expression and athleticism that characterized the sport throughout urban America and that was intrinsic to the manner in which Black athletes played it.”
In brief, the dunk was simply too avenue. The ban was loudly championed by legendary Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp, whose all-white squad had simply been spanked within the finals by a Texas Western (now College of Texas at El Paso) crew that made historical past by beginning 5 Black gamers. “It wasn’t just that players were dunking,” Sielski writes. “It was that Black players were dunking. And they were dunking while they were beating his team.” (Sarcastically, the very best participant on that Kentucky crew, Pat Riley, would go on to preside over the dunk-happy Showtime Lakers groups of the ’80s).
There are various approaches one may take towards writing such a e-book. A stats and analytics obsessive, like Henry Abbott, may unfurl a examine of leaping launch factors and sport conditions wherein the dunk makes essentially the most sense. A run-of-the-mill aggregator may produce a glorified, book-length weblog publish rating the very best dunks and dunkers. Sielski chooses to use a refreshingly human, old-school contact; “Magic in the Air” reads like a collection of deeply reported, interconnected characteristic tales, wealthy in historical past and authorial voice.
When Sielski writes in regards to the saga of Earl “The Goat” Manigault, a 6-foot-1 New York playground legend who soared among the many giants however couldn’t steer clear of heroin and different lures of the streets, he’s additionally writing about why Manigault’s story is catnip to (often white) journalists in search of a sure type of story — a narrative Manigault was all the time completely happy to inform. “Go ahead,” Sielski writes. “Pull up a chair or knock on his door, if you could pin down where he lived. He would tell you all about it, be genuinely wistful about his missed opportunities, open up and give you the goods. No athlete was in the passenger’s seat for more reporter ride-alongs than The Goat.”
There are, after all, greater names right here as nicely. They embody Jordan, whose fashion, hold time and acrobatic dunking had been as fashionable in company boardrooms as they had been on playgrounds; Invoice Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, who shook up the sport with their athleticism and measurement within the ’50s and ’60s; and David “Skywalker” Thompson, who, at 6-foot-4, dominated school basketball whereas starring for North Carolina State however needed to accept gently laying the ball in because of the dunk ban. (Did we point out how silly the dunk ban was?)
This has quietly been a terrific period for basketball books, together with Wealthy Cohen’s “When the Game Was War,” Chris Herring’s “Blood in the Garden,” Jeff Pearlman’s “Showtime” (about these Riley Laker groups), and Hanif Abdurraqib’s “There’s Always This Year.” “Magic in the Air” belongs on the highest shelf with these. For a examine of life above the rim, its tone is down-to-earth and likewise briskly colloquial and infused with infectious ardour for the game.
Chris Vognar is a contract tradition author.
