The NBA has returned to prominence on the backs of such phenoms as LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Kevin Garnett. The media promotes them, the shoe companies pay them, and America applauds. But how exactly do such players reach the pros? What do they do to get there? And what happens to those who fall short?
In PLAY THEIR HEARTS OUT: A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine (Ballantine Books); Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Sports Illustrated senior writer George Dohrmann uncovers the tough truths hiding behind the romanticized hoop dreams of America’s basketball prodigies and their families as they navigate this high-pressure world of big business and hoped-for NBA stardom.
This is narrative nonfiction at its absolute best—by turns illuminating, maddening, heartbreaking, page-turning, and ultimately hopeful.
At the book’s heart are the personal stories of two compelling figures: Joe Keller, an ambitious AAU coach with a master plan to find and promote "the next LeBron"—thereby paving his own path to power and riches; and Demetrius Walker, a fatherless latchkey kid who falls under Keller’s sway at the tender age of nine and struggles to live up to the unrealistic expectations his supposed benefactor has set for him. As their fortunes take shape and the pressure mounts—Demetrius finds himself profiled in Sports Illustrated at age fourteen by a reporter who caught onto the hype, while Keller cultivates his business empire—Dohrmann weaves in the stories of numerous other parents, coaches, and players. Some of them see their prospects evaporate as a result of poor decisions and worse luck. Others learn how to thrive in a corrupt system by playing the right angles.
Written with incomparable detail and insight, PLAY THEIR HEARTS OUT is a gripping and thoroughly unique narrative the reveals the inner workings of an American game, exposing what lies beneath so many dreams of fame and glory.
