Heaven Is a Playground: A Journey Into the Sweet World of Street Basketball (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781683583608)

"The best basketball book I've ever read." --Barack Obama

Heaven Is a Playground, now in its fifth edition to include more information on Fly Williams, was the first book on the uniquely American phenomenon of urban basketball. Rick Telander, a photojournalist and former high school basketball player, spent part of the summer of 1973 and all of the summer of 1974 in Brooklyn living the playground life with his subjects at Foster Park in Flatbush. He slept on the floor of a park regular's apartment, observing, questioning, traveling, playing with, and eventually coaching a ragtag group of local teenagers whose hopes of better lives were often fanatically attached to the transcendent game itself. Telander introduces us to Fly Williams, a playground legend with incredible leaping ability and self-destructive tendencies that threatened to keep him earthbound.

Another standout was Albert King, a fourteen-year-old phenom whose shy, quiet demeanor masked an otherworldly talent that eventually took him to the NBA. This edition also includes Telander's perspectives on the arrival of an NBA team in Brooklyn. Heaven Is a Playground is one of a kind--a funny, sad, ultimately inspiring book about Americans and the roots of the sport that they love.

Author: Rick Telander
ISBN-10: 1683583604
ISBN-13: 9781683583608
Publisher: Sports Publishing LLC
Language: English
Published: 10/20/2020
Pages: 288
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 1.10d