Let Your Game Speak For You: Authors/Writers Plied Basketball Script
Much is written about college basketball in the daily newspaper sports pages, weekly/monthly specialty magazines and on the internet. But you might be surprised the extent to which the written word, much of it outside the world of sports, emanates from former college basketball players.
For instance, politician extraordinaire Dean Rusk, Davidson's most noted alumnus who wrote his memoirs in the book "As I Saw It", was a star center in the late 1920s and early 1930s with former Davidson President Dr. D. Grier Martin (1957 until 1968).
"Basketball at Davidson reminds me of the old French proverb, 'Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose,'" said Rusk, who served as Secretary of State under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War era. "The game itself has been revolutionized since I played it. We once beat North Carolina 17-12; it was not a slowdown game. We both were trying like everything. What has remained the same has been the sheer fun of it, the stimulation of competition, the experience of losing as well as winning and the recognition that basketball is a sport in which a small college can take on the big fellows."
Former Princeton All-American Bill Bradley, a three-term U.S. Senator (Democrat-N.J.) until 1995, took on the "big fellows" as a presidential candidate in 2000. Bradley, a tax and trade expert with a strong voice on race issues and campaign finance reform, authored two basketball books (Life on the Run in 1976 and Values of the Game in 1998).
"The lessons learned from it (basketball) stay with you," Rhodes Scholar Bradley wrote of the sport he still loves. "I was determined that no one would outwork me."
You might not know it, but other luminaries who've displayed determination in the political arena and written books after "working the crowd" in a college basketball arena include former Pennsylvania governor Robert Casey, former U.S. Senator Robert Dole and former vice president Al Gore.
Casey, who ran in the Democratic presidential primary as a pro-life candidate, was a heart and liver transplant recipient who addressed that battle in his book called "Fighting for Life." Casey, a freshman at Holy Cross in 1949-50 when senior Bob Cousy was an NCAA unanimous first-team All-American, appeared in two NCAA Tournament games in 1953.
Dole, a member of Kansas' freshman basketball team for one semester before enlisting in the Army during World War II, wrote a book on political humor and Gore, who averaged 2.8 points per game for Harvard's 12-4 freshman team in 1965-66, wrote a book on global warming.
Shifting the writer emphasis from politics to entertainment, movie afficianados should know that the script for TNT's world premiere of "Passing Glory" that premiered several years ago was written by a former major college basketball player. Harold Sylvester sold the script for "Passing Glory" to Touchstone about a 1965 high school basketball game he played in when a predominantly black school and a predominantly white school from New Orleans met for the first time. Only faculty and families were invited to witness the historic contest.
Sylvester, a 6-6, 210-pound center, broke the color barrier at Tulane, averaging 12.5 points and 9.1 rebounds per game for the Green Wave from 1968-69 through 1970-71. He was Tulane's leading rebounder as a sophomore (8.5 rpg) before becoming its second-leading scorer and rebounder each of the next two seasons.
Sylvester, an actor who played a shoe salesman character named Griff on the Fox series "Married With Children", appeared in numerous sitcoms while under contract to Universal. His Hollywood credits include "An Officer and a Gentleman", "Uncommon Valor" and "Vision Quest".
Essentially, the following lineup represents a rebuttal to the chronic complainers who cite writers as individuals who don't know anything about sports in general and college hoops specifically. Here is an alphabetical list of additional authors who played the game:
Sam Balter, UCLA
All-American for the Bruins in 1929 was a sports columnist for the Los Angeles Herald-Express from 1955 to 1964. He also was a broadcaster for the Mutual Network.
Clair Bee, Waynesburg (Pa.)
Coach guided LIU to the best record of any program during the decade of the 1930s. His stories about Chip Hilton, an All-American boy and athlete, were among the most beloved books of a certain generation of school children.
Let Your Game Speak: Authors/Writers Plied Basketball Script
Ira Berkow, Roosevelt (Ill.)
Played for Roosevelt University in Chicago in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The New York Times sports columnist and senior writer authored more than a dozen books, including volumes on Hank Greenberg, Casey Stengel, Red Smith, Rod Carew and Walt Frazier.
Bob Bigelow, Penn
Star for Penn's three consecutive Ivy League champions from 1973 through 1975 co-authored Just Let the Kids Play, a mission to return youth sports to its rightful owners: the kids who play.
Doyle Brunson, Hardin-Simmons (Tex.)
Promising basketball career ended in the early 1950s because of a summer job accident when his leg was broken in two places while unloading some sheetrock. The first player to earn $1 million in poker tournaments is the author of several poker books, including Super/System and Poker Wisdom of a Champion. Winner of 10 World Series of Poker bracelets won the main event in back-to-back years in 1976 and 1977.
Donald "Pat" Conroy, The Citadel
The 5-10, 185-pound guard averaged 7.8 points per game for The Citadel in three varsity seasons (1964-65 through 1966-67). The Bulldogs' third-leading scorer as a senior with 11.8 ppg had a career high of 25 points. Here is an excerpt from a school guide about him: "Exceptional ball control ability and fighting spirit. English major is poetry editor of the Spinx (yearbook)."
Conroy became a best-selling novelist after his dismissal from a teaching post for unorthodox instruction methods. His Houghton-published books include The Water is Wide (1972 release), The Great Santini (1976), The Lords of Discipline (1980), The Prince of Tides (1986) and Beach Music (1995). Several of his novels became hit movies, including Conrack with Jon Voight, The Great Santini with Robert Duval, The Lords of Discipline about The Citadel, and Prince of Tides with Barbara Streisand and Nick Nolte.
John Corcoran, Texas Western
The 6-4 forward averaged 3.2 points and 3.2 rebounds per game for Texas Western in 1958-59 and 1959-60 after attending junior college.
The author of a book titled "The Teacher Who Couldn't Read" (published by Focus on the Family) was appointed to the National Literacy Board by former First Lady Barbara Bush. Corcoran was illiterate, a burden he carried with him throughout his days at what is now Texas-El Paso and through 18 years as a school teacher and later while dabbling in real estate. After learning to read at the age of 48 at an adult learning program in the late 1980s, the national spokesman on literacy founded the for-profit Cornerstone Learning Systems, Inc., and the non-profit Cornerstone Learning Foundation.
John "Michael" Crichton, Harvard
The tallest player (6-8) on Harvard's squad as a sophomore in 1961-62 scored three points (all free throws) in nine games. He averaged 6.3 points per game in 12 outings for Harvard's freshman team the previous year when his best performance was a 16-point, 14-rebound effort against Andover.
The nationally-acclaimed fiction writer has authored numerous best-selling novels, including "Andromeda Strain" (1969), "The Terminal Man" (1972), "The Great Train Robbery" (1975), "Jurassic Park" (1991), "Disclosure" (1994) and "The Lost World" (1995). Jurassic Park was made into one of the biggest blockbuster movies of all-time, grossing more than $900 million worldwide in its first release alone. The nation's fourth highest-paid entertainer in 1996 ($102 million) also serves as co-executive producer for the NBC hit series ER.
Jim Cymbala, Rhode Island
One of the top free-throw shooters in Rhode Island history, he hit 82 percent of his fouls shots from 1963-64 through 1965-66.
After graduating from URI, he entered the seminary to study for the ministry. He and his wife, Carol, had three books on the best-selling list of the national religious clothbound non-fiction books, including Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire. In 1971, Jim and Carol took over leadership of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, a small struggling congregation of some 30 people gathered in a run-down building in the inner city. The Brooklyn Tabernacle now numbers more than 5,000 members from all walks of life. As senior pastor, Cymbala has a staff of nine associate pastors.
Rob Dauster, Vassar (N.Y.)
Averaged 2.5 ppg in 36 contests from 2004-05 through 2006-07, competing in more than half of those games in 2005-06 as a sophomore. Took almost 90% of his field-goal attempts from beyond the three-point arc. . . . Editor of Ballin' is a Habit web site wrote for SI.com before becoming head writer and editorial manager of @CBTonNBC in early January 2013.
Frank Deford, Princeton
Deford was a practice player for Princeton (class of '61) under coach Cappy Cappon, who told him he wrote basketball better than he played it.
Deford has chronicled sports for half a century in the pages of Sports Illustrated, feature reports on HBO's Real Sports and commentaries on NPR among other venues. He has been a tireless advocate for research and treatment of cystic fibrosis after his daughter died of the disease in 1980 when she was 8 years old.
Peter Finney Sr., Loyola (La.)
Played for the Wolfpack in the late 1940s.
Sports reporter and columnist for 68 years in New Orleans. He received the Louisiana Sportswriter of the Year Award a total of 17 times.
Pete Gent, Michigan State
He averaged 17.4 points and 8.3 rebounds per game in leading Michigan State in scoring each of his three varsity seasons (1961-62 through 1963-64). The 6-4, 200-pound forward scored 34 points against Bowling Green State in his senior year when he ranked 62nd in the country in scoring with 21.1 ppg before becoming a 14th-round choice by Baltimore in the NBA draft.
He became an NFL flanker and tight end who caught 68 passes for 989 yards and four touchdowns with the Dallas Cowboys from 1964-68. Gent authored several novels, including "North Dallas Forty" and "The Franchise." One of his most recent titles is "The Conquering Heroes", a cynical look at a fictional renegade college basketball program.
Stedman Graham, Hardin-Simmons (Tex.)
The 6-6, 200-pound forward averaged 10.7 points and 7.4 rebounds per game for Hardin-Simmons (Tex.) in his three-year varsity career (41-35 record), averaging 12.3 ppg and 10 rpg as a junior in 1972-73 and 15.2 ppg and 8.5 rpg as a senior in 1973-74. He played his freshman season in junior college for Weatherford (Tex.).
Graham dabbled briefly in modeling and played professional basketball in Europe before conceding the NBA was out of his reach. The former beau of TV mega-personality Oprah Winfrey is president of a marketing and consulting firm with offices in Chicago and Washington, D.C. He founded Athletes Against Drugs in 1985 and was a regular columnist for Inside Sports magazine. Overcoming the "Mr. Oprah" label was a small portion of the eight-year "inner struggle" to discover himself outlined in his book titled "You Can Make It Happen: A Nine-Step Plan for Success" (Simon & Schuster/1997).
Sean Gregory, Princeton
Member of three straight Ivy League championship teams from 1996 through 1998 under coaches Pete Carril and Bill Carmody. Played one minute in the Tigers' 69-57 victory over UNLV in the opening round of the 1998 NCAA playoffs.
TIME Magazine staff writer penned the cover story on America's gold medal-winning men's basketball Olympic "Redeem Team." Keeping Score, his sports column for TIME.com, usually appears every Friday.
Andy Hill, UCLA
The 6-1 guard was a member of three consecutive NCAA championship teams under legendary coach John Wooden from 1970 through 1972 that lost a total of only three contests in that span. He averaged 2.1 points per game while shooting 34.3 percent from the floor and 73.8 percent from the free-throw line.
The former CBS Productions president authored a book titled by one of Wooden's most famous sayings: "Be Quick--But Don't Hurry."
Jerry Lucas, Ohio State
Three-year All-American center for Ohio State authored more than 60 books on learning, including The Memory Book, which was on the New York Times' best-seller list for 50 weeks and reached the No. 2 position behind All the President's Men, the investigative story that uncovered the Watergate scandal.
Tony Lupien, Harvard
The 5-10, 185-pound guard was captain of the 1938-39 Harvard basketball squad. The previous season, he was the school's second-leading scorer in conference competition with 5.4 points per game. Lupien was a lefthanded first baseman who hit .268 in six seasons (1940, 1942 through 1945 and 1948) with the Boston Red Sox, Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago White Sox.
The former baseball coach at Dartmouth was co-author of the book "The Imperfect Diamond: The Story of Baseball's Reserve Clause and the Men Who Fought to Change It."
James Michener, Swarthmore (Pa.)
Details of his playing career at Swarthmore are sketchy. Of seeing all-time great Hank Luisetti perform his acrobatics in 1941, Michener wrote: "It was a marvelous night, one I can never forget. It demonstrated that there is always the possibility someone will come along who will be able to do old things in bold new ways. And it taught me humility. Nobody that I ever played with or against could go on the same floor with Luisetti. He paved the way for Pettit and Mikan and Fulks and Chamberlain and Abdul-Jabbar. He was a revelation."
The internationally-acclaimed novelist authored more than 40 books, including blockbusters like Hawaii (1959), Centennial (1974), Space (1982) and Texas (1985). After visiting 50 islands while serving in the Navy, Michener used those experiences to write his first fiction, Tales of the South Pacific, which he published at age 40. The work won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize and was turned into the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. He gave the University of Texas $44.2 million and his alma mater 60 gifts for a total of more than $7.2 million.
In Michener's 1976 volume entitled Sports in America, he wrote that "I am very doubtful that big-time sports, whether high school, college university or professional, do much to alter or enhance the character of the young men who participate. Those who enter the system with strong characters formed at home and who fall under the guidance of a good coach emerge strengthened in their convictions. The athlete lives in a world the rest of us can scarcely imagine. That any survive to live reasonably decent lives is a miracle."
Dr. James Nagel, Moorhead State (Minn.)
Three-time All-Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference selection was the league's scoring champion as a senior in 1991-92.
Student body president obtained his Ph.D. from Penn State before becoming an endowed English professor at Georgia. A widely-published author and an international authority on American fiction, especially Ernest Hemingway, Nagel is credited with the screen play for the 1997 movie "In Love and War."
Bill Reynolds, Brown
The 6-3, 170-pound guard scored 909 points in three varsity seasons for Brown from 1965-66 through 1967-68, finishing his career as the school's seventh-leading career scorer. He led the Bears in scoring as a junior and senior.
The sports columnist for the Providence Journal has authored books about Big East Conference, Bob Cousy, Rick Pitino, Chris Herren (Basketball Junkie) and Glory Days.
Charley Rosen, Hunter (N.Y.)
Novelist was leading scorer and rebounder for Hunter College for three consecutive seasons from 1959-60 through 1961-62. His critically-acclaimed basketball books include The House of Moses All-Stars, Have Jump Shot Will Travel, The Cockroach Basketball League and Scandals of '51: How the Gamblers Almost Killed College Basketball.
Former CBA coach was an assistant of Phil Jackson with the Albany Patroons.
Stephen A. Smith, Winston-Salem State
Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, ESPN commentator and former host of "Quite Frankly" played under legendary coach Clarence "Big House" Gaines in the early 1990s. College career ended after blowing out a knee. Former Cleveland Cavliers beat writer Branson Wright, who covered WSSU for the local paper, said Smith's nickname was The Pedestrian because every time he went through the lane he walked.
Richard Stengel, Princeton
He became a Rhodes Scholar after being the fourth-leading scorer for Princeton's 1973-74 freshman team with eight points per game. Stengel was a 5-11, 165-pound backup sophomore guard who scored two points in 11 games for the Princeton squad that won the 1975 NIT.
In a TIME essay in the March 16, 1998, edition, Stengel wrote: "I was a scrub who occasionally forced the first team to work up a sweat in practice. The real curse of a Princeton basketball education is that it renders you unfit for pickup games for the rest of your life. No one looks for the open man. No one sees you when you go backdoor. Guys hog the ball and force shots from 30 feet. My inner coach wants to bench all these Michael Jordan wannabes. But it's a lost cause. Basketball is more than just a metaphor for who we are; we show who we are when we play it. I've never bothered to try to explain to the guys I play with (in pickup games) why I don't shoot more. Mainly, I'm just trying to get a workout and not get hurt, but I suppose on another level, I'm still looking for the open man."
Stengel, the former managing editor of time.com, was a major political commentator and TIME essayist who collaborated on the definitive biography of Nelson Mandela - "Long Walk to Freedom" (1994). He became the National Constitution Center's President & CEO in the spring of 2004 before returning to Time magazine in 2006 as managing editor. In the fall of 2013, he became under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs at the State Department.
Warren "Rick" Talley, Southern Illinois
Averaged 11.9 ppg for SIU from 1955-56 through 1957-58. Led the Salukis in scoring as a sophomore (14 ppg) before becoming their second-leading scorer each of the next two seasons.
Talley was a sports columnist for the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Daily News before working as a talk show host with the Las Vegas-based Sports Entertainment Network.
Robert James Waller, Northern Iowa
Averaged 11.8 points per game as a 6-0 guard for Northern Iowa in three varsity seasons (1959-60 through 1961-62). Waller earned All-North Central Conference honors as a senior when he finished 10th in the league in scoring (14.2 ppg) and fourth in free-throw shooting (78.4 percent) for Norm Stewart in his first year as a head coach. Helped the Panthers earn their initial NCAA Tournament appearance in the college division when the school was known as the State College of Iowa.
Waller is the best-selling author of Warner Books products "The Bridges of Madison County" and "Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend." His most recent well-received book is "Puerto Vallarata Squeeze".
Dr. John Edgar Wideman, Penn
Two-time All-Ivy League second-team selection led Penn in scoring as a junior (13.2 points per game in 1961-62) and as a senior (13.8 ppg in 1962-63). The 6-1, 180-pound swingman from Pittsburgh also paced the Quakers in rebounding as a junior (7.6 rpg). Wideman was named to the Big Five Hall of Fame in 1974.
Wideman, an award-winning writer/novelist, has taught at Wyoming, Penn, Massachusetts, Brown and Amherst. The 20-plus books he has authored includes two---"Sent For You Yesterday" (1984) and "Philadelphia Fire" (1990)--that enabled him to become the first individual to twice win the International PEN/Faulkner Award. Rhodes Scholar, the second African-American recipient, has been listed in Who's Who in America.
According to Wideman, "it's (renamed) the passing game and coaches get the credit, but what in fact happened is that the players remade the game according to their skills and the coaches tried to catch up (to style that originated on the playground). As in most things in this country, if it comes from the street, if it comes from the underclass, it doesn't exist until it's given a name, until it's patented. Then the credit goes to somebody who's very late in the field."
Wideman told ESPN.COM that "the primary thing writing and basketball share is the sense that each time you go out, each time you play or begin a piece, it's a new day. You can score 40 points one game, bu the next game, those points don't count. You can win the Nobel Literature Prize, but that doesn't make the next sentence of the next book appear. With both writing and basketball, it really is a question of starting fresh each time out--you have a chance, but you're also tested each time.
"We have those little moments in games when we feel in synch, when we feel that time has kind of stopped and we're on stage and we're in control of our lives. That's a very rare feeling. Most of us don't feel that way most of the time. Basketball can give us a kind of mystical awareness. Everything seems focused and in balance."
The celebrated author is the father of Jamila Wideman, a standout guard for Stanford who went on to start as a rookie in the inaugural season of the WNBA. His brother (Robbie) and son (Jacob) each served time in prison after being convicted of murder. Robbie was the centerpiece of his nonfiction book "Brothers and Keepers" that received a National Book Critics Circle nomination.
His book "Hoop Roots" (2003) tells the story of the roots of black basketball in our culture, a tale inextricable from that of racism in America. Wideman said "basketball is fluid, flexible, and as open to interpretation as a song." One of our nation's preeminent literary and social voices wrote: "You whisper the secret of who you are, who you want to be, into the ear of the game, and once it knows your secrets, it plays them back to you and you must dance to them, the sense, nonsense, and music nothing less than revealed and revealing truth--your song of self the game makes real. . . For a moment on the court you can play at that level of seriousness. Those are the stakes of the playground game."