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it would’ve been one of those reality shows.” And you can clearly tell he’s never seen a second of “Basketball Wives,” and you’re happy for him. In the age of oversharing, how many athletes have secrets? What isn’t on Twitter? Babies (LeBron), X-rays (Arian Foster), toenails (Dwyane Wade): all fair game.Įarly on Bird says about the Dream Team: “If it would’ve happened today. That it was a problem then seems almost quaint. He notes that he took heat from some for not making a bigger deal of it and from others (including Jordan) for writing it at all. Take, for instance, his retelling of one of his favorite Jordan stories, the one about his dilemma over reporting in a Sports Illustrated story that Jordan had a baby out of wedlock. McCallum’s tone is conversational but always insightful, drifting into first-person occasionally, but doing so through the lens, as he describes it, “of a minor-league Cameron Crowe’’ from “Almost Famous.” He’s able to write in a way that examines greatness without resorting to hero worship. (McCallum’s mocking, made-up example: “OMG, jst met ChazBark at bar & he KISSED me on cheek hez not rlly fat LOL,” and the only part that’s implausible is the semicolon - everyone knows it would be an ellipsis that’s six dots too long.)

McCallum makes fun of today’s excessive, social-media-fueled, minute-by-minute coverage of teams, players, owners, coaches, housewives, girlfriends, children, cars, cribs, and mistresses in sports - and especially the 140-character orgasms that flow nonstop on the social network of your choice. That dichotomy, in fact, forms a kind of sub-theme in the book. That these bits were still undisclosed underscores the difference between then and now. “A video of that game is the holy grail of basketball,” McCallum writes. would I be worried about Oscar Schmidt?” The greatest game of that summer, the one that McCallum devoted a chapter to, wasn’t the 32-point blowout against Croatia in the gold medal game, it was the intrasquad scrimmage between Magic Johnson’s blue team and Michael Jordan’s white team, a game seen by few. and a dozen other guys during the season.

It was the boldness of it all, like someone explaining the legend of Brazil’s Oscar Schmidt to Charles Barkley and Barkley saying something like this: “I guard Larry Bird and James Worthy and Kevin McHale. It wasn’t just that they gleefully steamrolled teams by an average of 44 points.