Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association by Terry Pluto

Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association Reviews

• 
  Joseph Stieb

  A mildly entertaining listen about the ABA, a weird pro league that existed from 1967-1976. The ABA gave us some incredible players (Julius Erving, Artis Gilmore, Rick Barry, David Thompson, Moses Malone) and some great innovations (the 3 pointer, a quicker pace of play, the dunk contest, and basically any gimmicky promotional thing ever). It was pretty interesting learning about those guys and events, especially many of the really whacky players they had. The league was a real mess, with teams folding and moving constantly, crappy gyms, horrible travel schedules, and poor press coverage. However, you also learn how the ABA gave players way more leverage in getting better contracts. There were some genuinely funny anecdotes in this book too.
  
  However, this book was way too long and the format stunk. Pluto's idea was that the ABA had so little TV or press coverage that most of what we know of it comes from lore, legend, and hearsay. Thus 95% of the book is just passages from interviews arranged chronologically to tell various stories in the ABA's career. To be honest, as a history dude, it's an interesting idea to put a book together as an oral history of a sports league. However, the execution just doesn't work. The segments are way too long and go into mind numbing detail about every dang trade, coaching move, and managerial dispute that happened in this 9 year period. In hindsight, the book would have been much better had it been 25% shorter or just written as a normal 300-pager-or-so fun sports book. That's why I don't really recommend it. If you want a more fun and much shorter hoop book, check out Showtime about the 1980's Lakers. I think you would have to be older or just a hardcore hoop fan (more than me) to really like Loose Balls (kudos on a great title though).
• 
  Benoit Lelièvre

  What makes LOOSE BALLS great is that the ABA is the last great American myth. There is little to no evidence of if any of the stories it engendered are true, but the book lives up to its strange, yet engaging legacy of being both the epitome of what the 1970s were about (afros, free spirited excess, drugs, guns) and the birth of contemporary, fast-flowing basketball.
  
  I didn't know the ABA all that well before getting into LOOSE BALLS, but the oral history structure of the book was perfect to get me introduced and become familiar with some of its key names such as Mike Storen, Carl Scheer, Joe Mullaney, Larry Brown, Dick Tinkham, Bob Bass, Slick Leonard, etc. Not sure who among these guys is still alive, but let me tell you something: they will all live forever because the ABA was the most media-friendly thing in a world where they was no media to cover it and therefore it has found its place in our common imaginary.
• 
  Barnabas Piper

  If you're a basketball fan this oral history of the ABA is well-worth your time. I never realized how important the ABA was to the current NBA's health and success. The book is equal parts history and and hilarious. It gives first hand accounts of the intricacies and insanity of the ABA. Really enjoyed it and learned quite a bit about how pro basketball in the U.S. got to where it is today.
• 
  James Lambert

  Warren Jabali deliberately stomped on a dude's head during an ABA game. Also the Spurs held a Dime Beer Night that ended in a riot. These are the things that are sorely missing from modern basketball.
• 
  Charles Heath

  Good oral history of a fun league and where my love for hoops started, back when the San Antonio Spurs first arrived on loan from Dallas. The league was full of real characters and some great talent. That said, this book is so out of date and would benefit from an updated or revised edition.
• 
  J.C.

  Exactly what I needed after the heavy, depressing stuff I had been reading. The oral history format really works well for this subject.
• 
  Damien Cowger

  Loose Balls is a highly enjoyable account of the wild days of the American Basketball Association. I'm an off and on NBA fan and a long time fan of the game of basketball. I can tell you stats and stories about many NBA players, but until I read this book, I basically knew nothing about this short-lived league other than the fact that it birthed the San Antonio Spurs. The book chronicles the several years in the Seventies that the league burned bright and how strongly it affected the NBA that we know today.
  
  One odd aspect of the book is that it is told in a non-linear fashion, in an atypical way. Rather than stick to a chronological form, the book is divided into compartments to follow particular players (Like Moses Malone) or teams (The fabled Indiana Pacers). The tale is also told from a patchwork of quotes from a wide variety of players, coaches, owners, and even journalists who experienced the ABA. This style ends up leading to lots of repetition, which at times can be maddening. I listened to this on Audible, so I imagine that it would be a different experience on the page. Every fan of the basketball pro game should be required to spend time with Pluto's loving look at the days when afros and red-white-and blue balls captured the imaginations of fans young and old.
• 
  Jeremy Moore

  This book epitomizes why I don't like oral histories. The story feels fragmented and biased. You ask 6 people to talk about the same story, and then each of their responses has redundant information. This book is probably 40% longer than it needed to be.
  
  The author submits no evidence that he can write - the only material that isn't a quote are his "yearly diaries" that are nothing but a stream of facts. The book is filled with typos, showing he can't edit either. And the choice to organize the book into stories means that when he does talk about the league chronologically, none of those details make any sense.
  
  I enjoyed learning about the ABA, and the crazy stories were entertaining, but this book was close to not worth it.
• 
  Phil Overeem

  HANDS DOWN THE FUNNIEST BOOK ABOUT PRO BASKETBALL EVER WRITTEN! It helps that it's about the brief, crazed history of the ABA, but the chapter about the St. Louis Spirits (with Marvin "Bad News" Barnes, Fly Williams of Austin Peay, and a first-year sportscaster named Bob Costas) is worth the price of the book alone. Pluto's book on the Cleveland Indians, The Curse of Rocky Colavito, is almost as funny, and ranks with Seasons in Hell: With Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog and "The Worst Baseball Team in History"--The 1973-1975 Texas Rangers, by Mike Shropshire, and Jim Bouton's Ball Four, as the funniest book about major league baseball ever written.
• 
  Frank Murtaugh

  One of the 10 best sports books I've read (and I've read . . . lots). The ABA was an incredible thing/place/time. Not all that long ago (the league existed from 1967 to 1976), it feels like it was of a different world (no cable TV, not internet, no ESPN for crying out loud). There were professional coaches who had not seen Julius Erving(!) play until they faced him in an ABA game. Basketball legends were organic in the time of the ABA (none grew larger than Doctor J, but there was also the Ice Man, and Skywalker), and the league's style (dunks and three-pointers!) changed basketball for good. And for the better.
• 
  Tyrone Umrani

  I was a fan of the ABA when I was a child, scouring the newspapers for box scores of Washington Capitals and Virginia Squires games. I grew up on the legend of Julius Erving, catching only occasional glimpses of him on local TV. Terry Pluto's exhaustive coverage of wild days of the ABA was a fascinating read. It is a delight for the hardcore basketball fan. My only complaint was with one of the narrators, who consistently mispronounced the names of many of the players.
• 
  David

  An intriguing behind the scenes look at the American Basketball Association, but in the introduction chapter Terry Pluto includes the line ... 'True Stories? Who knows?' and you get that sense in this book. Pluto did a great job interviewing a bunch of players/coaches/announcers/owners from the ABA days, but he spills everything out into this book, and I got the sense that little effort was made to back up claims that were made, etc.
  
  It is written in that lazy transcription style where Pluto simply gives you the dictation from his tape recorder rather than put any effort into crafting the information he gleaned into a story.
  
  I enjoyed the insights from Bob Costas the most, and was impressed at the number of voices Pluto tracked down, I just wish he had organized it better. Many parts of the book become repetitive and you get disjointed chapters that go from telling behind the scenes stories to a simple list of facts/stats from a season.
  
  Despite my frustrations with the style of the book, as a basketball fan, I enjoyed a look at an era of basketball that pre-dates me.
  
  C'mon NBA ... adopt the red, white and blue ball.
• 
  B. R. Reed

  A very enjoyable and informative book on the American Basketball Association, the league that introduced hoops to the red, white & blue basketball, the 3 point shot and "hardship" players. Being a native of Indiana and a big fan of the early Pacers, I never really knew that the ABA was a league in constant turmoil during its nine year existence. Indiana was a reasonably stable franchise during those years. I vividly recall Roger Brown, Bob Netolicky, Mel Daniels, Freddie Lewis, Billy Keller, George McGinnis, Don Buse, Danny Roundfield, Billy Knight, Darnell Hillman, Coach Bobby Leonard and others on the Pacers team. KY had Gilmore, Issel, Dampier and Carrier. Utah had a talented group led by Zelmo Beaty, Willie Wise and Ron Boone. Other great ABA players were Connie Hawkins, Doug Moe, Spencer Heywood, George Gervin, Jimmy Silas, Moses Malone, David Thompson and the great Dr J. It was a wild and crazy league with some real characters (players, coaches and owners). If you have any interest in the ABA then this is the book to read. Full of facts and anecdotes, often funny and some hard to believe. The league included Pat Boone, Bob Costas, Charlie Finley, "Bad News" Barnes, and enforcers Wendell Ladner, John Brisker and Warren Jabali. Fun read for me. Note: Many of you have probably never heard of Roger Brown, small forward for the Pacers. A New Yorker, he was one of the best basketball players I ever saw. They pulled him off an auto factory job in Dayton, OH in '67 and what a treat to watch him on the court.
• 
  Gregory Jones

  If you were a fan of the ABA back in the day, you will love this book. For those of us interested in the anomaly of this second tier basketball league, this book is a bit long and overly detailed. Pluto decided to write the book as basically a collected interview rather than an overarching narrative. I think that decision makes the book unique, giving "voice" to the players and officials that directed the quirky and interesting ABA.
  
  If you are looking for a quick summary, I would recommend finding something online. However, if you're interested in getting to know the personalities of big names like Julius Irving and Moses Malone, then this book will be for you. There was a litle of "wild west" stuff that happened in the ABA from the creativity in the early days to the more "up tempo" style they popularized.
  
  The book makes it clear that the ABA changed professional basketball forever. Even though it didn't last long term, it served to bring innovation and competition to the game. It was a joy to learn about. The introduction is well worth exploring even if you're not looking for 400 plus pages of ABA stories.
• 
  Joe Slavinsky

  This book really took me back in time. Even though it wasn't on TV much, I was a huge fan of the ABA. There wasn't a team in my area(Chicagoland, at the time), but I followed it as best I could. I even bought a red, white, and blue basketball. I would shoot at the rim above my garage, or at a park that was close to the house. My kids were small then, and they'd watch, and I would hold them up to make baskets. It's not that I disliked the NBA, but the ABA played a more exciting brand of ball, with the striped ball, the 3 point basket, and a fast-break style, that's the norm in the NBA today. This book is comprised of interviews with players, owners, broadcasters, and others involved, and gives you a great understanding of the whole issue. Highly recommended for anyone who was a basketball fan back in the day. BTW, this is not a new book. With the libraries in Dallas closed, due to Covid-19, one must find reading material where one can. My older son had this, and I found it while perusing his bookshelf.
• 
  Susan

  The fascinating story of the short-lived but immortal American Basketball Association. Of course there are stories about Dr. J, and the cult heroes who never had a chance for one reason or another to succeed in the NBA, but it really shines a much-deserved light on those whose success in the ABA justifiably earned them a place in the Basketball Hall Of Fame, such as Roger Brown and Louie Dampier. As the primary source of a league with no national television and little national media coverage, there is often more legend than fact involved, and its oral history format lends itself to repetition, but it is a must-read for any basketball fan.
• 
  Lewis M

  What a great story, and so well told. The amazing history of the American Basketball Association 🏀 is a must read for every great basketball fan. If you love the modern game with its 3 point shooting... well that's courtesy of the ABA. LeBron was likely the last great high school player to turn pro and again that came about from the ABA as well. The stories are wild, the personalities unbelievable and the book really seems to be the inspiration for Semi Pro, Will Ferrells movie about the Flint Tropics who seem loosely based on the Virginia Squires or perhaps the Carolina franchise... such great fun.
• 
  Lucas

  This was a fun, easy read. Just a bunch of people telling stories that may or may not be true. At times there are a lot of non sequiturs but the author organized the material together pretty well. I heard about this book from Bill Simmons, who said that today they would never write this book, it would just be a documentary. I agree with that, but it was interesting to read an oral history book, and the format allows for longer stories than TV does, so I think there are some benefits to this approach.
• 
  Kate Stafford

  I love stories about underdog startup leagues that take on the big boys. I am not a huge basketball fan but have always been intrigued by the silliness of the ABA. This was a quick read, mostly because it is truly an oral history. A bunch of quotes and non-sequiturs from participants. I understand what the author was attempting here - so much of the league was undocumented and accounts are sometimes contradictory. However, I would have liked some narrative tying this all together. It raises the question - is this actually a book or just the author’s raw notes from his research?
• 
  Dale Jennings

  I agree with some of the of the previous reviews that this book is way too long. It’s too long to be a lighthearted look at the craziness of the ABA and the era where pro basketball itself was a minor sport. But, the oral history and humor don’t lent itself to being an academic history of the ABA either.
  
  Book should have been much shorter, maybe release a volume 2 for those who just can’t get enough.
  
  On the other hand, it’s easy enough to skip through the humorous anecdotes about a player once you’ve had enough and move to the next chapter.
• 
  Cupboard Horsington

  It quickly becomes apparent that an oral history is quite possibly the only way to teach the lessons of the ABA.
  
  I an interesting read with a great collection of sources, however it tends to drag on a bit. It could have been 2/3 as long without losing any of the key concepts. Be prepared to have 4 people verify the same story which I understand is important to a historian, but as a casual reader it can become frustrating.
• 
  Rob Rains

  An excellent oral history into the short-lived but influential American Basketball Association that cultivated innovations that improved the NBA and also brought players like Julius Erving and Moses Malone and coaches like Hubie Brown and Larry Brown. Pluto’s best work here is organizing the narrative around seasons and teams. The stories are fascinating and the personalities are legendary. Well worth a read.