Book Review: "The Last Shot" by Darcy Frey

The original edition of this book, published in 1994, documents the story of four basketball players at Lincoln High in Coney Island around the year 1991. The story though, is really about the micro-culture that is big time high school basketball and its relationship to the ghetto that these kids inhabit. For the kids, rightly or wrongly, basketball represents their only chance for escape from a life of poverty and though its never stated explicitly in the book, we all know that the players here are facing nearly insurmountable odds and almost certain failure.

The author followed these kids throughout their senior season at Lincoln. In doing so, we gain a fairly intimate portrait of the three seniors. By following the players so closely, Frey achieves something remarkably powerful. We see just how young and vulnerable these young man-childs are. They may be over six feet tall and able to do things with a basketball most of us only dream about, but they are at their core, young and impressionable young men who've had almost no real education to speak of, and no realistic chance to succeed in anything in life, for whom basketball represents the only real way out of a crime and drug ridden neighborhood. Some are still struggling with dealing with their first serious girlfriend or selling Cokes for spare change in the summertime, but at the same time, they must fend off hordes of seasoned and slick college recruiters who are almost entirely self serving (at least as they are described by Frey).

The fourth player Frey studies is of course, Knicks' star Stephon Marbury, who at the time was a fast talking, brash, 14 year old freshman superstar in the making. Marbury really gives the book its focus. We know that in the end, he manages to break out of this cycle of poverty, something none of his older brothers were able to accomplish. We're left to ponder if its simply a matter of his talent level that allows this to happen, or perhaps, it has something to do with the cocksure attitude he displays even as a youngster in this book, that somehow cocoons him from the insecurities and threats that ultimately cause the downfall of the other characters in this book. Marbury's story calls to mind the story of another ghetto player turned NBA superstar - Isiah Thomas, who was built of similar mental resolve. Looking back on Marbury's career, one remembers that he was heavily derided for the "management" of much of his career, ie. his decision to turn his one year stay at Georgia Tech into essentially a one year prep course for pro basektball (which of course sent so called college hoops "purists" into a tizzy). In retrospect, given the backdrop he grew up against, suddenly his career decisions do not seem so unreasonable.

This is a very important book. I think it is must reading for anyone who sits at home on lazy Saturday afternoons watching their favorite college or pro basketball teams but has never stopped to wonder where on earth many of these players actually come from.

The edition of the book I read is lacking the updated epilogue which shows what happened to the players ten years after the fact. I will post an addendum once I have perused that at the local bookstore. Still, regardless, this is an important book, more so about blacks and poverty than just about basketball. The writing is journalistic and less than beautiful but the subject is powerful enough that it doesn't matter.

Overall rating: **** (out of 5)