Dr. G. Delivers Glowing Review of “Underbelly Hoops”
Hoops: Adventures in the CBA – A.K.A. The Crazy Basketball Association
(Paperback) When was the last time an athlete wrote a book this
intelligent? Maybe Bill Bradley’s “Life on the Run” or Bill Russell’s “Second
Wind”? Carson Cunningham, a former starter for a good Purdue team, writes about
his last year in the Continental Basketball Association, when he’s chasing a
dream to get into the NBA, even though part of him knows that it’ll never
happen. Cunningham is introspective and writes movingly about the flow of great
basketball, but the book is best when it profiles his teammates — sometimes
with affection, never with condescension, and always with fairness and humor.
And no one is more memorable, ridiculous, infuriating, and confounding than his
coach, “Daleo,” a character better than any novelist might dream up. Buy this
book.
HOOPSWORLD Gives Underbelly Hoops High Marks In Book Review
The “Crazy Basketball Association” – book review by HOOPSWORLD’s Jason Fleming
Remember Carson Cunningham? You can be forgiven if you do not, especially if you aren’t a fan of the Purdue Boilermakers or the Oregon State Beavers. Cunningham has now written a book about his experience in his final year in the Continental Basketball Association called Underbelly Hoops: Adventures in the Crazy Basketball Association.
Cunningham played his freshman season with the Beavers back in 1996-97, where the point guard was runner up for the Pac-10’s Freshman of the Year award to Arizona’s Mike Bibby. That’s significant because one of Cunningham’s teammates was another freshman, Corey Benjamin, whom the Chicago Bulls chose in the first round of the 1998 NBA Draft. After one season in Corvallis Cunningham transferred back home to Indiana to play for Purdue (a decision he talks about in the book). After college Cunningham played professionally in Australia and Estonia, plus three seasons in the CBA.
The book is a look, through the eyes of a player, at the CBA and all that it entails, from the travel to the personalities to hopes and dreams. In the book Cunningham does a good job bouncing back and forth between giving backgrounds of his teammates – names you know and remember, like Keith Closs, Ronnie Fields and Teddy Dupay – and detailing day-to-day life as a minor league basketball player. The book is well researched, providing much detailed background on the players and the league as a whole, and it’s colorful, giving the reader a chance to experience the daily grind the way Cunningham did.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that Cunningham wrote a book as much a piece of history as it is the personal journey of a player coming to grips with the end of his career. Since retiring from basketball he has earned his Ph.D in history from Purdue and is studying for his MBA at DePaul, where he currently teaches history and coaches basketball. He has written two other books, one a well-reviewed history of USA Basketball called American Hoops: US Men’s Basketball From Berlin to Beijing, and the other about baseball – Before the Curse: The Chicago Cubs Glory Years, 1870-1945.
Underbelly Hoops is available as an ebook only and is definitely worth checking out – link here!
Glowing Review of Cunningham’s American Hoops runs in the Journal of Sport History
CUNNINGHAM, CARSON. American Hoops: U.S. Men’s Olympic Basketball from Berlin to
Beijing.Lincoln:University ofNebraska Press, 2010. Pp. 528. Illustrations, notes, and
index. $40.00 cb.
During the 2008BeijingOlympic games, 4.7 billion people, about 70 percent of the world’s population, tuned on their television sets to witness the spectacle. One of the highlights of the event was the U.S. Men’s Basketball “Redeem Team,” which captured the gold medal with its victory overSpain. Olympic basketball had become a worldwide sensation. The International Basketball Federation (FIBA), which sanctions Olympic basketball, partners with more than 210 nations. Billions of people play and watch the sport throughout the world, and the sports stars are widely recognized. In 2008, the National Basketball Association (NBA) featured seventy-six players from thirty-two countries, and the NBA finals aired in 205 countries in over forty different languages. Furthermore, the meteoric rise of interest in Olympic basketball has facilitated cultural exchanges and promoted a common desire for Western products throughout the globe.
In American Hoops, Cunningham, a visiting professor of history atDePaulUniversity, offers a riveting and convincing explanation of how this phenomenon came about. Relying extensively on interviews with a vast array of former Olympic coaches and players, Cunningham weaves a rich tapestry exploring the relationship of sport and politics that brings the excitement of Olympic basketball to life. His thesis is that the intersection of three forces—liberal capitalism, technological innovation, and the revolution within the sport—all contributed to the electrifying evolution of Olympic men’s basketball and the global sport that it is today.
This evolution certainly sprang from modest soil. Basketball became a full-medal sport for the first time during the 1936Berlingames. When the inventor of the sport, Dr. James Naismith, tossed up the ball in the inaugural game betweenEstoniaandFranceon an outdoor court, few if anyone could envision an optimistic future for the game. InBerlin, theU.S.men’s basketball team captured its first gold medal, beatingCanadaby a score of 19 to 8.
A few decades later, opportunity for African Americans, greater competitiveness, diversity, and innovation revolutionized the sport, and in the early years of the Cold War,
Olympic basketball played an important role in showcasing American democratic ideals to the rest of the world. In 1948, Don Barksdale became the first African American to play for theU.S.Olympic basketball team. In the 1956 games, the speed, agility, and skill of Bill Russell became an international model for the big man in basketball that other countries would struggle to emulate. Four years later, the combination of size, speed, ball handling, shooting, passing, and power at the guard position exhibited by Oscar Robertson would have the same dynamic effect. The trend toward a more open, faster, and higherscoring style of basketball had become international.
Ironically, Henry Iba, who favored a more deliberate style of play, was chosen by theU.S.Olympic committee to coach three straight basketball teams from 1964 to 1972. Fortunately, relatively unknown African-American coach John McLendon, a pioneer in the development of the fast break, was an assistant in two of them and had an immeasurable positive influence not only on the African-American players like Charlie Scott and Spencer Haywood but on the pace and style of the game itself.
Cunningham skillfully explains the tension between the AAU and NCAA in fielding players for these teams and the complex issues of professionalism and amateurism. He also exhibits admirable restraint in exploring how the 1972 loss to the Soviet Union inMunichremains the most controversial championship of all time and clearly demonstrates how racial issues, super-nationalism, and overwrought individuality at the expense of team work exacerbated problems within theU.S.team and helped to undermine American basketball supremacy.
In 1992 the largely professional “Dream Team” of Larry Bird, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, and Michael Jordan epitomized basketball’s global reach and raised the basketball standard for everyone. Through the massive Olympic basketball coverage, these professional stars became some of the most recognized faces on the planet. Although the decision to use professionals in the Olympics was not without its critics, it was necessary for the United Statesto retain its competitive edge in the basketball arena. As George Vecsey wrote in the New York Times, “it was a noble experiment and it worked” (p. 347).
The engaging story ends with the “Redeem Team” capturing the gold inBeijing, allowing the American people to revel in Olympic basketball glory once again. However, as Cunningham rightly concludes, this final story is more than mere nationalistic pride, for it “takes place with the context of a global culture and a sporting environment of phenomenal appeal that celebrates openness and universalism” (p. 414). One hopes that his optimism is well founded as we look forward to the Olympic games of 2012 and beyond.
—MILTONS. KATZ
Kansas City Art Institute
*Article ran in the Fall 2010 edition of the Journal of Sport History, pgs. 454-55.
NWI’s Hammond Times Writes about Bruce Lee, Coach C, and the “Empty Cup”
Check out Steve Hanlon’s article on Bruce Lee, Coach C, and the “Empty Cup”:
http://www.nwitimes.com/sports/columnists/steve-hanlon/article_79324d8b-debf-5ff4-9dc9-3535117ec43f.html
ESPN’s Chris Sheridan’s Column Highlights Cunningham’s American Hoops
Check out this article from ESPN’s Chris Sheridan about the 1960 US Olympic team. It highlights American Hoops!:
Luke Harangody Visits the Carson Cunningham Basketball Camp
The recent NBA summer league sensation for the Boston Celtics, Luke Harangody, visited the Carson Cunningham Basketball Camp at Andrean High School on July 21, 2010. Read up on it here:
NPR’s Only A Game Reviews American Hoops
…American Hoops provides a thorough history of the development of the men’s game from the days when it was played in the dirt before a few confused fans to its current stature as a centerpiece of The Games.
Read the review by Bill Littlefield at Only a Game:
http://www.onlyagame.org/2010/01/american-hoops/
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