Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association
Terry Pluto stitches together hundreds of interviews with players, coaches, owners, referees, and reporters to tell the story of the ABA from its chaotic 1967 launch to its 1976 merger with the NBA. The result is a rollicking oral history of bounced checks, three point lines, slam dunk contests, and franchises that folded before they finished a season. Julius Erving, George Gervin, Moses Malone, and Bobby Jones appear alongside owners who ran teams out of shoeboxes and coaches who slept on trainers' couches. Pluto argues that the ABA's freewheeling style, its flair, and its Black stars pushed a stodgy NBA into the modern era. The book reads like a long night of stories at a hotel bar with people who cannot believe they lived through it.
What you might want to know about Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
An oral history of the wild, red white and blue basketball league that invented the modern NBA.
Simmons cites Loose Balls as one of the funniest and most quotable sports books ever, referencing it across The Book of Basketball and his podcasts whenever he wants to remind listeners how much of today's NBA came out of the ABA.
No. It is an oral history, so almost every page is a first person quote from someone who was there, which is a big part of the charm.
Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association was written by Terry Pluto, published in 1990 by Simon and Schuster.
Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association is 496 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association takes most readers 7 to 11 hours to finish.
Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
