Black Ball Kareem Abduljabbar Spencer Haywood And The Generation That Saved The Soul Of The Nba Theresa Runstedtler by Theresa Runstedtler 9781645036968, 1645036960 instant download after payment.

Against a backdrop of ongoing resistance to racial desegregation & strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation’s imagined descent into disorder. A new generation of Black players entered the league then, among them Kareem Abdul-Jabbar & Spencer Haywood, & the press & public were quick to blame this cohort for the supposed decline of pro basketball, citing drugs, violence, & greed. Basketball became a symbol for post-civil rights America: the rules had changed, allowing more Black people onto the playing field, & now they were ruining everything. Enter Black Ball, a gripping history & corrective in which scholar Theresa Runstedtler expertly rewrites basketball’s “Dark Ages.”

Weaving together a deep knowledge of the game with incisive social analysis, Runstedtler argues that this much-maligned period was pivotal to the rise of the modern-day NBA. Black players introduced an improvisational style derived from the playground courts of their neighborhoods. They also challenged the team owners’ autocratic power, garnering higher salaries & increased agency. Their skills, style, & savvy laid the foundation for the global popularity & profitability of the league we know today.

Theresa Runstedtler is a scholar of African American history whose research examines Black popular culture, with a particular focus on the intersection of race, masculinity, labor, & sport. She is the author of Jack Johnson,Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line (UC Press, 2012), a book that explores the first African American world heavyweight champion’s legacy as a Black sporting hero & international anticolonial icon. Her book won the 2013 Phillis Wheatley Book Prize from the Northeast Black Studies Association.