Illinois Authors

Follows the author as he spends a summer in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn and engages in urban basketball.

University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln : ©2004.

"In 1974 Rick Telander intended to spend a few days doing a magazine piece on the court wizards of Brookly's Foster Park. He ended up staying the entire summer, becoming part of the players' lives and eventually the coach of a loose aggregation known as the Subway Stars." "Telander tells of everything he saw: the on-court flash, the off-court jargon, the late-night graffiti raids, the tireless efforts of one promoter-hustler-benefactor to get these kids a chance at a college education. He lets the kids speak for themselves, revealing their grand dreams and ambitions, but he never flinches from showing us how far their dreams are from reality. The roots of today's inner-city basketball can be traced to the world Telander presents in Heaven Is a Playground, the first book of its kind."--BOOK JACKET.

Sports Pub., Champaign, IL : ©2004.

Cricket Books, Chicago : 2002.

An unlikely friendship develops between a lonely eleven-year-old boy and the professional basketball star whom he idolizes.

University of Illinois Press, Urbana : ©1996.

This edition, first published in 1989, includes a new afterword in which the author reviews some of the major gridiron scandals of the 1990s and new forewords by a university president and a leading scholar in the history of college sports.