Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation That Saved the Soul of the NBA

By Theresa Runstedtler

Book Overview

A vital narrative history of 1970s pro basketball, and the Black players who shaped the NBA

Against a backdrop of ongoing resistance to racial desegregation and 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, among them Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Spencer Haywood, and the press and public were quick to blame this cohort for the supposed decline of pro-basketball, citing drugs, violence, and greed. Basketball became a symbol for post-civil rights America: the rules had changed, allowing more Black people onto the playing field, and now they were ruining everything.

Enter Black Ball, a gripping 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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1645036952
• ISBN13: 9781645036951
• Release Date: March 2023
• Publisher: Bold Type Books
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.6"