{"id":745110,"date":"2026-06-18T19:36:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T19:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/745110\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T19:36:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T19:36:21","slug":"literary-hub-what-to-read-next-if-the-knicks-win-made-you-basketball-curious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/745110\/","title":{"rendered":"Literary Hub \u00bb What to read next if the Knicks win made you \u201cbasketball-curious.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\tA mini reading list. \t<\/p>\n

Today in New York, you can\u2019t get to lower Manhattan because the streets are clogged with Knicks fans. My town is still on fire from their historic championship win last weekend. People who could not name a single NBA player a month ago (ahem, it me) have sprouted expertise and regional patriotism overnight. Thanks to Jalen, OG, Josh, and Karl, the street vibes haven\u2019t been this good since Obama\u2019s win in 2008.<\/p>\n

Yet I anticipate the complaint of the serious sports fan. Where will all this goodwill go after the parade ends? A lesson of this historic season is that one could love basketball all year, not just when the games are being projected on the sides of bodegas. But say you have a nebbish temperament, and poor hand-eye coordination.<\/p>\n

Literary sports-writing is a long American tradition. But in the wake of Grantland\u2018s demise, it\u2019s been harder to find diamonds in the genre. There are some great basketball books<\/a> out there.\u00a0 And diehards always have ESPN. But if you\u2019re a casual reader on the bench, you might check out some of these features first.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what to read if you\u2019re almost ready to commit to basketball.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot A still from Love & Basketball. Omar Epps & Sanaa Lathan.<\/p>\n

1. Hanif Abdurraqib\u2019s \u201cNotes on Hoops<\/a>,\u201d The Paris Review<\/p>\n

Abdurraqib\u2019s 2021 column for the Review revisited the \u201cgolden age of basketball movies.\u201d His close reads of classics like Love & Basketball and White Men Can\u2019t Jump\u00a0note the elegance of the sport, and situate b-ball in a rich American history.<\/p>\n

Observations range from the pithy (\u201cIn most sports movies, no one can actually play the sport\u201d) to the personal (\u201c[Like Mike] is, at least in part, about loneliness, about placelessness, about wanting to pull the curtain back on a world where a kid feels worthy of being desired\u201d). A great place to start, considering he\u2019s one of our best bards, fullstop.<\/p>\n

\"Basketball<\/p>\n

2. Katie Heindl\u2019s \u201cBasketball Feelings<\/a>,\u201d Substack<\/p>\n

This newsletter, launched on TinyLetter in 2018, tries to \u201creconcile life with basketball\u201d while expounding on \u201cthe cultural, political, historic, and ideological intersections of the sport.\u201d Heindl\u2019s is a devoted but philosophical fandom. She\u2019s as inclined to meditate on miracles<\/a> as offseason turbulence.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s also written about women\u2019s basketball for The Believer<\/a>, and recently published a breathless Knicks play-by-play<\/a> for SB Nation. Her coverage is detailed, ardent, and soon to be collected in a book from Transit<\/a>.\u00a0I especially love her more tender musings, like this one<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

3. John McPhee\u2019s \u201cA Sense of Where You Are<\/a>,\u201d The New Yorker<\/p>\n

This lengthy profile from a 1965 New Yorker zones in on Bill Bradley, an Ivy League hooper who was once considered the best of the best and brightest. Later turned into a book, the essay was one of the first to give a human face to the world of college sports.<\/p>\n

Though mighty hagiographic, McPhee\u2019s ability to break down a player\u2019s gifts makes a poetic case for the game.<\/p>\n

\"Defector<\/p>\n

4. Giri Nathan, Defector<\/a><\/p>\n

A staffer and co-founder at one of our last good sports writing hubs (Defector, ftw!), Nathan regularly writes about tennis and basketball<\/a>\u2014often in a witty register that makes the players feel like friends. I\u2019ve loved his exuberant coverage of this year\u2019s finals. (And the glorious aftermath<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Nathan\u2019s hoop creds are also well-established. He profiled Abdurraqib<\/a> for Vulture around the publication of the latter\u2019s memoir, There\u2019s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And, on a general note? Defector is the place to go for all good hoop writing, au courant. Maitreyi Anantharaman is writing stylish reports<\/a> about the WNBA. And a great bench of freelancers is making this all-American game feel dramatic, approachable, and exciting\u2014even to filthy casuals.<\/p>\n

\"Hoop<\/p>\n

5. John Edgar Wideman, Hoop Roots<\/a><\/p>\n

I leave you with a long read. Wideman, one of our more prolific and fascinating novelists, wrote a rangy memoir of his own court time back in 2003. Combining reflections with love letters with poetry, this strange amalgam reconstructs the author\u2019s days as a college champ.<\/p>\n

Another great lay-up for the abstract fan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mini reading list. Today in New York, you can\u2019t get to lower Manhattan because the streets are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":745111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-745110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}