The Divine Nature of Basketball: My Season Inside the Ivy League Hardcover – February 4, 2014

A good tutorial on b-ball in the Ivy League. He captures well the ascendency of this league within college conferences. It's also nice to see how decently he was treated by the Yale coach and to learn how many great student athletes he ran across.

although the author played basketball he seems out of touch with how a team works. not much in depth on the players or coaches individually. stick with john feinstein or terry pluto--this is poor.

I think I expected more about a good Yale team and the players that play in the IVY League.

A writer aspires to be considered part of the team, as a fan! He follows and chronicles the players, mostly on the court, giving instruction to the reader who may perhaps have never seen a basketball game or court. He blathers on about his own youth and his father's disinterest in attending The Final Four because seats were $50! (Waaa).Shares team training procedure and inability to play how they train and prance when they whip a team worse than themselves.B/W images, roster.

The Divine Nature of Basketball by Ed Breslin (Sports Publishing/Perseus, 2014, 224 pages, $24.95) contains Breslin's oh too detailed and lifeless account of his season spent following the Yale basketball team through the 2011 – 2012 basketball season. At the beginning of the book, Breslin is introduced to Yale at the John J. Lee Amphitheater of the Payne Whitney Gymnasium (the Yale gym, referred to throughout the book as JLA) where Assistant Coach Jamie Snyder-Fair Points out a “dark blue rug with a big white Y in the center” and admonishes him, “Whatever else you do here, don't step on the Y.” This is one of the few pieces of dialogue found in this story, heavy on X's and O's and rather dreary accounts of scoring throughout the more than twenty game schedule. Breslin manages throughout the book not to step on the Y both metaphorically and physically, but in so doing, he manages not to generate any real excitement or interest.Breslin asserts at the beginning that his book is a memoir, not a report. Born of a lifetime of love of the game and a sneaking suspicion his life as an editor/publisher has been largely wasted, he wanted to participate as an observer, shadowing each of the games Coach James Jones and the team played during the season. He was given unusual access to the team, able to attend locker room sessions, interview coaches and players, and given prime seating for all home and away games. He seems at his best when describing the basketball venues themselves, which is perhaps fitting, because his previous book concerned railroad station architecture. His early descriptions of the art of defense and offense are not only clear, they set up further narrative to use in description of the games to come. The importance of intensive practice and careful planning in coaching become obvious. Incidents in the book recall Breslin's childhood and youth as a “Philly guy,” including a delightful episode in which his family constructed a basketball playground in a deserted lot, attracting the attention of players, fans, and even vendors only to be torn down by the Philadelphia Electric Company. His love of the fabled Big Five of Philadelphia, and particularly University of Pennsylvania's wonderful gym, the Palestra, is palpable. Such incidents and events give the book whatever life it has. Sadly, the book falls into the trap of pass-pass-pass...shoot-shoot-shoot too often. By choosing the personal George Plimpton approach to sports book writing over the more distanced and nuanced invisible narrator in John Feinstein's wonderful sports books, he misses opportunities to take a season of Yale basketball and fit it into the larger context of basketball as a uniquely American sport, without antecedants in formerly British sports such baseball and football. Read the remainder of this review on my blog. If you decide to purchase it, please consider using the Amazon portal found there.

Have you played some basketball? Did you watch your kid or grandkid play ball? Did you play horse with your brother in the driveway? Do you coach a kids team? Or do you just love watching college basketball? If any of those apply, or if you really just want to read a good book about a man with a passion, get this book.Ed Breslin heads out on quixotic venture to be an almost-coach of the Yale basketball team. The fact that he has never coached before, has spent years as a publisher and writer, and has no connection to Yale doesn't faze him. The man loves basketball and that love infuses his narrative. Soon enough, Breslin not only loves the game, but he also loves the coach, the team, the Ivy League--all the trappings of a wonderful, competitive, sport full of real scholar-athletes that he has fallen into.Breslin is a graceful, revealing writer, generous with his insights about basketball, college sports, the people around him--and himself. Breslin learns much from the players and coaches, from the nights on the road, the highs that follow the wins and the troughs that follow defeats, and he shares all of it. Some of his opinions may surprise you--he is one of Bobby Knight's great defenders--and he views the Palestra as the most beautiful building in the world. But in a world full of writers who write safely, who do not want to say a damn thing that might upset the slightest apple on the applecart, Breslin tells of his passions, his successes, and failures with admirable clarity and elegance.So sit on the bench with Breslin and you'll go on the roller-coaster that was a fine Yale season--the great comebacks, the injuries, the blow-outs, the exceptional coaching. Maybe Breslin will never be a real coach at Yale, but he's still a superb writer who has given us a wonderful picture of one of life's enduring pleasures--young athletes becoming a real team for the simple love of a game.Read this book. You'll know more about basketball players, about the game you watch on tv, about Breslin--and, maybe, about finding your own passion.

Entertaining, informative, enlightening. Breslin does a superb job bringing the reader into the inner sanctum of college basketball. If you a lover of college ball, put this book on your list of books to read. My grandchildren play high school ball. After reading this book, they became more motivated and focused on the game. Who can ask for more?