by Shea Serrano
First published 2025
Shea Serrano examines basketball's most transcendent moments and players in this celebration of the sport's artistic side. He argues that while the NBA measures and counts everything, the most meaningful aspects of basketball resist quantification. Serrano focuses on legendary performances like Kobe Bryant's 81-point game and Ray Allen's clutch three-pointer, alongside players such as Allen Iverson and Sue Bird. His approach treats these moments as poetry rather than data points, emphasizing feeling over calculation. The book positions basketball as virtuosity that can inspire the same wonder as contemplating existence under a starlit sky. Serrano offers readers an affirmation of basketball as art, showing how certain court performances create emotions that statistics cannot capture.
Genres: art, sports, non-fiction, 21st-century, sports-romance, basketball
Vibes: emotional, intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: celebration, virtuosity
Period: 21st-century
352 pages · Hardcover · Grand Central Publishing