First published 2006
Jamal Kelly stands months away from his Yale diploma when opportunity knocks. The Los Angeles Lasers offer him a front office position he cannot refuse. He drops out and heads west to professional basketball's inner sanctum. The Lasers organization introduces Jamal to a world of oversized personalities and luxury vehicles. He meets Jilly Forrester, the team's ambitious new beat reporter, whose presence complicates his already overwhelming transition. The NBA's cultural landscape unfolds around Jamal as he navigates the politics and excess of big money sports. McCallum crafts a satirical portrait of professional basketball's behind-the-scenes machinery. Jamal discovers that success in this environment requires skills his Ivy League education never taught him. The story exposes the gap between the sport's public image and its private reality through one young man's baptism by fire.
Genres: fiction, contemporary, sports, young-adult
Vibes: fast-paced, satirical, thought-provoking
Tropes: career-change, fish-out-of-water
Setting: Los Angeles, Yale
Period: 21st-century
319 pages · Paperback · Touchstone