Loose Balls

By: Terry Pluto

Narrated by: Bo Foxworth, Jack Garrett, William Harper, Michael McConnohie, J. D. Jackson, P. J. Ochlan

What do Julius Erving, Larry Brown, Moses Malone, Bob Costas, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the Slam Dunk Contest have in common? They all got their professional starts in the American Basketball Association.

The NBA may have won the financial battle, but the ABA won the artistic war. With its stress on wide-open individual play, the adoption of the 3-point shot and pressing defense, and the encouragement of flashy moves and flying dunks, today's NBA is still -- decades later -- just the ABA without the red, white and blue ball.

Loose Balls is, after all these years, the definitive and most widely respected history of the ABA. It's a wild ride through some of the wackiest, funniest, strangest times ever to hit pro sports -- told entirely through the (often incredible) words of those who played, wrote and connived their way through the league's nine seasons.

©1990 Terry Pluto (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Excellent

And I hate sports. Listen to Crime and sports after if you enjoy this book.

Incredible stories!

One of the best sports oral histories ever written. Hilarious, candid … a rollicking good time! Highly recommend!

Better late than never

I took too long to get around to it. Really glad I did! Your turn.

Fun and an education on some of the building blocks of what we now call the NBA!

What a roller coaster ride this book is. Up, down and around. Surprises around every turn. Too bad that so little is preserved for the annals of history. However, this book allows for the stories to live on through its pages. The narration is mostly done by the actual characters recalling the stories they lived through in their own words.

Enjoyable, even with distracting mispronunciations

The stories of the players and coaches are entertaining and enlightening and raise fond memories. As with many audiobooks, mispronounced words are annoying and distracting. Dave DeBusschere is pronounced “DeebooSHEER,” Lou Carnesecca is “Carnesca,” Norfolk, Virginia as “NorFALK,” and there are several others. It seems these narrators would read ahead and be sure of pronunciations before recording, and producers would be sure words are pronounced correctly.

Extremely comprehensive look back

Any diehard basketball fan should listen to this. So much history, and so much information about how today’s NBA really got kick-started. Only drawback - although it will be downright hilarious for those listeners that knew the right way to say them - was the massive amount of botched pronunciations of ABA players’ names. And the easiest one was the one they never got right: Larry KEE-nehn. Spurs’ fans will be yelling at their app! (The Dave DeBusschere attempts are pretty funny, too.)

Great Memories of My Childhood in the 70’s

I grew up in Indiana following the Pacers and then Dr. J. I had not heard all these player’s names in decades. Really great to relive this era of pro basketball and get such a detailed behind the scenes perspective.

Great Stories of a fun league

The ABA is presented as something that was almost started on a whim and only survived through a combination of great ideas, the right investors at the right time, and sheer dumb luck. The multiple readers help you with the oral history nature of it. The owners, coaches, and players all make for fun characters, and it is good for younger NBA fans to learn that many of the best parts of today's game only came in with the NBA/ABA merger. Had a great time listening.

One of My Favorite Books. Period.

I'm a basketball junkie and Terry Pluto's Loose Balls is the first time I ever read/listened to a book and wish that I had written it. The oral history structure, the idea of letting the people from the ABA tell the stories themselves. A genuine masterpiece & a book that I will be revisiting time and time again.

Interesting Read

This is a very well researched and interesting book. I did not realize how much the NBA tool from the ABA.

I also did not realize how many great players came rom the ABA.