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Can't Knock the Hustle
- Inside the Season of Protest, Pandemic, and Progress with the Brooklyn Nets' Superstars of Tomorrow
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
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Publisher's Summary
“Brilliantly audacious...written with the profundity of a sage baller and the acuity of a seasoned journalist.” (Kiese Laymon, New York Times best-selling author of Heavy)
An award-winning journalist's behind-the-scenes account from the epicenter of sports, social justice, and coronavirus, Can't Knock the Hustle is a lasting chronicle of the historic 2019-2020 NBA season, by way of the notorious Brooklyn Nets and basketball's renaissance as a cultural force beyond the game.
The Nets were already the most intriguing start-up in the NBA: a team of influencers, entrepreneurs, and activists, starring the controversial Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. But this dynasty-in-the-making got disrupted by the unforeseen. One tweet launched an international scandal, pitting the team's Chinese owner and the league's commissioner against its players and LeBron James. The sudden death of Kobe Bryant, after making his final public appearance in Brooklyn, sent shockwaves through a turbulent season.
Then came the unimaginable. A global pandemic and a new civil-rights movement put basketball's trend-setting status to the ultimate test, as business and culture followed the lead of the NBA and its empowered stars. No team intersected with the extremes of 2020 quite like the Brooklyn Nets, and Matt Sullivan had a courtside view.
Can't Knock the Hustle crosses from on the court, where underdogs confront A-listers like Jay-Z and James Harden, to off the court, as players march through the streets of Brooklyn, provoke Donald Trump at the White House, and boycott the NBA's bubble experiment in Disney World.
Hundreds of interviews - with Hall-of-Famers, All-Stars, executives, coaches, and power-brokers across the world - provide a backdrop of the NBA's impact on social media, race, politics, health, fashion, fame, and fandom, for a portrait of a time when sports brought us back together again, like never before.
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What listeners say about Can't Knock the Hustle
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- julia robinson
- 09-14-22
Good history and narrative shifting
I enjoyed the book and gained a depth of insight into the read world of NBA basketball. The book provides a good history of professional athletes and activism, rooted in NBA basketball, while simultaneously delving into today’s players and the major shifts in society that they’ve been confronted with. Ultimately, it humanizes them as more than the media narrative—especially in the case of stars Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant—and positions them as (mostly) Black men aiming to use their platform for something good but not knowing how, not wanting to make the sacrifice, or pursuing activism and suffering consequences for it. It shifts the scrutiny to capitalism, media, and NBA ownership, and focuses on how they take advantage of Black players and limit their activism. In the end, I have more questions especially looking at how the NBA looks post-bubble and I imagine many of these players have more story to tell.
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- bds92
- 09-28-21
Thoughts and prayers
The execution of an idea is generally more useful than the idea itself - except, of course, when the idea IS its own execution. A prayer doesn’t need follow through like a jump shot, but an audiobook does. Much like Kyrie Irving’s own minefield of expression, this audiobook sounds like it knows what I want, but it doesn’t quite deliver. It is very difficult to read between the lines of a text message or Instagram post, which is a problem we all find ourselves facing from time to time. The narrator’s performance grates upon “Death Row” group texts like a tone deaf journalist from the Ivy League. Sure, the content is wildly expansive, and Matt Sullivan’s research is Robert Caro-level, but it would take someone who doesn’t understand the story to deliver certain casual texts with such aplomb. This story doesn’t have an ending at all, happy or otherwise, and the narrator’s lack of nuance ultimately speaks to the tone deafness of our age; better to speak loudly and not carry a stick than to not speak at all, he seems to say.
The audience is unlikely to judge a story by the timbre of its narrator’s voice, but it is interesting to hear the overtones nonetheless. It’s as if the narrator was picked for a millennial consciousness, rather than a universal one. We tend to judge history by its last minute, rather than its last decade or century. From afar, everything seems equally minute or gigantic, but upon further review we are subjected to the inequities of time and place. Context, be it racial, environmental, economic, social, or historical, is big enough to swallow content whole in almost every scenario of life. And so we find ourselves glued to the minute, to the millisecond, waiting for more stories when we could realize they were set in distant realities. This underpins the performance here; we are as beholden as we want to be to time, to fame, to justice, to Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving or to whatever master(s) we serve. But context does not spoonfeed us; we must go to it, or it will elude us in perpetuity.
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- Gregory Ruffin Jr.
- 08-18-21
Great listen.
Great listen with inside information shared throughout the book. A must listen for NBA fans.
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- John
- 07-31-21
Gets beyond the usual narratives
Most sports reporting is tedious click baity and terrible. This books gets to the heart.
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- Storm G.
- 07-24-21
Great Insights
For an average sports fan, Sullivan gives detailed insight into the day by day thought process that superstore athletes go through as they maneuver the avenues of superstardom as well as every day life. Disassembling the argument of “enough money eliminates stress”, this publication allows you to be a fly on the wall of sorts to see real time decisions being made buy some of the most well-known names across sports today.
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Golden State Warriors insider and best-selling author Marcus Thompson delivers the definitive biography of one of the most extraordinary basketball players in NBA history - Kevin Durant.
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Revealing!
- By Chris D. on 05-21-20
By: Marcus Thompson
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Built to Lose
- How the NBA's Tanking Era Changed the League Forever
- By: Jake Fischer
- Narrated by: Kyle Tait
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It's a story that weaves its way behind closed doors to reveal intricate machinations normally hidden from public view. Backed by extensive reporting and hundreds of interviews with top players, coaches, and executives, Jake Fischer chronicles secret pre-draft workouts, feuding between player agents and executives, surprising trade negotiations, interpersonal conflict within rosters, organizational power struggles, and the missteps behind infamous public relations fiascos, making for a fascinating and unmissable insider's look at the NBA.
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Great book, horrible monotone narrator.
- By Nathan Newman on 05-05-21
By: Jake Fischer
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Basketball
- A Love Story
- By: Jackie MacMullan, Rafe Bartholomew, Dan Klores
- Narrated by: James Fouhey, Jim Frangione, Sullivan Jones, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A sweeping and revelatory history of basketball, drawing upon hundreds of hours of interviews with the greatest players, coaches, executives, and journalists in the history of the game. In an effort to tell the complete story of basketball in all its fascinating dimensions, acclaimed authors Jackie MacMullan, Rafe Bartholomew, and Dan Klores have compiled nearly a thousand hours' worth of interviews with a staggering number of basketball greats. The audiobook that grew out of those interviews is an extraordinary project and quite possibly the most ambitious basketball work ever made.
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Underwhelming
- By Adam Kosberg on 12-02-18
By: Jackie MacMullan, and others
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Barkley
- A Biography
- By: Timothy Bella
- Narrated by: Korey Jackson
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
He's one of the most interesting American athletes in the past fifty years. Passionate, candid, iconoclastic, and gifted both on and off the court, Charles Barkley has made a lasting impact on not only the world of basketball but pop culture at large. Yet few people know the real Charles. Informed by over 370 original interviews and painstaking research, Timothy Bella's Barkley is the most comprehensive biography to date of one of the most talked about icons in the world of sports.
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Good Timeline on Barkley
- By Paul on 01-25-23
By: Timothy Bella
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The Last Enforcer
- Outrageous Stories from the Life and Times of One of the NBA's Fiercest Competitors
- By: Charles Oakley, Frank Isola
- Narrated by: Adam Lazarre-White
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
If you ask a New York Knicks fan about Charles Oakley, you better prepare to hear the love and a favorite story or two. But his individual stats weren’t remarkable, and while he helped power the Knicks to 10 consecutive playoffs, he never won a championship. So why does he hold such a special place in the minds, hearts, and memories of NBA players and fans?
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Story about a guy who played with famous people
- By Yuri van Huisstede on 04-02-22
By: Charles Oakley, and others
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Giannis
- The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP
- By: Mirin Fader
- Narrated by: Mirin Fader
- Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As the face of the NBA's new world order, Giannis Antetokounmpo has overcome unfathomable obstacles to become a symbol of hope for people all over the world, the personification of the American Dream. But his backstory remains largely untold, and Fader unearths new information about the childhood that shaped "The Greek Freak"—from sleeping side by side with his brothers to selling trinkets on the side of the street with his family to the racism he experienced in Greece.
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Fantastic Well Narrated Book
- By B on 08-13-21
By: Mirin Fader
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KD
- Kevin Durant's Relentless Pursuit to Be the Greatest
- By: Marcus Thompson
- Narrated by: David Sadzin
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Golden State Warriors insider and best-selling author Marcus Thompson delivers the definitive biography of one of the most extraordinary basketball players in NBA history - Kevin Durant.
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Revealing!
- By Chris D. on 05-21-20
By: Marcus Thompson
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Tanking to the Top
- The Philadelphia 76ers and the Most Audacious Process in the History of Professional Sports
- By: Yaron Weitzman
- Narrated by: Yaron Weitzman
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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When a group of private equity bigwigs purchased the Philadelphia 76ers in 2011, the team was both bad and boring. Attendance was down. So were ratings. The Sixers had an aging coach, an antiquated front office, and a group of players that could best be described as mediocre. Enter Sam Hinkie - a man with a plan straight out of the PE playbook, one that violated professional sports' Golden Rule: You play to win the game.
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Great content, terrible performance.
- By DRabe on 09-10-21
By: Yaron Weitzman
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Three Ring Circus
- Kobe, Shaq, Phil and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty
- By: Jeff Pearlman
- Narrated by: Brian Hutchison
- Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins
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In the history of modern sport, there have never been two high-level teammates who loathed each other the way Shaquille O’Neal loathed Kobe Bryant and Kobe Bryant loathed Shaquille O’Neal. From public sniping and sparring, to physical altercations and the repeated threats of trade, it was warfare. And yet, despite eight years of infighting and hostility, by turns mediated and encouraged by coach Phil Jackson, the Shaq-Kobe duo resulted in one of the greatest dynasties in NBA history.
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Ok I've finished it and have more thoughts
- By Bobby S on 09-24-20
By: Jeff Pearlman
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Not a Game
- The Incredible Rise and Unthinkable Fall of Allen Iverson
- By: Kent Babb
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Through extensive research and interviews with those closest to Iverson, acclaimed Washington Post sportswriter Kent Babb gets behind the familiar, sanitized, and heroic version of the hard-changing, hard-partying athlete who played every game as if it were his last.
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So sad.
- By jonathan meharg on 05-05-20
By: Kent Babb
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Across the River
- Life, Death, and Football in an American City
- By: Kent Babb
- Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson, Kent Babb
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
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Overall
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Story
On the west bank of the Mississippi lies the New Orleans neighborhood of Algiers. Short on hope but big on dreams, its mostly poor and marginalized residents find joy on Friday nights when the Cougars of Edna Karr High School take the field. For years, this football program has brought glory to Algiers, winning three consecutive state championships and sending dozens of young men to college on football scholarships. Although he is preparing for a fourth title, Head Coach Brice Brown is focused on something else: keeping his players alive.
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Great book
- By Anonymous User on 02-01-23
By: Kent Babb
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The Last Great Game
- Duke vs. Kentucky and the 2.1 Seconds That Changed Basketball
- By: Gene Wojciechowski
- Narrated by: Kyle Tait
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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March 28, 1992. The final of the NCAA East Regional, Duke vs. Kentucky. Millions could say they witnessed the greatest game and the greatest shot in the history of college basketball. But it wasn't just the final play - an 80-foot inbounds pass with 2.1 seconds left in overtime - that made Duke's 104-103 victory so memorable. Each player and coach arrived at that point with a unique story to tell. In The Last Great Game, ESPN columnist Gene Wojciechowski turns the game we think we remember into a drama filled with suspense, humor, revelations, and reverberations.
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A great book about a great game
- By Hebern on 02-02-21
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It's Better to Be Feared
- The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness
- By: Seth Wickersham
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 19 hrs and 21 mins
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Overall
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Story
Over two unbelievable decades, the New England Patriots were not only the NFL's most dominant team, but also - and by far - the most secretive. How did they achieve and sustain greatness - and what were the costs? In It's Better to Be Feared, Seth Wickersham, one of the country's finest long form and investigative sportswriters, tells the full, behind-the-scenes story of the Patriots, capturing the brilliance, ambition, and vanity that powered and ultimately unraveled them.
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Don’t bother if you’ve read other patriots books
- By Brandon O. on 10-14-21
By: Seth Wickersham
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Tanking to the Top
- The Philadelphia 76ers and the Most Audacious Process in the History of Professional Sports
- By: Yaron Weitzman
- Narrated by: Yaron Weitzman
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When a group of private equity bigwigs purchased the Philadelphia 76ers in 2011, the team was both bad and boring. Attendance was down. So were ratings. The Sixers had an aging coach, an antiquated front office, and a group of players that could best be described as mediocre. Enter Sam Hinkie - a man with a plan straight out of the PE playbook, one that violated professional sports' Golden Rule: You play to win the game.
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Great content, terrible performance.
- By DRabe on 09-10-21
By: Yaron Weitzman
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Three Ring Circus
- Kobe, Shaq, Phil and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty
- By: Jeff Pearlman
- Narrated by: Brian Hutchison
- Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the history of modern sport, there have never been two high-level teammates who loathed each other the way Shaquille O’Neal loathed Kobe Bryant and Kobe Bryant loathed Shaquille O’Neal. From public sniping and sparring, to physical altercations and the repeated threats of trade, it was warfare. And yet, despite eight years of infighting and hostility, by turns mediated and encouraged by coach Phil Jackson, the Shaq-Kobe duo resulted in one of the greatest dynasties in NBA history.
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-
Ok I've finished it and have more thoughts
- By Bobby S on 09-24-20
By: Jeff Pearlman
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Not a Game
- The Incredible Rise and Unthinkable Fall of Allen Iverson
- By: Kent Babb
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Through extensive research and interviews with those closest to Iverson, acclaimed Washington Post sportswriter Kent Babb gets behind the familiar, sanitized, and heroic version of the hard-changing, hard-partying athlete who played every game as if it were his last.
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-
So sad.
- By jonathan meharg on 05-05-20
By: Kent Babb
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Across the River
- Life, Death, and Football in an American City
- By: Kent Babb
- Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson, Kent Babb
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
On the west bank of the Mississippi lies the New Orleans neighborhood of Algiers. Short on hope but big on dreams, its mostly poor and marginalized residents find joy on Friday nights when the Cougars of Edna Karr High School take the field. For years, this football program has brought glory to Algiers, winning three consecutive state championships and sending dozens of young men to college on football scholarships. Although he is preparing for a fourth title, Head Coach Brice Brown is focused on something else: keeping his players alive.
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Great book
- By Anonymous User on 02-01-23
By: Kent Babb