Loose Balls

By: Terry Pluto

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

Length: 20 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

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.

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.

Great story lots of mispronunciation

I loved learning about the history. The narrators mispronounced SO many names!! Still worth it

Great Book! Accurate and Factual.

As a basketball loving 10 year-old, growing up in Chicago, my game was starting to develop, and I became a better player than most of my friends. I learned how to make shots that I could not have imagined a year ago. I learned it from watching the ABA games that I watched on TV. I Remember Mack Calvin, Wise, Jabali ,Dampier, and Brisker, the great Colonels, Pacers, and Stars teams. My transformation came from watching a Squires team that had Dr.J and a young, skinny George Gervin. Doc did things that I never saw in the NBA!
The games were always exciting and usually close, and VERY exciting! But they played the games like we played, with a lot of enthusiasm and enjoyment. And that ball! Every year at Christmas for about five years, i received a new ball, and the only year I didn’t get the ABA ball, I had to earn the money to buy one. Thank you for the insight to the league, and the players and teams that helped fuel my love for this wonderful game!

Great Telling of Fun Story

Loved to hear the old stories of the league from my childhood. Only negative would be some narrators had no idea who basketball legends were. Names like Dave DeBusschere
Lou Carnesecca
Lefty Driessel
Lew Alcindoor
Adolf Roop
Pete Mavarich
Monty Towe

were all mispronounces multiple times. Otherwise, fantastic!

Great book.

The information and stories provided are heartbreaking, uplifting, and everything in between. Amazing! I've read it twice and now listened to it once. It's one of my all time favorites.