Expensive Basketball

From #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Rap Year Book and Basketball (And Other Things) Shea Serrano, a clever and original examination of some of the most "expensive" moments, players, and games in basketball.

Everything in basketball is measured.

Everything in basketball is counted, and quantified, and computed.

And yet, no matter how expansive the list of various pinpoint-specific statistical categories gets, some basketball things remain impossible to assess with numbers.

Some basketball things are more poetry than calculation; more art than statistical value; more feeling than data processing. And thus: EXPENSIVE BASKETBALL.

From the night LeBron James made The Leap to Michael Jordan's cosmic relationship with the number six, from the way Sue Bird backpedaled down the court after hitting a big shot to the nefariousness tucked inside the way Isiah Thomas dribbled a basketball, from the velvet brilliance of Tracy McGrady to the specific kind of terrifying magic that only Kobe Bryant ever seemed to be able to summon.

EXPENSIVE BASKETBALL is not a refutation of stats.

It's an affirmation of feelings.

It's an affirmation of basketball as virtuosity.

It's an affirmation of how sometimes you watch a person do a thing on a basketball court and it feels the same way it feels when you lie in the grass at night and stare up at the moon for long enough that you start to think about how incredible it is that you really, truly, honestly, actually exist.