January 2022 Book Reviews

(To make it easy for you to buy any of these books if you are interested, I made each image linked to buying the book right on amazon.com. I do get a commission if you use the links in this post.)

Three-Ring Circus

By Jeff Pearlman

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

As the manuscript was completed for “Three-Ring Circus” in early 2020, author Jeff Pearlman found himself in what some would consider a quandary.

Kobe Bryant — one of the protagonists in the author’s book about the Los Angeles Lakers of the late 1990s and early 2000s — was killed in a tragic helicopter accident.

Bryant’s story through those years was a mixture of overwhelming success and undeniable failure. Pearlman’s presentation reflected a good portion of the latter. Did the untimely death cause him to soften his commentary on the legendary Laker?

“It definitely did not,” Pearlman tells me. “My first thought was how incredibly sad it was. I’m not saying later on I didn’t think about that. … but the only thing I did was add the three-page author’s note (before the prologue). That was it.

“I was nervous about what the blowback would be. It’s not a super positive Kobe book. You’re writing about a period of history. I can’t change history.”

In 2012, Pearlman wrote a book entitled, “Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton.” A few weeks before the unauthorized biography was released, Sports Illustrated ran a cover excerpt.

“There was a lot of (controversial) stuff from the end of his life,” Pearlman says. “I got destroyed. Death threats. ‘Don’t come to Chicago.’ I ended up scarred by that experience. I felt the same thing was going to happen here. I was prepared for that. And nothing happened. All I got was a few Tweets — a shockingly bare minimum (of criticism).

“You just have to be honest. I didn’t have any opinions on Kobe going in. I didn’t grow up a Laker fan. I admired him as a player. I wasn’t there to take down Kobe. You’re writing the stories. You’re just the vessel.”

During the interview process, Pearlman reached out to Bryant.

“I never heard back,” Pearlman says.

Two of his best sources, however, were the other protagonists in the three-ring circus — center Shaquille O’Neal and coach Phil Jackson, the latter inviting Pearlman to his home in Montana.

“Phil was amazing,” he says. “He gave me seven hours in Montana. Shaq gave me an hour and twenty (minutes), and he was excellent.”

Pearlman pulls no punches in this revealing review of the Lakers covering the 1996-to-2004 period, during which they won three straight NBA championships (1999-2002). It’s roughly the same time frame as my “Jail Blazers” book, which detailed the period from 1995-to-2006. There was enough dysfunction and chaos at times that it reminded me of the Jail Blazers (or perhaps Jail Blazers Lite).

The author neatly puts into context the complexities of the main characters. And if Pearlman lean toward the opinions of Jackson and O’Neal because they cooperated — sorry, Kobe, you had your chance.

The notion that Bryant was selfish and not a good teammate — at least through the early part of his career — is corroborated by a number of biting comments from former teammates, including Paul Shirley, who calls him a psychopath. “Kobe was such a bully,” Shirley is quoted as saying. “But in a sadistic way, not a good-natured, normal way.”

Writes Pearlman: “Over the first four years of the guard’s career, teammates recoiled at his arrogance, his indifference.” And then it got worse.

The author takes an in-depth look at Bryant’s biggest offense, extensively covering the 2003 rape trial in Colorado, with transcripts from the investigative interviews with Kobe and his accuser.

Pearlman roughs up Del Harris, Jackson’s predecessor, with plenty of quote from players talking about the coach’s propensity for filibustering.

Writes Pearlman: “By this point, Harris could say, ‘I’m giving each man on the team $10 million and my nude pics of Halle Berry’ and (the players) would hear, ‘Blah blah blah blah blah blah Halle Berry blah blah blah blah.’ ”

Pearlman also marginalizes Rick Adelman, with an off-the-mark appraisal as such:

“Jackson knew (truly knew) his rival was no sideline match. Adelman’s rotations were strange.

His substitution pattern — limited in scope — often made little sense. He went long spans when it seemed like he genuinely forgot that certain players were on the bench. His offensive schemes (knockoffs of assistant coach Pete Carril’s old Princeton offense) were predictable. … Adelman wasn’t a bad coach. But he was ordinary; Jackson was a genius.”

Adelman wasn’t ordinary; in fact, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame last September, one of nine coaches ever to collect 1,000 wins. He was an offensive mastermind — changing his style from year to year and from franchise to franchise to match personnel — and as good as any in terms of understanding relationships with players.

Jackson rightly gets clobbered for an ego that old foe Larry Brown said “could not be any bigger.” And for poor treatment of veteran assistant Tex Winter, the architect of the “Triangle” offense, who at some point was banished to the second row on the bench “when Jackson thought he was getting too much credit for his team’s success.”

O’Neal? Generational center. Good guy. Generous. “The best teammate I ever had,” reserve guard Mike Penberthy says. Increasingly lazy in terms of conditioning as his career wore on. And very unhappy with Bryant’s unending challenge to his status with the Lakers.

Pearlman’s theme is that Shaq would have loved a big brother/little brother scenario, but it wasn’t to be because Kobe always wanted to be the top dog. Writes the author: “O’Neal could never fully get past Bryant’s refusal to embrace him. Everybody loved Shaq. So why didn’t Kobe?”

Bryant’s self-centered behavior got to the point where Jackson finally told owner Jerry Buss after the 2003-04 season, “if Kobe isn’t gone, I am.” Buss, who regarded Kobe as a son, saw him as the future of the franchise. Jackson did not return.

If you like a circus, you’ll like this book. Lots of stuff happening between those rings.

Unguarded
By Scottie Pippen with Michael Arkush
Simon & Schuster

I had mixed emotions while reading this autobiography of the basketball Hall of Famer, for four seasons a member of the Trail Blazers (1999-2003).

I applaud him for speaking his mind without regards to repercussions or being politically correct. We’re getting unadulterated Scottie Pippen here, which can be interesting material.

(Full disclosure: Scottie declined an interview when I was writing “Jail Blazers.” That disappointed me, but I don’t hold it against him. I used a heaping helping of his quotes from the time he played with Portland, and his perspective was some of the best in the book. I always felt I could get an honest account when I talked to him.)

The impetus for the autobiography, though, came primarily from the airing of “The Last Dance” ESPN docu-series in 2020, which detailed the Chicago Bulls’ run to six NBA championships in the 1990s. Pippen was offended by what he viewed, believing that it was pandering to Michael Jordan, since his former running mate had been granted editorial control of the final product. He gets right to it in the prologue:

“I was nothing more than a prop. His ‘best teammate of all time,’ he called me. He couldn’t have been more condescending if he tried. … each episode was the same: Michael on a pedestal, his teammates secondary, smaller, the message no different from when he referred to us back then as his ‘supporting cast.’ … here I was, in my mid-fifties, 17 years since my final game, watching us being demeaned once again. Living through it the first time was insulting enough. … bottom line: the doc fails to give my Hall of Fame career the treatment it deserves.”

“Best teammate of all time” doesn’t sound condescending to me, but I certainly get Pippen’s point. Jordan’s use of “supporting cast” in reference to his teammates, for instance, was egotistical and demeaning. Often through his career, his ego was on full display.

Though they seemed to be in sync as they led the Bulls to dynastic proportions in the ‘90s, it wasn’t a personal relationship. “Michael and I aren’t close,” Scottie writes, “and never have been.”

Jordan did make the documentary about him. Pippen points out that Jordan’s low moments were glossed over or not included in the script. Like me, Pippen doesn’t buy that being a leader means being rough on teammates.

“Michael attempted to justify the occasions in which he berated a teammate in front of the group,” writes Scottie, who makes no secret that he enjoyed the one full season without Jordan, when he made a stab at playing pro baseball. “Without Michael judging every move, no one was afraid to make a mistake,” he writes.

Pippen offers many compliments about Jordan’s talents, calling him at one point “basketball’s Baryshnikov.” But Scottie doesn’t defer at all.

“There’s no doubt in my mind I was superior to Michael in both individual and team defense,” he writes. And: “Even before Michael retired, I had come to the conclusion that I was our best all-around player.”

I’m not going to weigh in on that argument, other than to say, as great as Pippen was, he wasn’t Jordan.

Jordan isn’t Pippen’s only target. He complains about Jerry Krause, the former Chicago general manager who took a chance on the kid out of NAIA Central Arkansas. (Scottie was jealous of Krause’s pursuit of Toni Kukoc, whom he grew to like as a teammate once he got to know him as a person. He is also mad at Krause for considering trading him during his final years in Chicago.)

And former Bulls coach Doug Collins, “who deferred to Michael in every situation, on or off the court. It would make me want to vomit.”

Pippen doesn’t like what he perceives as the public’s view on NBA trades.

“The fans see us as nothing more than pawns on a giant chessboard, never giving any thought to the tight relationships we are forced to give up when we are sent, without our consent, to another city,” he writes. “That usually doesn’t happen in other professions.”

Granted, it’s difficult for a player to be told he is being removed from a good situation, with the comfort of teammates and an organization. It’s hard to feel sorry, though, for young men who are making millions of dollars playing a game.

Pippen spares the rod with almost no one. Not with Isiah Thomas, whom he calls out for failing to shake the Bulls’ hands after Detroit’s loss to them in the Eastern Conference finals in 1991. “Since our playing days ended, I have had nothing to do with Isiah, and it will remain that way,” he writes.

Not with NBC, which billed the ’91 finals as Magic Johnson vs. Michael, rather than the Lakers vs. the Bulls. (I’m with Scottie on that one.).

Not with the media. Writing about Sam Smith who wrote Jordan Rules: “Sam, to be fair, was no different from the other members of the fourth estate, always on the prowl for the next victim.”

Can’t go along with that. There are some bad apples in the media, but most reporters are trying to do an honest job in their pursuit of a good story.

Pippen hacks at Dream Team teammate Clyde Drexler with this: “His energy was terrible. He always had his head down and acted as if Michael and I were his adversaries, not his teammates. Clyde didn’t fit in with the whole team, and it was a shame.”

Pippen blasts referee Hue Hollins, who called a terrible foul on him during the ’94 Eastern Conference semifinals. And Charles Barkley, with whom he feuded during their one season together in Houston. And today’s NBA game, using James Harden as an example, writing: “For

God’s sake, James, stop dribbling!”

Jackson offers plenty of praise for Coach Phil Jackson, but says their relationship ended badly as a result of the incident during the 1994 playoffs, when Pippen refused to go into the game in the final seconds after Jackson designed a game-winning shot attempt for Kukoc instead of Scottie (Toni hit the shot and the Bulls won).

Nearly three decades later, Pippen has no regrets. He writes that it was humiliating, that Jackson wouldn’t have done it with Jordan. Pippen: “I was done with Phil Jackson. … our relationship would never be the same no matter what triumphs would lie ahead. The moment of truth had come, and he had abandoned me.”

He did apologize for calling Jackson a racist for designing the play for Kukoc. “Only when I saw my words in print (nearly 30 years later) did it dawn on me how wrong I was.”

There are other admissions. Pippen laments he didn’t reach out to Jordan after his father was murdered. He confesses that he put off post-season knee surgery in ’93 until the end of August, which caused him to miss the start of the 1993-94 season, so he could enjoy the summer. “I’d given enough to the Bulls already,” he writes. “Surgery would have meant another lost summer and being on crutches for weeks.”

He reveals that in the hours before the 1994 All-Star Game, while playing the card game “tonk” with a friend, he drank the equivalent of three beers.

“So I was a little tipsy. So what?” he writes. “I wasn’t planning on putting much energy into what is nothing more than an exhibition.” Pippen went out and got 29 points and 11 rebounds and was named the game’s MVP.

The book is lacking information on Pippen’s personal life as an adult. He spends only a few paragraphs on Larsa Pippen, his wife of 19 years, and his seven children. Scottie reveals a little more about his upbringing as the youngest of 12 children raised in rural Hamburg, Ark.

Pippen gives several pages of the penultimate chapter to his four years with the “Jail Blazers.” He says coach Mike Dunleavy lost control of the team, putting up with too much from the players.

The most interesting tidbit comes from an incident late in the infamous Game 6 of the Lakers series in 2000. Pippen writes that Rasheed Wallace came out of a huddle and changed a play Dunleavy had drawn up, telling Steve Smith, “f— what that bitch just said. I’m going to kick that bitch (the ball) out to you, and you shoot the three.”

“I’d never heard a player defy a coach so blatantly, and on such a big stage,” Pippen writes. “I should have said something to Rasheed before the ref blew the whistle and play resumed. I don’t know what I didn’t.”

Pippen also writes this: “I felt sorry for the fans in Portland, perhaps the most rabid in The NBA, and will always feel bad I didn’t bring them a championship.”

I give kudos to the ghost writer for a job well done. I’m sure he filled the gaps and dressed things up for Pippen, who certainly, for instance, would have no clue who “the fourth estate” is.

Pippen got a lot off his chest. Too much of his spiel, though, came off sounding like a whine.

The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer
By Christopher Clarey
Hachette Book Group

There have been several books based on the life of tennis great Roger Federer. Though I’ve read none of this book’s predecessors, I can’t believe any of them are more complete, more insightful, more accurate and more well-written than “The Master.”

The author, Christopher Clarey, has covered tennis globally for decades for the New York Times and International Herald-Tribune. Clarey first watched Federer play tennis as a teenager and has followed him closely through a brilliant career that spans 23 years and features 20 Grand Slam championships and 103 ATP titles.

Clarey’s biography is based on more than 20 years of one-on-one interviews with Federer.

Through his coverage of pro tennis for the aforementioned periodicals, Clarey has also had excellent access to the sport’s biggest names, including rivals such as Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Roddick, coaches such as Paul Annacone, Peter Carter and Peter Lundgren and Hall of Famer Pete Sampras, one of Federer’s idols. There is plenty of insight from all in the book.

The author provides mini-profiles of all the major players of the Federer era, especially Nadal and Djokovic. Most of all, though, he offers a great tutorial on Federer — straight-forward, detailed and reflective of the greatest, most enduring player that men’s pro tennis has ever known.

It’s hard to pick a “peak” period for Federer, because he has been great for so long. It probably was from 2004-07, when he won 11 Grand Slam titles between ages 22 and 26. By 2005, rival Andre Agassi was already saying this about Federer, who was 6-0 in Grand Slam singles finals and had won 23 tournament finals matches in a row to that point:

“Pete was great … but there was a place to get to with Pete. You knew what you had to do. If you could do it, it could be on your terms. There’s no such place like that with Roger. I think he’s the best I’ve played against.”

Clarey describes it all superbly, if not chronologically (he bounces around a little, which confused me at times). I’m not sure if Federer expressly cooperated with the author in the writing of the book, but it matters little. Roger’s wife Mirka — mother of their four children — hasn’t given interviews since the mid-2000s, so there is little to offer there. Even so, Clarey provides a complete course in Federer 101, and with a flair, such as in this comparison of the Swiss native and his greatest rival:

“Federer and Nadal were a great stylistic contrast in some respects, a contrast that Nike carefully cultivated, just as it did with Sampras and Agassi in the ‘90s. Federer was elegance, acquired cool and effortless power; Nadal was exuberance, innate fire and flexed biceps. Federer was smooth and classical; Nadal was rugged and avant-garde.”

I liked the book — which was released in August — just as I’ve always liked Federer. If there is an authority in the media on Roger, it is probably Clarey. Can’t imagine anybody could have written it better.

Glory Days: The Summer of 1984 and the 90 Days That Changed Sports and Culture Forever
By L. Jon Wertheim
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Anything written by Jon Wertheim is worth a read. For 25 years, he has been one of the best writers Sports Illustrated has to offer. These days, he is also a star in the electronic media as a contributing correspondent for CBS’ “60 Minutes” and as an analyst for the Tennis Channel.

Wertheim, who lived in Portland for a short time in the early ‘90s and worked for the Trail Blazers’ “Rip City Magazine,” was a 13-year-old growing up in Bloomington, Ind., in 1984. With the Olympic basketball team trials held in his hometown that summer, Wertheim had a personal experience with one Michael Jordan.

That may have provided the impetus for this look at the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day that year, and how it impacted not just our country’s sports future but also its cultural and technological path to today.

This period was of particular interest to me. I was turning 31 that summer and covering the Olympic Games for The Oregonian. I vividly remember Jordan leading the U.S. to the gold medal and emerging that fall as a spellbindingly talented rookie for the Chicago Bulls.

Jordan Junkies will get their fix here, but there is plenty more: Larry Bird vs. Magic Johnson, John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova, ESPN’s early years, the genesis of the “Karate Kid” movie, a fun chapter on pro wrestling, Vince McMahon, “Captain Lou” Albano and Cyndi Lauper, and even an off-beat look at Michael Jackson’s “Victory Tour” and how it impacted Robert Kraft’s ownership of the New England Patriots (no kidding).

Wertheim writes that he has long thought a book on the summer of ’84 would be compelling. He makes his case in “Glory Days.”

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