Tall Men, Short Shorts

Starred review from May 3, 2021
Sportswriter Montville (Sting Like a Bee) masterfully combines memoir and sports history in this thrilling deep dive into a legendary NBA championship battle. As a 24-year-old novice reporter for the Boston Globe in 1969, he had a first-row seat to an epic duel that went the full seven games and pitted Bill Russell’s Boston Celtics against Wilt Chamberlain’s Los Angeles Lakers. The Celtics, Montville writes, were “at the end of their dominance”—they’d finished fourth in their division, and their leader, Russell, was playing his final year. The Lakers, meanwhile, had just brought on Chamberlain, who many considered the “most stupendous” player in the league. Historically, the Lakers had routinely been bested by the Celtics, but the L.A. team’s two games to none lead at the outset of the Finals gave them the upper hand. Instead, Boston won by two points in the seventh game, with Chamberlain injured on the bench in the final, crucial minutes. Montville recounts his race against “the tightest of deadlines” to file game reports—including the first game’s “53 beautiful backcourt points” scored by Jerry West—that he hoped would catapult his career. In vividly evoking the ups and downs that led to this monumental match-up, Montville paints a humanizing portrait of the game. This is another success for a gifted writer. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM Partners.

Starred review from July 1, 2021

Veteran sportswriter Montville (Sting Like a Bee) takes us back in time to the 1969 National Basketball Association finals. Why 1969? The seven games of that series had it all, including the Celtics-Lakers rivalry, one of the NBA's most storied (to date, each team has 17 titles); and the historic rivalry between Bill Russell, centerpiece of the Celtics dynasty, and Wilt Chamberlain, who set records for the Lakers throughout his career. It was also the first big-time reporting assignment for Montville, who arrived at the games with his typewriter (of the brand favored by star reporters) and his desire to bring New Journalism (with its emphasis on the revealing anecdote) to sports reporting. Montville's book also brings into focus the dynamics of Celtics teammates John Havlicek and Sam Jones and Lakers legends Jerry West and Elgin Baylor--four players who set personal records. There are fast-paced chapters devoted to the cast of characters and to each of the hard-fought games. One could just take a glance at the record book to learn the winner of 1969 title, but Montville's revealing anecdotes and suspenseful writing build the tension. VERDICT Over 50 years after he first covered these games, Montville gives basketball fans a book they won't want to put down.--Jim Burns, formerly of Jacksonville P.L., FL

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Starred review from July 15, 2021
A firsthand account of the 1969 NBA finals, pitting the Lakers against the Celtics. The 1969 playoffs should have been lopsided. Montville, a prolific author and former reporter for the Boston Globe and Sports Illustrated who was on the scene for the games, notes that there had been only 12 NBA Finals preceding it, and Boston had won 10 of them. But the 1969 Lakers were a force, thanks in large part to new addition Wilt Chamberlain. Against them were Bill Russell, who was then serving two roles: "As a young coach at thirty-five," writes the author, "he knew the limits of an old player at thirty-five." Montville's deep dive into the storied series is much more than the usual color commentary. Self-deprecatingly, he digs up a word that old-school sportswriters applied to writers of his generation: chipmunks. "Young, mostly under thirty-five, they are irritants to the older generation," he writes. "Too noisy. Too demanding. Too...everything." His writing has the verve of the new journalism, but the author also looks hard at the business of basketball. The big stars of the day, he writes, earned just $200,000 to $300,000 per year, "nothing to compare to the status of LeBron James and Kevin Durant" and others. In passing, readers will learn all sorts of fun sports trivia--e.g., why the Celtics wore black sneakers--and Montville is a master of context. He writes about a college campus visit by Russell in which he talked about the Black Panthers, the previous Olympic Games, and his refusal to enter politics "because politicians in 1960s America did not tend to live too long"--every subject under the sun, it seems, except basketball. In this, Montville's book makes an excellent companion to Ron Brownstein's Rock Me on the Water as a portrait of a fast-receding time. A thrillingly good blend of sportswriting, pop culture, and history and a must-read for roundball fans.

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