The Last Shot

City Streets, Basketball Dreams

De: Darcy Frey

Narrado por: Darcy Frey, JD Jackson

One of Sports Illustrated’s “Top 100 Sports Books of All Time”

The 2023 “BEST BASKETBALL GIFT” from The Strategist

A classic of narrative journalism about four inner-city high school basketball prospects trying to make it to the pros, with a new introduction by the author, now in audio for the first time.

The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams is the “revelatory” (New York Times), “deeply empathetic” (New Yorker) true story of four teenagers attempting to escape the cycles of poverty, crime, and despair in 1990s Brooklyn by getting recruited to play college basketball. With poignant intimacy, Darcy Frey chronicles the aspirations of these young men, including the future superstar Stephon Marbury, who are among the most promising players in Coney Island. What they have going for them is athletic talent, grace, and years of dedication. But working against them are woefully inadequate schooling, family circumstances that are often desperate, and the slick, brutal world of college athletic recruitment. Incisively and compassionately written, this is Frey’s award-winning masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, a startling exposé of inner-city life and the big business of college sports. Narrated by JD Jackson (The Nickel Boys).

“[A] revelatory description of how the basketball myth plays out in the public housing projects of New York’s Coney Island, an isolated and impoverished spit of land at the seaward end of Brooklyn…. Vividly describes how the zealous pursuit of hoop glory serves as an inner-city version of the American Dream… [C]ompellingly written, with elegance, economy and just the right amount of outrage.”—Brent Staples, New York Times

“Elegiac.”—Sports Illustrated

©2004 Darcy Frey (P)2004 Spiegel & Grau by Spotify Audiobooks

Excellent Sports Book

In this book Darcy Frey follows a group of high school seniors and a talented freshman named Stephon Marbury at Lincoln high school in Coney Island through the 1991-92 school year. I missed this one when it came out 30 years ago, but it’s consistently on lists of all time best sports books. So when the 30th anniversary edition was released as an audio, I picked it up. It details a group of kids trying to use basketball to get out of poverty. It also shows how those around them are banking on these kids as there ticket out too. This is most glaring in the case of Marbury’s dad. With the entitlement that Marbury and his dad exhibited in only his freshman year of high school, it’s impossible to believe that Georgia Tech got him with only legal enticements. Cremins was quite the the salesman in his day, so maybe I’m wrong. Or maybe Cremins was such a good salesman because he sweetened the deals. Who knows. There definitely were minor violations by Jim Boehiem going on repeatedly in the book. It’s an enjoyable sports book. I see why it’s so highly regarded. JD Jackson reads it. He read the book I listened to on Magic Johnson last year. He seems to be a go to guy for basketball books and for good reason.