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Adult Books - Fiction - General Fiction
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Foul Lines.
McCallum, Jack (author) and Jon Wertheim (author).
Feb. 2006. 336p. Touchstone, paperback, $14 (0-7432-8650-2).
REVIEW.
First published February 15, 2006 (Booklist).
Jamal Kelly escaped the inner city with a scholarship to Yale, and as graduation approaches he is putting the finishing touches on a statistical-analysis program that he hopes will affect professional basketball in much the same way sabermetrics is changing baseball. His work lands him a position with the Los Angeles Lasers of the NBA. He’s young, relatively wealthy, and livin’ the dream. Or so he thinks. The league and its players soon prove an often-dismaying convergence of narcissism, greed, and cultural exploitation. McCallum and Wertheim, senior writers for Sports Illustrated who certainly know the excesses of the NBA, have chosen “reality fiction” as a safe cover to avoid the legal tangles of naming names, a strategy they skewer in the book’s last pages. There is some inspired humor here, including an All-Star event sponsored by an erectile dysfunction drug and dedicated to all the “ballers” out there. Most fans would rather have had the real names, but in the meantime, they can enjoy a fast-paced story while they try to match the fictional player with his NBA counterpart. — Wes Lukowsky
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