Cousy: His Life, Career, and the Birth of Big-Time Basket - Softcover

Reynolds, Bill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1476746168 ISBN 13: 9781476746166

Publisher: Gallery Books, 2013

Synopsis

It was an era when the game was played for the love of it, and a fledgling NBA struggled for mainstream attention. Bob Cousy was at the heart of basketball's emergence as premier entertainment, a dynamo whose talent and ingenuity dazzled fans and players. The MVP of the 1957 season and veteran of six NBA championships with the Boston Celtics, his trademark behind-the-back dribble and no-look pass gave us basketball as no one had seen it before -- a one-man revolution that set the stage for Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, Bill Russell, and others. Here is the fascinating, in-depth story of Cousy's life -- his tenement childhood, his drives and motivations, his little-known personal life, and his record-breaking career -- set against one of the most exciting generations in sports history.

About this title

About the Author

Bill Reynolds, coauthor of Success Is a Choice with Rick Pitino, has won numerous awards for his columns in The Providence Journal. The author of several books, including Fall River Dreams and Glory Days, he lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

From Publishers Weekly

Nicknamed the "Houdini of the Hardwood" by sportswriters during the 1950s, Bob Cousy was basketball's "first genuine superstar," as Providence Journal columnist Reynolds shows in this insightful, well-written biography. Cousy became a Hall of Fame member for originating such NBA staples as the behind-the-back dribble and the no-look pass, but most importantly because his enormous talent made the Boston Celtics the dominant team of the 1960s. Excellent chapters on Cousy's pro career explore his interactions with basketball legends like the gruff Celtics coach Red Auerbach and Bill Russell, the brilliant and enigmatic Celtics center who endured years of racism from many of the same Boston fans who cheered Cousy. Reynolds does a remarkable job illuminating the sport's early days in the 1940s, when three-time All-American Cousy became one of the biggest names in college hoops, and the NBA's first gritty years. But the book's best parts are those in which Reynolds illuminates how Cousy's impoverished 1930s youth in a Manhattan tenement and the constant tension between his parents created in him a drive to succeed that resulted in anxiety attacks, sleepwalking and a "raw, unadulterated, fear" of failure—all of which he hid from the public yet used to motivate himself and to maintain a social consciousness about racism that was unfortunately uncommon for his era.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1476746168
• ISBN 13: 9781476746166
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 400