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Title details for Play Their Hearts Out by George Dohrmann - Available

Play Their Hearts Out

A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine

by George Dohrmann
Emily Rose Speer
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

Eight years of unfetteredaccess and a keen sense of a story's deepest truths allow PulitzerPrize-winning journalist George Dohrmann to take readers inside the machinethat produces America's basketball stars. Drawing on eight years of reportingand telling the very specific tale of one talented young recruit, his coach,and his teammates, Dohrmann immerses listeners in the world of grassrootsbasketball, where men hunt for future NBA stars and young boys and theirparents navigate a tumultuous course in pursuit of basketball glory.

At the book's heart arethe personal stories of two compelling figures: Joe Keller, an ambitious coachwith a master plan to find and promote "the next LeBron," and Demetrius Walker,a fatherless latchkey kid who falls under Keller's sway and struggles to liveup to unrealistic expectations. In Play Their Hearts Out, Dohrmann presents athoroughly compelling narrative, exposing the gritty reality beneath so manydreams of fame and glory.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 5, 2010

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781483063485
      • File size: 435445 KB
      • Duration: 15:07:10

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Lexile® Measure: 1090
    • Text Difficulty: 7-9

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This inside look at Amateur Athletic Union basketball--a rarely scrutinized hoops farm ground--examines a sordid world of overly ambitious coaches banking their lives on the futures of preteen players. Many of the coaches seem motivated by shoe contracts while dreaming of a bigger payday down the road. Each day for AAU basketball coaches is a gaze at a proverbial crystal ball as they try to predict which young players will evolve into NBA draft picks. Emily Speer's poor pacing and numerous mispronunciations of well-known basketball figures mar this book. She also cannot conjure an angry voice--even for the hot-under-the-collar coach who is the book's focus. M.B. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from July 26, 2010
      Dohrmann, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for Sports Illustrated, spent eight years chronicling the struggles and triumphs of a select group of California youths who chased their dream in his wonderful and immaculately reported first book. Dohrmann largely focuses his work on Demetrius Walker, the hoops phenom who seems destined for stardom at a young age, his travel team from California, and the club's complex and bombastic coach, Joe Keller. Dohrmann began reporting on the book back in 2000, when Walker and many of his teammates were only 10 years old, and followed them through to their high school graduation. Along the way, he shows the brutal nature of "grassroots" basketball, in which coaches can view their players as "investments," the power of sneaker companies in youth basketball, and the cutthroat antics of collegiate recruiting. But this is equally a story about relationships and the sad deterioration of many of them, whether it be among teammates, parents and son, or coach and player. It's a brilliant and heart-wrenching journey, and a cautionary tale to any basketball player who thinks the path to the NBA is a slam dunk.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:1090
  • Text Difficulty:7-9

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