Review of Playing for Keeps, by David Halberstam
Published Dec. 7, 1999, in The Monitor
Review by Matthew Webber
I have never been a basketball fan. I can probably count the number of NBA games I have watched to
completion on one hand. Even so, there has always been something magnetic to me about Michael Jordan,
something that caught my eye in his commercials, something that tempted me (though I did not succumb to
the temptation) to pay good money to see Space Jam. Was it his smile? His fierce competitiveness? His acrobatic athleticism? Or was it something else? Something much larger and incomprehensible?
Over time, Michael Jordan came to represent that certain special something for millions of people around the world, from the richest CEOs to the poorest star-struck youths. He represented that special something to David Halberstam, too.
In Playing for Keeps, Halberstam sets out to portray not just the man, Michael Jordan, but the phenomenon of him, that special something else. The book, therefore, is not a biography. It focuses on the causes and effects of this Jordan phenomenon rather than Jordan himself.
Halberstam conducted extensive research before writing the book (he’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist, after all) and it shows. Playing for Keeps is chock-full of personal anecdotes and quotes
from friends, teammates, coaches, broadcasters, NBA executives, and many others. The research sheds new light on Jordan’s infamous competitiveness, as well as his proclivity in dealing with media. Halberstam exposes the effects of playing with Michael Jordan -- an elevated game and a life in the shadows.
Mostly, Halberstam focuses on Michael Jordan’s almost-single-handed transformation of the NBA into
the megabucks conglomerate it is today. During the 1979-80 NBA season, when Halberstam was writing his
previous basketball book, The Breaks of the Game, “players still traveled on commercial airlines, and the tiny handful of beat writers flew with them and rode back and forth from the airport to the hotel on the same chartered bus,” writes Halberstam. But “that world is largely gone. The separation caused by huge no-cut contracts, and charter flights, is almost complete. The players idea of dealing with the media is about being seen on a brief ESPN video clip slam-dunking the ball.”
Michael Jordan’s balletic physical ability, charisma, and genius as a pitchman are responsible for raising the NBA to its current, near-omnipresent level, which Halberstam records in wondrous detail. Halberstam’s prose is clear and precise. He writes like he speaks (for those of you who heard him), to-the-point, well-developed, informative, and interesting.
Though I am not a basketball fan, Halberstam’s portrayals of games entranced me with their drama. The penultimate chapter alone reminds how beautiful and distinctly human a sporting event can be. Halberstam’s account of Game Six of the 1998 NBA Finals, Michael Jordan’s last game, is one of the finest pieces of sports writing I have ever read.
