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BOOKSHELF
He Shoots, He Scores!..Again
By Lisa
Kitayama
Originally
published in 1968, 24 Seconds to Shoot: The Birth and Improbable
Rise of the NBA by Leonard Koppett '44 is enjoying a
well-deserved rebound. Total Sports Publishing has reissued
Koppett's book as a paperback, with a new preface by the author.
"I'm just delighted," said Koppett of the 1999 reissue.
Before the
1980s, professional basketball was a struggling enterprise of
limited appeal - a far cry from the popular sports heavyweight that
it is today. Koppett's experience covering basketball since 1949,
first for The New York Herald Tribune and the New York
Post and later for The New York Times, turned him into a
basketball expert "because of sheer exposure," he said. When the
time came for a history of the fledgling National Basketball
Association, Macmillan editor Bob Markel picked Koppett for the
job. 24 Seconds to Shoot remains the classic account of the
progression of the Basketball Association of America into the
NBA.
"Thirty years
ago, I thought that no one would want to read it, but my editor
went ahead and told me to write it," said Koppett. Now, with the
NBA thriving, the reissue of Koppett's highly readable history
should reach a whole new audience.
Koppett, the
only writer to be named to both the baseball and basketball halls
of fame, has authored several other books, including Koppett's
Concise History of Major League Baseball (1998) and The Man
in the Dugout: Baseball's Top Managers and How They Got That
Way (1993); he is currently working on two projects with
tentative release dates in 2001. 24 Seconds to Shoot sells
for $12.95.
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