BLEACHERS BREW EST. MAY 2006

Someone asked me how my blog and newspaper column came to be titled "Bleachers Brew". It's like this, it's an amalgam of sorts of two things: The bleachers area in the stadium/arena where I used to sit when I would watch baseball, football, and basketball games and Miles Davis' great jazz album Bitches Brew. That's how it got culled together. I originally planned on calling it "The View from the Big Chair" that is a nod to Tears For Fear's second album, Songs from the Big Chair. So there.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Catch a rising star

I am not a big LeBron James fan. In fact, I have been critical of him in the past columns or in newspaper articles. But of late, I've got a better appreciation for LBJ and that isn't because he won last season's NBA MVP Award. The simple truth there is... he's growing as a person and as a player. And for one of such prodigious talents, how can I not watch or even pay attention?

In recent weeks, I've been trying to catch up on my reading and this book, when I first saw it on the shelf, attracted me. I went back and forth for weeks until I finally decided to plunk down some moolah to get the hardcover book.

I guess having Buzz Bissinger in there to make sense of everything was a huge selling point. Buzz in case you've been living in the caves with Osama Bin Laden, is the author of the masterful Friday Night Lights. So I told myself I had to pick this one up.

I didn't think that he'd write it like that football story of the Odessa Panthers because this is a basketball tale to begin with. 

I also had to unload my expectations following my read of Grant Wahl's The Beckham Experiment that was worth my time. And LeBron's storytelling is simple, honest, and well, it flows seamlessly. Like The Beckham Experiment, I understood a lot of things after having read it. With Shooting Stars, you will understand why James' game is like this -- when he'd rather pass than shoot. 

No comments:

Post a Comment