Best Seat in the House: A Basketball Memoir - Softcover

Lee, Spike

3.43

127 ratings by Goodreads

9780609801918: Best Seat in the House: A Basketball Memoir

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0609801910 ISBN 13: 9780609801918

Publisher: Three Rivers Press, 1998

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Best Seat in the House, Spike Lee's evocative and compelling basketball memoir, interweaves several journeys over a course of thirty years. The first is professional basketball's metamorphosis from a fringe sport to the big-money spectacle it is today, filled with outrageously inflated salaries and egos. The other journey is that of Shelton Jackson Lee himself, who has gone from a skinny kid playing ball on the streets of Brooklyn, sneaking into Madison Square Garden to watch his beloved Knicks, to a student at Morehouse College and NYU film school, to a world-renowned film director and hoops fan.

Along the way Spike takes readers on entertaining and provocative detours, including a one-on-one with that other Brooklyn-born, film-directing, Garden-inhabiting hoops fan, Woody Allen; reviews of sports movies (Spike has seen them all, and the results aren't pretty); an unusually candid interview with Michael Jordan; and a stark assessment of the role of African-American athletes--both in the big business of sports and in the broader culture.

But overall, Best Seat in the House is a love letter, from a passionate and unswervingly devoted fan, to the game and the team that took possession of Spike's adolescent heart--the New York Knickerbockers--and held it without a turnover through thirty years. of bang-ups and fouls, bad calls and air balls.
Best Seat in the House is a slam dunk.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

This is filmmaker Spike Lee's reminiscences of his love affair with basketball (make that the New York Knicks), from the time he was a child growing up in Brooklyn, New York, to the present. While it's a kind of history of the game, from its long-ago status as a not-quite professional sport (which seems unbelievable in this day of multi-million-dollar salaries and prime time television exposure), it's also a very personal journey. Lee paints an evocative portrait of growing up in Brooklyn in the 1960s with his four brothers and sisters, remembers his high school years and time at Morehouse College in Atlanta, and his start as a filmmaker. Film fans will find a special treat in this book--Lee's account of the creation of the character Mars Blackmon, who appeared in She's Gotta Have It, and several commercials for Nike.

From the Back Cover:

"As purely satisfying as a Michael Jordan three-pointer."
        --People magazine

"Just like the athletes Lee admires most, he and Wiley play their hearts out here, making this one of the best sports books of recent years."
        --Kirkus Reviews

"The sweetest book about sports to be published in a long time; it reminds one of how beautifully Bertrand Tavernier in the film Round Midnight captured the feelings and absolute devotion of the jazz fan to the jazz musician."
        --Booklist

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.