The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams by Darcy Frey

The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams Reviews

• 
  Andrew Garvin

  The Last Shot is a concise portrayal of institutional racism, localized to college basketball. Frey follows four teenagers as they navigate the NCAA recruitment process while living and balling in the projects of Coney Island, New York. As the stars of their high school team, each young man represents hope for their otherwise blighted community.
  
  That hope is overwhelmed by a pervasive pressure associated with the expectation of making it to a D1 school - an expectation that most of Coney Island's best prospects fail to meet. The Last Shot now has - like
  Hoop Dreams from the same year - a thick layer of irony. As a basketball fan, I know that three of the boys never made it to the professional level. Hearing their dreams deferred (even just their desire to leave Coney Island) is a sad and powerful experience.
  
  Frey's prescience renders The Last Shot enduring. His observations about the NCAA and black culture around athletics remain controversial, poignant, and contemporary twenty years later. Put simply, the NCAA treats its recruits with a systemic hypocrisy that is most impactful to and repressive of black athletes. Frey makes his points with a light touch, drawing them out of reflection on actual conversations - including Rick Barnes' magic-act-as-recruitment pitch and Stephon Marbury's dad demanding Frey pay-to-play.
  
  Particularly if you are a basketball fan and know who Starbury is, The Last Shot is a must read.
  
  Companion Music:
  Outkast - Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik
• 
  Solistas

  Ο διακεκριμένος δημοσιογράφος Darcy Frey πέρασε το 1991 9 μήνες στις συνοικίες του Coney Island κ έζησε από κοντά τις ζωές 4 νεαρών μαθητών που χάρις στο μπασκετικό τους ταλέντο έψαχναν διέξοδο απ'την σκληρή ζωή που τους περίμενε αν δεν κατάφερναν να βρουν υποτροφίες σε κάποιο πανεπιστήμιο. Το Last Shot δεν είναι φυσικά απλά ένα βιβλίο για το μπάσκετ όπως ίσως θα περίμενε κάποιος. Ούτε καν μια ρομαντική εξιστόρηση για τις θυσίες που πρέπει να κάνουν αυτά τα παιδιά για να καταφέρουν να γλιτώσουν απο μια ζωή που ξέρουν πολύ καλά που καταλήγει. O Frey με πολύ προσεκτικό τρόπο καυτηριάζει το οικονομικό παιχνίδι που παίζεται στις πλάτες αυτών των παιδιών, αναλύει πως αυτές οι γειτονιές βρέθηκαν να αντικατοπτρίζουν τα όρια της ανθρώπινης αξιοπρέπειας κ κατ'αυτό τον τρόπο φανερώνει την παρωδία του αμερικανικού ονείρου στα πλαίσια του επαγγελματικού αθλητισμού.
  
  Το Last Shot εκτός ότι προσφέρει απλόχερα γνώση για το βάναυσο recruiting process των μεγάλων κολεγίων, καταφέρνει να δώσει αρκετή τροφή για σκέψη γύρω απ'τις υποχρεώσεις που έχουν αυτά τα ταλέντα σε μια τόσο νεαρή ηλικία, δίνει μια σαφή εικόνα για την παιδεία τους που είναι by default λειψή αλλά πάνω απ'όλα δίνει μια προσωπική ματιά στο πως όλα μοιάζουν στημένα ώστε αυτά τα πιτσιρίκια να αποτύχουν.
  
  Η έρευνα του Frey σταματάει κάπως απότομα αφού σε κάποια στιγμή χάνει την πρόσβαση του στους παίχτες. Η μητέρα του ενός αρχίζει να τον βλέπει ως περισπασμό, ο πατέρας του Marbury ως ύπουλο τύπο που θέλει να βγάλει λεφτά απ'το γιο του χωρίς να του δώσει μερίδιο ενώ κ το ίδιο το NCAA (η αρχή του κολεγιακού πρωταθλήματος) του απαγορεύει την παρουσία του στις συναντήσεις του Tchaka με τους προπονητές των κολεγίων που τον ήθελαν στις ομάδες τους. Συνολικά όμως, δεν μπορεί κανείς παρά να συνυπογράψει το μυθικό στάτους που έχει αυτό το βιβλίο στον κόσμο των sports books.
  
  Ο συγγραφέας ήταν σίγουρα τυχερός που έπεσε πάνω σε έναν παίχτη που έκανε σπουδαία καριέρα (ο Stephon Marbury δεν ήταν απλά ένα απ'τους 15 καλύτερους παίχτες στον κόσμο στις αρχές των 00s αλλά καθόρισε το μπάσκετ στην Κίνα όπου αγωνίζεται απ'το 2011) κ σίγουρα θα πρέπει κάπου να αναφερθεί ότι ο συγγραφέας δεν σχολιάζει πόσο άλλαζε την καθημερινότητα των πρωταγωνιστών με την παρουσία του. Νομίζω όμως ότι όποιος ενδιαφέρεται για τις κοινωνικές τάξεις, τη φυλή κ τη βία της αμερικανικής κοινωνίας εδώ θα βρει ένα πραγματικά εξαιρετικό βιβλίο.
• 
  Stan Vlieg

  Heartbreaking.
  
  I've visited New York 10 years ago with my family. One day i met up with a friend to take the subway from Manhattan to Soho to spend some white man privileged money. In the subway i saw that the last stop was at Coney Island. I've heard the Lou Reed song and read some snippets of it being the place where the working class went to spent some time relaxing. I wish i've read this book before visiting the place.
  
  We sat there on the beach sipping some Starbucks coffee and enjoying our freedom. Walking on the boardwalk, seeing the Cyclone and NOT seeing the projects. Maybe i forgot, maybe i just didn't see it, i don't know..
  
  I bought a red t-shirt with with letters saying Coney Island and i wore it the day i passed through customs. The customs agent praised me for visiting the place and i think i misplaced the praise. It was not the case that i knew of the poverty. Or did i just close my eyes to it? I can hardly believe that.
  
  So far for my feelings afterwards and during this impressive read. I've been reading a lot of basketball related books the last year and this book kind of stumbled in my lap as some sort of conclusive story. The author follows 3 (maybe 4 if you included the somewhat shorter story of Stephon Marbury) students from Lincoln High school at Coney Island. I've been following NBA basketball pretty closely the last 20 years and i was hoping that i just forgot the names of the 3 kids. Obviously Stephon made quite a name for himself on and off the court. Not all positive though.
  I just zoom in on the 3 (to me unknown) students. There is Tchaka, the big strong 6,7 foot power forwards with arguablly the lesser talent but still dunks on everybody. His mom decided to flee from the projects at Coney Island to give his son a better chance to escape fate that many of his tallented peers could not escape. Drugs, dealing drugs or ending up dead. Russell is the most talented of the 3 with some dead-eye shooting and lock down defense. He is also very susceptible for stress, he almost jumped from a building after hitting his girlfriend thinking everything went down the drain. Struggling to keep his grades high enough to fit the requirements from the NCAA he hopes to get the recruiting process out of the way as soon as possible. Having not been teached properly from his younger years he is having a hard time to get the grades high enough. It is incredibly hard not to care about his problems, mainly because he is trying harder than everyone else. Lastly there is Corey, the hardest do describe. He wants to be a writer of poetry and if it could be possible get to know every girl that is in his vicinity. Having about the same amount of talent as Russell he is not worrying about the tests results and the improvement of his jumpshot. People find it difficult to get him on the right track because he is to illusive and to smart for his own good.
  
  When the book progressed i became more and more afraid of the almost inavoidable heartbreak. Reading how difficult it is for a talented person from Coney Island to meet the requirements and go to college, not only to become a basketball player but just to graduate, it became pretty painfull.
  
  I don't know if i would have walked the mile from the cyclone to the Garden, the most famous basketball court from Coney Island if i knew about it then. Maybe i would have been to scared. But i hope i would have tried. Just to see and feel the difference of opportunity. Reading a masterpiece like this makes me sad and grateful at the same time. Darcy wrote with honesty and sincere care about the people he met at Lincoln and the projects. I hope some people in the U.S.A. would do the same. It feels like a lot of people are still looking the other way when it comes to the projects or ghetto's .
• 
  Krishna

  This kinda walks the path established by Heaven is a Playground, but resonated a bit more with me. Partly because it's more recent and so I was more familiar with the characters on the periphery. It was interesting to read about coaches in their younger days who are still around and of course, Stephon Marbury as a kid. Partly because it goes a little harder at the system of "amateur" athletics, which at every level preaches lofty ideal but is often at cross purposes with those ideals, with the same issues all these years later. Partly because I just liked the kids. Looking up what happened next is depressing. But for some one who invests as much interest in college basketball as I do, it's important to remember the numerous and extremely serious flaws in the system, and this book is a great reminder.
• 
  Rayne

  3.5 stars
  
  THE LAST SHOT follows the lives of immensely talented black basketball players at Lincoln High School through one season of the game. All of these players, with the exception of one, are from the Coney Island projects (“hulking, prisonlike, and jutting straight into the sea”). Frey uses these poor, black kids sort of as an example of the belief that yeah, college sports/recruiting/the NCAA are reeeeeally shady. Which, no shit, dude.
  
  There was some pretty disturbing stuff in here, or at least disturbing to me, like the fact that Nike is running fucking farm systems full of teenage student-athletes. And for what? SHOES! Money! That's insane to me. Or the way these (mostly black) kids are being described by (mostly white) coaches and recruiters: for example, at one point, an assistant coach refers to the aforementioned kids practicing basketball as "horses." Talk about dehumanizing.
  
  “Yup, a lotta horses here,” remarked Tom Sullivan, one of Seton Hall’s assistant coaches, on the first day of camp.”
  
  There was also some pretty heartbreaking stuff, like everything Russell Thomas was going through. He seemed so disturbed, like there was a lot more than just anxiety going on. And also just seemingly regular stuff like this, that's just a side effect of living somewhere like Coney Island:
  
  “And despite their athletic skills, and the crowds of coaches who watched them all summer, most of the players have returned to Coney Island completely broke and have found no legitimate options for making money besides hawking sodas on the boardwalk. It’s hard work, lugging a case of Cokes from the nearest supermarket a mile away, then selling them one by one as the brutal summer sun hangs like a surgeon’s lamp in the afternoon sky. For their trouble the players often get a summons from the police. Meanwhile, the drug business directly across Surf Avenue seems as brisk as ever and appears to draw less official attention.”
  
  I think the biggest flaw of this book is something that Donald Marbury, a father of one of the players, hinted at. In a way, Darcy Frey is no different than the coaches and the recruiters. They all want a piece of these kids. That's something the author only partially admits to.
• 
  Brittany Young

  When I chose this novel, I was thinking about a different group of students than I usually think about. I was thinking that in my own classroom, I want to make sure that all the students in my class can be able to go to my book shelf and pick a book they would like to read. I was thinking about the young boys in my future class. They would love a book like this. I would suggest it to middle school readers and above, but advanced fifth grade boys may be able to read and understand it as well. I was surprisingly emotionally affected by this book in a way that I never thought I would be. This book is not just about Basketball. It follows four high school boys who live in a very run down urban area on Cooney Island. Abraham Lincoln High School was known for its basketball program, and all four of the chronicled boys believed it was their only way to succeed in life. Even if that success had nothing to do with basketball, they needed it to get where they wanted to go in life. The book covers social issues like living in a struggling urban area, sketchy recruiting tactics by colleges, and dealing with drugs and violence. The book is well written and descriptive in the text, which allows the reader to put themselves right into Cooney Island. We get to feel what the four boys feel, and struggle as they do. This book would be useful in exposing to young students what it is like to live in such an urban area. It is a very real and raw book, it deals with tough issues that people who are less fortunate than most deal with every day. I liked the book altogether, it was emotional and “real” in the way it was written. There was no sugar coating, and that tactic worked well for this nonfiction novel.
• 
  Benoit Lelièvre

  Becoming a high level athlete is some sort of American Dream for every young man around the world. It's what we would all be if we had the breeding and the work ethic to get there. It's the top of the food chain for boys. But there's a gap between the idea and the reality of elite sports and THE LAST SHOT tries its best to illustrate what it feels like for four young boys of Coney Island, including a 14 years old Stephon Marbury, who would grow up to become a tormented NBA superstar.
  
  Frey has a great pen, although sometimes he indulge in overwriting and the necessary sensibility to translate the wild and frantic recruiting process into great literature. It's a solid book about the broken business of college sports recruiting and that, I thought it was interesting, attempts to explain what kind of pressure elite athletes are under. It's not just about Bentleys and hoes when multimillion dollar businesses sell dreams and hopes using your performances.
• 
  Manav Singh

  This biographical account gives a wonderful insight into the lives of the residents of Coney Island and the many hardships faced by them. How every young boy has to make a decision - the easy one of getting involved in drug peddling, or the tough one of struggling it out on the basketball court - which is the only escape.
  Another aspect this book touches upon is the extremely competitive college recruitment scene in the US. How, in spite of excellent skills on the court, many players fail to make it anywhere, owing to years of bad schooling.
  Darcy Frey touches upon these through the lives of four boys - Tchaka, Corey, Russell and Stephon (Marbury) - all potential superstars, but with very different fates.
  I would say that this is a must-read for any basketball enthusiast. After a point, it becomes unputdownable.
• 
  7703Emil

  For me, this book was a great read. The book was about 4 people growing up in the Coney Island Projects. It was focused around Stephon Marbury, a former basketball player, Russell Thomas, Tchaka Shipp, and Corey Johnson. It is an exciting book on the 4 trying to pass their high school exams and get to college, and hopefully the NBA. The author did a great job in giving every detail he heard and saw, and gave you the feel of how the games on the street court went. If this was the last book in the world I had, I would read it over and over again.
• 
  Vilis

  Lielisks stāsts par trīsarpus vidusskolniekiem ceļā no Ņujorkas Steitenailendas, kas ceļas un iet gulēt ar sapņiem par koledžas basketbolu. Šitāda dokumentālā literatūra (un filmas), kas pievēršas pāris cilvēkiem ilgākā laika posmā ir mans vājais punkts, bet vajadzētu patikt, kurus varētu interesēt jauno basketbola zvaigžņu ražošanas sistēma ASV.
• 
  Andrew Martin

  A gut-wrenching look into a harsh world which, though twenty-some years removed by now, resonates with modern readers and most certainly reflects ongoing issues in urban planning, college basketball recruiting, racial and social stratification, and so on. I am confident a 2019 text with the same premise would uncover even more startling content. Frey's writing is natural and smooth, bringing the reader into a new world and ruminating on very human young men, not just characters in a contrived story. A must-read for those interested in youth basketball and its various immense pressures.
  
  Below is a brief review (found on Goodreads, posted 2014) that I liked quite well:
  
  The Last Shot is a concise portrayal of institutional racism, localized to college basketball. Frey follows four teenagers as they navigate the NCAA recruitment process while living and balling in the projects of Coney Island, New York. As the stars of their high school team, each young man represents hope for their otherwise blighted community.
  
  That hope is overwhelmed by a pervasive pressure associated with the expectation of making it to a D1 school - an expectation that most of Coney Island's best prospects fail to meet. The Last Shot now has - like Hoop Dreams from the same year - a thick layer of irony. As a basketball fan, I know that three of the boys never made it to the professional level. Hearing their dreams deferred (even just their desire to leave Coney Island) is a sad and powerful experience.
  
  Frey's prescience renders The Last Shot enduring. His observations about the NCAA and black culture around athletics remain controversial, poignant, and contemporary twenty years later. Put simply, the NCAA treats its recruits with a systemic hypocrisy that is most impactful to and repressive of black athletes. Frey makes his points with a light touch, drawing them out of reflection on actual conversations - including Rick Barnes' magic-act-as-recruitment pitch and Stephon Marbury's dad demanding Frey pay-to-play.
• 
  Scott

  Throughout the novel, I kept thinking about how this novel reads more like an essay about how corrupt recruiting high school athletes has become in low socioeconomic neighborhoods.
  
  Had it not been for some interesting bits of information, I would��ve given this “novel” one star. Darcy Frey, the author, absolutely slams on the NCAA, NIKE, some big-time NCAA coaches, as well as many of those who are involved in making money off high school basketball players looking to attend a 4-year university on a basketball scholarship.
  
  Despite bring up some rather shady stuff, Frey is doing the exact thing he is criticizing - making money off the athletes by pretending to be their friend, by buying them food, and by giving them rides.
  
  If you are not a big basketball fan, then this book is not for you. It reads more like a first draft of a weak doctoral dissertation than it does a novel about high school athletes who find themselves stuck inside of the manipulative and cutthroat industry of college recruiting.
  
  As someone who played basketball in high school and in college, I feel like this book was more like watching the highlights than watching the actual game itself, let alone, participating in the game.
  
  I appreciate the time Frey spent researching the “novel” and I’m glad he revealed some sad and pathetic truths about the recruiting industry. However, I believe the “novel” would’ve had a better chance of making a difference had Frey taken more time with the writing process, had he developed the characters, spent less time being pedantic and more time being artistic.
  
• 
  Charles S

  This book has a very powerful message and is a story about Stephon Marbury who lived in the projects and parents have financial struggles. The book is a rags to riches story as Marbury a real person to date has a net worth above $60 million. He resorted to his athletic skills in basketball to get out the projects and end up an NBA All Star! This book can relate to NBA players like Damian Lillard and LeBron James who had a hard upbringing but, depended on sports to get them to where they are today. “Stephon Marbury, Corey Johnson, Tchaka Shipp, and Russell Thomas have lived filled with extravagant success and bitter disappointment, lives whose trajectories seem largely to have been shaped by the events and circumstances of their youth”(229 Marbury). I strongly recommend this book because, it’s a very real book. The message in this story will change you no matter what background you have.