This book is a good read, but I could not help feeling disappointed at what might have been. Except for the opening scene where the Knick brass is interviewing Sprewell in his living room in Milwaukee and another where Dave Checketts fires Ernie Grunfeld in a Westchester restaurant, the book is no more than a compendium of the writers' regular columns. There is little insight into the characters' motivations or the reasons why the season went from tragedy to glory and ended with disappointment. The season and the team were rich with intrigue and complex characters, yet the book remains surprisingly bland. The book is poorly written. It never rises above a simple retelling of the facts of the season. In fact the narrative gets lost because the writers settled for a sequential review told from the point of view of outsiders. As a fan of the Knicks, I came away with the feeling of déjà vu. I heard it all before. The writers covered the team for an entire season but the book bears little evidence of that fact. I hope this is not the definitive book on the Knicks improbable run to the NBA championship series. For those readers that did not live and die with the 1998-1999 New York Knicks as I did, the book will be an interesting read. But you will be left wanting more.

I'm not a huge Knicks fan, but I really got into the whole story about the team. It also told me lots of inside tidbits about the NBA that I didn't know. I couldn't believe what Michael Jordan said to Jeff Van Gundy in Chapter 3. Like I said, I'm not a huge fan, but it was a wild read.

Just Ballin' is a good read which really gives you the inside track of an NBA Franchise owned by a billion dollar corporation. You also see how professional teams are effected internally by things such as bad attitudes, personal beliefs, or lack of commitment to the team. This book tells you in-depth about the 1999 New York Knicks and how the entire mess was somehow able to come together for an unforgettable playoff run. A good read for any basketball fan and a must read for Knicks fans.