A basketball game in the NBA is 48 minutes long, right? Wrong. There is so much more drama behind the scenes and so much more at stake than another victory in every NBA game that the average fan is never entitled to witness and experience but this book does the best job I've ever seen in taking you there. It doesn't hurt that a classic confrontation between the then-mighty Celtics and the upstart Cavaliers is the matchup taken into focus by this great literary effort of showing what life in the NBA is like (at least during the 1980s). No personal fouls here... just a sure shot for all basketball fans who are also bookworms at heart and are not limited to enjoying the game of basketball on the television or on the court. Like I said, nothing but net..

Excellent book on the NBA of the 50s and 60s. All the big names are here, Wilt, Russell, West, the Big O and also many names that have been forgotten but shouldn't have been. Bob Pettit, Lenny Wilkens (as a player not coach), Tom Meschery, Al Attles and more. The stories come directly from the players with numerous quotes from different individuals who were actually there. This book is written in the same style as Loose Balls another great book by this author about the ABA. Anyone who thinks the NBA came into being with Michael Jordan should read this book and get a reality check. These are the real founders of the NBA. Current fans think a triple double by a player is a wondrous feat, Oscar Robertson averaged a triple double for a whole season!! If you like basketball and are interested in its history, this is the book for you.

The intereviews and personal stories bring back to memory the days in the NBA when teams were teams, individual "superstars" were non-existent, and men played the game for the love of the game and not for the money.

Earl Weaver reveals some of the reasons he was such a successful manager. Baseball fans can use this book to get a better understanding of the strategy behind the managerial decisions. Some of Earl Weaver's advice is admittedly questionable for the current game, so he added a 2002 epilogue to comment on his past advice. Earl Weaver was not as hot headed as was the impression from his arguments with umpires. His additude is that it was better for the manager to be thrown out of a game than to have one of his valuable players thrown out. He explains how he looked upon each decision as a type of gamble, basing the odds of success largely on past performace when a player was in a similar situation. That is why he kept and used lots of player statistics.

Anyone who's ever listened to Pete Franklin on the radio knows that he is passionate about sports. Take all that fire and fury and put it on paper and you got a great book.

This is a superb book because it goes beyond being a great sports book. Terry Pluto's weaving of his relationship with his father into his lifetime love of the Cleveland Indians makes it a book that readers will think about long after they've finished reading it. It's not necessary to be a Tribe fan to enjoy this book. I'd even go as far to say that a reader need not be a baseball fan to feel empathy and self-reflection on his or her parent-child relationship, regardless of whether the person is the parent or the child. I've also read the author's "Loose Balls", a wonderful look back at the American Basketball Association, and recommend that to those who remember the ABA (go Oakland Oaks!) and to those who weren't around to enjoy those years.

I am definitely not a fan of the Indians,but I loved the book. If you are a fan of any team, you should enjoy this. Pluto drops fun anecdotes of Indians history and trivia throughout Our Tribe. He also comes to grips with his relationship with his father. An enjoyable read.

If you went to the baseball game with your Father, this book will strike a chord in your heart. Beside reactivating some old memories (fortunately they become better with time), this book also illustrates why Indians fans are Indians fans, by birth-right. We are fans becouse most of us were born near Cleveland and went to the stadium with our dad's, neighborhood friends, college friends, clients, and yes our kids.

This book reminds you why Indians fans are so special. We didn't pick the Indians, they were given to us. In a day where the team was yours for life. When every spring you got excited at the chance that a miracle just might happen this year. When you didn't dare like the Yankees even if it seamed to be an easy way out to happiness. Being an Indians is more valuable than that. Thanks Terry.

An excellent book for the car or the bathroom, and I mean that as high praise. This is an oral history of the ABA, made up of short vignettes about teams, players, coaches and the league's background in general. Because of its structure -- it is written in short bursts -- it is easy to read over time, although (cliche warning) once you pick it up it isn't easy to put down. What I especially appreciated were the stories and information on some of the ABA's obscure yet notable players (Willie Wise and John Silas), its thugs (John Brisker, Warren Jabali), and its characters (Wendell Ladner, Bob Netolicky, Marvin Barnes). There's also a fair amount of information about league owners, executives and announcers, which isn't as boring as it sounds (Bob Costas worked games for the Spirits of St. Louis). I was afraid the book would be mostly about players like Julius Erving, George Gervin etc., whose exploits are fairly well chronicled elsewhere. That's not true. You will recognize much of the material in this book as the basis for the HBO documentary on the ABA, which also is excellent.

Loose Balls has to be on any basketball fan's short list of the greatest books ever to be written on the subject. Terry Pluto (whose 48 Minutes and Falling from Grace are also more than worthwhile) lets the principles-players, coaches, refs, media, agents, front-office folks, etc.-tell most of the story in this Studs Terkel-esque oral history. It's a fascinating tale on numerous levels, useful not only as the definitive source for information on the ABA but also as a way to understand where the NBA stood just prior to the Bird/Magic era. Funny, sometimes poignant, and always informative and interesting, Loose Balls is the rare book that's at once entertaining and indisputably credible.

The ABA was filled with great players and great personalities, and Pluto's book gives you the whole shebang. Detailed accounts of the league's founding, teams comings, goings, and movings, and side-splitting memories from coaches, players, announcers (Bob Costas's blooper is legendary) and even Pat Boone, who owned a team briefly. Plus find out why the owners of the Spirits of St. Louis were the luckiest saps who ever walked the earth when the league finally merged with the NBA. Highly recommended for sports fans of all sorts.

This book brought back some fond and also bittersweet memories. It is a "must read" for anyone who suffered along with the author and anyone else who dared to root for this group of hapless,yet lovable "has beens" and "never weres".I thouroughly loved every page!

Terry Pluto wrote two of my favorite sports books, "Loose Balls" and "Our Tribe", this one makes three. Reading this will be great entertainment for the casual or die-hard Indians fan. Those who don't fit those two classifications will probably enjoy it also.

A wonderful trip down memory lane, as I appear to be a contemporary of Terry Pluto in that I really relate to the Indians troubles from the mid-60's to their resurgence in 1995. As a youngster growing up, my favorite Indian was Sam McDowell and it was exciting and at the same time troubling to read how his personal problems affected his amazing potential. I, like Pluto, became a Tribe fan by listening to my father and went through all the frustration of watching a team that just did not appear to want to win...we were just happy if they were not in last place by July 4th every year! Pluto brought back many memories when he went into discussions like the Ken Harrelson trade, the deal that brought Gaylord Perry to Cleveland, the Dennis Eckersley era where my then favorite player George Hendrick prospered (and this is my only somewhat selfish critique of the book in that Hendrick is barely mentioned), the Wayne Garland fiasco and Len Barker's perfect game. These are all milestones for Tribe fans in an otherwise desulatory period of baseball watching. The purchase of the team by the Jacobs brothers and the day-to-day general management from Hank Peters and John Hart sets the stage for his next book on the Tribe's wonderful 1995 season where they finally put it all together. (Just a side note from a frustrated fan...if the Indians had played the 1995 World Series against the Braves in June of that year, we'd have smoked them!!!). In summary, this is an excellent book for the average baseball fan and a must-read for any Tribe fan who can remember the frustrations of the 60's and 70's. Go Tribe!

For me, the acid test of books like these is whether they manage to engage the neutral. Certainly Browns fans will enjoy this pleasant wallow in nostalgia from a time when football was still football.

I'm not a Browns fan but I found myself wallowing along with them. Pluto manages to capture the essence of the '64 season and yet not neglect the wider context. Fascinating stuff.

Award-winning Akron Beacon Journal sportswriter Terry Pluto's latest work is When All The World Was Browns Town. It discusses the 1964 Cleveland Browns, the last Cleveland champion in one of the four major professional sports. Pluto is one of the most gifted sportswriters working today, and the calibre of the writing in this book, like The Curse of Rocky Colavito, is a fine example of his work. It is far better written than the average sports book, in part because Pluto, like David Halberstam, does a fine job of digging up how the people involved saw the events he discusses. One thing I did not care for about the book is that it takes too much of the season itself as a given. The season up until the playoffs only rates one chapter, for example. For those who grew up in Cleveland and remember the season, that's probably sufficient, but I would have liked more focus on it. It's also somewhat unorthodox and anticlimactic to have the title game discussion come in the middle of the book and not the end, and the brief discussion of the 1965 season comes off as whiny and does not give the outstanding '65 Packers the respect they are due. There's much more that is good than bad here, however. Pluto is masterful as usual at showing how different people saw the same events differently. He handles the discussion of Paul Brown well, and did a good job of getting Art Modell's perspective even as he is (rightly) critical of him for moving the Browns to Baltimore. In short, I think any football fan would enjoy this book, and those who remember the '64 Browns firsthand won't be able to put it down.

THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS I HAVE EVER READ IN MY ENTIRE LIFE

I was drawn to "Unguarded" primarily because I grew up with the Sonics coached by Lenny Wilkens. I remember the championship season he guided the team to, and have always rued the day he left the Sonics for other coaching endeavors.

This book isn't verbose, and doesn't go into tremendous detail about every aspect of his career, but this style works for Mr. Wilkens. What the reader gets is a nice, classy snapshot of a career that has - as player and coach - encompassed the rise and current decline of the NBA.

I was particularly fascinated with his descriptions of the NBA he played in during the 1960's. The murky arenas, low pay, poor treatment of players in general, the caste system between rookies and veterans, and subtle bigotry were all things Mr. Wilkens highlighted. Most NBA fans would no doubt imagine the league as always being the "showtime", glamorous atmosphere of the Magic-Bird-Jordan era. Mr. Wilkens' description would probably be as surprising to the hard-core fan as it would be to the non-fan.

I also found his opinions on the current state of the game to be fascinating. He laments the "SportsCenter" style of play where everyone's playing for highlight reel material, the "me-first" attitude among players, and the general loss of the art of the game he played. These are all things that have prompted me to quit watching NBA basketball in recent years, so I couldn't help but say a quiet "amen" as I read the book.

One of the troublesome areas I found with the book were when he addressed the topic of racism. In the very first chapter he tackles it head-on, saying that he saw it and experienced it, but then alluding that he doesn't dwell on it or hold grudges. However, when it arises in later chapters - notably in his being left off the Olympic team as a player or when up for coaching the original "Dream Team" - Mr. Wilkens comes off as definitely holding grudges and letting racism play a big factor in his life. It is a paradox I couldn't grapple with personally. I certainly don't deny he was treated horribly in situations based on his race, but I found that it was almost as if he was trying too hard to walk the tightrope between being bitter and handling the issue with class. It was an area of the book that just didn't work, because you couldn't tell whether he had indeed let it go or was still holding grudges on many an situation.

All in all, though, this was a nice memoir. There is nothing scandalous revealed, and he doesn't attack anyone - even in his descriptions of the aforementioned racial treatment or in his criticism of the modern game. Perhaps this also accounts for the puzzling, clumsy way he addresses racism, because while he does criticize a few, he writes very well of those who fired him or cut him over the years.

There is no doubt Mr. Wilkens has led an extraordinary career, and has done so with dignity, modesty, and class. We get our best glimpse of this tremendous man with this book, and I recommend it to fans and non-fans of basketball. The fan will be interested in the history of the game; the non-fan will see that there are still a few class individuals in an otherwise horrendous NBA. Mr. Wilkens has penned a nice book here, and it further confers upon him the status that Seattle and the Northwest is STILL "Lenny's Country".

Along with John Wooden, who practically invented basketball, Lenny Wilkens is the only man to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach. In one or both of these capacities he has competed against giants of the game from Bill Russell to Michael Jordan to today's superstars such as Allen Iverson. He has experienced the evolution of the NBA from the shoestring operation it was in the 1950s to the global phenomenon that it is today. Wilkens was a publicly prominent African-American during one of this country's most racially turbulent periods. He has risen from childhood poverty to almost incomprehensible wealth.

It is not hard to see why Lenny Wilkens has been so successful as a point guard or coach. In these memoirs he comes across as perceptive and self-effacing - just the qualities that one wants in a point guard or a coach. No chair-thrower, he. And with veteran basketball writer Terry Pluto handling the prose the book is an easy read. Yet herein lies the problem: I would have been happy to read twice as much. The book is weirdly uneven in its treatment of Wilkens' life both on an off the court. One feels like there are huge things going on both in the NBA and in the world that pass by unnoticed or with only cursory mention.

Perhaps this is unfair: afterall the subtitle of the book is "My forty years of surviving in the NBA," not "what it was like to be a public figure in turbulent times." Even the basketball aspects of the book have some of this unevenness, however. To give one example: Wilkens goes into a fair amount of detail describing his first contract negotiation (he received less than $15,000 and had to take a summer job) and a subsequent salary dispute later in his career. Yet late in the book he mentions almost in passing that one of his coaching contracts was for millions. What is it like to have one's income rise like that? What does it do to your family and others around you?

In the end these are quibbles, I suppose. The book is unguarded and revealing in certain aspects, but one gets the sense that the extreme self-discipline necessary to accomplish what Wilkens has also lends itself to a certain degree of self-censorship. I have no reason to believe that Wilkens is anything other than the thoroughly decent man that he appears to be from this book, and if he chooses to emphasize some aspects of his life over others in his memoirs, well, that's his prerogative.

As another reviewer mentioned, Lenny Wilkens does come across as an admirable role model in this book without being a goody two-shoes or a candidate for sainthood. This book would make an excellent gift for young people interested in basketball or simply the life of one remarkable American individual. It might also be a good antidote for fans who believe the key to winning basketball games is throwing chairs.

I am not a fan of the NBA. I am not even a basketball fan. I bought and read this book because Lenny Wilkens was a member of the St. Louis Hawks of the 1960's when I closely followed the Hawks of Bob Pettit, Cliff Hagan, "The Big Z" Zelmo Beaty, John "Rabbit" Barnhill, Chico Vaughn, and others. I was interested in reading what Wilkens would have to say about the Hawks. According to Wilkens, coaching in the NBA in the '60's consisted of scrimmaging and shooting free throws. Rather than teaching, coaches screamed at players. Wilkens says that one of his Hawks' coaches, Richie Guerin, played favorites namely Bill Bridges and Gene Tormohlen. Wilkens credits his faith in God for directing his life and for providing him with the many blessings that have come his way. Having graduated from Providence with a degree in economics, he had no idea he would be playing in the NBA. He takes the reader through the discrimination he encountered in St. Louis during the '60's and how this was all new to him having been raised in Brooklyn, New York. Wilkens provides us insight of his experiences of playing with St. Louis followed by the trade to Seattle and his two coaching stints there along with coaching at Cleveland, Portland, Atlanta, and now Toronto. Along the way he managed to pass Celtic legend Red Auerbach's career victory total. Both Wilkens and former UCLA Bruins' coach, John Wooden are the only two members elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame as both players and coaches. I rate this book five stars, not because it is a keeper for me. I plan on sending this up to our local high school library so people who are interested in basketball can benefit from this book. In addition, how refreshing to read a book without any profanity. Lenny Wilkens, you have been a credit to the game of basketball and you will touch a number of lives of those who will read your book.