Elevated: The Global Rise of the N.B.A.

I had trouble putting this down! It is a series of articles from the past and rather than being told in sequential order, there are different sections covering different topics. I had read several of the articles before, but still enjoyed seeing and reading them again after several years have passed. If you are a true NBA fan, then I would highly recommend this book.

I’m still working my way through the book but it’s great to read about history’s nba greats and stories with a more personal point of view of the events as they happened.

I expected a more contemporary take on the NBA than what was provided. I should have read more of the description.

Excellent little stories of the NBA

Professional basketball and the National Basketball Association (NBA) were on life support in the late 1970’s. The league had a reputation of being “too black” and drug-infested. Arenas were rarely sold out. Television ratings were very low and the championship round of the playoffs was not shown live but on tape delay late at night.Enter two young college stars named Ervin “Magic” Johnson and Larry Bird. When they became professionals, the game and the league started growing again, and it still is to this day. This era of the history of the NBA is covered in this book of New York Times (NYT) articles edited by Harvey Araton, who was also the writer of several of the articles.Marketed as a history book to celebrate the rise of the league, it was surprising to learn that this was a collection of articles instead of a narrative of how the league grew to be a global phenomenon. However, that format worked for this topic as the articles broke the book up into small, manageable sections that made reading over five hundred pages take very little time.The other advantage to having this collection of NYT articles was that a lot of topics, players, owners and other key aspects of the game were covered. Players from Magic and Bird, through Michael Jordan, Shaquile O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Stephan Curry are all featured. Nearly every controversy in that time frame has at least an article or two as well – the three-point shot, the 2004 brawl between Detroit and Indiana, the dress code for players instituted by former Commissioner David Stern, banning former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling from the league – they are all there as well as many other topics.The complete picture of the NBA from the last 40 years is on display in this book and the writers of the articles as well as the editing job by Araton to put this together is excellent. Even the small snippets of commentary that precede each chapter of related articles will teach the reader a little bit about the league. This book is highly recommended for readers of any level of interest in professional basketball.

Don't waste your money on this book. The cover implies it is about today's NBA, or some well thought-out narrative about how the league orchestrated it incredible growth over the past 2 decades. Unfortunately, it is really just a bunch of repackaged and unrelated NYT articles, most of which were probably not that interesting when published and are seriously out-of-date today. Some of the irrelevant topics covered include: the length of players' shorts, the lockout, Space Jam, Seinfeld, Carmelo Anthony, and the Knicks. Really, who outside of NY really cares about that last one anymore?

This book is fantastic! A must-read for any basketball fan. Easy to read and with fascinating insight from the columnists. Harvey Araton is the premier voice on the NBA and provides a well-organized and interesting look inside the people and events that have shaped today's league. Too often revisionist history can alter important happenings of the past. Thanks to the NY Times archives, each article is written from the present perspective, which gives the reader a truly authentic experience. Buy this book, you will not be disappointed!

This book memorializes the important decades in terms of growth for the NBA through the talented insights of the writers from the New York Times who were there. What a joy to read for any pro basketball fan. Particularly illuminating are Mr. Araton's chapter introductions and the many column post scripts.