Urban Desires Book Review
Houghton Mifflin
by Darcey Frey
review by Brian Dykstra
review by Brian Dykstra
If you can't take having your heart broken, forget about this book.
Darcey Frey, a white guy who writes for Harper's, writes it like a novel. It's not. The Last Shot tells the true stories of Corey Johnson, Stephon Marbury, Tchaka Shipp, and Russell Thomas. Four black, high school hoop players from Coney Island, New York who want to get out of the city, the projects, Coney, and into college. The book focuses on these four kids because they have the talent to get what they want. They all play basketball, and they all play it well enough to escape. Who cares? Yeah. That's in there too.
I watch College Basketball on television. NBC, CBS, ABC, ESPN, MSG, PRIME Network, ESPN2. Last Saturday there were eleven games in my viewing area. ESPN gives me double-headers, and triple-headers during the weekdays, even while it's sister station gives one, two, or even the full three more. Big time college coaches need to keep winning. Sneaker companies need to keep their Reeboks or Nike Swoosh on all that television. The networks need to keep product on the air in order to sell more advertising. The one thing they all need to keep the system in high gear is 17-21 year old kids who can play with enough proficiency to make it look good, and maintain their eligibility, at least until it runs out in four or five years. The carrot they dangle is a free education.
This book, which at times flows like the game it's covering, gets into the hearts of the four young players and their different dreams of what a college education can give them. Some of them ache for life outside the projects. Some are too cool to ache. At least externally. They even care about the chance beyond the astronomical odds against a career in the NBA. In one case, there is an almost desperate urgency just to get out of the projects. That's where the heartbreak comes in. They want what everybody wants, a better life. It quickly becomes evident that there is a great struggle to even qualify for a college scholarship. Then there is the recruiting, the sneaker companies influence, the lack of respect for the students and for their learning. They try to battle through an educational system that has failed them, the inertia of their situation that binds them, the dismal history that befell the high school legends that preceded them, showing them a hopelessness that they can fight with high school boy bravado, but which eats at their confidence like only whispering doubt can.
This is a book about four children at the most important crossroads in their young lives. How they handle their opportunity will dictate the quality of their future. Any misstep could take away the single best chance of their lives. Ever. It's a pressure no other group of 14-17 year-olds in this country have to face, at least that I know of. For these four, that misstep could lead to a life of hopelessness where selling crack is preferable to getting addicted to it.
The book is a terrific read. Even when I was afraid of finding out what came next.
