When the Game Was War

July 1, 2023
A die-hard fan revisits the 1987 NBA season. Wall Street Journal columnist Cohen, the author of The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse and Pee Wees: Confessions of a Hockey Parent, seeks to convince readers that 1987 was "the greatest season in NBA history." He makes the debatable argument that the Detroit Pistons were as accomplished a franchise as Magic Johnson's Los Angeles Lakers, Larry Bird's Boston Celtics, and Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls and that Pistons point guard Isiah Thomas was the equal of those three players. In this "revisionist history," the author wants "to return Isiah to the pantheon, where he belongs." During that fabled season, the Celtics were fading though still competitive, the Lakers were dominant but about to be dethroned by the Pistons, and the Bulls were on the verge of transcendence. At the time, general managers and coaches "took time to build" their teams, looking to the long-term; the style of play was fast and physical; and the coaches were savvy students of the game. Cohen goes all in: "The game was better than it ever had been, or will be....It was a time when the games really mattered." The Lakers met the Pistons in the Finals, and the Lakers pulled out the victory to repeat as NBA champions. However, notes the author, "the future belonged to the brash newcomers from the Midwest, first the Pistons, then the Bulls," who would combine to win the next five championships. Along with arguing, to uneven effect, that Thomas has been disrespected, Cohen provides capsul biographies of the personalities that made these teams successful, short descriptions of key games during the season and all seven games in the finals, and even reviews of the courts on which they played. An invitation to avid fans of a certain age to bathe in the soothing nostalgia of a bygone era.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from July 17, 2023
The “incredible pool of talent” on display in the NBA’s 1987–1988 season makes it the league’s best to date, according to this exhilarating account. Focusing on how Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Isiah Thomas revolutionized the NBA, Wall Street Journal columnist Cohen (The Adventures of Herbie Cohen) recaps key games, including the Feb. 21, 1988, matchup between Thomas’s Pistons and Johnson’s Lakers, during which Thomas embodied his team’s “brutal” aggression, which Johnson countered with the Lakers’ signature “pass-drunk, run-crazy fast-break” style. Bird and Jordan, according to Cohen, represented the past and future of basketball, with Bird’s Celtics slipping out of their dynasty phase as Jordan’s Bulls became a contender. Cohen excels at wringing the human drama out of the sport, as when he portrays the ascendant Bulls’ rivalry with the powerhouse Pistons as a “schoolyard quest” to “stand up to a bully,” or draws pathos from 40-year-old Kareem Abdul-Jabbar stoically facing down the end of his basketball career: “Nothing brings fans closer to an athlete than watching him struggle with mortality.” The empathetic portraits humanize the legendary players, and the play-by-play game recreations thrill (“Just as Zeke started to release the ball, Kareem, appearing from nowhere, reached out and swatted it away. Block. Game over”). This love letter to the NBA’s golden age is an instant classic.

July 1, 2023
From 1980 to 1998, in all but three seasons, the NBA title bounced among four teams: the Lakers, led by Magic Johnson; the Celtics, led by Larry Bird; the Pistons, led by Isaiah Thomas; and the Bulls, led by Michael Jordan. Arguing (convincingly) that the 1987-88 season was the greatest of all time, Cohen does a fine job of explaining how each of those four teams was assembled, the interpersonal dynamics among players and coaches on each team, the games they played against one another that season, the direction each franchise was heading, and how they performed in the playoffs (the Lakers would win it all). In a smooth-flowing narrative, given ballast from numerous interviews with principal players and coaches, Cohen reanimates those teams and their era with such color, and the games with such suspense, that readers should be forgiven for getting caught up in the games, even as they know the outcomes. A nice addition to the strong sports shelf.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.