New York. 1998. Verso. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket.

New York. 1998. Verso. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 1859842356. 203 pages. hardcover. Cover photo by Barry Munger. keywords: Basketball Sociology America. FROM THE PUBLISHER-The stories of the playground and the basketball players who have made their legends there have, until now, largely gone untold, the melodramas of these athletes' lives playing out only before the select few who frequent the blacktops. But for the first time, the history of the playground game-and how it's played today in prisons, on Indian reservations, among drug dealers and by women-is told in Pickup Artists. On a trip to a blacktop, perhaps you'll see James ‘Speedy' Williams. Age twenty-nine, Speedy makes his living playing basketball for drug dealers in New York City. All along the East Coast, dealers recruit, assemble, and subsidize their own teams and play each other for as much as $100, 000 per game. The playground game, once a drama acted out anonymously in America's ghettos, has become a multimillion dollar business. Tournaments today are sponsored by shoemakers and record companies, and these contests have branched out from the inner-city into the suburbs and onto the farms. inventory #25490.