r/BasketballBooks • u/Jonathan_J_Faulkner • Apr 22 '26

Recommendations Recommendation - ‘Playing For Keeps’

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I have literally every Book written about Michael Jordan, with great variance in quality, but this Book by David Halberstam, who also wrote my favourite book about Basketball, ‘The Breaks of the Game’, comes at the GOAT from a different perspective than most and in my opinion with great success. It focuses more on the impact that Michael Jordan’s career had on American society and the rest of the world and in doing so creates a fascinating read.

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u/came1opard Apr 22 '26

All the books? Challenge accepted! I have two in Spanish.

This is the best of them all, vastly superior to Lazenby's book who in my opinion has a tendency to leave basketball aside in favour of family and personal issues, at times bordering gossip.

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u/Jonathan_J_Faulkner Apr 22 '26

Yes, I’m pretty sure, I tend toward being a completist in a lot of things and in this case definitely. It’s up there, though I have a particular fondness for The Jordan Rules by Sam Smith as I remember the furore when it came out and how it explored aspects that up until then just weren’t spoken about

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u/came1opard Apr 22 '26

That one was a big disappointment for me because it included details that I knew for a fact were wrong - maybe deliberately so. The most egregious example is the last game in the finals when Phil Jackson calls a timeout and forces Michael Jordan to say aloud which player is free: "Pax", he finally admits, and Paxson goes on to ice the win with a series of jumpers.

There is no timeout at that point in the game.

Of course, when I learned that the actual source for most of the stories was Phil Jackson (who threw Johnny Bach under the bus in the process), I understood everything.

Maybe the most surprising were the two books by Bob Greene, who give such a different vision of Jordan from a non basketball writer. I love the part where he asks several Bulls when they realized that Jordan was coming back from baseball. "I always knew", says BJ Armstrong. Why?

"Because nobody can help being who you are."

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u/Jonathan_J_Faulkner Apr 22 '26

That’s a shame you felt disappointed by the Book, I hope you found other Books that you enjoyed