Books by Charley Rosen

During the 1972-73 season, the Philadelphia 76ers were not just a bad team; they were fantastically awful. Doomed from the start, they lost twenty-one of their first twenty-three games, on their way to a not-yet-broken record of nine wins and seventy-three losses. Charley Rosen recaptures the futility of that season through the firsthand accounts of players, participants, and observers.

Elliot Hersch is given a basketball on his tenth birthday and cuts a deal with his disapproving father: if he makes straight As, he is allowed to play. Modeling his game on the basketball heroes of his time--Clyde Frazier, Oscar Robertson, Magic Johnson, and especially Larry Bird--Elliot becomes one of the finest high school basketball players in New York. Trying to steer clear of the corruption and sleaze in the big college programs, Elliott signs with the seemingly clean-cut University of Southern Arizona (USA), partly to fulfill his promise to his father, whose one piece of advice about life is: Tell the truth, always. A quote from Chaucer, his father's favorite writer, guides both father and son "Trouthe is the hyest thing that man may kepe." What he finds at the USA and then the NBA is a far cry from untarnished "trouthe." Elliott is challenged at every turn, tangling at the end of the day with what is most true: the game. Can Elliott truly play basketball? And if not, what is left of his life? Trouthe, Lies, and Basketball is an epic comic tale--structured somewhat like a gripping basketball game, completely with literary "time-outs"--of a basketball player coming to terms with the world as it is, his talents as they are. Rosen's characters, even the mostly unseemly, are all heart, and by the end they leave those hearts on the hardwood.

The 1980s were arguably the NBA's best decade, giving rise to Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan. One player who personified the eighties excess is Micheal Ray Richardson. Tracking the rise, fall, and eventual redemption of Richardson throughout his playing days and subsequent coaching career, Charley Rosen describes the life-defining pitfalls Richardson and other players faced.

A few years after its invention by James Naismith, basketball became the primary sport in the crowded streets of the Jewish neighborhood on New York’s Lower East Side. Participating in the new game was a quick and enjoyable way to become Americanized. Jews not only dominated the sport for the next fiftyΓÇæplus years but were also instrumental in modernizing the game. Barney Sedran was considered the best player in the country at the City College of New York from 1909 to 1911.┬áIn 1927 Abe Saperstein took over management of the Harlem Globetrotters, playing a key role in popularizing and integrating the game. Later he helped found the American Basketball Association and introduced the three-point shot.┬áMore recently, Nancy Lieberman played in a men’s pro summer league and became the first woman to coach a men’s pro team, and Larry Brown became the only coach to win both NCAA and the NBA championships. While the influence of Jewish players, referees, coaches, and administrators has gradually diminished since the midΓÇæ1950s, the current basketball scene features numerous Jews in important positions. Through interviews and lively anecdotes from franchise owners, coaches,┬áplayers, and referees, The┬áChosen Game explores┬áthe contribution of Jews to the evolution of present-day pro┬ábasketball. ┬á

Commentator, analyst, author, and all-around pro basketball presence, Charley Rosen may seem like a natural, sprung upon the sports scene with the NBA in his blood. And yet how Rosen arrived at his present position comfortably overseeing basketball at its finest is a story as unexpected as it is delightful, documenting basketball travels as unlikely as they are nomadic and eclectic.

"Players and Pretenders" tells the story of the flip side of basketball's "March Madness," where the game is played by average players for love, not for money. At the end of the 1970s at Bard College, where there was no pretense of institutional support, Charley Rosen gathered his hoops hopefuls and put together a basketball season whose impact reached far beyond the court. Writing with a humorous touch, Rosen details the Running Red Devils' season, simultaneously examining the lives of those who made it so memorable and providing a glimpse of how the team members existed off the courts as both players and pretenders. His book playfully depicts the 1979-80 basketball season at Bard College and the "sports for fun" side of the game.