Howard Beck. Marc Stein. Jonathan Abrams. Chris Broussard. Ira Berkow. George Vecsey. Mike Wise. Selena Roberts. Lee Jenkins. All have graced the pages of The New York Times, entertaining readers with their probing coverage of the N.B.A.: a stage on which spectacular athletes perform against a backdrop of continuous social change. Now, their work and more is collected in a new volume, edited and annotated by Hall of Fame honoree Harvey Araton, tracing basketball's sustained boom from Magic and Bird to the present. Elevated provides a courtside seat to four decades of professional basketball. Both the iconic moments and those quieter, but no less meaningful times in between are here, from Wise riding around Los Angeles with a young Kobe Bryant on the eve of his first All-Star Game, to Stein declaring Giannis Antetokounmpo's "unspeakable greatness" to the world in a riveting profile. Rather than simply preserving the past, Elevated reexamines and further illuminates hoops history. This expertly curated collection features exclusive new writing by Araton and postscripts from the original journalists, revealing candid exchanges with NBA greats that didn't make the original newspaper edit and tracing the rise of a worldwide phenomenon from a contemporary vantage point.
"There are few authors and subjects as perfectly matched as Harvey Araton and Elevated: The Global Rise of the N.B.A. Araton is the most influential and gifted writer ever on the N.B.A. and his ability to trace the storylines of the seismic shifts in the game's landscape are without peer. If you care about the game and those who've most impacted its meteoric rise, Elevated is a must-read."
Adrian Wojnarowski, ESPN Senior N.B.A. Insider and New York Times Best-Selling Author
