Pickup Artists

The history of blacktop basketball in fast-paced words and pictures. A New York street hustler. A lonely man in a Maryland prison. A confused Native American on a reservation in Idaho. What do they all have in common? They are among the best pickup basketball players in the country. In Pickup Artists, Lars Anderson and Chad Millman tell the complete story of the street game from its mythical past to its glorious present. Using original reporting to examine the evolution of playground basketball, Anderson and Millman are the first journalists to unravel the thickly woven tapestry of the sport’s subculture. Today’s super-hyped, corporate-sponsored tournaments weren’t always the norm. The foundation of the game was laid with sweat in the 1920s… Keep Reading