{"product_id":"runstedtler-theresa-black-ball-9781645036975","title":"Black Ball","description":"A vital narrative history of 1970s pro basketball, and the Black players who shaped the NBA Against a backdrop of ongoing resistance to racial desegregation and strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation’s imagined descent into disorder. A new generation of Black players entered the league, among them Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Spencer Haywood, and the press and public were quick to blame this cohort for the supposed decline of pro-basketball, citing drugs, violence, and greed. Basketball became a symbol for post–civil rights America: the rules had changed, allowing more Black people onto the playing field, and now they were ruining everything.   Enter Black Ball, a gripping corrective in which scholar Theresa Runstedtler expertly rewrites basketball’s “Dark Ages.” Weaving together a deep knowledge of the game with incisive social analysis, Runstedtler argues that this much-maligned period was pivotal to the rise of the modern-day NBA.","brand":"Bold Type Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53830430523734,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/www.momoxbooks.com\/products\/runstedtler-theresa-black-ball-9781645036975","provider":"momoxbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}