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"The unlikeliest of champions, the 1949-50 City College Beavers were extraordinary by every measure: City College was a tuition-free, merit-based college in Harlem known for its intellectual achievements and political radicalism rather than its athletic prowess. Only two years after Jackie Robinson broke the major league baseball color barrier (and the NBA was still segregated), every single member of the Beavers was either Jewish or African American. Yet this scrappy, come-from-nowhere team thrived in the highly competitive era when college basketball fans dwarfed the numbers that followed the professional teams. Then, less than a year after winning both the NIT and NCAA basketball tournaments in the same season--still the only team to ever have done so--the team's starting five were arrested. Charged with colluding with gamblers to shave points, these celebrated young men became symbols of disillusionment and corruption. Their dramatic story is set against the larger backdrop of post-war New York when gangsters controlled the city's illegal sports gambling, the police were on their payroll, and everyone was getting rich--except the young men actually playing the games. Yet they were the ones who took the fall when the party finally ended"--… (more)
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This is book about basketball, a team that beat all odds, but it is also a book about young men who got caught up in something bigger than themselves. About corruption that included the highest circle of the police, and the men, including 28 young rookies straight out of the academy, that followed the threads to unravel something that will ruin and expose many. A justice system based on who you were, and who you know. Not too much different now, though many years have passed.
Loyalty, friendship, motives and goals, young men who will give their all for the school and city, but ultimately pay a heavy price. Well written, kept my interest throughout, and I came to like these young men, care about their future. I also decided I like reading about basketball, though this book is much more, more than watching the game.
ARC from Netgalley.