Boom! This is Books & Biceps #398!

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Expensive Basketball by Shea Serrano

Whenever I ask the crack Books & Biceps analytics team (me) to dig up numbers, I’d say sixty percent of the time they get it right every time. So I can say with confidence that this is either the fourth or fifth or sixth book of Shea Serrano’s that we’ve featured here in B&B, but for sure this is our second interview.

We’ve recommended Movies (and Other Things), Basketball (and Other Things), the Action Hero Scouting Report and his fiction work, The Abduction, which I liked a ton and you would too. There may be one more I’m missing, but the gist is, Serrano is a first ballot Books & Biceps Hall of Famer and whenever we build the world’s only bookstore and gym combo location, we’ll have a bust of Shea on the wall in his Tim Duncan jersey.

Today I’m pumped to share an interview about his newest book, Expensive Basketball. This one came out late last year, but I just got around to reading it and enjoyed the hell out of it. The format is great. You can skip around to the chapters that interest you, read it straight through, or treat it like a series of longform columns and leave it on the coffee table to read during commercials or while you’re lounging on the couch.

I’ll let Shea explain where the title came from before our interview here:

“Everything in basketball is measured. Everything in basketball is counted, and quantified, and computed. And yet, no matter how expansive the list of various pinpoint-specific statistical categories gets, some basketball things remain uncountable, and unquantifiable. Some moments are more poetry than calculation; more art than numerical value; more feeling than data processing. And thus: Expensive Basketball.”

Got it? Good. And now that the table is set, please enjoy our exclusive, behind-the-book Author Q&A with Shea Serrano:

ONE

FINKEL: Let’s begin with the Iverson chapter. I covered him years ago and interviewed him for a project as well, and as you mention, by NBA standards, he’s small. Six foot. One hundred and sixty five pounds. In person, the best way to describe him was as a blur. He seemed to slip through time on the court. Gliding from spot to spot for shots and steals. When you brought up that Iverson had 10 steals in his first ever home post-season game, I thought of that blur-ability too. Does anyone else you can think of even have that? Any player even come close? It was like he could teleport.

SERRANO: There are a lot of guys who've been fast in the NBA. John Wall was fast. Derrick Rose was fast. My beloved Tony Parker was fast. The only person who's ever come close to recreating Allen Iverson's velocity, though, was Stephon Marbury. He was like one of those Tesla Plaid cars that goes 0-60 in under two seconds. He never seemed to be moving from one place to another, he only ever seemed to go from one place to another, if that makes sense.

TWO

I think my favorite title chapter is ‘Reggie Miller, Grace and Gloating’. It’s perfect. It describes him exactly in the smallest amount of words. And the lead-in with Cool Hand Luke was great. How long have you been sitting on the Luke/Reggie connection? Was that in your back pocket for like twenty years? Great stage setting.

Ha. Thanks. I didn't think of that comp until I was actually working on the book. The first thing I did was try to figure out precisely what it was about Reggie that made him such a special player, and then after I figured that out, I took all of about ten seconds to draw a line between him and Paul Newman's character in Cool Hand Luke.

THREE

I’ve watched the NBA my entire life and over time we look back and there are clear eras where one or two guys shaped the league in their image. For me, the ‘Steph at the Olympics’ performance solidified the idea that the 2010s to early 2020s was Steph’s era. Not LeBron’s. Not Durant’s. The jersey the kids wanted the most… The guy they wanted to play like the most… The man with the most memorable performances that got crowds (not just home team crowds) exploding was Steph. In terms of ALL memorable hoops performances the last 25 years or so, where does this rank for you? It’s tough to beat being THE REASON Team USA won gold.

I mean, 25 years covers a lot of ground. In that span, you have the Lakers threepeat, Dwyane Wade silently making the case that he's one of the five best guards ever, four of the five titles the Spurs won, Dirk's incredible 2011 playoff run, and LeBron's 3-1 comeback against the 73-9 Warriors (and that's only the NBA). I don't know that I'm willing to place Steph's performance at the Olympics at the top of everything (and I'm definitely not willing to say he was the defining player of the era over LeBron), but it is a compelling argument.

FOUR

The 1993 Charlotte Hornets chapter rules. I didn’t know a fashion designer created those iconic uniforms, which had a massive effect on why random kids in random towns in the northeast wore Hornets Starter Jackets even though they’d never been to Charlotte (me). Has any other team done this that you know of? Should every new team in every sport hire high-end fashion designers now to do this outside of alternate jerseys? It seems super smart. Also, which Starter Jacket did you have? I had a Hornets one and my brother had a Buffalo Bills one. We'd never been to either city.

I can't think of any other teams that did it. (That being said, I also didn't know the Hornets had done it until I started researching.) As for the Starter jacket, I never had one. I always wanted one, but never actually got one. The closest I got was a knock-off Los Angeles Raiders one my mom bought from the flea market. I actually bought Larami one a few years ago for a birthday gift because she'd mentioned that she always wanted a Miami Dolphins one when she was a kid because of the colors. She hasn't let me wear it, though.

FIVE

The further away we get from the 2000 dunk contest, the more of an anomaly it becomes. NBA star. Doing dunks we’ve never seen. Captivating everyone with his creativity and verticality and charisma. I didn’t remember that Vince was also the leading vote-getter for the all-star team that year as well. Damn. Will we ever see the leading vote getter participate in the dunk contest again? Ever? And you mention Jordan and Dominique as the only other All-Star starters to participate in the dunk contest. Having stars compete again seems like a pretty good idea. (My son is 13, loves hoops, and could care less about the dunk contest right now. I’d like that to change, haha.) Will we ever see it? Is that entire idea just extinct? If you replaced Adam Silver, how would you make that happen?

I think Wemby's gonna change everything. He's making it cool to care again. Remember a few years ago when the NBA started the NBA Cup? Everyone was like, "I'm not sure if this is gonna work or not." But then LeBron was like, "I care desperately about this and want to win it," and so since he was the A1 guy at the time, everybody else followed his lead. I'm hopeful that that's what's gonna happen with Wemby. We just watched him do it in the All-Star game. He went out there playing at 100% speed and mostly everyone else (Anthony Edwards, in particular) was like, "Okay, let's fucking go."

I think if Wemby continues doing that (which I assume he definitely will; just the other day he was crying from happiness after he led a 25-point comeback against the Clippers), everyone else will join in. When the best guy does something, others follow.

BUY YOUR COPY OF EXPENSIVE BASKETBALL HERE

We just got back from our annual Spring Break skiing trip in Deer Valley and for the first time ever, I had zero soreness after the first long day on the slopes. No pain. No odd tweaks. Nothing.

And the reason I think my legs were ready and prepped for skiing even though we live in Florida and only ski one week a year is because of the Knees Over Toes training I do several times a week.

In particular, I think it’s these two exercises that give me the most bang for my buck when it comes to leg strength and mobility: the ATG Split Squat and the Slow Eccentric Slant Board Squat.

Here’s how to do the split squat from the man himself, my buddy Ben Patrick:

And here’s how you do the slow, eccentric squats with a slant board.

I’ve done both of these, along with a half-dozen leg exercises from Ben for a few years now and I’m starting to really see a difference in how I move. Don’t get discouraged when you start. I was embarrassed at how absurdly rigid I was my first workout. I felt like I was 97-years-old. Just start. Six months from now, you’ll be glad you did.

If you’re a guy over 40 and you’ve been looking for a new digital magazine that’s written for midlife men, by midlife men, on the topics that actually matter to us: family, fitness, fashion, finance, food & fun, then join us at Midlife Male.

I write a column every Tuesday called The Manologue. This week, after spending a ton of time in airports, I wrote a masterpiece on the eight guys you see when flying. From the All-Work Assassin to the Midwest Dad to the Boomer Businessman, you’ve not only encountered all these guys, you ARE one of these guys. The only question is: Which one?

BIG QUESTION: Have you ever eaten at a restaurant where they simply hung meat in front of fireplaces and let it cook before you ordered it? Or where they cut giant wheels of cheese in half and put them on iron slabs in front of a fireplace to melt it for you and serve it on its own plate? No? Me neither. But my wife found this spot in Park City that was billed as a “unique dining experience” and we tried it and… well… I ate about five pounds of meat and melted cheese in one sitting. I mean, look at this cheese!:

And this meat!:

Insane, right? I don’t even know what this style is called, but if you have the chance to eat fireplace cooked meat and cheese, take it!

The ‘Read More, Lift More’ 30-Day Brain & Body Endurance Challenge

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"It's insane. It's primal. It's poetic. Bear Brawl is like Rocky IV meets The Revenant, but with a deeper emotional undercurrent about grief and masculinity. Finkel captures the mind of a fighter better than most writers ever have--and reminds you that sometimes, the fight isn't just about the opponent, but also with yourself--or in this case, with a bear." - Ed Latimore

Jon Finkel is the award-winning author of Macho Man: The Untamed, Unbelievable Life of Randy Savage, 1996: A Biography, Hoops Heist, The Life of Dad, Jocks In Chief, The Athlete, Heart Over Height, “Mean” Joe Greene and more. His books have been endorsed by everyone from Mark Cuban, John Cena and Tony Dungy to Spike Lee, Kevin Durant and Chef Robert Irvine. He has written for GQ, Men’s Health, Yahoo! Sports, The New York Times and has appeared on CBS: This Morning, Good Morning Texas, Good Morning Chicago, and hundreds of radio shows, podcasts and streams. Jon was recently profiled in The New Yorker about the awesome community he’s built around his Books & Biceps newsletter. They describe him as “a gym rat’s Reese Witherspoon”. Reply to this email for any media requests.

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