Hanif Abdurraqib

Hanif Abdurraqib presents himself as both participant and witness, someone whose personal history is inseparable from the larger story of basketball and Ohio. The book is not written by an objective commentator but from the position of someone who has lived in the neighborhoods, walked the same streets as the athletes he describes, and carried the weight of the same social and economic conditions. He writes candidly about moments of hardship such as his periods of homelessness, his incarceration, and the instability and precarity that marked stretches of his life. These autobiographical details are integral to the perspective he brings: they shape the way he understands what it means to survive, to persevere, and to find moments of joy.

Abdurraqib’s history gives particular force to the way he writes about the idea of “making it.” His accounts of local heroes like Kenny Gregory or Estaban...