Brendan’s Alternate Tagline for Heartland:
The legend before the legend.
Quick synopsis:
The story of Larry Bird’s path to a magical year at Indiana State University.
Fact for Non-History People:
Bird was set to play for the legendary Bobby Knight but quit before ever playing a game.
Fact for History Nerds:
Bird is the first person to win NBA MVP, NBA Coach of the Year, and NBA Executive of the year.
My Take on Heartland:
When someone thinks of Larry Bird, the vast majority of us will either picture him in Boston Celtics green or in a suit overlooking the Indiana Pacers. Or maybe you don’t like sports, and you have no idea who I am talking about. Either way, you are probably not thinking about his time on the Indiana State Sycamores. Yes, that is an actual college and that is their mascot. However, it all happened in one of the most improbable stories in sports history. Keith O’Brien tackles all of this in Heartland.
I can’t even begin to explain how ridiculous this true story is. Larry Bird was going to play at Indiana University under the legendary (and extremely temperamental) Bobby Knight. Bird decided to leave before playing a single game. He bounced (pun intended) around and improbably ended up at Indiana State in beautiful Terre Haute (famously name checked in A Christmas Story and go ahead and verify, I’ll wait). What follows is basically a montage of every sports cliché you have ever heard. Players come and go while becoming a team and they become bigger than the sum of their parts. There is tragedy, people pushed into positions they never anticipated, and the inevitable clash with the other best player in existence at the time, Magic Johnson. I’m not sure if it can even be called cliché since all of it happened.
O’Brien is also the perfect author for this story. He is a journalist at heart, which means he never tells you how to feel or lays anything on too thick. There is no editorializing or, more importantly, schmaltz. He reports the facts and lets you decide how to feel about it. Do you think Bird is kind of a jerk for the way he treats reporters? Maybe you think he is completely justified in how he refuses to speak to them unless it is completely on his terms. Either way, O’Brien doesn’t weigh in. He reports the facts, and gives you as much background as possible, but never crosses the line into opining.
O’Brien also nails the pace of this book. He chops this story up into short chapters. This tactic can be absolutely disastrous when used incorrectly. Instead, O’Brien makes every single chapter feel frenetic. It feels like a bunch of news articles formed into a cohesive and engaging narrative. I loved this book and I don’t even like basketball. O’Brien tells a human story, not a sports story.
(This book was provided as an advance reader copy by NetGalley and Atria Books.)
Verdict:
A great read even for non-sports fan. Buy it here!
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