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Taking Shots: Tall Tales, Bizarre Battles, and the Incredible Truth About the NBA | 
 enlarge | Author: Keith Glass
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $4.25
You Save: $11.70 (73%)
New (32) Used (10) from $4.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 890440
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 0061373907
Dewey Decimal Number: 796
EAN: 9780061373909
ASIN: 0061373907
Publication Date: March 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Bring a family of four to an NBA game today, and it costs around $500 to watch a bunch of seven-footers take bad shots. Perhaps the quote often attributed to P.T. Barnum is true?there really is a sucker born every minute. The NBA is in trouble. And as NBA agent Keith Glass describes it?he's part of the problem! If team owners are willing to throw millions of dollars his way for marginal players, why should he be the only one with the self-restraint to say "no"? In his insightful, funny, and often mind-numbingly bizarre tales of life in the NBA over the last twenty- five years, Keith Glass lets it fly from half-court. He'll tell you how we got to the present state?where an agent who makes millions off the game can't sit through one; why our NBA stars couldn't capture Olympic gold; and why the game he loves is in dire need of help. Glass has seen it all as the representative of players like Mark Eaton, the seven-foot-five center found working as a mechanic because he hated basketball; Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, who converted to Islam and brought the wrath of the league upon him when he refused to stand for the National Anthem; and first-round draft pick Quincy Douby, who was forced to enter the draft before graduating from Rutgers because of the harsh NCAA rules regarding college eligibility. With informative chapters such as "How to Feed Your Family on Only $14 Million a Year," "Eighty-one Feet of White Centers," and "From 6'11" to the 7- Eleven," Glass shatters the myth of NBA marketing: that everything about the game is great, and that as long as the fans in the luxury boxes are happy and weighed down with expensive merchandise, all is well. But have no fear! Keith Glass doesn't preach about the evils of highlight film slam-dunks—he'll just have you falling down laughing as he flagrantly fouls the league that was once the envy of the pro sports world.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
A great read for any NBA Fan September 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Taking Shots is a great read about the life of Keith Glass, an NBA agent. From his days at UCLA all the way through to the NBA.
An enjoyable read for any basketball fan.
 Eh... April 9, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read a ton of books, mostly history and sports books. This book does have some interestng stories, he tries to hard to preach and the book never seems to flow. Granted, I bought it for 6 bucks but it's simply not worth the cover price.
 An insider's look at the NBA February 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Keith Glass takes us behind the scenes on what goes on behind the glitz of an NBA game. He gives us lots of behind the scenes action, insider information and laugh-out loud anecdotes, which are all fun to read. However, that lies the shortcoming of this book. It is just that. Full of anecdotes. According to the cover copy, it's about the incredible truth about the NBA. The problem is, the book is so scattered, there's no central topic, even if Keith Glass said it's about NBA player's sense of entitlement, it doesn't come out that way since there are chapters that digress from this subject. Reading the book, it switches from an autobiography, to the pratfalls of being an honorable agent to stories about his clients to an advice on how to improve the US Men's Basketball team. The topics meander and Glass seems to be trying hard to be a comedy writer in his next life. Still, Taking Shots is an enjoyable if not (very) light read. It is not in the level of Terry Pluto's Loose Balls or as controversial as Phil Jackson's last book. The supposed subject on what makes the NBA fail today (as written in sleeves) is not discussed in-depth and if it was discussed, the writing is not that clear to be understood what the point is all about. Keith Glass, being an agent, should've called his agent so he could've secured a good editor for his book.
OK , but a disappointment December 13, 2007
My largest disappointment with this book was the lack of focus on the agent aspect of Glass's life. The stories were about his clients, and there are some situation he's found himself that are the result of being an agent, but they often weren't about actually what it was like to be an agent. Negotiation tales were vague and general, most of the players he told stories about were non-stars if not entirely unrecognizable.
His portion of the book that addressed what was wrong with the NBA was hardly a revelation; I think most people know that the basketball being played in the NBA is lousy, so that assessment from Glass is not shattering any illusions. Further, his suggestions for how to "fix" the NBA are pipe dreams, at best, even if some would make sense.
There is enough humor and behind-the-scenes type of stories to keep the book interesting, but there's an awful lot of pages for what seems like very little substance. The content does not live up to the expectations created by the title.
Finally, and this is a very picky detail, there are typos galore in this book. I generally thought books had editors to catch such things, but there is a variety of glaring errors throughout.
A Heart-felt Examination of What the NBA Has Become October 7, 2007
Keith Glass tells a great tale, and his many years of experience representing NBA players has given him many to tell. Glass' book is a great insight into the other side of the NBA that the general public would otherwise have no access to. But one of the greatest elements of this book is Glass' true passion for the sport, and for the part he has played in it.
The book looks at Glass' upbringing, with basketball in his life from a very young age. Glass discusses how Larry Brown ended up living with his family, how Glass saw the evolution of basketball, and how he became a coach at UCLA. There's a very nostalgic and homely feel to these earlier chapters, and they definitely show a man who really loves the game and loves the relationships he has been able to establish through it.
The book then looks at Glass' adventures in representing top level NBA stars and how he came into this career. The greatest stories in here are the tale of Mahamoud Abdul-Rauf, the making of Scott Skiles (current head coach of the Chicago Bulls) and the sad story of Thomas Hamilton. It really is the stories like Hamilton's, a seven-foot-four giant with exquisite skills who could never get his NBA career started due to personal problems, that make this book. The power this story has is it makes you look at how some people can throw their God-given talent away, which gives you perspective to appreciate what you have in your life.
The latter chapters lack the same level of interest, as Glass discusses the various ways he NBA could improve the league and take it back to it's roots more, and further away from the greed-driven monster it has become. Glass makes some great points, but they could have been better illustrated through his stories, rather than telling the reader, point-blank. His various tales deliver this message through subtlety and through reading between the lines of what's going on, so to have this opinion forced onto the reader in the end weakened the overall tone of the writing a bit.
It also plays down some of Glass' other failings, in that he makes little to no mention of his previous marriages and doesn't discuss things he has done that he has regretted. It seems, at times, that Glass is a little too ethical in a world of no ethics, and to survive in this arena, Glass says himself, you can't always hold to your morals. There would appear to be a level of censorship and restraint at times. The book could have had more effect if there were no barriers, no holds barred.
There are also two times that Glass refers to the story of Lloyd Daniels, and says that he would need an entire book of it's own to tell Daniels' story. Lloyd Daniels was shot three times in the late eighties and still, to this day, has a bullet lodged in his right shoulder. He never played in college, yet went on to play for five NBA teams. Now that's a story I want to hear. Daniels' story should have made the book, even in brief form.
At the end of the book you get the sense that this is the story Keith Glass wanted to tell in exactly the way he wanted to tell it, which is not so bad, but it felt like it could have explored so much more about the dark side of the glamourous life of pro-ballers. As it stands, it's an interesting read, great at times, but overall more focussed on presenting a portrait of a man who loves the game and who holds a special place in his heart for 'his' players. Again, this is not so bad, but a but more controversy and a couple more first-hand accounts of back-room dealings would have made this a more important and compulsive book.
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