Dear Adam Silver

Kirk Goldsberry joins the pod to discuss cartography, NBA Stats and how he has combined the two to make (stunning!) graphics that reflect recent NBA trends and the history of basketball. Kirk is a Lecturer in Management and the Associate Director of the Center for Leadership and Ethics at the University of Texas at Austin as well as a staff writer at ESPN. What I love about Kirk's work is that he brings together art and science, culminating in a visual that celebrates basketball and informs the viewer.

If you are interested in purchasing a Naismith International Park Map click here. 

Thank you to Kirk for coming on and thank you to you all for listening. Please share, subscribe, rate and review Dear Adam Silver wherever you find your podcasts. 

Author Andrew Maraniss joins the show to discuss his book Games of Deception, which focuses on the first Olympics where basketball was included as a sport (for men only). These were the 1936 olympic games played in the heart of Nazi Germany during the regime's ascension. The games were used as a way for the Nazi's to show off and receive some validation from other world powers and individuals. And in the center of all of this, we have the inventor of the modern game of basketball, James Naismith, traveling to Germany to watch the game played as an Olympic sport for the first time. This is a truly fascinating and relevant story.

You can find Andrew's website here and follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

Books mentioned in this podcast: The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown, Hitler's American Model by James Q. Whitman, Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, Strong Inside by Andrew Maraniss

Douglas Hartmann, Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, is back on the show today to discuss his book Race, Culture and the Revolt of the Black Athlete: The 1968 Olympic Protests and Their Aftermath. This book encompasses the time leading up to the protests during which the Olympic Project for Human Rights, led by Professor of Sociology Harry Edwards, was attempting to organize a boycott of the 1968 games by black athletes. From there we learn about the actual moment where Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists on the medal stand in Mexico City and the legacy of their actions. What I appreciate so much about this book is the focus on the iconic image that was made of the protest that night and how that image has lived on and been used, for celebratory, educational and malicious reasons. Professor Hartmann is a returning guest to Dear Adam Silver and was featured in Episode 64 to discuss his book Midnight Basketball. I am grateful that he joined the pod again to share his work and thoughts, especially about how this action taken in 1968 connects to how we see athletes protesting and speaking out about racial justice today. 

Books featured in this episode:

Back in February of 2020, I was a project based resident at Lawrence Arts Center and spent two and a half weeks researching the history and current state of basketball in Lawrence, KS. The history of the game runs deep in this college town as James Naismith, the inventor of the game, was the first basketball coach at the University Kansas (KU) and worked with many people in the town and region on the development of the game.   As I am sure you can imagine, I learned a lot while I was there and can't wait to get back to continue to working through how the game lives in this majority basketball crazed town! 

I want to thank the Lawrence Arts Center for supporting this work and providing me with Jayhawks Men’s basketball tickets. Especially Kyla Strid and Justin Harbaugh for all their logistical and conceptual support. I also wanted to thank all my guests; Nick Krug, Leo Hayden, Curtis Marsh and Linda Reimond answered so many of my questions and were patient with my tight schedule. And thank you to Tim Gaddie of the DeBruce Center for all of his knowledge. And thanks to the Lawrence Public library for letting me use their recording studios! And thank you for my contacts at Haskell Indian Nations University for sitting down with me and sharing with me about the school.  And also thank you to anyone else who was willing to talk to me or gave me a ride when it was too far to walk.  And finally, thank you to my dear friend Adam Meistrell who encouraged me to come to Lawrence. He and his family opened their home to me while I was there and I couldn’t be more grateful. And thank you, to you all, for listening, and Happy New Year.

Returning guests and Professors of Sociology (aka The Profs) Stephen Suh, Alex Manning and Kyle Green are back on the show to discuss recent sports news that has been on our minds. We speak about the financial impact of the pandemic on local sports teams, MLB's recent decision to recognize the statistics of the Negro Leagues as major league and breaking as an olympic sports and much more....thanks so much to The Profs for joining me on a very non-traditional Christmas Eve.  And thanks so much to you all for listening and supporting this podcast for the past year! 

Tucson local Zoe Lambert is on the podcast today to discuss her documentary titled Adia, which focuses on the recent history of the University of Arizona women's basketball program and is named for the head coach of the women's basketball team, Adia Barnes. Zoe and I discuss the initial idea for this documentary, how it evolved over time and some of her favorite parts. The documentary will be streamed on The Loft's website in February, which is a local theatre here in Tucson. . Thanks to Zoe for coming on the show and all the work she put into making this doc and celebrating U of A women's basketball. 

Check out The Loft's website for details about show dates and times for Adia here. 

As many of you already know, this election cycle I was a volunteer for Mission for Arizona, the democratic coordinated campaign for Mark Kelly and the Biden/Harris ticket that helped to flip AZ from red to blue for the first time in many decades! And today on the pod I am joined by two of the organizers from the campaign, Carly Berke and Ben Horowitz, who dedicated the past year of their life to winning the election for the democratic party. We get into the all of the work that went into making this historic change possible, their feelings on the current state of politics, both in AZ and the rest of the country, and what the future of the democratic movement might look like. I was grateful and excited to work with both Carly and Ben and I am so glad they are on the pod to share a little bit about the behind the scenes of campaigns in a crucial swing state. 

Although this episode is a little different from the norm for the pod, I believe that politics and political campaigns take a huge amount of creativity and of course, fierce competitiveness, and a belief you can win no matter what. So when you come at it from a conceptual point of view, the subject matter fits right in to our larger conversation around sports and art.

Thank you to Carly and Ben for joining and thank you all for listening. Please email me @ [email protected] with any questions. 

Eric Nusbaum, author of  the recently published Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between, joins the show to share about  researching and writing this book and his personal fandom of the Dodgers.  The book focuses on the story of the Aréchiga family, who were forced out of their home and off their property by the city, like many other families living in the Mexican-American neighborhood of Palo Verde, to clear the area for Dodger Stadium to be built.  Besides the central narrative of the displacement of a multigenerational family, this book is also about the fight for public housing, the red scare and a large American city grasping for continued relevance through Major League Baseball. Stealing Home is filled with a richness in detail that defines each character and their background, as well as beautiful sketches by Adam Villacin of the people and places we are learning about. Thank you to Eric for writing a book that represents a specific time and a place but very much speaks to systemic issues and injustices that continue to this day. 

Thank you all for listening and if you would like to get in touch, please email me @ [email protected]. 

Jessica Luther and Kavitha Davidson join the show to discuss their recently published book Loving Sports When They Don't Love You back: Dilemmas of the Modern Fan. Luther is a freelance journalist, Davidson is a sports writer for The Athletic and they are both dedicated sports fans. This book is an incredible collection of perspectives and stories for dedicated fans who believe in the ability of sports to evolve and grow as a part of our greater culture. From loving your team when you hate the owner to an honest, thoughtful conversation about the arbitrary controversies around doping, this book explores challenging issues that the invested fan faces. It is a true document and its' relevance to this moment we are living through, as sports fans, is incredibly impactful. 

Professor Douglas Hartmann teaches sociology at the University of Minnesota and is on the show to discuss his book Midnight Basketball, which takes a deep, detailed look into the social initiative known as Midnight Basketball, developed in the late 1980s . In this episode, we unpack the racism that was built into this program, which targeted young adult African-American men who were living in large cities around the country.  It is important to use the word targeted in this case because the use of surveillance was at the root of this project that used the game of basketball as a form of control during certain hours of the day. 

As we discuss, this initiative is tied to our incoming presidential administration because Joe Biden was a proponent of Midnight Basketball during the mid 1990s and the fight for the passage of the 1994 crime bill. This conversation is timely and necessary to take a close look at the motivations and results of social policy that fall in line with the systemic racism inherent to our country, even when it is dressed up as help or social support.   

Thank you to Doug for coming on and for writing this educational and informative book. As always, thank you to you for listening and I hope you all enjoy this episode.