PLAY THEIR HEARTS OUT A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine

This inside look at Amateur Athletic Union basketball—a rarely scrutinized hoops farm ground—examines a sordid world of overly ambitious coaches banking their lives on the futures of preteen players. Many of the coaches seem motivated by shoe contracts while dreaming of a bigger payday down the road. Each day for AAU basketball coaches is a gaze at a proverbial crystal ball as they try to predict which young players will evolve into NBA draft picks. Emily Speer’s poor pacing and numerous mispronunciations of well-known basketball figures mar this book. She also cannot conjure an angry voice—even for the hot-under-the-collar coach who is the book’s focus. M.B. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: MAY 2011]