The Last Shot, Darcy Frey
The Last Shot, Darcy Frey
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
Club: $13.49

The Last Shot
City Streets, Basketball Dreams

Author: Darcy Frey

Narrator: Darcy Frey, JD Jackson

Unabridged: 8 hr 12 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/18/2024


Synopsis

One of Sports Illustrated’s “Top 100 Sports Books of All Time” The 2023 “BEST BASKETBALL GIFT” from The Strategist A classic of narrative journalism about four inner-city high school basketball prospects trying to make it to the pros, with a new introduction by the author, now in audio for the first time. The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams is the “revelatory” (New York Times), “deeply empathetic” (New Yorker) true story of four teenagers attempting to escape the cycles of poverty, crime, and despair in 1990s Brooklyn by getting recruited to play college basketball. With poignant intimacy, Darcy Frey chronicles the aspirations of these young men, including the future superstar Stephon Marbury, who are among the most promising players in Coney Island. What they have going for them is athletic talent, grace, and years of dedication. But working against them are woefully inadequate schooling, family circumstances that are often desperate, and the slick, brutal world of college athletic recruitment. Incisively and compassionately written, this is Frey’s award-winning masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, a startling exposé of inner-city life and the big business of college sports. Narrated by JD Jackson (The Nickel Boys).“[A] revelatory description of how the basketball myth plays out in the public housing projects of New York’s Coney Island, an isolated and impoverished spit of land at the seaward end of Brooklyn…. Vividly describes how the zealous pursuit of hoop glory serves as an inner-city version of the American Dream… [C]ompellingly written, with elegance, economy and just the right amount of outrage.” —Brent Staples, New York Times“Elegiac.” — Sports Illustrated

Reviews

Goodreads review by Andrew on May 17, 2015

The Last Shot is a concise portrayal of institutional racism, localized to college basketball. Frey follows four teenagers as they navigate the NCAA recruitment process while living and balling in the projects of Coney Island, New York. As the stars of their high school team, each young man represen......more

Goodreads review by Stan on September 26, 2019

Heartbreaking. I've visited New York 10 years ago with my family. One day i met up with a friend to take the subway from Manhattan to Soho to spend some white man privileged money. In the subway i saw that the last stop was at Coney Island. I've heard the Lou Reed song and read some snippets of it be......more

Goodreads review by Morgan on February 03, 2025

this put the smut in basmutball......more

Goodreads review by sarah on August 15, 2024

a truly powerful and poignant take on the hypocritical nature of college recruiting and the commodification of young, usually poor, athletes......more

Goodreads review by Steven on May 20, 2024

A WRITER FOLLOWS SOME PLAYERS FROM AN INNER-CITY BASKETBALL TEAM Darcy Frey is an American writer and educator from New York who was a contributing editor at Harper's and The New York Times Magazine. He has taught writing at the University of Chicago, Columbia University's Graduate Writing Program, a......more