NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Inspired by a major ESPN film series, this is an extraordinary oral history of basketball—its eye-opening untold history, its profound deeper meaning, its transformative influence on the world—as told through an unprecedented series of candid conversations with the game’s ultimate icons. This is the greatest love story never told. It has passion and heartbreak, triumph and betrayal. It is deeply intimate yet crosses oceans, upends lives and changes nations. This is the true story of basketball. It is the story of a Canadian invention that took over America, and the world. Of a supposed “white man’s sport” that became a way for people of color, women, and immigrants to claim a new place in society. Of a game that demands everything of those who love it, yet gives so much back in return. To tell this story, acclaimed journalists Jackie MacMullan, Rafe Bartholomew and Dan Klores embarked on a groundbreaking mission to interview a staggering lineup of basketball trailblazers. For the first time hundreds of legends, from Kobe, Lebron and Steph Curry to Magic Johnson, Dr. J and Jerry West, spoke movingly about their greatest passion. Former NBA commissioner David Stern and iconic coaches like Phil Jackson and Coach K opened up like never before. Those who shattered glass ceilings, from Bill Russell and Yao Ming to Cheryl Miller and Lisa Leslie, explained what it really took to lay claim to their place in the game. At once a definitive oral history and something far more revelatory and life affirming, Basketball: A Love Story is the defining untold oral history of how basketball came to be, and what it means to those who love it.

本作は競技史を越え、数百人の伝説たちの肉声を編み上げた濃密な叙事詩です。マクマランら稀代の書き手たちが引き出した言葉は、単なる記録の集積ではなく、その向こう側にある「情熱という名の孤独」や魂の震えを浮き彫りにします。コート上の神々が漏らす、一人の人間としての剥き出しの挫折と愛の告白こそが、本書を比類なき文学へと昇華させているのです。 ＥＳＰＮによる映像版が圧倒的な躍動感で視覚を揺さぶるのに対し、書籍は活字ならではの静謐な深みで個々の内面に肉薄します。映像で目撃した超人的な輝きの背後にある、社会的な逆境に抗うための哲学を、私たちはページをめくる指先から受け取ることになります。この両メディアを往来することで、バスケットボールという発明がいかに世界を救い、変革してきたかという真実がより鮮烈に完成するのです。