Forever's Team

The author of A Season on the Brink and A Season Inside here turns his talents to composing a basketball version of The Boys of Summer , based on the Duke team of 1977-1978, which lost the NCAA championship to Kentucky. The team was unusual in that most of the players were freshmen and sophomores, with only one senior on the squad; further, they all played the sport for the fun of it, developing a wonderful sense of camaraderie as they did so. A decade later, their coach is at Northwestern, having survived a heart attack; one of the assistant coaches is head coach at Rutgers; another has left coaching. Of the players, three are lawyers, two are in the computer business, one is a minister and one is a star in the NBA, while some of the others have had professional and medical problems. Granted the dubious premise that this almost-winning team is a reasonable subject for a book, this is a good study of boys becoming men. BOMC alternate. (Jan.)