When the Game Was War: The NBA’s Greatest Season

The “incredible pool of talent” on display in the NBA’s 1987–1988 season makes it the league’s best to date, according to this exhilarating account. Focusing on how Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Isiah Thomas revolutionized the NBA, Wall Street Journal columnist Cohen (The Adventures of Herbie Cohen) recaps key games, including the Feb. 21, 1988, matchup between Thomas’s Pistons and Johnson’s Lakers, during which Thomas embodied his team’s “brutal” aggression, which Johnson countered with the Lakers’ signature “pass-drunk, run-crazy fast-break” style. Bird and Jordan, according to Cohen, represented the past and future of basketball, with Bird’s Celtics slipping out of their dynasty phase as Jordan’s Bulls became a contender. Cohen excels at wringing the human drama out of the sport, as when he portrays the ascendant Bulls’ rivalry with the powerhouse Pistons as a “schoolyard quest” to “stand up to a bully,” or draws pathos from 40-year-old Kareem Abdul-Jabbar stoically facing down the end of his basketball career: “Nothing brings fans closer to an athlete than watching him struggle with mortality.” The empathetic portraits humanize the legendary players, and the play-by-play game recreations thrill (“Just as Zeke started to release the ball, Kareem, appearing from nowhere, reached out and swatted it away. Block. Game over”). This love letter to the NBA’s golden age is an instant classic. (Sept.)