What was the most interesting place you visited, and where were you blown away by the level of basketball?

—Alan Walls, Colorado Springs

Bhutan was easily the most fascinating stopover of my year on the road. The exotic (royalty, Buddhism, abominable snowmen) co-mingled with the comfortingly familiar (hoops up the wazoo). The juxtaposition never failed to fascinate. As for the level of play, I was very impressed by the feel for the game among sub-Saharan Africans at the African Championships in Angola. Most lacked a lot of things: coaching, diet, and weight training. Even so, even the wraithlike Mozambiqueans played with an instinct that seemed to come from their bones—which made me long for the day they finally get coaching, diet, and weight training.
I wonder, did you make it to Beirut at all? What a basketball haven that is! There’s a purity there that can only exist in a country that has been besieged for most of the latter part of the 20th century. Basketball remains all new there, uncorrupted and fan-driven.

—Matt Jung, Hong Kong

No, I never made it to Beirut, but I’ve taken note of the Lebanese successes in FIBA competition of late: first, an Asian club title; now, a berth, for the first time ever, in the World Championships, which will be held in Indianapolis in August. Perhaps for a sequel to the book—Bigger Game, Smaller World?—I’ll make it to that Mediterranean city.
I checked with our local bookstore and they tell me the book should be on the shelves here in Singapore next week (Jan. 28). I wonder when copies will make it to Thimphu and how soon His Majesty will read the book? (He will read it, for sure.) You may get your game of one-on-one yet . . . a good sequel.

—Steve Nycum, Singapore

Those of you who have read Big Game, Small World will recognize Steve’s name. He’s the original basketball ambassador to Bhutan—the Californian who spent a year as His Majesty’s personal coach and pick-up sparring partner. He has played one-on-one against the King more than any non-Bhutanese on earth.
In the spirit of basketball-related travel—“Go to the basket, go to the game”— I spent the month of December on something we called the Magical Mystery Kruse. My journey, judging from the premise of your book, might be of interest.

—Michael Kruse, Basketball America, Chapel Hill, N.C.

To read about Michael’s own road trip, set your browser on Kruse control and click here.


Great book! But you slept through the [1965] Bill vs. Cazzie Holiday Festival semifinal, not final, as I'm sure you have heard by now.

—Rob Vaughan

Of course Rob, a classmate of Bill Bradley’s at Princeton, would catch that error. So did another reader, former St. John’s star Gus Alfieri, who was the first to point out my slip-up—perhaps because he and the Redmen, not the Tigers, played Michigan in the final. I’ve made a note to make the correction in the paperback. Meantime, I’m sticking by my alibi: I was an eight-year-old, sent to bed early by my parents.

Africa is known for its track athletes. When I was at Washington State, I remember all these great runners coming from the Ivory Coast. When did Africans’ interest switch over to basketball?

—Jim Walden, KXNO Radio, Des Moines, and former Washington State and Iowa State football coach

Rural parts of Africa still turn out great runners, especially Morocco and the Rift Valley of Kenya. And soccer remains the passion of most people. But much of the continent is becoming increasingly citified, and where urbanization occurs, hoops follows. Point guard prodigy Mike Lasme, whom I wrote about from the African Championships in Angola, is from Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast. He began playing hoops as a kid on a playground near his family’s high-rise apartment building, trying out moves he’d seen on videos and satellite TV. He wasn’t limited to playing soccer, or running track, waiting for some Peace Corps worker to get hold of him. It’s the cities that are leading the African basketball revolution.

Greetings from Hong Kong. I'm glad that I “clicked” because your site looks great and so true from here. There’s little space for playing fields here, but there are many courts where the “moves” are practiced every day by many kids.

—Bob Hewitt, Hong Kong

Bob’s fair city was my hub between Manila and Beijing, and Japan and Bhutan. Not since the Houston Rockets started Akeem and Ralph across their front line have I seen so many vertical strokes concentrated in one place—mountains and buildings to catch your breath on. The ballplayers, alas, aren’t very vertical. The Chinese big men we keep hearing about, like 7’5” Yao Ming and 7’ Wang Zhi Zhi, are from north and central China, not the south.

My dad and I (undoubtedly among hundreds of others) once vowed to play on every court listed in The In-Your-Face Basketball Book, but, sadly, we didn’t. I once had a nightmare where my parents got divorced and my mom remarried the guy who had “the wrong look.” Remember that guy? With the perm and the watch? My own hoop odyssey took me to Prague for a season with a bad but fun club team called the Vinohrady Bohemians (no joke), highlighted by a 36-hour bus trip to the Alps to play in a French tournament (we came in third). I wrote it all down in a book called Away Games but it didn’t get published, not even by a house whose other offerings included Great Chefs of the NFL.

—David Fromm, Palo Alto, Calif.

That guy—with the perm and the watch—was a college buddy of mine, David Remnick, now the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of The New Yorker. As you say, “no joke.”