Star NBA reporter Ethan Sherwood Strauss investigates the team's culture, its financial ambitions and struggles, and the toll that being a super-team can take. In so doing, he not only rewrites the story of the Warriors, but reveals how the Darwinian business of NBA basketball really works.
...the book isn’t really about the Warriors’ style of play or their place in N.B.A. history. It’s barely about basketball. It’s essentially a workplace drama revolving around thirty or so incredibly wealthy and psychotically competitive people—players, agents, management, ownership—united in professional purpose yet also seeking their own versions of personal fulfillment ... While Strauss clearly loves the sport, he also treats the N.B.A. as a reflection of the 'Darwinian contest' prized by American society, and writes about it without romance ... Strauss is interested in workplace culture, decision-making processes, and hierarchies, and he carefully maps the web of intermediaries and liaisons between players, their teams, and their business interests ... Strauss is stubbornly professional, refusing to apologize—how would he be able to continue doing his job if he folded to attacks? He writes about his brush with Durant with a kind of confidence, not in a way that feels vengeful. But it’s striking how secure he sounds compared with Durant, who has become a poster child for the melancholy superstar.
In The Victory Machine, Ethan Sherwood Strauss lauds the Warriors ... Kevin Durant is another story. Mr. Strauss describes him as the most talented scorer in basketball but a difficult dude to deal with. Nearly a quarter of his excellent book focuses on his own relationship with Durant...
Sports dynasties tend to inspire the extremes of love and hate, and more than ever in this era of constant connection. For basketball fans interested in the lesser-known business side of the sport.
