There's Always This Year - Hanif Abdurraqib

⭐8/10

This is a semi-autobiographical story of the author growing up in Columbus, written in poetic-prose, kinda going back and forth in time and touching on a few different themes. This style very much didn't appeal to me, and I was super skeptical to start, but I was completely won over by the end. This book won a million awards, but what attracted me to it is that it's sorta about basketball, but also the author grew up in Ohio at the same time as LeBron James, so he has a personal connection to the LeBron story. But beyond that, this book is just a story about the places that make you and the connections you have with them. 

I'm not especially connected to my community, or at least not like the author is, but I have tons of nostalgia for basketball stories from that era (this book is what got me started on this early 2000s nostalgia trip). I know I romanticize those underdog stories of guys making it out of the projects, but the way the author describes those days certainly makes me long for days I will never experience nor would want to. Those hot days on the blacktop playing basketball until the lights get turned off, lineups for high school games, hustling to make ends meet. I loved stories like this and still do, and Abdurraqib captures it beautifully. 

He has a lot to say about growing up black and poor, and while I'll never understand it, he definitely communicates it in a way I appreciated. I think this also has a connection to the LeBron story, and how much he meant to that community, and how hard it was when he left, but then how happy everyone was when he returned and won it all. The whole LeBron arc will always be special to me, but it is clear I'll never have the same connection as these poor, black Ohioans who had so much invested in LeBron making these people feel like winners. That feeling of being on top, as people who had never won anything, was pretty cool. Abdurraqib is super self-aware and charming throughout the telling, pointing out the silliness and seriousness of all of this. 

He had a pretty cool life, and hearing the details was always a treat, going to jail, trying to recover and make a life. I also loved his thoughts on the bleak Cavs years after LeBron left, both hating him and wanting him to come back. I dunno, this probably sounds like a bunch of scattered opinions, but that's kinda what the book felt like. It was more artful and experimental than what I'm used to, but in the end he made meaningful connections to his own life, and often connected that to LeBron or the basketball scene in Ohio. 

It's a good book, but I'd have a difficult time finding just the audience to recommend it to. I don't think it would be a hit for non-fans, but I think most sports people wouldn't dig the style. It's a true hybrid piece, an intersection of art and sports that feels like it was written for me and nobody else.  How can you not be romantic about basketball??