In 1974 Rick Telander intended to spend a few days doing a magazine piece on the court wizards of Brooklyn’s Foster Park. He ended up staying the entire summer, becoming part of the players’ lives, and eventually the coach of a loose aggregation known as the Subway Stars.

 

Telander tells of everything he saw: the on-court flash, the off-court jargon, the late-night graffiti raids, the tireless efforts of one promoter-hustler-benefactor to get these kids a chance at a college education. He lets the kids speak for themselves, revealing their grand dreams and ambitions, but he never flinches from showing us how far their dreams are from reality. The roots of today’s inner-city basketball can be traced to the world Telander presents in Heaven Is a Playground, the first book of its kind.

Rick Telander is a sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and was named 2002 Illinois Sportswriter of the Year by the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters.

“Funny, sad, superbly written and intensely involving.”—New York Times Book Review

“Telander’s open-ended chronicle of inner-city playground basketball life is a model of clarity and restraint. No one has written a more resonant or understanding book about kids playing basketball, and few books about sports have willingly pulled together so many truths about the disappointments and dislocating fantasies of athletic competition.”—Atlantic

“Even those who know little about the game should appreciate this intense and penetrating peek at growing up in the ghetto.”—Chicago Daily News

One of Sports Illustrated's Top 100 Sports Books of All Time