Book Review. Can I Keep My Jersey?

A few hours of my recent Summer vacation were spent reading Paul Shirley's latest literary effort "Can I Keep My Jersey? 11 Teams, 5 Countries and 4 Years in My Life as a Basketball Vagabond" (Villard, New York, 16.25$ on Amazon.com)

Basketball has never had the great literature other sports, baseball above all, have experienced. For that reason I am always interested when a Basketball book gets published and seems to be of some relevance or simply interesting, and this is certainly both. One of the world's tallest mechanical engineer became famous as an author writing a very entertaining blog while on the Suns' playoffs roster in 2005.

It is basically a 4-year diary, sometimes it tends to be too much of it actually as it get into the day-by-day details (you know, like...had dinner, got back to the hotel with Mike, went to sleep, woke up, back to the Arena... and so on), but it seems very honest, open and quite frankly very far from your basic "all common place" basketball stars' stuff. I am sure Shirley could have gone much more in depth, but I am afraid he was possibly trying to not sound too rude or making fun of people he'll end up playing with in the future. I mean, the guy's making a living in pro basketball...

The book includes some nice "insider" considerations about life as a pro player, especially one always struggling to make an NBA roster. He played the grand total of 18 games in the NBA, not much one could say...but many more than 5,999,750,000 other people in the world. Great are also the comments on some of today's NBA superstars: as you know most of them don't have a clue on real life...The only drawback of the diary is the constant (too much anyway) complaining about the disadvantages of travelling the World playing hoops. On a more personal note I think I could live with that.

As a Suns fan, you also have to be pleased by the fact that Shirley really loved his days with the Suns and adds some very pleasing comments on Coach D'Antoni, the Suns Organization and on Steve Nash although the funniest part was probably the recall of Shirley's days somewhere in Russia sleeping in creepy hotels, in cold weather along with some funny characters.

Overall I found the book entertaining and a nice read. If you're a basketball fan and like to see how the world look from the eyes of a pro player, I think it's worth reading.

In case you're interested he's currently on the Spanish League's Menorca Basket 2007/08 Roster where last season played 34 games, averaging 13.4 points and 7 rebounds per game. I am afraid he seems to be on IR right know. Get well soon Paul!

I almost forgot...Go Suns !