Today our guest is Ethan Strauss, a basketball reporter for The Athletic and the author of The Victory Machine: The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty. The book is a workplace drama about one of basketball’s greatest teams, but this episode is more than sports talk. We get into Ethan’s love of subculture narratives, being a reporter versus an author, and the “sadness of success”. This is an episode for both lovers of the game and the page.
The Stacks Book Club selection for May is The Giver by Lois Lowry, we will discuss the book with Sue Thomas on May 27th.
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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.
- The Victory Machine by Ethan Strauss
- The Athletic
- House of Strauss
- Anthony Slater (The Atlantic)
- Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
- Friends (NBC)
- Kevin Durant
- Steph Curry
- Steve Kerr
- The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam
- The Last Dance (ESPN)
- Jay-Z
- Draymond Green
- Kevin Durant Press Conference (2019)
- Kyrie Irving
- Britney Spears Attacks Paparazzi With Umbrella! (Youtube.com)
- Miss Americana (Lana Wilson, 2020)
- Celebrities Sing “Imagine” by Jon Lennon
- Varsity Blues (Brian Robbins, 1999)
- Andre Iguodala
- Klay Thompson
- “An awkward conversation, plenty of smoke and maybe some enlightenment in Don Nelson’s poker room” (Ethan Strauss, The Athletic)
- David Stern
- University of California at Berkeley
- Muhammad Ali
- Howard Cosell
- Russell Westbrook
- Warrior’s Huddle (Warrior’s Huddle)
- Among Thugs by Bill Buford
- Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie (memoir)
- Playing for Keeps by David Halberstam
- The Jordan Rules by Sam Smith
- Seven Seconds or Less by Jack McCallum
- Moneyball by Michael Lewis
- Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday
- Quinn Cook
- Mike Krzyzewski
- LeBron James
- Anthony Davis
- Marcus Thompson
- “Barack Obama releases list of his 19 favorite books from 2019” (The Guardian)
- The Sixth Man by Andre Iguodala
Connect with Ethan: Twitter | Instagram | The Athletic | House of Strauss Podcast
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