Pete Croatto’s debut book From Hang Time to Prime Time is a very good read on the rise of the NBA and a must-read for all hoops fans
You’ve heard the NBA’s origin story before. Maybe not the story of its inception but certainly how it developed from an afterthought into a monolith with a greater global standing than any other American sports league. But the tale is always oversimplified, reducing it to Magic, Bird, and Michael as if that explains everything. In the popular imagination, these men combined to save the NBA by themselves by being phenomenal athletes as well as great pitchmen, affable celebrities who could make basketball fans out of anyone. There’s usually some talk thrown in of David Stern doing behind the scenes work to capitalize on their popularity, but it’s an add-on
For most, this capsule explanation suffices even though it hardly answers the question of how the league became what it did. After all, having Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, Bill Russell, and Wilt Chamberlain all in the league at the same time didn’t make the NBA a widespread success in the 1960s. It has to be a bit more complex, right? As Pete Croatto shows in his debut book, From Hang Time to Prime Time, the answer is yes
From Hang Time to Prime Time is a history of the NBA’s rise in popularity from the ABA-NBA merger in 1976 to the early 1990’s when the league’s deal with NBC began and the first wave of international players arrived. Yet Croatto keeps his focus away from the court here. Reading this book, one would hardly know that the Celtics and Lakers dominated the 1980’s. Meanwhile, the Pistons who won back to back titles in 1989 and 1990 are mostly written about in reference to their arena, the Palace at Auburn Hills, which a Trail Blazers executive called “the first fan-friendly building
Instead, he shines his light on lesser-known elements of the NBA’s rise, on backroom deals and the NBA employees who worked to implement the ideas of Stern while also contributing quite a few of their own. Some of the book’s most interesting sections come when Croatto turns his focus on these otherwise unknown employees from NBA Entertainment. While they are not as famous as the major players in league history, it was these people who helped market the league’s stars and in many ways, are responsible for the way fans came to know, understand, and love these players.
The growth of the NBA was about way more than just Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan
All three of the major leagues in the United States have their own distinct brand and audience and much of the issue for the NBA was deciding who to pursue and how. Rather than try to win over fans of other sports who had been previously unwilling to give the NBA a chance, they instead attempted to win over a younger crowd. Croatto shows just how they were able to do that by marrying the league to popular culture, becoming the first league to embrace hip-hop — a pairing that was, thankfully for the league, a more natural fit than if the NFL or MLB had tried to do so. He quotes Ron Thomas, an editor at USA Today as saying that with the NBA’s decision to become a “black league, it was going to accept it as its culture — what we could call now its brand.” With this being the case, the NBA became not just another sports league, but a “black cultural entity called the NBA.”
Croatto traces this development to Marvin Gaye’s rendition of the National Anthem at the 1983 All-Star Game which, as he puts it, “provided the first push on the NBA’s slow, inexorable journey towards its soul mate in commodified cool.” Fittingly, while Larry O’Brien “seethed” during Gaye’s unconventional reworking of the anthem, David Stern smiled throughout
While Gaye’s anthem is one of the most iconic moments in All-Star history, it was the next year that the league expanded the All-Star Game into a fuller All-Star Weekend with the Dunk Contest and Legends Game, transforming what had been an exhibition game into a multi-day event. It’s a pivotal decision that signifies the league trying to transform itself from just another sports league into a distinctive entertainment product. As Stern is quoted as saying at one point, “We’re not just in the basketball business anymore… we’re in the real estate business. We’re in the arena business. We’re in the entertainment business. And we’re in the basketball business.” While Stern and the other people written about here deeply loved the game of basketball, they all knew they had to find a way to win over potential fans who did not have the same passion they did. Making the NBA something more than a sports league was the answer
If Croatto’s book has a protagonist, it is Stern, the man in the middle of the storm, trying to orchestrate the NBA’s rise. Even before becoming commissioner in 1984, it was clear that he, more than Larry O’Brien was the man with the ideas, the one who was working to ensure the league has a bright future. Stern comes across here as an intense and hyper-focused man, who worked harder than anyone else in the league while also demanding everyone else do the same. A man who is both profane and passionate, kind and brutal in equal measure, yet at all times indispensable to the league’s workings and ultimate success.
With this glut of new information and well-known stories examined from unexpected angles, the book predictably loses a bit of steam when it turns its attention to a chapter on Michael Jordan and the popularity of the Air Jordan line. While Croatto does expand his scope further than David Halberstam or Roland Lazenby in their writings on the same topics by focusing more on sneaker culture as a whole, it is the one part of this book that feels like it is going over well-trod territory. It’s a fine section on its own, but in light of how revelatory everything else is, it just doesn’t match up.
From Hang Time to Prime Time is a must-read for all NBA fans, as well as for anyone curious about the business of big-time sports and what it took for this marginal league to become a cultural phenomenon. No matter how much you may think you know about the NBA and its history, you are bound to come across a new anecdote or story several times throughout this book. It’s hard to imagine a better, more comprehensive book about this decisive and transformational era in NBA history arriving any time soon. From Hang Time to Prime Time is more than just a promising debut, it’s a valuable and compelling book on its own terms.