Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA

Theresa Runstedltler’s NEH Public Scholars book Black Ball: Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA is a gripping history and corrective in which Runstedtler expertly rewrites basketball’s “Dark Ages.” Black Ball explores how the NBA embodied the nation’s imagined descent into disorder in the 1970s amid ongoing resistance to racial desegregation and strident calls for Black Power. It was against this backdrop that a new generation of Black players entered the league—including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Spencer Haywood—and the press and public were quick to blame this cohort for the supposed decline of professional basketball, citing drugs, violence, and greed.  

In Black Ball, Runstedtler weaves together a deep knowledge of basketball and incisive social analysis to argue that this period was pivotal to the rise of the modern-day NBA and explore how basketball became a symbol for post-civil rights America.  

Book reviews from The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times discussing Black Ball’s framing of pivotal moment in both sports and American history.