Speaking of “The Art of a Beautiful Game” … Chris Ballard, the author of said book and a journalist for Sports Illustrated, was nice enough to join me for Episode 3 of my Talking About Practice podcast.
I actually wasn’t even aware that Matt Moore would be taking such an in-depth look at Ballard’s book and had scheduled Chris to come on the show around the same time just by pure happenstance, but after finding out that my Hardwood Paroxysm brethren would be home to such an extensive, ongoing breakdown, it just made sense to post this episode here as a sort of audio complement to that whole endeavor.
We chat for about 45 minutes and focus on the book for the most part, beginning with the shooting contest Ballard had with Suns GM Steve Kerr before getting into some stuff about his college-basketball playing days and just a general discussion about sportswriting in this modern multimedia age. But we soon pull it all back to the NBA more directly and focus in on how Shane Battier plays defense, how Kobe has virtually no weaknesses, how Houston embraces advanced stats/game charting and all that jazz. Then we finish with the 10 Questions and call it a day.
All in all … rock, flag and eagle.
And, oh yeah, subscribe to Talking About Practice via iTunes and leave some rankings/reviews if you have a second or just subscribe to the RSS feed and enjoy all the Practice-y goodness that way. We have a few other good guests lined up for the near future. So stay tuned.
