Review by Booklist Review
Gr. 7^-11. Always in the shadow of his older brother, Scott, Nick begins to catch his father's attention when Scott gives up basketball to spend more time on his music, and Nick's basketball prowess develops. Nick's talent is further nurtured by nightly one-on-one games with a disturbing neighbor, Trent Dawson. A master at writing good basketball sequences, Deuker vividly depicts every fast break, every trap, but as with On the Devil's Court (1988), he uses basketball as a device to tackle larger issues. This time, Deuker is writing about choices: Scott elects music instead of basketball and his father's approval; Trent seems to be choosing school (via basketball) instead of a life of crime; and Nick decides to support Trent despite his father's advice and his peers' disapproval. Complex characters make the story compelling. The basketball coach, Mr. O'Leary, is particularly endearing, gruff, and exacting but also willing to gamble on the kids when the moment seems right. Deuker offers no easy answers; he's honest enough to leave Trent's future unresolved. The conclusion isn't entirely realistic, but the story is satisfying and hopeful, and the book will be an easy sell. --Frances Bradburn
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 8-10-Nick Abbott finds himself trying to deal with his parent's divorce and a host of other problems that face him during his sophomore year. He wants above all else to be a star player on his high school basketball team. As the story progresses, Nick learns how to control the tempo of a game as a point guard, and he also begins to reach a greater maturity in his life. Central to the story is his relationship with his disturbed and angry teammate and neighbor, Trent Dawson. The young men form an uneasy bond as they quietly practice each night on Nick's backyard court. Eventually, they become a dominating duo on the court, with Trent's aggressiveness complemented by Nick's feel for the game. This is an excellent novel. Nick's first-person narration is authentic throughout. The author perfectly captures the swirl of ideas in the adolescent mind. The descriptions of the games are well written and accurate. Best of all, the complexities of basketball are contrasted with the complexities of life. Nick learns how important it is to make adjustments during the course of a game, and he learns that adjustments are also important in life. This message is imparted subtly, though. Deuker delivers a story that features rounded characters dealing with real problems, set against the backdrop of a varsity basketball season.-Todd Morning, Schaumburg Township Public Library, IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(Young Adult) Late-night games of one-on-one between a troubled youth and a more grounded counterpart figure prominently in another basketball story-Bruce Brooks's The Moves Make the Man. Similar scenes of teenage male bonding are featured in this novel, which, despite a somewhat dense and unwieldy plot, will draw fans of sports fiction. Narrator Nick Abbott enters high school determined to play varsity basketball, and difficulties in his personal life-including his parents' recent separation-cannot sway him from that goal. Nor can the presence of his antisocial neighbor, Trent Dawson, on the varsity team. Nick is a gifted player but struggles during his first season as point guard-making errors, playing selfishly, and not always relying on his teammates. Trent must deal with an explosive temper, academic ineligibility, and two brushes with the law; first placed in juvenile detention for an incident of animal cruelty, he's later suspected of involvement in the shooting of a local boy. Although Nick is convinced that Trent ""half-hates"" him, the two boys are eventually united in nightly games of hoops on the darkened court in Nick's backyard. ""There were none of the pointless shoves, none of the mean-spirited fouls, none of the trash-talk that marked his game,"" Nick marvels, and an uneasy alliance is forged, enhancing both characters as individuals and as athletes. Beyond the perimeters of the basketball court, the sprawling story bounces in too many directions, resulting in extraneous, often unresolved subplots and potentially interesting but underdeveloped characters, such as each boy's older brother. But the sports action is plentiful and moves the book along, with the characters of Nick and Trent making us care who wins, who loses, and exactly how they play the game. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Deuker (Painting the Black, 1997) weaves wide bands of fastbreak, pulse-pounding basketball action into this piercing exploration of family loyalties and parental failure. Prepared by years of practice, Nick marches triumphantly into high school, through basketball tryouts and onto the team--along with, to his disgust and amazement, despised Trent Dawson, a vicious ne'er-do-well neighbor who has never seemed more than a smaller version of his very bad-news big brother, Zack. But Trent can play, with the same intensity that Nick finds in himself. On the boards, Trent shows signs of wanting to turn his life around, and there, Nick can also escape both the pain of his parents' divorce and the influence of his bullying, manipulative father. In the end, the two lead their team into a district championship despite a two-and-five start and, in a climax that will have even readers not up on bball jargon riveted, a 19point deficit in the fourth quarter of the final game. It's only the beginning for Nick, but the triumph is bittersweet for Trent, who turns his back on the fragile stability he's achieved to follow his brother, now a wanted felon, into hiding. Expertly juggling a sackful of subplots, Deuker gives his characters understandable (if not always defensible) motives, and role models whose strengths and flaws are laid out with painful precision. Deuker adds further luster to his reputation for top-flight sportswriting matched to uncommonly perceptive coming-of-age stories. (Fiction. 1115) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
