REVIEWS: PRESS INTERVIEWS & FEATURES
The New York Times, Play Magazine
"A textual-visual showpiece... Fabulously eccentric and gloriously illustrated... It is likely the only sports almanac in existence that features a manifesto, cooks up winkingly abstruse statistics like “cancer effect” (e.g. Stephon Marbury and the Knicks), provides an etymology of the hoop slang “swag,” and name-drops Amiri Baraka, Martin Buber and Chris “Birdman” Andersen. The book knows its hoops too... Phenomenal swag." Full Review
Sports Illustrated
"Ever wonder what would happen if Bill James and Mars Blackmon got together? Produced by the writers of the hoops blog FreeDarko, the illustrated Almanac combines player analysis with witty cultural commentary (whose jersey should you wear to a wedding?). Welcome to the 21st-century NBA, where style counts as much as stats."
Stefan Fatsis, NPR sports commentator & author of A Few Seconds of Panic
"I love these guys—and I love this book."
East Bay Express
"Nothing on Earth can prepare even diehard hoops fans for The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac...Bethlehem Shoals (and various pseudonymous coauthors) put every existing sports book to shame. Dribblers would die for it."
Slate
"FreeDarko is the Web's leading destination for the obsessive, overliterate, free-thinking NBA fan. The basketball collective's new print extravaganza, The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, mines all of FreeDarko's obsessions. There are incisive profiles of players, from LeBron James to Leandro Barbosa; unique statistics (the dunk-to-layup ratio among NBA big men); and—perhaps the book's most startling innovation—the Periodic Table of Style."
The Portland Mercury
"FreeDarko's Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac will do nothing less than change the face of sports journalism as we know it." Full Review
Dave Zirin, Author of A People's History of Sports in the United States
"This book captures what the hoops junkie loves about the sport—the personalities that turn the game into great theater."
True Hoop, ESPN.com
"The book is an academic survey that elevates pro basketball's pop to poetry. The prose is intentionally esoteric and will be a deal breaker for some—but a revelation for others. For junkies who revel in taxonomies, the mythical classifications are a thing of beauty. Those who embrace the more cerebral elements of the pro game, the symbol-rich FreeDarko Style Guide will delight. And for those who love the transmission of big ideas through graphic art, the illustrations are eye candy." Full Review
Memphis Flyer
"For certain nontraditional basketball fans—the egghead, the hipster, the ironist, the amateur culture critic—this might be the hoops book you've been waiting your whole life for."
Philadelphia City Paper
"This guide to pro hoops from the freaks at Freedarko is a gorgeously illustrated, deeply idiosyncratic work of mad, mad genius."
Will Leitch, Author of God Save the Fan
"Annoyingly brilliant...well thought out, vividly illustrated and disturbingly organized."
Boston Herald
"Hoop junkies will flip for this wacky but beautiful volume celebrating and analyzing the outsized individuality of the NBA’s stars."
Time Out Chicago
"Over the past few years, the boys of basketball blog FreeDarko have perfected a unique brand of talking about hoops—call it the hip-hop hermeneutics of balling. In their first book, they break down the style of play by the best pros in the game, accompanied by some mind-blowing illustrations."
Dan Steinberg, D.C. Sports Bog, Washington Post
"If I could own one and only book about the NBA, this would be the one."
The TONY Blog, Time Out New York
"The FreeDarko Collective—namely Bethlehem Shoals, Big Baby Belafonte, Brown Recluse Esq., Dr. Lawyer IndianChief and Silverbird 5000—all contribute to this Emersonian analysis of today's NBA...
Baseball analysts clearly have a ton of work to do if they hope to equal this level of cerebral, lovingly scatological reduction for their own earthbound sport." Full Review
Complex.com
"An NBA-related item that actually is worth following is The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, a new book from the FreeDarko blog. The hardcover combines FreeDarko's b-ball nerd-dom with awesomely funny illustrations. Imagine an Ego Trip book on the NBA, and bingo."
Jeff Staple, Founder of Staple Design
"If you’re even remotely a fan of the NBA, you need to get your hands on this book. It’s genius. It’s hilarious. And it’s really well designed and illustrated . . . You just feel the love that went into this book."
boingboing.net
"An idiosyncratic, highly personal take on professional basketball. The illustrations and overall design are stunning."
AM New York
"The smart commentary is accompanied by hilarious illustrations that are as
telling as the textual analysis . . . opening this paean to professional basketball offers hopeful intimations that the clock hasn't quite run out on the NBA."
AOL FanHouse
"My favorite wedge of Macrophenomenal might be the gonzo statistics of Silverbird5000. . . things like a chart breaking out the D'Antoni Suns by percentage of field goals scored in seven seconds or less -- that will be what drops the jaws of fans and executives when basketball's statistical revolution comes about."
With Leather
"The MPBA succeeds at every level: Its essays on the league's most stylistically interesting (and confounding) stars paints the players as the complex, often tragic characters they are, illuminating them in ways that no mainstream columnist can."
Notcot.com
"I think we may have just found the perfect gift for both basketball fans and designers without a clue about the current state of the NBA."
The FADER
"The FreeDarko collective, a group of unconventionally analytical basketball enthusiasts, have managed to retain a sincere love for the game through the NBA's numerous questionable rule/policy changes and general curmudgeon-y attitude towards individual expression in the post-Jordan era."
SportingNews.com
"The Macrophenomenal's essay on Leandro Barbosa, for example, a player I don't care about, and honestly, have never had much interest in watching play the game of basketball. Yet this book makes his story, style, and speed interesting to me, the non-fan."
Drew Magary, Author of Men with Balls
"If you're the sort of person who loves both the NBA and meticulous writing that you know is good but often sails directly over your head and out into the far reaches of space, Shoals and the gang have just the book for you."