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Editorial Review Product Description
It ought to be just a game, but basketball on the playgrounds of Coney Island is much more than that — for many young men it represents their only hope of escape from a life of crime, poverty, and despair. In The Last Shot, Darcy Frey chronicles the aspirations of four of the neighborhood"s most promising players. What they have going for them is athletic talent, grace, and years of dedication. But working against them are woefully inadequate schooling, family circumstances that are often desperate, and the slick, brutal world of college athletic recruitment. Incisively and compassionately written, The Last Shot introduces us to unforgettable characters and takes us into their world with an intimacy seldom seen in contemporary journalism. The result is a startling and poignant expose of inner-city life and the big business of college basketball. ... Read more Customer Reviews (46) 
Compelling Read
This is one of the best sports books I've ever read. Darcy Frey embedded himself in the desolate housing projects of Coney Island for two years, to the point where he became the de facto transportation option for the poor kids he was shadowing. He emerged with a document that goes beyond the thrill of sports (though that's here) and delves into society, education, and individual motivation.
This book has been around a while - it was published in 1994 - but it still rings true, despite the references to razor haircuts and DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince lyrics. Frey follows one special group of basketball players at Coney Island's Abraham Lincoln High. Power forward Tchaka Shipp, guards Corey Johnson and Russell Thomas, and a playground tag-along (who joins the team as a freshman in the second half of the book) by the name of Stephon Marbury. The double-entendre in the book's title becomes poignant from page one: nobody in the projects wants their last shot on the high school basketball court to be their last shot at a decent life.
The overwhelming basketball talent possessed by this quartet of kids is immediately evident. Any one of them is talented enough to play some level of DI ball. That ability level has been evident at Lincoln High for years, but most players become Prop 48 casualties. So Frey begins to look at the educational system and social culture of the projects that so often help to snatch away the one ray of promise that's dangled in front of young men.
When you read about how difficult it is for inner-city kids to get a meager 700 on their SAT's after years of sub-par schooling, you may not be so quick to judge the academic malfeasance that currently dogs the Memphis program. None of us has ever been faced with the choice to cheat on college eligibility or turn to the drug trade. This book does an excellent job of exploring the shades of grey that lie between coaches, players, businessmen, and the NCAA.
To his credit, after a bitter conversation with Marbury's grasping father, Frey even looks at his own complicity in the game. Would he be there, talking to these kids, if their basketball skills couldn't sell books? So, he tries to do the right thing, and strike a deal to share book revenue with his subjects. But who should come calling to put the kibosh on that? Good ol' uncle NCAA, of course. By paying them to talk, he could further reduce their already miniscule chances of playing DI ball.
For me, the greatest thing about this book was that it put a face on the kids whose names get bandied about on team message boards. To recruiters and fans, they're just pieces of meat until they sign on the dotted line. But in this book, we see four kids from the same place with widely divergent personalities.
Big man Shipp struggles with his game despite having made his SAT score early on. When he puts them both together just in time for ABCD camp, his future comes into sharp focus. Thomas (not his real name) works obsessively on his game, and it shows. All he wants is an education to build on, but he can't seem to get over that SAT hump. Johnson loves to write and fool around, and not pay attention to the work he needs to put in. Marbury? He's been recruited since he was 13, but he's seen each of his older brothers try and fail to make a living playing ball. He, obviously, becomes the book's big success story. An appended afterword tells what became of all four since the book was written.
This book is hard to put down once you've started. My copy got doused with water at my son's soccer game, but I kept turning those damp, warped pages just the same, eager to find out what would happen. I could have looked it all up online, but the story was told in such a compelling fashion that I had no desire to cheat.
Marco and I have sacrificed a lot of our potential summer audience because we both hate recruiting talk with a passion. This book will give you a clear inside look at why that unsavory underworld is so important to all parties involved, and also why it is broken to the point of being heartbreaking.
This book is a classic. If you need a beach read this summer, I highly recommend it.
Great Book about basketball and the struggles
I started reading this book on a monday morning and finished it that night. I couldnt stop reading and Darcy Frey kept me at the edge of my seat. I couldnt wait to see what would happen to the three other players featured in this book besides Stephon Marbury. I recommend this book to ANY basketball fan or anyone intrested in the struggles of lower income neighborhoods.
Our nation has a long way to go!!
This book was set in the early 90's in one of New York City's worst neighborhoods. The story is of the struggle that 3 friends (plus one genuine jerk) under go in their individual pursuits of college scholarships. The things that they see and experience are still the same type of challenges that face today's urban learners. I give Darvy Frey credit for bringing us in to their world in a way that very few authors can pull off. If you are considering buying this book do so you will not be dissapointed.
Last Shot makes you know what C.I. is like...
Coney Island the basketball playground of America is the setting for the Last Shot: City Streets and Basketball Dreams. 4 stories of H.S. basketball players who goto Abraham Lincoln H.S. and play for the might basketball team the Railsplitters (What a cool name). I mainly bought this book because Stephon Marbury is featured as one of the four people in it. I myself grew up in Brighton Beach one town away from Coney Island so I know how life is... This book is true and real and I recommend this book to any sports fan or anyone who is looking for a real treat.
Coney Island B-Ball
A classic piece of sports writing, but for everyone. The author is a writer for the New York Times Magazine. In this book he writes about the lives of some high school basketball players/high school students (in that order).
Like the other posters have noted, it's not just for basketball freaks. It's a well written story about some kids in the 90's who live in the projects in Brooklyn, Coney Island for the most part, and how much basketball means to them. In the book it seems like basketball is their only path to success. But they are up against the recruiters, hustlers and the SATS (which they need to get a 700 on but that's just out of reach for most).
You get to meet the student athletes, Russell, Corey, Tchak, and Stephon, their parents, coaches, recruiters, local prophets, etc, and the author treats them all with a level of respect the New York Times Magazine accords the suit wearing sharks.
If you get this book, you won't have to read long before you're committed to reading the whole thing. It's a very rare book indeed that leaves me wanting more. I would have loved to read a sequel. Alas, we only get an afterward, but the story had to end somewhere and the afterward was, well, quite the shock.
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