Narrator Will Damron brings gravitas to Matt Sullivan’s words. This audiobook isn’t about Xs and Os on the court; it’s about professional athletes, as seen through the Brooklyn Nets, voicing their opinions on a lot of issues—from politics to dealing with COVID and more. The overarching themes are racial equality and the movement in the NBA to gain more control over contracts. Damron narrates in a tone that reflects the seriousness of the topics. He doesn’t imitate anyone quoted, with the rare exception of a child here and there. But the importance of the messages that the players impart comes across in Damron’s inflections. He clearly takes the narration as seriously as the players take their political positions. M.B. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

★ 04/05/2021

Sportswriter Sullivan takes readers on a propulsive ride in his tour-de-force debut, pulling from over 400 interviews to offer a behind-the-scenes look at the 2019–2020 NBA season and the resurgence of the Brooklyn Nets. Starting in May 2019—when Kevin Durant prepared his move to the Brooklyn Nets—Sullivan follows the Nets’ rise from a coachless team in early 2020 to a star-studded group of vocal activists at the epicenter of a civil rights movement. After the death of George Floyd, the Barclays Center became a “recognizable gathering place,” as protests erupted in Brooklyn and worldwide. During this time, Nets players decided to take their politics from the court to the streets, using their fame to bring attention to the growing injustice. Sullivan leads up to this with news of other earth-shattering events, like Kobe Bryant’s death to the looming chaos of the pandemic. Perhaps most illuminating is his recounting of the NBA playoff bubble in the summer of 2020, when players wrestled with the decision to play as the Black Lives Matter movement reached its apex. Sullivan’s detailed account will intrigue anyone who cares about sports and the role it plays in social justice today. Agent: David Granger, Aevitas Creative Management. (June)

Sportswriter Sullivan takes readers on a propulsive ride in his tour-de-force debut. . . . Sullivan’s detailed account will intrigue anyone who cares about sports and the role it plays in social justice today.”  — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"More than a basketball book, this helps explain race relations, celebrity power, and personal choice in a changed world." — Kirkus Reviews

"A must-read for its in-depth look at the mental, economic, and political tribulations of NBA players." — Library Journal (starred review)

"Only a brilliantly audacious book could begin to make sense of the weirdly brilliant audacity of the new Brooklyn Nets. One writer on Earth could have written this book this way — with the profundity of a sage baller and acuity of a seasoned journalist — and that writer is Matt Sullivan." — Kiese Laymon, New York Times best-selling author of Heavy

“With Can't Knock The Hustle, Matt Sullivan correctly positions the basketball games we love as both a prism through which to understand our culture, and a battlefield on which to fight for the better angels of that culture. On the surface, it's a story about the unending march of 2020. But once you finish it, you understand that it's also an essential document about the decades that led us to this moment, and about the future decades yet unspooled."  — Wright Thompson, ESPN senior writer and New York Times bestselling author of Pappyland and The Cost of These Dreams

“In the dueling eras of unprecedented athlete empowerment and the coarse ugliness of 'shut up and dribble,' Matt Sullivan's Can't Knock the Hustle offers a can't-look-away sampling of not merely the NBA's most fascinating franchise, but a frozen period in time that will leave historians both horrified and riveted."  — Jeff Pearlman, New York Times bestselling author of Three-Ring Circus and Showtime 

“Matt Sullivan is one helluva social anthropologist, and as a result, his Can't Knock the Hustle amounts to way more than a journey with the Brooklyn Nets, or an examination of the modern-day athlete. This is an astute, ambitious book about the glory and torment of talent itself. Basketball? That's just the starting point, and what a trip Sullivan's remarkable odyssey turns out to be.” — James Andrew Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Those Guys Have All the Fun, Live From New York, and Powerhouse

“Can't Knock the Hustle is a terrific book because it gives us something in woefully short supply: real journalism. Matt Sullivan has discovered the ground zero of a player revolution—and it's in Brooklyn. Is anybody ready for it?"  — Howard Bryant, ESPN senior writer and author of Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field

“The superstar-studded Brooklyn Nets are basketball's most captivating team, and Can't Knock the Hustle delivers a fascinating secret history of their journey to the pantheon of player activism and empowerment. With brilliant reporting and breakneck prose, this is our generation's Moneyball.”  — Don Van Natta Jr., Pulitzer Prize-winning ESPN investigative reporter and New York Times bestselling author of First Off the Tee and Wonder Girl

“No narrative has captured the dynamics of the ‘player empowerment’ movement quite like Can’t Knock the Hustle. Sullivan has written about as revealing a basketball book as there's been in a long time: an insider’s account with an outsider’s moxie.”  — Dave Zirin, The Nation sports editor and author of The Kaepernick Effect

Matt Sullivan is one helluva social anthropologist, and as a result, his Can't Knock the Hustle amounts to way more than a journey with the Brooklyn Nets, or an examination of the modern-day athlete. This is an astute, ambitious book about the glory and torment of talent itself. Basketball? That's just the starting point, and what a trip Sullivan's remarkable odyssey turns out to be.

The superstar-studded Brooklyn Nets are basketball's most captivating team, and Can't Knock the Hustle delivers a fascinating secret history of their journey to the pantheon of player activism and empowerment. With brilliant reporting and breakneck prose, this is our generation's Moneyball.” 

"Only a brilliantly audacious book could begin to make sense of the weirdly brilliant audacity of the new Brooklyn Nets. One writer on Earth could have written this book this way — with the profundity of a sage baller and acuity of a seasoned journalist — and that writer is Matt Sullivan."

With Can't Knock The Hustle, Matt Sullivan correctly positions the basketball games we love as both a prism through which to understand our culture, and a battlefield on which to fight for the better angels of that culture. On the surface, it's a story about the unending march of 2020. But once you finish it, you understand that it's also an essential document about the decades that led us to this moment, and about the future decades yet unspooled." 

No narrative has captured the dynamics of the ‘player empowerment’ movement quite like Can’t Knock the Hustle. Sullivan has written about as revealing a basketball book as there's been in a long time: an insider’s account with an outsider’s moxie.” 

Can't Knock the Hustle is a terrific book because it gives us something in woefully short supply: real journalism. Matt Sullivan has discovered the ground zero of a player revolution—and it's in Brooklyn. Is anybody ready for it?" 

In the dueling eras of unprecedented athlete empowerment and the coarse ugliness of 'shut up and dribble,' Matt Sullivan's Can't Knock the Hustle offers a can't-look-away sampling of not merely the NBA's most fascinating franchise, but a frozen period in time that will leave historians both horrified and riveted." 

★ 07/01/2021

Going beyond the on-court plays, sports reporter Sullivan analyzes the NBA's culture and power dynamics through the lens of the 2019–20 Brooklyn Nets season. He describes a player empowerment movement that's at the center of the present-day NBA, in which players (rather than owners or the league office) dictate business ventures, their own futures, and social agendas. NBA superstars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving are Sullivan's primary focus here; Durant struggles with coming back from an injury, while Irving questions basketball's importance in his life, and the death of Kobe Bryant impacts Irving and other current stars mentored by Bryant. The narrative also introduces lesser-known Nets player Garrett Templeton, who pushes for social justice reform. Sullivan writes that many NBA players became more politically active after the murder of George Floyd and debated how to address the Hong Kong protests and whether to boycott the NBA's Disney Bubble experiment, with views that differed based on players' economic standings and social justice beliefs. VERDICT A must-read for its in-depth look at the mental, economic, and political tribulations of NBA players. A good complement to Ben Golliver's Bubbleball that will give readers a full understanding of the struggles and dynamics of the 2019–20 NBA season.—Chris Wilkes, Tazewell Cty. P.L., VA

Narrator Will Damron brings gravitas to Matt Sullivan’s words. This audiobook isn’t about Xs and Os on the court; it’s about professional athletes, as seen through the Brooklyn Nets, voicing their opinions on a lot of issues—from politics to dealing with COVID and more. The overarching themes are racial equality and the movement in the NBA to gain more control over contracts. Damron narrates in a tone that reflects the seriousness of the topics. He doesn’t imitate anyone quoted, with the rare exception of a child here and there. But the importance of the messages that the players impart comes across in Damron’s inflections. He clearly takes the narration as seriously as the players take their political positions. M.B. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

2021-04-07
A sportswriter and investigative journalist delivers “a contemporaneous history revealing how everyone from LeBron James and Kyrie Irving to shifty billionaires and calamity-stricken Brooklynites were forced to evolve as frantically as the world did” during the pandemic.

In 2020, everyone’s story became one of life and death, of personal choices about racial inequality and political beliefs, of playing it safe or taking risks during a global pandemic. In this ambitious book, Sullivan captures all those aspects in the lives of the Brooklyn Nets, including one of the NBA’s biggest superstars, Durant, one of its most controversial, Irving, and the rest of a team poised to win a championship this season. The author embedded with the Nets back in 2019, when no one could have imagined the hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 deaths or millions of Black Lives Matter protesters taking to streets across the U.S. Sullivan’s eyewitness accounts of the team’s private moments and in-depth interviews with players and coaches yield explanations for those crises as well as behind-the-scenes details of some of the biggest stories in sports, including the international incident surrounding the Nets’ exhibition game against the Los Angeles Lakers in China and the deliberations over whether the team should finish out the 2020 season in the NBA–created bubble in Orlando. All of the author’s cogent reporting allows him to place these events in a deeper context. “It continues to be a despicable and particularly American reality,” he writes, “that the oppressed so often, and especially with the undue pressure of television and social media, are expected to both withstand and overcome, to survive and speak out at once.” He also reveals remarkable details about Durant’s recovery from injuries, Irving’s Indigenous roots and headline-grabbing behavior, Spencer Dinwiddie’s forward-thinking business strategies, and Garrett Temple’s plans to study law.

More than a basketball book, this helps explain race relations, celebrity power, and personal choice in a changed world.