Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Tall Tales and Short Shorts
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.adamcriblez.com
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://semo.edu/history/faculty/criblez.html * http://semo.edu/pdf/History-Criblez_CV.pdf
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Ohio Wesleyan University, B.A., 2001; Kent State University, M.A., 2003; Purdue University, Ph.D., 2008.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, historian, and educator. Kent State University, teaching assistant, 2001-03; Heritage Christian School (Canton, OH), teacher, 2003-04; Purdue University, teaching assistant, 2004-07, graduate instructor, 2007-08; Tiffin University, instructor, 2009-14; Bluffton University, adjunct professor, 2010; University of Findlay, adjunct professor, 2010; Ohio State University, Mansfield, visiting assistant professor, 2010-12; Southeast Missouri State University, assistant professor of history, 2012-, director of Center for Regional History, 2013-.
Also Hancock Historical Museum, Findlay, OH, director of archives, 2008-11, executive director, 2012; Missouri Humanities Council, board member, 2014-. Presenter at academic meetings, conferences, and symposia.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including Encyclopedia of U.S. Political History, CQ Press, 2010; and American Centuries: The Ideas, Issues, and Trends that Made U.S. History, Facts on File, 2011.
Contributor to periodicals and journals, including the Journal of Illinois History, Journal of American History, History: Reviews of New Books, and the Northeastern Ohio Journal of History.
SIDELIGHTS
Adam J. Criblez is a writer, historian, and educator at Southeast Missouri State University. He serves as an assistant professor of history as well as the director of the university’s Center for Regional History. As an educator, he teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses in history, including American history, women’s history, the Civil War and Reconstruction, American urban history, the history of sports, and Missouri history, noted a writer on the website of Southeast Missouri State University. Criblez holds a B.A. in chemistry from Ohio Wesleyan University, an M.A. in history from Kent State University, and a Ph.D. in history from Purdue University.
In his first book, Parading Patriotism: Independence Day Celebrations in the Urban Midwest, 1826–1876, Criblez “examines America’s celebrations of its own founding” during the fifty-year period between 1826 and 1876, when the United States added more territory, large midwestern cities were created, and industrialization began to expand in earnest, noted an Internet Bookwatch reviewer. These celebrations “can reasonably be argued to reflect the thought of society,” observed Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries critic I. Cohen, and as such, they provide an important insight into the cultural and social atmosphere of the day. Criblez looks at Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Indianapolis. He provides not only insight into the nature of the Fourth of July celebrations in these cities but also background on the evolution of the cities themselves, as they were areas where major urban growth occurred in the United States during the period under study.
The author gives particular emphasis to celebrations that took place after the end of the Civil War and how this conflict changed the way the Fourth of July was commemorated. For example, he notes how in the midwestern cities studied in the book, Fourth of July celebrants drew obvious parallels between the victorious northern armies of the Civil War and the Revolutionary War armies that contributed so significantly to the country’s independence in 1776. Criblez also includes a detailed bibliography to help interested readers find other works on patriotic celebrations in the United States. The Internet Bookwatch reviewer called Parading Patriotism a “welcome and seminal contribution to American history shelves.”
Tall Tales and Short Shorts: Dr. J, Pistol Pete, and the Birth of the Modern NBA presents a history of basketball and the NBA during the 1970s, “a decade almost as noteworthy for its outsized personalities and colorful nicknames as for its increasingly athletic and sophisticated brand of basketball. The result is an entertaining book that adds to the nascent body of scholarship on the history of professional basketball,” remarked Christopher R. Davis on the website Sport in American History. Criblez looks at the outsized personalities that dominated basketball during this period, including players such as “Pistol Pete” Maravich and Julius Erving. He describes some of the threats that professional basketball faced in the 1970s, such as decreased television ratings and rampant cocaine use among players. He covers crucial developments in the sport, such as the merger between two important leagues, the ABA and the NBA. He also uncovers a selection of little-known historical facts that help show the state of the sport during the 1970s, such as the telethon the Indiana Pacers held in 1977 to keep the team’s finances in the black. The book “does succeed in recapturing the 1970s NBA, along with the players, personalities, legal and financial disputes, and battles on and off the court that defined a luminal period,” commented Davis.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer called the book a “light-hearted, informative overview.” Davis concluded that Tall Tales and Short Shorts is an “entertaining and engaging read” that “opens up the vivid story of a colorful time when players like Kareem, the Doctor, the Iceman, and Pistol Pete became household names as they battled for dominance on the court and pushed the athleticism, skill, and aesthetic beauty of their game to new heights.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, March, 2014, I. Cohen, review of Parading Patriotism: Independence Day Celebrations in the Urban Midwest, 1826–1876, p. 1289.
Internet Bookwatch, November, 2013, review of Parading Patriotism.
Publishers Weekly, April 10, 2017, review of Tall Tales and Short Shorts: Dr. J, Pistol Pete, and the Birth of the Modern NBA, p. 67.
ONLINE
Guy Who Reviews Sports Books, http://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com (July 4, 2017), review of Tall Tales and Short Shorts.
Southeast Missouri State University Website, http://www.semo.edu/ (January 8, 2018), author profile.
Sport in American History, https://www.ussporthistory.com/ (December 3, 2017), Christopher R. Davis, review of Tall Tales and Short Shorts.
4
of 4
Adam J. Criblez1931 Sherwood Drive Cape Girardeau, MO 63701 Phone: (419) 672-8326 E-mail: acriblez@semo.edu EducationPurdue University 2008 Ph.D. in History Dissertation: “Parading Patriotism: Independence Day Celebrations in the Urban Midwest, 1826-1876” Advisor: Dr. John Larson Major Field: Nineteenth-Century United States History Minor Field: Women’s History Kent State University 2003 M.A. in History Thesis: “From Grog-Punch to Hard Cider: Tavern Culture on Ohio’s Western Reserve, 1796-1840” Advisor: Dr. Jon Wakelyn Ohio Wesleyan University 2001 B.A. in Chemistry, Minor in History Advisor: Dr. Kim Lance Teaching ExperienceSoutheast Missouri State University – Assistant Professor 2012-PresentCourses Taught: History 105: American History I History 107: American History II History 302: Missouri History (Online) History 360: Women in America (Online) History 507: Civil War History History 525: American Urban History (Online) History 600: Introduction to Public History History 645: Issues in Ed. at Public History Sites University Studies 100: Sports as America Tiffin University – Instructor 2009-2014 Courses Taught: History 111: American History to 1865 (Online) History 112: American History since 1865 (Online) History 312: Middle East History (Online) Ohio State University Mansfield – Visiting Assistant Professor 2010-2012 Courses Taught: History 151: American Civilization to 1877 History 152: American Civilization Since 1877 History 310: History of Ohio History 556: Colonial North America to 1763History 557.01: American Revolution and the New Nation, 1763-1800
History 557.02: Jeffersonian/Jacksonian Democracy University of Findlay – Adjunct Professor 2010 Courses Taught: History 111: United States History since 1865 History 152: Global History, 1780 to Present History 390: History of Ohio (Online) Bluffton University – Adjunct Professor 2010Course Taught: History 201: The Making of Contemporary America Purdue University – Graduate Instructor 2007-2008Courses Taught: History 151: The United States to 1877 History 376: History of Indiana Teaching Assistant 2004-2007 Courses Assisted: History of the Middle East Medieval Europe Southeast Asia America to 1877 and 1877 to the Present Heritage Christian School (Canton, OH) - Teacher 2003-2004 Courses Taught: American Government, Biology, Chemistry Kent State University – Teaching Assistant 2001-2003 Courses Assisted: America to 1877 and 1877 to the Present Related Work ExperienceCenter for Regional History (Southeast Missouri State University) 2013-Present DirectorHancock Historical Museum (Findlay, OH) 2012 Executive Director 2008-2011 Director of Archives Our People, Our History: A History of Findlay, Ohio, 1950-2010 2009-2011 Assistant Project Editor McNaughton-McKay Electric Company (Findlay, OH) 2011 Archival Consultant Hale Farm and Village (Bath, OH) 2002-2003 Historic Interpreter Book Parading Patriotism: Independence Day Celebrations in the Urban Midwest, 1826-1876(Northern Illinois University Press, 2013)
Journal Articles “White Men Playing a Black Man’s Game: Basketball’s ‘Great White Hopes’ of the 1970s.” Journal of Sport History (Forthcoming). “‘A Motley Array’: Changing Perceptions of Chicago Taverns, 1833-1871,” in The Journal of Illinois History (Winter, 2005): 262-280. “Tavernocracy: Tavern Culture on Ohio’s Western Reserve, 1796-1840,” in The Northeastern Ohio Journal of History (Summer, 2004) Other Publications Review of McDonnell, Michael A., et al., “Remembering the Revolution,” Journal of American History (Summer 2014) Review of Valencius, Coevery Bolton, “The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquake,” Missouri Historical Review (Summer 2014) “Anti-Irish Riots of 1844,” “Nativism in America,” and “The Know-Nothing Party,” in On the Move: The Encyclopedia of Immigration, Migration, and Nativism in United States History (Facts on File, Forthcoming) “Seventeenth-Century Immigration” and “Seventeenth-Century Transportation” in American Centuries: The Ideas, Issues, and Trends that Made U.S. History (Facts on File, 2011) “‘All Roads Lead to Findlay’: The Optimism of the 1950s” in Dennis East, ed. Our People, Our Story: A History of Findlay, Ohio, 1950-2010 (Hancock Historical Museum, 2011) “Immigration: 1789-1840” in Encyclopedia of U.S. Political History (CQ Press, 2010) Review of David W. Gutzke, Pubs and Progressives: Reinventing the Public House in England, 1896-1960 (History: Reviews of New Books, Winter 2006) Review of Vincent Carretta, Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-made Man (History: Reviews of New Books, Winter 2006) Select Paper Presentations North American Society for Sport History Conference 2014 Paper presented: “White Men Playing a Black Man’s Game: Basketball’s “Great White Hopes” of the 1970s Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Conference 2010 Paper Presented: “‘Worthy of Our Sires’: Memory, the American Revolution, and the Fourth of July in the Urban Midwest” Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Conference 2009
Paper Presented: “‘Sabbath of Liberty’: Religion and the Fourth of July, 1827-1857” Alcohol in the Atlantic World: Historical Perspectives 2007 Paper Presented: “Beer Gardens and a Bloody Fourth: Drinking and Ethnic Violence in Mid-Nineteenth Century Columbus, Ohio” Awards and FellowshipsCrader Family Book Prize in American Values 2014 Awarded “Honorable Mention” for Parading Patriotism Illinois State Historical Society 2014 Awarded “Superior Achievement” for Parading Patriotism Grants and Research Funding Committee Award, Southeast Missouri State University 2014 Academic Leadership Grant,Southeast Missouri State University 2012 & 2013 Research Incentive Grant,Purdue University 2007 History Department Travel Grant, Purdue University 2007 Professional Development Missouri Humanities Council 2014 - Present Board Member Leadership Cape 2013 Program Participant Missouri Conference on History 2013 Panel Chair and Commentator Ohio Academy of History Annual Meeting 2011 Panel Chair and Commentator Tri-County Educational Service Center 2011 Connecting to the Past Seminar – Featured Speaker University of Findlay 2010 External Student Internship Supervisor Purdue University – History Graduate Student Association 2004-2007 Vice-President and Americanist Representative
Dr. Adam Criblez
Assistant Professor, Center for Regional History Director
acriblez@semo.edu
573-651-2555
Office: CR 311K
Vita
Dr. Adam Criblez is the Director of the Center for Regional History as well as an Assistant Professor of History. He teaches courses on Public History, Civil War and Reconstruction, Women’s History, Sport History, and Missouri History. His first book, Parading Patriotism: Independence Day Celebrations in the Urban Midwest, 1826-1876 (Northern Illinois University Press, 2013) explores contested nineteenth-century Fourth of July commemorations, while his second, Tall Tales and Short Shorts: Dr. J., Pistol Pete, and the Birth of the Modern NBA takes readers on a trip through 1970s-era professional basketball.
Tall Tales and Short Shorts: Dr. J, Pistol
Pete, and the Birth of the Modern NBA
Publishers Weekly.
264.15 (Apr. 10, 2017): p67.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Tall Tales and Short Shorts: Dr. J, Pistol Pete, and the Birth of the Modern NBA
Adam J. Criblez. Rowman & Littlefield, $38
(288p) ISBN 978-1-4422-7767-0
In this light-hearted, informative overview of pro basketball in the 1970s, Criblez, professor of history at
Southeast Missouri State Univ., focuses on the showmanship of Pistol Pete Maravich and the ABA-NBA
merger, which brought flashy talent such as Julius Erving and George Gervin to the pro scene. Criblez
explains how sagging TV ratings and the increased use of cocaine endangered the league. There's a reason
why future NBA commissioner David Stern, who oversaw the NBA's golden era of the 1980s and '90s,
called the late '70s the league's "dark days." But Criblez finds plenty of sunshine. He unearths surprising,
humanizing facts that have been lost in the NBA's now-slick facade. The struggling Indiana Pacers held a
telethon in 1977 to stay solvent; the NBA held a televised dunk contest in 1976 and revived the idea in
1984. Some readers will crave a little more insight, rather than this yearbook-style format, but the
abundance of bon mots will satiate basketball fans of all ages. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Tall Tales and Short Shorts: Dr. J, Pistol Pete, and the Birth of the Modern NBA." Publishers Weekly, 10
Apr. 2017, p. 67. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A490319310/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=77bde976. Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A490319310
12/24/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1514144777122 2/3
Criblez, Adam. Parading patriotism:
Independence Day celebrations in the urban
Midwest, 1826-1876
I. Cohen
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
51.7 (Mar. 2014): p1289.
COPYRIGHT 2014 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
Criblez, Adam. Parading patriotism: Independence Day celebrations in the urban Midwest, 1826-1876.
Northern Illinois, 2013. 193p bibl index alp ISBN 9780875806921 pbk, $28.95; ISBN 9781609090883 ebook,
contact publisher for price
51-4034
E286
2013-12979 CIP
Over the past several decades, the life and thought of the common individual has become a growing field of
study. One of the areas that have come under examination is the public celebration, which can reasonably be
argued to reflect the thought of society. Criblez (Southwest Missouri State Univ.) adds to this field with his
study of July Fourth celebrations over 50 years in five cities in the Midwest: Chicago, Cleveland,
Cincinnati, Columbus, and Indianapolis. These midwestern cities are among the major places of urban
growth in the US. The study starts with Chicago as a burnt-out village and ends with Chicago as one of the
leading cities. The author does an excellent job in describing the similarities in ideas among the cities at any
given time by period. The first two chapters reflect the issues of growth in a relatively new land. The third
chapter deals with the coming of the Civil War, the war as seen by the midwesterners, and its outcome,
which really shifts how those communities saw the changes around them. A very interesting piece.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. *** Most levels/libraries.--I. Cohen, emeritus, Illinois State
University
Cohen, I.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Cohen, I. "Criblez, Adam. Parading patriotism: Independence Day celebrations in the urban Midwest, 1826-
1876." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Mar. 2014, p. 1289. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A360474211/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=cf11c8a1.
Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A360474211
12/24/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1514144777122 3/3
Parading Patriotism
Internet Bookwatch.
(Nov. 2013):
COPYRIGHT 2013 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Parading Patriotism
Adam Criblez
Northern Illinois University Press
2280 Bethany Road
DeKalb, IL 60115
9780875806921 $28.95 www.niupress.niu.edu
Parading Patriotism: Independence Day Celebrations in the Urban Midwest, 1826-1876 examines America's
celebrations of its own founding during a crucial era when the new nation expanded its territory, created
cities in the Midwest, and began to industrialize. Of particular interest is how the terrible toll of the Civil
War transformed national remembrance of this holiday. "In both the planning and execution of
Independence Day celebrations in 1865, Midwestern revelers drew parallels between the eastern heroes of
1776 and their own victorious armies in 1865. Making these ties explicit not only connected war veterans to
their Revolutionary War kindred, but also linked the rebirth of American nationalism and patriotic loyalty
brought forth by the Civil War to the battles faced by the Founding Fathers in building a national identity
nearly a century earlier." Notes, a bibliography, and an index round out Parading Patriotism, a welcome and
seminal contribution to American history shelves.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Parading Patriotism." Internet Bookwatch, Nov. 2013. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A350232143/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1c0100a6.
Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A350232143
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
Review of "Tall Tales and Short Shorts"
Happy Independence Day aka July 4th to all of my fellow American readers. On this all-American holiday, what game is more appropriate to read about than the sport that was invented in the United States? Of course, I am talking about basketball and I first followed the game in the 1970's. This book is a very good account of the sport during that decade. Here is my review of "Tall Tales and Short Shorts."
Title/Author:
“Tall Tales and Short Shorts: Dr. J, Pistol Pete & the Birth of the Modern NBA” by Adam J. Criblez
Tags:
Basketball, Professional, History
Publish date:
June 9, 2017
Length:
311 pages
Rating:
4 of 5 stars (very good)
Review:
The state of professional basketball was shaky in the 1970’s. Former NBA Commissioner David Stern called the decade the “darkest times” for the league. The number of African-American players was increasing, there was increased drug use among the players, the game was felt to be too violent and the television ratings were so bad, there were playoff games that were not shown live, but on delay during late night hours
However, there are some who credit this decade as the stepping stone to the global success the NBA is currently enjoying through the merger of the two professional leagues, the birth of free agency and the exciting play of many talented players. This is the approach taken by author Adam J. Criblez in this very interesting book on the NBA of the 1970’s.
The format of the book is straightforward – each chapter is an account of each season through the decade, starting with the legendary 1970 championship season for the New York Knicks to the unlikely championship claimed by the Seattle SuperSonics in 1979. The material is not extremely detailed or in depth, but each season is covered well, as well as many of the great players from that time such as George Gervin, Bill Walton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and John Havlicek.
One facet of the book that I like is that each team, whether the champion, a playoff team or an also-ran is mentioned each year. Unlike many books that cover certain seasons, the star players from losing teams are credited with their fine play and there are even paragraphs about these losing teams that explains why they were in the poor shape they were in.
The season-by-season recap is interrupted three times for chapters on other topics. Two of these chapters are about two of the biggest names in the sport during that decade – Julius “Dr. J” Erving and “Pistol” Pete Maravich. Being a fan of both of these players during that time brought back some great memories and also a little bit of trivia that I had never heard before. When Dr. J was trying to play in the NBA before the ABA and NBA merged in 1976, he signed a contract with the Atlanta Hawks, who already had Maravich on the roster. While the matter was in the court system, the Hawks played three exhibition game with both players. The contact was voided in court and Dr. J had to return to the New York Nets of the ABA. It would have been very interesting to see those two legends play on the same team.
Speaking of the merger, the third chapter that was not a recap of a season was about that topic when the two professional leagues stopped fighting each other on and off the court and became a stronger league. One of my favorite passages from that chapter is about the final all-star game in the ABA when Dr. J performed his legendary foul-line dunk.
While the book does not shed a lot of new light nor goes into great details into any particular topic, it is a very entertaining and fun read for any basketball fan who watched the game in that decade. These fantastic teams and players may not get the same love as Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan did for “saving” the game in the 1980’s – but this book gives that decade some much-deserved recognition for providing the first step to that revival.
I wish to thank Rowman & LIttlefield for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Review of Tall Tales and Short Shorts
lindsaypieper / 03 December 2017
Adam J. Criblez, Tall Tales and Short Shorts: Dr. J, Pistol Pete, and the Birth of the Modern NBA. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Pp. xii + 299. Photos, notes, select bibliography, and index. $38 hardback.
Reviewed by Christopher R. Davis
Tall Tales
Rowmman & Littlefield, 2107
In his monograph, Tall Tales and Short Shorts: Dr. J, Pistol Pete, and the Birth of the Modern NBA, historian Adam J. Criblez takes us back to the 1970s—a decade of mood rings, voluminous afros, and the disco craze—as he recounts the history of the NBA during what he labels a period of “great transformation” (p. xii). Inspired by Dan Epstein’s 2010 Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ‘70s, Criblez sets out to link the history of the game on the court to the colorful cultural history of a turbulent, transitional decade. While the book does not always achieve this larger goal, it does succeed in recapturing the 1970s NBA, along with the players, personalities, legal and financial disputes, and battles on and off the court that defined a luminal period. From the celebrated New York Knicks championship teams of 1970 and 1973, to the Washington Bullets and Seattle SuperSonics teams that split the decade’s final two championship series, Criblez chronicles the exploits of a colorful cast of characters—Walt “Clyde” Frazier, “the Big E” Elvin Hayes, “Downtown” Freddie Brown, Nate “Tiny” Archibald (also known as Nate “the Skate” this reviewer would add), Marvin “Bad News” Barnes, World B. Free, and David “Skywalker” Thompson, to name a few—during a decade almost as noteworthy for its outsized personalities and colorful nicknames as for its increasingly athletic and sophisticated brand of basketball. The result is an entertaining book that adds to the nascent body of scholarship on the history of professional basketball.
Criblez thoroughly mined mainstream magazines, popular histories, and biographical and autobiographical accounts of this period to elaborately reconstruct the NBA of the 1970s. Taking Bill Russell’s retirement following the 1969 NBA championship as his starting point, he organizes his narrative into ten numbered chapters, each covering one season during the ensuing decade. Interspersed following chapters one, six, and seven are three unnumbered thematic chapters, labelled “Time-Out(s),” focusing on Pete Maravich, Julius Erving, and the 1976 ABA-NBA merger, respectively. The numbered chapters quickly fall into a familiar pattern as the author recounts the key players, coaches, draft picks, trades, and games that shaped each team’s season. He then discusses the campaign’s important playoff matchups and provides a detailed account of each championship series. The 1970s NBA, Criblez emphasizes, lacked a dominant team. Russell’s exit marked the end of the Celtic dynasty and eight different franchises won the league title in the next ten years, with no team repeating as champions in consecutive seasons. Much of the drama in Criblez’s narrative revolves around his slow unveiling of which franchise’s management strategy and combination of players brought home the championship each season. This pattern becomes a bit tedious as the book progresses, especially for readers who already know the outcomes. Each chapter ends with a useful statistical section listing the final standings, playoff series results, All-NBA first and second teams, and statistical leaders for that campaign.
Criblez’s goal is to establish the importance of this decade—a period former commissioner David Stern once disparagingly referred to as the “dark days” of NBA history—as a critical turning point that witnessed “the birth of the modern NBA” (pp. xii, 259). In his estimation, “none of the NBA’s growth in the eighties would have been possible without the efforts of basketball’s pioneers of the 1970s” who “transformed professional basketball in important ways” (p. 259-260). It was indeed a period of significant change. The players’ legal challenge to the reserve clause, beginning in 1970, opened the way to free agency by the middle of the decade. Greater bargaining power for the players, in turn, produced a marked escalation in salaries by the late-1970s. It also gave these athletes greater control over choosing who they would play for, and a larger voice in the league overall, at an earlier date than in other major team sports. The mid-decade merger with the American Basketball Association brought the best talent in professional basketball under one organizational structure, setting the stage for future growth. Just as importantly, it opened the talent of the ABA to a national television audience for the first time. The upstart league also added the three-point shot (incorporated by the NBA in 1979) and the dunk contest to the professional game. The decade also witnessed, Criblez asserts, the beginnings of an outlaw ethos among players as “a culture of violence and drugs pervaded pro basketball locker rooms” (p. xii).
Despite these important developments, Criblez’s argument seems a bit overstated. The seventies certainly were an important period for the NBA, but it was hardly a “pioneer” era; a case could be made for the 1960s, the 1980s, or several other ten-year stretches of league history as being, at least, equally significant to the professional game’s development. The critical weakness here, however, is not relevancy, it is lack of elaboration. This is a history of the game on the court in the 1970s and very little time is spent developing and supporting the analytical portion of the argument. Criblez presents his thesis in the final paragraph of his prologue and returns to it in the last paragraph of his epilogue, but in between focuses almost exclusively on the personnel decisions, athletes, and games that shaped each season. The history of professional basketball in the 1970s certainly needs reassessment and development, but the ideas proposed here will be left to others to explore more fully.
The ubiquity of the nicknames from the period alone, and the deep in-roads they made into middle-class American culture, suggests that something more than a “dark ages” was afoot. The 1970s NBA offers fertile ground for studying the changing dynamics of a new stage in the history of American race relations. Criblez’s narrative touches on some of these changes, but stops short of analyzing their broader implications. The achievements of the civil rights era produced a degree of racial desegregation in American society that opened professional team sports to black athletes on a wide scale during the 1960s. By the mid-1970s, African Americans, with a few notable exceptions, dominated the highest levels of basketball. As they achieved that ascendency, large numbers of Americans of all backgrounds, including whites in suburbia, embraced black players (like Dr. J), emulating their style on and off the court, even if they could not quite duplicate the athleticism or afro. At the same time, deep-seated prejudices and structural inequalities endured. African-American athletes, like other prominent minorities, were exposed to greater scrutiny and held to a higher standard than their white compatriots. No more likely to use drugs or engage in violent behavior than other elite athletes, they nonetheless faced greater scrutiny and stiffer criticism for their actions. The outlaw ethic, drugs, and violence that Criblez identifies speak more to broad cultural attitudes than the character of the players in this period. One thing is certain—whatever conclusions historians ultimately reach about the NBA in the 1970s, they will be closely connected to the complex racial history of the late-twentieth century United States.
This monograph represents Criblez’s first foray into the field of sport history. His previous work focused on the social and cultural history of the nineteenth-century Midwest and his first book was titled Parading Patriotism: Independence Day Celebrations in the Urban Midwest, 1826-1876. An interest in sports and a love of basketball led him to a personally surprising shift in focus for his second book project. Given his academic background, Criblez could have spent more time relating his topic to the broader social and cultural history of a complex decade. While each chapter does contain a section or two where the narrative breaks away from basketball to consider larger events (for example: Kent State in 1970, the Boston busing controversies in 1974, and mood rings and pet rocks in 1975), for the most part, these brief segues are not connected to players, coaches, or events inside the NBA. The reactions of pro basketball to the major cultural developments of the era go largely unrecorded. Unlike Epstein’s Big Hair and Plastic Grass, which vividly brought to life links between the diamond and the broader cultural ferment of the period, Criblez keeps his focus principally within the confines of the hardwood. Embedding his work in the growing historiography of the “‘Me’ Decade” would have enriched the story, strengthened its analysis, and made the book a more enduring work of scholarship.
Yet, the publication of this book highlights the potential of digital media to enhance scholarship by opening more of the creative process to a broader audience. Criblez promoted the book on social media and his website. In May and June 2017, the editors of this blog published an excerpt from the book as well as two articles by the author, one detailing his research and writing process for the project and the other discussing his thesis and the significance of the 1970s in professional basketball history. Access to these materials gives his readership greater insight into the author’s selection of topic, the research methods he employed, the shaping of his ideas, and the general spirit of the project. When publishing budgets limit authors to a particular page count, or specialized information and data seems inappropriate for a general audience—as well as for countless other potential reasons—digital platforms offer scholars a chance to supplement their projects and engage their readers in greater depth.
Readers can also embrace the resources of digital history to enhance their experience reading this book. Video footage of the 1970s NBA readily available through internet platforms, such as Youtube, offers the opportunity to view highlights of many of the players, teams, and games that Criblez chronicles. Especially for fans who did not experience the period first-hand, this video archive brings 1970s pro basketball to life in ways that the text of a book can only suggest. At the same time, Criblez’s narrative connects the video images to the context and times that produced them. Together, both make for an enriched reading experience.
Of all the major American team sports, basketball has received the least scholarly attention. As Criblez points out, much of the secondary source material available on the pro game in the 1970s is written by journalists. In the last few years, however, more serious works of scholarship have begun to emerge. Important monographs, such as Todd Smith’s Young, Black, Rich, and Famous: The Rise of the NBA, the Hip Hop Invasion, and the Transformation of American Culture (2008), Aram Goudsouzian’s King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution (2010), and Yago Colás’s Ball Don’t Lie: Myth, Genealogy, and Invention in the Cultures of Basketball (2016), demonstrate the rich potential of the game and its past to highlight larger cultural and historical shifts. Criblez takes the first step toward incorporating a previously dismissed decade, the 1970s, into this growing body of work. He clearly demonstrates that the period was one of vibrancy and important change. The merger with the ABA, escalating talent levels, competitive parity, improved labor relations, and the ascendance of the black athlete, all set the stage for the glory days of “Showtime,” Magic, Bird, and Jordan in the decades that followed. Given basketball’s expanding popularity in the United States and abroad, as well as the youthful demographics of its fan base, it seems that interest in the professional game—both popular and scholarly—will continue to grow in the coming decades.
In all, Tall Tales and Short Shorts is an entertaining and engaging read. Fans old enough to remember the 1970s will enjoy a trip down memory lane and a chance to re-live an era that seems increasingly distant almost two decades into the twenty-first century. It was a period when professional basketball underwent important fundamental changes and cemented its place in the American athletic mainstream. For younger fans, and the game’s growing urban, suburban, and international audiences, this book opens up the vivid story of a colorful time when players like Kareem, the Doctor, the Iceman, and Pistol Pete became household names as they battled for dominance on the court and pushed the athleticism, skill, and aesthetic beauty of their game to new heights.
Christopher R. Davis received his PhD in history from the University of Oklahoma. His research focuses on the desegregation of college football in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas between the end of World War II and the late-1970s. He is currently working on a book project entitled Black Power on the Football Field: Race, Rivalry, and Manhood in Oklahoma and Texas. Chris lives in McAllen, Texas where he teaches courses on U.S. history, African-American history, and sport history at South Texas College.