Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Boys of Dunbar
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Baltimore
STATE: MD
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Alejandro-Danois/400361100 * https://www.theshadowleague.com/authors/102 *
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2016046501
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2016046501
HEADING: Danois, Alejandro
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PERSONAL
Born in Brooklyn, NY.
EDUCATION:Attended the University of Pennsylvania.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Senior writer and editor of the Shadow League. Former senior editor of Bounce.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to publications, including the New York Times, Sporting News, Bleacher Report, Ebony, Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press.
SIDELIGHTS
Alejandro Danois is a writer based in Baltimore, Maryland. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he attended the University of Pennsylvania. Danois has served as a senior editor for Bounce magazine and for the Shadow League. He has also contributed articles to publications, including the New York Times, Sporting News, Bleacher Report, Ebony, Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press.
In 2016, Danois released his first book, The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball. The volume chronicles the impressive 1981-82 and 1982-83 seasons of the Dunbar High School Poets boys’ basketball team, whose players were from a tough part of Baltimore. During those two seasons, the team played sixty games and won all of them. Major colleges recruited ten of the Poets’ players, while another four were drafted directly into the NBA. Among the players who went on to play professionally was Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues, a remarkably short player measuring just five feet, three inches in height. Dunbar profiles Bogues and other players, as well as their coach, Bob Wade.
According to Bijan C. Bayne, contributor to the Online version of Washington Post: “Danois’s narrative takes readers aboard for spirited team bus rides and inside Wade’s grueling practices: He had the Poets carry bricks in each hand and wear sand-filled backpacks to increase their strength and stamina. The author also takes us inside the apartments of the ballplayers as family issues arise, and courtside for thrilling games against schools favored to defeat the upstart team with the tiny point guard. Former players recount the year, as do recreation leaders, opposing coaches, players’ relatives and Wade.” Bayne added: “The result is a work that expertly re-creates not only a season but the mood of a growing sport.” In an interview with Dean Smith, writer on the Press Box Online Web site, Danois stated: “Back then, high school basketball meant something. … Now kids are more concerned with playing in summer showcases. The book is a reminder of what the game was and what it must become again.” Danois also told Smith: “I started out writing a book about basketball. … I spent time in the archives at Enoch Pratt and realized it goes way deeper than that.”
Keith Klang, contributor to Library Journal, remarked: “There isn’t much more to this account than the play-by-play of a fantastic team having a great season.” Other assessments of The Boys of Dunbar were more favorable. “Danois … delivers a solid story that pretty much tells itself,” asserted Alan Moores in Booklist. A Publishers Weekly critic suggested: “Danois rarely talks to anyone outside of Dunbar’s squad, and the season-long narrative lacks a hook beyond the team’s dominance.” Reviewing the book on the Spectrum Culture Web site, Grant Rindner commented: “Largely it’s a basketball purist’s exploration of a juggernaut they likely knew little about. It’s difficult to project how the book would appeal to a casual fan, but for anyone with an appreciation of what it takes to play the sport beautifully, this book will prove an absolute page-turner waiting to be devoured.” Bill Hughes, writer on the JMWW Web site, opined: “It’s not only well written by its Brooklyn-born author, Alejandro Danois, but captivating on a number of levels. It’s surely more than simply a book about the Dunbar Poets—a winning and acclaimed public high school basketball team—from the hard streets of East Baltimore. At a deeper level, it’s an inspiring tale about the magnificence of the human spirit.” Hughes continued: “Alejandro Danois has written a gem of a sports story. It belongs in the library of all lovers of high school athletics.” “The Boys of Dunbar is a book about high school basketball. But it is much more than that,” wrote Frank Valish on the Under the Radar Web site.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, September 1, 2016, Alan Moores, review of The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball, p. 36.
Library Journal, September 1, 2016, Keith Klang, review of The Boys of Dunbar, p. 113.
Publishers Weekly, June 20, 2016, review of The Boys of Dunbar, p. 148.
ONLINE
Baltimore Post-Examiner Online, http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/ (September 29, 2016), Bill Hughes, review of The Boys of Dunbar.
Bleacher Report, http://bleacherreport.com/ (March 13, 2017), author profile.
Bookreporter.com, http://www.bookreporter.com/ (March 13, 2017), author profile.
InkWell Management Web site, http://inkwellmanagement.com/ (March 13, 2017), author profile.
JMWW, https://jmwwwblog.wordpress.com/ (September 30, 2016), Bill Hughes, review of The Boys of Dunbar.
Press Box Online, https://www.pressboxonline.com/ (October 17, 2016), Dean Smith, author interview.
Shadow League, https://www.theshadowleague.com/ (March 13, 2017), author profile.
Simon & Schuster Web site, http://www.simonandschuster.com/ (March 13, 2017), author profile.
Spectrum Culture, http://spectrumculture.com/ (September 27, 2016), Grant Rindner, review of The Boys of Dunbar.
Under the Radar, http://www.undertheradarmag.com/ (September 22, 2016), Frank Valish, review of The Boys of Dunbar.
Washington Post Online, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ (September 23, 2016), Bijan C. Bayne, review of The Boys of Dunbar.
Alejandro Danois was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and now lives in Baltimore, Maryland. He earned a scholarship for talented minority students to attend Milton Academy in Massachusetts and later attended the University of Pennsylvania. Alejandro is a senior writer and editor with The Shadow League and a freelance sports and entertainment writer whose work has been published by The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, Associated Press, Bleacher Report, Sporting News, Los Angeles Times, and Ebony magazine, among others. The Boys of Dunbar is his first book.
Alejandro Danois is the Editor-in-Chief of The Shadow League. The former senior editor of Bounce Magazine, he's also had work published by the New York Times, Sporting News, Baltimore Sun, Los Angeles Times, Ebony magazine and others. Follow him on Twitter @alidanois.
Alejandro Danois
Alejandro Danois was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and now lives in Baltimore, Maryland. He earned a scholarship for talented minority students to attend Milton Academy in Massachusetts and later attended the University of Pennsylvania. Alejandro is editor-in-chief of The Shadow League and a freelance sports and entertainment writer whose work has been published by The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, Associated Press, Bleacher Report, Sporting News, Los Angeles Times, and Ebony magazine, among others. THE BOYS OF DUNBAR is his first book.
Alejandro Danois
Alejandro "Ali" Danois is the Editor-in-Chief of The Shadow League.
The former Senior Editor of Bounce Magazine, he is also a Freelance Sports and Entertainment Writer whose work has been published by the New York Times, Bleacher Report, Sporting News, Baltimore Sun, Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, SLAMonline and Ebony Magazine, among many others.
His Shadow League features "Humble Beginnings", and "Rocky Flop" were mentioned in the Best American Sports Writing Anthology as among the country's most notable stories of 2014 and 2015 respectively.
Ali is the author of the crticially acclaimed book, The Boys of Dunbar, A Story of Love, Hope and Basketball
Alejandro Danois
A native of Brooklyn, New York, Alejandro Danois now lives in Baltimore, Maryland. He earned a scholarship for talented minority students to attend Milton Academy in Massachusetts and later attended the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Danois is editor-in-chief of The Shadow League and a freelance sports and entertainment writer whose work has been published by The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, Associated Press, Bleacher Report, Sporting News, Los Angeles Times, and Ebony magazine, among others. The Boys of Dunbar is his first book.
Alejandro Danois is the editor-in-chief of The Shadow League. As a freelance sports and entertainment writer, his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, Associated Press, Bleacher Report, Sporting News, Los Angeles Times, Ebony magazine and other publications. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Danois earned a scholarship for talented minority students to attend Milton Academy in Massachusetts and later attended the University of Pennsylvania. His first book, "The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope and Basketball" , follows the true story of a high-school basketball team that overcame desperate circumstances in 1980s Baltimore to produce four NBA players and give hope to a neighborhood and a city. Danois lives Maryland.
QUOTED: "There isn't much more to this account than the play-by-play of a fantastic team having a great season."
Danois, Alejandro. The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love,
Hope, and Basketball
Keith Klang
Library Journal.
141.14 (Sept. 1, 2016): p113.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Danois, Alejandro. The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball. S. & S. Sept. 2016.288p. photos, index. ISBN 9781451666977.
$26; ebk. ISBN 9781451666991. SPORTS
In this chronicle of the Dunbar Poets' 1981-82 boys high school basketball season, Danois, editor of the sports website the Shadow League,
debuts with mixed results. Four remarkable players from the Poet's team that season would go on to play in the NBA, an impressive feat. Readers
get to know the athletes, including fan-favorite petite (5'3") Muggsy Bogues before his rise to stardom. Head coach Bob Wade is presented as
tough as nails, one who believes students' education is as important as their jump shot. Danois spends a lot of time on game descriptions. Despite
a few bumps in the road, the season is not surprisingly a success. It is evident that the author weighed heavily on player and coach interviews.
Readers interested in high school basketball might find this all-star team entertaining, while those in the Baltimore area will have the chance to
relive some glory days. VERDICT What makes a special sports book is that it can get beyond the event to tell a more human story. There isn't
much more to this account than the play-by-play of a fantastic team having a great season.--Keith Klang, Port Washington P.L., NY
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Klang, Keith. "Danois, Alejandro. The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball." Library Journal, 1 Sept. 2016, p. 113+. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA462044912&it=r&asid=66518c11dfc95dc006cdd98469c7cfdd. Accessed 19 Feb.
2017.
2/19/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1487537729604 2/4
Gale Document Number: GALE|A462044912
---
QUOTED: "Danois ... delivers a solid story that pretty much tells itself."
2/19/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1487537729604 3/4
The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball
Alan Moores
Booklist.
113.1 (Sept. 1, 2016): p36.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball. By Alejandro Danois. Sept. 2016. 288p. illus. Simon & Schuster, $26
(9781451666977); e-book, $13.99 (9781451666991). 796.323.
The numbers say everything about the magical run by the boys' basketball team of Baltimore's Dunbar High School in the 1981-82 and 1982-83
seasons: a 60-0 record, 10 players going to major college programs, 4 reaching the NBA, and 3 of those being first-round picks. None had a
greater impact on the program than their leader, the diminutive Tyrone "Muggsy" Bogues, who at 5'3" became the shortest player ever in the
NBA, while carving out a stellar 14-year career there. Inspirational stories can be found everywhere in high-school sports, but Dunbar and its
legendary coach, Bob Wade, stand out for the sheer talent to converge at Dunbar those two seasons, for Wade's success at maintaining the players'
focus on academics and basketball amid the poverty and violent crime that permeated their tough East Baltimore neighborhood, and for Muggsy.
As author Danois, who delivers a solid story that pretty much tells itself, writes, "We'll see more Michael Jordans before we see another Muggsy
Bogues." --Alan Moores
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Moores, Alan. "The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball." Booklist, 1 Sept. 2016, p. 36. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463755053&it=r&asid=37714d084c72450535837a2eb14ba737. Accessed 19 Feb.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463755053
---
QUOTED: "Danois rarely talks to anyone outside of Dunbar's squad, and the season-long narrative lacks a hook beyond the team's dominance."
2/19/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1487537729604 4/4
The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball
Publishers Weekly.
263.25 (June 20, 2016): p148.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball
Alejandro Danois. Simon & Schuster, $26 (288p) ISBN 978-1-4516-6697-7
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The 1981-1982 Poets, the basketball team of Baltimore's Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, reside in sports folklore, as Danois explains in this
tedious history. Three future NBA players--Tyrone "Muggsy" Bogues, David Wingate, and Reggie Williams--started with the Poets that season,
and one future NBA All-Star (the late Reggie Lewis, who was a captain on the Boston Celtics) came off the bench. Coach Bob Wade, who
happened to be an ex-NFL player, refused to have his players coast on their talent. Instead, the Baltimore native conducted practices where
players carried bricks and sandbags to teach their bodies to combat fatigue. Danois, editor-in-chief of the Shadow League, recounts the
memorable season and its resonance in a city whose salad days had shriveled into unemployment, drugs, and violence. The anecdotes, including
the 5'3" Bogues astonishing crowds with his formidable abilities and Wingate's struggle to balance basketball with caring for his disabled mother,
only go so far. Danois rarely talks to anyone outside of Dunbar's squad, and the season-long narrative lacks a hook beyond the team's dominance.
Danois's attempts to branch out--profiling Baltimore's youth basketball organizers and fallen legends--do little to reduce the insular flimsiness.
(Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball." Publishers Weekly, 20 June 2016, p. 148. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA456344781&it=r&asid=ec6eb8c6fb147bc0dd7872edc19f88a1. Accessed 19 Feb.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A456344781
QUOTED: "Largely it’s a basketball purist’s exploration of a juggernaut they likely knew little about. It’s difficult to project how the book would appeal to a casual fan, but for anyone with an appreciation of what it takes to play the sport beautifully, this book will prove an absolute page-turner waiting to be devoured."
The Boys of Dunbar: by Alejandro Danois
Grant Rindner GRANT RINDNER SEPTEMBER 27, 2016
Touches on some of the darker issues related to college recruiting and the difficult circumstances commonly faced by African-Americans in inner cities.
4 / 5
Alejandro Danois’s new book is a fascinating look at one of high school basketball’s powerhouse programs, the Poets of Baltimore’s Dunbar High School, during its historic run from 1981-83. For the team’s players, including future NBA stars Reggie Lewis and Muggsy Bogues, as well as decade-plus league veterans like Reggie Williams and David Wingate, Dunbar was an oasis from the dangerous drug scene that had overtaken much of the city.
Danois clearly loves basketball (he makes it abundantly clear in the prologue), and his writing is never more bouncy or joyous than when he’s describing the 5’3 Bogues throwing opposing point guards off their rhythm and wrenching the ball free to ignite a fast break. Danois tries to spend equal time on each of the team’s stars and their coach, local legend Bob Wade, but Bogues’ underdog story—he was constantly ridiculed and dismissed as a novelty by opposing coaches and players, as well as major college scouts—has an undeniably appealing, cinematic arc.
Save for Bogues’ and Wade’s respective journeys—the latter of which Danois handles beautifully, spending over half the book painting him as an authoritative, demanding father figure for his teams before finally revealing what made him that way in a flawlessly executed bit of lede-burying—Boys of Dunbar isn’t trying to wring much drama out of its premise. Most basketball fans who will give the book a read are familiar with Bogues’s unlikely success, Lewis’s tragic fate and perhaps even the journeyman careers of Wingate and Williams, all of which are expanded upon in the epilogue.
There’s a dutiful quality to Danois’s writing that fits the book’s heavy focus on Dunbar’s grueling practices. He resists the temptation to frame the long hours of springs, the tedious bus rides and subpar accommodations against the players’ eventual success in college and the pros, offering instead a number of cautionary parables involving sharp-shooting, high-flying Baltimoreans who snorted and injected away their lucrative futures. Stability was the most remarkable thing about Dunbar—Wingate accidentally breaking a hotel TV is about as heinous as it got for the Poets—and Danois’s writing highlights that fact.
As a basketball fan, reading about Williams and Lewis soaring above the rim is thrilling, but Danois isn’t trying to make each game seem like the championship in Hoosiers. Dunbar was dominant, and even though there were some doubters in the national media, they steamrolled through basically every opponent. Still, the author knows when to play things up, and one of the book’s more captivating stretches comes in the lead-up to a game against New Jersey’s Camden High School, the immovable object that many thought would put a halt to Dunbar’s unstoppable force. The scene works so well in part because Danois writes about most of the games to resemble what they were: blowouts.
Danois does a terrific job building tension until the last possible moment:“After scanning the hunger and intensity etched into the faces of his players, Wade inhaled deeply. He smiled and dispatched his team upstairs. But before doing so, he had the final word. ‘They want to see a show, let’s give them a show,’ he instructed.” Overall though, he lets the players recount the tales, and there’s a palpable nostalgia, even from the ones who made it to the NBA, about those Dunbar years.
The Boys of Dunbar touches on some of the darker issues related to college recruiting and the difficult circumstances commonly faced by African-Americans in inner cities, but largely it’s a basketball purist’s exploration of a juggernaut they likely knew little about. It’s difficult to project how the book would appeal to a casual fan, but for anyone with an appreciation of what it takes to play the sport beautifully, this book will prove an absolute page-turner waiting to be devoured.
Publisher:
Simon & Schuster
Pages:
288
QUOTED: "It’s not only well written by its Brooklyn-born author, Alejandro Danois, but captivating on a number of levels. It’s surely more than simply a book about the Dunbar Poets—a winning and acclaimed public high school basketball team—from the hard streets of East Baltimore. At a deeper level, it’s an inspiring tale about the magnificence of the human spirit."
"Alejandro Danois has written a gem of a sports story. It belongs in the library of all lovers of high school athletics."
REVIEW: THE BOYS OF DUNBAR: A STORY OF LOVE, HOPE, AND BASKETBALL BY ALEJANDRO DANOIS (REVIEWED BY BILL HUGHES)
September 30, 2016 · by jmwwblog · in Reviews. ·
book-coverThe Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball
by Alejandro Danois
288 pages
Simon & Schuster, 2016
ISBN:978-1451666977
I know it’s a cliche, but I found it hard to put down The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball. It’s not only well written by its Brooklyn-born author, Alejandro Danois, but captivating on a number of levels. It’s surely more than simply a book about the Dunbar Poets—a winning and acclaimed public high school basketball team—from the hard streets of East Baltimore. At a deeper level, it’s an inspiring tale about the magnificence of the human spirit played out in the lives of young people who had to learn to survive, struggling to do their best daily in the crime-ridden housing projects, in very difficult, challenging and often dangerous times.
Sports, basketball, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School helped to focus their lives. Their names: Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues, Gary Graham, David “Gate” Wingate, Reggie “Russ” Willams, Reggie “Truck” Lewis, and Tim Dawson, along with nine other darn good players, will long be associated with this celebrated team. But at center stage in their story is Dunbar’s 1981-1982 (29-0), undefeated basketball season. The team was led by its stellar, 5’3’’ point guard, Muggsy. Its head coach (and father figure) was Bob Wade. Wade had earlier learned his craft serving as an assistant coach at Dunbar under the incomparable, late William “Sugar” Cain, whose reign as head coach lasted 32 successful years.
Wade, also an ex-NFL cornerback, comes across in the book as a mix of a brilliant basketball strategist and a hard-as-nails U.S. Marine Corp drill instructor. Wade once played under NFL’s legendary coach Vince Lombardi (then with the Washington Redskins), so you can see where he may have inherited some of that tough guy, take-another-lap-around-the-field persona.
The 1980-1981 season ended on a bit of a bummer. They lost to my alma mater, the Calvert Hall Cardinals, coached by the Catholic League legend, Mark Amatucci, (94-91), at the Towson Center before a capacity audience. The game went into triple overtime. The Poets were “actually winning by nine points with less than two minutes to play in regulation,” writes Danois.
After that bitter defeat, Wade and his team were committed to the 1981-1982 season—not only for it to be a winning one but to also extract some revenge on the boy-ohs from Towson, who wore the Cardinal & Gold uniforms. From the first practice session (incidentally they usually lasted about four hours) Wade pushed hard to create a mindset of victory, no matter how high the price.
Author Danois take you game by important game through the season. He also tells you, at time, poignantly, what was going on inside the sometimes-difficult families lives of the players. It rings with the pain-filled truth. But, despite the roadblocks, the setbacks, the players (and their family supporters) soldiered onward.
Lurking on the perimeter of this story are the ubiquitous drug dealers who have been ravaging and causing havoc in the black neighborhoods. The 1981-1982 Dunbar team knew what had happened to one of the schools’ greatest basketball stars, Allen “Skip” Wise. He was “The Man” on its team in the early 1970s.
Wise only lasted one year at the U. of Clemson, turned pro, and then became a serious drug user. He also served time for drug-related offenses. Wade’s players knew that this could be their fate too, if they hung around with the wrong characters.
Besides drugs, Danois also mentions another curse that had seriously impacted on all the blue-collar neighborhoods in the city in the late 1970s and early 1980s, particularly in black East Baltimore—“deindustrialization.” The globalist schemers pushed through trade agreements like NAFTA that robbed our country of many of its steel mills, shipyards, and booming manufacturing plants, such as the Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point plant in South Baltimore. (To learn more, go to: http://economyincrisis.org)
After the breadwinner lost his job, Danois underscores, in some of the cases, “these teenage drug dealers became their family’s main wage earners.” As the years progress, he writes ominously, the drug dealers have become “younger and younger.”
Like in many stories of this kind, there are a host of unsung heroes. One of them is Leon Howard. He ran the Lafayette Projects’ Rec center. He was Muggsy’s first mentor. Another hero was the long time principal of Dunbar, the late Mrs. Julia B. Woodland. She was a first class motivator who insisted on the surrounding communities being an “integral part of the school community.”
I’m not going to tell you if Wade’s Dunbar team got its revenge on Calvert Hall—you’ll have to read the book to get the answer to that one. He does write, however, about each of the team’s players and how they fared after Dunbar, including that “eighth wonder of the world”—Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues. Alejandro Danois has written a gem of a sports story. It belongs in the library of all lovers of high school athletics. Bottom line—The Boys of Dunbar is a winner!
QUOTED: "Danois’s narrative takes readers aboard for spirited team bus rides and inside Wade’s grueling practices: He had the Poets carry bricks in each hand and wear sand-filled backpacks to increase their strength and stamina. The author also takes us inside the apartments of the ballplayers as family issues arise, and courtside for thrilling games against schools favored to defeat the upstart team with the tiny point guard. Former players recount the year, as do recreation leaders, opposing coaches, players’ relatives and Wade."
"The result is a work that expertly re-creates not only a season but the mood of a growing sport."
How a five-foot, three-inch dynamo helped change high school basketball
Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues, No. 14, overcame derision and low expectations surrounding his diminutive size on the court. ( Gene Boyars/Simon & Schuster )
By Bijan C. Bayne September 23, 2016
Bijan C. Bayne is the author of “Martha’s Vineyard Basketball: How a Resort League Defied Notions of Race & Class” and “Elgin Baylor: The Man Who Changed Basketball.”
Hit cable-TV shows about the drug trade. The death of Freddie Gray and subsequent unrest. Racially biased law enforcement. These are the images that flood the mind these days when we think of urban Baltimore. What about close-knit families? Inspiration? Educational excellence? What about hope? In “The Boys of Dunbar,” Alejandro Danois gives us a portrait of a Baltimore where these qualities predominate. His tale of the basketball exploits of a handful of high school students in the 1980s shows young men motivated by their coach and other recreation leaders to dream beyond the hardship of their geography.
Thirty-five years ago, U.S. high school basketball began a transition from a regional sport marked by limited national recruiting, a few popular national champions, a lack of funding for travel and only a few players known outside their own regions. East Baltimore’s Dunbar High School was one of several area schools, including DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Md., that helped inspire change. Unlike DeMatha, which first gained national attention in February 1965 after ending the 71-game winning streak of New York City’s Power Memorial High School and its 7-foot-1-inch center, Lew Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), Dunbar was a public school, located in economically challenged East Baltimore.
Danois provides historical context for the decline in shipyard and factory employment, and the associated despair and drug sales, that hardened East Baltimore and other segregated sections of the city into often dangerous areas made famous by TV series such as “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “The Wire.” The book primarily focuses on the Dunbar Poets’s 1981-82 season under veteran coach Bob Wade, an early 1960s graduate of the school. Wade employed rigorous endurance training and imposed strict academic standards on his players. He also familiarized himself with the boys’ off-court life at home.
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"The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball" by Alejandro Danois (Simon & Schuster)
The least likely Poets player was Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues, a 5-foot-3-inch leader who faced derision and low expectations each time Dunbar faced a school that had never watched the diminutive dynamo in action. Bogues grew up in Baltimore’s huge Lafayette Courts housing project, which became the feeder community for Dunbar High School sports. The 1980-81 Poets were a formidable team, though they lost a triple-overtime city title game to the Catholic school Calvert Hall. Coach Wade thought the addition of Bogues made Dunbar a squad without weaknesses. Bogues was a tireless sparkplug of the fast break and could not only disrupt opposing playmakers but also submarine big men and wing players in double-teams that resulted in steals.
The author introduces us to the compelling family stories of the ’81-’82 Poets. Bogues, who was inspired to play by his older sister Sherron and another player at Dunbar, David Wingate, was too embarrassed to tell schoolteachers that his occasional tardiness was because he had to get his mom, who used a wheelchair, settled, downstairs and fed before he left for school. We learn about rail-thin Reggie Lewis, the quiet sixth man whose mom, Inez, had her first heart attack at age 17 and was diagnosed with a heart murmur and leaky valves, and about his brother Jon, who had a hole in his heart. Their teammates included jumpshooter Gary Graham, whose big brother Ernie had starred at the University of Maryland before succumbing to drug abuse; 6-foot-7-inch scoring machine Reggie “Russ” Williams; and center Tim Dawson. In early practices there were heated rivalries, with Bogues and Williams, who grew up as teammates for the nearby Lafayette Recreation Center, on one side and Wingate, who was from the crosstown Cecil Kirk Recreation Center, on the other. Wade wisely allowed the beefs to play out, and the boys evolved into a cohesive unit known for disciplined offensive patterns, a suffocating full-court press spearheaded by Muggsy and high-flying finishes.
But 1981-82 was a different season in the high school game. Dunbar, not considered by national and some local media as Baltimore’s premier team, faced stiff challenges. The team was scheduled to play a tournament in Harlem and other competitive games across the country, and had to face the nation’s No. 1 ranked school, Camden (N.J.) High, which starred 6-foot -8-inch Billy Thompson, widely regarded as the top prospect in the country. In 1981, recruiting, ranking, scouting and elite tournaments were becoming more national in nature. Highly rated teams traveled out of town to test their mettle early in the season or in preseason scrimmages. USA Today, a new publication, ranked the top 25 boys programs each week. Sports Illustrated devoted more attention to high school ball. The McDonald’s All-American Game near Washington brought in the top 12 U.S. players to face the D.C. area’s best.
Danois’s narrative takes readers aboard for spirited team bus rides and inside Wade’s grueling practices: He had the Poets carry bricks in each hand and wear sand-filled backpacks to increase their strength and stamina. The author also takes us inside the apartments of the ballplayers as family issues arise, and courtside for thrilling games against schools favored to defeat the upstart team with the tiny point guard. Former players recount the year, as do recreation leaders, opposing coaches, players’ relatives and Wade.
The result is a work that expertly re-creates not only a season but the mood of a growing sport. The Harlem trip opened the players’ eyes to a side of life even they had not witnessed. Danois reveals the care and support of the players’ parents and extended families, and how the boys inherited a work ethic and respect for others. On the street, grown-ups approached the players, telling them how much their accomplishments meant to a city struggling with hard times. Everywhere, the boys were buoyed to keep up the good work and put a positive face on “B’more.”
In Danois’s crisp telling, the Poets demonstrate their confidence and will on the court, and Bogues exerts his dominance. Though Dunbar had fine teams before Wade arrived, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington and Detroit were considered the hotbeds of boys high school basketball. The boys of Dunbar forever changed that map. Their winning season also changed their lives. Bogues, Williams, Wingate and Lewis went on to college stardom and pro careers, though Lewis died of a heart attack as a Boston Celtics star at age 27. Their high school exploits set the stage for nationally televised games, recruiting websites, powerhouse urban and suburban AAU and travel teams, camps and tournaments sponsored by sneaker companies, and high school kids going directly to the NBA, until that league changed its policies concerning eligibility.
What unfortunately has not changed are the unemployment, dilapidated housing, inefficient public-transit system and police abuse that thrust Baltimore into recent national news.
‘Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball ‘ is a winner
BY BILL HUGHES · SEPTEMBER 29, 2016 · 0 COMMENTS
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I know it’s a cliche, but I found it hard to put down this book: “The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball.” I discovered it was not only well written by its Brooklyn, NY-born author, Alejandro Danois, but captivating on a number of levels.
It is surely more than simply a book about the Dunbar Poets – a winning and acclaimed public high school basketball team – from the hard streets of black East Baltimore.
unnamedAt a deeper level, it’s an inspiring tale about the magnificence of the human spirit played out in the lives of young people. They had to learn to survive, struggling to do their best daily in the crime-ridden housing projects, in very difficult, challenging and often dangerous times.
Sports, basketball and Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School helped to focus their lives. Their names: Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues, Gary Graham, David “Gate” Wingate, Reggie “Russ” Willams, Reggie “Truck” Lewis and Tim Dawson, along with nine other darn good players, will long be associated with this celebrated team.
At center stage in their story is Dunbar’s 1981-82 (29-0), undefeated basketball season. The team was led by its stellar, 5’3’’ point guard, Muggsy. Its head coach, and father figure, was Bob Wade. Wade had earlier learned his craft serving as an assistant coach at Dunbar under the incomparable, late William “Sugar” Cain, whose reign as head coach lasted 32 successful years.
Wade, also an ex-NFL cornerback, comes across in the book as a mix of a brilliant basketball strategist and a hard-as-nails U.S. Marine Corp drill instructor! Wade once played under NFL’s legendary coach Vince Lombardi, (then, with the “Washington Redskins”). So, you can see where he may have inherited some of that tough guy, take-another-lap-around-the-field persona.
unknownThe 1980-81 season ended on a bummer note for the Poets. They lost to my alma mater, the Calvert Hall Cardinals, coached by the Catholic League legend, Mark Amatucci, (94-91), at the Towson Center before a capacity audience. The game went into triple overtime. The Poets were “actually winning by nine points with less than two minutes to play in regulation,” wrote Danois.
After that bitter defeat, Wade & his team, were committed to the 81-82 season – not only for it to be a winning one, but to also extract some sweet revenge on the boy-ohs from Towson, who wore the Cardinal & Gold uniforms. From the first practice session – (incidentally they usually lasted about four hours) – Wade pushed hard to create a mindset of victory, no matter how high the price.
Author Danois take you game by important game through the season. He also tells you, at time, poignantly, what was going on inside the sometimes difficult families lives of the players. It rings with the pain-filled truth. But, despite the roadblocks, the setbacks, the players (and their family supporters) soldiered onward.
Lurking on the perimeter of this story are the ubiquitous drug dealers who have been ravaging, and causing havoc in the black neighborhoods. The 81-82 Dunbar team knew what had happened to one of the schools’ greatest basketball stars, Allen “Skip” Wise. He was “The Man” on its team in the early 70s.
Wise only lasted one year at the U. of Clemson, turned pro and then became a serious drug user. He also served time for drug related offenses. Wade’s players knew that this could be their fate too, if they hung around with the “wrong characters.”
Besides drugs, Danois also mentions another curse, that had seriously impacted on all the blue collar neighborhoods in the city – in the “late 70s and early 80s,” particularly in black East Baltimore – “deindustrialization.” The globalist schemers pushed through unfair Trade Agreements, like NAFTA, that robbed our country of many of its steel mills, shipyards and booming manufacturing plants, such as the Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point plant.
After the breadwinner lost his job, Danois underscores, in some of the cases, “these teenage drug dealers became their family’s main wage earners.” As the years progress, he writes ominously, the drug dealers have become “younger and younger.”
As a former soccer player who went to the University of Baltimore on a sports scholarship, I could identify with the importance of basketball in the lives of the Dunbar players.
Like in many stories of this kind, there are a host of unsung heroes. One of them is Leon Howard. He ran the Lafayette Projects’ Rec center. He was Muggsy’s first mentor. Another hero was the long time principal of Dunbar, the late Mrs. Julia B. Woodland. She was a first class motivator, who insisted on the surrounding communities being an “integral part of the school community.”
I’m not going to tell you if Wade’s Dunbar team got its revenge on Calvert Hall. You will have to read the book to get the answer to that one. The author does write, however, about each of the team’s players and how they did after Dunbar, including that “eighth wonder of the world” – Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues.
Summing up, Alejandro Danois has written a gem of a sports story. It belongs in the library of all lovers of high school athletics. Bottom line: The book, “The Boys of Dunbar,” is a winner.
- See more at: http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/boys-dunbar-story-love-hope-basketball-winner/2016/09/29#sthash.wfEDL3gP.dpuf
QUOTED: "The Boys of Dunbar is a book about high school basketball. But it is much more than that."
Alejandro Danois
The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball
Published by Simon & Schuster
Sep 22, 2016 WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Frank Valish
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Basketball lovers of a certain age will always remember Muggsy Bogues, the 5'3" point guard who was more than a foot shorter than most players yet played with grit, pluck, determination, and marvelous skill. The Boys of Dunbar tells the story of the 1981-82 Dunbar Poets, Bogues' high school team from impoverished East Baltimore that went undefeated and spawned several future NBA talents.
Those Poets, which included future NBA players Reggie Lewis, David Wingate, Reggie Williams, and Bogues, was the best in the nation, a team of kids from the inner city who overcame an environment filled with drugs and crime to reach ultimate heights. Danois' tale provides background on each of the team's members, as well as disciplinarian taskmaster coach Bob Wade, and follows the team's undefeated season, chronicling each win.
Yes, The Boys of Dunbar is a book about high school basketball. But it is much more than that. If one has patience to wade through the stats and game recollections, one will find that The Boys of Dunbar is a book about survival, a book about perseverance, a story about hard work and overcoming obstacles. Bogues is central to the tale, the story of the shortest player to ever play a tall man's game at the highest level. The courage, leadership, and drive are remarkable, and The Boys of Dunbar chronicles it from its beginning. (www.simonandschuster.com)
Author rating: 7/10
QUOTED: "Back then, high school basketball meant something. ... Now kids are more concerned with playing in summer showcases. The book is a reminder of what the game was and what it must become again."
"I started out writing a book about basketball. ... I spent time in the archives at Enoch Pratt and realized it goes way deeper than that."
New Book Provides Front Row Seat To City's Greatest High School Team
By: Dean Smith, October 17, 2016
When he walked off the court after Dunbar's triple overtime loss to Calvert Hall during the 1980-81 season, legendary head coach Bob Wade locked eyes with Tyrone "Muggsy" Bogues, who was in the bleachers, and shrugged his shoulders. Wade and Bogues both knew a true point guard would have secured Dunbar's 9-point lead with less than two minutes remaining. Bogues submitted his transfer papers from Southern High for his junior year and joined Coach Wade.
Alejandro Danois' riveting new book, "The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope and Basketball" reveals the backstory of the greatest team in Baltimore high school basketball history through a series of unforgettable moments like this one.
Beginning with the first practice of the 1981-82 season, Danois takes readers inside the gymnasiums, the games, the chalk talks, the bus rides, the hotels, the summer camps and the players' homes, where they overcame the day-to-day struggle of life in Baltimore to bring national prominence to their school and their city.
"Back then, high school basketball meant something," Danois said. "Now kids are more concerned with playing in summer showcases. The book is a reminder of what the game was and what it must become again."
A sports journalist, Ali Danois grew up on the basketball courts of Brooklyn where word traveled north about a team from Baltimore with bench players going to Division I schools and a point guard mistakenly called "Buggsy."
Issue 226: The Boys Of Dunbar (cover, inside article only)
In the book, Danois captures a Baltimore in transition during the early 1980s, when recreation centers and their directors, like Leon Howard, held the frayed edges of the community together by setting up basketball hoops. A new breed of younger and more aggressive drug dealers had emerged, and manufacturing jobs disappeared as plants closed down.
"Crime was on the rise," Danois said. "Outdoor drug markets went into operation and turf wars began."
The story revolves around Wade and the four stars who made it into the NBA: Bogues, Reggie "Russ" Williams, David "Gate" Wingate and sixth man Reggie "Truck" Lewis, who died of a heart attack at 27. They were Baltimore boys with distinctive personalities who fought for each other, and Danois' depiction evokes the characters in Barry Levinson's movie, "Diner."
Wade's practices come to life in the book, with players lugging bricks while they ran suicides. He coached with military precision, emphasizing preparation and defense. He also ensured his players carried themselves with dignity off the court by keeping tabs on them through a vast community network he established when he attended Dunbar decades before. When the boys strayed, he was often waiting when they returned from their capers.
"He'd known them all since they were playing on milk crates as toddlers," Danois said. "It was his mother's voice pushing him that he used to coach the team. He didn't have a father."
"The Boys of Dunbar" tackles the issue regarding the real No. 1 team in the nation that year, Calvert Hall or Dunbar. Both teams played the No. 1 ranked Camden Panthers, and the possibility of a matchup between the Cards and the Poets percolates throughout the narrative. The showdown between Dunbar and Camden High in New Jersey is one the strongest chapters in the book. The Panthers hadn't lost a home game since 1977. When fans first glimpsed the 5-foot-3 point guard called Muggsy, they started pointing and laughing.
"I'm going to have the last laugh," he told his coach.
Muggsy steals the show for most of the book as well -- racing around the pages making steals, recording assists and defying a lifetime of detractors, including the late five-star guru, Howard Garfinkel, who believed he was too small. An underdog with a chip on his shoulder, Bogues becomes a metaphor for the city of Baltimore.
"Muggsy has an incredible memory," Danois said. "We'd get on conference calls, and he'd remember players who liked to dribble high and the exact moments in games when he made steals."
As a kid in Brooklyn, Danois rebounded for his neighbor Lorenzo Charles, who won a national championship with North Carolina State.
"We'd watch the court from our apartment windows," he said. "When he appeared, my friend and I would start yelling, 'Lo is on the court!'"
He followed the Dunbar players through their college and pro careers and pitched the story a decade ago to a magazine editor who told him to write a book. He now lives in Baltimore and is working on an ESPN "30 for 30" film account of the team.
"I started out writing a book about basketball," Danois said. "I spent time in the archives at Enoch Pratt and realized it goes way deeper than that."