Leigh Montville TALL MEN, SHORT SHORTS: The 1969 NBA Finals: Wilt, Russ, Lakers, Celtics, and A Very Young Sports Reporter

Legendary, award-winning sportswriter Leigh Montville—former Boston Globe columnist, Sports Illustrated senior writer, and New York Times bestselling author of biographies covering the lives of athletes like Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, and Dale Earnhardt—has entertained sports fans and readers for five decades with his wry voice and razor-sharp insights. But even after his six critically acclaimed, bestselling biographies, Sports Illustrated cover stories, and decades of Globe columns, Montville has never written an autobiographical word. That changes with TALL MEN, SHORT SHORTS: The 1969 NBA Finals: Wilt, Russ, Lakers, Celtics, and A Very Young Sports Reporter (Doubleday). Already poised to be a new classic, TALL MEN, SHORT SHORTS weaves a fine thread of Montville’s own coming-of-age as a celebrated journalist into an absolutely riveting sports story: the 1969 NBA Finals. Considered one of the best championship series in sports history—seven games, West Coast vs. East Coast, ending with a massive upset—it was a classic battle between the Los Angeles Lakers (the first iteration of the Dream Team so familiar to us today) and Boston Celtics (widely regarded as the underdogs, past their prime after an unbelievable 12-season, 10-championship run), with two of the most legendary stars of the game in Wilt Chamberlain vs. Bill Russell who, even today, rank alongside Michael Jordan and LeBron James as two of the greatest players of all time. But beyond the breathtaking sports writing, Montville also steeps us in the nostalgia of 1969—the good and the ugly—when most professional sports teams were racially integrated but not always smoothly (see: Bill Russell’s comments about being a Black man in 1960s Boston) and sports fans didn’t quite know how to feel about it, all against the backdrop of Vietnam and an America in political, cultural, and racial turmoil, through the eyes of a very young, very green New England sportswriter. With lively and colorful coverage of the classic series, an epic cast of characters, Montville’s own charming narrative thread, and real contemporary resonance to our current political and racial tensions—exploding on and off the court, field, and pitch—TALL MEN, SHORT SHORTS will delight basketball fans old and new. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Three-time New York Times bestselling author Leigh Montville is a former columnist at The Boston Globe and former senior writer at Sports Illustrated. He is the author of Sting Like A Bee, Evel, The Mysterious Montague, The Big Bam, Ted Williams, At the Altar of Speed, Manute, and Why Not Us? He lives in Boston.