45 books like Inaugural Ballers

Body image issues affect so many of us, and it can feel particularly acute in the middle school years, when our bodies are undergoing so much change. Though it’s been decades, I palpably remember how strange my growth spurt felt from the inside and how it changed my confidence.

In Alyson Gerber’s excellent book, Sarah is used to excelling on the basketball court, but when the shots stop falling, she’s quick to blame her changing physique and takes matters into her own hands to rectify things by drastically altering her eating habits.

Gerber handles this material with empathy and compassion, never talking down to the reader or getting preachy. Whatever your gender (body image issues are hardly limited to girls), there’s so much to relate to in this story.

It’s obvious from the first page that Barbara Carroll Roberts has spent hundreds (thousands?) of hours in stuffy gyms. Her know-how of the AAU circuit and the politics of competitive middle school basketball seep into the story in a way that will be recognized by current players.

I loved that aspect of the story, but even more, I loved the way this book honors the range of real-life issues affecting a player off the court, whether it’s the financial constraints due to being raised by a single parent or how differently a family tree project resonates when your dad is a sperm donor. Readers will find it impossible not to root for Nikki.

Every baller has a player they absolutely idolize, whether it’s someone who makes the Sportscenter highlight reels on the regular or the best dunker at their local basketball court. For Shot Clock’s Tony, it’s Dante, who took his AAU team to the championships twice. But when Dante is killed by a police officer, everything changes.

This book brings you all the exciting game action you’d expect from a book with that title and cover, but it’s also a story about grief and loss (a sweet spot for me, always) and the intersection of racial justice and sports. I can’t wait for the sequel coming out in fall 2024.

A graphic novel about girls’ basketball after the passing of Title IX? Sign me up!

This book takes readers into the early 1970s as Judy, Cindy, and Lisa join their school’s first-ever girls’ basketball team. Tavares is best known for his beautiful picture books, but here he crafts a completely winning story that’s as much about basketball as it is a slice of life in the seventies. Current middle schoolers will be blown away by the differences between then and now, both on and off the court.

I gobbled this book up in less than an hour, but I keep coming back to it again and again because there’s just that much to appreciate with the combination of the visual elements and the text. 

I personally don’t think there are enough books on the shelves about Women in Sports. Although this is a middle grade book, I thoroughly enjoyed how the author brought her chosen athletes to life. Ignostofsky also illustrated the book and that added another dimension to the book that made it fun and entertaining. I was pleasantly surprised that she chose a few athletes who I hadn’t heard of. 

This novel of Aganetha, a 104-year-old woman who looks back on her years as a runner in the 1928 Olympics is as much a story about aging and the examination of one’s life, as it is about the glory days of her feat. I loved the idea of this woman at such an advanced age reflecting on her past, on what she has seen and experienced, and all the details of the events are beautifully rendered. This is an intimate yet propulsive novel that takes us through issues of gender equality, abortion, and all the obstacles that Aganetha would have faced as a female athlete.  

I was on lunch break one day in 2010 walking through Union Station in DC when I saw a very tall, elderly Black man seated at a table in the B. Dalton bookstore with a stack of books in front of him.

I smiled at him and he back and me, and then the man with him said, “Do you know who this is?” I said no. The man said “It’s Earl Lloyd, the first African American to play in the NBA.” It occurred to me then, as it has many times since, that most Americans know about Jackie Robinson breaking the color line in professional baseball, but until that moment I didn’t know who did the same in basketball.

And it wasn’t until 10 years later, when I finally read the book that Mr. Lloyd graciously signed for me, that I wished I’d talked with him about his remarkable… show more.

OK, I’m stretching a bit to include this on my list.

John Thompson made his mark on basketball as a college coach, not from his two years as Bill Russell’s back-up with the Celtics. But I’ve got a personal interest here: I was a student sportswriter at Georgetown from Coach Thompson’s second year as coach, and as a junior and senior got to attend his weekly press conferences with the student press. I’ve often said I learned more about life from those meetings in Coach’s office than I did from any other class at Georgetown.

I feel the same about this book, written with Andscape senior writer Jesse Washington. If you read this book you probably won’t agree with all of it, but I have no doubt that you’ll learn from it. 

While this book mirrors the template of Darcy Frey’s book and my own, following a high school basketball team through an entire season, the setting—an upper-class, genteel community of white suburbanites in Amherst, Massachusetts—is a world away from that of those stories, and, most importantly, the athletes are female. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author, through her elegant writing, brings a piercing understanding of the obstacles these girls face in the wake of Title IX as they prove their toughness, perseverance, and abilities in a sport traditionally dominated by men. 

David Halberstam's classic, a chronicle of the Portland Trailblazers during the 1979-80 season. Three years removed from a stunning run to the NBA title, and with their mercurial superstar, Bill Walton, injured and then traded, the Blazers scuffled through the long slog of the season, trying in vain to recapture old glory. The book isn't just a chronicle of a team of interesting characters, though. It's an unflinching look at the cold financial calculus of professional sports and what it means when athletes know that they are, in the end, high-priced and expendable commodities. The book also captures the NBA at a critical inflection point in its history. It became a predominantly black league in the 1970s and its popularity declined to the point that the finals were televised on tape delay. Halberstam, the players and management are acutely aware of the tightrope the sport was compelled to walk as… show more.