Dribbling a Basketball on the Road to Damascus

A coming-of-age novel that takes us from a very tall boy’s discovery of his love of basketball to a young man who engages in point-shaving while a college player on his way to NBA brilliance with a shadow hanging over him—a book that sheds light on both the sheer beauty and some of the ugliness in the game.

A bildungsroman and the most autobiographical yet of Charley Rosen’s many works of fiction, nonfiction and reportage on the subject of basketball, Dribbling a Basketball on the Road to Damascus tells the story of the life of Chazz Klein, a power forward and elite scorer who starts at Metropolitan College and ends up on the Knicks by way of the Detroit Pistons. Klein loves the game that helped him survive his childhood and find meaning. But his awkwardness early in life also stays with him, as both love and long-lasting meaning elude him except in small doses. And yet he does achieve, across the journey represented in these pages, that rarest of gifts, a kind of humility, an acceptance of himself, and the peace that goes with that.