
In "There's Always This Year," MacArthur genius Hanif Abdurraqib transforms basketball into poetry, exploring how LeBron's rise mirrors our own dreams of ascension. "The sharpest writing of his career," raves bestselling author Shea Serrano - a love letter to hoops that transcends the court.
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December 2002. Three days after Christmas. White tourists edge nervously through a Columbus neighborhood, their eyes scanning telephone wires where shoes dangle like strange ornaments. To them, those shoes mean drugs, danger, territory. To those who live here, they might be a memorial-a young basketball player recently shot, someone whose name deserves to be remembered. Tonight, everyone's heading to Value City Arena, where LeBron James and his Akron team will face Columbus's Brookhaven Wildcats. The crowd will outnumber an Ohio State game played earlier that day. This isn't just basketball-it's about who gets witnessed, who gets remembered, and who decides what stories matter.
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