cover image On These Courts: 
A Miracle Season that Changed a City, a Once-Future Star, and a Team Forever

On These Courts: A Miracle Season that Changed a City, a Once-Future Star, and a Team Forever

Wayne B. Drash. Touchstone, $25 (288p) ISBN 978-1-4767-1021-1

Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway, the former pro-basketball star (who first played for the Orlando Magic), recently returned to his hometown of Memphis in a most unusual capacity: as middle school basketball coach. Hardaway initially volunteered to help head coach Desmond Merriweather, a longtime friend battling cancer. As Lester Middle School’s head coach for the 2012 season, Hardaway provided a positive male role model for players who desperately needed one and was a source of pride for a community long plagued by drugs and violence. What could have been a stirring account of a city looking for redemption, however, is turned mawkish and maudlin by Drash’s clumsy prose: “Penny let fly a three-pointer from so deep it seemed like he was standing across town at Elvis’s home, Graceland.” Drash attended a youth basketball camp with Hardaway—and his description of the experience is one of the few instances in which he portrays Hardaway as a human being rather than as a saint shepherding wayward youths. (May)