writesdave's review
3.0
With the distance of a few years, I don't buy Mitchie's assertions that he didn't know these guys were on the take. For all the time he spent with them, he had to know something and it was his duty to report it. That, plus his yen for embellishing things in his other books (and apparently in his column writing) call the plausibility seriously into question. The rating owes largely to the access he had with his subjects, a hard thing to do in any era of journalism – not that the Fab Five WEREN'T open books, anyway.
paulogonzalez's review
3.0
This is a story about extremes, originality, city meeting suburbs, veterans meeting rookies, white meeting black, noise meeting quiet. A story about the Greatest Class Ever Recruited in college basketball. With their bald heads, black socks, long shorts, coolness and highlight film style, Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson became American celebrities.
This is an entertaining book on an iconic team, which was written right after Chris Webber left the team to go pro. I think some time was needed to correctly assess this team's influence as a cultural reference. Besides, years later we knew that the Wolverine basketball program was punished with sanctions due to violations to NCAA rules. As a result, coach Steve Fisher was fired in 1997 (subsequently, the NCAA investigation did not find him culpable of significant wrongdoing related to the scandal) and the 1992 and 1993 appearances in the Tournament both were erased. 1992 and 1993, just the seasons in which the Fab Five were part of the team.
None of all this appears in the book, and it changes a little my vision on the facts narrated, especially those concerning the recruitment process. But of course, recruitment is a central part of the story. Without the further NCAA investigation this history seems to me a bit outdated, the book has aged badly. Not that I agree with NCAA policy's, that I am not because it seems to me an organization that takes advantage of athletes.
This is an entertaining book on an iconic team, which was written right after Chris Webber left the team to go pro. I think some time was needed to correctly assess this team's influence as a cultural reference. Besides, years later we knew that the Wolverine basketball program was punished with sanctions due to violations to NCAA rules. As a result, coach Steve Fisher was fired in 1997 (subsequently, the NCAA investigation did not find him culpable of significant wrongdoing related to the scandal) and the 1992 and 1993 appearances in the Tournament both were erased. 1992 and 1993, just the seasons in which the Fab Five were part of the team.
None of all this appears in the book, and it changes a little my vision on the facts narrated, especially those concerning the recruitment process. But of course, recruitment is a central part of the story. Without the further NCAA investigation this history seems to me a bit outdated, the book has aged badly. Not that I agree with NCAA policy's, that I am not because it seems to me an organization that takes advantage of athletes.
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