Black Planet, David Shieldss diary of the 199495 Seattle SuperSonics NBA seasona self-conscious deconstruction of fandom, media, and racechanged sports journalism.
Critically acclaimed and highly controversial, Black Planet was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN USA Award and was named a Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 1999 by Esquire, Newsday, and LA Weekly.
During the 19941995 NBA season, David Shields attended nearly all of the Seattle SuperSonics home games; watched on TV nearly all their away games; listened to countless pre- and post-game interviews and call-in shows on the radio; spoke or tried to speak to players, coaches, agents, journalists, fans, his wife; corresponded with members of the Sonics newsgroup on the internet; read innumerable articles.
Although Im a passionate basketball fan and Sonics fan, Shields wrote in the authors note to the original publication of Black Planet, I wasnt interested in the game per sewho won, who lost, the minutiae of strategy. I was interested in how the game gets talked about. By the end of the season Id accumulated hundreds of pages of often utterly illegible notes, the roughest of rough drafts. Over the next three years I transformed those notes into this booka daily journal that runs the length of one teams long-forgotten season and that is now focused, to the point of obsession, on how white people (including especially myself) think about and talk about black heroes, black scapegoats, black bodies.
Black Planet changed sports journalism and remains a prophetic book on America and race. This edition features a new foreword by Bryan Curtis.
