Game Face

September 25, 2017
King, the prolific scorer and NBA Hall of Famer, played basketball with a scowl, and, as he explains in this honest if uneven memoir, his game face arose from darkness. He grew up in 1960s Fort Greene, Brooklyn: his father, who worked for the Housing Department, was a stoic recluse devoted to his Bible and church; King’s mother routinely beat him with a strap and kitchen broom. King writes that his game face “allowed me to shut out the hurt, protect myself from the outside world.” The basketball court was “the only place I felt free,” King writes. That passion brought him massive success, including captaining his hometown Knicks in the mid-’80s. The first half of the book is a tender, gripping portrait of a young man seeking salvation. It’s when this pain festers years later that King retreats from his personal story and turns to stories from the court. He glosses over his recovery from alcoholism and a failed first marriage that he entered into to look stable for NBA executives. His ongoing relationship with his parents is only given surface treatment, save for a poignant resolution with his mother. The memoir is solid, but could have been memorable if King were as fearless on the page as he was on the court.