Taking Shots, By Keith Glass (Oh, I see what he did there.)

Keith Glass is a basketball agent. You may or may not have heard of him.

He isn't a powerhouse agent - you know, one of the ones that you've heard of, such as Arn Tellem or Mark Bartelstein. Indeed, unless you're exceptionally hardcore and boring like me, then you may have heard of him only from reading the literature of Paul Shirley, who is one of Glass's clients, and who neatly ties into Glass's self professed niche market of Tall White Boys. Glass's list of current and recent NBA clients is, as far as I can tell, limited to Shirley, Scott Skiles, Royal Ivey, Jackie Butler, Quincy Douby and Joseph Blair.

That list probably didn't get you semi-erect, no matter how much you love Scott Skiles.

Still, something else that you also probably didn't know about Keith Glass is that he has written a book, a somewhat autobiographical venture called "Taking Shots: Tall Tales, Bizarre Battles, and the Incredible Truth About the NBA".

(Ridiculously cheap second-hand copies of this book are available from Amazon Marketplace. I also bought an album by a band named Midget Handjob from there while buying this book, purely so that I could say that I got a midget handjob for £1.99. I lead an exciting life. But anyway, back to the topic at hand.)

This book is, in many ways, interesting. To say that may not seem like particularly incisive book reviewing on my part, but remember that I'm not a particularly incisive book reviewer. Nor am I a book reviewer at all. Nonetheless, "interesting" is still the most apt adjective that I can muster to describe the book, despite its chronic overuse.

I use "interesting" in place of "good", not because the book is bad, but because of some rather indefensible flaws.

The book covers topics as diverse as The Adventures of Thomas Hamilton (for those unaware, Thomas Hamilton was an NBA player in the 90's, represented by Glass, who was really really fat, and who had little interest in doing anything about that), Glass's days as an assistant coach to Larry Brown (for those unaware, this was for the UCLA Bruins in the 70's, when Keith had a truly shocking moustache), and the Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf saga (for those unaware, buy the damn book). With 13 chapters for 13 different mini-stories, interest (there's that word again) is peaked. If you're fascinated by Keith Glass the man, there's some to be found. If you're an avid collector of black and white photographs featuring a man with a jewfro in a black leather jacket, then this book should speak to you. If you're looking for some insight into how agents do what they do, there's some of that, too. And if you're looking for amusing tales of NBA people that you've heard of, then there's some of that thrown in as well.

But, undermining all of these high points are three flaws that shine through relentlessly:

1: The book suffers from really sloppy editing. Whether this is the fault of the editor (or lack thereof), or whoever printed this particular version of the book, I couldn't say. But it really is truly sloppy, with commas frequently in the wrong places, or missing altogether. Many names are misspelt, due to what can only be sloppy typing, unless someone out there really does think that the NBA Commissioner's name is Davis Stern. This might not seem like a deal breaker, but it is annoying, and really kills the cohesiveness of the writing - then again, with Glass's tendency to rant about whatever he wants whenever he wants, cohesiveness is never entirely secured anyway.

2) Keith repeats himself. Quite a lot.

3) A more apt title for the book would be "Why Everything That Went Wrong When Larry Brown Was Around Wasn't Larry Brown's Fault". (Glass and Brown's lives, both professional and personal, are heavily intertwined in ways that Glass elaborates fully on, and that I can't be bothered to explain. The offshoot of this is that Glass somehow works the topic of Larry Brown into pretty much every issue he talks about. And never is anything Larry's fault in Keith's stories.)


This gets amusing in places, for at times it borders upon the hallowed "Old Man's Amusing Rant About The Way Things Were" turf that can occasionally carry Boston Celtics broadcasts. Glass appears to have written the book to rant about things that piss him off, rather than to recant interesting tales for the purposes of entertainment. And that's fine. A positive side effect of this is Glass's staunch defiance and insistence that he is right, and also in several cases his willingness to call those out by name who have annoyed or wronged him. (This is something that his client Shirley could, and should, have done way more often in his book, which will be reviewed soon.)

Another positive side effect of Glass's ranting was when, while ranting about how to fix the USA's recent Olympic bronze medal winning woes, Keith's 'This Team Would Win Easily' roster included Quincy Douby and Jackie Butler. That was fun. I bet Paul Shirley was pissed off, though, for seemingly Jared Jeffries took his place.

But it also leads to agendas, as seen above with the frequent mentions of Larry Brown. Glass points out what he believes is wrong with the NBA, some of which is obvious, some of which is insightful, some of which still rings true, some of which has been corrected, and some of which he's just wrong about. His solutions to the problems are sometimes lacking, and sometimes not cohesive - for every good point addressed (e.g. the need to rectify the system in which as player can fire an agent with no forewarning or severance, as often as they so choose), he tells you something that you already know (we are all aware of the excessive timeouts at the end of games, and the NBA is aware enough of our awareness to have addressed it slightly), and something that makes you wonder where the hell he's going with it (players fouling out is far from the top of the NBA's problems list, Keith).


Taking Shots tells you a lot of things that you want to hear, and some other things that you never thought that you wanted to hear. It provides a genuinely insightful view into the workings of the NBA from an inside perspective, and sheds light on some luminary NBA personalities. All this is done with a small but pleasurable dollop of humourous garnish, as well as the bizarre inclusion of the aforementioned picture of his jacket. Yet in doing so, Glass sets out to prove some other points about things that are clearly bugging him, and the doesn't prove them very well.

And no matter how "interesting" the book is, that doesn't excuse having no one proof-reading it.