Description:
New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Abrams takes a deep dive into the lives and careers of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden, using their entangled paths as a lens to view the myriad facets of the player empowerment era.
It's one of the greatest "what ifs" in sports - what if the Thunder had kept Durant, Westbrook, and Harden, three of the league's young, exciting stars and future MVPs, together? Their departure from Oklahoma City begins two decades of repercussions for basketball and the formation of the modern NBA.
When We Were Young and Fearless is The Social Network for basketball. As he touches on universal themes of loyalty, money, power, friendship, class and lost innocence, Abrams ponders the central irony of athletic greatness: how much is an individual willing to sacrifice to win in a team sport?
Brief description: Jonathan Abrams is a reporter for The New York Times and the author of several books, including Boys Among Men, about the NBA's prep-to-pro generation, All the Pieces Matter, an oral history of The Wire, and The Come Up, an oral history of hip-hop. He lives In Charlotte, North Carolina.
Review Quotes:
"I run out of adjectives to describe the peerless Jonathan Abrams. Brilliant. Rigorous. Thoughtful. This mesmerizing, exhaustive book will make you smarter and help you understand the way power, youth and ego define today's game." -- Mirin Fader, New York Times bestselling author of Giannis and Dream
"A highly meticulous, incisive read on one of the most fascinatingly consequential teams in NBA history. When We Were Young and Fearless is more than a book about an NBA star trio. At its core, it's a coming-of-age story for three young men who each reached the pinnacle of individual success, but never got the chance to reach their peak collectively." -- Chris Herring, New York Times bestselling author of Blood in the Garden
"In this lazy era of vanilla hot takes, it'd be easy to think the NBA begins and ends with LeBron and Steph. But the great Jonathan Abrams reminds us--beautifully, richly, adeptly--that the league we know and love is largely the byproduct of a wild experiment in Oklahoma City featuring three future megastars and a fleet of visionaries. When We Were Young and Fearless isn't just an explanation of modern hoops--it's a roadmap." -- Jeff Pearlman, New York Times bestselling author of Three-Ring Circus and Showtime
"This isn't the story you think it is--which is that the Durant, Westbrook, Harden Thunder made it to one Finals together and never retuned after that. It's something bigger; better; more profound; and unexpected. And Jonathan Abrams, a gifted author and one of the finest true-blue sports journalists of the century, was the exact right person to tell it." -- Shea Serrano, New York Times bestselling author of Expensive Basketball and Basketball (and Other Things)
"With his great eye for detail and diligent work in tracking down dozens of sources, Jonathan Abrams delivers a masterclass of in-depth reporting and edge-of-your-seat storytelling on one of the greatest 'what ifs' in NBA history. You'll learn new things about Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden that buck the conventional narratives fans have of them, and along the way, re-live a transitional time for the NBA in a way only Abrams can tell." -- Chris Hine, author of Ant
"Abrams sheds whole beacons of new light on one of the greatest what-ifs in NBA history, fleshing out every character who made up this iconic Oklahoma City Thunder team--and unearthing new revelations about what brought them together and what ultimately broke them apart. Like all of Abrams work, a must-read for any sports fan--and anyone interested in what makes high-achieving humans tick." -- Zach Lowe
"It's truly mind-blowing, even all these years later, to recall just how loaded the Thunder were at the start of the 2010s--how brilliantly they'd drafted, how dominant they'd become, and how disappointing they would ultimately be. Drafting three generational stars in a three-year span is an incredible feat. That Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden would make just a single NBA Finals, and never win a title as teammates, is just as striking. Jonathan Abrams takes us back to a time when the Thunder were set to rule the NBA for a decade--and explains in vivid detail how that dream ultimately collapsed under the weight of expectations, ambition, and competing agendas." -- Howard Beck