The Jump: Sebastian Telfair and the High-Stakes Business of High School Ball: Sebastian Telfair and the High-Stakes Business of High School Ball

Sebastian Telfair was born into a poor family that lived in a bad neighborhood filled with violence and drugs in Brooklyn, New York. His dad was in and out of jail throughout his life and his mother struggled to work. The only provider he truly had was his older brother, an athlete who failed to make it to the next level, who failed to bring in the wealth like his now famous cousin Stephon Marbury did just a few years before. With Sebastian being one of the last children growing up in the Telfair family he was made into the last hope at a luxurious lifestyle. Sebastian Telfair had always avoided the dangers of his neighborhood. Instead of being up to no good like some of his peers, he just played basketball all day long. Eventually Telfair became skilled in the sport like no other his age. In fact, as a 10-year-old he was actually ranked the best 4th grader in America Throughout his teen years he continued to persevere in his basketball dreams by winning numerous basketball tournaments and then excelling at Lincoln High School. After his four year run there, he came to an important decision in his life. Should he go to college or straight to the NBA? At first he said he would attend Louisville but the money was just too tempting and Telfair went straight to the NBA as the 13th pick by the Portland Trailblazers. As a rookie Telfair struggled; many of his critics claimed he should have gone to college to become more polished. Now he's getting prepared for his sophomore season hoping to make more of an impact. The Jump was very descriptively written. Almost everything talked about in the book had some kind of background information included with it so that the reader would never be unaware of something. The story of Sebastian Telfair's life has its share of drama, so naturally his biography will too. From his past coaches trying to follow him to glory, to people trying to pressure him into life changing decisions, just about every page was filled with dramatic situations. Another factor that made me enjoy this book was all of the detailed basketball action that made it seem as though I was actually watching the game. For readers of all kinds, especially sports fans, this book will be a very appealing. O'Connor did a great job of implementing detail into this biography. Not only did he elaborate extensively on Sebastian Telfair's background, but he did the same for almost every other person Telfair knew or encountered. For example, when writing about Sebastian as a junior high student playing for the Juice All-Stars of Brooklyn he described the coach, Ziggy Scaginano, and his past fully. A reader can really tell that O'Connor has done his research by all the information provided. Probably the most interesting part of the book was all of the drama. The story of Sebastian Telfair's life written in The Jump seems perfect for a day- time soap opera. His dad and his brother were constantly having run-ins with the law while his mother had to stay home t

In "The Jump", Ian O'Connor takes the case of Sebastian Telfair (a talented if undersized NYC point guard) to document the wholesale marketing of basketball as merely an outlet for businessmen and agents to exploit the very stars they need. Telfair himself is an intense but likable young athelete who comes across as more than just the sum of his shoe company endorsements and shady high school coach's dealings. And O'Connor masterfully describes the various elements that make basketball what it is today, on the high-school level. Sebastian (or "Bassy") Telfair is the product of an inner-city enviroment that promises little to many of his peers. Nonetheless, he is blessed with an unnatural ability to command the ball and also interact with his teammates in an unselfish style that seperates him from the ball-hogging "gangstas" that dominate the NBA. In Telfair, O'Connor finds a unique case study for his look at the way money can corrupt even the best atheletes. Telfair is smarter than most, able to avoid the pitfalls of financial entanglements while still a "amateur" status. But he has his own problems off the court. Telfair's father Otis, a Vietnam vet, was a nonentity during his son's formative years due to a prison conviction. His older brother Sylvester, also in and out of trouble with the law, figured prominently in concerns over Sebastian's ability to land with a team in the 2004 draft. And the neighborhood he grew up in on Coney Island is one of the worst in the country. Through it all, Telfair has his talent and his backers to keep him from becoming another statistic. As documented in "The Jump", Telfair is the local celebrity, and he is able to navigate through the tension of inner-city life because he has the chance to make it out. Telfair is surrounded by all sorts of hangers-on who want to ride him to glory: Ziggy Scaginano(sic), the former coach who first pinpointed Sebastian for greatness; Tiny Morton, Bassy's high school coach who falls under investigation for his participation in various tournaments for cash; Sonny Vaccaro, the former Adiddas and ReeBok chief who first courts Telfair then trys to undermine him allegedly; Stephon Marbury, Telfair's famous (and in the Telfair household, infamous) cousin; Rick Pitino, the college coach who banked on Telfair attending school instead; and a host of executives from NBA teams and sneaker companies, all with their eyes on the prize that is the Next Big Thing. And in their eyes, that Next Big Thing is a point guard named Sebastian Telfair. It would be fair to say that I'm not a huge basketball fan; I enjoy the game, but know little about it. In "The Jump", I think it's fair to say even a non-NBA fan would find something worthy to read. Whether it's Telfair's own struggles to transcend his enviroment without losing his soul, or the various goings-on that conspire to make his jump to the pros all that more difficult, O'Connor never loses sight of the narrative flow that makes this compelli

Given the number of pointless, puff-piece biographies about many young athletes, I can understand why some might worry about the substance of this work. However, it takes no more than a few pages to realize that O'Connor is not falling into any such trap. Instead, he has produced one of the best sports to come out in recent years, and one of the best basketball books I've ever read. I'm sure that even the casual sports fan is aware of Sebastian Telfair, given the magazine covers he graced during his senior year of high school basketball. Knowing a good subject when he sees it, O'Connor decided to follow the Telfair story on a personal level, talking to ST throughout his final year, as well as having discussions with everyone around him - and I mean everyone, including family, friends, teammates, high school and college coaches, ADs, scouts, etc. What we get is an incredibly detailed portrait of what it felt like to be Telfair during an absolutely crazy time in his life. While athletes are portrayed as vain and greedy, Telfair actually comes off very well in this book. It's not that O'Connor unfairly keeps him above the fray, it's just that Telfair seems like a genuinely good person who happens to be an incredibly gifted and hardworking athlete. The same, however, can't be said of his family. His parents, especially, come across as greedy and self-centered, always looking at how the success of Sebastian (as well as Stephon Marbury and Jamel Thomas before him) might help them out of their tough financial situations. Same goes for plenty of non-family members, who seem in many cases to feel that they're entitled to some kind of kickback for having helped Telfair get to where he is today. The writing is smooth and descriptive, never becoming bogged down too much with O'Connor's subjective views or wasted words. It's like reading a piece of fiction at times, given the fact that so many invovled come across as characters someone would have created if they didn't already exist. This is a masterpiece of sports writing, a truly great book, and I would recommend it to anyone, even those without a great interest in basketball.

The news reports give the brief versions of a promising high school student who skipps college to play with the pros. But here are the day to day details of a young man all of a sudden being put into play almost as a commodity. When amazing amounts of money are involved, amazing things happen. The colleges that would like to have the player hopefully lead them to championships, the agents, the shoe companies seeking yet another name to hang on their wall all begin to work their own special interests. To a young man from the projects, this has to be bewildering. Whose advice to follow? What is the best solution? What about college? What about the millions of dollars being offered? At 5' 11", is he too small, or is he good enough to make up for the small size? This is the day by day, decision by decision, event by event story of one young man as he starts his NBA career. It's a story very few will experience first hand, and it's almost unbelievable.