Homecourt Advantage

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Ostensibly concerned with the women behind the men who move the ball for the fictional New York Flyers, this first novel from former and current basketball wives Ewing and McCrary wobbles unsteadily from the announcement by Alexis--wife of team owner Mike Mitchell--that the mostly African American team will be sold to a known bigot if they don't win the championship. The tie that binds the tales of the players' mates together is Casey Rogers, fantastically successful attorney and wife to Brent, star player for the Flyers. Their marital problems quickly steal the focus from the team's difficulties. From this tipoff, the novel weaves in and out, dribbling and passing the action from couple to couple. We get lots of sad but unconnected backstories, lots of catty infighting and (often justified) jealousies among the wives, all of whom are intensely (if predictably) aware that their husbands belong to the fans and owners more than to them. Meanwhile, the team itself tries to ignore the "personal fouls" in their lives and plays on as the pressure to win mounts and the episodic soap opera ticks away with the clock. Tritely and carelessly written, the book has too many howlers: "Naturally he did not forget to pack the brand-new Calvin Klein underwear for his road trip, unlike when he was at home with his drawers full of holes"; "He treated players like machines on a southern plantation." The book moves in fits and starts toward a predictable conclusion and fails to realize even the most fundamental possibilities of a good sports novel from the wives' point of view (readers would do better to try Balls, Nanci Kincaid's recent chronicle of football wives). (Nov.) FYI: McCrary is married to Greg Anthony of the Seattle Supersonics (formerly of the New York Knicks). Ewing was married to Patrick Ewing of the New York Knicks. Both women hold law degrees.

Library Journal

An insider's novel about women married to pro basketball stars, from the ex-wife of Knick Patrick Ewing and the wife of Seattle Supersonic Greg Anthony -- who are both members of the Bar as well.

Kirkus Reviews

Attorney and mother of three, Ewing is the ex-wife of New York Knick Patrick Ewing; McCrary is an entertainment lawyer married to Seattle Supersonic Greg Anthony. Between them they have a homecourt advantage in telling the stories of basketball wives.

The New York Flyers have never won an NBA championship trophy, though they've led the Eastern Conference for two years running. Now, management will sell the team and move it out of New York if they don't bring home a championship this year. The next six weeks of playoffs will be hell, with the players needing all the female comfort they can get. The story focuses less on the players than on the bonds holding their wives and girlfriends together: the coach's wife, Alexis Mitchell, skillful handler of the wives, who's much like a coach but as intent as her husband on the Flyers winning; newlywed attorney Casey Rogers, working 70 hours a week and married to the team's star forward Brent Rogers, who swears his fidelity to Casey and expects her to give up most of her legal work to care for him and his son by a former girlfriend; Trina Bellevile, who holds the whole sport in contempt and dresses down to show it; Kelly Tucker, mother of pretty little Diamond and undergoing a much-too- long engagement with Steve (who actually has a new love interest and is edging Kelly out); superfamous, leather-jacketed singer Remy; and Dawn, first-year resident in psychiatry, hitched to a hot young rookie. The Flyers' mostly tough women aren't used to laying off of their men, as Alexis would have it, and they face not only an enforced, blissful silence during their husbands' rough schedule but a scandal and murder that rock the team.

A richly hard-as-nails, largely African-American sports opera as only two legal-eagle insiders could write it.

Baltimore Sun

“...a juicy tell-all, inside look at the National Basketball Association.”

Newsweek

“An outrageous . . . courtside seat on the fast-breaking NBA lifestyle.”