The catalyst for much of the book is the team's heart and soul, Bill Walton, signing with the San Diego Clippers just prior to the season. While the book is centered on the 1979-1980 Trail Blazers team the book encompasses so much more. I read the paperback version which is an oversized paperback containing 400 pages.

You can read here Bill Simmons' thoughts on the author and the book upon David Halberstam's death in 2007. Being a Trail Blazers fan it resonates with me more than most but that doesn't change how good this book is. This book is a great read for anyone who enjoys basketball. Halberstam strides authoritatively through locker room, front office, and network suite and casts an unsparing wide-angle lens upon the power struggles implicit in this big-money, fierce, TV-dominated enterprise.The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam follows the season of the 1979-1980 Portland Trail Blazers. It’s about the influence of big media, the fans and the hype they subsist on, the clash of ethics, the terrible physical demands of modern sports (from drugs to body size), the unreal salaries, the conflicts of race and class, and the consequences of sport converted into mass entertainment and athletes transformed into superstars-all presented in a way that puts the reader in the room and on the court, and The Breaks of the Game in a league of its own. This is a story about a place in our society where power, money, and talent collide and sometimes corrupt, a place where both national obsessions and naked greed are exposed.

Yet he is writing here about far more than just basketball.

The tactile authenticity of Halberstam’s knowledge of the basketball world is unrivaled. The New York Times bestseller, now with a new introduction! The Breaks of the Game focuses on one grim season (1979-80) in the life of the Bill Walton-led Portland Trail Blazers, a team that only three years before had been NBA champions. His work has stood the test of time and has become the standard by which all journalists measure themselves. A Pulitzer Prize-winner for his ground-breaking reporting on the Vietnam War, Halberstam wrote more than 20 books, almost all of them bestsellers. More than 6 years after his death David Halberstam remains one of this country’s most respected journalists and revered authorities on American life and history in the years since WWII.

Breaks of the game