Assisted

by John Stockton
349 pgs

I was 11 years old when John Stockton was drafted by the Jazz and I was 30 when he decided to hang up his sneakers. That's 19 years worth of Jazz memories that are indelibly associated with the Hall of Fame point guard from Spokane, Washington. I remember dozens of game winning shots he made for the team, including, of course "The Shot." I remember the countless no-look passes he made threading the needle between defenders into the hands of Malone driving to the basket for a hammer dunk. I remember the hard screens he'd set on opponents double his size that would free up his teammate for an open shot at the basket. He was a gritty player who teammates loved, and opponents couldn't stand to play against.

Assisted offers a surprisingly candid insight into the life and career of a man who was notorious for his disdain for fame and the spotlight as well as his insistence on privacy for himself and his family. The irony of him writing his autobiography is significant and not lost on him as the author.

First off, and importantly, it's very apparent that the book was written by Stockton, and not some professional writer hired to do it. It's written in a frank and direct manner, without embellishment and without any sense of pride and bravado. Not very surprising coming from Stockton.

He spends a significant amount of time describing his background, his family life growing up, and his years of schooling at the hands of Catholic nuns. Unsurprisingly he describes his love for sports and competition from an early age. He tells of his early association with great coaches, who instilled in him a sense of discipline and excellence that carried over into every athletic activity he participated in.

My favorite parts of the book deal of course with his years with the Jazz and his two Olympic experiences. I especially enjoyed the insights into his teammates, coaches, and the team's ownership that he included in the book.

I don't read much non-fiction and very few biographies. I'm usually just not that interested in other peoples' lives. But Stockton is someone whose life I found very interesting. I admired him as a basketball player for 19 years, and now after finally getting an insight into his life, I admire him even more.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock

Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock by Sammy Hagar

Okay, so I've got some explaning to do on this one. I don't read much non-fiction, let alone celebrity autobiographies. And I'm not a huge Van Halen fan. I've never paid to see them in concert, but I have all of their albums, even the one with Gary Cherone (I know, sorry). So the bottom line is this, under normal circumstances, I never would have read this book, let alone paid for it. But, when I walked past a Barnes & Noble in southern California and saw a sign in the window that Sammy was going to be there signing his book the following night, an internal debate began in my head that lasted until the following evening. 

I had no desire to read the book, but I kind of wanted to own a signed copy of it. I thought it would be a waste of money to buy a book I was never going to read, but then here was a chance to meet a bona fide rock star and one from a band that I listened to for several years of my my life. So I decided to go to the signing.

While waiting in the hour-long line for the three-second experience of meeting him and getting the signature, I started reading the book. It's not Pulitzer material obviously. In fact, I have a sneeking suspicion that he didn't type one word of it himself. It reads as if he sat down with Joel Selvin - who gets a much smaller billing as coauthor, and is taped as he describes different periods of his life. Nevertheless, by midway through the book when he comes to the Van Halen years of his life, I was pretty interested and was enjoying the book.  

Sammy has some out-there ideas about things like numerology and exta-terrestrial mind-hijackers. He also describes numerous experiences where he was visited in his dreams by people from his life who he learns the next day had died during the night. But the bottom line for me is here's the guy who wrote Summer Nights, Finish What Ya Started, and Right Now. That's the person I waited an hour to shake his hand and get his autograph . . . and it was worth it.

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆