Bondy, Filip

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Bondy, Filip

PERSONAL:

Married; children: two.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Montclair, NJ. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

New York Daily News, New York, NY, sports columnist, 1993—; has also worked for other publications, including the New York Times.

WRITINGS:

(With Harvey Araton) The Selling of the Green: The Financial Rise and Moral Decline of the Boston Celtics, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1992.

(With Wayne R. Coffey) Dreams of Gold: The Nancy Kerrigan Story, St. Martin's Paperbacks (New York, NY), 1994.

Tip-Off: How the 1984 NBA Draft Changed Basketball Forever, Da Capo Press (Cambridge, MA), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sports writer Filip Bondy has worked for a number of periodicals, most notably as a columnist for the New York Daily News, and for the New York Times. He is also the author or coauthor of a number of books about the sports world. The Selling of the Green: The Financial Rise and Moral Decline of the Boston Celtics, which Bondy wrote with Harvey Araton, addresses the issue of racism in basketball. It focuses in particular on the Boston Celtics as a team that has outwardly seemed to promote equal rights among its players when actually there were racist policies in place. While the team is known to have signed the first black professional basketball player and the first black coach, and was the first team to start a game with a lineup consisting entirely of black players, the Celtics have gone out of their way to maintain at least an equal number of white players on the team. This was true even when there were black players available who were more talented, according to the authors. Some critics disagreed about whether Bondy and Araton had a valid point, or were merely indulging in reverse racism. John Garrity remarked in Sports Illustrated that "that's what poisons The Selling of the Green: the calumny that all white players below star level are ‘stealing’ from more deserving blacks. It's Shoal Creek turned inside out: basketball as an exclusive private club, no whites need apply." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly, though, commented that Bondy and Araton "argue convincingly that the Boston press has played a shameful role in cloaking that the Celtics team is ‘still for whites.’"

Bondy's Tip-Off: How the 1984 NBA Draft Changed Basketball Forever looks at the way that the National Basketball Association draft has changed over the years. He focuses on the draft of 1984, which was the last year that the draft was not determined by lottery. Up until that point, draft picks were based on standings in the league, with low performers getting a chance to choose early in hopes of evening out competition. This policy, however, allowed for tampering. Teams could feasibly lose games on purpose once it was clear they were not going to rank in a high position, thereby improving their placement in the draft and increasing their chances of getting stronger players based on an earlier pick. The year 1984 saw the drafting of numerous players destined to be star athletes, including Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, and also the introduction of high-placing foreign players into the draft ranks, with Hakeem Olajuwon selected first. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews argued that "overall analysis of the draft's significance takes a back seat to key players' stories, but overall this is a lively and enlightening look at one of the NBA's decisive turning points."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2007, review of Tip-Off: How the 1984 NBA Draft Changed Basketball Forever.

Library Journal, January 1992, William H. Hoffman, review of The Selling of the Green: The Financial Rise and Moral Decline of the Boston Celtics, p. 139.

Newsweek, February 24, 1992, Peter Plagens, review of The Selling of the Green, p. 66.

Publishers Weekly, December 6, 1991, review of The Selling of the Green, p. 63.

Sporting News, February 3, 1992, Steve Gietschier, review of The Selling of the Green, p. 54.

Sports Illustrated, March 23, 1992, John Garrity, review of The Selling of the Green. p. 87.