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Legendary, award-winning sportswriter Leigh Montville\\u2014former Boston Globe columnist, Sports Illustrated senior writer, and New York Times bestselling author of biographies covering the lives of athletes like Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, and Dale Earnhardt\\u2014has entertained sports fans and readers for five decades with his wry voice and razor-sharp insights.

But even after his six critically acclaimed, bestselling biographies, Sports Illustrated cover stories, and decades of Globe columns, Montville has never written an autobiographical word. That changes with TALL MEN, SHORT SHORTS: The 1969 NBA Finals: Wilt, Russ, Lakers, Celtics, and A Very Young Sports Reporter (Doubleday).

Already poised to be a new classic, TALL MEN, SHORT SHORTS weaves a fine thread of Montville\\u2019s own coming-of-age as a celebrated journalist into an absolutely riveting sports story: the 1969 NBA Finals. Considered one of the best championship series in sports history\\u2014seven games, West Coast vs. East Coast, ending with a massive upset\\u2014it was a classic battle between the Los Angeles Lakers (the first iteration of the Dream Team so familiar to us today) and Boston Celtics (widely regarded as the underdogs, past their prime after an unbelievable 12-season, 10-championship run), with two of the most legendary stars of the game in Wilt Chamberlain vs. Bill Russell who, even today, rank alongside Michael Jordan and LeBron James as two of the greatest players of all time.

But beyond the breathtaking sports writing, Montville also steeps us in the nostalgia of 1969\\u2014the good and the ugly\\u2014when most professional sports teams were racially integrated but not always smoothly (see: Bill Russell\\u2019s comments about being a Black man in 1960s Boston) and sports fans didn\\u2019t quite know how to feel about it, all against the backdrop of Vietnam and an America in political, cultural, and racial turmoil, through the eyes of a very young, very green New England sportswriter.

With lively and colorful coverage of the classic series, an epic cast of characters, Montville\\u2019s own charming narrative thread, and real contemporary resonance to our current political and racial tensions\\u2014exploding on and off the court, field, and pitch\\u2014TALL MEN, SHORT SHORTS will delight basketball fans old and new.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Three-time New York Times bestselling author Leigh Montville is a former columnist at The Boston Globe and former senior writer at Sports Illustrated. He is the author of Sting Like A Bee, Evel, The Mysterious Montague, The Big Bam, Ted Williams, At the Altar of Speed, Manute, and Why Not Us? He lives in Boston.