Alexander Wolff: A Global Search for Basketball Tales

Press Box Access: A Sports History Podcast

Take a trip around the world with Alexander Wolff, one of the most lyrical writers of his era. He shares some gems from chronicling basketball’s international growth during his 36 years at Sports Illustrated. We’re in a car with him, Dennis Rodman and Carmen Electra at 3 a.m. We tag along to remote Asia where royalty wasn’t keen on man-to-man D. We hear about Jerry Tarkanian making an offer that Alex refused. Go to Tobacco Road and learn the differences between Dean Smith and Mike Krzyzewski. Alex recounts the college version of Michael Jordan, and how MJ helped spread hoops around the planet. We also talk a little football as Alex explains the backstory of his open letter to The U and its blowback from outraged Miami fans.

The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame recognized Wolff with its 2011 Curt Gowdy Media Award for lifetime contributions to the game as a print journalist. Alex joined Sports Illustrated as a researcher in September 1980 after earning a bachelor’s degree in history with honors from Princeton, where he had served as a freelance writer for the Trenton Times. Wolff became a writer at SI in 1982, at age 25, and the magazine named him a senior writer in 1985.

Besides basketball, Wolff also covered the Olympics, the World Cup, the World Series, every Grand Slam tennis event, and the Tour de France before leaving Sports Illustrated and SI.com in 2016 as the longest-tenured writer on staff. He reported from China, Cuba, Russia and Iran, and often wrote about issues where and sports and society intersect.

Wolff’s work has been anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing, Best Sports Stories, Sports Illustrated’s Fifty Years of Great Writing, and The Princeton Anthology of Writing. In 1996, Alex collaborated with Hoop Dreams filmmakers Peter Gilbert and Steve James to make Team of Broken Dreams, which detailed the impact of the Yugoslav crisis on basketball players from the Balkans. The documentary, based on one of Wolff’s Sports Illustrated articles and broadcast on NBC, was nominated for an Emmy and won the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Media Award. When he served as president of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, Wolff helped found the USBWA’s Full Court Press journalism scholarship and seminar program. He is the former owner of the now defunct Vermont Frost Heaves, which won American Basketball Association championships in 2007 and 2008.

Wolff is the author or co-author of seven books about basketball:

Wolf also edited and introduced a collection of basketball writing for the Library of America in 2018 called “Basketball: Great Writing about America’s Game.”

“Endpaper: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home” is Wolff’s latest book, published in 2021. He explores the lives of his grandfather and father, who were both born in Germany and later became American citizens.

Check out Alex’s website: https://alexanderwolff.com/

Read articles that Alex wrote for Sports Illustrated: https://alexanderwolff.com/stories-for-sports-illustrated/

Follow him on Twitter: @alexander_wolff

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