Playgrounds to the Pros: Legends of Peoria Basketball
From the late 1980s through the early 2000s, Peoria, Illinois was a basketball town with few peers. Incredible talent, coaching, rivalries and passion turned the hardscrabble Midwestern town into a hoops hotbed. But this is a story about much more than basketball games. Playgrounds to the Pros pulls the curtain back on what made the players and coaches tick, their background stories and the socioeconomic factors that contributed to some extremely difficult upbringings.
While the names of some players such as Shaun Livingston, Howard Nathan, A.J. Guyton and Sergio McClain will be familiar to basketball fans, the book also sheds light on lesser-known but equally intriguing names and stories. Intense and intimate, Playgrounds to the Pros chronicles a basketball golden age in America’s quintessential blue-collar town.
