Michael and the Whiz Kids: A Story of Basketball, Race, and Suburbia in the 1960s

John Christgau

U of Nebraska Press, Nov 1, 2013 - Social Science - 160 pages

Imagine a boy, five feet tall and one hundred pounds, who wants to play high school basketball. Now imagine that he was blind until the age of six and that he?s the first black student to attend his suburban school. And there you have Michael Thompson in 1965 in San Bruno, California. He played at the school where a young English teacher was coaching ?lightweight basketball,? a competition for smaller players that has since disappeared. The team that Coach John Christgau put together came to be called the Whiz Kids for the way they rocketed up and down the court, led by Michael and invariably winning.

Michael and the Whiz Kids tells the story of the team?s 1968 championship season. It is a tale of cliffhanger games and players as outsized in character as they are short in stature, from the wild-haired, bespectacled ?Professor? to the well-traveled Latvian dubbed ?Suitcase? to the quiet and tenacious ?Salt,? as in ?of the earth.? But it is also a tale of the time?of counterculture, suburbia, integration, and racial brawls erupting on the court. In Christgau?s deft telling, it is an absorbing, often comic story of coming of age, for coach and Whiz Kids alike.
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Contents

• 1 The Whiz Kids: 1
• 2 Michael: 10
• 3 Coach: 20
• 4 Suitcase and the Professor: 33
• 5 Jack Armstrong and Salt: 42
• 6 Zinji: 52
• 7 Rene and Firp: 64
• 8 Bob and Red: 77
• 9 Noah: 85
• 10 Darnell: 95
• 11 Uncle Tom: 106
• 12 Nerb: 120
• 13 Rick: 128
• 14 The Gipper: 137
• 15 Jimmy the Greek and Artichoke Joe: 149
• Sources: 163

About the author

John Christgau is the author of numerous books, including Origins of the Jump Shot: Eight Men Who Shook the World of Basketball and Tricksters in the Madhouse: Lakers vs. Globetrotters, 1948, both available in Bison Books editions.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Michael and the Whiz Kids: A Story of Basketball, Race, and Suburbia in the 1960s; Bison books
• Author: John Christgau
• Publisher: U of Nebraska Press, 2013
• ISBN: 080324844X, 9780803248441
• Length: 160 pages
• Subjects: History / United States / State & Local / West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY); Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies; Sports & Recreation / Basketball; Sports & Recreation / Sociology of Sports