The Capital of Basketball

The finished product is a great basketball book, filled with details of big games, powerful high school basketball programs and insightful stories about the top players and coaches who, at least at one time, called Washington home. The chronicle begins in 1900, when a local newspaper first mentioned a high school basketball game, and continues through the 1990s, when DeMatha High School was dominant. * New York Times *
[This book] comes alive when it captures the culture of basketball, the social significance of the sport beyond the box scores. * Washington Post *
It’s a story of civil rights heroes and NBA legends. It’s [more than 300] pages of history few others could have accomplished, but John, who was born in Washington and never left the area, dedicated his life to it. * Washington Post *
[The book] is a meticulous history of the players and coaches that defined DC area basketball, broken down by the decade. Anecdotes and line scores are preserved for posterity, chronicled in painstaking detail, thanks to more than 150 interviews and countless hours of research. While the writing showcases the kind of granular attention to detail that would appeal to any sports fan, it’s also an impressive historical text that demonstrates how basketball’s influence stretched beyond the simple happenings on the hardwood, helping the city contextualize the broader societal changes taking place. -- Noah Frank * WTOP.com *
McNamara gives light to well-known high school coaches such as Morgan Wootten (DeMatha), Joe Gallagher (St. John’s) and Bob Dwyer (Carroll), but also highlights coaches such as Cardozo High’s Frank Bolden, whose teams won back-to-back city titles in 1957 and 1958...There are dozens of other players and coaches and teams, some known, many not, who get their moment in the sun because McNamara was such an encyclopedic student of the game he loved. -- David Aldridge * The Athletic *
The book hits all the boldface names that define hoops in Washington DC at every level—from Red Auerbach to ... Kevin Durant—but its passion is reserved for the hidden figures. The world beyond the district may not know ... how basketball played a crucial role in integrating DC thanks to E.B. Henderson, a trailblazer player and coach who wasn't allowed to coach white students at the turn of the century, yet his activism ultimately proved instrumental in the founding of the NAACP. -- Gabe Lacques * USA Today *
I just finished reading The Capital of Basketball and thoroughly enjoyed it. It brought back such great memories.  It is a fine social history as well as an account of basketball in the DC area. I appreciate [it]. -- Father Edward "Monk" Malloy, President Emeritus, University of Notre Dame, Archbishop Carroll High School class of 1959
From the introduction of basketball in the city by lesser-known figures like E.B. Henderson to Morgan Wootten’s DeMatha dynasty to Montrose Christian’s Kevin Durant, this book has everything you need to know to consider yourself well-informed on DC-area high school basketball. -- Matt Modderno * Wizards Xtra *
John’s book is wonderfully reported and researched, as thorough a history of DC boys’ basketball as you’ll ever read. -- Christine Brennan * Washington Independent Review of Books *
History is survival. And survival is politics—inequality persists in whose stories get told, get recorded, and get preserved. John McNamara did not survive a violent shooting in an all-too-often-violent country, but thanks to his work, a century’s worth of stories—of players and coaches, dynasties and underdogs, defeats and triumphs on and off the court—live on. * Washington Monthly *
[The Capital of Basketball] offers a welcome look at the shifting sands of race in Washington, and the social legacies that great local players and coaches have left behind. * Washington History *