TO ORDER All titles may not be immediately available. . . . . . . . . . . . . RECENT REVIEWS: 5/07/97: Trail Fever By Michael Lewis Nonfiction 5/06/97: The Collector Collector By Tibor Fischer Fiction 5/05/97: How Proust Can Change Your Life By Alain de Botton Nonfiction 5/02/97: Walker Percy: A Life By Patrick Samway Nonfiction 5/01/97: My Life, Starring Dara Falcon By Anne Beattie Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . SEARCH BOOK ARCHIVES BY: title of book author publisher reviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . ALSO IN SALON: Look back in Lust By Carol Lloyd Two very different sexperts trace the Legacy of the Sexual Revolution RECENT BOOK FEATURES

best seat in the house A + B A S K E T B A L L + M E M O I R BY SPIKE LEE WITH RALPH RILEY CROWN, 336 PAGES N O N F I C T I O N BY ROB SPILLMAN the impish director of "Do The Right Thing" and "Malcolm X" has been a hard-core New York Knicks fan since his Brooklyn childhood. In this loose, baggy, slapdash personal history, he takes the reader on a journey from the days when he perched in the nosebleed sections and made super-8 films to his recent experiences directing big-budget epics and sitting courtside. Lee charmingly recalls his early love affair with professional basketball, which coincided with the entertaining and cerebral Knicks' championship team of 1969-70. When Lee made his first low-budget breakthrough feature, "She's Gotta Have It," the movie's hero, Mars Blackmon, was fixated on a young NBA phenom named Michael Jordan. Nike called soon after to hire Lee to direct TV commercials starring Jordan, and Lee's visibility soared along with that of His Airness. Lee states the obvious when he writes, "I honestly believe those commercials ... have given me more visibility than I got from being a filmmaker." Roughly chronological, "Best Seat" is a mishmash of memories and general hoop history, layered with numerous rough interviews with past and present players. Like watching a .500 team every night over a long pro season, there are a few transcendent moments mixed in with frequently numbing tedium and repetition. The book tanks when Lee jumps on his soapbox, as when he questions the sincerity of Chris Weber, the Washington Bullets star who gave up his Nike endorsement contract because he didn't want to push $140 shoes on inner-city black kids who can't afford them -- a prickly issue for Lee considering Jesse Jackson asked the filmmaker to stop hawking Air Jordans when kids were literally killing each other to wear them. The few ups include a stinging critique of every b-ball movie every made -- on "Above the Rim" Lee writes, "Junkies and whores and dope dealers, oh, my!" For good measure he bashes other famous sports movies, including "Rocky": "Creed represented not just a man, Ali, but every would-be egomaniac, loud-talking, flashy, overpaid black athlete; every nigger, not just in boxing, but all these nigger athletes who are taking over sports." "Best Seat" is a lot like the Knicks' John Stark -- moody, streaky, erratic, frequently brilliant, a genuine New York hero. Starks' passion was harnessed by the disciplinarian coach Pat Riley. Lee should've brought Riley in to edit this mess. May 8, 1997 Rob Spillman lives in New York. He is a regular contributor to Salon. BOOKMARK: http://www.salonmagazine.com/sneaks/sneak.html