During his career, David Halberstam wrote two books about the National Basketball Association: The Breaks of the Game and Playing for Keeps (concerning the break-up of the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers and the construction of the 1990s Chicago Bulls respectively). Halberstam’s two works – written roughly seventeen years apart – cover a dramatic shift in the game of basketball, a change from a marginal sport without a full television contract to the second most popular sport in the world. The 1976-77 Portland Trail Blazers may have been the last true team (greater than the sum of its parts) to win …