Basketball analysis as an intellectual pursuit

26. Nov, 2008 Comments Off

FreeDarko has long been a bastion for the verbose and pretentiously self aware basketball lover. The site’s underpinning philosophy of liberated fandom breaks free from the constructs imposed by blind adherence to the primacy of the home team and allows the sports fan to pursue and follow particular styles of play that represent the ideal of the sport to them. FreeDarko’s writing is not for the light hearted or ADD afflicted, dense tracts of at times impenetrable text combine cerebral socio-political musings with absurdist metaphors, encyclopaedic basketball knowledge and at first glance non-sequiter photographic essays that call for a suspension of disbelief and a focusing of one’s mental faculties.

Put it this way, they make McSweeneys read like a News Corp owned tabloid.

After 4 years or so of providing liberal arts grads the world over with a regular dose of basketball infused intellectual masturbatory goodness, the FreeDarko crew have released a book befitting the site’s lofty ideals, The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac.

Obviously this thing is a niche product aimed at over educated hoops obsessed twats like myself, but there is a secondary audience in the non-basketball inclined design junkie who is going to be impressed by the illustrations and all round attention to detail that has gone into this impressive tome.

To see what i’m raving about, check out some of the illustrations after the jump, visit the FreeDarko blog or the book site.