Is The Hustle based on a book?

In 1986, a couple of Seattle fathers decided to mix some privileged white kids with five relatively poor black kids on an AAU basketball team. One of the kids was author Merlino, who reprises his experience here. The book is at its best when focused on team dynamics. Any team hierarchy is a product of playing ability, social skills, race, and social standing outside the team, and anyone who has ever participated in team sports will find Merlino’s account spot on. He gets bogged down, though, in a detailed history of Seattle’s race relations before moving on to a recap of the players’ lives as they grew up. One was murdered, another runs a hedge fund, another is looking at prison time for a drug deal, another is a prosecutor. Merlino challenges racial stereotypes, examines the reason why some stereotypes seem applicable on occasion, and looks at whether sports really are a valuable building block in young people’s lives. A very thoughtful, perceptive, and moving chronicle of the journey from adolescence to manhood. --Wes Lukowsky

Winner of the 2011 Washington State Book Award for Biography/Memoir

A Seattle Times Bestseller

"Mindful of the lessons of Du Bois, Dr. King, and others, Doug Merlino shatters post-race fantasies and bears witness to immigrant and African-American struggles, past and present, and weaves them into a captivating, unsentimental and sometimes tragic story of dreams realized, deferred and/or destroyed."—Nigel Hatton, University of California, Merced

"The Hustle somewhat resembles the great documentary series Seven Up, which provides now-and-then profiles of kids shaped by the English class system. Only here, both race and class come into play. Most interesting and affecting about the book are Merlino's conversations with former teammates—resumed, as it were, after a 15-year gap."—Seattle Weekly

"By reminding readers that questions of race and social mobility are at bottom really questions about what kind of people are granted what sort of life opportunities, The Hustle allows us to see our often recursive and overheated debates over such questions play out on a personal, frequently tragic scale."—Bookforum

"The book digs deeply, compassionately and intelligently into [race in America]."—TrueHoop, ESPN.com

"A provocative and candid commentary on the history of class, race, and wealth in Seattle and in America."—Seatown Sports

"A captivating memoir that sees racial and class divides in intimate personal terms, but with no easy pieties or excuses, no righteous indignation or blame."—Crosscut.com

"Anyone concerned with improving the U.S. educational system must read this book, which brilliantly highlights the problems and possibilities facing schools and students. At the same time, Doug Merlino also tells a broader story of race in America that vividly brings ten boys, and the men they became, to life. The Hustle is a wonderful reading experience."—Robert L. Bernstein, founder, Human Rights Watch; former president, Random House

"Working on an apparently small canvas, Doug Merlino has managed to look widely and deeply into race and class, idealism and dead-end despair in America. This unusual combination of sensitive memoir and incisive reporting tells us a great deal about the nation we are and the one we dream of. A fascinating and haunting book."—Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost and Bury the Chains

"As a boy, Doug Merlino was part of something special: A championship basketball team that drew players from both sides of Seattle's racial divide. The Hustle is his elegant, absorbing account of what became of his ex-teammates, and how their lives were inevitably affected by the color of their skin. It is impossible to read this book and not be deeply moved."—Brendan I. Koerner, author of Now the Hell Will Start

"[Merlino] paints a timeline vividly, in fact and circumstance, to unveil twists and turns, sadness and joy, conscience and tragedy . . . A great read."—Douglas Morrison, The Novel Road blog

"Merlino skillfully weaves the personal biographies with the biography of a city that relegated blacks to neighborhoods that were segregated and poor, to the margins of economic life, to public schools that were overcrowded and underfunded. The book's precise focus enables troubling considerations of the role of race and class in America."—Kirkus Reviews

"A very thoughtful, perceptive, and moving chronicle of the journey from adolescence to manhood."—Booklist

"Expecting a conventional basketball book? Look elsewhere. Although the central focus is ten members of a biracial boys basketball team, freelance journalist Merlino, in his first book, is writing about race relations and the changing socioeconomic experiences and expectations of five black and five white kids who came together in 1986 to form an Amateur Athletic Union basketball team in Seattle. The book provides remarkable insight into the fortunes and misfortunes of the ten kids who shared a court but never a dream. For Merlino, who was on the team, the titular hustle is the drive to achieve in today's competitive economy. Readers will witness the omnipresent racial divide in Seattle and the nation, in the workplace, and in a secondary school setting. The chapter on Seattle's Lakeside School, a private K-12 institution, is compelling reading for today's parents and educators. The former teammates whom Merlino traced up to the present include a prosecutor, a financial manager, a preacher/teacher, a writer, a street hustler—and a murder victim. This book, both memoir and social analysis, is an essential read as a recent social history and personal story of America."—Boyd Childress, Auburn University Libraries, Alabama, Library Journal

Is Hustle based on a real story?

What is the Hustle movie based on?