Why You Should Read Ethan Strauss’s “The Victory Machine”
By: Thomas Jenkins
Tags: Sports, Writing, NBA, Reading, Books

Why You Should Read Ethan Strauss’s “The Victory Machine”

This book tells a captivating story, satisfied basketball nostalgia, and says a lot about the state of the NBA

From the book’s cover

The absolute best sportswriting transcends its genre, telling human stories of success and failure that captivate nearly any audience. Reaching that level of storytelling is incredibly difficult, something that only a few writers can do. Today, I want to take a few minutes to talk about a book that does reach that rarefied status — The Victory Machine — by Ethan Sherwood Strauss.

In a little over 200 pages, Strauss tells the story of Kevin Durant and the Golden State Warriors in the 2018–2019 NBA season. That season ended in disaster for the team and the player, leaving Durant with a torn Achilles tendon and the Warriors in a battered ruin of their former glory. On its own, the book is a fascinating read. It’s also a great way to pass the time for anyone who misses basketball and, I think, a story with a lot to say about the current state of the NBA.

The Story Itself

The Victory Machine is a complex, well-written deep dive into one of the most captivating stories around professional sports over the last few years. That story, of course, is the tale of how one of the best players in the history of basketball (Kevin Durant) joined one of the best teams in the history of basketball (The Golden State Warriors) and created a once-in-a-lifetime juggernaut that terrified the entire league.

But nothing lasts forever and the Warriors dynasty fell apart after a few short years. It collapsed under the weight of egos and expectations. Now, the Warriors have the worst record in the NBA, while Durant rehabs from his injury on the Brooklyn Nets.

Most basketball fans already know the story beats of Durant’s exit from the Warriors. There was his injury in the NBA Finals, the Warriors’ defeat at the hands of the Toronto Raptors, and Durant’s subsequent exit in free agency, all events that have been picked over many times already. Strauss adds a level of detail and nuance missing from most accounts, though, drawing on his time spent around the team and intimate knowledge of its biggest personalities. I doubt there’s any reporter that knows the Warriors better than he does, and that level of insight is clear from the first few pages.

Strauss combines that deep knowledge of the Warriors with some of the best writing I’ve read in a basketball story. There are many great examples, but here’s my favorite (on Durant’s season-ending injury in the Finals):

“This was the night of Kevin Durant’s redemption and also the consummation of his Faustian bargain. For years, he’d wanted love and recognition from a fan base that wanted Steph to be the hero. On June 10, 2019, Kevin Durant was finally their hero. It just so happened to cost him his Achilles tendon.”

Here’s another memorable line, this time from the end of the book:

“He had left the greatest team ever, but the sun’s glow remained on Kevin Durant’s attenuated frame, just never offering enough warmth to make a man comfortable.”

To me, this is the most interesting part of the book. Durant as a figure seems constantly unhappy, looking for fulfillment that constantly seems to elude him. He clearly couldn’t find it in Oklahoma City, or Oakland, despite finding levels of success that most athletes can only dream of.

Strauss writes at one point, “The Warriors had the most talent for KD to play alongside and some good years remaining. Still, he had a foot out the door because that setup wasn’t satiating emotionally.” Whatever Durant’s looking for, I sincerely hope he does in Brooklyn.

Whether it’s on sneakers, basketball games, or the comments of the athletes themselves, Strauss’s writing never fails to draw the reader in. It surely helps that the subject matter is one that already captivates millions, but Strauss knows how to emphasize what’s important and how to show the complicated natures of both Durant and the Warriors. This is, ultimately, a tale of humans looking for happiness. With Strauss at the helm, nothing important is left out.

Why It’s Worth Reading Now

In 2020, as we all know, the NBA season was cut off with no return date. Right now, reading this book is the closest one can get to real basketball. For no other reason than that, it’s worth picking up a copy. Personally, flipping through these pages takes me back to the summer of last year.

I remember exactly how it felt to see the Warriors fall and realize that this could be the end of one of the greatest dynasties sports has ever seen. We can’t watch live basketball right now, but Strauss’s book is a good reminder of what it felt like just a year ago.

But what I love the most about this book — even more than the writing and the nostalgia — is that it highlights exactly what so many people love about the NBA. Perhaps more than any other book I’ve read, The Victory Machine shows the tensions between players and teams, between superstars and owners, that make the league so interesting. In no other sport could a player of Durant’s caliber command so much attention, but the NBA is uniquely set up to give its best players an incredible amount of control over both their own futures and the futures of teams.

The influence and notoriety of superstar NBA players is a blessing and a curse for the league. The blessing is a near-infinite amount of buzz and attention on social media. The curse is that this buzz and attention doesn’t always translate to revenue and tv ratings.

In one of his podcast episodes last year, NBA writer Zach Lowe commented on the relatively small amount of attention the Toronto Raptors got after winning the Finals. Instead, as he pointed out, most fans just wanted to talk about the advent of free agency. Those two things seem pretty closely linked to me.

Even before COVID-19 shut basketball down, the NBA was thinking about how to drive higher tv ratings. The league’s financial footing was already a little unsure, and now the immediate future looks bleak from a revenue perspective. The NBA will be fine in the long term, but it’s at least plausible that fans are so interested in the lives and attitudes of the game’s biggest personalities that they don’t care about the games themselves. That’s something the league needs to figure out.

It’s fine for people to care more about players than teams, and it’s fine for people to care more about teams than players. I think it’s great that the NBA can mean so many different things to so many different people. Personally, I think that players like Durant are so interesting because their decisions directly affect which franchises succeed or fail. I’m more interested in the story of the collective Warriors than on any one of the franchise’s individual players, but what I love the most is that all of these stories are intertwined together.