The basketball star offers an account of his life on and off the court, detailing his accomplishments in college and in professional sports, the inherent racism in sports, and his tenure as president of the NBA Players Union.

There have been stories written about Kelly Coleman. There have been writers who have tried to figure him out, to find out why he did what he did. But none of them ever started at the beginning. It seems like everything writter about him revolved around that one single event in March of 1956--the Sweet 16. Kelly's life is about much more than four basketball games. He had a life well before and long after those games in Lexington, and, with Kelly, in order to come even close to finding out what makes him who he is, you've got to start at the beginning.

The story of Kelly Coleman, who played basketball at Wayland High School in eastern Kentucky from 1952-56, scoring 4,337 points during his high school career. Kelly was the all-time scoring leading for boy's high school basketball until 2023, a record that stood for over six decades. The son of a coal miner, Kelly was described as "the greatest high school player who ever lived" by Coach Adolph Rupp and "one of the most exciting players in Kentucky's history" by Coach Joe B. Hall. Kelly went on to have a remarkable career at Kentucky Wesleyan College and later played professional ball in the NBA. Originally published in 2005, this new expanded edition provides an intimate look at Kelly's later years up through his death in Hazard, Kentucky, on June 16, 2019. The book is about more than just Kelly the high school basketball legend (that's included for sure), but also a look at Kelly the man, the husband and father, presenting not only his successes on the court but also his trials and failures off the court.

This fascinating volume profiles thirty-nine significant figures in Kentucky history, from Daniel Boone to Loretta Lynn, Muhammad Ali and many others. For years, Dr. James C. Claypool delivered an annual talk for the Kentucky Humanities Council entitled “Our Fellow Kentuckians,” which profiled a wide array of individuals with ties to the Commonwealth either by birth, residence, or family heritage. This volume expands on that famous talk, offering a rich and varied sampling of the personalities that have made Kentucky the place it is. From intrepid pioneers and statesmen to legendary athletes, inventors, entrepreneurs, and film stars, the selected individuals were chosen to represent the widest set of demographics. And as Claypool says in his introduction, “like a wine tasting, the sketches offered are meant to give readers a taste for more.”

The true story behind Crispus Attucks High School and the all-Black basketball team loosely depicted as the championship opponent in the beloved classic sports movie Hoosiers. For far too long the mythology of Indiana basketball has been dominated by Hoosiers. Framed as the ultimate underdog, feel-good story, there has also long been a cultural debate surrounding the film. The Real Hoosiers sets out to illuminate the narrative that the film omits, the story of the unheralded Crispus Attucks Tigers, playing the game at the highest level in the 1950s in a racially divided Indiana. After a crushing loss to Milan High School in the 1954 semifinal, which was the game that the final scenes in Hoosiers are based on, Attucks went on to win back-to-back Indiana state championships. That team was led by a young Oscar Robertson and coached by Ray Crowe, who fully recognized the seemingly insurmountable challenges of playing basketball in a state that was a bastion for not only the game but also the Ku Klux Klan. Veteran sportswriter and the bestselling author of Dream Team, Jack McCallum, pulls back the curtain on that history, which is rich, far beyond the basketball court. The Real Hoosiers replaces a lacuna in the history of Indiana while dissecting the myths and lore of Hoosier hoops; placing the game in the context of migration, segregation, and integration; and enhancing our understanding of this country’s struggle for civil rights.

The college basketball scandals of 1951 were to basketball what the 1919 Black Sox scandals were to baseball—a loss of innocence, after which the game would be permanently tarnished, its relationship to power and big money firmly established. In Scandals of '51, Charley Rosen identifies all the major figures—including players, coaches, gangsters, clergymen, politicians—that made up the elaborate network that controlled the outcomes to many games or protected those who did so. Rosen shows who got caught and who didn't, and what role class, race, and religion played in determining this.

Ive often heard it said that everybody has a story to tell, and I know this is true, but I have found also that we all have a yearning to tell our story. Also, we have numerous ways to do it: through voice, writing instruments and machines, through photographic and digital images that we make or assemble, and also through the pattern of our living, and in the things that we create. Truman Fields is a many-faceted person, and he has left plenty of evidence of his interesting story to supplement what he tells us in this book. He has been a persistent student, teacher and craftsman, a successful businessman, and an award-winning tennis player, a superb craftsman, and a public servant. He was born in the center of the Appalachian coal fields, where he attended local schools until his father, perceived that Truman had a desire to learn more than might be possible locally, sent his reluctant son to Berea Foundation High School at the age of sixteen. There, in addition to the usual academic subjects, he began probing the complexities of electronics, metal-and-wood, and of course basketball and tennis. Without money, he was a half-day student, meaning he took classes for half the day and worked in the rest of the day for his room and board. Thus it would have taken him five years to complete high school, so ever restless and inquisitive, he decided at the age of twenty, to join the Navy for four years. The Navy sent him to electronic school before assigning him to a destroyer tender. On this ship, he saw a great deal of the world. At age 24, he re-entered the Foundation School for a semester to finish high school, and then enrolled at Berea College. There he majored in Industrial Arts and played tennis so well that he was a finalist in several tournaments. In college, he met Joyce Barnes from Tennessee, and they were married. After graduation Truman taught in Louisville and then moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he and Joyce taught for 30 years. There, Truman also worked successfully part-time as a real estate broker and he coached tennis at Baldwin Wallace College. Joyce and Truman reared two daughters in Cleveland, and their grandchildren, who know little of life in the Appalachian Mountains, became the main inspiration for this book. When Joyce and Truman retired from teaching, their love of Berea College and the Berea community drew them back to Kentucky. Here they have managed several rental properties and developed home-building sights. Truman was elected for several terms to Berea City Council, taught students, faculty, and community people to make furniture in the Colleges woodworking shop, and coached the college tennis team. He also continued to follow the tennis circuits, winning many gold metals in his age class. Joyce has also been much involved in the arts and crafts scene for which Berea is famous. She and Truman are active members of Union Church, the mother church of Berea College. They are also generous supporters of Berea College in the knowledge that the lives of other young people from the mountains will be enriched there, as theirs have been. In this book, Joyce and Trumans grandchildren, and others, will learn much about the life Truman lived as a boy, about the one-room school he attended, his classmates, the games they played, the spelling bees, the sporting contests, the victories and disappointments in his budding life, his teachers and pastors vigorous efforts to teach right from wrong, and his own family history. Along the way, from Big Creek to Berea, to Louisville, and Cleveland and back to Berea, we learn Trumans story and the events that shaped him from the lad on the cover in Happy Jack overalls looking with sharp and expectant eyes, to the disciplined tireless, teacher, public servant, athlete, auctioneer, craftsman, and student of all Kentucky things today. Hes been a little modest, however, like most mountain people, in telling his story. So keep in mind all that he has done, all his interests and involvements, as he remembers and tells you about his life in the heart of Appalachia. Loyal Jones Berea, Kentucky