Finkel, author on IT’s new publishing arm, talks Seattle-Celtics ties, book

Author Jon Finkel joined the Celtic Wire to talk IT’s new publishing imprint, his new book on it, and the deep ties between Boston and Seattle basketball.

If the idea of former Boston Celtic All-Star point guard Isaiah Thomas branching out into becoming a publisher sounds odd to you, you’d better warm up to the idea.

The author of the video series “The Book of Isaiah” plans on pushing more than the pace of offence in a bookstore near you soon.

The beloved floor general has added a publishing imprint to his Slow Grind Media outlet, with the first book set to be published detailing the history of the Seattle Supersonics and the city’s legendary basketball scene, entitled “Hoops Heist” by author Jon Finkel.

Finkel, who has previously worked with fellow Seattleite Nate Robinson on his biography, took a moment to talk with the Celtics Wire about his new book and Thomas’ new publishing imprint, noting the deep ties between that scene and the Celtics over the decades.

How did this project come about in the first place?

“So TJ Regan, who is partners with Isaiah Thomas in Slow Grind Media, he and I work together when I wrote Nate Robinson’s autobiography years ago,” explained Finkel.

“We’ve always stayed in touch and … when he took the reins of Isaiah starting this full-time media imprint, we had stayed in touch about potentially doing a publishing imprint as well. And once they got their ducks in a row, it was launched with all the stuff they’ve done, some documentaries and the content they put on social media. We started kicking around what the kind of debut book would look like and naturally talking to Isaiah, what he’s most passionate about is — to start — would be the [local] basketball scene.”

“He’s from Tacoma, Seattle Sonics, University of Washington, and how that unique basketball culture has spread throughout the NBA in a way that people don’t quite realize how big it is,” he suggested.

While the loss of the Sonics in that city is an unavoidable part of any accounting of that scene, so too is the deep roots of the Sonics and Seattle basketball culture more generally around the league, both historically and in the present.

The Celtics are among the most-entangled NBA franchises with that scene and team over the course of their shared histories.

And it isn’t just focused on the team and its loss; it covers the Seattle scene’s impact on the sport, going back to the rise of the city as a global metropolis — never mind the Sonics themselves.

“It starts off with Seattle in the mid 50s, when they were trying to establish themselves,” recounted Finkel.

“Having the World’s fair, hosting it, growing, becoming larger and World War II, and then moving to the two guys who were actually from L.A. who decided they wanted to get into the NBA, and they pitched a bunch of cities … and decided to pitch team in Seattle.”

Boston big man icon Bill Russell would come to play a major role with the team in its earlier days once it had been established in the Pacific Northwest.

His cache as the ultimate winner — and fraught relationship with the fans and team he’d done so much for at the time — made for a brilliant coup for the Sonics.

“Bill Russell was actually brought in by [founding partner] Sam Schulman to be the big name — at the time what would have been considered [like] bringing in a Phil Jackson or Pat Riley,” offered the Slow Grind author.

“He did not have the best relationship with the city or the fans at that point; he left and took off to California. He’d been offered a bunch of jobs over the years and he took three or four years off from coaching or anything basketball. He was an announcer, did some work with the network NBC games, and then finally, after years of kind of being mad [at his former team and league], he gets an offer he can’t refuse [from Sherman] to become the head coach of the Seattle Supersonics.”

Finkel laid out the deep roots of Boston present in the Seattle franchise, from Bill Sharman all the way up to Dennis Johnson, Ray Allen, Nate Robinson, Thomas and Avery Bradley.

Unbeknownst to many contemporary Celtics fans, the two teams shared much more with one another than the color of their uniforms, the author detailing a half-dozen such major threads in our short talk alone.

With plans for audiobooks and multi-media creations already in the pipeline and “Hoops Heist” available on pre-order, Celtics fans should make it a point to check out the book and the imprint.

Like IT in the fourth quarter, we’re expecting a lot of good things from the publisher, with this book being the very first foray into this new field for Thomas et al.

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