My summer reading pick is Rockin' Steady: A Guide to Basketball and Cool by Walt Frazier and Ira Berkow, published in 1974. Many of you may know Walt "Clyde" Frazier as one of the greatest basketball players of all time, the backcourt leader of the two-time NBA Champion New York Knicks of the early 1970s. Some may also be familiar with Clyde's razzle-dazzle wordsmithery as a color commentator for Knicks games on the MSG Network (and previously WFAN radio). And still others are no doubt aware of his work alongside Keith Hernandez in the Just For Men hair product commercial campaign (the Frazier-Hernandez pairing serving, according to Wikipedia, as the inspiration for the name of Denzel Washington's character in the movie Inside Man, which is... odd).

I submit that if you have any knowledge of Clyde Frazier whatsoever then you have at some point asked yourself the question, "How can I be as cool as Clyde Frazier?" The book Rockin' Steady provides the answers.

Half autobiography (ranking in the Not-Quite-Straight-Autobiography Pantheon somewhere near Count Leo Tolstoy's Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth, which I've never read, but which I understand is only semi-autobiographical), half life manual; Rockin' Steady will teach the reader about Clyde, about how to become a poet in the backcourt, and about the trials and tricks in mastering the art of cool. Chapters include:
Cool (pg. 11)
Defense (pg. 27)
Offense (pg. 68)
A general guide to looking good, and other matters (pg. 133)

As the dust jacket notes, "Rockin' Steady is a spoken book. That is, it is told in Clyde's words." Words to which no justice can possibly be done but to simply read them and repeat them, as a mantra to oneself.

I pat down my burns. I mash down my 'stache... I catch my profile. "Yeah, Clyde," I say, "You've got it." It relieves some of the pressure. (pg. 12)

In a cocktail lounge once a glass slipped and I nabbed it in midair without spilling a drop. I do that a lot with most things that are falling. (pg. 14)

Some guys sweat more than others naturally. But cool helps. So does pit juice. (pg. 17)

Some people say, well, how can girls want to kiss you when you have a mustache and beard? ... Girls are thrilled to go through the forest to get to the picnic. (pg. 120)

I don't need grass, either, because I can sky on myself. (pg. 136)

Along with beautiful photographs, Rockin' Steady features outrageously funky illustrations by John Lane. Page 73 features a full-page drawing of Clyde, limbs akimbo, tossing a pass between his legs. The caption reads, "No. Try to keep it simple." You see, Clyde's on-the-court cool came not in the form of flamboyance, but in that of a calm and deadly efficiency. And he expounds at length in this book upon how to achieve such.

But off the court, Clyde was pure style. His wide-brimmed hats earned him his nickname (after Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and- fame). And we can see from the Clyde's Wardrobe Stats table on page 156, among other things, exactly how many (18) and what type of (1 brown calfskin "Riverboat gambler", e.g.) "lids" he owned. And he was the consummate New Yorker, playing street pickup games with neighborhood kids and riding the subway from his midtown apartment to Madison Square Garden on game nights. And after the game?

And then some nights, if we don't have a game the next day, I'll go dancing, especially if we win. I like to celebrate. I still have a lot of energy. It's funny. Like I've played 48 minutes and I've gone and danced at discotheques afterward for three, four hours straight. You just sort of get with the beat of the music and you rock steady into the night. (pg. 129)

Trivia digression: Rockin' Steady is referenced in the Beastie Boys song Pass the Mic when Adrock raps, "So what you gonna say that I don't know already? I'm like Clyde, and I'm Rockin' Steady." In the music video Adrock catches a basketball upon delivery of the line. End trivia digression.

The chapter entitled A general guide to looking good, and other matters is without a doubt one of the greatest chapters in literary history, blowing away, just as a point of comparison, Episode 16 of Ulysses, which I've never read. Subsections of this chapter include GROOMING SECRETS (kneading the scalp is good for the circulation of the head and hair, pg. 133), THE RACK ("I've got a nine-foot round bed with a fitted white mink bedspread. I have a matching nine-foot round mirror on the ceiling. ... The only problem is I have this crazy fear that one day the mirror will fall down on me. Well, you have to take the bad with the good." pg. 140), and of course, VINES ("It doesn't always work out that if a guy is cool on the court he's going to be cool, dress cool, off the court. It happens to be that way in my case." pg. 151).

The unparalleled highlight of the book however has to be on pages 148 and 149 with the sections

17. CATCHING A FLY WHEN THE FLY IS IN A SITTING POSITION
It's technique, not just amazing hand-quickness like most people think. Most people grab straight for the fly. That's wrong. You have to sort of curl your hand backward and slowly circle the fly. Then you come around in front of him. You have to be careful and patient, then move your hand forward and he'll fly right into your palm.

and

18. CATCHING A FLY WHEN HE'S IN MIDAIR
Amazing hand-quickness. But I seldom perform these feats anymore. Like I said, my reputation's out. Flies won't come within ten feet of me anymore.

The illustrated diagram (complete with dotted lines marking fly flight paths) included in this section lays out the three simple steps:

A Relax - concentrate on target.
B Next, bring flexor and extensor muscles to a spring-like tension.
C If these muscles are flexed hard enough they will automatically release just before tendon separates from bone. Since complete concentration has been on the fly, his capture is a matter of course.

A big part of being cool, maybe the biggest of all, and one that I think Clyde displays in myriad spades if you interpret the book the way I do (viz. as a preposterously vainglorious self-lovefest lifted from the stomach-turning to the sublime by a deft self-awareness), is being able to laugh at oneself. Clyde ends Rockin' Steady with this "Pearl" of wisdom:

There's one last style note that should be in. That is, always remember to wear your shorts on the basketball court. I say this because of something that happened when I was a sophomore in high school. It was the first game of the season. I was just on the launching-pad stage of being cool, so I was kind of excited. I had a lot to learn. Our team warmed up in sweatsuits. When I was ready to go into the game I began to slip off my sweatpants. I realized that all I had on underneath was a jockstrap. I had forgotten to put my shorts on! I had to rush to the locker room. People sitting in the first couple rows from our bench were still laughing when I got back. So I learned this early: A big rule for cool is to get it all together.

Amen Clyde, and hear hear.

As paperback is of course the lowest form of book, Rockin' Steady is fittingly only available in hardcover. And with its 9'' x 11 1/4'' size and gorgeously illustrated dust jacket, I would not recommend it as beach material. No, this is a book to be displayed prominently on one's shelf, to outshine and obscure the lesser books around it. But it is unquestionably a summer book, as basketball is unquestionably a summer game, to be played on the sizzling blacktops and hazy backyards and dusty dirt alleys across the country. And what is it after all that we must strive to do during these hot summer days? To keep cool.