Dunks, Threes and Palm Trees

From Chauncey Billups and Kevin Love to Aaron Wiggins and John Wall, almost 200 McDonald's All-Americans and future NBA players have competed over the past half century at the City of Palms Classic in Fort Myers, Florida. But back in 1973, Edison Community College coach Hugh Thimlar established a mid-December tournament without such visions of grandeur. He simply wanted to gauge the area's talent and help him build future junior college teams. He did so more than a decade before the three-point shot existed and even longer before the NBA's prep-to-pros renaissance, the one-and-done college basketball trend and the proliferation of high-powered high school basketball academies and multi-million-dollar shoe deals. No one could have foreseen that in 1985, Bill Pollock and Donnie Wilkie would save the tournament and its floundering finances from extinction, then shepherd it into becoming the world's most interesting basketball tournament - if not the best in the world. Author David A. Dorsey has sat courtside at more than half of the tournament's title games. With intimate detail in Dunks, Threes & Palm Trees, Dorsey transports readers through every era of the tournament's vast history, bringing them forward to present times and looking ahead to future challenges in preserving the tournament's national caliber format while balancing its local character. It's a must-read for all basketball fans.