Review: This Was Always About Basketball by Craig Leener

Author Craig Leener hits nothing but net in the third and final installment of his Zeke Archer Trilogy with This Was Always About Basketball. Perfectly balancing young adult drama with time-traveling fantasy, this novel is a thrilling, heartwrenching, and mind-bending read.

Diving back into the strange science of the 7th Dimension, and with help from his unusual and darkly humorous sidekick Lawrence, Zeke Archer once again finds himself facing impossible odds. After his archenemy Brock Decker finds a way to travel back in time and change the history of basketball, Zeke must tap into sacred geometry and the secrets embedded in his recently dismembered truck to save the game he loves so much.

After two installments, loyal readers already have a lot of love for Zeke Archer, and this book delves even deeper into his obstacle-laden development as a character, and as an admirable young man. Facing up to impossible challenges is nothing new for this dauntless protagonist, having saved the game of basketball from annihilation once before, but this time around his future dreams are on the line, which makes the stakes even higher.

Often moving at a breakneck pace, this book is a hard one to put down, but the impact of this story is likely to stick around far longer. Timeless lessons of failure and resilience, as well as authentic explorations of teenage life and the pressure to perform, fill these pages with subtle but unforgettable wisdom. The story is laden with valuable lessons, but this moralizing is never done heavy-handedly; revelations about personal responsibility, sacrifice, growing up, disappointment, and loss occur in organic and believable ways. Leener demonstrates a keen eye for human nature, and is able to capture delicate and powerful moments with grace, despite being a generation or two ahead of his complex, three-dimensional characters.

There are charming echoes of “Back to the Future” and other beloved time-travel epics peppered throughout the book, but the originality of this series shines through. The seven-pencil strategies of Lawrence the aspiring Martian astronaut are goofy, but creative, and Zeke’s reality-righting quest to the past is littered with paradoxical (and overly convenient) moments, but it’s easy to suspend disbelief when the story is so enjoyable, as is often the case with time travel stories.

The writing itself is simple, with a clear target of young adult readers, and some of the plot devices and twists reflect that. Despite its simplicity, the writing should still be clean, so there is some cause for a minor editing sweep. The narration is declarative and frequently explains events too explicitly; teenage readers are more than capable of reading context clues. The dialogue is the last notable area for improvement, as there are inconsistencies in the way some characters speak, particularly after Zeke and Lawrence make their way back to the 19th century.

Aside from those superficial and easily remedied critiques, this remarkably clever and engaging novel is uplifting, thought-provoking, and inspiring for young readers, and the perfect cap to a phenomenal series.