Scott Raab’s The Whore of Akron is not your average sports book.  On the surface, it’s one fan(atic)’s purging of all his feelings of betrayal and abandonment – feelings common to fans of all sports when one of their favourites spurns them and leaves town.  The athlete in question here is LeBron James, formerly of the Cleveland Cavaliers, who has famously "taken his talents to South Beach."

Looking deeper, The Whore of Akron is a quasi-biography, a life explored with sports mania as a vehicle, and that fandom may well not be rational or healthy.  And more than just fanhood – Raab integrates his personal life into his book; highs and lows, warts and all.

A brave and honest book, as well as a truly funny one – and not just for basketball fans, or just sports fans for that matter.  As a passenger in a car last week, I read passages aloud to the driver – but not for very long, as I didn’t want the person responsible for my safety laughing that much while behind the wheel.  Readers of this blog should note that I only had to read aloud for about 30 seconds before my buddy decided it was his next read.

A previous feature in our blog outlined Raab’s thoughts on the NBA lockout we were mired in at that time.  Now that the truncated season is upon us (like it or not), Scott has been generous enough to answer some questions I posed to him about the book, and his hope for Cleveland’s future.

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INDIGO BLOG:  I truly enjoyed, and appreciated your book – for your voice (you’re not the average sportswriter), your points of view on modern NBA culture, and as a biographical window into your life.  My first question has to be, do you feel better physically, and was the act of writing The Whore of Akron spiritually cathartic?

SCOTT RAAB:  First of all, thank you kindly. I had a fine time working on the book, and so I want anyone reading it to share some of my delight. Which is to say also that, yes, it was a soul-cleansing experience, and I feel much, much better than when I began, spiritually and physically. Not to make it seem too serious or dramatic -- I believe the book is very funny, bitter though some of the humour may be -- but I found myself delving more deeply into autobiography as I plumbed my love for Cleveland and my animus toward LeBron James.

IB:  What was the exact moment of conception for this book? Before “The Decision,” or after?

SR:  During the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals, when it became clear that the Cavs weren't going to survive, I felt for the first time that I might never again see any Cleveland team win a championship. (I was at the NFL Championship Game in 1964, when the Browns beat the Baltimore Colts, 27-0. I was 12 years old.) If the Cavs, with the NBA's best player, an owner with deep pockets, and the league's best regular-season record, fell short of the NBA Finals, when would it ever come to pass?

After the second game of that playoff series, I also received an e-mail question -- in my guise as Esquire magazine's "Answer Fella" columnist -- from a fellow who worked for the Cavaliers. Suddenly fate cracked open a door for me; I wrote back to him as myself. A day or two later, while I sat mourning my lost hope for witnessing a Cleveland championship, I realized that it might turn out otherwise. The Cavs still had LeBron for at least one more season, after all -- so why not try to write a book about that season?

IB:  Are you OK with being compared to Hunter S Thompson? You felt a little more like the unholy love child of Lewis Black, Frederick Exley, and David Halberstam to me …

SR:  I'm delighted by all of the comparisons above, and pleased by the choice of 'unholy' as an adjective. My academic study was literature and 'creative writing,' not journalism. My experience as a consumer of journalism -- though I never thought of it as such -- was reading National Lampoon in its salad days, and Rolling Stone when HST was filing his pieces there. I never paid any dues as a newspaper reporter. I never read Halberstam's landmark The Breaks of the Game until I began work on The Whore of Akron. I can't say when I first read Exley's A Fan's Notes, because of my own history of alcoholism, but I've read it many times. As for Lewis Black, whose work I enjoy, my love for the fine art of stand-up goes back to Lenny Bruce, whom I consider an artist of the first rank.

On one of my first trips to Miami for the book, I met Hunter Thompson's nephew, Robin Thompson, entirely by accident at a South Beach diner. His young son was wearing a vintage 'Witness' t-shirt, I asked him about it, and when he said that he was a Cavs fan, I asked if his dad would speak with me. I was floored when Robin told me that Hunter was his uncle. I tried putting the scene in the book, but somehow it never worked -- it seemed unreal, too much of a deus ex machina moment. Still, it meant a great deal to me, and Robin and I have kept in contact ever since.

IB:  I think anyone who reads The Whore of Akron will be looking for more chances to experience your opinions and your voice.  Any chance of an anthology of your journalism being published in the future?

SR:  Two small presses collaborated on a collection of my celebrity profiles a few years back. It was not a happy collaboration. (The book that resulted, Real Hollywood Stories, was supposed to be called Angry Jew Goes To Hollywood.) Many copies of it sit, as far as I know, in a warehouse somewhere in Pennsylvania, and last time I looked, it was available for purchase online.

I would very much like to see a better version of my anthologized magazine work, including not only celebrity journalism but also some of the more serious stories I've written. I've produced seven separate features for Esquire about the rebuilding of the World Trade Center over the past six years as part of an ongoing series; those stories certainly deserve a home of their own.

IB:  Now that the NBA lockout is over, what are your hopes or predictions for LeBron and the Heat in the abbreviated 2011-2012 season?

SR:  I think it's safe to predict that the Heat will again contend for a championship. I hope, fervently, that they not only fall short again, but also that LeBron James continues to succeed wildly at failing when the chips are down.

IB:  What are your (realistic) hopes for the Cavs this year? As a Torontonian, I think Cleveland will be happy with Tristan Thompson …

SR:  You're asking a Cleveland fan to be both hopeful and realistic? Seriously?

I shall try.

I hope Mr. Thompson and Mr. Kyrie Irving prove to be the most dynamic rookie tandem in NBA history. I realistically hope that one of them turns out be a cornerstone of the next Cavaliers team to compete for a championship down the road, and that the other has a long, productive career wearing the wine and gold.

I hope the team gives plays both youngsters for all the minutes they can eat, from the beginning of the season forward. Last year's team was not merely bad; they did not try very hard for long stretches of a horrible season. Veterans like Antawn Jamison and Baron Davis will surely not be part of the next truly good Cavs team, so I see no reason at all to put them ahead of the rookies. Wins don't matter this season; let the young players learn by playing, and hope to land another lottery pick in the next draft.

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Our thanks to our friends at Harper Collins for facilitating this blog, and to Scott Raab himself for participating.  We wish him well with this title and in the future. Read more from Scott at ScottRaab.com