Bob Batchelor still gets goose bumps when talking about his days growing up in Slippery Rock, playing basketball whenever and wherever he could.

"My friends and I used to play deep into the night," Batchelor said. "We were the Lakers. It was Kareem, Magic and Worthy."

One of those friends was Chris Burtch, the former Slippery Rock High School boys basketball coach.

The two, thick as thieves growing up, breaking into college gyms and shoveling snow off potential basketball courts in the hopes of squeezing in some hoop time, have collaborated on a book about the sport.

"Basketball in America: From the Playgrounds to Jordan's Game and Beyond," is set to hit bookstores early next week. The book is a collection of essays about how basketball and popular culture have collided.

Burtch, who coached the Rockets from 1999 to 2004, penned a chapter in the book about how coaching high school basketball has changed, but it also dealt with the school's tragic 2001-2002 season in which three Slippery Rock students died due to illness and automobile accidents.

"I just kind of used it as a memoir," Burtch said. "If nothing else came through, what came through was how important being a high school coach is in this day and age."

Burtch is candid in his writing, describing some of the behind-the-scenes happenings in the program during those difficult times.

"In eleven years of coaching I had never cried in front of my team," Burtch wrote, describing his feelings after cheerleader Ashley Anderson died of meningitis before senior night that season. "My gut instinct told me that displaying such emotion was being overly dramatic. Faced with yet another tragic death, however, I could not fight off the deep feelings of sadness."

Burtch said that in many ways writing about that season helped him heal some wounds.

"I certainly never thought of it that way," Burtch said. "It's always a good thing to get things going on in your life on paper sometimes. But in the end, it was definitely therapeutic."

Batchelor had wanted to write a book about basketball for several years before finally launching the project.

He called his old Slippery Rock High School teammate, Burtch, and asked him to contribute to the book.

"When we were at Slippery Rock, we were the guys who ran through the paper held up by the cheerleaders," Batchelor said. "Chris is a great writer and I knew the book needed a high school story. I think Chris is one of the best high school basketball coaches in Western Pennsylvania.

Part of Burtch's draw was the fact he came to a program that hadn't made the playoffs in two decades and averaged 15 wins per season during the five years he coached the Rockets.

"You have a story about an amazing turnaround and then you throw in the human drama," Batchelor said. "It was about a community that was healing and how basketball helped that process.

The book also looks at how basketball in many ways is America's pastime.

It focuses on how NBA players have set fashion trends, Michael Jordan in particular.

Batchelor, who serves as a public relations instructor at the University of South Florida, has always had a fascination with the subject and the book was a culmination of a longtime dream of his.

"I went to the mall yesterday and I saw a kid who could have been Allen Iverson's little cousin," Batchelor said. "He had the corn rows, the long, baggy pants. He had the Air Jordans on. You can't go one day without seeing how much basketball has influenced culture.

"I've always been interested in how pop culture influences the rest of society and I've always been a basketball nut."