The Joy of Basketball

The Joy of Basketball
Author: Ben Detrick
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 753
Release: 2021-11-09
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1647003008

A vibrant, unconventional, highly opinionated guide to the triumphs, joys, struggles, and heartbreaks of the modern era of the game, for every obsessive basketball fan who loves to hate hot takes The Joy of Basketball celebrates the meteoric rise of basketball over the last quarter century by ignoring the bland, traditionalist binary of wins or losses. Instead, the book's focus is on everything else. Using text, charts, and illustrations that upend conventional jock wisdom, the book details the most incredible players in history, draft flops, long-limbed oddballs, superteams, the international talent wave, brawls, scandals, the rapid evolution of contemporary gameplay, coaching, fashion, crime, positional erosion, tragic tales, memes, and the sacred Kardashian Blessing. Bouncing between witty graphics and keen sociopolitical observations, The Joy of Basketball is a subversive sports manifesto camouflaged as a colorful reference book for your coffee table.

Letters to a Young Athlete

Letters to a Young Athlete
Author: Chris Bosh
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1984881795

A legendary NBA player shares his remarkable story, infused with hard-earned wisdom about the journey to self-mastery from a life at the highest level of professional sports Chris Bosh, NBA Hall of Famer, eleven-time All-Star, two-time NBA champion, Olympic gold medalist, and the league’s Global Ambassador, had his playing days cut short at their prime by a freak medical condition. His extraordinary career ended “in a doctor’s office in the middle of the afternoon.” Forced to reckon with moving forward, he found himself looking back over the course he'd taken, to the pinnacle of the NBA and beyond. Reflecting on all he had learned from a long list of basketball legends, from LeBron and Kobe to Pat Riley and Coach K, he saw that his important lessons weren’t about basketball so much as the inner game of success—right attitude, right commitment, right flow within a team. Now he shares that journey, giving us a view from the inside of what greatness feels like and what it takes. Letters to a Young Athlete offers a proven path for taming your inner voice and making it your ally, through the challenges of failure and success alike.

The Road to Madness

The Road to Madness
Author: J. Samuel Walker
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2016-09-13
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1469630249

The NCAA men's basketball tournament is one of the iconic events in American sports. In this fast-paced, in-depth account, J. Samuel Walker and Randy Roberts identify the 1973–74 season as pivotal in the making of this now legendary postseason tournament. In an era when only one team per conference could compete, the dramatic defeat of coach John Wooden's UCLA Bruins by the North Carolina State Wolfpack ended a decade of the Bruins' dominance, fueled unprecedented national attention, and prompted the NCAA to expand the tournament field to a wider range of teams. Walker and Roberts provide a richly detailed chronicle of the games that made the season so memorable and uncover the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that set the stage for the celebrated spectacle that now fixes the nation's attention every March.

Glory Days

Glory Days
Author: L. Jon Wertheim
Publisher: Mariner Books
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2021
Genre: History
ISBN: 1328637247

A rollicking guided tour of one extraordinary summer, when some of the most pivotal and freakishly coincidental stories all collided and changed the way we think about modern sports The summer of 1984 was a watershed moment in the birth of modern sports when the nation watched Michael Jordan grow from college basketball player to professional athlete and star. That summer also saw ESPN's rise to media dominance as the country's premier sports network and the first modern, commercialized, profitable Olympics. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird's rivalry raged, Martina Navratilova and John McEnroe reigned in tennis, and Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon made pro wrestling a business, while Donald Trump pierced the national consciousness as a pro football team owner. It was an awakening in the sports world, a moment when sports began to morph into the market-savvy, sensationalized, moneyed, controversial, and wildly popular arena we know today. In the tradition of Bill Bryson's One Summer: America, 1927, L. Jon Wertheim captures these 90 seminal days against the backdrop of the nostalgia-soaked 1980s, to show that this was the year we collectively traded in our ratty Converses for a pair of sleek, heavily branded, ingeniously marketed Nikes. This was the year that sports went big-time.

The Baseball Encyclopedia

The Baseball Encyclopedia
Author: BASEBALL ENCYCLOPEDIA.
Publisher: MacMillan Publishing Company
Total Pages: 1560
Release: 1974
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN:

UCLA Basketball Encyclopedia

UCLA Basketball Encyclopedia
Author: Spencer Stueve
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 727
Release: 2019-10-15
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1683583205

A complete history of a century of UCLA Basketball! Over the course of one hundred years, UCLA has proven to be arguably the top college basketball program of all time, but the rise to the top was filled with many bumps in the road. In UCLA Basketball Encyclopedia, Spencer Stueve writes in detail about each season in the team’s epic history. While Coach John Wooden built a program that won more championships than any other in America, not all of UCLA’s basketball history is about winning titles. Prior to Coach Wooden’s arrival, UCLA was one of the worst programs in America, and since his departure, UCLA has been on a never-ending search for the man to bring them back to the top. Stueve leaves no stone unturned in this comprehensive volume, describing the many highs and lows the team has encountered along the way. Readers will learn about the life of Lewis Alcindor (who changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), the dark days of Bill Walton and how he came back to life, and many other legendary players whose accomplishments have often been overshadowed, players like Gail Goodrich and Walt Hazzard. With a comprehensive all-time roster to accompany the text, this book is the perfect gift for any Bruins basketball fan!