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Chasing Perfection
- A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the High-Stakes Game of Creating an NBA Champion
- Narrated by: Graham Corrigan
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
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Publisher's summary
Basketball team building is the ultimate challenge at the NBA level, and the last few years have seen a massive change in the amount of money, technology, and approaches to finding and evaluating players. This process starts at the high school level, goes through college, and culminates in the NBA, where the ability to identify and cultivate talent is at an absolute premium. Media and fans like to talk about "busts" when a player doesn't work out, but in truth it takes a complete team/franchise culture beyond any evaluation system to ensure the greatest chance of player success.
Spanning the entire amateur and pro basketball landscape and using the 2014-2015 NBA season as a prism to a much larger story, Chasing Perfection is a fascinating, all-access spin through the inner workings of the smartest minds at every level of the game. It is about the ongoing relentless, high-stakes quest to find what national sportswriter Andy Glockner calls "perfected players" and what ultimately happens to them at the highest (pro) level. Every team knows they want to find the next Jordan or LeBron. Rather, the resources teams are pouring into various kinds of research and analysis is intended to turn less-expensive supporting players into crucial extra wins and, hopefully, championships.
Chasing Perfection explores those players who, by the end of their run through high school and college and into the NBA, hit as many qualitative and quantitative predictors of future success as possible. Molded and then unearthed by years-long processes, they theoretically should be very strong contributors, but there are a ton of external factors that can affect individual success. Sometimes, though, they bomb, and the stories of why they do are as interesting and illustrative as those who actually succeed. Maybe more so.
Chasing Perfection will generate a lot of conversation, as fans of both basketball and Moneyball-style performance analytics, people in the industry, and fans/outsiders will then discuss further and expand their understanding and approaches. It answers questions such as: How do the San Antonio Spurs continue to get enormous production above normal from their complementary rotation players? What is behind the quiet rise of the Atlanta Hawks? What is the philosophy behind the so-called "tanking" employed by the Philadelphia 76ers? Where do perfected players come from? How are NBA teams using Big Data? Who are the top 10 current perfected players and the most perfected player?
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
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The Captain Class
- The Hidden Force That Creates the World's Greatest Teams
- By: Sam Walker
- Narrated by: Keith Szarabajka
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Several years ago, Sam Walker set out to answer one of the most hotly debated questions in sports: What are the greatest teams of all time? He devised a formula, then applied it to thousands of teams from leagues all over the world, from the NBA to the English Premier League to Olympic field hockey. When he was done, he had a list of the 16 most dominant teams in history. At that point he became obsessed with another, more complicated question: What did these freak teams have in common?
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Dates and names
- By Hunter on 11-28-21
By: Sam Walker
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Scorecasting
- The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won
- By: L. Jon Wertheim, Tobias Moskowitz
- Narrated by: Zach McLarty
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing from Moskowitz's original research, as well as studies from fellow economists such as bestselling author Richard Thaler, the authors look at: the influence home-field advantage has on the outcomes of games in all sports and why it exists; the surprising truth about the universally accepted axiom that defense wins championships; the subtle biases that umpires exhibit in calling balls and strikes in key situations; the unintended consequences of referees' tendencies in every sport to "swallow the whistle," and more.
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Fascinating book!
- By Wayne on 10-22-16
By: L. Jon Wertheim, and others
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The Perfect Pass
- American Genius and the Reinvention of Football
- By: S. C. Gwynne
- Narrated by: Santino Fontana
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling, award-winning historian S. C. Gwynne tells the incredible story of how Hal Mumme and Mike Leach - two unknown coaches who revolutionized American football in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s - changed the way the game is played at every level, from high school to the NFL. Hal Mumme is one of a handful of authentic offensive geniuses in the history of American football. In 2015 ESPN Magazine, the nation's leading sports magazine, called him the single most influential football coach in the last quarter century.
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The Perfect Pass
- By Little Pecan on 09-29-16
By: S. C. Gwynne
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War Room
- The Legacy of Bill Belichick and the Art of Building the Perfect Team
- By: Michael Holley
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Bill Belichick is one of the titans of today's game of football. Now, sports commentator and best-selling author Michael Holley follows three NFL teams - the New England Patriots, Kansas City Chiefs, and Atlanta Falcons - from training camp 2010 through the Super Bowl and into the April draft, opening a new window into Belichick's influence on the game. This one-of-a-kind exploration takes football fans behind the scenes of the most popular sport in America, with unprecedented insider access to the head coaches, scouts, trainers, and players.
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Narrator choice - HUH?
- By Ryan Mullaney on 03-25-18
By: Michael Holley
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Golden Days
- West's Lakers, Steph's Warriors, and the California Dreamers Who Reinvented Basketball
- By: Jack McCallum
- Narrated by: Jack McCallum
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In Golden Days, acclaimed sports journalist Jack McCallum uses these two teams - the Jerry West/Wilt Chamberlain/Elgin Baylor Lakers and the Stephen Curry/Kevin Durant/Draymond Green Warriors - to trace the dynamic history of the National Basketball Association, which for much of the last half century has marched memorably through the state of California. Tying together the two strands of McCallum's story is Hall of Famer West, the ferociously competitive Laker guard who later became one of the key architects of the Warriors.
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Very interesting and fun to read
- By Joe on 06-12-18
By: Jack McCallum
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The Playmaker's Advantage
- By: Leonard Zaichkowsky, Daniel Peterson
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Coaches search for it. Parents dream of it. Fans love it. Athletes want it. The Playmaker on any sports team possesses it: an elusive, intangible quality combining anticipation, perception, and decision-making skills. This quality raises their game above the competition and allows them to pass when no one else can, anticipate the movement of opponents, and avoid costly mental mistakes, thus holding the team together. Using today's technology and tools, it is now possible to understand, assess, and train this sixth sense rather than just hope it magically appears.
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Applies to all aspects of life, coaching and business
- By Dave on 12-27-19
By: Leonard Zaichkowsky, and others
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Winning Fixes Everything
- How Baseball’s Brightest Minds Created Sports’ Biggest Mess
- By: Evan Drellich
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Baseball has been defaced and consumed by corporate America. As Moneyball-thinking and Ivy League graduates grabbed hold of the sport, the Astros set out to build a cost-efficient winning machine on the principles of the outside business world, squeezing every dollar out of every transaction, player and employee. In less than a decade, Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow helped revolutionize the game and create an environment that led to one of the worst cheating scandals in baseball history, a Shakespearean tragedy of innovation and failed change management.
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The Houston Trashstros
- By DavidF on 02-20-23
By: Evan Drellich
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Tales from the San Francisco 49ers Sideline
- A Collection of the Greatest 49ers Stories Ever Told
- By: Matt Maiocco, Roger Craig
- Narrated by: David Crommett
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The San Francisco 49ers shaped the NFL throughout the 1980s with their unique blend of precision, panache, and preparation. Three decades later, NFL teams are still copying the system and the methods that made the 49ers unlike any other organization in professional sports. Now fans of this dynamic franchise will relive all the action and thrills of 49ers football through the eyes of one of the greatest San Francisco legends of all time: Roger Craig.
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Boring!
- By JayMK on 05-14-24
By: Matt Maiocco, and others
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Homegrown
- How the Red Sox Built a Champion from the Ground Up
- By: Alex Speier
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The 2018 season was a coronation for the Boston Red Sox. The best team in Major League Baseball - indeed, one of the best teams ever - the Sox won 108 regular season games and then romped through the postseason, going 11-3 against the three next-strongest teams baseball had to offer. As Alex Speier reveals, the Sox’ success wasn’t a fluke - nor was it guaranteed. It was the result of careful, patient planning and shrewd decision-making that allowed Boston to develop a golden generation of prospects - and then build upon that talented core to assemble a juggernaut.
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Great read if you like the Red Sox or baseball ops
- By Amazon Customer on 01-11-20
By: Alex Speier
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The End of the Perfect 10
- The Making and Breaking of Gymnastics' Top Score from Nadia to Now
- By: Dvora Meyers
- Narrated by: Elise Arsenault
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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It was the team finals of women's gymnastics in the 2012 Olympics, and McKayla Maroney was on top of her game. The 16-year-old US gymnast was performing arguably the best vault of all time, launching herself unimaginably high into the air and sticking a flawless landing. When her score came, many were baffled: 16.233. Three-tenths of a point stood between her and a perfect score. If that vault wasn't perfection, what was?
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Book's great--reader's performance is TERRIBLE
- By AB on 12-14-18
By: Dvora Meyers
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How to Watch Soccer
- By: Ruud Gullit, Sam Herman
- Narrated by: Shaun Grindell
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Ruud Gullit knows better than anyone else that to understand soccer you have to understand strategy. When he started playing soccer, his only "strategy" was to get the ball, outrun everyone else to the other end of the field, and score. At first it served him well, but as he advanced through the sport, he learned that it takes much more than speed to make a winning team.
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Great book
- By Gerald Kearney on 03-24-17
By: Ruud Gullit, and others
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Boys Among Men
- How the Prep-to-Pro Generation Redefined the NBA and Sparked a Basketball Revolution
- By: Jonathan Abrams
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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When Kevin Garnett shocked the world by announcing that he would not be attending college - as young basketball prodigies were expected to do - but instead would enter the 1995 NBA draft directly from high school, he blazed a trail for a generation of teenage basketball players to head straight for the pros. That trend would continue until the NBA instituted an age limit in 2005, requiring all players to attend college or another developmental program for at least one year.
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Bad pronunciation
- By K. Spearman on 07-03-16
By: Jonathan Abrams
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The National Team (Updated and Expanded Edition)
- The Inside Story of the Women Who Dreamed Big, Defied the Odds, and Changed Soccer
- By: Caitlin Murray
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The US Women’s National Soccer Team has won three World Cups and four Olympic gold medals, set record TV ratings, drawn massive crowds, earned huge revenues for FIFA and US Soccer, and helped to redefine the place of women in sports. But despite their dominance, and their rosters of superstar players, they’ve endured striking inequality: low pay, poor playing conditions, and limited opportunities to play in professional leagues.
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Too much swearing
- By Rebecca Sheldon on 01-23-20
By: Caitlin Murray
What listeners say about Chasing Perfection
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Chris Woods
- 04-15-19
How the world works today.
Great tour and comprehensive, comprehensible explanation of how basketball and all "games" have leveled-up recently.
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