Game Basketball

For generations, basketball has united people through the players' unwavering determination and the thrilling moments that define this sport. However, there exists a realm of untold stories and experiences beyond the scores displayed on the scoreboard and the excitement of winning or losing that have greatly influenced the sport and the individuals who participate in it. These tales are the pieces to the whole puzzle of what makes basketball one of the greatest sports there are today.

Much of today’s basketball training focuses on improving speed, agility, scoring moves, and shooting abilities. While this increases physical skills, it doesn’t teach young athletes the mental ins and outs of the game. Boost Your Basketball IQ teaches players and coaches arguably the most important (and neglected) skill of all: game awareness—a skill that most players often don’t develop until late in their careers.

Basketball is the second-most popular sport in the world - an insanely complicated game built on a combination of athleticism, craftiness, rules, intangibles, and superstardom. However, while it's enjoyable to watch, the real reason it works is because it's a game of culture, art, and all the things that make us human. How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius deconstructs the sport from top to bottom and then puts it back together again, detailing its intricacies through reporting and dozens of interviews with experts.

The 1980s were a transformative decade for the NBA. Since its founding in 1946, the league had evolved from a bruising, earthbound game of mostly nameless, underpaid players to one in which athletes became household names for their thrilling, physics-defying play. The 1987–88 season was the peak of that golden era, a year of incredible drama that featured a pantheon of superstars in their prime—the most future Hall of Famers competing at one time in any given season—battling for the title, and for their respective legacies.

Through extensive research and interviews with those closest to Iverson, acclaimed Washington Post sportswriter Kent Babb gets behind the familiar, sanitized, and heroic version of the hard-changing, hard-partying athlete who played every game as if it were his last.

In June 2007, the FBI informed the NBA that one of its referees, Tim Donaghy, was the subject of a probe into illegal gambling. Within months, the public knew the broad outlines of a scheme involving Donaghy betting on games he officiated with a coconspirator, longtime Donaghy acquaintance and professional gambler Jimmy "Baba" Battista. They were joined in the scandal by a mutual childhood friend, Tommy Martino. By November 2008, each man had pleaded guilty to charges relating to the conspiracy and was in federal prison.

You gotta know the rules to play the game. Ball is life. Take it to the hoop. Soar. What can we imagine for ourselves? What if we were the star players, moving and grooving through the game of life? What if we had our own rules of the game to help us get what we want, what we aspire to, what will enrich our lives? The Playbook is intended to provide inspiration for kids ages 10 and up to help them succeed on and off the court.

March 28, 1992. The final of the NCAA East Regional, Duke vs. Kentucky. Millions could say they witnessed the greatest game and the greatest shot in the history of college basketball. But it wasn't just the final play - an 80-foot inbounds pass with 2.1 seconds left in overtime - that made Duke's 104-103 victory so memorable. Each player and coach arrived at that point with a unique story to tell. In The Last Great Game, ESPN columnist Gene Wojciechowski turns the game we think we remember into a drama filled with suspense, humor, revelations, and reverberations.

Phil Jackson has done it again, led the L.A. Lakers to an NBA championship victory. For him, it's More Than a Game. Also, listen to a recent Fresh Air interview with Jackson.

In Dream Team, acclaimed sports journalist Jack McCallum delivers the untold story of the greatest team ever assembled: the 1992 U.S. Olympic men's basketball team that captivated the world, kindled the hoop dreams of countless children around the planet, and remade the NBA into a global sensation. As a senior staff writer for Sports Illustrated, McCallum enjoyed a courtside seat for the most exciting basketball spectacle on earth, covering the Dream Team from its inception to the gold medal ceremony in Barcelona.

A New York Times best seller, David Halberstam's The Breaks of the Game focuses on one grim season (1979-80) in the life of the Bill Walton-led Portland Trail Blazers, a team that only three years before had been NBA champions. The tactile authenticity of Halberstam's knowledge of the basketball world is unrivaled. Yet he is writing here about far more than just basketball. This is a story about a place in our society where power, money, and talent collide and sometimes corrupt, a place where both national obsessions and naked greed are exposed.

From the moment these two players took the court on opposing sides, they engaged in a fierce physical and psychological battle. Their uncommonly competitive relationship came to symbolize the most compelling rivalry in the NBA. These were the basketball epics of the 1980s - Celtics vs Lakers, East vs West, physical vs finesse, Old School vs Showtime, even white vs black. Each pushed the other to greatness - together Bird and Johnson collected eight NBA Championships and six MVP awards.

Among many legendary episodes from the life and career of men's basketball coach Dean Smith, few loom as large as his recruitment of Charlie Scott, the first African American scholarship athlete at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Drawn together by college basketball in a time of momentous change, Smith and Scott helped transform a university, a community, and the racial landscape of sports in the South.

Verne Lundquist's remarkable broadcasting career has placed him at the center of major sporting events in America for more than 50 years, from Jack Nicklaus' final victory at the 1986 Masters to Tonya Harding's attack on Nancy Kerrigan at the 1994 Olympics to the Auburn-Alabama shocker of 2013. In his first memoir, he replays highlights from his career, taking sports fans behind the scenes of some of the most dramatic moments in modern sports history.

Whether you play basketball, watch basketball, or you’re simply a history buff, there is something for you here! Crafted for both hardcore NBA fans and curious newcomers to the sports world, this book dives into the history of basketball and specifically the tales of certain players that revolutionized the game.

An electrifying first novel that shocks by its language, its circumstances, and its brutal honesty, Push recounts a young black street-girl's horrendous and redemptive journey through a Harlem inferno. For Precious Jones, 16 and pregnant with her father's child, miraculous hope appears, and the world begins to open up for her when a courageous, determined teacher bullies, cajoles, and inspires her to learn to read, to define her own feelings, and set them down in a diary.

On a scorching hot day in July 1936, thousands of people cheered as the US Olympic teams boarded the SS Manhattan, bound for Berlin. Among the athletes were the 14 players representing the first-ever US Olympic basketball team. This is the incredible true story of basketball, from its invention by James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891, to the sport's Olympic debut in Berlin and the eclectic mix of people, events, and propaganda on both sides of the Atlantic that made it all possible.

The unlikeliest of champions, the 1949-50 City College Beavers were extraordinary by every measure. During that remarkable season, this unheralded group of city kids would stun the basketball world by becoming the only team in history to win the NIT and NCAA tournaments in the same year. This team, though, proved to be extraordinary in another way: During the following season, all of the team’s starting five were arrested by New York City detectives. The story centers on Eddie Roman and Floyd Layne, each caught up in the scandal, each searching for a path to personal redemption.

When Lily and Alex entered a packed gymnasium in Queens, New York, in 1972, they barely recognized their son. The boy who escaped to America with them, who was bullied as he struggled to learn English and cope with family tragedy, was now a young man who had discovered and secretly honed his basketball talent on the outdoor courts of New York City. That young man was Ernie Grunfeld, who would go on to win an Olympic gold medal and reach previously unimaginable heights as an NBA player and executive.

This inspiring memoir from sports and cultural icon Bill Walton recounts his devastating injuries and amazing recoveries, set in the context of his UCLA triumphs under John Wooden, his storied NBA career, and his affinity for music and the Grateful Dead.