If the great Sun Tzu, legendary author of the ancient military text âTHE ART OF WAR,â was alive today, what life and strategy advice would he impart upon his great Chinese descendant, Jeremy Lin? What timeless principles of ancient Chinese warfare can Jeremy Lin use to explode âLinsanityâ further and drive the New York Knicks to even greater victories? In this powerful e-pamphlet (which should take Jeremy Lin â and you â less than 15 potentially life changing minutes to finish reading) you will witness the ghost of the great Sun Tzu rise from his grave after 2,500 years of slumber and talk to you â and that modern day basketball warrior Jeremy Lin - as if he were alive again today.
Price : N/A
N/A
Show Detail »
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 â Celtics vs Lakers, East vs West, physical vs finesse, Old School vs Showtime, even white vs black. Each pushed the other to greatness â together Bird and Johnson collected eight NBA Championships, six MVP awards and helped save the floundering NBA at its most critical time. When it started they were bitter rivals, but along the way they became lifelong friends.  With intimate, fly-on-the-wall detail, When the Game Was Ours transports readers to this electric era of basketball and reveals for the first time the inner workings of two players dead set on besting one another. From the heady days of trading championships to the darker days of injury and illness, we come to understand Larryâs obsessive devotion to winning and how his demons drove him on the court. We hear him talk with candor about playing through chronic pain and its truly exacting toll. In Magic we see a young, invincible star struggle with the sting of defeat, not just as a player but as a team leader. We are there the moment he learns heâs contracted HIV and hear in his own words how that devastating news impacted his relationships in basketball and beyond. But always, in both cases, we see them prevail. A compelling, up-close-and-personal portrait of basketballâs most inimitable duo, When the Game Was Ours is a reevaluation of three decades in counterpoint. It is also a rollicking ride through professional basketballâs best times.
Price : N/A
N/A
Show Detail »
The wonderfully original story of a struggling Chinese basketball team and its quixotic, often comical attempt to right its fortunes by copying the American stars of the NBAâa season of cultural misunderstanding that transcends sports and reveals Chinaâs ambivalent relationship with the West. Â When the Shanxi Brave Dragons, one of Chinaâs worst professional basketball teams, hired former NBA coach Bob Weiss, the teamâs owner, Boss Wang, promised that Weiss would be allowed to Americanize his players by teaching them âadvanced basketball culture.â That promise would be broken from the moment Weiss landed in China. Desperate for his team to play like Americans, Wangâa peasant turned steel tycoonânevertheless refused to allow his players the freedom and individual expression necessary to truly change their games. Â Former New York Times Beijing bureau chief Jim Yardley tells the story of the resulting culture clash with sensitivity and a keen comic sensibility. Readers meet the Brave Dragons, a cast of colorful, sometimes heartbreaking oddballs from around the world: the ambitious Chinese assistant coach, Liu Tie, who believes that Chinese players are genetically inferior and can improve only through the repetitious drilling once advocated by ancient kung fu masters; the moody and selfish American import, Bonzi Wells, a former NBA star so unnerved by China that initially he locks himself in his apartment; the Taiwanese point guard, Little Sun, who is demonized by his mainland Chinese coaches; and the other Chinese players, whose lives sometimes seem little different from those of factory workers. Â As readers follow the team on a fascinating road trip through modern Chinaâfrom glamorous Shanghai and bureaucratic Beijing to the booming port city Tianjin and the polluted coal capital of Taiyuanâwe see Weiss learn firsthand what so many other foreigners in China have discovered: China changes only when and how it wants to change.
Price : N/A
N/A
Show Detail »
Amazon Best of the Month, October 2009: The Book of Basketball is a 700-page work of hoops genius that would make Dr. James Naismith beam proudly â and probably blush. Author Bill Simmons, best known as ESPN.com's "The Sports Guy," explores the NBA with hilarious insight, brilliant analysis, and a bevy of irreverent footnotes. Simmons is a fan first â a fact best explained in an entertaining foreword by Malcolm Gladwell â and writes from the stands, not the press room. His knowledge and passion for the game provide him with few peers, yet his voice represents those who stick by their teams through thick and thin. As a result, The Book of Basketball is not just a tribute to hardwood heroes, but also a celebration of yelling at TV sets, revering lucky jerseys, and holding our breath until the final buzzer sounds. Throw in pages of nearly-insane statistical breakdowns (including a projected boxscore from the movie Teen Wolf), and it's easy to see why fans of all levels should clear shelf space for this instant classic. --Dave Callanan
Price : N/A
N/A
Show Detail »
Coach Wooden's remarkable 10 national basketball championships in 12 years at UCLA speak for themselves. In Wooden, the coach--quiet, thoughtful, and introspective throughout his distinguished career--finally speaks forhimself, and he's well worth hearing. Wooden is a modern chapbook of inspiration and good sense that reveals the hard-court philosopher behind it as a man of character, conviction, decency, and straightforwardness. There are no complex ideas, just little beams of light filtered through anecdotes that project the kinds of simple, immutable truths that in the end touch nothing but net.
Price : N/A
N/A
Show Detail »
"If there was an opportunity for me to return to Cleveland and those fans welcomed me back, that'd be a great story."âLebron JamesScott Raab is a last vestige of Gonzo Journalism in an era when sanitary decorum reigns. Crude but warmhearted, poetic but raving, Raab has chronicledâat GQ and Esquireâeverything from nights out with the likes of Tupac and Mickey Rourke to a moral investigation into Holocaust death-camp guard Ivan the Terrible to the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, but the book you hold in your hands is neither a story nor a job: The Whore of Akron is the product of lifelong suffering, and a mission bound with the meaning of existence.Raab sat in the lower bowl of Cleveland Stadium on December 27, 1964, when the Browns defeated the Colts for the NFL World Championshipâthe last sports title the declining city has won. He still carries his ticket stub wherever he goes, safely tucked within a Ziploc bag. The glory of that triumph is an easy thing to forgetâeach generation born in Cleveland is another generation removed from that victory; an entire fan base "whose daily bread has forever tasted of ash."LeBron James was supposed to change all that. A native son of Akron, he was already world famous by the age of seventeen, had already graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, was already worth $90 million to Nike. He seemed like a miracle heaven-sent by God to transform Cleveland's losing ways. That the Cavaliers drafted him, the hometown prodigy, with the first pick of the 2003 draft, seemed nothing short of destiny. But after seven yearsâand still no parade down Euclid Avenueâhe left. And he left in a way that seemed designed to twist the knife: announcing his move to South Beach on a nationally televised ESPN production with a sly title ("The Decision") that echoed fifty years of Cleveland sports futility.Out of James's treachery grew a monster. Raab, a fifty-nine-year-old, 350-pound, Jewish Santa Claus with a Chief Wahoo tattoo, would bear witness to LeBron's every move, and in doing so would act as the eyes and ears of Cleveland itself. (He did not keep this intentions a secret and was promptly banned by the Miami Heat.)The Whore of Akron is an indictment of a traitorous athlete and the story of Raab's hilarious, profane (and profound) quest to reveal the "wee jewel-box" of LeBron James's very soul.
Price : N/A
N/A
Show Detail »
The late 1960s and early 1970s, in New York City and America at large, were years marked by political tumult, social unrestand the best professional basketball ever played. Paradise, for better or worse, was a hardwood court in Midtown Manhattan.When the Garden Was Eden is the definitive account of how the New York Knickerbockers won their first and only championships, and in the process provided the nation no small escape from the Vietnam War, the tragedy at Kent State, and the last vestiges of Jim Crow. The Knicks were more than a team; they were a symbol of harmony, the sublimation of individual personalities for the greater collective good.No one is better suited to revive the old chants of Dee-fense! that rocked Madison Square Garden or the joy that radiated courtside than Harvey Araton, who has followed the Knicks, old and new, for decadesfirst as a teenage fan, then as a young sports reporter with the New York Post, and now as a writer and columnist for the New York Times. Araton has traveled to the Louisiana home of the Captain, Willis Reed (after writing a column years earlier that led to his abrupt firing as the Knicks short-lived coach); he has strolled the lush gardens of Walt Clyde Fraziers St. Croix oasis; discussed the politics of that turbulent era with Senator Bill Bradley; toured Baltimores church basement basketball leagues with Black Jesus himself, Earl the Pearl Monroe; played memory games with Jerry the Brain Lucas; explored the Tao of basketball with Phil Action Jackson; and sat through eulogies for Dave DeBusschere, the lunch-bucket, 23-year-old player-coach lured from Detroit, and Red Holzman, the scrappy Jewish guard who became a coaching legend.In When the Garden Was Eden, Araton not only traces the history of New Yorks beloved franchisefrom Ned Irish to Spike Lee to Carmelo Anthonybut profiles the lives and careers of one of sports all-time great teams, the Old Knicks. With measured prose and shoe-leather reporting, Araton relives their most glorious triumphs and bitter rivalries, and casts light on a time all but forgotten outside of pregame highlight reels and nostalgic reunionsa time when the Garden, Madison Square, was its own sort of Eden.
Price : N/A
N/A
Show Detail »
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERPat Conroy, one of America’s premier novelists, has penned a deeply affecting coming-of-age memoir about family, love, loss, basketballâand life itself. During one unforgettable season as a Citadel cadet, Conroy becomes part of a basketball team that is ultimately destined to fail. And yet for a military kid who grew up on the move, the Bulldogs provide a sanctuary from the cold, abrasive father who dominates his lifeâand a crucible for becoming his own man.With all the drama and incandescence of his bestselling fiction, Conroy re-creates his pivotal senior year as captain of the Citadel Bulldogs. He chronicles the highs and lows of that fateful 1966–67 season, his tough disciplinarian coach, the joys of winning, and the hard-won lessons of losing. Most of all, he recounts how a group of boys came together as a team, playing a sport that would become a metaphor for a man whose spirit could never be defeated.Look for special features inside.Join the Circle for author chats and more.RandomHouseReadersCircle.com
Price : $10.88
$10.88
Show Detail »
Drawing on his work with some of the top teams in professional sports, noted sport psychology consultant Gary Mack shares with you the same techniques and exercises he uses to help elite athletes build mental "muscle." These 40 accessible lessons and inspirational anecdotes will help you gain the "head edge" over the competition.
Price : N/A
N/A
Show Detail »
In the ranks of college basketball, Duke is like something scraped off the bottom of a shoe. Itâs like a nasty virus you catch from a door handle at a public toilet.No team is as uniquely hated as those smug, entitled, floor-slapping, fist-pumping, insufferable Blue Devils. The loathing has almost reached the level of a religion. Christian Laettner is a punk. Amen. The Cameron Crazies are obnoxious. The Plumlees are worthless times three. Coach K is a jerk. Kumbaya. The team is dogged by an intense hatred that no other team can match---and for good reason. Millions of basketball fans around the world are not imagining things. Duke really is evil, and within the pages of Duke Sucks, Reed Tucker and Andy Bagwell show readers exactly why Duke deserves to be so detested. They bruise and batter the Blue Devils with fact after fact, story after story, statistic after statistic. They build an airtight case that could stand up in a court of law. So sit back, and in true Duke fashion, force someone poorer than you to do your work as you crack open the ultimate guide to Duke suckitude.
Price : N/A
N/A
Show Detail »
Top Search
Last Search
