Basketball in its early years was rough and rowdy, on the courts and off. Players had names like Feets Broudy, Sweetwater Clifton, and Easy Ed Macauley. There was no twenty-four-second clock, no jump shot, and only one referee, and fouls were called only for real injury. But from the very start the game won fans. From Set Shot to Slam Dunk brings back the glory days of basketball as lived by fifteen old-time players and officials.
Help your readers to slam dunk their next science project. Physics concepts play a big role in the sport of basketball. Readers will learn about friction, mass, vectors, and more, all while playing their favorite sport. Great science project ideas follow many experiments.
Audisee® eBooks with Audio combine professional narration and sentence highlighting to engage reluctant readers! From three-pointers to slam dunks, Swish: The Quest for Basketball’s Perfect Shot goes beyond the record books and explores all aspects of making a basket. This book features amazing shots, player profiles, and tons of trivia. Authors Mark Stewart and Mike Kennedy cover basketball from the late 1800s to modern times, showcasing top male and female players both at the college level and in the pros.
Examines the best professional basketball players from each of the five distinct periods and ranks the five greatest players at each position throughout the history of the game.
Drawing on interviews with former teammates, opponents, coaches, friends, and rivals, a definitive portrait of the first dominant big man in professional basketball celebrates the sixtieth anniversary of George Mikan's debut with the Lakers, chronicling his college and professional career and critically assessing his key influence on the evolution of the modern NBA. Reprint.
Today, it is nearly impossible to talk about the best basketball players in America without acknowledging the accomplishments of incredibly talented black athletes like Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant. A little more than a century ago, however, the game was completely dominated by white players playing on segregated courts and teams. In Breaking Barriers: A History of Integration in Professional Basketball, Douglas Stark details the major moments that led to the sport opening its doors to black players. He charts the progress of integration from Bucky Lew—the first black professional basketball player in 1902—to the modern game played by athletes like Stephen Curry and LeBron James. Although Stark focuses on the official integration of basketball in the late 1940s, the story does not end there. Over the past 60-plus years, black athletes have continued to change the game of basketball in terms of style, social progress, and marketability. Spanning the early 1900s to the present day, no other book features such a comprehensive examination of the key events and figures that led to the integration of professional basketball. In Breaking Barriers, these crucial steps in the history of the sport are placed within the larger context of American history, making this book an essential addition to the literature on sports and race in America.
Today's National Basketball Association commands millions of spectators worldwide, and its many franchises are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But the league wasn't always so successful or glamorous: in the 1940s and 1950s, the NBA and its predecessor, the Basketball Association of America, were scrambling to attract fans. Teams frequently played in dingy gymnasiums, players traveled as best they could, and their paychecks could bounce higher than a basketball. How did the NBA evolve from an obscure organization facing financial losses to a successful fledgling sports enterprise by 1960? Drawing on information from numerous archives, newspaper and periodical articles, and Congressional hearings, The Rise of the National Basketball Association chronicles the league's growing pains from 1946 to 1961. David George Surdam describes how a handful of ambitious ice hockey arena owners created the league as a way to increase the use of their facilities, growing the organization by fits and starts. Rigorously analyzing financial data and league records, Surdam points to the innovations that helped the NBA thrive: regular experiments with rules changes to make the game more attractive to fans, and the emergence of televised sports coverage as a way of capturing a larger audience. Notably, the NBA integrated in 1950, opening the game to players who would dominate the game by the end of the 1950sdecade: Bill Russell, Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, and Oscar Robertson. Long a game that players loved to play, basketball became a professional sport well supported by community leaders, business vendors, and an ever-growing number of fans.
"King of the Court provides a highly nuanced and sophisticated analysis of the great African American basketball player from his earliest days up to the present time. With great skill and much insight, Goudsouzian makes clear that Russell was a very complicated man who was full of contradictions in his own private life and in relationship to his business associates, teammates, opponents, the media, and the larger sporting public."--David K.Wiggins, George Mason University "Not only is King of the Court one of the most impressive and important sports biographies to come along in many a season, easily in the same class as David Maraniss's When Pride Still Mattered (on Vince Lombardi) and Wil Haygood's Sweet Thunder (on Sugar Ray Robinson), it is also one of the truly incisive books on the intersection of race, civil rights, and popular culture that have appeared in some time. Having grown up in Philadelphia, I was always a Wilt Chamberlain man and always will be, but King of the Court convinced me that Bill Russell defined his age in ways that Chamberlain never did. Russell was a man for all seasons. This is a biography befitting Russell's stature."--Gerald Early, author of One Nation Under a Groove: Motown and American Culture "Before there were crossover dribbles or slam dunk competitions, before they even kept statistics for blocked shots, Bill Russell dominated the game we call basketball. The respect he demanded as a black man during America's turbulent Civil Rights era made him the personification of a winner in life. King of the Court, like Russell's defense, locks it down, and puts it all in its proper context. Long live the King!"--Dr. Todd Boyd, author of Young, Black, Rich, and Famous: The Rise of the NBA, the Hip Hop Invasion, and the Transformation of American Culture "Bill Russell's life story is only incidentally about basketball. For him the sport was not a life; it was his vehicle for social change, a platform that showcased his vision for America as much as his athletic talent. In his magnificent biography, Aram Goudsouzian captures the nuance and meaning of Russell's career. After reading the book, one will never look at Russell or sports in quite the same way."--Randy Roberts, Purdue University "Brings back the excitement of the great days of the NBA and its legendary players, led by the king of them all, Bill Russell. Best book I've read on basketball in 40 years."--Bill McSweeny, co-author, with Bill Russell, of Go Up for Glory
"Irreverent in approach, these guides include tips and advice from leading authoritimes, aiming to help with life's big decisions and challenges, as well as hobbies. This book should help readers how to watch and understand basketball. "
