Narrating the NBA
Narrating the NBA

Author: Lukasz Muniowski

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-04-20

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1793623406

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This book analyzes career narratives of selected prominent NBA players after the Michael Jordan era, understood as the time after his second retirement in January 1999. It was a pivotal time for the league, as Jordan became synonymous with NBA basketball and the face of its global expansion. The players discussed in the book have been selected because of the significance of their career narratives, as all of them correspond with certain archetypes, prevalent in the world of not only professional basketball, but professional sports in general. The private and public personas of eight players as well as their depiction by the media are analyzed not only regarding their success on the basketball court, but also in light of what they have come to represent for the modern NBA. The players discussed in this book are Shaquille O’Neal, Alonzo Mourning, Vin Baker, Allen Iverson, Antoine Walker, Steve Nash, Tim Duncan, and Kobe Bryant. Collectively, these eight players embody the distinguishing character profiles and career arcs of sports superstars with dominance, individualism, and athleticism being as much a part of sports star culture as egotism, injuries, boredom, addiction, and bankruptcy.

The NBA Playoffs
The NBA Playoffs

Author: Matt Doeden

Publisher: Millbrook Press TM

Published: 2022-01-01

Total Pages: 64

ISBN-13: 1728447747

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Audisee® eBooks with Audio combine professional narration and sentence highlighting for an engaging read aloud experience! Do you know: • Which team won the first NBA championship? • Why Michael Jordan felt awful during one of his greatest playoff performances? • How the Golden State Warriors built a playoff dynasty? Read about the incredible playoff games that basketball fans will never forget. Clutch performances and shocking finishes have helped make the NBA playoffs one of the most thrilling spectacles in sports. The biggest moments, from buzzer-beaters to last-second defensive plays, are all here in vivid detail.

At the Buzzer!
At the Buzzer!

Author: Bryan Burwell

Publisher: Broadway Business

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13:

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Wilt's 100-point game...The Celtics/Suns triple-overtime finals game...Dr. J's unforgettable shot from under the basket...Michael Jordan's incredible hanging-in-the-air-switching-hands-to-score shot in the 1991 battle for the championship... Basketball's legendary players, record-setting games, buzzer-beating baskets, stunning upsets, and much more come to life as never before in this extraordinary book-and-CD package. Packed with photographs, including many published for the first time, the book chronicles the high points and low points of professional basketball from the early days of the NBA to the Russell/Robertson/Chamberlain era, through the Bird/Magic/Jordan years to the 2000 season. Covering topics ranging from great individual games to the greatest team victories, it sets every memorable moment into the context of the season and the individual game. Fascinating sidebars-including quotations and anecdotes from winners and losers alike-provide a rare insider's perspective. Narrated by Bill Walton with his inimitable flair, the accompanying CDs capture the real-life reactions of some of the best sportscasters and commentators in the business. And dozens of players step up to the mike with personal memories of what really happened, both on the court and behind-the-scenes. A dazzling, comprehensive, and beautifully produced tribute to the game, its players and coaches, "At the Buzzer! gives fans a courtside seat as basketball history unfolds before them.

Interdisciplinary Analyses of Professional Basketball
Interdisciplinary Analyses of Professional Basketball

Author: Till Neuhaus

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2024-01-03

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 3031416562

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This edited collection conceptualizes professional basketball not just as a sport but as an historically, culturally, and economically embedded entity. The chapters analyse the fact that the sport of basketball contains alternative logics that can easily clash, and by treating professional basketball as the negotiation place of these multiple demands, ideas, and logics, the editors have identified three areas in which these clashes manifest: the realization of the game; the cultural impact of professional basketball and the global outreach of professional basketball. The book is explanatory and qualitative, offering new perspectives and touching on topics including gender, diversity, racism, and minority experiences within professional basketball. As such it will be of interest to sport sociologists, as well as those researching the history of sport, sports marketing and cultural studies.

By the Grace of the Game
By the Grace of the Game

Author: Dan Grunfeld

Publisher: Triumph Books

Published: 2021-11-30

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1641257008

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A multi-generational family epic detailing history's only known journey from Auschwitz to the NBA 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. In By the Grace of the Game, Dan Grunfeld, once a basketball standout himself at Stanford University, shares the remarkable story of his family, a delicately interwoven narrative that doesn't lack in heartbreak yet remains as deeply nourishing as his grandmother's Hungarian cooking, so lovingly described. The true improbability of the saga lies in the discovery of a game that unknowingly held the power to heal wounds, build bridges, and tie together a fractured Jewish family. If the magnitude of an American dream is measured by the intensity of the nightmare that came before and the heights of the triumph achieved after, then By the Grace of the Game recounts an American dream story of unprecedented scale. From the grips of the Nazis to the top of the Olympic podium, from the cheap seats to center stage at Madison Square Garden, from yellow stars to silver spoons, this complex tale traverses the spectrum of the human experience to detail how perseverance, love, and legacy can survive through generations, carried on the shoulders of a simple and beautiful game.

Basketball
Basketball

Author: Jackie MacMullan

Publisher: Crown Archetype

Published: 2018-09-18

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 152476180X

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Inspired by a major ESPN film series, this is an extraordinary oral history of basketball—its eye-opening untold history, its profound deeper meaning, its transformative influence on the world—as told through an unprecedented series of candid conversations with the game’s ultimate icons. This is the greatest love story never told. It has passion and heartbreak, triumph and betrayal. It is deeply intimate yet crosses oceans, upends lives and changes nations. This is the true story of basketball. It is the story of a Canadian invention that took over America, and the world. Of a supposed “white man’s sport” that became a way for people of color, women, and immigrants to claim a new place in society. Of a game that demands everything of those who love it, yet gives so much back in return. To tell this story, acclaimed journalists Jackie MacMullan, Rafe Bartholomew and Dan Klores embarked on a groundbreaking mission to interview a staggering lineup of basketball trailblazers. For the first time hundreds of legends, from Kobe, Lebron and Steph Curry to Magic Johnson, Dr. J and Jerry West, spoke movingly about their greatest passion. Former NBA commissioner David Stern and iconic coaches like Phil Jackson and Coach K opened up like never before. Those who shattered glass ceilings, from Bill Russell and Yao Ming to Cheryl Miller and Lisa Leslie, explained what it really took to lay claim to their place in the game. At once a definitive oral history and something far more revelatory and life affirming, Basketball: A Love Story is the defining untold oral history of how basketball came to be, and what it means to those who love it.

Under the Boards
Under the Boards

Author: Jeffrey Lane

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2007-12-01

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 0803207557

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From its birth as interdependent towns on the Missouri River frontier to its emergence as a metropolis straddling two states, Omaha-Council Bluffs has been one of the great urban construction projects in the nation's history. Upstream Metropolis provides the first comprehensive history of this unique urban region that ranks 60th among the 370 major metropolitan areas in the United States.

Spaced Out
Spaced Out

Author: Mike Prada

Publisher: Triumph Books

Published: 2022-11-01

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 1637271654

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A hands-on, illuminating deconstruction of NBA basketball, tracing the tactical evolution of the modern game As the NBA celebrates and surpasses 75 years of existence, today's game looks nothing like it did in generations past when Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar took turns ruling the league. But it's also entirely different from a decade—even half decade—ago. Today's stars enter the league with more versatility and fluidity than ever before, and they need it to handle the strategies, philosophies, schemes, skill sets, movement patterns, and measures of basketball intelligence that simply didn't exist in the past. Spaced Out tells the story of what professional basketball looks like right now and how it got here. Taking a court-level view, Mike Prada breaks down high-level play to elucidate the athleticism, strategy, and skill demonstrated on a nighty basis, while shining a light on the historical forces that have dramatically altered the shape of the game and the role of its superstars. Topics covered include the explosion of three point shooting, the rise and fall and rise again of zone defense, the impact of tighter enforcement of perimeter contact rules, and other pivotal factors impacting the pro game. From Xs and Os to keen historic analysis, this definitive volume will reveal the intricacies of a beautiful game for savvy fans, players, and coaches alike.

The NBA Story
The NBA Story

Author: Rich Mintzer

Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership

Published: 2020-05-26

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1400218861

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What can you learn from the most successful companies in the world? The NBA Story will help you understand and adopt the competitive strategies, workplace culture, and daily business practices that enabled the exciting basketball league to become the powerhouse it is today. Today’s NBA is filled with larger-than-life figures, like LeBron James, James Harden and Stephen Curry, who effortlessly dominate the courts. But it wasn’t always so glamorous. The multi-billion-dollar league has grown from humble roots into a sports powerhouse that is loved around the world due to savvy digital marketing and a global focus. Thanks to the popularity of individual players and team rivalries, the NBA has survived league mergers and financial crisis. Teams have earned the respect of millions of loyal fans who are dedicated to the success of each and every organization within the league. Through the story of the NBA, you’ll learn: How to keep a dream alive when it seems like no one wants to see it come true. How a company can find their way out of a financial crisis. How presentation is the secret sauce to the success of any show. And how a company can build a loyal fanbase who will do anything to keep them on top.

Sugar
Sugar

Author: Charley Rosen

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2018-04

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1496206142

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The 1980s were arguably the NBA’s best decade, giving rise to Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan. They were among the game’s greatest players who brought pro basketball out of its 1970s funk and made it faster, more fluid, and more exciting. Off the court the game was changing rapidly too, with the draft lottery, shoe commercials, and a style driven largely by excess. One player who personified the eighties excess is Micheal Ray Richardson. During his eight-year career in the NBA (1978–86), he was a four-time All-Star, twice named to the All-Defense team, and the first player to lead the league in both assists and steals. He was also a heavy cocaine user who went on days-long binges but continued to be signed by teams that hoped he’d get straight. Eventually he was the first and only player to be permanently disqualified from the NBA for repeat drug use. Tracking the rise, fall, and eventual redemption of Richardson throughout his playing days and subsequent coaching career, Charley Rosen describes the life‐defining pitfalls Richardson and other players faced and considers key themes such as off‐court and on‐court racism, anti-Semitism, womanizing, allegations of point‐shaving within the league, and drug and alcohol abuse by star players. By constructing his various lines of narration around the polarizing figure of Richardson—equal parts basketball savant, drug addict, and pariah—Rosen illuminates some of the more unseemly aspects of the NBA during this period, going behind the scenes to provide an account of what the league’s darker side was like during its celebrated golden age.