Wish It Lasted Forever
Wish It Lasted Forever

Author: Dan Shaughnessy

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-11-16

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1982169990

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From award-winning Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, an “entertaining” (The Wall Street Journal) and nostalgia-filled retelling of the 1980s Boston Celtics’ glory years, which featured the sublime play of NBA legend Larry Bird. Today the NBA is a vast global franchise—a billion-dollar industry seen by millions of fans in the United States and abroad. But it wasn’t always this successful. Before primetime ESPN coverage, lucrative branding deals like Air Jordans, and $40 million annual player salaries, there was the NBA of the 1970s and 1980s—when basketball was still an up-and-coming sport featuring old school beat reporters and players who wore Converse All-Stars. Enter Dan Shaughnessy, then the beat reporter for The Boston Globe who covered the Boston Celtics every day from 1982 to 1986. It was a time when reporters travelled with professional teams—flying the same commercial airlines, riding the same buses, and staying in the same hotels. Shaughnessy knew the athletes as real people, losing free throw bets to Larry Bird, being gifted cheap cigars by the iconic coach Red Auerbach, and having his one-year-old daughter Sarah passed from player to player on a flight from Logan to Detroit Metro. Drawing on unprecedented access and personal experiences that would not be possible for any reporter today, Shaughnessy takes us inside the legendary Larry Bird-led Celtics teams, capturing the camaraderie as they dominated the NBA. Fans can witness the cockiness of Larry Bird (who once walked into an All-Star Weekend locker room, announced that he was going to win the three-point contest, and did); the ageless athleticism of Robert Parish; the shooting skills of Kevin McHale; the fierce, self-sacrificing play of Bill Walton; and the playful humor of players like Danny Ainge, Cedric “Cornbread” Maxwell, and M.L. Carr. For any fan who longs to return—for just a few hours—to those magical years when the Boston Garden rocked and the winner’s circle was mostly colored Boston Green, Wish It Lasted Forever is a masterful tribute to “the Celtics from 1982–1986 [that] is so good even fervent Celtics haters will have trouble putting it down” (New York Post).

The Book of Basketball
The Book of Basketball

Author: Bill Simmons

Publisher: ESPN

Published: 2010-12-07

Total Pages: 754

ISBN-13: 0345520106

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The wildly opinionated, thoroughly entertaining, and arguably definitive book on the past, present, and future of the NBA—from the founder of The Ringer and host of The Bill Simmons Podcast “Enough provocative arguments to fuel barstool arguments far into the future.”—The Wall Street Journal In The Book of Basketball, Bill Simmons opens—and then closes, once and for all—every major NBA debate, from the age-old question of who actually won the rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to the one about which team was truly the best of all time. Then he takes it further by completely reevaluating not only how NBA Hall of Fame inductees should be chosen but how the institution must be reshaped from the ground up, the result being the Pyramid: Simmons’s one-of-a-kind five-level shrine to the ninety-six greatest players in the history of pro basketball. And ultimately he takes fans to the heart of it all, as he uses a conversation with one NBA great to uncover that coveted thing: The Secret of Basketball. Comprehensive, authoritative, controversial, hilarious, and impossible to put down (even for Celtic-haters), The Book of Basketball offers every hardwood fan a courtside seat beside the game’s finest, funniest, and fiercest chronicler.

Unfinished Business
Unfinished Business

Author: Jack McCallum

Publisher: Diversion Books

Published: 2013-10-01

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 1938120876

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NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Jack McCallum (DREAM TEAM) gives an inside look at the legendary Boston Celtics during a season of change. “One of the five best NBA books ever written.” —Bill Simmons, ESPN In the 1990-91 basketball season, the Boston Celtics were a team in transition, both on and off the court. Jack McCallum, also the author of the critically-acclaimed SEVEN SECONDS OR LESS, chronicled this crucial year from the back-room planning on draft day to Larry Bird’s unforgettable effort in the postseason. With aging superstar Bird nearing the end of his career, the season was filled with glorious highs and devastating lows. McCallum gets up close and personal with the players and management from this storied franchise, showing the larger-than-life characters in a rarely-seen light. The day-to-day drama of Bird's aching back plays in concert with the drumbeat of banter from his frontcourt partner, Kevin McHale. The book reveals the deep bonds—and sometimes deeper rivalries—of the locker room, and also provides an inside look at a league that was entering its Golden Age.

100 Things Celtics Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die
100 Things Celtics Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die

Author: Don Hubbard

Publisher: 100 Things...Fans Should Know

Published: 2017-11

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781629374185

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Most Boston Celtics fans have taken in at least a game or two at the Garden and have watched highlights of Larry Bird in his prime. But only real fans know about Bill Russell's pregame ritual or the history of the team's parquet floors. 100 Things Celtics Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die is the ultimate resource for true fans of the Boston Celtics. Experienced sportswriter Don Hubbard has collected every essential piece of Celtics knowledge and trivia, as well as must-do activities, and ranks them all from 1 to 100, providing an entertaining and easy-to-follow checklist as you progress on your way to fan superstardom. Now updated through 2017!

Tall Men, Short Shorts
Tall Men, Short Shorts

Author: Leigh Montville

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2022-05-24

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0525567313

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This "part memoir, part sports story" (Wall Street Journal) from the New York Times bestselling author of The Big Bam chronicles the clash of NBA titans over seven riveting games—Celtics versus Lakers, Russell versus Chamberlain—covered by one young reporter. Welcome to the 1969 NBA Finals! They don’t set up any better than this. The greatest basketball player of all time - Bill Russell - and his juggernaut Boston Celtics, winners of ten (ten!) of the previous twelve NBA championships, squeak through one more playoff run and land in the Finals again. Russell’s opponent? The fearsome 7’1” next-generation superstar, Wilt Chamberlain, recently traded to the LA Lakers to form the league’s first dream team. Bill Russell and John Havlicek versus Chamberlain, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor. The 1969 Celtics are at the end of their dominance. The 1969 Lakers are unstoppable. Add to the mix one newly minted reporter. Covering the epic series is a wide-eyed young sports writer named Leigh Montville. Years before becoming an award-winning legend himself at The Boston Globe and Sports Illustrated, twenty-four-year-old Montville is ordered by his editor at the Globe to get on a plane to L.A. (first time!) to write about his luminous heroes, the biggest of big men. What follows is a raucous, colorful, joyous account of one of the greatest seven-game series in NBA history. Set against a backdrop of the late sixties, Montville’s reporting and recollections transport readers to a singular time – with rampant racial tension on the streets and on the court, with the emergence of a still relatively small league on its way to becoming a billion-dollar industry, and to an era when newspaper journalism and the written word served as the crucial lifeline between sports and sports fans. And there was basketball – seven breathtaking, see-saw games, highlight-reel moments from an unprecedented cast of future Hall of Famers (including player-coach Russell as the first-ever black head coach in the NBA), coast-to-coast travels and the clack-clack-clack of typewriter keys racing against tight deadlines. Tall Men, Short Shorts is a masterpiece of sports journalism with a charming touch of personal memoir. Leigh Montville has crafted his most entertaining book yet, richly enshrining luminous players and moments in a unique American time.

Funniest Riddle Book in the World
Funniest Riddle Book in the World

Author: Morrie Gallant

Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 104

ISBN-13: 9781402734342

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A collection of hundreds of riddles and jokes arranged in such categories as: School Daze, Family Values, Crime & Punishment, and Getting Personal.

Pacific Rims
Pacific Rims

Author: Rafe Bartholomew

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2010-06-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1101187913

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A young man's journey through the Philippines' most unlikely obsession: basketball. In Pacific Rims, Rafe Bartholemew, journalist, New Yorker, and veteran baller, ventures through the Philippines to investigate the country's love of basketball. From street corners where diehards fashion hoops out of old car parts to the professional league where politicians exploit team loyalties to win elections, Pacific Rims gets the story-and gets in the game.

High Above Courtside
High Above Courtside

Author: Mike Carey

Publisher: Sports Publishing LLC

Published: 2003-01

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 9781582617404

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The legendary Boston Celtics broadcaster tells the story of his fabled career and offers a behind-the-scenes look at the team in this book mostly completed shortly before his 1993 death, epilogue by Larry Bird.

The Joy of Basketball
The Joy of Basketball

Author: Ben Detrick

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 2021-11-09

Total Pages: 753

ISBN-13: 1647003008

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A vibrant, unconventional, highly opinionated guide to the triumphs, joys, struggles, and heartbreaks of the modern era of the game, for every obsessive basketball fan who loves to hate hot takes The Joy of Basketball celebrates the meteoric rise of basketball over the last quarter century by ignoring the bland, traditionalist binary of wins or losses. Instead, the book's focus is on everything else. Using text, charts, and illustrations that upend conventional jock wisdom, the book details the most incredible players in history, draft flops, long-limbed oddballs, superteams, the international talent wave, brawls, scandals, the rapid evolution of contemporary gameplay, coaching, fashion, crime, positional erosion, tragic tales, memes, and the sacred Kardashian Blessing. Bouncing between witty graphics and keen sociopolitical observations, The Joy of Basketball is a subversive sports manifesto camouflaged as a colorful reference book for your coffee table.