The Breaks of the Game

Author: David Halberstam
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1401305199
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
A New York Times bestseller, 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. More than six years after his death David Halberstam remains one of this country's most respected journalists and revered authorities on American life and history in the years since WWII. A Pulitzer Prize-winner for his groundbreaking reporting on the Vietnam War, Halberstam wrote more than 20 books, almost all of them bestsellers. His work has stood the test of time and has become the standard by which all journalists measure themselves. 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. It's about the influence of big media, the fans and the hype they subsist on, the clash of ethics, the terrible physical demands of modern sports (from drugs to body size), the unreal salaries, the conflicts of race and class, and the consequences of sport converted into mass entertainment and athletes transformed into superstars -- all presented in a way that puts the reader in the room and on the court, and The Breaks of the Game in a league of its own.

Playing for Keeps

Author: David Halberstam
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453286144
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 660

Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist looks at the life and times of the Chicago Bulls superstar— “The best Jordan book so far” (The Washington Post). One of sport’s biggest superstars, Michael Jordan is more than an internationally renowned athlete. As illuminated through David Halberstam’s trademark balance of impeccable research and fascinating storytelling, Jordan symbolizes the apex of the National Basketball Association’s coming of age. Long before multimillion-dollar signings and lucrative endorsements, NBA players worked in relative obscurity, with most games woefully unattended and rarely broadcast on television. Then came Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, Jordan’s two great predecessors, and the game’s status changed. The new era capitalized on Jordan’s talent, will power, and unrivaled competiveness. In Playing for Keeps, Halberstam is at his investigative best, delving into Jordan’s expansive world of teammates and coaches. The result is a gripping story of the athlete and media powerhouse who changed a game forever. This ebook features an extended biography of David Halberstam.

Tall Tales

Author: Terry Pluto
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803287662
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 420

Book Description
An account of the NBA from 1956 to 1966, after the introduction of the 24-second shot clock, highlights those who dominated the sport during its "glory days," including Red Auerbach, Wilt Chamberlain, and the Boston Celtics.

The Book of Basketball

Author: Bill Simmons
Publisher: ESPN
ISBN: 0345520106
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 754

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The NBA according to The Sports Guy—now updated with fresh takes on LeBron, the Celtics, and more! Foreword by Malcom Gladwell • “The work of a true fan . . . it might just represent the next phase of sports commentary.”—The Atlantic Bill Simmons, the wildly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining basketball addict known to millions as ESPN’s The Sports Guy, has written the definitive book on the past, present, and future of the NBA. 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, Simmons opens—and then closes, once and for all—every major pro basketball debate. 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.

October 1964

Author: David Halberstam
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453286128
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 525

Book Description
The “compelling” New York Times bestseller by the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, capturing the 1964 World Series between the Yankees and Cardinals (Newsweek). David Halberstam, an avid sports writer with an investigative reporter’s tenacity, superbly details the end of the fifteen-year reign of the New York Yankees in October 1964. That October found the Yankees going head-to-head with the St. Louis Cardinals for the World Series pennant. Expertly weaving the narrative threads of both teams’ seasons, Halberstam brings the major personalities on the field—from switch-hitter Mickey Mantle to pitcher Bob Gibson—to life. Using the teams’ subcultures, Halberstam also analyzes the cultural shifts of the sixties. The result is a unique blend of sports writing and cultural history as engrossing as it is insightful. This ebook features an extended biography of David Halberstam.

Loose Balls

Author: Terry Pluto
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439127522
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 456

Book Description
What do Julius Erving, Larry Brown, Moses Malone, Bob Costas, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the Slam Dunk Contest have in common? They all got their professional starts in the American Basketball Association. What do Julius Erving, Larry Brown, Moses Malone, Bob Costas, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the Slam Dunk Contest have in common? They all got their professional starts in the American Basketball Association. The NBA may have won the financial battle, but the ABA won the artistic war. With its stress on wide-open individual play, the adoption of the 3-point shot and pressing defense, and the encouragement of flashy moves and flying dunks, today's NBA is still—decades later —just the ABA without the red, white and blue ball. Loose Balls is, after all these years, the definitive and most widely respected history of the ABA. It's a wild ride through some of the wackiest, funniest, strangest times ever to hit pro sports—told entirely through the (often incredible) words of those who played, wrote and connived their way through the league's nine seasons.

The Game That Breaks Us

Author: Micalea Smeltzer
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781533661142
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 406

Book Description
Hockey's bad boy needs to clean up his reputation...Bennett James has built his career at being the best, on and off the ice, and now it's come back to bite him. The media has turned against him, and with a near career-ending injury, he needs to clean up his act and prove that he's serious about the game. For Bennett, working with his old coach at his alma mater feels like a step back, but it might be just what he needs....and she's going to help him do it.Grace Wentworth has always been the good girl, and she's tired of that stigma. She wants to prove that she can get down and dirty with the best of them. The problem? She doesn't know how. Bennett will teach the good girl how to be bad, if she pretends to be his goody two-shoes girlfriend in front of the media.But what happens when the game becomes real?

Everything They Had

Author: David Halberstam
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 0316312231
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Book Description
"Sometimes sports mirrors society, sometimes it allows us to understand the larger society a little better. But mostly, it is a world of entertainment of talented and driven young men and women who do certain things with both skill and passion." --David Halberstam David Halberstam was a distinguished journalist and historian of American politics. He was also a sports writer. Everything They Had brings together for the first time his articles from newspapers and magazines, a wide-ranging collection edited by Glenn Stout, selected over the full scope of Halberstam's five decades as one of America's most honored journalists. These are dazzling portraits of some of the most compelling sports figures of our era, the superstars of popular sports like basketball, football, and baseball, but also fishing, soccer, and rowing, and the amateur athletes who play for the love of the game. In "My Dinner with Theodore," Halberstam recounts his long anticipated--and unforgettable--meeting with Red Sox legend Ted Williams. Against the backdrop of 1960s Nashville, he beautifully recounts a lifelong love of football in "How I Fell in Love with the NFL." And "Men Without Women," set on a fishing expedition in Patagonia, is more than a hunt for giant brown trout--it is a story of fishing, friendship, and fellowship. These and many more stories exemplify the breadth and depth of David Halberstam's devotion to diverse sports and his respect and fascination for the men and women who play them so well. The result is an intimate and personal collection that reveals the issues and the ideals David Halberstam cared about--racial equality, friendship, loyalty, and character--and creates a vivid and unforgettable portrait of the author himself. Everything They Had takes its rightful place alongside Halberstam's bestselling sports titles, which include The Breaks of the Game, The Amateurs, Summer of '49, and The Education of a Coach.

The Education of a Coach

Author: David Halberstam
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 1401305202
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
Pulitzer Prize-winner David Halberstam's bestseller takes you inside the football genius of Bill Belichick for an insightful profile in leadership. Bill Belichick's thirty-one years in the NFL have been marked by amazing success--most recently with the New England Patriots. In this groundbreaking book, David Halberstam explores the nuances of both the game and the man behind it. He uncovers what makes Bill Belichick tick both on and off the field.

Levels of the Game

Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374708657
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Book Description
Levels of the Game is John McPhee's astonishing account of a tennis match played by Arthur Ashe against Clark Graebner at Forest Hills in 1968. It begins with the ball rising into the air for the initial serve and ends with the final point. McPhee provides a brilliant, stroke-by-stroke description while examining the backgrounds and attitudes which have molded the players' games. "This may be the high point of American sports journalism"- Robert Lipsyte, The New York Times