Download or read book Spencer Haywood written by Spencer Haywood and published by Amistad. This book was released on 1992 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Spencer Haywood was still a teenager when he drew worldwide attention and created controversy by not only joining the U.S. Olympic basketball team, but leading it to win a gold medal, when many of his fellow Black athletes had boycotted the Olympics and staged acts of protest." "He earned a reputation for his outstanding talent on the basketball court, and for his willingness to go against the grain, off of it. After one great season with the University of Detroit, he signed with the Denver Rockets, of the American Basketball Association. In the process, he broke a rule heretofore followed by basketball and football players - that they remain in school and on a college team for four years before signing with a professional-league team. Haywood took his case against the rule to court - the Supreme Court - won, and became professional basketball's first so-called hardship case. His victory in the courts made him a troublemaker in the eyes of team management, but opened the way for players like Isiah Thomas, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, and Michael Jordan to enter the pro draft when they thought they were ready, rather than after four years of college." "Haywood reached for the stars on the court and was the American Basketball Association's Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year in 1970 with Denver. He led the league in scoring and rebounding and was the All-Star Game's MVP. He jumped from the ABA to the National Basketball Association, playing for the New York Knicks and then the L.A. Lakers. He played hard on the court and off, where he partied with the stars of fashion, society, and entertainment. He married one of the world's most glamorous, and fashion's most photographed, women - Iman. In public and private they shared the idealistic dream of linking Africa to African American through their own romantic union. But the idealism turned into a celebrity fast lane of self-indulgence and drug abuse that caused the dream to explode." "He nearly lost it all, but this is a story about success and recovery, not failure. It is a story of triumph, as Haywood reveals how he recovered from addiction through a 12-step program and his own willingness to struggle to heal himself."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Download or read book Stand Up for Something written by Bill Libby and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Spencer Haywood Rule written by Marc J. Spears and published by Triumph Books. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If you are a basketball fan, you should be aware of Spencer Haywood's immense historical importance. If you're not aware, you should be." —Bob Ryan, The Boston Globe Hall of Famer, Olympic gold medalist, MVP, and All-Star could all be used to describe the illustrious career of Spencer Haywood on the hardwood. From picking cotton in rural Mississippi to the historic 1968 Olympics to Winning ABA MVP to the battle with the NBA that would go all the way to the Supreme Court and change the league forever, Spencer Haywood's life has been a microcosm of 20th-century sports and culture. One of the most dominant big men of his era, Haywood burst onto the international scene as a teenager with a revelatory performance at the Mexico City Olympics. Yet, while his basketball career was just beginning back in that summer of '68, it was only one of many notable moments in the extraordinary and fateful life of the big man from Silver City, Mississippi. In The Spencer Haywood Rule, Marc J. Spears of ESPN's The Undefeated and Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe worked with Spencer to tell the remarkable story of a man who was born into indentured servitude in rural Mississippi, and all of the unbelievable trials, tribulations, successes, failures, and redemptions that followed. Haywood would go on to be the ABA Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same season, but his triumphs on the court are only part of the?legend. His winding journey off the court saw him challenge the NBA's draft-entry rules and win at the Supreme Court level; run in New York City high-fashion circles in the mid-70s with his then-wife, supermodel Iman; and bottom out with alcohol and drug addiction during the infancy of the Showtime Lakers dynasty.? Spears and Washburn explore how Haywood's impact was felt throughout the NBA and in society at large—and still is to this day—culminating in Haywood's inspiring second act as an advocate for current and retired NBA players alike.

Download or read book Basketball written by Jackie MacMullan and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Jack Johnson Rebel Sojourner written by Theresa Runstedtler and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the life and boxing career of Jack Johnson.

Download or read book Hoops Heist written by Jon Finkel and published by . This book was released on 2020-12-07 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the untold story of the city of Seattle, their beloved Sonics, and how the legacy of their stolen team created a transcendent hoops culture and a pipeline of NBA All-Stars, champions and icons with roots in the Emerald City and the Pacific Northwest.Few cities in the history of modern sports had a visceral connection to a professional sports team like the citizens of Seattle and their Sonics. Beginning with their first season in 1967 through their last in 2008, the city's love affair with their team and players was unlike any other. From Lenny Wilkens, Spencer Haywood, Slick Watts, "Downtown" Freddie Brown and Jack Sikma, through Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp and the electric 90s era, all the way up to Ray Allen's run and Kevin Durant's single season, Hoops Heist explores the incredible impact of the Sonics locally and the importance of the franchise nationally.Featuring exhaustive research and exclusive interviews with Seattle legends, NBA Hall of Famers and the players who came of age in the Sonics' shadow, including Isaiah Thomas, Brandon Roy, Doug Christie, Jason Terry, Nate Robinson, Jamal Crawford and more, Hoops Heist captures the transcendence of the Pacific Northwest's basketball scene and its ongoing influence in today's NBA.

Download or read book Sports Matters written by John Bloom and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2002-09 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sports Matters brings critical attention to the centrality of race within the politics and pleasures of the massive sports culture that developed in the U.S. during the past century and a half.

Download or read book Rebound written by Michael Connelly and published by Voyageur Press. This book was released on 2010-11-10 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-1970s, the city of Boston entered a period of upheaval on both its historic cobblestone streets and its legendary parquet basketball court. The Boston Celtics’ long dominance of the NBA came to an abrupt end, and the city's image as a hub of social justice was shaken to its core. When the federal courts declared, in 1974, that the city was in violation of school desegregation rulings and would need to institute a busing program, Boston became deeply polarized. Then, just as the city was struggling to pull itself out of economic and social turmoil, the Boston Celtics drafted a forward from Indiana State named Larry Bird. Upon the arrival of the “Hick from French Lick” to Boston in 1979, the fates of team and city were reborn. Pride, championships, reduced crime, and an economic boom re-emerged in Boston. In Rebound!, author Michael Connelly chronicles these parallel but intertwining worlds. It is an account of a city in financial, moral, and social decline brought back to life by the re-emergence of the Boston Celtics dynasty and the return of hope, purpose, and pride to “Hub of the Universe.” Interviews with city officials, former players, and others on the frontlines provide a fascinating exploration into this tumultuous time.

Download or read book The Speed Game written by Paul Westhead and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-11 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul Westhead was teaching high school in his native Philadelphia when he was named La Salle University's men's basketball coach in 1970. By 1980 he was a Los Angeles Lakers assistant, soon to be hired as head coach, winning an NBA title with Hall of Fame center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and rookie guard Magic Johnson. After compiling a 112-50 record, he was fired in November 1981. After a short stay as coach of the Chicago Bulls, Westhead reemerged in the mideighties as a coach at Loyola Marymount in California, where he designed his highly unusual signature run-and-gun offense that came to be known as "The system." The Speed Game offers a vibrant account of how Westhead helped develop a style of basketball that not only won at the highest levels but went on to influence basketball as it's played today. Known for implementing an up-tempo, quick-possession, high-octane offense, Westhead is the only coach to have won championships in both the NBA and WNBA. But his long career can be defined by one simple question he's heard from journalists, fellow coaches, his wife, and, well, himself: Why? Why did he insist on playing such a controversial style of basketball that could vary from brilliant to busted? Westhead speaks candidly here about the feathers he ruffled and about his own shortcomings as he takes readers from Philadelphia's West Catholic High, where he couldn't make varsity, to the birth of the Showtime Lakers and to the powerhouse he built nearly ten years later at Loyola, where his team set records likely never to be approached. Westhead says he always found himself telling prospective bosses, "My speed game is gonna knock your socks off!" So will his story and what it could do to bring back a popular style of play.

Download or read book Loose Balls written by Terry Pluto and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-07-19 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Midrange Theory written by Seth Partnow and published by Triumph Books. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of basketball's foremost experts in the field of analytics, a fascinating new perspective on how to watch and think about the game. At its core, the goal of any basketball team is relatively simple: take and make good shots while preventing the opponent from doing the same. But what is a "good" shot? Are all good shots created equally? And how might one identify players who are more or less likely to make and prevent those shots in the first place? The concept of basketball "analytics," for lack of a better term, has been lauded, derided, and misunderstood. The incorporation of more data into NBA decision-making has been credited—or blamed—for everything from the death of the traditional center to the proliferation of three-point shooting to the alleged abandonment of the area of the court known as the midrange. What is beyond doubt is that understanding its methods has never been more important to watching and appreciating the NBA. In The Midrange Theory, Seth Partnow, NBA analyst for The Athletic and former Director of Basketball Research for the Milwaukee Bucks, explains how numbers have affected the modern NBA game, and how those numbers seek not to "solve" the game of basketball but instead urge us toward thinking about it in new ways. The relative value of Russell Westbrook's triple-doubles Why some players succeed in the playoffs while others don't How NBA teams think about constructing their rosters through the draft and free agency The difficulty in measuring defensive achievement The fallacy of the "quick two" From shot selection to evaluating prospects to considering aesthetics and ethics while analyzing the box scores, Partnow deftly explores where the NBA is now, how it got here, and where it might be going next.

Download or read book San Diego Noir written by Maryelizabeth Hart and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2011-05-17 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Southern California is not all sun, sand, and surf in this gripping collection of noir tales from T. Jefferson Parker, Don Winslow, Maria Lima, and others. San Diego is home to miles of beaches, Balboa Park, a world-famous zoo, and some of the country’s most expensive home and resort real estate. Yet the city also houses a few items that aren’t actively promoted by the visitor’s bureau: a number of the country’s most corrupt politicians, border-related crimes, terrorists, and the occasional earthquakes. A noir feast! In the fifty-plus years since Raymond Chandler set Playback in Esmeralda, his name for La Jolla, the population has grown by more than a million, and crime has proliferated as well. San Diego of the past and the present offers the book’s contributors a rich selection of settings, from the cross on Mount Soledad to the piers of Ocean Beach, and perpetrators and victims from the residents of its wealthiest enclaves to the inhabitants of its segregated barrios. San Diego Noir includes stories by T. Jefferson Parker, Jeffrey J. Mariotte, Martha C. Lawrence, Diane Clark & Astrid Bear, Debra Ginsberg, Morgan Hunt, Ken Kuhlken, Taffy Cannon, Don Winslow, Cameron Pierce Hughes, Lisa Brackmann, Gabriel R. Barillas, Gar Anthony Haywood, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Maria Lima. “When it’s done right, noir is a darkly delicious thrill: smart, sharp-tongued, surprising. The knife goes in at the end with a twist. San Diego Noir, a new 15-story collection by some of the region’s best writers, has all that going for it, and the steady supply of hometown references makes it even more fun.” —The San Diego Union-Tribune

Download or read book Shake and Bake written by Bob Kuska and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-02 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shake and Bake is the story of Archie Clark, one of the top playmaking guards in the 1970s pre-merger NBA. While not one of the game’s most recognized superstars, Clark was a seminal player in NBA history who staggered defenders with the game’s greatest crossover dribble (“shake and bake”) and is credited by his peers as the originator of today’s popular step-back move. Signed as the Lakers third-round draft pick in 1966, Clark worked his way into the starting lineup in his rookie year. But Clark was more than a guaranteed double-double whenever he stepped on the floor. He was a deep-thinking trailblazer for players’ rights. Clark often challenged coaches and owners on principle, much to the detriment of his career and NBA legacy, signing on as a named litigant in the seminal Robertson v. NBA antitrust case that smashed the player reserve system and jump-started the modern NBA. So lace up your high-top Chuck Taylors, squeeze into a pair of short shorts, and shake and bake back in time to the days of Wilt, Russell, Oscar, Jerry, Elgin, Hondo—and Archie.

Download or read book Showtime written by Jeff Pearlman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 563 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling author of Sweetness delivers the first all-encompassing account of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers, one of professional sports’ most-revered—and dominant—dynasties. The Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s personified the flamboyance and excess of the decade over which they reigned. Beginning with the arrival of Earvin “Magic” Johnson as the number-one overall pick of the 1979 draft, the Lakers played basketball with gusto and pizzazz, unleashing their famed “Showtime” run-and-gun style on a league unprepared for their speed and ferocity—and became the most captivating show in sports and, arguably, in all-around American entertainment. The Lakers’ roster overflowed with exciting all-star-caliber players, including center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and they were led by the incomparable Pat Riley, known for his slicked-back hair, his Armani suits, and his arrogant strut. Hollywood’s biggest celebrities lined the court and gorgeous women flocked to the arena. Best of all, the team was a winner. Between 1980 and 1991, the Lakers played in an unmatched nine NBA championship series, capturing five of them. Bestselling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman draws from almost three hundred interviews to take the first full measure of the Lakers’ epic Showtime era. A dazzling account of one of America’s greatest sports sagas, Showtime is packed with indelible characters, vicious rivalries, and jaw-dropping, behind-the-scenes stories of the players’ decadent Hollywood lifestyles. From the Showtime era’s remarkable rise to its tragic end—marked by Magic Johnson’s 1991 announcement that he had contracted HIV—Showtime is a gripping narrative of sports, celebrity, and 1980s-style excess.

Download or read book 30 Summers More written by Dwayne J. Clark and published by Brisance Books. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Hoops written by Thomas Aiello and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-02-25 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its early days as a sport to build “muscular Christianity” among young men flooding nineteenth-century cities to its position today as a global symbol of American culture, basketball has been a force in American society. It grew through high school gymnasiums, college pep rallies, and the fits and starts of professionalization. It was a playground game, an urban game, tied to all of the caricatures that were associated with urban culture. It struggled with integration and representations of race. Today, basketball’s influence seeps into film, music, dance, and fashion. Hoops tells the story of the reciprocal relationship between the sport and the society that received it. While many books have celebrated specific aspects of the game, Thomas Aiello presents the only contemporary cultural history of the sport from the street to the highest levels of professional mens and womens competition. He argues that the game has existed in a reciprocal relationship with the broader culture, both embodying conflicts over race, class, and gender and serving a s public theater for them. Aiello places cultural icons like Bill Russell, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant in the context of their times and explores how the sport negotiated controversies and scandals. Hoops belongs on the bookshelf of every reader interested in the history of basketball, sports, race, urban life, and pop culture in America.

Download or read book Confessions of a Basketball Gypsy written by Rick Barry and published by Prentice Hall. This book was released on 1972-01-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: