Basketball Books

A magnum opus of the premiere degree, Mr. Sachare, throughphotos and scholarly chroniclization, depicts the evolution of thegame from it's genesis in James Nasmith's Springfield gym with a soccer ball and two peach buckets, all the way to the manner in which he approaches with didactical fury it's evolution to it's current Nike, gangsta status on the playgrounds of Harlem. From Magic Johnson to the lumbering Bob Kurland, to photos with Michael Jordan dunking the ball, to Larry Bird popping the trey, to dominique "Human highlight film" Wilkins, to the adroitness of Tiny Archibald's ball handling. Alex Sachare understands both the playground, AND the locker room aspects of what he rightly calls the great American pasttime. I found especially interesting his polemical approach to the evolution of tartan and parquet surfaces in some of the cold-weather college basketball arenas of the the Northeastern U.S. Kudos to Mr. Sachare for another great work!

I think George Karl wrote a very exelent book on the proper way to fight for a rebound. He taught me how to position, how to time, how to stand, and how to jump for a rebound. The drills taught to me in this book helped me do all these things and much much more. My speed and agility were increased from practicing the rebounding drills. Before reeding this book I was unable to get rebounds with any regularity or consistency. Now with techniques from George Karl's book "101 Basketball Rebounding Drills" I am a constant competitor for a rebound.

This book is fantastic and super! You should buy this book if you're Michael Jordan fans! It's so cheap,if you go out and buy it,it is much more expensive than buying it from the internet! So get it now! For more information,please e-mail me at chew_rachel@hotmail.com!

I thoroughly enjoyed your book. I have given it as a gift and recommend it highly. One person I gave it to grew up a Brooklyn Dodger fan and he really loved the section about "Leo the lip" Durocher.

If you want to learn about the fading days of Gehrig and the ascendancy of the splendid splinter, you will find it here. The personalities of the various featured players shine through in Talmadge's prose. Easy to read, enjoyable, and inexpensive when bought used, this makes for great summer reading!

The 2000 STANDARD CATALOG OF BASKETBALL CARDS 3RD EDITION from Krause Publications wins out as the best major basketball card compendium. With over 100,000 individual cards priced and featuring over 800 sets, the Krause book is well-organized, well-written, and very well done overall. As a basketball card hobbyist and writer, I find myself turning to the Krause book first whenever I have a nagging question about a particular card or set. The prices throughout are as fresh as an annual guide can list them. Moses Malone's rookie card, for example, is just about right at $50 in near mint. Besides covering the basic card information on professional stars that every collector desires in a price guide, the Krause book takes the extra step of including such exotic international sets as the Australian Futera, as well as including a wide variety of college, high school, and figurine cards. The price guide for certified cards is also a worthy feature. The large page size of the 2000 STANDARD CATALOG gives the B&W photos inside good clarity and the prices are listed in a clean, easily readable typeface. Rookie cards of players are in italics, which makes picking them out much less difficult. Long time collectors of basketball cards find the 2000 STANDARD CATALOG a delight to use. Practically the only drawback editors should correct in future editions is the omission of a few key sets. For example, it would be good to include the first basketball cards, the 1911 Murads, as well as obscure minor issue cards as the 1972 Allentown Jets. Otherwise, from courtside to rafters and from pillar to post, Krause's 2000 STANDARD CATALOG does an outstanding job of pricing the hoop hobby's peerless products.--Mike Bonner, author of COLLECTING BASKETBALL CARDS, A Complete Guide With Prices.

This book covers all the happy moments of MN sports history. What a fun book to own.

Just because the recent crops of NBA players have exhibited a less than stellar knowledge of the past history of the game that is paying them big bucks is no reason young fans cannot be better informed. You might not be able to dunk the ball or hit a shot from long range at the buzzer, but you might be able to take some of these young hotshots on a NBA history quiz.

If you are a fan of one of the teams in the NBA's "Midwest Division" then you have an advantage in learning about that history because none of the seven teams in that division played in the NBA before 1976 (when four of them came over from the ABA). The seven teams covered are the Dallas Mavericks, Denver Nuggets, Houston Rockets, Memphis Grizzlies, Minnesota Timberwolves, San Antonio Spurs, and Utah Jazz. There have been other teams in the NBA Midwest Division, and author John Walters touches on some the history of the division going back to 19701-71 while a note at the front of the book forewarns that more changes might be coming, but the focus here is mostly on the present. The exception that proves the rule are the Milwaukee Bucks, who won an NBA championship out of the Midwest in 1971.

This book, like the other three in this "Over the Rim: The NBA Library" series, strikes a nice balance between the present and the past. For each team you get a history of the franchise, focusing on the star players of the past and the current hot players, which means the "Three J's" of the Mavericks in the early 1990s (Jimmy Jackson, Jamal Mashburn and Jason Kidd) are contrasted with the current core trio of Dirk Nowitzki, Michael Finley, and Steve Nash. One nice touch about this book is that when it describes a team such as the Rockets winning the title it talks not just about the future Hall of Fame players like center Hakeen Olajuwon and Clyde "the Glide" Drexler, but also the supporting cast of Robert Horry, Sam Cassell, and Kenny Smith. If you are a fan of a particular team Walters does a good job of touching on not only the great players and teams but also the owners and coaches.

Of course these volumes are already outdated. John Stocken has retired and Karl Malone left the Jazz, Terrell Brandon and Joe Smith have been replaced by Sam Cassells and Lattrell Spreewell on the Timberwolves, and the Rockets appear to be on the verge of pushing the button on a big trade with the Orlando Magic where the key names switching teams will be Steve Francis and Tracy McGrady. But the history lessons here make up for being behind the headlines.

"Midwest Division" is illustrated with photographs of superstar NBA players, with both black & white shots of the likes of Pete Maravich, David Thompson, and Moses Malone along with color shots including Kevin Garnett, David Robinson, and cover boy Tim Duncan. The back of this book includes all time team records, as well as the career leaders in points and rebounds for each franchise, and members of the Naismith Memorial National Basketball Hall of Fame from each team (only four of the teams have anybody in Springfield). There is also a Glossary of terms from "buzzer-beater" to "sixth man," along with a Time Line of the history of the division, Books and Web sites for additional information about the Midwest Division and the NBA, and an Index.

This is a book that really gets into the various things that were rumoured and suggested all along. Get the real deal. Here is a great story of a great man.

Tuesday's game was great! It was so phat. I think the blazers are ill. The best part was when pippen sunk that 3 to win by 1. Bryon Russell was gaurding him but pippen faked him out and launced the long range 3-pointer from way downtown.Pippen was throwing excellent passes 2 his teammates. Stoudamire was outstanding. He was scoring 3's every 5 seconds. The book deserves 5 stars.peace.e-mail me at caseyc@adelphia.net ,or casey@krazymp3z.com , or pimpflex88@hotmail.com .e-mail me.my sn is pimpflex88 . bye.

This is a great book with a lot of background. So many great "Alisms!"