Basketball Books

Kayes handbook provides immediate hands-on advice on how to motivate kids, teach basketball, and reinforce faith. He believes hard and plays hard. Nice tool for coaches of all skill levels.

You can really tell McCarthy has experience in coaching the sport as well as a keen understanding of the needs of young athletes and their parents. I found this book to be instrumental in guiding my son as a parent not only through a better grasp of the sport's strategies and rules but also simple drills to increase his ability to handle the ball and play well. The plethora of player-model pictures to further help us "see" what good athletic positioning looks like, is just good direction on his part. Some of us learn by seeing! As a parent or coach, of course knowing more about the sport can only help build a child's skills which increases their motivation to be better at the sport and want to play more. However, McCarthy also brings in some aspects of the psychological desires of player and parents from his experiences and covers what works and what doesn't relative to the emotional aspects in order to even further guide us to love and respect the sport. A very well rounded book and worth the economical price!

My reason for getting this book was completely mercenary. I was hoping to get in on what I thought was a new and untapped area of trading card collectibles. But I quickly discovered on reading Bonner's very interesting and informative book that basketball card collecting is already an established hobby, in which I wasn't about to make some quick dollars off some kid holding a Michael Jordan rookie card he didn't know what to do with. (That card goes for, oh, $3,000.) But after those initial dreams were deflated, I settled in for a good read. Bonner has a style that makes even a cold subject such as "Price Guides" come off with a lively flair. What I especially liked about the book is that while he describes in detail the surprisingly long history of basketball card production (Murad Cigarette Company started it all in 1911), the reader simultaneously gets a narrative on the development of basketball itself in the U.S., and its key players through the years.

A comprehensive guide to collecting Michael Jordan memorabilia. Very well documented with hundreds of pictures to help identify the various items.

An indispensable guide for MJ collectors.

We all knew kids like Morgan Brenner back in school: you'd say, "Hey, let's make a skateboard!" and a year later a fully-restored '56 Chevy was sitting in the driveway.

The genesis of College Basketball's National Championships must have been something like that: Maybe the original goal was a compilation of NCAA title tournaments or somesuch. Four years and a thousand pages later, however, what Brenner ended up putting together was a definitive compendium of every tournament ever conducted by the eight national athletic associations, with every non-association tournament thrown in for good measure.

This volume is a college b-ball lover's dream. You can do your own color commentary if you have it at your elbow, as every sportscaster is sure to. Its thoroughness is dazzling: Brenner even took pains to resolve confusion involving school names - changes, mergers, common usages - and provided a cross-reference in an appendix ("If you're looking for School [a], try School [b]..."). You can also test your knowledge with "Tournament Trivia:" Which school was the first women's collegiate national champion? Which tournament participant had the fewest wins in a season?

It's a pricey tome at $98.50 (Amazon.com) but look at it this way: it effectively replaces a whole shelf of lesser reference works costing many times that. If you're a true lover of the game and its history, this is the one book you want to have.

By the way, the first women's collegiate national champion was West Chester in 1969, in the invitational IAIW (page 1,027). Fewest wins in a season? Bay Ridge Christian in 1997, with zip.

This series, this book inparticular, is really special. IT has problems, controversy and excitement. For anyone, any age, read this book.

This text gives oustanding, detailed fresh ideas for keeping your team motivated. The drills are great for developing skills & for doing what I hope we all strive for; keepin it fun for kids. Wanna avoid burnout, give this text a shot- its nothin but net from beyond the arc!

The Complete Book of Man to Man Offense is exactly what it promises to be...complete!

The first three chapters of the book take the reader through a series of steps which help to identify the factors that determine what kind of offense will make a team successful. These are perhaps the three most important chapters of the book as they help the reader understand the basic principles of team offense where other books simply swamp the reader with a series of x's and o's.

The chapters that follow delve into the famous UCLA offense (with some of coach Kresse's own adaptations) the flex plus, and motion offenses. A variety of set plays and options are also discussed with an emphasis on the teaching points to consider.

Special situations are also covered, proposing several options for creating three-point shots as well as inbounding the ball. In each case the explanations are written with a clarity that allows the reader to gain a greater understanding of offensive basketball.

Having read the book it becomes obvious why coach Kresse has lead the programme at the College of Charleston to success. He is a great teacher of the game! If you are a coach this book deserves a place in your library.

What a great book! Too many of the Idiot's Guides seem to be, well, for idiot's. This book was well written, fun, full of cool facts, and lots of inside stuff too. I know a bit about basketball and still found things and stories in there I never knew. It would be a great present for a child, a girlfriend, or a buddy just getting into the NBA. Another good thing is that most NBA books are very expensive ($50), but this is very reasonable priced in comparison.

This is the best conditioning book I've ever read. By following its 3-month training outline, I have improve my game 150%. I have improved my vertical jump by 4 inches, my mile run by a full minute, and am stronger and more fit than ever.