The best
Basketball Biographies:
Reddit reviews
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
The best of Basketball Biographies by number of unique Reddit comments:
Top Reddit reviews mentioning Basketball Biographies:
His Washington years get made fun of but he was pretty damn good. Reading the book on those years illuminated the fact that Jordan's knee had severe tendinitis basically his entire first season as a Wizard, due to being older and training heavily out of nowhere (he announced his comeback very late in the offseason prior), and had to be drained multiple times. He was such a maniac about playing that he refused to let it rest until he just couldn't play anymore. Because of this, his stats don't really look very good in comparison to the rest of his career. His second season his percentages are up across the board and, most impressively, he played all 82 games as he was turning 40 years old averaging 37 minutes a game. That's incredible.
The efficiency isn't great, particularly that first year, but the entire league was not very efficient at that time. It was a tough era to watch basketball if you were a fan of offense. Lots of isos, particularly by Jordan.
Another thing: He took the veterans exception to play as a Wizard, which was only like $1 million a year, and he donated his salary for those two years to charity. I want to say it was a 9/11 victims charity but I'm not 100% on that. I'm going by memory on this. The way I remember it is that he announced his comeback pretty soon after 9/11, almost like it was a response to the event
Dead wrong about the SSOL Suns being potentially uninteresting. There is actually a great book about the team, called <em>Seven Seconds or Less: My Season on the Bench with the Runnin' and Gunnin' Phoenix Suns.</em> It's possibly my favorite book of all-time.
I'm not much of a book reader, but this one was captivating, especially as an NBA junkie who grew up watching the SSOL Suns. The season the author chose to follow was especially interesting because it was the year where Amare basically sat out the entire season. For context, if you didn't get a chance to follow the team, while Nash ran the offense, Amare was the second-most important player on the team, as he was an offensive juggernaut, their main scorer, and one of the NBA's star young big men at the time. In addition to the main players, like Nash and Coach D'Antoni, the book also goes into details about the personalities, styles, and characteristics of a lot of the role-players and assistant coaches, too, like Shawn Marion, Boris Diaw, James Jones, Raja Bell, Tim Thomas, and Alvin Gentry. Totally awesome book.
If anyone wants to dive deep into just how corrupt NBA officiating is, read this book.. Fun read. My attitude towards the NBA totally changed after reading. NBA is the most corrupt major sports body after FIFA IMO.
https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Loathing-Las-Vegas-American/dp/0679785892
>Books› Biographies & Memoirs› Arts & Literature
>>>>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is a 1971 novel by Hunter S. Thompson, illustrated by Ralph Steadman. The book is a roman à clef, rooted in autobiographical incidents. The story follows its protagonist, Raoul Duke, and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, as they descend on Las Vegas to chase the American Dream through a drug-induced haze, all the while ruminating on the failure of the 1960s countercultural movement. The work is Thompson's most famous book, and is noted for its lurid descriptions of illegal drug use and its early retrospective on the culture of the 1960s. Its popularization of Thompson's highly subjective blend of fact and fiction has become known as gonzo journalism.
In case anyone is interested in the history of baseball's unwritten rules, this book is an excellent (and hilarious) breakdown. There are some great stories in here and it might help some folks understand where they came from.
this is from top review on amazon
"By the end of the book you too may question whether the NBA is a professional sports league where the best-of-the-best come together to compete against one another on the national and world stage or simply a league of teams brought together for entertainment and profit generating purposes not much unlike the WWE."
https://www.amazon.com/Personal-Foul-First-Person-Account-Scandal/dp/061536263X
My husband also likes basketball, and one of my smaller gifts for him was this book, which he liked: https://www.amazon.com/Basketball-Other-Things-Collection-Illustrated/dp/1419726471
I really want to get him an Oomi pizza oven, I feel like that would be so fun to have family pizza nights.
There are two good sources for the "unwritten rules", the book The Baseball Codes by Jason Turbow and Michael Duca, which does go into the Ryan/Ventura fight, and the podcast Unwritten with Ron Darling and Jimmy Rollins.
i gotta think the NBA has bot/shill accounts to give this same response whenever i bring up the terrible officating. there are plenty of calls that we can all get right in real-time (not replays) that the refs get wrong. plenty of instances where you know a team that is down is going to get more favorable whistles in a series. i don't know how you can be a sports fan and not see that the NBA has the worst officiating in sports and it's not close. the NFL isn't great but there is way more going on and a way way more complicated rulebook.
i've been an NBA fan since the late 90s/early 2000s, and we definitely did not have high definition cameras everywhere, and it was still easy to tell in real-time when a ref fucked up. it is the same today.
Listen to The Whistleblower Podcast or read Tim Donaghy's book <em>Personal Foul</em>, and let me know if you still have the same opinion.
I’m generally not a huge fan of sporting events for the mob mentality alone. Perhaps the culture has changed though there were definitely students, alumni, and fans in my day that took an ultimately inconsequential basketball rivalry much too far—well beyond the bounds of human decency and considerate behavior. It’s certainly happened at UNC—I recall discussing our disappointment with the cheers over Zion’s injury with a few old friends. I’ve also seen the Cameron crazies wildly celebrate the blood coming from the face of Tyler Hansbrough. And there’s a reason you never wear Carolina colors when tailgating at Carter-Finley unless you’re traveling in a large group.
People are people. We’re capable of empathy and excellence. We’re capable of heinous, selfish, harmful acts as well. We may vary by degrees from individual to individual, but the potential is always there. I hope you have the opportunity to interact with some more pleasant, down-to-earth Chapel Hill students/residents in the future—perhaps in a less raucous, competitive context. I’d also encourage you to get your passport updated and visit the People’s Republic of Carrboro just a bit further down Franklin Street as you’ll never find a more spectacular assortment of delightfully strange people in our entire state. 😅
Also, give this book a read-through sometime. There’s a lot of great history tied up in the Tobacco Road rivalry. My first dorm-mate practically forced it onto my first semester reading list. The context gave me a healthier perspective on the significance of long-standing sport/fandom rivalries.
https://www.amazon.com/Hate-Like-This-Happy-Forever/dp/0060740248
Can I Keep My Jersey?: 11 Teams, 5 Countries, and 4 Years in My Life as a Basketball Vagabond https://www.amazon.com/dp/0345495705/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_232CXGRATPVQCA04DDM8
He wrote a great book years ago about being the last guy on the bench as well
Read Paul Shirley's Can I Keep My Jersey? about his 4-year pro career in the NBA, D-League, and other countries. He goes into every type of topic you can imagine wondering about regarding a journeyman's career.
This whole episode is well covered in the excellent history of the Carolina-Duke rivalry. I highly recommend for anyone who’s a fan of either team or college basketball in general.
Highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend Basketball (and Other Things by Shea Serrano. Not a dense book or anything, good for a 7th grader
Like college basketball it just doesn't matter what happens during the regular season. I find college basketball so unwatchable and now that star players are not playing every game the NBA is going in that direction. It also seems like the most rigged sport.
Another book I highly recommend - Has some history but also nonsense, Shea Serrano is a fantastic author - Basketball (and Other Things)
Congrats. 9 months sober for me. If my wallet wasn't decimated from having 2 kids and it being Christmas time I'd gift you this
Seven Seconds or Less: My Season on the Bench with the Runnin' and Gunnin' Phoenix Suns https://www.amazon.com/dp/0743298136/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_zx9hCb9Y1NMFM
I will counter that Jordan turned on Brown later on. Jordan went from being a supporter to being ruthless to him later on. The perception was Kwame Brown wasn't putting in the work and he's lazy, disengaged, etc. In my opinion I think Jordan still helped ruin him. Jordan went from his best supporter to one of his worst enemies later on. What you quoted here seems to be in between. At the end of the day the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Kwame isn't the first teammate Jordan was ruthless against - he's an alpha male that tests everybody, including Robert Parish.
My source: https://www.amazon.com/When-Nothing-Else-Matters-Comeback/dp/0743254279
Just occured to me, Duke players always look like the fuckwit fraternity from Animal House.
That being said, firmly believe coach K is a good guy. (see http://www.amazon.com/Hate-Like-This-Happy-Forever/dp/0060740248)
Any particular video games/novels/tv? Which ones are you hooked on the most right now?
I've been hooked on R6: Siege lately, and just got Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, going to start reading that after I finish Cosmos
Paul Shirley's Book touched on his experience with 10-day contracts, and was interesting in parts. Too bad the dude had his opinions and then decided to share them, and then doubled down on it. He had some decent writing back in the day.
That was years before Kukoc came over. The Jordan Rules mentions the tension between the Bulls' then-current players and Kukoc -- mostly because Reinsdorf kept underpaying everyone to save cap room for a possible Kukoc contract.
You're making such a rash assessment though, based on a disagreement of opinion. Lots of batters react with passion to not hitting a homerun, missing their pitch, or driving in that RBI, and lots of pitchers don't take offense. Just because I think that this was an overreaction on bummy's part doesn't mean i know nothing about the history of the game.
Its pretty short sighted of you to make that assumption based off of one interaction with me as well.
You are right in acknowledging the unwritten rules of baseball, there are lots of "rules" but there are plenty of them that have been called out as dumb because of the risk they pose to other teammates. The last thing that anybody needs is to have a beanball war between the giants and dodgers over some supposed insult, cause whether or not the insult was real, injuries are. Lots of discussions have been had on the value of some of these rituals. It's not worth it to sweat the small stuff, especially with the astronomical salaries of some of these super stars...
If you do care to learn more about the code, you know the one I apparently know nothing about, check out this book, its a great book to begin with, but it is also written by a couple of bay area dudes, so there is a bunch on the A's and Giants in there.
It's what fueled him - making him think everyone was against him and he had something to prove. It worked clearly, but socially not so much. Check out the book The Jordan Rules.
When Nothing Else Matters by Michael Leahy was quite good. A look into his Wizards days and you get a pretty good insight into his insane competitiveness.