Dean Smith - A Coach's Life #deansmith #collegebasketball #basketball #tarheels #northcarolinatarheels #northcarolina

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

My Forty Years in College Basketball

When Dean Smith retired from the University of North Carolina in 1997 as the most successful college basketball coach in history, he left behind a long list of staggering statistics, including seventeen Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season titles, thirteen ACC tournament championships, twenty-three consecutive NCAA tournament bids, two national championships, NCAA records for twenty-five-win seasons and consecutive trips to the tournament Sweet 16 (thirteen), an Olympic gold medal, and twenty-four first-round NBA draft picks. A special panel assembled by ABC and ESPN named him one of the seven greatest coaches of the twentieth century in any sport. Another measure of Dean Smith's legacy is his profound impact on the lives of the players he coached. From Michael Jordan to the last man on the bench of his least gifted team, Dean Smith's players all credit him with forging in them the values of discipline, respect, camaraderie, and fortitude that laid the groundwork for their success in basketball and in life. Ninety-eight percent of his players earned college degrees, and a high percentage went on to graduate and professional schools. In A Coach's Life, for the first time, Dean Smith tells the full story of his fabled career. With warmth, humor, and unflinching candor, he gives readers the best seat in the house—the view from the bench—for all of the memorable games, players, coaches, and teams, including North Carolina's fierce rivalries, their darkest hours, and their greatest triumphs. He explains his basketball philosophy and its sources, the origins of his many innovations to the game, and his thoughts on the issues and challenges facing college basketball today. He talks about his roots in family and faith, the source of much of his strength in taking controversial stands on social issues over the years, such as desegregating the Carolina basketball team in the early 1960s. He relates incisive leadership lessons distilled from five decades of showing young men how to win the right way, on the court and off. A Coach's Life is a book about basketball filled with wisdom about living. To read it is to understand why Dean Smith made everyone around him better, and to see that even in the most competitive of arenas, doing good and doing well can be one and the same thing.

A Coach's Life

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#hardcover #includesdvd #marchmaddness #basketball #sports #ncaa #ncaatournament #Collectors edition #collectibles 

Oversized Hardcover (4 to 6 lbs)

Iowa

How the NCAA Tournament Became the Greatest Sporting Event in America (Includes DVD)

Told through the voices of players, coaches, and announcers, accounts the first primetime telecast of a college basketball game, Houston versus UCLA in the Astrodome in 1968, and includes a DVD of the historic game.

How March Became Madness (Includes DVD)

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Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Nevada

Looking for baseball action? Check out this Sports Story Series book from Washington Post KidsPost columnist and author Fred Bowen ? perfect for fans of Mike Lupica and Tim Green.

?Smartly using sports terminology and internal monologue from the protagonist?s point of view, this latest novel is bound to engage and entertain young readers who double as basketball players and/or fans. VERDICT A must-purchase?? ?School Library Journal

Richie Mallon is known as ?the shooter??the one on the team who scores most of the baskets. Every day he practices at his driveway hoop, perfecting his technique. Richie never plays any other roles on the court, leaving it to his teammates to do the assisting and rebounding.

Under a new coach, Richie makes the team but isn?t given a starting position. So when his shooting skills fall into a slump, can he find a way to become a better-rounded player and stay on the team?

Bowen returns with another fast-paced story of sports, teamwork, and talent. The afterword offers real-life stories about some of the great shooters in basketball history.

Discussion Guide available.

Outside Shot

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#paperback #sports #basketball #lebronjames

Maine

How Four Friends and I Brought a Championsip Home

The DREAM TEAM was a bunch of kids from Akron, Ohio-LeBron James and his best friends-who first met on a youth basketball team of the same name when they were ten and eleven years old. United by their love of the game and their yearning for companionship, they quickly forged a bond which would carry them through thick and thin (a lot of thin) and, at last, to the brink of a national championship. They were a motley group who faced challenges all too typical of inner-city America. LeBron grew up without a father and had moved with his mother more than a dozen times by the age of 10. Willie McGee, the quiet one, had left both his parents behind in Chicago to be raised by his older brother in Akron. Dru Joyce was outspoken, and his dad, who was ever-present, would end up coaching all five of the boys in high school. Sian Cotton, who also played football, was the happy-go-lucky enforcer, while Romeo Travis was unhappy, bitter, even surly, until he finally opened himself up to the bond his team mates offered. In the summer after seventh grade, the DREAM TEAM tasted glory when they qualified for a national championship tournament in Memphis. But they lost their focus, and had to go home early. They promised each other they would stay together and do whatever it took to win a national title. They had no idea how hard it would be to pursue that promise. In the years that followed, they would endure jealousy, hostility, exploitation, resentment from the black community (because they went to a "white" high school), and the consequence of their own over-confidence. Not least, they would all have to wrestle with LeBron's outsize success, which brought too much attention and even a whiff of scandal their way. But together these five boys became men as they sought a national championship.

LeBron's Dream Team

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Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Vermont

Jeneva Leopold mystery about a murdered basketball player. By Ashna Graves.

Gripper

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Written in his words before his death.

In the wake of his retirement from professional basketball, Kobe “The Black Mamba” Bryant has decided to share his vast knowledge and understanding of the game to take readers on an unprecedented journey to the core of the legendary “Mamba mentality.” Citing an obligation and an opportunity to teach young players, hardcore fans, and devoted students of the game how to play it “the right way,” The Mamba Mentality takes us inside the mind of one of the most intelligent, analytical, and creative basketball players ever.

For the first time, and in his own words, Bryant reveals his famously detailed approach and the steps he took to prepare mentally and physically to not just succeed at the game, but to excel. Readers will learn how Bryant studied an opponent, how he channeled his passion for the game, how he played through injuries. They’ll also get fascinating granular detail as he breaks down specific plays and match-ups from throughout his career.

Bryant’s detailed accounts are paired with stunning photographs by the Hall of Fame photographer Andrew D. Bernstein. Bernstein, long the Lakers and NBA official photographer, captured Bryant’s very first NBA photo in 1996 and his last in 2016—and hundreds of thousands in between, the record of a unique, twenty-year relationship between one athlete and one photographer.

 #hardcover #kobebryant #nonfiction #basketball #sports #blackmamba #mambamentality

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Michigan

How I Play

The Mamba Mentality

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#hardcover #kobebryant #nonfiction #sports #basketball #mamba #mambamentality #memoir

California

This is signed by Wilt Chamberlain. first edition Hardback.  #hardcover #basketball #signed #firstedition #basketballhistory #sportshistory #autobiography #wiltchamberlin 

South Dakota

Just Like Any Other 7-Foot Black Millionaire Who Lived Next Door 

Wilt ***SIGNED FIRST EDITION HARDBACK***

#hardcover #sports #baseball #football #basketball #education #facts 

Oklahoma

Why Americans Watch Baseball, Football, and Basketball and What They See When They Do

In The Meaning of Sports, Michael Mandelbaum, a sports fan who is also one of the nation's preeminent foreign policy thinkers, examines America's century-long love affair with team sports. In keeping with his reputation for writing about big ideas in an illuminating and graceful way, he shows how sports respond to deep human needs; describes the ways in which baseball, football and basketball became national institutions and how they reached their present forms; and covers the evolution of rules, the rise and fall of the most successful teams, and the historical significance of the most famous and influential figures such as Babe Ruth, Vince Lombardi, and Michael Jordan.
Whether he is writing about baseball as the agrarian game, football as similar to warfare, basketball as the embodiment of post-industrial society, or the moral havoc created by baseball's designated hitter rule, Mandelbaum applies the full force of his learning and wit to subjects about which so many Americans care passionately: the games they played in their youth and continue to follow as adults. By offering a fresh and unconventional perspective on these games, The Meaning of Sports makes for fascinating and rewarding reading both for fans and newcomers.

The Meaning of Sports

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#hardcover #NBA #stevenadams #adams #basketball #athlete 

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Rising up from New Zealand to the OKC Thunder

The OKC Thunder's big man shares the unlikely story behind his indomitable sense of determination and his journey from Rotorua, New Zealand to stardom in the NBA.

Steven Adams overcame extreme odds to become a first-round prospect in the 2013 NBA draft. From there he signed a major contract with the Oklahoma City Thunder -- making him New Zealand's highest-paid athlete ever -- and went on to forge a reputation for his intense, physical style of basketball.

Adams takes you inside the draft process from the fascinating whirlwind tour of pre-draft workouts with dozens of teams to the draft itself where dreams are made or dashed and the Gatorade bottles on every table are glued shut. He reveals what it's like to be a rookie in the league, getting pushed around and elbowed -- or worse. He takes the court alongside superstars like Russell Westbrook, Paul George, Carmelo Anthony, and Kevin Durant; and matches up against legendary big men like Tim Duncan, DeAndre Jordan, Dwight Howard, and Draymond Green. Adams recounts the Thunder's rise through the victories and the heartbreaks and how the resilient team has a bright future ahead.

In this intimate account of his life story so far, the seven-foot center also reflects on his humble upbringing as one of fourteen children, the impact of his father's death when he was just thirteen, the multiple challenges and setbacks he has faced, and what basketball means to him.

Told with warmth, humor, and humility, My Life, My Fight is a gripping account from an emerging superstar.

Dean E. Smith; John Kilgo; Sally Jenkins

A Coach's Life

Eddie Einhorn; Ron Rapoport

How March Became Madness (Includes DVD)

Fred Bowen

Outside Shot

Lebron James; Buzz Bissinger

LeBron's Dream Team

Ashna Graves

Gripper

Kobe Bryant; Phil Jackson (Introduction by); Pau Gasol (Foreword by); Andrew D. Bernstein (Photographer)

The Mamba Mentality

Kobe Bryant; Phil Jackson (Introduction by); Pau Gasol (Foreword by); Andrew D. Bernstein (Photographer)

The Mamba Mentality

Wilt Chamberlain and David Shaw

Wilt SIGNED FIRST EDITION HARDBACK

Michael Mandelbaum

The Meaning of Sports

Steven Adams

My Life, My Fight