› › The Knicks Of The Nineties

The Knicks of the Nineties

Author : Paul Knepper

Publisher : McFarland

Page : 299 pages

File Size : 23,29 MB

Release : 2020-09-28

Category : Sports & Recreation

ISBN : 147668281X

Get eBook

Book Description

The Knicks of the 1990s competed like champions but fell short of their goal. An eclectic group who took divergent, in many cases fascinating paths to New York, they forged an identity as a rugged, relentless squad. Led by a superstar center Patrick Ewing and two captivating coaches--Pat Riley and Jeff Van Gundy--they played David to the Chicago Bulls' Goliath. Despite not winning a championship, they were embraced as champions by New Yorkers and their rivalries with the Bulls, Indiana Pacers and Miami Heat defined NBA basketball for a decade. Drawing on original interviews with players, coaches and others, this narrative rediscovers the brilliance of the Knicks, Ewing and his colorful supporting cast--Charles Oakley, John Starks, Larry Johnson and Latrell Sprewell--in the glory days of Madison Square Garden.



Blood in the Garden

Author : Chris Herring

Publisher : Simon and Schuster

Page : 368 pages

File Size : 50,22 MB

Release : 2024-11-12

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 1982132124

Get eBook

Book Description

For nearly an entire generation the New York Knicks have been a laughingstock franchise. But in the 1990s they had earned respect not only by winning, but also through brute force. The Knicks fought opponents. They fought each other. They even fought their own coaches at time-- and coach Pat Riley encouraged the nastiness. They never won a championship in those years-- but endeared themselves to millions of fans. Herring delves into the origin, evolution, and eventual demise of the iconic club in eye-opening detail. He pulls no punches-- which is just how those rough-and-tumble Knights would like it. -- adapted from jacket



The Last Enforcer

Author : Charles Oakley

Publisher : Simon and Schuster

Page : 288 pages

File Size : 50,10 MB

Release : 2022-02-01

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 1982175664

Get eBook

Book Description

In this “incredible read on some incredible days and nights in the old association” (Adrian Wojnarowski, ESPN senior NBA insider) Charles Oakley—one of the toughest and most loyal players in NBA history—tells his unfiltered stories about his basketball journey and his relationships with Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Phil Jackson, Pat Riley, James Dolan, Donald Trump, George Floyd, and many others. If you ask a New York Knicks fan about Charles Oakley, you better prepare to hear the love and a favorite story or two. But his individual stats weren’t remarkable, and while he helped power the Knicks to ten consecutive playoffs, he never won a championship. So why does he hold such a special place in the minds, hearts, and memories of NBA players and fans? Because over the course of nineteen years in the league, Oakley was at the center of more unbelievable encounters than Forrest Gump, and nearly as many fights as Mike Tyson. He was the friend you wish you had, and the enemy you wish you’d never made. If any opposing player was crazy enough to start a fight with him, or God forbid one of his teammates, Oakley would end it. “I can’t remember every rebound I grabbed but I do have a story—the true story—of just about every punch and slap on my resume,” he says. In The Last Enforcer, Oakley shares one incredible story after the next—all in his signature “unflinchingly tough, honest, and ultimately endearing” (Harvey Araton, New York Times bestselling author) style—about his life in the paint and beyond, fighting for rebounds and respect. You’ll look back on the era of the 1990s NBA, when tough guys with rugged attitudes, unflinching loyalty, and hard-nosed work ethics were just as important as three-point sharpshooters. You’ll feel like you were on the court, in the room, can’t believe what you just saw, and need to tell everyone you know about it.



When the Garden Was Eden

Author : Harvey Araton

Publisher : Harper Collins

Page : 292 pages

File Size : 25,24 MB

Release : 2011-10-18

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 0062097059

Get eBook

Book Description

In the tradition of The Boys of Summer and The Bronx Is Burning, New York Times sports columnist Harvey Araton delivers a fascinating look at the 1970s New York Knicks—part autobiography, part sports history, part epic, set against the tumultuous era when Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, and Bill Bradley reigned supreme in the world of basketball. Perfect for readers of Jeff Pearlman’s The Bad Guys Won!, Peter Richmond’s Badasses, and Pat Williams’s Coach Wooden, Araton’s revealing story of the Knicks’ heyday is far more than a review of one of basketball’s greatest teams’ inspiring story—it is, at heart, a stirring recreation of a time and place when the NBA championships defined the national dream.



Three-Ring Circus

Author : Jeff Pearlman

Publisher : Houghton Mifflin

Page : 461 pages

File Size : 39,3 MB

Release : 2020

Category : Basketball players

ISBN : 1328530000

Get eBook

Book Description

From 1996 through 2004, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal combined-- and collided-- to help bring the Lakers three straight championships and restore the franchise as a powerhouse. From public sniping and sparring, to physical altercations and the repeated threats of trade, it was warfare. The eight years of infighting and hostility were by turns mediated and encouraged by coach Phil Jackson. Pearlman shows how the Shaq-Kobe duo resulted in one of the most enduring, and ever-evolving, teams in NBA history. -- adapted from jacket



Golden

Author : Marcus Thompson

Publisher : Simon and Schuster

Page : 288 pages

File Size : 45,92 MB

Release : 2017-04-11

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 1501147854

Get eBook

Book Description

The #1 national bestseller and inside story of Steph Curry, the greatest shooter basketball has ever seen. Golden is the first book to provide an all-access look at Steph Curry and the team that has fueled Dub Nation—by longtime Warriors beat reporter and Bay Area News Group sports columnist Marcus Thompson, the go-to expert on all things Golden State. A lifelong Warriors fan turned insider Thompson is uniquely qualified to tell the definitive story of a singular talent, pulling back the curtain on the crazy work ethic and on-court intensity that make Curry great—and the emphasis on family and faith that keeps him grounded. Combining the competitive grit and fun-loving spirit of his mother with the mild demeanor, easy charm, and sharp shooting of his father, former NBA player Dell Curry, Steph Curry derives support and strength from his close-knit kin and his commitment to Christianity. This hard-working, wholesome image however is both a blessing and curse in a League of big personalities. Thompson unravels the complicated underpinnings of the Steph Curry hate with a nuanced analysis of how class and complexion come into play when a child with an NBA pedigree becomes the face of a sport traditionally honed on inner-city black top and dominated by the less privileged. With unprecedented access, Thompson draws from exclusive interviews with Steph Curry, his family, his teammates, Coach Steve Kerr, and the Warriors owners to bring readers inside the locker room and courtside with this remarkable athlete and man.



Unfinished Business

Author : Jack McCallum

Publisher : Diversion Books

Page : 388 pages

File Size : 19,41 MB

Release : 2013-10-01

Category : Sports & Recreation

ISBN : 1938120876

Get eBook

Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Jack McCallum (DREAM TEAM) gives an inside look at the legendary Boston Celtics during a season of change. “One of the five best NBA books ever written.” —Bill Simmons, ESPN In the 1990-91 basketball season, the Boston Celtics were a team in transition, both on and off the court. Jack McCallum, also the author of the critically-acclaimed SEVEN SECONDS OR LESS, chronicled this crucial year from the back-room planning on draft day to Larry Bird’s unforgettable effort in the postseason. With aging superstar Bird nearing the end of his career, the season was filled with glorious highs and devastating lows. McCallum gets up close and personal with the players and management from this storied franchise, showing the larger-than-life characters in a rarely-seen light. The day-to-day drama of Bird's aching back plays in concert with the drumbeat of banter from his frontcourt partner, Kevin McHale. The book reveals the deep bonds—and sometimes deeper rivalries—of the locker room, and also provides an inside look at a league that was entering its Golden Age.



The Falconer

Author : Dana Czapnik

Publisher : Simon and Schuster

Page : 304 pages

File Size : 36,73 MB

Release : 2019-01-29

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1501193244

Get eBook

Book Description

A New York Times Editor’s Choice Pick “A novel of huge heart and fierce intelligence. It has restored my faith in pretty much everything.” —Ann Patchett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth “[An] electric debut novel…Reader, beware: Spending time with Lucy is unapologetic fun, and heartbreak, and awe as well.” —Chloe Malle, The New York Times Book Review In this “frank, bittersweet coming-of-age story that crackles with raw adolescent energy, fresh-cut prose, and a kinetic sense of place” (Entertainment Weekly), a teenaged tomboy explores love, growing up, and New York City in the early 1990s. New York, 1993. Street-smart seventeen-year-old Lucy Adler is often the only girl on the public basketball courts. Lucy’s inner life is a contradiction. She’s by turns quixotic and cynical, insecure and self-possessed, and, despite herself, is in unrequited love with her best friend and pickup teammate, Percy, the rebellious son of a prominent New York family. As Lucy begins to question accepted notions of success, bristling against her own hunger for male approval, she is drawn into the world of a pair of provocative feminist artists living in what remains of New York’s bohemia. Told with wit and pathos, The Falconer is at once a novel of ideas, a portrait of a time and place, and an ode to the obsessions of youth. In her critically acclaimed debut, Dana Czapnik captures the voice of an unforgettable modern literary heroine, a young woman in the first flush of freedom.



Basketball on Paper

Author : Dean Oliver

Publisher : U of Nebraska Press

Page : 417 pages

File Size : 28,10 MB

Release : 2020-02-15

Category : Sports & Recreation

ISBN : 164012389X

Get eBook

Book Description

Journey "inside the numbers" for an exceptional set of statistical tools and rules that can help explain the winning, or losing, ways of a basketball team. Basketball on Paper doesn't diagram plays or explain how players get in shape, but instead demonstrates how to interpret player and team performance. Dean Oliver highlights general strategies for teams when they're winning or losing and what aspects should be the focus in either situation. He describes and quantifies the jobs of team leaders and role players, then discusses the interactions between players and how to achieve the best fit. Oliver conceptualizes the meaning of teamwork and how to quantify the value of different types of players working together. He examines historically successful NBA teams and identifies what made them so successful: individual talent, a system of putting players together, or good coaching. Oliver then uses these statistical tools and case studies to evaluate the best players in history, such as Magic Johnson, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, and Charles Barkley and how they contributed to their teams' success. He does the same for some of the NBA's "oddball" players-Manute Bol, Muggsy Bogues, and Dennis Rodman and for the WNBA's top players. Basketball on Paper is unique in its incorporation of business and analytical concepts within the context of basketball to measure the value of players in a cooperative setting. Whether you're looking for strategies or new ideas to throw out while watching the ballgame at a sports bar, Dean Oliver'sBasketball on Paper will give you amazing new insights into teamwork, coaching, and success.



The Cap

Author : Joshua Mendelsohn

Publisher : U of Nebraska Press

Page : 373 pages

File Size : 11,77 MB

Release : 2020-10

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1496223861

Get eBook

Book Description

2020 Wall Street Journal Holiday Gift Books Selection Today the salary cap is an NBA institution, something fans take for granted as part of the fabric of the league or an obstacle to their favorite team’s chances to win a championship. In the early 1980s, however, a salary cap was not only novel but nonexistent. The Cap tells the fascinating, behind-the-scenes story of the deal between the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association that created the salary cap in 1983, the first in all of sports, against the backdrop of a looming players’ strike on one side and threatened economic collapse on the other. Joshua Mendelsohn illustrates how the salary cap was more than just professional basketball’s economic foundation—it was a grand bargain, a compromise meant to end the chaos that had gripped the sport since the early 1960s. The NBA had spent decades in a vulnerable position financially and legally, unique in professional sports. It entered the 1980s badly battered, something no one knew better than a few legendary NBA figures: Larry Fleisher, general counsel and negotiator for the National Basketball Players Association; Larry O’Brien, the commissioner; and David Stern, who led negotiations for the NBA and would be named the commissioner a few months after the salary cap deal was reached. As a result, in 1983 the NBA and its players made a novel settlement. The players gave up infinite pay increases, but they gained a guaranteed piece of the league’s revenue and free agency to play where they wished—a combination that did not exist before in professional sports but as a result became standard for the NBA, NFL, and NHL as well. The Cap explores in detail not only the high-stakes negotiations in the early 1980s but all the twists and turns through the decades that led the parties to reach a salary cap compromise. It is a compelling story that involves notable players, colorful owners, visionary league and union officials, and a sport trying to solidify a bright future despite a turbulent past and present. This is a story missing from the landscape of basketball history.