Blake Griffin: the Inspiring Story of One of Basketball's Most Dominant Power Forwards


Book Description

Learn the Incredible Story of the Los Angeles Clipper's Star Power Forward Blake Griffin Read on your PC, Mac, smartphone, tablet or Kindle device! In Blake Griffin: The Inspiring Story of One of Basketball's Most Dominant Power Forwards, you'll read about the inspirational story of basketball's star, Blake Griffin. This short unauthorized biography of Blake Griffin highlights incredible ascent to almost winning the Most Valuable Player award in the 2013-2014 NBA season. The arrival of Blake Griffin for the Los Angeles Clippers marked the turning point for a traditionally bottom-feeder franchise. Now, alongside the leadership of Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and the Clippers have become a formidable team in the Western Conference, intimidating teams with stylish alley-oop passes and dominating performances by Griffin. A franchise once lottery-bound has become one of the hottest franchises in the NBA today. Read on to learn about Blake Griffin's journey into the league from his childhood growing up alongside a talented brother, to his college years at Oklahoma before ultimately propelling into the NBA. Here is a preview of what is inside this book: Childhood and High School Years College Years at Oklahoma Blake Griffin's NBA Career Griffin's Personal Life Blake Griffin's Impact on Basketball Blake Griffin's Legacy & Future An excerpt from the book: If you regularly watch ESPN SportsCenter's daily top 10 plays then there's a good chance that you have seen a lot of Los Angeles Clippers' power forward Blake Griffin. In the span of his young and promising career, Blake Griffin's flurry of electrifying, death defying, posterizing dunks have been his main source of fame. Measuring at 6 feet 10 inches and weighing 250 pounds combined with otherworldly athleticism and leaping ability; Griffin is an impressive physical specimen. Along with running mates NBA All-Star point guard Chris Paul and fellow dunking dervish DeAndre Jordan, Griffin is at the center of the moniker he himself coined for the team, "Lob City". His humiliation efforts of fellow big men Timofey Mozgov, Kendrick Perkins and Pau Gasol have generated almost six million YouTube views. He won the NBA Slam Dunk Contest in 2011 by leaping over a car and then slamming the ball down while being serenaded by a choir singing R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly". He has also been featured in numerous commercials and advertisements for brands such as Kia (who sponsors the slam dunk contest) and Subway.However, his best ability has also begotten his greatest criticism. Many basketball experts, including hall of fame power forward Charles Barkley; have dismissed Griffin of being a one-dimensional dunker. They claim that he doesn't have a refined post-up game, relies too much on his physical gifts and has limited basketball acumen. His poor free-throw shooting and playoff struggles so far haven't helped his case either. Even contemporaries dislike his tough guy on-court persona, the way he looks at his opponents with a stone-cold expression after his dunks and his alleged constant flopping. Zach Randolph of the Memphis Grizzlies called Griffin an "actor" prior to a 2012 playoff matchup. Tags: Blake Griffin, Los Angeles Clippers, Chris Paul, Doc Rivers, Oklahoma Basketball, DeAndre Jordan, Steve Ballmer, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Tim Duncan, Serge Ibaka, Kenneth Faried




DeMar Derozan: the Inspiring Story of One of Basketball's Star Shooting Guards


Book Description

Learn the Inspiring Story of the Toronto Raptors' Star Shooting Guard DeMar DeRozan! Read on your PC, Mac, smartphone, tablet or Kindle device! In DeMar DeRozan: The Inspiring Story of One of Basketball's Star Shooting Guards, you will learn the inspirational story of one of basketball's greatest offensive players, DeMar DeRozan. DeMar DeRozan has quickly emerged as one of the premier scorers in the NBA, with a ruthless ability to score that reminds many of none other than a combination of Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady. Since being drafted as the ninth overall pick in the 2009 NBA draft, DeMar has played a significant role in the Raptors' emergence as a force in the Eastern Conference. Paired with Kyle Lowry, DeMar DeRozan and the Raptors are a formidable team in the East, and will likely remain so for years to come. In this unauthorized biography, we'll explore DeMar's incredible life story and impact on the game of basketball. Here is a preview of what is inside this book: Childhood and Early Life High School Career College Career NBA Career Getting Drafted, The Rookie Campaign, The Development Years Teaming Up with Kyle Lowry, the Rudy Gay Experiment, First All-Star Season, Playoff Debut, Injury Struggles, Lowry's Evolution into an All-Star Breaking Through to the Conference Finals, Road to Becoming Elite International Career Personal Life and Impact on Basketball Legacy and Future An excerpt from the book: The shooting guard position has always been one of the more difficult spots to play in the NBA. Shooting guards are required first and foremost to be among the best scorers on their team since their primary role of the team is to, of course, shoot and make their shots. While scoring the ball may not sound like the most difficult task to do, what makes the shooting guard a difficult position in the NBA is the level of skill required to be elite. As far as the history of the league is concerned, there have not been a lot of great shooting guards compared to centers, point guards, and forwards due to the relative difficulty the position requires for the player to be elite. But even though there have not been a lot of great shooting guards in the NBA's history, the best of the best happen to be those that play that position. Since the dawn of the league, the first great shooting guard was the NBA logo himself, Jerry West. Then there came guys like George Gervin and Pete Maravich during the dark 70's era of the league. Come the 80's and 90's, Reggie Miller and Clyde Drexler dominated the position. Those that came after them were Kobe Bryant, Ray Allen, Vince Carter, and Dwyane Wade. And Michael Jordan, the greatest player to have ever played the game, is known as a shooting guard. There have not been a lot of great shooting guards, but they were always the best of their respective eras. Tags: DeMar DeRozan Bio, DeMar DeRozan basketball, Toronto Raptors basketball, Kyle Lowry, DeMarcus Cousins, Jimmy Butler, Jonas Valanciunas, Paul George, James Harden, Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady




Tuff Juice


Book Description

Two-time All-Star and thirteen-year NBA veteran Caron Butler has an impressive basketball record. He was Big East Co-Player of the Year at UConn, the 10th overall pick of the 2002 NBA Draft and a key player for the Dallas Mavericks in their championship-winning season in 2011. But before Butler had a chance to prove himself on the court, he spent his time trying to prove himself on the streets, as a gang member and drug dealer in his hometown of Racine, Wisconsin. He saw friends gunned down in the bloody street wars near his home, was arrested nearly 15 times and wound up behind bars and in solitary confinement before his 15th birthday. Tuff Juice shares Caron Butler’s extraordinary journey from his delinquent youth in the streets of Racine to his role as an accomplished pro basketball player, dedicated husband and father, active philanthropist and burgeoning businessman. Along the way, the book explores the incredible impact his single mother’s unconditional love and his college coach’s unwavering support had on him, and what drives him to be so successful in basketball and in life. Like The Blind Side, it’s a gripping narrative filled with hubris, dangerous obstacles and heartwarming moments that transcend sports and speak to perseverance, hope and the triumph of the human spirit.




The Book of Basketball


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The NBA according to The Sports Guy—now updated with fresh takes on LeBron, the Celtics, and more! Foreword by Malcom Gladwell • “The work of a true fan . . . it might just represent the next phase of sports commentary.”—The Atlantic Bill Simmons, the wildly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining basketball addict known to millions as ESPN’s The Sports Guy, has written the definitive book on the past, present, and future of the NBA. From the age-old question of who actually won the rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to the one about which team was truly the best of all time, Simmons opens—and then closes, once and for all—every major pro basketball debate. Then he takes it further by completely reevaluating not only how NBA Hall of Fame inductees should be chosen but how the institution must be reshaped from the ground up, the result being the Pyramid: Simmons’s one-of-a-kind five-level shrine to the ninety-six greatest players in the history of pro basketball. And ultimately he takes fans to the heart of it all, as he uses a conversation with one NBA great to uncover that coveted thing: The Secret of Basketball. Comprehensive, authoritative, controversial, hilarious, and impossible to put down (even for Celtic-haters), The Book of Basketball offers every hardwood fan a courtside seat beside the game’s finest, funniest, and fiercest chronicler.




Tall Men, Short Shorts


Book Description

This "part memoir, part sports story" (Wall Street Journal) from the New York Times bestselling author of The Big Bam chronicles the clash of NBA titans over seven riveting games—Celtics versus Lakers, Russell versus Chamberlain—covered by one young reporter. Welcome to the 1969 NBA Finals! They don’t set up any better than this. The greatest basketball player of all time - Bill Russell - and his juggernaut Boston Celtics, winners of ten (ten!) of the previous twelve NBA championships, squeak through one more playoff run and land in the Finals again. Russell’s opponent? The fearsome 7’1” next-generation superstar, Wilt Chamberlain, recently traded to the LA Lakers to form the league’s first dream team. Bill Russell and John Havlicek versus Chamberlain, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor. The 1969 Celtics are at the end of their dominance. The 1969 Lakers are unstoppable. Add to the mix one newly minted reporter. Covering the epic series is a wide-eyed young sports writer named Leigh Montville. Years before becoming an award-winning legend himself at The Boston Globe and Sports Illustrated, twenty-four-year-old Montville is ordered by his editor at the Globe to get on a plane to L.A. (first time!) to write about his luminous heroes, the biggest of big men. What follows is a raucous, colorful, joyous account of one of the greatest seven-game series in NBA history. Set against a backdrop of the late sixties, Montville’s reporting and recollections transport readers to a singular time – with rampant racial tension on the streets and on the court, with the emergence of a still relatively small league on its way to becoming a billion-dollar industry, and to an era when newspaper journalism and the written word served as the crucial lifeline between sports and sports fans. And there was basketball – seven breathtaking, see-saw games, highlight-reel moments from an unprecedented cast of future Hall of Famers (including player-coach Russell as the first-ever black head coach in the NBA), coast-to-coast travels and the clack-clack-clack of typewriter keys racing against tight deadlines. Tall Men, Short Shorts is a masterpiece of sports journalism with a charming touch of personal memoir. Leigh Montville has crafted his most entertaining book yet, richly enshrining luminous players and moments in a unique American time.




The Undoing Project


Book Description

“Brilliant. . . . Lewis has given us a spectacular account of two great men who faced up to uncertainty and the limits of human reason.” —William Easterly, Wall Street Journal Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original papers that invented the field of behavioral economics. One of the greatest partnerships in the history of science, Kahneman and Tversky’s extraordinary friendship incited a revolution in Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis’s own work possible. In The Undoing Project, Lewis shows how their Nobel Prize–winning theory of the mind altered our perception of reality.




My First Book of Basketball (Board Book)


Book Description

Now available as a board book for budding basketball fans!My First Book of Basketball introduces young kids to the game of basketball with a visual retelling of a professional basketball game— from the jump ball to the game-winning basket! Dribbling, passing, traveling, shooting, dunks, and more are all explained using a fun mix of Sports Illustrated action photography, simple text, and awesome graphics. Illustrated "Rookie" characters provide fun facts and simple explanations to help kids better understand the game. Perfect for the youngest hoopers, My First Book of Basketball is meant to be a shared reading experience between parents and their little rookies before, during, and after the game.




Justin Bieber


Book Description

Justin Bieber is the world's hottest new pop star and every music fan's favorite heartthrob! After being discovered on YouTube, Justin's singles have taken the music world by storm! Since then his career has continued to heat up with an appearance as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live and features on the covers of People and Billboard. Fans around the world can't get enough of him, and this book will answer all of their burning questions, including: --What was Justin's childhood like growing up with a single mother? --How has his life changed since becoming a pop superstar? --What are the latest details on his next album? --How did he teach himself to play so many instruments? --Who are some of Justin's celebrity crushes? --What are Justin's possible plans for the future? --And much more! With 16 pages of full-color photos, details of his wild 16th birthday party, his early dating experiences and crushes, and info on his hit singles, this biography is a must-have for every fan and the perfect gift! Get to know the real Justin Bieber, as never before!




Stephen Curry


Book Description

Highlights the life and accomplishments of the high-scoring player with the Golden State Warriors, who was dismissed by most scouts as being too small in stature to be successful in college basketball.




Kevin Durant


Book Description

"In Kevin Durant: The Inspiring Story of One of Basketball's Greatest Small Forwards, you'll read about the inspirational story of basketball's star, Kevin Durant. Kevin Durant started his career as the face of the Thunder dynasty upon entering the league in 2007 as the second overall pick. After a nine-year stint with the Thunder, Durant opted to sign with the Golden State Warriors in the 2016 offseason. Reflecting back on Durant's time in OKC, the team came a long way, becoming one of the perennial Western Conference contenders during his tenure. Playing alongside athletic and talented players like Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Serge Ibaka, and Reggie Jackson, Durant had the opportunity to lead the Thunder to several deep playoff runs behind the helm of Coach Scott Brooks. While he did not win a championship with the Thunder, Durant accomplished quite a bit with Russell Westbrook in his nine years in OKC. Time will tell what he will be able to accomplish with Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green in Golden State. In this book, you’ll learn about Kevin’s incredible story to the NBA. Kevin Durant has had an incredible basketball career playing in the National Basketball Association. In this short book, we will learn about how Kevin became the star MVP small forward that he is today. Starting first with his childhood and early life, we'll learn about Kevin Durant prior to entering the NBA, his time in the NBA, along with his impact on Oklahoma City"--P. [4] of cover.