The Basketball Shooting Guide 2nd Edition (Nitty-Gritty Basketball Series) (Nitty-Gritty Basketball)
Techniques that yield rapid and permanent improvement.
Customer Review: A great learning tool.
I reccomend this book to everyone.
OnBasketball.info
Archive for May, 2009
Fighting Illini Basketball : A Hardwood History
The University of Illinois has fielded a basketball team since 1905. Over the years, many memorable players have donned the orange and blue, including Derek Harper, Dave Downey, Doug Altenberger, Kendall Gill, Eddie Johnson, Ken Norman, Kenny Battle, Johnny Kerr, Dike Eddleman and many more. Coaches such as Doug Mills, Lou Henson, and Lon Kruger have led their teams to conference championships and post-season tournaments. A Hardwood History chronicles the players and coaches who have shaped Illinois basketball history and the moments no Illini basketball fan can forget.
Customer Review: The Awsome History of Illini Basketball
The name of my book is Fighting Illini Basketball.Do you know the history about Illini Basketball?This book was written by Joanna Wright. This book is about Illini through out the years.It gives interesting facts about their records It tells about the indavisual players groups of playres that were great through out the seasons.It tells great facts about the coaches and assistant coaches.Tells about wherethey played at.Tells who they played against. In 1914-15 Illini went 16-0 and won the national
Kobe Bryant: Basketball Big Shot (Sports Achievers Biographies)
Customer Review: The Kid
1. About Kobe Bryant and his life as a teenager in a man's game.
and how he was cocky and always embarrassed people with the killa crossovers. His rookie year was only bad because he was a target.
2. This book made my feel like not wanting to embarrass people on the court or take scrubs pride.
3. This had irony because when you watch the games players seem to be nice to each other and they like each other. Almost everyone who didn't play on his team didn't like him.
4. Every person who likes superstars in the NBA should read this book about one of the best superstars in the NBA.
The Last Amateurs : Playing for Glory and Honor in Division I College Basketball
If there's any doubt about John Feinstein being one of sport's truebelievers, The Last Amateurs readily dispels it. After years of smartlydissecting our games at their highest levels in bestsellers like TheMajors, A Good Walk Spoiled, and A Season on the Brink, hereturns to dissecting our games at their purest level, ground he firststaked out quite stirringly in A Civil War, his chronicle of Army-Navyfootball. In The Last Amateurs, he mines the 1999-2000 season of Patriot Leaguebasketball. Given the high-stakes, high-profile, and often dirty world ofcollege hoops these days, Feinstein comes up with a remarkably refreshing placeto visit, a sporting environment short on scandals, prima donnas, and sneakercontracts, but long on a pure passion for the game that complements achievementin the classroom. In the league's seven schools--Bucknell, Lehigh, Lafayette,Colgate, Holy Cross, Army, and Navy--academics come first, the hardwood second.These are campuses populated by students who happen to be athletes, not athletesstopping off on the way to lucrative careers in professional sports. Indeed,these are young athletes who have their post-college focus on the rest of theirlives, not the NBA. Sports, for them, builds character, not bank accounts.Still, the Patriot League is a Division I conference, with its champion earningan automatic berth in the NCAA tournament. It takes the games seriously--often,as Feinstein reveals, heartbreakingly so--even if it doesn't necessarily play toACC, SEC, Big 10, and Pac-10 standards. Feinstein's interviewing, skillful asever, brings the players, coaches, and administrators of the colleges in thisleague to full form, making The Last Amateurs a rarity among sportsbooks--a smart volume about smart people with their heads and priorities pointedin the right direction. Like the conference itself, it's in a league of its own.--Jeff Silverman
Customer Review: It takes time, but a worthy read
I really enjoyed "The Last Amateurs." I've been a sports fan since grade school and as I write this, I'm closer to 50 than I'd care to be, so it's been a while. The past several years, I've tended to seek books about sports at the more grass-roots level because the games are (usually) purer than where all the money can be found. This is such a book.
If you're a fan of quick and snappy books about major league sports, stay away from this one. It is not a fast read, and there's not a protagonist in it who played in the NBA (okay, maybe Adonal Foyle or David Robinson, but they're abstract figures). That's the point. The Patriot League is all about colleges who expect their athletes to attend class and graduate, and these are good SCHOOLS just below Ivy League status.
I've seen a number of reviewers downgrade "The Last Amateurs" because he spends so much time on so many people. Well, YEAH...who is this book about? As tired as I've become of NBA players with college backgrounds who somehow made it through up to five years of classes without being able to string a coherent sentence together with any sense of intellect, it's kind of nice to get to know D1 players who can actually tell you who the president and is and would likely be able to find Iraq on a map if you asked. When I think of college athletes, these guys are closer to what I'd like to see than the imposters we too often get who would never set foot on a college campus if they couldn't play sports.
If you're a skeptic like me who doesn't buy into the notion that the Final Four is the pinnacle of college basketball, you'll enjoy this one. If you're still held in the thrall of major college sports programs and could care less about schools outside the big conferences like the ACC or Big 10, you SHOULD read it because you've been missing something.
Customer Review: True and important
I moved to Indiana roughly 18 months ago, and thus, re-read this book that I had first read a few years back. It was better and more telling the second time, obviously. It's nice to see kids who play for love of the game. You can see that here in the Hoosier State at any Butler University or high school game. I enjoy those tilts/atmospheres far more that IU, Purdue or the NBA's Pacers.
Feinstein has particularly good insight herein, thanks to his fastidious documentation and "all access" passes to the seasons of these teams. I actually follow the Patriot League more now because of this book.
John Feinstein writes a new book each year, and some are better than others. This was perhaps his best.
Remember Feinstein's book when you watch Carolina and Duke and think that's what college hoops is about.
Ultimate Basketball Book: A Complete Shooting Guide
Customer Review: Basic Fundimental Book
There is nothing "ultimate" about this basketball shooting book. Filled with lots of pictures and fundimental instruction that is in most every basketball book on the market. Certainly not up to the hype.
Customer Review: GO WRIGHT!!!
Mr.Wright was my teacher last year in Jr.High School.He taught History-but BASKETBALL?! Who'd think that a newspaper dweller would know so much about basketball? Anyway-It is a FABULOUS book,and if you play basketball,it is guaranteed to get you on the team!
Blue Yonder : Kentucky : The United State of Basketball
This is an impeccably true story about a state's obsession, but it masquerades as a fast-paced cultural novel featuring at least a dozen of Kentucky's favorite characters. Even when the outcome is preordained-i.e., the University of Kentucky's 1997 trip to the Final Four-the readers cling precariously to their chairs, watching the astounding picture unfold. For in this unusual and disarming book, what happens next isn't always predictable. Wheeler, the author of eight books, including the best-selling I Had a Hammer (with Henry Aaron), begins with a fan camping out thirty-eight days in front of Lexington's Memorial Coliseum while waiting for tickets to a practice. Wheeler then takes the reader back in time to when basketball authoritarian Adolph Rupp established Kentucky's national reputation. Segueing deftly between the contemporary resurgence of Kentucky
basketball under Rick Pitino and all the eventful turns between these two legendary coaching icons, the reader is taken on a star-studded trip down memory's free-throw lane. 320 pages. Hardcover.
Customer Review: A fine book
This is a great book for all basketball fans and all Kentuckians. For those who do not understand Kentucky, or who do not understand basketball, this book will make both of them much more understandable. Truly, there is nothing on Earth like the subculture of Kentucky basketball.
Customer Review: A fine book
This is a great book for all basketball fans and all Kentuckians. For those who do not understand Kentucky, or who do not understand basketball, this book will make both of them much more understandable. Truly, there is nothing on Earth like the subculture of Kentucky basketball.
Golden Hurricane Basketball at the University of Tulsa (OK) (Images of Sports)
When Kendall College fielded its first basketball team in 1907, no one could predict what great sports moments were in store for the city of Tulsa. All-American caliber athletes such as Bob Patterson, Jim King, Bobby ?Bingo? Smith and Willie Biles laid the foundation under the direction of groundbreaking coaches like Clarence Iba, Joe Swank and Ken Hayes. The past 25 years have arguably seen some of the best court action in The University of Tulsa?s history. Paul Pressey, Steve Harris, Tracy Moore, Shea Seals, Michael Ruffin and Kevin Johnson are just a few of the marquis players that have donned the Blue and Gold. They have been led into battle by a ?who?s who? of big time coaches including Nolan Richardson, Tubby Smith and Bill Self.
Coaching Basketballs Scramble Defense (Art & Science of Coaching)
Customer Review: Exciting book
Coach Larranaga will probably see his book sell quite a bit more following his team's exciting trip to the Final Four this past year.
His system of pressing, trapping man-to-man defense is exciting and refreshing. He outlines two sets, or systems, of half-court man-to-man pressure, and three of full-court man-to-man -- depending on how much pressure you want to throw at the other team. The highest level of pressure is a full-court zone, but he offers a good way to transition back into man-to-man. All of these systems draw on the same basic philosophy and set of skills, so switching from one to the other should be as easy as possible.
In my experience, the best system in the world is useless unless it can be taught, and Coach Larranaga gives several drills for teaching and practicing eash of the systems presented. The drills are simple and straightforward enough that one can imagine many variations to them to keep your team interested and challenged.
The only thing that kept me from giving this book the full five stars is the lack of description of fundamentals. Granted, many coaches have a firm grasp of fundamentals and how to teach them, but it's helpful to have things spelled out. Persistent attention to specific little details when teaching fundamentals is absolutely key to teaching basketball, and Coach Larranaga's Scramble defense has some unique features that just might call for very specific types of fundamentals.
I Remember Jim Valvano: Personal Reflections and Anecdotes About College Basketball’s Most Exuberant Final Four Coach, As Told by the People and play (I Remember)
College basketball and its annual March Madness extravaganza have emerged over the last three decades as one of the most popular sporting phenomena in America. Perhaps no one personifies the excitement of this tournament better than Jim Valvano, whose heavily underdog North Carolina State Wolfpack achieved the pinnacle of success in college basketball in 1983 with an unlikely run through the NCAA tournament, culminating an incredible one-point victory over Houston's heavily favored Phi Slamma Jamma squad in the championship game.
While that Cinderella story was Valvano's only national championship, he quicky came to symbolize the exuberance and excellence of the exciting world of college basketball. Valvano transcended his sport, touching millions as he emerged as one of the most charismatic and, ultimately, courageous figures in American life who touched millions.
Diagnosed with bone cancer, he joined ESPN to comment on college basketball games. Later he received the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at ESPN's first ESPY awards, where he announced that he was starting the V Foundation for cancer research. Shortly after receiving the award, he died at the age of forty-seven. In I Remember Jim Valvano, he is remembered by former players, coaches, a variety of other basketball experts, close associates, and many others as one of college basketball's great movers and shakers, a man with a heart as big as his popularity. Valvano's life is the classic story of courage and determination as borne out in his memorable line: "Don't give up. Don't ever give up."
Customer Review: Great book for Jimmy V fans
I am a big Jimmy V fan from over twenty years ago when he was one of the greatest personalities in college basketball. It was nice to read about his everyday relationships with those who were so lucky to have known him.
Customer Review: Deeply disappointing
I was deeply disapointed by this book. I expected an uplifting, inspiring story, but instead it was the story of disfunctional relationships. The worst part was, the author did not seem to realize that his life and his families lives were disfunctional.
