Best Basketball Biographies Books
Here you will get Best Basketball Biographies Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. The Mamba Mentality: How I Play
Author: by Kobe Bryant
MCD
English
208 pages
The Mamba Mentality: How I Play is Kobe Bryant’s personal perspective of his life and career on the basketball court and his exceptional, insightful style of playing the gamea fitting legacy from the late Los Angeles Laker superstar. In the wake of his retirement from professional basketball, Kobe The Black Mamba Bryant 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.
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.
2. Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike
Author: by Phil Knight
Scribner
English
400 pages
In this instant and tenacious New York Times bestseller, Nike founder and board chairman Phil Knight offers a rare and revealing look at the notoriously media-shy man behind the swoosh (Booklist, starred review), illuminating his company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands.
Bill Gates named Shoe Dog one of his five favorite books of 2016 and called it an amazing tale, a refreshingly honest reminder of what the path to business success really looks like. It’s a messy, perilous, and chaotic journey, riddled with mistakes, endless struggles, and sacrifice.
Phil Knight opens up in ways few CEOs are willing to do. Fresh out of business school, Phil Knight borrowed fifty dollars from his father and launched a company with one simple mission: import high-quality, low-cost running shoes from Japan.
Selling the shoes from the trunk of his car in 1963, Knight grossed eight thousand dollars that first year. Today, Nike’s annual sales top $30 billion. In this age of start-ups, Knight’s Nike is the gold standard, and its swoosh is one of the few icons instantly recognized in every corner of the world.
3
Letters to a Young Athlete
Author: by Chris Bosh
English
256 pages
1984881787
A legendary NBA player shares his remarkable story, infused with hard-earned wisdom about the journey to self-mastery from a life at the highest level of professional sportsChris Bosh, NBA Hall of Famer, eleven-time All-Star, two-time NBA champion, Olympic gold medalist, and the league’s Global Ambassador, had his playing days cut short at their prime by a freak medical condition.
His extraordinary career ended not at a time of his choosing but in a doctor’s office in the middle of the afternoon. Forced to reckon with how to find meaning to carry forward, he found himself looking back over his path, from a teenager in Dallas who balanced basketball with the high school robotics club to the pinnacle of the NBA and beyond.
Reflecting on all he learned from a long list of basketball legends, from LeBron and Kobe to Pat Riley and Coach K, he saw that his important lessons weren’t about basketball so much as the inner game of successright attitude, right commitment, right flow within a team.
4. Can't Knock the Hustle: Inside the Season of Protest, Pandemic, and Progress with the Brooklyn Nets' Superstars of Tomorrow
Author: by Matt Sullivan
English
352 pages
0063036800
English
512 pages
Price:
$18.5
as of Jul 8, 2021
(11:30 am)
The shocking, gripping, and at times darkly hilarious bestselling memoir of Nikki Sixx’s yearlong war with a vicious heroin addiction, featuring exclusive new content. When Mtley Cre was at the height of its fame, there wasn’t any drug Nikki Sixx wouldn’t do.
He spent dayssometimes alone, sometimes with other addicts, friends, and loversin a coke- and heroin-fueled daze. The highs were high, and Nikki’s journal entries reveal some euphoria and joy. But the lows were lower, often ending with Nikki in his closet, surrounded by drug paraphernalia and wrapped in paranoid delusions.
Here, Nikki shares the diary entriessome poetic, some scatterbrained, some bizarreof those dark times. Joining him are Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars, Slash, Rick Nielsen, Bob Rock, and a host of ex-managers, ex-lovers, and more. Brutally honest, utterly riveting, and surprisingly moving, The Heroin Diaries follows Nikki during the year he plunged to rock bottomand his courageous decision to pick himself up and start living again.
6. Finished Business: My Fifty Years of Headlines, Heroes, and Heartaches
Author: by Ray Didinger
Temple University Press
English
1439920605
Ray Didinger opens his lively memoir Finished Business with the Philadelphia Eagles’ upset win in Super Bowl LII. When the Eagles finally hoist the Lombardi Trophy, Didinger does his best to straddle the emotions of a working reporter and a long-suffering Philly fan.
His ability to do that is why he has built up such a loyal following. Didinger began following the Eagles as a kid, hanging out in his grandfather’s bar in Southwest Philadelphia. He spent his summers at the team’s training camp in Hershey.
It was there he met his idol, flanker Tommy McDonald. He would later write a play, Tommy and Me, about their friendship and his efforts to see McDonald enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Didinger has been covering the Eagles as a newspaper columnist or TV analyst since 1970.
Over the years, he wrote sports for the Philadelphia Bulletin and the Philadelphia Daily News. He later produced Emmy Awardwinning documentaries for NFL Films before transitioning to sports talk radio and TV analysis. In five decades, across multiple media platforms, he has interviewed everyone from Hank Aaron, Wayne Gretzky, Muhammad Ali, Julius Erving, Jack Nicklaus, to Mike Schmidt, as well as writing film scripts for Hollywood stars such as Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin.
7. I Came As a Shadow: An Autobiography
Author: by John Thompson
English
352 pages
1250619351
The long-awaited autobiography from Georgetown University’s legendary coach, whose life on and off the basketball court threw America’s unresolved struggle with racial justice into sharp relief. John Thompson was never just a basketball coach and I Came As A Shadow is categorically not just a basketball autobiography.
After five decades at the center of race and sports in America, Thompsonthe iconic NCAA champion, Black activist, and educatorwas ready to make the private public at last, and he completed this autobiography shortly before his death in the historically tumultuous summer of 2020.
Chockful of stories and moving beyond mere stats (three Final Fours, four-time national coach of the year, seven Big East championships, 97 percent graduation rate), Thompson’s book drives us through his childhood under Jim Crow segregation to our current moment of racial reckoning.
We experience riding shotgun with Celtics icon Red Auerbach and coaching NBA Hall of Famers like Patrick Ewing and Allen Iverson. What were the origins of the the phrase Hoya Paranoia?You’ll see. And parting his veil of secrecy, Thompson brings us into his negotiation with a D.C.
8. Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success
Author: by Phil Jackson
Penguin Books
English
384 pages
“Through candor and comprehensiveness, Jackson writes a convincing revisionist take, in which he emerges as an excellent coach …Highly readable … Reflects Jackson’s polymathy.” The New York Times Book Review”Part sports memoir, part New Age spirit quest, part pseudo-management tract …
But the primary thing with Jacksonas with all the old bards, who were also known for repeating themselvesis the voice.” Sam Anderson, The New York Times MagazineA New York Times BestsellerThe inside story of one of basketball’s most legendary and game-changing figures During his storied career as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, Phil Jackson won more championships than any coach in the history of professional sports.
Even more important, he succeeded in never wavering from coaching his way, from a place of deep values. Jackson was tagged as the Zen master half in jest by sportswriters, but the nickname speaks to an important truth: this is a coach who inspired, not goaded; who led by awakening and challenging the better angels of his players’ nature, not their egos, fear, or greed.
9. Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization
Author: by John Wooden
McGraw-Hill Education
English
302 pages
A Wall Street Journal Bestseller A compelling look inside the mind and powerful leadership methods of America’s coaching legend, John Wooden “Team spirit, loyalty, enthusiasm, determination…. Acquire and keep these traits and success should follow.”-Coach John Wooden John Wooden’s goal in 41 years of coaching never changed; namely, to get maximum effort and peak performance from each of his players in the manner that best served the team.
Wooden on Leadership explains step-by-step how he pursued and accomplished this goal. Focusing on Wooden’s 12 Lessons in Leadership and his acclaimed Pyramid of Success, it outlines the mental, emotional, and physical qualities essential to building a winning organization, and shows you how to develop the skill, confidence, and competitive fire to be at your best when your best is needed-and teach your organization to do the same.
Praise for Wooden on Leadership: What an all-encompassing Pyramid of Success for leadership! Coach Wooden’s moral authority and brilliant definition of success encompass all of life. How I admire his life’s work and concept of what it really means to win!Stephen R.
10. Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court
Author: by John Wooden
Contemporary Books
English
201 pages
National bestseller “I am just a common man who is true to his beliefs.”-John Wooden Evoking days gone by when coaches were respected as much for their off-court performances as for their success on the court, Wooden presents the timeless wisdom of legendary basketball coach John Wooden.
In honest and telling passages about virtually every aspect of life, Coach shares his personal philosophy on family, achievement, success, and excellence. Raised on a small farm in south-central Indiana, he offers lessons and wisdom learned throughout his career at UCLA, and life as a dedicated husband, father, and teacher.
These lessons, along with personal letters from Bill Walton, Denny Crum, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Bob Costas, among others, have made Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections on and off the Court an inspirational classic.
11. Miseducated: A Memoir
Author: by Brandon P. Fleming
English
272 pages
0306925133
An inspiring memoir of one man’s transformation from a delinquent, drug-dealing dropout to an award-winning Harvard educator through literature and debateall by the age of twenty-seven.Brandon P. Fleming grew up in an abusive home and was shuffled through school, his passing grades a nod to his skill on the basketball court, not his presence in the classroom.
He turned to the streets and drug deals by fourteen, saved only by the dream of basketball stardom. When he suffered a career-ending injury during his first semester at a Division I school, he dropped out of college, toiling on an assembly line, until depression drove him to the edge.
Miraculously, his life was spared. Returning to college, Fleming was determined to reinvent himself as a scholarto replace illiteracy with mastery over language, to go from being ignored and unseen to commanding attention. He immersed himself in the work of Black thinkers from the Harlem Renaissance to present day.
Crucially, he found debate, which became the means by which he transformed his life and the tool he would use to transform the lives of othersteaching underserved kids to be intrusive in places that are not inclusive, eventually at Harvard University, where he would make champions and history.
12. All the Colors Came Out: A Father, a Daughter, and a Lifetime of Lessons
Author: by Kate Fagan
English
208 pages
0316706914
“A love story for the ages” from # 1 New York Times bestselling author Kate Fagan comes an unforgettable story about basketball and the enduring bonds between a father and daughter that “will heal relationships and hearts.” (Glennon Doyle)Kate Fagan and her father forged their relationship on the basketball court, bonded by sweaty high fives and a dedication to the New York Knicks.
But as Kate got older, her love of the sport and her closeness with her father grew complicated. The formerly inseparable pair drifted apart. The lessons that her father instilled in her about the game, and all her memories of sharing the court with him over the years, were a distant memory.
When Chris Fagan was diagnosed with ALS, Kate decided that something had to change. Leaving a high-profile job at ESPN to be closer to her mother and father and take part in his care, Kate Fagan spent the last year of her father’s life determined to return to him the kind of joy they once shared on the court.
13. Women in Sports: 50 Fearless Athletes Who Played to Win (Women in Science)
Author: by Rachel Ignotofsky
1607749785
Ten Speed Press
English
Illustrated profiles of fifty pioneering female athletes, from the author of the New York Times bestseller Women in Science.Women for the win! A richly illustrated and inspiring book, Women in Sports highlights the achievements and stories of fifty notable women athletes from the 1800s to today, including trailblazers, Olympians, and record-breakers in more than forty sports.
The athletes featured include well-known figures like tennis player Billie Jean King and gymnast Simone Biles, as well as lesser-known champions like Toni Stone, the first woman to play baseball in a professional men’s league, and skateboarding pioneer Patti McGee.
The book also contains infographics on topics that sporty women want to know about such as muscle anatomy, a timeline ofwomen’s participation in sports, pay and media statistics for female athletes, and influential women’s teams. Women in Sports celebrates the success of the tough, bold, and fearless women who paved the way for today’s athletes.
14. KG: A to Z: An Uncensored Encyclopedia of Life, Basketball, and Everything in Between
Author: by Kevin Garnett
Simon & Schuster
English
320 pages
NATIONAL BESTSELLER A unique, unfiltered memoir from the NBA champion and fifteen-time all-star ahead of his induction into the Hall of Fame. Kevin Garnett was one of the most dominant players the game of basketball has ever seen. He was also one of its most outspoken.
Over the course of his illustrious twenty-one-year NBA career, he elevated trash talk to an art form and never shied away from sharing his thoughts on controversial subjects. In KG A to Z, published ahead of Garnett’s induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame, he looks back on his life and career with the same raw candor.
Garnett describes the adversity he faced growing up in South Carolina before ultimately relocating to Chicago, where he became one of the top prospects in the nation. He details his headline-making decision to skip college and become the first player in two decades to enter the draft directly from high school, starting a trend that would be followed by future superstars like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James.
