The years 1945 1959 marked the time when basketball truly became the sport of Indiana. High school basketball bound together communities across the state and interest in the sport rose to a new level. The period saw the Milan/Muncie Central game, given new fame through the movie Hoosiers. It also saw the first televised game, the start of the career of Oscar Robertson (who played for Crispus Attucks), and friendly town rivalries to build the state s biggest gymnasium. It was a time before the massive consolidations of the 1960s and 70s, with more than 700 teams involved in basketball tournaments. (There are some 300 now.)

Greg Guffey captures the flavor of the period and showcases many of the best teams, players, and coaches. This is a book for all fans of Indiana basketball."

This paper is a study of UW men’ s basketball fans during the 2001-2002 season and explores their proclivity to ‘ cheering for self’ during basketball events. The term ‘ basketball event’ is used rather than ‘ basketball game’ to make clear that everything connected to and seen, heard, or experienced before, during and after a basketball game is included. The actual game itself is only part of the ‘ basketball event.

An undercurrent runs throughout this participant observation mini-ethnography dealing with access, and the relative quality of that access, to basketball events being affected by ones age, class, race, and gender. The prominent role of advertising in shaping basketball events and helping to construct fans as consumers of products (both commercial and institutional) during the process of cheering for self is central to this thesis. Cheering for self is the activity engaged in by individual fans after they find things to identify or connect with through personal investment. Fans cheer for self indirectly. Fans cheer for the team that they identify with. Through the process of cheering for self while attending the basketball event people are taught how to become fans, to consume a UW product--the basketball event and to consume advertisers’ products.

A BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN ACCOUNT OF THE NBA'S GLORY DAYS, AND THE RIVALRY THAT DOMINATED THE ERA
In the mid-1950s, the NBA was a mere barnstorming circuit, with outposts in such cities as Rochester, New York, and Fort Wayne, Indiana. Most of the best players were white; the set shot and layup were the sport's chief offensive weapons. But by the 1970s, the league ruled America's biggest media markets; contests attracted capacity crowds and national prime-time television audiences. The game was played "above the rim"-and the most marketable of its high-flying stars were black. The credit for this remarkable transformation largely goes to two giants: Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain.
In The Rivalry, award-winning journalist John Taylor projects the stories of Russell, Chamberlain, and other stars from the NBA's golden age onto a backdrop of racial tensions and cultural change. Taylor's electrifying account of two complex men-as well as of a game and a country at a crossroads-is an epic narrative of sports in America during the 1960s.
It's hard to imagine two characters better suited to leading roles in the NBA saga: Chamberlain was cast as the athletically gifted yet mercurial titan, while Russell played the role of the stalwart centerpiece of the Boston Celtics dynasty. Taylor delves beneath these stereotypes, detailing how the two opposed and complemented each other and how they revolutionized the way the game was played and perceived by fans.
Competing with and against such heroes as Jerry West, Tom Heinsohn, Bob Cousy, John Havlicek, and Elgin Baylor, and playing for the two greatest coaches of the era, Alex Hannum and the fiery Red Auerbach, Chamberlain and Russell propelled the NBA into the spotlight. But their off-court visibility and success-to say nothing of their candor-also inflamed passions along America's racial and generational fault lines. In many ways, Russell and Chamberlain helped make the NBA and, to some extent, America what they are today.
Filled with dramatic conflicts and some of the great moments in sports history, and building to a thrilling climax-the 1969 final series, the last showdown between Russell and Chamberlain-The Rivalry has at its core a philosophical question: Can determination and a team ethos, embodied by the ultimate team player, Bill Russell, trump sheer talent, embodied by Wilt Chamberlain?
Gripping, insightful, and utterly compelling, the story of Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain is the stuff of sporting legend. Written with a reporter's unerring command of events and a storyteller's flair, The Rivalry will take its place as one of the classic works of sports history.

"From the Hardcover edition."

On the night of March 2, 1962, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, right up the street from the chocolate factory, Wilt Chamberlain, a young and striking athlete celebrated as the Big Dipper, scored one hundred points in a game against the New York Knickerbockers.
As historic and revolutionary as the achievement was, it remains shrouded in myth. The game was not televised; no New York sportswriters showed up; and a fourteen-year-old local boy ran onto the court when Chamberlain scored his hundredth point, shook his hand, and then ran off with the basketball. In telling the story of this remarkable night, author Gary M. Pomerantz brings to life a lost world of American sports.
In 1962, the National Basketball Association, stepchild to the college game, was searching for its identity. Its teams were mostly white, the number of black players limited by an unspoken quota. Games were played in drafty, half-filled arenas, and the players traveled on buses and trains, telling tall tales, playing cards, and sometimes reading Joyce. Into this scene stepped the unprecedented Wilt Chamberlain: strong and quick-witted, voluble and enigmatic, a seven-footer who played with a colossal will and a dancer's grace. That strength, will, grace, and mystery were never more in focus than on March 2, 1962. Pomerantz tracked down Knicks and Philadelphia Warriors, fans, journalists, team officials, other NBA stars of the era, and basketball historians, conducting more than 250 interviews in all, to recreate in painstaking detail the game that announced the Dipper's greatness. He brings us to Hershey, Pennsylvania, a sweet-seeming model of the gentle, homogeneous small-town America that was fast becoming anachronistic. We see the fans and players, alternately fascinated and confused by Wilt, drawn anxiously into the spectacle. Pomerantz portrays the other legendary figures in this story: the Warriors' elegant coach Frank McGuire; the beloved, if rumpled, team owner Eddie Gottlieb; and the irreverent p.a. announcer Dave "the Zink" Zinkoff, who handed out free salamis courtside.
At the heart of the book is the self-made Chamberlain, a romantic cosmopolitan who owned a nightclub in Harlem and shrugged off segregation with a bebop cool but harbored every slight deep in his psyche. March 2, 1962, presented the awesome sight of Wilt Chamberlain imposing himself on a world that would diminish him. "Wilt, 1962" is not only the dramatic story of a singular basketball game but a meditation on small towns, midcentury America, and one of the most intriguing figures in the pantheon of sports heroes.
Also available as a Random House AudioBook

"From the Hardcover edition."

Ron Richardson has written a cogent, well-reasoned, scriptural account of purpose lost and purpose regained in the human community. In Oneness With God he makes the case for God's plan to bring mankind full circle, and back to Himself. If you've struggled with meaning in your life, this book will help you find plenty of meaning in your connection to the Creator.

Fans that wager on college basketball can become consistent winners and still gain the full entertainment value of both watching the games and wagering. By applying a little extra effort to handicap games and place wagers intelligently, the losses of the average fan can be turned into significant winnings. If you are a fan are ready to spend some time handicapping - maybe 20 minutes - you can win consistently. By using a systematic handicapping and wagering process that makes the best use of your time, you can gain an advantage. Examples of the most powerful techniques for gaining a consistent wagering advantage are: . Specializing in point-spread wagers rather than totals, futures, interactive, and exotic propositions. . Projecting a team's play based on past performance against teams comparable to the next opponent, not all teams. . Analyzing a team's performance trend by focusing on the last 10 games. . Systematically varying the amounts wagered to reflect your perceived advantage - the difference between the outcome that you forecast for the game and the point spread. . Doing business with sports books with offer you a tangible advantage in terms of how early they accept wagers as well as the propositions they handle and transaction fees (vigorish) they charge. . For each desired wager, "shop" among sports books for the most favorable terms - both the point spread and the moneyline.

If you love the sport of basketball, a coach struggling with your team or a player seeking new moves, this is the book for you. Improve your game with insider skills and unique team strategies acquired through a 32 year National Championship coaching career. Read about coach Jack Alof's successful 1-3-1 Trap Zone and experience the thrill and dynamics of the sport of basketball through amazing stories about real life games. This book is unique because it will include human interest stories about the author's experiences coaching basketball at the high school and college level for 32 years with great success (College 20 year coaching record is 391-155- 72% winning percentage), that will be very beneficial, enlightening and interesting to all basketball coaches at any level, especially the younger coaches.

Looking for a game? Here's your guided tour of the country's best pickup basketball courts, from the blacktops of Brooklyn to the asphalt of Anchorage to the gyms of Jackson, Mississippi. It's all inside: where the pros play, the most scenic runs in the land, and a ranking of the top five courts. Chris Ballard and three other former college players piled into a used Chevy van and traveled thirty-one thousand miles in seven months, playing at over a thousand courts in 166 cities in forty-eight states. This is the story of their roundball road trip and a guide to the places, people, and communities they encountered. More than a travel guide, "Hoops Nation" is "a celebration of the game of basketball as it is played in America." It includes guides to streetball fashion, the lingo of the courts, the etiquette of the pickup world, the tricks of old-guy basketball, and tips for the dunking impaired. Also included are profiles of playground legends and dispatches from the legions of basketball lifers who populate the country's courts. This book can tell you where they're running today, all over America. Who's got next?

Timed to the release of Jerry Bruckheimer's movie, the moving autobiography of Hall of Fame basketball coach Don Haskins and his storied team of players, the Texas Western Miners
In 1966, college basketball was almost completely segregated. In the championship game for the NCAA title that year, Don Haskins, coach of the then little-known Texas Western College, did something that had never been done before in the history of college basketball. He started five black players, and in the now legendary game, unseated the nationally top-ranked University of Kentucky. Broadcast on television throughout the country, the Miners victory became the impetus for the desegregation of all college teams in the South during the next few years.
Now, for the first time, Hall of Fame coach Don Haskins tell his story. Beginning as a small-town high school basketball coach, Haskins was known for his tough coaching methods and larger-than-life personality. As a child growing up during the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, he developed a strong set of values and discipline that he would instill in his players throughout his coaching career. With recollections from his former players, including those of the 1966 team, along with Haskins's own Seven Principles for Success, Glory Road is the inspiring story of a living legend and one of the most respected coaches of all time.
With a foreword by basketball legend Bobby Knight, and coinciding with the release of the film Glory Road, the story of Don Haskins and his championship team is sure to become a classic for sports fans and historians.

Texas Western College, then a small and unknown school tucked away in the far corner of West Texas, came out of nowhere to pull the biggest upset in the history of college basketball in 1966. The Miners' 72-65 victory over the University of Kentucky, coached by the legendary Adolph Rupp, in the finals of the NCAA Tournament topped one of the most remarkable stories in the history not only of basketball, but of all sports. It's a story of triumph of character and heart over hardship and seemingly impossible odds. Their accomplishment also had a big impact on society. For the first time, five African-Americans started in the finals of the NCAA Tournament. The victory overcame many prejudices against the ability of African-American athletes to function in a team concept and opened doors for them throughout the South and other parts of the country.

The first definitive oral history of the ever popular L.A. Lakers

The L.A. Lakers have long been one of the NBA's most exciting teams. In "The Show," critically acclaimed sportswriter Roland Lazenby brings the story of this charismatic team to life in an unprecedented oral history, featuring such legendary players as Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Kareem Abdul- Jabbar, and Magic Johnson, along with current stars like Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant.

Through in-depth interviews with players, coaches, and many other key figures, Lazenby follows the Lakers from their birthplace in 1946 Minneapolis to their eventual successes and failures in Los Angeles, using his flair for storytelling and eye for detail to show you exactly why the 14-time NBA champion Lakers are a celebrated favorite for sports fans all over America.

HOW TO PLAY BASKETBALL This book is for anyone that wants to Coach or play Basketball. It's for College Coaches, High School Coaches, Middle School Coaches, Elementary Coaches, and Recruitment Coaches. With this book you will win at least 75% of your games if you have a supportive team to Coach.

It is true, they don't make things the way they used to, they don't do things the way they used to, and the times are not what they used to be. This book is a journey back to the days of my early childhood through high school. What was like to be raised in Indiana basketball country? It was an exciting time with over 700 high school teams from every corner of the state of Indiana competing each year in a single elimination tournament for the Indiana State Basketball Championship. One small school triumphed in a miracle over the great odds against them. It is still for me to imagine what those hundreds of Indiana basketball heroes experienced by having family, friends, classmates, cheerleaders, teachers, community fans for all kinds of reasons, even stranger bystanders, cheering and shouting them on with encouragement. (www.garyleesmith.com)

Every year a new champion is crowned in the world of professional basketball. But few seasons feature a champion that has countless ups and downs, key coaching and player changes, dominating defensive play, and one player who is criticized heavily early in the season that later becomes a hero, making one of the greatest plays in team history.

Detroit experienced all these things during the 2003-2004 season and along with it, won the team's third ever championship. David Lawless was there, like he always is every year, following this team at the arena; on TV; even occasionally on the road. It's quite clear that he has "The Fever."

In "The Fever," Lawless chronicles what it's like to be a fan of a team that plays such an exciting style and ends up winning the game's ultimate prize. True fans of the team and true fans of the sport itself, will relate to his use of first names, always, when describing the players and the exclamations of emotion that come out during the middle of a big playoff game. Each game is discussed in the same language and expressions that fans use.

They're all here: each and every game analyzed like a coach would, but described with the passion of a true fan.

Best-selling "New York Times" writer Ira Berkow presents a unique look at America's premier sport--and its fans--through interviews with a remarkable cross section of widely known and extraordinarily accomplished individuals in a variety of fields, who explain what the lure of basketball is for them. Berkow talked with Chris Rock, Woody Allen, Tom Brokaw, Saul Bellow, Johnnie Cochran Jr., Walter Matthau, Nikki Giovanni, Donald Trump, Julia Child, Frank Stella, Erica Jong, Grover Washington Jr., Seiji Ozawa, and Sharon Stone, among others, to uncover fresh, funny, controversial, and often surprising opinions about the teams and players who make the game intriguing.

Finally, a book that will teach you the most effective way to coach today's players, both boys and girls. It includes all the drills and plays you will need for a successful season. Learn to become the kind of coach that you and your players can be proud of. This easy to use guide contains ideas on how to organize your team along with tips on running a well- planned practice. Also included are simple to teach individual and team offenses. Learn to play solid man-to-man and team defense. Make your team impossible to press. Special sections include "Developing your big guy" and "Recognizing and dealing with basketball injuries." Easy to follow diagrams clearly demonstrate all the drills and strategies to make your team a winner. Master the techniques to gain the control and respect of your team. Motivating different types of players is critical to any team's success. Coach Leibowitz has experience coaching elementary school, high school girls and boys, junior college and major college basketball. This book is a "must read" for all beginning and seasoned coaches.

With 40 years of coaching experience at the high school level and 8 state championships, Hall of Famer Bill Kuchar lends his battle-tested philosophies and principles that made his teams unbeatable, and offers his advice on how you can start to build a dynasty of your own. Using easy to read drill diagrams and concepts, Coach Kuchar breaks down the game of basketball into a science. Offensively, it focuses on dynamic zone play such as the 1-2-2, the 1-3-1 and the box and one--concepts that will help your team score at will against the stingiest of defenses. Kuchar also introduces his double motion offense, where you utilize your three best scorers by screening away from the ball and making back cuts. He shows you how to locate zones and how to infiltrate them using proper jump shooting angles, zone cutters, screeners and producing man to man situations. He demonstrates how this will open up gaps for your players that will overwhelm the opponent with deadeye shots. He also gives his 15 best out-of-bounds plays as well as three sure fire last second desperation plays when the game is on the line. Defensively, Coach Kuchar provides a complete breakdown of the man for man pressure defense from half-court and full-court sets, as well as the zone defense with bases from a 1-3-1 set to a 2-1-2. He not only teaches you how to defend a particular offense, but what to defend it with and why. He shows you the individual and team techniques to build a tenacious defense that uses both these man-to-man and zone styles of play. In Coaching High School Basketball, you'll also find new, cutting edge ideas on how to defend against the ever-popular fast break, stunting defenses and powerful post players. You'll learn the right way to create mismatches, slow down your opponents, and utilize your best shooters all while shutting down their best scorer. And through dozens of easy to follow drills you'll also learn the fundamentals of shooting the proper jump shot, boxing out for a rebound, setting picks, screening away from the ball, and making the right decisions on the floor.

As a coach I always find one of the most challenging parts of my job is keeping the players motivated. One of the best ways I have found for doing this is to vary the drills I use in practice. Drills provide a powerful opportunity for coaches because they combine so many important elements of training at once. Drills can train all fundamental skills. They train the team to work together in speed, agility and execution. The flowing repetition of the drill allows the training to become second nature to the players. Using new and varied drills and incorporating them into our practices, we train a wide variety of fundamental skills and variations on basic offensive plays like the fast break. I have found that drills are often overlooked as an asset in coaching. No matter where I am coaching whether at a clinic, or watching the practice of a club in Europe, South America, an NCAA or high school team. I see that coaches around the world often get into a routine of the same drills every practice. If a drill becomes routine, then the players will lose interest and focus. I was inspired to write this book after coaching a group of professional players in the Euro2003 tournament in Spain. to my drills. Other coaches who attended the tournament also said my drills were unique and asked me to share my techniques with them.

He was featured on the covers of both Sports Illustrated and ESPN The Magazine. He has the scouts of every pro basketball team drooling. He has been touted wildly on national TV by basketball experts from Dick Vitale to Bill Walton. He has a reported $20 million dollar shoe contract pending.

And he's still in high school.
Why the big deal about LeBron James?
The odds were against LeBron from the start. Born in poverty to a 16-year-old, drug-addicted single mom, without a father, raised by various family and neighbors . . . he could have become just another scarred product of a rough childhood in the projects.
Instead, he's the darling of the sports world--and he plays the part well.
Sportswriter David Lee Morgan has covered the LeBron phenomenon for the Akron Beacon Journal since the kid's freshman year and has been granted unequaled access to LeBron, his family, and his close friends. He's seen the exceptional play on the basketball court. But he's also seen how surprisingly well LeBron has handled the pressure, the scrutiny, the criticism that arrived with the early onset of stardom. (Just imagine how most of us would have handled that as a teenager )
An unusual inside look at the rise of sport's hottest young prospect, now poised at the brink of superstardom.

"Nothing in basketball beats Hoosier Hysteria, and this true-life Cinderella story of the 1954 Milan Indians has it all courage, heart, suspense, and triumph. Greg Guffey brings the team and its championship odyssey to life again in this action-packed book. A great read " Digger Phelps

With the release of the movie Hoosiers starring Gene Hackman, the whole world discovered the "Milan Miracle." The true story of the Milan miracle is even better, and Greg Guffey tells it here in graphic and gripping detail. Here we get to know the real Coach Marvin Wood and the remarkable group of high school players who defeated mighty Muncie Central. In his new introduction, Guffey talks about the switch to class basketball in Indiana and the legacy of this story for the town and for the legendary team."

Charles Barkley has never been shy about expressing his opinions. Michael Jordan once said that we all want to say the things that Barkley says, but we don’t dare. But even die-hard followers of the all-time NBA great, the star of TNT’s Inside the NBA and CNN’s TalkBack Live, will be astonished by just how candid and provocative he is in this book—and just how big his ambitions are. Though he addresses weighty issues with a light touch and prefers to stir people to think by making them laugh, there’s nothing Charles Barkley shies away from here—not race, not class, not big money, not scandal, not politics, not personalities, nothing. “Early on,” says Washington Post columnist and ESPN talk show host Michael Wilbon in his Introduction, “Barkley made his peace with mixing it up, and decided the consequences were very much worth it to him. And that makes him as radically different in these modern celebrity times as a 6-foot-4-inch power forward.”

If there’s one thing Charles Barkley knows, it’s the crying need for honest, open discussion in this country—the more uncomfortable the subject, the more necessary the dialogue. And if the discussion leader can be as wise, irreverent, (occasionally) profane and (consistently) funny as Charles Barkley, so much the better. Many people are going to be shocked and scandalized by I May Be Wrong but I Doubt It, but many more will stand up and cheer. Like Molly Ivins or Bill O’Reilly, Charles Barkley is utterly his own thinker, and everything he says comes from deep reflection. One way or another, if more blood hasn’t reached your brain by the time you’ve finished this book, maybe you’ve been embalmed.


From the Hardcover edition.

The real basketball deal-the inside story of Harlem's legendary tournament and the pros and playground legends who have made it world famous.
Earl "The Goat" Manigault. Herman "Helicopter" Knowings. Joe "The Destroyer" Hammond. Richard "Pee Wee" Kirkland. These and dozens of other colorfully nicknamed men are the "Asphalt Gods," whose astounding exploits in the Rucker Tournament, often against multimillionaire NBA superstars, have made them playground divinity. First established in the 1950s by Holcombe Rucker, a New York City Parks Department employee, the tournament has grown to become a Harlem institution, an annual summer event of major proportions. On that fabled patch of concrete, unknown players have been lighting it up for decades as they express basketball as a freestyle art among their peers and against such pro immortals as Julius Erving and Wilt Chamberlain. X's and O's are exchanged for oohs and aahs in one of the great examples of street theater to be found in urban America.
"Asphalt Gods" is a streetwise, supremely entertaining oral history of a tournament that has influenced everything from NBA playing style to hip-hop culture. Now, legends transmitted by word of mouth find a home and the achievements of basketball's greatest unknowns a permanent place in the game's record.

"From the Hardcover edition."