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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

"The strong take from the weak, but the smart take from the strong." So said Pete Carril's father, a Spanish immigrant who worked for thirty-nine years in a Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, steel mill. His son stood only five-foot-six but nonetheless became an All-State basketball player in high school, a Little All-American in college, and a highly successful coach. After twenty-nine years as Princeton University's basketball coach, he became an assistant coach with the NBA's Sacramento Kings. In 1997 he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Coach Carril inspired his teams with his own strength of character and drive to win, and he demonstrated time and again how a smart and dedicated team could compete successfully against bigger programs and faster, stronger, more athletic players. His teams won thirteen conference championships, made eleven NCAA Tournament appearances, and led the nation in defense fourteen times. Throughout his reflections on a lifetime spent on the basketball court and the bench, Carril demonstrates deep respect for the contest, his empathy and engagement with the players, humility with his own achievements, a pragmatic vision of discipline and fundamentals, and an enduring joy in the game. This is an inspiring and wonderful book, even for those who never made a basket.

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."

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.

"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."

Basketball is now over a century old. "Cages to Jump Shots" offers an unforgettable glimpse of its exciting and eccentric early years, beginning in 1891 when James Naismith drew up the first rules, through decades of growing popularity and professionalism, and culminating with its fundamental transformation in the 1950s, when the twenty-four-second shot clock and team foul limit were instituted. Along the way we learn about all those who were drawn to the game--players, officials, owners, and fans--and why so many came to love it. Drawing on extensive research and a host of interviews with veteran players, Robert W. Peterson vividly recreates the rough-and-tumble basketball games of long ago and shows why basketball has become such a celebrated part of American life today. This Bison Books edition features an updated appendix of early pro basketball teams.

Like millions who love college basketball, John Feinstein was first drawn to the game because of its intensity, speed, and intelligence. And like many, he now feels that the vast sums of money involved in NCAA basketball—TV money, sponsorship money, alumnae money—have turned college basketball into a division of the NBA, rather than the beloved amateur sport it was in the past.

Feinstein went in search of college basketball played with the passion and integrity it once inspired. He found it in a place called the Patriot League. The Patriot League is one of the NCAA's smallest Division I conferences, a group of schools that includes Colgate, Holy Cross, Lafayette, Lehigh, Bucknell, Army, and Navy. No one leaves these schools early to join the NBA. Few have athletic scholarships. The players ride on team buses the day of the game—and back to campus the same night. No private planes or deluxe hotels. They carry full course loads of real college classes, without the lavish support network provided at larger schools.

John Feinstein spent an unforgettable season with the players of the Patriot League, and in The Last Amateurs he tells their amazing stories. Every year, these players compete against top programs like North Carolina and Indiana. Every year, one team from the Patriot League enters the NCAA Tournament, joining into the national dream of a David-and-Goliath upset. And every year, virtually every senior in the Patriot League basketball program graduates from college—a success rate unparalleled in the richer conferences.

The Last Amateurs is John Feinstein at his brilliant best, capturing the passion of players for whom sports are neither pastime nor profession, but something more. For anyone who enjoys college basketball, this is an unforgettably moving and enlightening look inside the game at its purest and most intense.

The newest addition to the highly successful Baffled Parents Guide Series.

Written by a teacher and basketball coach with more than three decades of experience, Great Basketball Drills offers 125 games that will keep practices fresh and kids moving and excited. Here is a fun, engaging alternative to traditional rote drills, with games designed to teach basic skills, sharpen reflexes, and build confidence and decision-making ability. Great Basketball Drills is a sure bet to end practice boredom.

• A fun, original games approach to drilling young players
  
• 125 simple, skill-building games that keep kids moving
  
• Quick-access troubleshooting chart lets coaches easily match drills to problem areas
  
• Endorsed by nationally renowned high school coach Morgan Wooten
  

Coach Girls for Success on and off the Court
Coaching girls' basketball is a blast! Witness a well-executed fast break, an intense defense, or a team's unbridled enthusiasm, and you can't help but be inspired. The effort, pride, and enjoyment on the girls' faces are great rewards for parents and often the signs of a good coach—the type of coach you want to be. So how can you get there?
Perfect for coaches of girls up to age 13, Coachng Girls' Basketball includes everything you need to be an outstanding coach and mentor to your players. Whether you are a seasoned coach looking to fine-tune your skills or a rookie eager to take the court running, you'll discover techniques for success that are tailored specifically to the needs of girls, including:
·Drills and strategies for coaches new to the world of coaching basketball
·Tips on what girls want and need from their basketball experience
·Practical suggestions on how to motivate in a positive and encouraging way
·Advice for helping girls deal with their changing bodies
·And much more!
Now, you can be a coaching winner and help bring out the best in your players, both on the court and in the game of life.