Kobe Bryant is a legend - The Rise is a fascinating look at his early life and how he became regarded as one of basketball's greatest-ever players. Kobe Bryant's death in January 2020 did more than rattle the worlds of sports and celebrity. It took the tragedy of that helicopter crash to reveal the full breadth and depth of Kobe's influence. By tracing and telling the oft-forgotten and lesser-known story of his early life, The Rise promises to provide an unparalleled insight into Kobe. In The Rise, readers travel from the cracked concrete basketball courts of Philadelphia in the 1960s and 70s - where Kobe's father, Joe, became a playground, college and professional stand-out - to the majesty and isolation of Europe, where Kobe spent his formative years, and to the leafy suburbs of Lower Merion, where Kobe's legend was born. The story ends with his leading Lower Merion to the 1995-96 Pennsylvania state championship - a true underdog run for a team with just one star player, Kobe - and with the 1996 NBA draft, where Kobe's dream of playing pro basketball culminated with his acquisition by the Los Angeles Lakers. With exclusive access to a series of never-before-released interviews during Bryant's senior season and early days in the NBA, and tapes and transcripts which have preserved Kobe's thoughts, dreams and goals from his teenage years for a quarter-century, Mike Sielski's The Rise uncovers insights and stories that have never been revealed before. This is an exploration of the making of an icon and the effect of his development on those around him - the essence of the man before he truly became a man.

From the author of the bestselling Kobe Bryant biography The Rise comes the legend of the most powerful shot in basketball: the slam dunk.

The evolution of basketball, and much of the social and cultural change in America, can be traced through one powerful act on the court: the slam dunk. The dunk's history is the story of a sport and a country changed by the most dominant act in basketball, and it makes Magic in the Air a rollicking and insightful piece of narrative history and a surefire classic of sports literature.

When basketball was the province of white men, the dunk acted as a revolutionary agent, a tool for players like Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell to transform the sport into a Black man’s game. The dunk has since been an expression of Black culture amid the righteous upheaval of the civil-rights movement, of the threat that Black people were considered to be to the establishment. It was banned from college basketball for nearly a decade―an attempt to squash the individual expression and athleticism that characterized the sport in America’s cities and on its playgrounds. The dunk nevertheless bubbled up to basketball’s highest levels. From Julius Erving to Michael Jordan to the high flyers of the 21st century, the dunk has been a key mechanism for growing the NBA into a global goliath.

Drawing on deep reporting and dozens of interviews with players, coaches, and other hoops experts, Magic in the Air brings to life the tale of the dunk while balancing sharp socio-racial history and commentary with a romp through American sports and culture. There's never been a basketball book quite like it.

A true story of hometown heroes.
Doylestown, Pennsylvania, was home to the greatest high school football rivalry in the state. There was Central Bucks West, captained by senior fullback/ linebacker Bryan Buckley. And there was Central Bucks East, led by senior lineman Colby Umbrell.
Bryan and Colby would meet each other as opponents in a game played on a grass field, but their dreams and devotion to their country after the horrific events of September 11, 2001 would lead each of them to the conflict in the Middle East. Only one would return.
This slice of small-town American life is the compelling chronicle of two outstanding athletes: their lives, the game they loved, and the separate journeys they would undergo from the football field to the battlefield. But it is also a chronicle of those who helped shape them into the men they became, and the community that watched and cheered as they grew from game-playing boys into fighting men-and witnessed a sacrifice it would never forget.