In this revised and expanded edition, Los Angeles Times writer Mark Heisler investigates the 45-year history of the Los Angeles Lakers and unveils a pattern of pampered and/or misguided players, megalomaniacal executives, and owners whose obsessive drives for championships and attention combined to create an atmosphere of conflict for decades Throughout the entire 2003–04 season, fans and the media called the L.A. Lakers the biggest reality show in the country. But the laundry lis...

Brilliant, intimidating, charming, or profane, Coach Bob Knight is an enduring contradiction who has long fascinated and repelled basketball fans, for whom he has provided as much to dislike as to respect.Bob Knight: The Unauthorized Biography is the first comprehensive biography of Knight, one of the most successful and controversial coaches in the history of American sports. Detailing the entire scope of Knight's playing and coaching career through exten...

A behind-the-scenes tour of the ups and downs of an NFL season focuses on the Baltimore Ravens and reveals the lesser-known aspects of the professional league, from the dangerous conditions under which athletes are expected to train to the unrelenting pressures faced by coaches and players.In the NFL there is only one certainty: that every day, someone will have to be the Next Man Up. Football is an unrelentingly punishing sport, played and practiced at undiminishe...

The New York Times–bestseller from the Hall of Fame basketball legends. "Finally a book that tells the story of Magic and Larry from their vantage point." —Denzel WashingtonIn Celtic green was Larry Bird, the hick from French Lick, with laser-beam focus, relentless determination, and a deadly jump shot, a player who demanded excellence from everyone and whose caustic wit left opponents quaking in their high-tops. Magic Johnson was Mr. Showtime, a magnetic p...

The New York Times bestselling author of Sweetness delivers the first all-encompassing account of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers, one of professional sports’ most-revered—and dominant—dynasties.The Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s personified the flamboyance and excess of the decade over which they reigned. Beginning with the arrival of Earvin “Magic” Johnson as the number-one overall pick of the 1979 draft, the Lake...

One of the greatest basketball players of all time finally tells—with relentless honesty—the incredible story of his life.He is one of basketball's towering figures: "Mr. Clutch," who mesmerized his opponents and fans. The coach who began the Lakers' resurgence in the 1970s. The general manager who helped bring "Showtime" to Los Angeles, creating a championship-winning force that continues to this day.Now, for the first time, the legendary Jerry West tells ...

John Feinstein's illuminating recollections from two decades of interviews with sports legends.John Feinstein's career is a sports fan's dream-a lifetime of encounters with the great figures in sports, not just on the field, but in the locker room and behind the scenes with legends like Bob Knight, Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, and John McEnroe.Since his days as a young Washington Post journalist, Feinstein has written tw...

The New York Times bestseller that's "heaven in hardcover" (New Orleans Times-Picayune) for Saints fans.In the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, no symbol of disaster was more potent than New Orleans' Superdome: it became a horrific shelter of last resort where the utterly desperate rode out the storm.Four years later, in that very stadium, the New Orleans Saints won the NFC championship and earned their first-ever trip to the Super Bowl, ...

The Kid. The Splendid Splinter. Teddy Ballgame. One of the greatest figures of his generation, and arguably the greatest baseball hitter of all time. But what made Ted Williams a legend – and a lightning rod for controversy in life and in death?Still a gangly teenager when he stepped into a Boston Red Sox uniform in 1939, Williams’s boisterous personality and penchant for towering home runs earned him adoring admirers and venomous critics. In 1941, the entire country followed Willi...

A provocative and revelatory new biography of the legendary UCLA coach John Wooden, by one of America's top college basketball writers.No college basketball coach has ever dominated the sport like John Wooden. His UCLA teams reached unprecedented heights in the 1960s and '70s capped by a run of ten NCAA championships in twelve seasons and an eighty-eight-game winning streak, records that stand to this day. Wooden also became a renowned motivational speaker and writ...

"Did I ever tell you about Wilt Chamberlain?" "Did I ever tell you about Bob Cousy?" "Did I ever tell you about Joe DiMaggio?" Whenever Arnold "Red" Auerbach starts a sentence with those six words—"Did I ever tell you about ... "—anyone within earshot should prepare to hear a marvelous story.As a living legend among sports fans, Red Auerbach—the fiery coach who led the Boston Celtics to nine NBA championships, eight of them consecutive—has long been renowned for hi...

Exploring what it means to be a school, a coach, and a player in college basketball's Final Four, Feinstein exposes the driving forces behind one of the most revered events in American sports. Readers will also find dramatic stories from the officials and referees to the scouts and ticket-scalpers.