Sports Biographies Basketball

Nav immigrated to Canada from India after experiencing many hardships—only to face a host of new challenges. Life as an immigrant was gruelling and grey . . . and then, a new basketball team came to town. As Nav cheered on the Toronto Raptors at game after game, as they lost, as they won, on the good days and the bad, he discovered inspiration and community in the greatest game on Earth, formed life-long bonds with many of the best players the sport has ever known, and solidified his own place in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

In John Stockton: The Inspiring Story of One of Basketball's Greatest Point Guards, you will learn the inspirational story of one of basketball's greatest point guards of all time, John Stockton. Stockton ran the point for the Utah Jazz through the majority of the '80s and '90s. He holds the NBA record for the most assists and steals of all time. Playing for the majority of his career alongside Karl Malone, Stockton had a highly illustrious career. By the time he retired, he was a 10-time All-Star and had led the league in assists nine times.

Chris 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 “in a doctor’s office in the middle of the afternoon.” Forced to reckon with moving forward, he found himself looking back over the course he'd taken, to the pinnacle of the NBA and beyond.

Scottie Pippen has been called one of the greatest NBA players for good reason. Simply put, without Pippen, there are no championship banners - let alone six - hanging from the United Center rafters. There’s no Last Dance documentary. There’s no “Michael Jordan” as we know him. The 1990s Chicago Bulls teams would not exist as we know them. So how did the youngest of 12 go from growing up poor in the small town of Hamburg, Arkansas, enduring two family tragedies along the way, to become a revered NBA legend?

Mike Krzyzewski's eight trips to the Final Four and two national championships with Duke University make him one of the most successful college basketball coaches of all time. With Donald T. Phillips, the best-selling author of Lincoln on Leadership, Krzyzewski explains the techniques that have made his program so successful and offers advice on using those same strategies to excel in both your business and personal lives.

NBA fans had low expectations for rookie coach Nick Nurse and his Toronto Raptors. But what those naysayers didn't realize was that Nurse had spent the past 30 years proving himself at every level of the game, from youth programs and college ball to the NBA D League and Britain's struggling pro circuit. While few coaches have taken such a circuitous path to pro basketball's promised land, the journey - which began at Kuemper Catholic high school in Carroll, Iowa - forged a coach who proved to be as unshakable as he is personable.

Best-selling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman draws from almost 300 interviews to take the first full measure of the Lakers’ epic Showtime era. A dazzling account of one of America’s greatest sports sagas, Showtime is packed with indelible characters, vicious rivalries, and jaw-dropping, behind-the-scenes stories of the players’ decadent Hollywood lifestyles. From the Showtime era’s remarkable rise to its tragic end - marked by Magic Johnson’s 1991 announcement that he had contracted HIV - Showtime is a gripping narrative of sports, celebrity, and 1980s-style excess.

The definitive history of the 1990s New York Knicks, illustrating how Pat Riley, Patrick Ewing, John Starks, Charles Oakley, and Anthony Mason resurrected the iconic franchise through oppressive physicality and unmatched grit. Blood in the Garden is a portrait filled with eye-opening details that have never been shared before, revealing the full story of the franchise in the midst of the NBA’s golden era. And rest assured, no punches will be pulled. Which is just how those rough-and-tumble Knicks would like it.

Mike Krzyzewski, known worldwide as “Coach K,” is a five-time national champion at Duke, the NCAA's all-time leader in victories with nearly 1,200, and the first man to lead Team USA to three Olympic basketball gold medals. Through unprecedented access to Krzyzewski’s best friends, closest advisers, fiercest adversaries, and generations of his players and assistants, three-time New York Times bestselling author Ian O’Connor takes you behind the Blue Devil curtain with a penetrating examination of the great, but flawed leader as he closes out his iconic career.

One of the most successful coaches in NBA history, Chicago Bulls head coach Phil Jackson provides an inside look at the higher wisdom of teamwork with Sacred Hoops. A new paradigm of leadership based on Eastern and Native American principles, Jackson's approach flies in the face of the egoistic, winner-take-all attitude that has changed the face of American sports.

A New York Times best seller, David Halberstam's The Breaks of the Game focuses on one grim season (1979-80) in the life of the Bill Walton-led Portland Trail Blazers, a team that only three years before had been NBA champions. The tactile authenticity of Halberstam's knowledge of the basketball world is unrivaled. Yet he is writing here about far more than just basketball. This is a story about a place in our society where power, money, and talent collide and sometimes corrupt, a place where both national obsessions and naked greed are exposed.

They slam big-time dunks. They pull down rebounds. Who are the brightest stars in the game of basketball?

Why So Serious? takes listeners on Nikola Jokic’s long, strange, and incredibly unlikely journey to becoming the heartbeat of the champion Denver Nuggets and the best basketball player on the planet. As he traces Jokic’s transformation from his humble beginnings in Sombor, Serbia, sports journalist Mike Singer captures the witty irreverence, unparalleled competitiveness, and slight mischievousness of the MVP fondly known as “The Joker.”

The definitive biography of the basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson, from the highly respected, career sportswriter and author of Michael Jordan: The Life.

Kobe Bryant’s death in January 2020 did more than rattle the worlds of sports and celebrity. The tragedy of that helicopter crash, which also took the life of his daughter Gianna, unveiled the full breadth and depth of his influence on our culture, and by tracing and telling the oft-forgotten and lesser-known story of his early life, The Rise promises to provide an insight into Kobe that no other analysis has.

Ernie Johnson, Jr., has been in the game a long time. With one of the most recognized voices in sports broadcasting, he is a tireless perfectionist when it comes to preparing and delivering his commentary. Yet he knows that some of sports' greatest triumphs - and life's greatest rewards - come from those unscripted moments you never anticipated.

Best-selling author and NBA all-time leading scorer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar takes listeners on a tour through the segregated days of early basketball. Along the way, hoops icons like Charles Barkley, Julius Erving, and John Wooden share their thoughts, while broadcast legend Bob Costas narrates.

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 21-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.

In Kobe Bryant: The Inspiring Story of One of Basketball's Greatest Shooting Guards, you'll read about the inspirational story of basketball's star, Kobe Bryant. Kobe Bryant has been the face of the Lakers dynasty for the past two decades and for good reason. Few players have commanded a basketball court as much as Kobe in historical performances such as his notable 81-point performance in just under 42 minutes of playing time in 2006 against the Toronto Raptors.

He is considered by many the greatest basketball player ever produced by the hoops-crazy state of Kentucky. In two years at the University of Kentucky, he scored over 1,000 points, led the Wildcats to a Sweet Sixteen appearance and was nicknamed “King Rex.” The first player ever drafted by the Charlotte Hornets, he spent twelve seasons in the NBA, dazzling in dunk contests and sinking one of the most memorable buzzer-beaters in league history. But by the end of his career, Rex Chapman was harboring a destructive secret.