Teams were losing games very suspiciously during the regular season to enhance their draft position. And who wouldn't, when the draft featured four future members of the Top 50 NBA Players of All Time team-Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, John Stockton, and Michael Jordan. But this draft is most often remembered as the one where Michael Jordan slipped to third and was a reason the lottery system was introduced the next year. How could the experts have been so wrong and, even more astoundingly, how could the Portland Trailblazers, who held the second pick, pass on Jordan and choose the injury-prone Sam Bowie? Filip Bondy sets out to answer that question and many more. Talking to general managers, coaches, and players, Bondy provides the entire back story of the draft: trades that were never made; wrong-headed assessments of players like Charles Barkley and John Stockton, and how Bobby Knight, coach of the 1984 U.S. Olympic team, played a major role in advising certain teams about key players.

    Highlighted by dozens of photographs, a celebration of America's college and professional basketball from some of Sports Illustrated's finest writers captures the great teams, players, games, memorabilia, artifacts, and important moments throughout the more than one hundred years of basketball history.

    It's the stuff of classic novels: the story of a boy transformed by his father's dream -- and the cost of that dream. Even as Pete Maravich became Pistol Pete -- a basketball icon for baby boomers -- all the Maraviches paid a price. Now acclaimed author Mark Kriegel has brilliantly captured the saga of an American family: its rise, its apparent ruin, and, finally, its redemption. Almost four decades have passed since Maravich entered the national consciousness as basketball's boy wizard. No one had ever played the game like the kid with the floppy socks and shaggy hair. And all these years later, no one else ever has. The idea of Pistol Pete continues to resonate with young people today just as powerfully as it did with their fathers.In averaging 44.2 points a game at Louisiana State University, he established records that will never be broken. But even more enduring than the numbers was the sense of ecstasy and artistry with which he played. With the ball in his hands, Maravich had a singular power to inspire awe, inflict embarrassment, or even tell a joke.But he wasn't merely a mesmerizing showman. He was basketball's answer to Elvis, a white Southerner who sold Middle America on a black man's game. Like Elvis, he paid a terrible price, becoming a prisoner of his own fame.Set largely in the South, Kriegel's "Pistol," a tale of obsession and basketball, fathers and sons, merges several archetypal characters. Maravich was a child prodigy, a prodigal son, his father's ransom in a Faustian bargain, and a Great White Hope. But he was also a creature of contradictions: always the outsider but a virtuoso in a team sport, anexuberant showman who wouldn't look you in the eye, a vegetarian boozer, an athlete who lived like a rock star, a suicidal genius saved by Jesus Christ.A renowned biographer -- "People" magazine called him "a master" -- Kriegel renders his subject with a style that is, by turns, heartbreaking, lyrical, and electric.The narrative begins in 1929, the year a missionary gave Pete's father a basketball. Press Maravich had been a neglected child trapped in a hellish industrial town, but the game enabled him to blossom. It also caused him to confuse basketball with salvation. The intensity of Press's obsession initiates a journey across three generations of Maraviches. Pistol Pete, a ballplayer unlike any other, was a product of his father's vanity and vision. But that dream continues to exact a price on Pete's own sons. Now in their twenties -- and fatherless for most of their lives -- they have waged their own struggles with the game and its ghosts."Pistol" is an unforgettable biography. By telling one family's history, Kriegel has traced the history of the game and a large slice of the American narrative.

    And now readers have an inside ticket for the entire trip! In this new authorized biography, fans young and old will learn about everything from Nash’s early years in Victoria, British Columbia, where he forged his now-legendary work ethic and hoop skills, to his current superstar turn with the Phoenix Suns. The boy who in junior high school confidently told his mother he would one day play in the NBA has done that and so much more. This is the story of how he has beaten overwhelming odds to become not only a top-flight athlete—but also a widely admired human being.

    But as a high school senior, none of those elite programs offered him a scholarship-they thought he was too small and too slow. After a year at a mid-major program, he chose to attend North Carolina without a basketball scholarship. Over the next four years, Miller's hard work resulted in a major role on the Carolina team. He earned a starting spot as a junior, displacing more highly touted players. He began his senior year with a mission-to chronicle all aspects of his final season in Chapel Hill. Off the court, it is a glimpse of a life few will ever enjoy. At a basketball-crazy school like the University of North Carolina, basketball players are the Beatles. On the court, Miller had to find his place in one of the most talented Carolina teams in history. This is the story of his senior year in his own words, as he takes you inside the locker room, on the court, and behind the scenes in the most unique book ever written about one of the most famous college sports dynasties of all time-Carolina basketball. Wes Miller is a senior on the men's basketball team at North Carolina, one of the nation's most elite programs. Adam Lucas is the author of three books on North Carolina basketball: Going Home Again, Led By Their Dreams, and The Best Game Ever. He lives in Chapel Hill.

    Her position as "Big Girl" on the team belies her fragility when her decision to retire and undergo a long overdue hip replacement throws her into a post-retirement identity crisis. Spurred on by pain and a numbing domesticity with longtime love, Quinn McLeod, she retreats into her memory, reliving her rookie year and emerging sexuality with her much older mentor, Darren Steward. As Nolan struggles to maintain her tenuous connections to the people around her in the midst of physical anguish, we are reminded that, despite our bodies' limitations, we have physical needs that we are driven to fulfill, and the adrenaline that pushes professional athletes can be harnessed to allow what may seem impossible.