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The Soul Of Basketball: The Epic Showdown Between LeBron, Kobe, Doc, and Dirk That Saved the NBA

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The Soul Of Basketball: The Epic Showdown Between LeBron, Kobe, Doc, and Dirk That Saved the NBA

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Overview

The Soul of Basketball tells the story of an NBA prodigy, his league and their sport in the throes of crisis during the pivotal 2010-11 season. It began with The Decision, that infamous televised moment when uber-star LeBron James revealed that he was leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers – thereby distancing himself from his role model Michael Jordan – to pursue his first championship with his former opponents on the Miami Heat.

To the great fortune of LeBron, the NBA and basketball itself, the mission didn’t work out as planned. In the cultural tradition of Moneyball and Friday Night Lights, veteran NBA writer Ian Thomsen portrays the NBA as a self-correcting society in which young LeBron is forced to absorb hard truths inflicted by his rivals Kobe Bryant, Doc Rivers and Dirk Nowitzki, in addition to lessons set forth by Pat Riley, Gregg Popovich, Larry Bird, David Stern, Joey Crawford and many more.

This is about the making of a champion. Brimming with inside access, The Soul of Basketball tells the inspiring story of LeBron’s loneliest year, insecure and uncertain, when his ultimate foe was an unlikely immigrant who renewed the American game’s ideals. From Miami to Boston, Los Angeles to Dallas, Germany to the NBA’s Manhattan headquarters, the biggest names in basketball are driven by something more valuable than money and fame – a quest that will pave the way for Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and future generations to thrive.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780547746517
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/17/2018
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.00(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Ian Thomsen has been writing about sports in America and around the world for three decades on behalf of the Boston Globe, The National Sports Daily, the International Herald Tribune, Sports Illustrated and NBA.com. He was courtside for the three NBA Finals of Magic Johnson versus Larry Bird, and in Barcelona when they joined with Michael Jordan on the original Dream Team. Since 2000 he has been focusing exclusively on the NBA from his base in Boston, Massachusetts.

Prologue: The Fairy Tale xi

1 The Bastard 1

2 The Decision 14

3 The Game 46

4 The Tradition 58

5 The Entrepreneur 78

6 The All-Star 100

7 The Trade 124

8 The Odyssey 142

9 The Higher Calling 158

10 The Immigrant 170

11 The Conflict 195

12 The Twelfth Star 217

13 The Finals 237

14 The Sheriff 260

15 The Triumph 275

Epilogue: The Way Forward 289

Acknowledgments 311

Index 316

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

02/12/2018
Through an array of profiles, NBA.com contributor Thomsen insightfully examines the 2010–2011 NBA season, which saw players and coaches negotiating the league’s rise in popularity, massive financial success, and increased marketing savvy. Realizing that the NFL and MLB had “recognized their own symbolism” (“Baseball was peace. Football was war”), the NBA board questioned what its “higher calling” might be. Thomsen focuses on four key players he believed helped, knowingly or not, NBA’s mission. Veteran Celtics coach Doc Rivers tried to maintain his team’s winning team-first tradition in an era when players were more concerned with individual accomplishments; superstar LeBron James turned the scrappy inner-city narrative into unheard-of success, but experienced backlash when he announced on his vanity show The Decision that he was leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat; Kobe Bryant early on emulated Michael Jordan, but because of accusations of sexual assault, instead followed the “controversial path of Jordan’s adversary Isiah Thomas”; and Dallas Mavericks’ Dirk Nowitzki was the underdog who became a star. Thomsen’s ability to get personal, especially with unlikely sources, will hook readers, as when he captures the stoic Larry Bird gushing over LeBron James’s otherworldly skills, proclaiming him “the one guy I could watch play basketball all day long.” By thoughtfully plumbing the NBA’s biggest names, Thomsen offers a fascinating, thorough look at pro basketball’s continuing evolution to becoming the “sport of the American Dream.” (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Ian Thomsen brings us the NBA like we’ve never seen it before: Gregg Popovich, anonymous, brilliant and alone, drinking a $160 bottle of wine at New York City bar to forget the season; the German trainer who built the exact specifications of Dirk Nowitzki’s jump shot on his computer; LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, finding their own paths as the successors to Michael Jordan. Intimate, lyrical and consistently revelatory, The Soul of Basketball is the story of a glossy multi-billion dollar league stripped to its essence.” –Steve Fainaru, ESPN Senior Writer and author of League of Denial and Big Boy Rules "In his groundbreaking book The Soul of Basketball, Ian Thomsen has crafted fascinating and revealing insights into a pivotal time in the NBA involving the game's biggest stars. This is a must read for all basketball junkies." –Jackie MacMullan, bestselling author of When the Game was Ours (with Larry Bird and Magic Johnson) and Shaq Uncut (with Shaquille O’Neal) “Bravo! About time! Ian Thomsen provides an antidote to the fast-food, twitter feed of instant information consumption. Travel back to the 2010 NBA season, when LeBron and his two amigos arrived in Miami, when Dirk asserted himself in Dallas, when the league went through an economic and social convulsion. Marinate to see all the repercussions. Tell the tale with deft prose and snappy anecdotes and bring us all up to speed on what might come next. Great, great stuff.” –Leigh Montville, NYT bestselling author of The Big Bam and Sting Like a Bee “If you think the NBA is strictly about talent, mixed in with some Xs and Os, and, oh, yes, the dreaded “A-word” — Analytics — guess again. Master reporter and dream writer Ian Thomsen reminds us the game is played with fascinating people, who bring both human greatness and vulnerability. Beginning with the folly of “The Decision,” Thomsen traces LeBron’s evolution from somewhat confused superstar to the multi-time champion he has become. In addition, he probes the psyches of Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Pat Riley and Doc Rivers, among others. What David Halberstam did for the NBA fan of the late 70s and 80s in “The Breaks Of The Game,” Thomsen does for contemporary NBA buffs.” –Bob Ryan, author of Scribe: My Life in Sports “Ian Thomsen is the perfect writer to show us "The Soul of Basketball.'' While baseball grew old, and the NFL dealt with multiple crises, the NBA has emerged as America's game of the present and future. Riding sidecar with LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Gregg Popovich, Ian was there for all of it and tells us how the NBA became our national pastime.”—Dan Shaughnessy, bestselling author of Francona (with Terry Francona) "A fine work of sports journalism and a must for every bookish roundball fan."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review "Thomsen’s ability to get personal, especially with unlikely sources, will hook readers . . . By thoughtfully plumbing the NBA’s biggest names, Thomsen offers a fascinating, thorough look at pro basketball’s continuing evolution to becoming the 'sport of the American Dream.'"—Publishers Weekly "Insightful, deeply researched."—D Magazine —

From the Publisher

★ 2018-02-15
A blow-by-blow account of the 2010-2011 NBA season, which reshaped the face of pro basketball in a flurry of big money.There was no end to the talent assembled when the teams lined up to play out that season, but it had opened on a note that was sour to many ears when LeBron James aired a "curious vanity show" meant to promote his brand and "extend his reach further into the entertainment mainstream." He did that, taking his free agency option to leave his home-state Cleveland Cavaliers and sign on with the Miami Heat. As fans will remember, and as NBA.com contributor Thomsen (Flutie!, 1985) painstakingly reminds us, James was but one of an extraordinary group of free agent players whose movements shook up long-settled lineups. There were Shaquille O'Neal, Chris Bosh, and Amar'e Stoudemire, among many others, joining contract-bound players like Kobe Bryant, who had lately emerged as the league's chief bad guy: "Instead of emulating the likability of [Michael] Jordan, Kobe appeared to be following the controversial path of Jordan's adversary Isaiah Thomas." Everyone wanted to be Jordan, and by moving to Miami, aside from raking in a fat paycheck, James would find himself on a squad whose combined talent was guaranteed to crush all comers. It didn't quite work out like that. Thomsen goes deep behind the scenes into locker rooms, conference rooms, and boardrooms to follow what often amounts to a nonstop clash of egos—and a few friendships, too. Notable was the rancor between old-school owners like Detroit Pistons owner Bill Davidson and arrivistes like Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. "Whereas his rivals tended to see pro sports as a secretive society of sacred traditions," writes the author, "Cuban viewed the NBA as an entertainment industry that needed to evolve." Evolve it did, and with sometimes unintended consequences.Perhaps not the soul of basketball but certainly the wallet. A fine work of sports journalism and a must for every bookish roundball fan.

Kirkus Reviews

The Soul Of Basketball: The Epic Showdown Between LeBron, Kobe, Doc, and Dirk That Saved the NBA

The Soul Of Basketball: The Epic Showdown Between LeBron, Kobe, Doc, and Dirk That Saved the NBA

Hardcover

Hardcover

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