Game-Changing Books To Read About Basketball

Orphaned at just 13 in a still-segregated Washington, D.C., George Raveling was introduced to a relatively unpopular sport — basketball — in high school. The rest, as they say, is history. Here, Coach Raveling tells the story of his extraordinary ascent, sharing incredible behind-the-scenes stories of his days working with the best in the game. But this book is more than a memoir—it’s a manual for life that presents surprising methods for harnessing your potential from a man who shaped the careers of so many legends.

Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1990s, Hanif Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron James were forged and countless others weren’t. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tension between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role models, all of which he expertly weaves together with intimate, personal storytelling.

Discover a sweeping look back at the protest movements that changed America from activist and NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He examines the activism that helped change America, documenting events from the Free Speech Movement through the movement for civil rights, the fight for women’s and LGBTQ rights, and, of course, the protests against the Vietnam War. Part history lesson and part personal reminiscences of his own activism, We All Want to Change the World will resonate with anyone who recognizes the need for social change and is willing to do the work to make it happen.

Bestselling author John Feinstein returns to his first love — college basketball — with a fascinating and compelling journey through a landscape of unsung, unpublicized and often unknown heroes of Division-1 college hoops. With his trademark humor and invaluable connections, Feinstein reveals the big time programs you’ve never heard of, the bracket busters you didn’t expect to cheer for, and the coaches who inspire them to take their teams to the next level.

Out of the greatest dynasty in American professional sports history, a Boston Celtics team led by Bill Russell and Bob Cousy, comes an intimate story of race, mortality, and regret. The Last Pass situates the Celtics dynasty against the full dramatic canvas of American life in the 50s and 60s. It is an enthralling portrait of the heart of this legendary team that throws open a window onto the wider world at a time of wrenching social change. Ultimately it is a book about the legacy of a life: what matters to us in the end, long after the arena lights have been turned off and we are alone with our memories.

An irreverent, hilarious insider’s look at big-time NCAA basketball, through the eyes of the nation’s most famous benchwarmer and author of the popular blog ClubTrillion.com. Mark Titus holds the Ohio State record for career wins, and made it to the 2007 national championship game. You would think Titus would be all over the highlight reels. You’d be wrong.

The New York Times bestselling author of Sweetness and Gunslinger delivers the first all-encompassing account of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers, one of professional sports’ most-revered — and dominant — dynasties. Soon to be an HBO Original Series called Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty!

Eleven times, Phil Jackson led his teams to the ultimate goal: the NBA championship — six times with the Chicago Bulls and five times with the Los Angeles Lakers. We all know the legendary stars on those teams, or we think we do. What Eleven Rings shows us, however, is that when it comes to the most important lessons, we don’t know very much at all. This book is full of revelations: about fascinating personalities and their drive to win; about the wellsprings of motivation and competition at the highest levels; and about what it takes to bring out the best in ourselves and others.

The only resource you need for a standout season! With over 160 drills and plays, this book will help you run efficient and effective practices and improve your game in live competition. Step-by-step instructions, accompanied by diagrams and instructions walk you and your players through every step of the way.

The moving story of a Navajo high school basketball team, its members struggling with the everyday challenges of high school, adolescence, and family, and the great and unique obstacles facing Native American living on reservations.

From Magic Johnson to Michael Jordan to LeBron James to Steph Curry, ESPN’s Howard Bryant presents the best from the hardwood — a collection of NBA champions and superstars for young sports fans!

For forty years, Dean Smith coached the University of North Carolina basketball team with unsurpassed success. Now, in The Carolina Way, he explains his coaching philosophy and shows readers how to apply it to the leadership and team-building challenges they face in their own lives. The keystones of Coach Smith’s coaching philosophy are widely applicable and centrally relevant to building successful teams of any kind.

Basketball’s most unlikely — and most sought-after — training guru offers an inside look at his career, his methods, and the all-star players whose games he’s helped transform.

On March 18, 1980, the Duke basketball program announced the hiring of Mike Krzyzewski, the man who would restore glory to the team. Nine days later, Jim Valvano was hired by North Carolina State to be their new head coach. These two new coaches had a similar goal: to unseat North Carolina’s Dean Smith as the king of college basketball. And just like that, the most sensational competitive decade in history was about to unfold…

In a city mired in endless decay, where the youth suffer through all the horrors of urban blight, hope comes in a most unassuming form: a tiny brick schoolhouse run by two nuns where a singular basketball genius takes teenagers from the mean streets of Jersey City and turns them into champions on the hardcourt. In The Miracle of St. Anthony, acclaimed sports journalist Adrian Wojnarowski follows Coach Bob Hurley through a gripping and heartrending season, as he struggles to lead a troubled team to glory through his unparalleled understanding of the game and his ceaseless determination to see no more children lost to the city streets.

The standout memoir from NBA powerhouse Andre Iguodala, the indomitable sixth man of the Golden State Warriors. On drive, on leadership, on pain, on accomplishment, on the shame of being given a role, and the glory of taking a role on: This is a powerful memoir of life and basketball that reveals new depths to the superstar athlete, and offers tremendous insight into the most urgent stories being told in American society today.

Against the backdrop of one of the most tumultuous periods in recent American history, as riots and demonstrations spread across the nation, the Tigers of poor, segregated East High School in Columbus, Ohio did something no team from one school had ever done before: they won the state basketball and baseball championships in the same year. In Tigerland, Wil Haygood gives us a spirited and stirring account of this improbable triumph and takes us deep into the personal lives of these local heroes.

They don’t set up any better than this. Bill Russell and his Boston Celtics vs. Wilt Chamberlain and the LA Lakers. A clash of NBA titans. Seven riveting games. One young reporter. Welcome to the 1969 NBA Finals.

Before the league’s founding, East Coast basketball had crowned just three national championships in forty years, and none since 1954. But in the Big East’s first ten years, five of its teams played for a national championship. The league didn’t merely inherit good teams; it created them. But how did this unlikely group of schools come to dominate college basketball so quickly and completely? This is the definitive, compulsively readable story of the greatest era of the most iconic league in college basketball history.

Bill Simmons, the wildly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining basketball addict known to millions on ESPN’s The Sports Guy, has written the definitive book on the past, present, and future of the NBA. Comprehensive, authoritative, controversial, hilarious, and impossible to put down (even for Celtic-haters), The Book of Basketball offers every hardwood fan a courtside seat beside the game’s finest, funniest, and fiercest chronicler.

A fast-break history of basketball—from its humble beginnings to its all-time great players—featuring engaging true tales from the court and vivid, dynamic illustrations.

Acclaimed sports journalist Jack McCallum delivers the untold story of the greatest team ever assembled: the 1992 U.S. Olympic Men’s Basketball Team. In the thirty years since the Dream Team first captivated the world, its mystique has only grown, Dream Team vividly re-creates the moment when a once-in-a-millennium group of athletes came together and changed the future of sports—one perfectly executed fast break at a time.

Inspired by a major ESPN film series, this is an extraordinary oral history of basketball—its eye-opening untold history, its profound deeper meaning, its transformative influence on the world—as told through an unprecedented series of candid conversations with the game’s ultimate icons.