On June 2nd, 1947, the Basketball Association of America (BAA) and the National Basketball League (NBL) held the first college basketball draft in the history of the sport. The two leagues selected a combined 100 college seniors, including future Hall of Famers Harry Gallatin, Andy Phillips, and Jim Pollard. Since then, over 9,000 draft choices have been made by the major professional basketball leagues. The Basketball Draft Fact Book is the first detailed and comprehensive listing of all professional basketball drafts in the history of the sport, from the first draft in 1947 to the present. In The Basketball Draft Fact Book, each season’s draft is summarized, noting significant events and circumstances pertinent to that year and providing insight into the unique conditions and notable players involved. Following the summary is a complete list of all players drafted that season. This book includes not only the NBA, but the American Basketball League, American Basketball Association, and the Women’s National Basketball Association, as well. Additional sections cover expansion and dispersal drafts, international players selected in the draft, the processes used to determine the order of the drafts, the impact of trades, and more. The Basketball Draft Fact Book provides an authoritative history of basketball drafts in the U.S., with more complete and accurate information than any other source. Containing corrections to hundreds of errors in the draft information currently available, this volume is a valuable resource for basketball fans, historians, writers, and researchers.

The 1984 NBA draft is most remembered as the one where Michael Jordan slipped to third behind number-one pick Hakeem Olajuwon...and the immortal Sam Bowie. You could understand the Houston Rockets choosing Olajuwon, but how on earth could the Portland Trailblazers pass up Jordan for the injury-prone Bowie? For the first time, Filip Bondy pieces together the entire backstory of the draft: from Michael Jordan's indecision over whether he should declare himself eligible for the NBA draft after his junior year...to Charles Barkley's calculated attempt to avoid being drafted by the Philadelphia 76ers and to improve his position at the Olympic trials...to the trades that were considered but fatefully never made.

Superagent David Falk -- the man who called the shots for some of the greatest heroes in the history of basketball -- reveals the innovative business secrets that catapulted him to the top of his game. David Falk is the most successful agent in the game of basketball. He has represented more NBA first-round draft selections, lottery picks, Rookies-of-the-Year, and All-Stars than anyone else in the business. He changed the NBA's entire salary structure with a unique approach to negotiations that garnered some of the biggest contracts in league history, including Alonzo Mourning's $100-plus million contract with the Miami Heat -- the first ever in professional sports. His groundbreaking Nike deal for Michael Jordan, the most successful endorsement relationship in history, revolutionized basketball by creating the game's first commercial superstar. Basketball Digest called Falk one of the sport's most influential people, second only to NBA commissioner David Stern. In The Bald Truth, Falk, respected throughout the industry as an innovator, candidly unveils the business secrets that have fueled his extraordinary success. For the first time, he shares the fascinating insider details of how he negotiated lucrative contracts, learned from his mistakes, and branded and marketed not only the greatest basketball stars in history but also other elite athletes and coaches. Falk is blunt, he's fair, and he looks at the long run rather than the short-term gains. To make a great deal, he believes, both sides have to win. He adheres to steadfast principles, some of which he learned from the celebrated champion athletes and revered coaching legends -- like Georgetown's John Thompson and Duke's Mike Krzyzewski -- who have been long-standing clients and lifelong friends. Since Falk began representing athletes more than thirty-five years ago, basketball has grown from a fledgling team sport to a multibilliondollar business with celebrity players, powerful endorsement deals, salary caps, and ever-evolving free agency rules. He has made millions of dollars for himself and his clients, but today he remains in the business for one reason: love of the game -- on and off the court.

The Eastern Professional Basketball League (1946-78) was fast and physical, often played in tiny, smoke-filled gyms across the northeast and featuring the best players who just couldn’t make the NBA—many because of unofficial quotas on Black players, some because of scandals, and others because they weren’t quite good enough in the years when the NBA had less than 100 players. In Boxed out of the NBA: Remembering the Eastern Professional Basketball League, Syl Sobel and Jay Rosenstein tell the fascinating story of a league that was a pro basketball institution for over 30 years, showcasing top players from around the country. During the early years of professional basketball, the Eastern League was the next-best professional league in the world after the NBA. It was home to big-name players such as Sherman White, Jack Molinas, and Bill Spivey, who were implicated in college gambling scandals in the 1950s and were barred from the NBA, and top Black players such as Hal “King” Lear, Julius McCoy, and Wally Choice, who could not make the NBA into the early 1960s due to unwritten team quotas on African-American players. Featuring interviews with some 40 former Eastern League coaches, referees, fans, and players—including Syracuse University coach Jim Boeheim, former Temple University coach John Chaney, former Detroit Pistons player and coach Ray Scott, former NBA coach and ESPN analyst Hubie Brown, and former NBA player and coach Bob Weiss—this book provides an intimate, first-hand account of small-town professional basketball at its best.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The NBA according to The Sports Guy—now updated with fresh takes on LeBron, the Celtics, and more! Foreword by Malcom Gladwell • “The work of a true fan . . . it might just represent the next phase of sports commentary.”—The Atlantic Bill Simmons, the wildly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining basketball addict known to millions as ESPN’s The Sports Guy, has written the definitive book on the past, present, and future of the NBA. From the age-old question of who actually won the rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to the one about which team was truly the best of all time, Simmons opens—and then closes, once and for all—every major pro basketball debate. Then he takes it further by completely reevaluating not only how NBA Hall of Fame inductees should be chosen but how the institution must be reshaped from the ground up, the result being the Pyramid: Simmons’s one-of-a-kind five-level shrine to the ninety-six greatest players in the history of pro basketball. And ultimately he takes fans to the heart of it all, as he uses a conversation with one NBA great to uncover that coveted thing: The Secret of Basketball. 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.

From its early days as a sport to build “muscular Christianity” among young men flooding nineteenth-century cities to its position today as a global symbol of American culture, basketball has been a force in American society. It grew through high school gymnasiums, college pep rallies, and the fits and starts of professionalization. It was a playground game, an urban game, tied to all of the caricatures that were associated with urban culture. It struggled with integration and representations of race. Today, basketball’s influence seeps into film, music, dance, and fashion. Hoops tells the story of the reciprocal relationship between the sport and the society that received it. While many books have celebrated specific aspects of the game, Thomas Aiello presents the only contemporary cultural history of the sport from the street to the highest levels of professional mens and womens competition. He argues that the game has existed in a reciprocal relationship with the broader culture, both embodying conflicts over race, class, and gender and serving a s public theater for them. Aiello places cultural icons like Bill Russell, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant in the context of their times and explores how the sport negotiated controversies and scandals. Hoops belongs on the bookshelf of every reader interested in the history of basketball, sports, race, urban life, and pop culture in America.

In basketball, just as in American culture, the 1970s were imperfect. But it was a vitally important time in the development of the nation and of the National Basketball Association. During this decade Americans suffered through the war in Vietnam and Nixon’s Watergate cover-up (not to mention disco music and leisure suits) while the NBA weathered the arrival of free agency and charges that its players were “too black.” Despite this turmoil, or perhaps because of it, the NBA evolved into a cultural phenomenon. Tall Tales and Short Shorts: Dr. J, Pistol Pete, and the Birth of the Modern NBA traces the evolution of the NBA from the retirement of Bill Russell in 1969 to the arrival of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson ten years later. Sandwiched between the youthful league of the sixties and its mature successor in the eighties, this book reveals the awkward teenage years of the NBA in the seventies. It examines the many controversies that plagued the league during this time, including illicit drug use, on-court violence, and escalating player salaries. Yet even as attendance dwindled and networks relegated playoff games to tape-delayed, late-night broadcasts, fans still pulled on floppy gray socks like “Pistol Pete” Maravich, emulated Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s sweeping skyhook, and grew out mushrooming afros à la “Dr. J” Julius Erving. The first book-length treatment of pro basketball in the 1970s, Tall Tales and Short Shorts brings to life the players, teams, and the league as a whole as they dealt with expansion, a merger with the ABA, and transitioning into a new era. Sport historians and basketball fans will enjoy this entertaining and enlightening survey of an often-overlooked time in the development of the NBA.

The NFL Record and Fact Book 2011 is a must for every football fan. This popular reference book is jam-packed with all the facts and figures a football fan would ever want, including all-time records, team rosters and schedules, past standings, Super Bowl results, and more. The NFL Record and Fact Book 2011 also includes a digest of NFL rules, team directories and active and career coaching records. It is the official record and fact book for the sports media covering the NFL.

If you love sports trivia, then you'll be all in for The Great Book of Football, which is a must-read for any NFL fan out there. One of the most inclusive NFL football books on the market today, it's a treasure trove of sports stories, random facts, and the most in-depth tales of the most fascinating football players who have made the NFL what it is today. Starting with the foundation of the fledgling NFL in the 1920s and leading right up the thrilling finish at the most recent Super Bowl, The Great Book of Football highlights the best players of every era, the games that separated the boys from the men, and the off-the-field shenanigans and twists of fate that have seen the league go from Midwestern distraction to international obsession. There are lots of football books out there, but The Great Book of Football takes you inside the action from the huddle to the locker room to the draft room to the owner's box. And every chapter ends with trivia questions that are sure to stump your NFL-crazy friends at your next Sunday afternoon watch party. From Red Grange and Sammy Baugh to Tom Brady and J.J. Watt, the best of every era is highlighted, analyzed, and celebrated. Learn the secrets of the unstoppable Wing-T offense; relive Broadway Joe's Namath legendary Super Bowl guarantee; go behind enemy lines to witness the birth of Pittsburgh's Steel Curtain defense; and take pride in how players, owners, and fans have responded to America's greatest battles, from World War II to Hurricane Katrina to September 11. It doesn't matter if it's Super Bowl Sunday or the heart of the offseason, The Great Book of Football is one of those NFL football books that you just won't be able to put down.

The Great San Francisco Trivia and Fact Book"", by Janet Bailey, is a celebration of the City by the Bay. Although relatively young as compared to the world's great cities, it has had a greater influence than many older, larger cities.""