The world may never again see an athlete dominate basketball for as long and as thoroughly as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. From the time he stepped on the court as Lewis Alcindor at Power Memorial High School in his native New York City, to the years he owned college basketball at UCLA, to the time he retired as the NBA's all-time leader in nine statistical categories ... the 7-foot-2 superstar established himself as ... the kind of player who graces a sport once in a lifetime.
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame
For all the hoopla (pun intended) of the upcoming NBA Finals, we are aware of few books about the sport of basketball that have achieved the iconic status that titles penned about other sports have achieved. Baseball, for example, has everything from Ball Four to The Boys of Summer to Bang the Drum Slowly. Football has North Dallas Forty and Semi Tough and Friday Night Lights. Golf has Out of the Bunker and Into the Trees, Dead Solid Perfect and Harvey Pennick's Little Red Book. Basketball has....
Well, there's an official encyclopedia (last updated ten years ago).
There are several histories of the game, including some that cover aspects of the game that often get overlooked:
There are several biographies of "name" players...
...as well as some fairly scarce titles about the rules and mechanics of the game itself:
But iconic? Maybe Pete Axthelm's The City Game or Stanley Cohen's The Game They Played. Or, more recently, Alexander Wolff's Big Game, Small World.
Then again, perhaps the time is not yet ripe....
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