Bøger af Lukasz Muniowski

From March 26, 1985 until April 4, 2003 Jerry Krause was responsible for shaping the Chicago Bulls' roster as vice president of basketball operations. He called the shots and yet, even after six championships, could never shake off the status of the underdog. He conducted 37 trades to win the first championship for the Bulls, was constantly evaluating talent and throughout his tenure remained who he was at heart--a scout. Krause's fate was closely tied to his surroundings, the people he employed and the ones he ignored for certain positions. This book examines Jerry Krause as a basketball scout and executive. Rather than redirecting hate, casting blame or clearing anybody's name, it shows the other side of the story of the Bulls dynasty--one with a sharp focus on roster construction--and the interactions between the team, the staff and the front office. This is a story about making hard decisions and learning how to live with them.

"In the 1990s, the NBA was trying to capitalize on the latter part of the Michael Jordan era and reposition the league for an international market. Expansion franchises were granted to two Canadian cities; but while Toronto thrived thanks in large part to the drafting of Vince Carter, Vancouver badly mismanaged its team, leading eventually to the team's relocation to Memphis. Author ¡ukasz Muniowski finds in the shifting fortunes of the Vancouver/Memphis Grizzlies a significant window on a volatile moment in NBA history. He first examines the failure, both financially and culturally, of a prosperous Canadian city to support an NBA expansion team before turning to the Grizzlies' explosive rise in a relatively impoverished southern city starving for national recognition"--

"A sense of impending doom surrounded the New Jersey Nets. No matter how well things were going for the perennial underdogs, something would go wrong sooner or later--injuries, bad trades, inner conflicts. But if the Nets were never a stable organization, it made following them as entertaining as it was painful. The team's 2012 move to Brooklyn was supposed to make a clean break with their past. That past was in fact rich and eventful, filled with heroes, often unfairly vilified or underappreciated. Shedding new light on the careers of such figures as Julius Erving, Buck Williams, Sam Bowie, Derrick Coleman, Stephon Marbury, Jason Kidd and Vince Carter, this book celebrates a team of strong-willed individuals whose best efforts always ended in heartbreak"--

Theoretically the worst position on an NBA roster is the sixth man - so close to being the starter yet seeming to be the odd man out. This book dispels that notion, presenting players who through the years came off the bench for NBA teams, proving that despite not starting, they were worthy of playing in the best basketball league in the world.

This book analyzes career narratives of selected prominent NBA players after the Michael Jordan era, understood as the time after his second retirement in January 1999. It was a pivotal time for the league, as Jordan became synonymous with NBA basketball and the face of its global expansion. The players discussed in the book have been selected because of the significance of their career narratives, as all of them correspond with certain archetypes, prevalent in the world of not only professional basketball, but professional sports in general. The private and public personas of eight players as well as their depiction by the media are analyzed not only regarding their success on the basketball court, but also in light of what they have come to represent for the modern NBA. The players discussed in this book are Shaquille O'Neal, Alonzo Mourning, Vin Baker, Allen Iverson, Antoine Walker, Steve Nash, Tim Duncan, and Kobe Bryant. Collectively, these eight players embody the distinguishing character profiles and career arcs of sports superstars with dominance, individualism, and athleticism being as much a part of sports star culture as egotism, injuries, boredom, addiction, and bankruptcy.

The three-point shot has been an NBA institution for more than 40 years, with the first long-distance bombs fired on October 12, 1979. This book focuses on examples of 12 performances by 12 exceptional shooters. Starting with Chris Ford and ending with Steph Curry, the author shows how these athletes have changed the NBA one shot at a time.