Basketball

by Eric Besnard and NBA

Features photographs of eighteen basketball stars and includes brief profiles of their lives and and careers. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0789301075
• ISBN13: 9780789301079
• Release Date: December 1997
• Publisher: Universe Publishing(NY)
• Length: 289 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.7" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Basketball: The Best of NBA Photography - not really the best of nba photography

I bought this book expecting to see the best of NBA photography; I expected to see colorful, glossy, action-packed pictures from cover to cover. What I got was about half pictures and only some of them are exciting; the rest are players resting during game and off-court activity, etc. The pictures come in colored, black & white and many one-toned colored pictures. One-toned colored picture means picture that is deliberatly touched up with one color as its background color. I don't know the technical term for this, but imagine the same picture in different background colors. What makes this book such a disappointment visually is the size of the book: 6.5 inches wide x 8.5 inches high; most picture books are coffee table sized. The pages are so small that it simply does not do even the best pictures justice. The other half of the book are words. There are one section on NBA and basketball history, 18 in-depth profile of NBA stars followed by one section on 1992 USA Dream Team and another section on the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls team that won 72 regular season games and the NBA title. The appendix features some very important NBA statistics and history, such as NBA champions from every year, MVP winners, regular season statistical leaders in the five major categories, World Basketball champions, Olympic basketball medalists, etc. The players featured in the profiles are in order: Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O'Neal, Larry Bird, Scottie Pippen, Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman, John Stockton, David Robinson, Isiah Thomas, Patrick Ewing, Clyde Drexler, Grant Hill, Anfernee Hardaway, Karl Malone and Shawn Kemp. The player section is an overview of the player's basketball career; the pages cover each player's upbringing, their trials and tribulations in reaching the NBA and their accomplishments. Each section of the book vary in length, some 10 pages, others 20 pages or more. There are a total of 290 pages, equaling an inch thick. In the end, this book is very detailed and makes an interesting read if you want to find out more about the players featured and catch up on important NBA history and statistics. Don't buy it if you are looking for great pictures, the size of the book and one-toned color pictures make the visual experience forgetful.