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Loose Balls
- Narrated by: Bo Foxworth, Jack Garrett, William Harper, Michael McConnohie, J. D. Jackson, P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 20 hrs and 27 mins
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Publisher's summary
What do Julius Erving, Larry Brown, Moses Malone, Bob Costas, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the Slam Dunk Contest have in common? They all got their professional starts in the American Basketball Association.
The NBA may have won the financial battle, but the ABA won the artistic war. With its stress on wide-open individual play, the adoption of the 3-point shot and pressing defense, and the encouragement of flashy moves and flying dunks, today's NBA is still -- decades later -- just the ABA without the red, white and blue ball.
Loose Balls is, after all these years, the definitive and most widely respected history of the ABA. It's a wild ride through some of the wackiest, funniest, strangest times ever to hit pro sports -- told entirely through the (often incredible) words of those who played, wrote and connived their way through the league's nine seasons.
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Overall
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The legends of the game and the magic of the times - an oral history of pro basketball's wonder years, by the author of the highly acclaimed Loose Balls. Using a lively oral history format, Terry Pluto provides the best look yet at the glory days of the NBA. Tall Tales is essential reading for any fan who understands that the history of the league does not begin and end with Michael Jordan.
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Great story Unprepared reader
- By ed taylor on 10-12-16
By: Terry Pluto
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The Breaks of the Game
- By: David Halberstam
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 17 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A New York Times best seller, David Halberstam's The Breaks of the Game focuses on one grim season (1979-80) in the life of the Bill Walton-led Portland Trail Blazers, a team that only three years before had been NBA champions. The tactile authenticity of Halberstam's knowledge of the basketball world is unrivaled. Yet he is writing here about far more than just basketball. This is a story about a place in our society where power, money, and talent collide and sometimes corrupt, a place where both national obsessions and naked greed are exposed.
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This book is a must read for all NBA junkies.
- By Kyle on 06-13-18
By: David Halberstam
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Playing for Keeps
- Michael Jordan and the World He Made
- By: David Halberstam
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 20 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In Playing for Keeps, David Halberstam takes the first full measure of Michael Jordan's epic career, one of the great American stories of our time. A narrative of astonishing power and human drama, brimming with revealing anecdotes and penetrating insights, the audiobook chronicles the forces in Jordan's life that have shaped him into history's greatest basketball player and the larger forces that have converged to make him the most famous living human being in the world.
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If You Liked "The Last Dance," You Will Love This
- By John on 06-13-20
By: David Halberstam
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Barkley
- A Biography
- By: Timothy Bella
- Narrated by: Korey Jackson
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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He's one of the most interesting American athletes in the past fifty years. Passionate, candid, iconoclastic, and gifted both on and off the court, Charles Barkley has made a lasting impact on not only the world of basketball but pop culture at large. Yet few people know the real Charles. Informed by over 370 original interviews and painstaking research, Timothy Bella's Barkley is the most comprehensive biography to date of one of the most talked about icons in the world of sports.
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Great insight to the big man’s life.
- By marci rodee on 07-03-23
By: Timothy Bella
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When the Game Was War
- The NBA's Greatest Season
- By: Rich Cohen
- Narrated by: Cary Hite
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The 1980s were a transformative decade for the NBA. Since its founding in 1946, the league had evolved from a bruising, earthbound game of mostly nameless, underpaid players to one in which athletes became household names for their thrilling, physics-defying play. The 1987–88 season was the peak of that golden era, a year of incredible drama that featured a pantheon of superstars in their prime—the most future Hall of Famers competing at one time in any given season—battling for the title, and for their respective legacies.
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Phil Jackson accuses Red Auerbach of cheap tactics
- By Sean on 01-03-24
By: Rich Cohen
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Pipeline to the Pros
- How D3, Small-College Nobodies Rose to Rule the NBA
- By: Ben Kaplan, Danny Parkins
- Narrated by: Barry Abrams
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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For the first time in league history, NBA coaches and general managers are just as likely to have played Division III basketball as they are to have played in the NBA. While the number of former D3 players working in the NBA is higher than ever, small college alums have served in leadership positions since the league's founding.
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Bad narrator
- By Doctor on 09-05-24
By: Ben Kaplan, and others
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Boys Will Be Boys
- The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty
- By: Jeff Pearlman
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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They were America's Team - the high-priced, high-glamour, high-flying Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s, who won three Super Bowls and made as many headlines off the field as on it. Led by Emmitt Smith, the charismatic Deion "Prime Time" Sanders, and Hall of Famers Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin, the Cowboys rank among the greatest of all NFL dynasties.
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This is a football book right?
- By Aaron on 12-07-09
By: Jeff Pearlman
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Three Ring Circus
- Kobe, Shaq, Phil and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty
- By: Jeff Pearlman
- Narrated by: Brian Hutchison
- Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In the history of modern sport, there have never been two high-level teammates who loathed each other the way Shaquille O’Neal loathed Kobe Bryant and Kobe Bryant loathed Shaquille O’Neal. From public sniping and sparring, to physical altercations and the repeated threats of trade, it was warfare. And yet, despite eight years of infighting and hostility, by turns mediated and encouraged by coach Phil Jackson, the Shaq-Kobe duo resulted in one of the greatest dynasties in NBA history.
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Ok I've finished it and have more thoughts
- By Bobby S on 09-24-20
By: Jeff Pearlman
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LeBron
- By: Jeff Benedict
- Narrated by: Chris Jackson
- Length: 17 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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LeBron James is the greatest basketball player of the twenty-first century, and he’s in the conversation with Michael Jordan as the greatest of all time. The reigning king of the game and the first active NBA player to become a billionaire, LeBron wears the crown like he was born with it. Yet his ascent has been anything but effortless and predetermined—the truth is vastly more interesting than that. LeBron tells the full, riveting saga of how a child adrift found the will to become a titan. Jeff Benedict paints a vivid picture of LeBron’s epic origin story, showing the gradual rise of a star.
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Anyone could have written this book
- By Kevin Crane on 05-01-23
By: Jeff Benedict
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The Boys of Summer
- The Classic Narrative of Growing Up Within Shouting Distance of Ebbets Field, Covering the Jackie Robinson Dodgers, and What's Happened to Everybody Since
- By: Roger Kahn
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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This is a story about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a story by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is the story about what happened to the team when their glory days were behind them.
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Classic book!
- By Christopher Arthur on 11-19-17
By: Roger Kahn
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Magic: The Life of Earvin “Magic” Johnson
- By: Roland Lazenby
- Narrated by: JD Jackson, Roland Lazenby
- Length: 30 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The definitive biography of the basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson, from the highly respected, career sportswriter and author of Michael Jordan: The Life.
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The Definitive Book on Magic
- By Hebern on 03-04-24
By: Roland Lazenby
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Showtime
- Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s
- By: Jeff Pearlman
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 18 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman draws from almost 300 interviews to take the first full measure of the Lakers’ epic Showtime era. A dazzling account of one of America’s greatest sports sagas, Showtime is packed with indelible characters, vicious rivalries, and jaw-dropping, behind-the-scenes stories of the players’ decadent Hollywood lifestyles. From the Showtime era’s remarkable rise to its tragic end - marked by Magic Johnson’s 1991 announcement that he had contracted HIV - Showtime is a gripping narrative of sports, celebrity, and 1980s-style excess.
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Offended at the style used to voice black characters.
- By NP on 01-15-22
By: Jeff Pearlman
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A Season on the Brink
- By: John Feinstein
- Narrated by: John Feinstein
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
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A Season on the Brink chronicles the basketball season that John Feinstein spent following the Indiana Hoosiers and their fiery coach, Bob Knight. Knight granted Feinstein an unprecedented inside look at college basketball - with complete access to every moment of the season. Feinstein saw and heard it all - practices, team meetings, strategy sessions, and mid-game huddles - during Knight's struggle to avoid a losing season.
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Great Sports Journalism
- By Robert on 04-18-13
By: John Feinstein
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House of Nails
- A Memoir of Life on the Edge
- By: Lenny Dykstra
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Eclipsing the traditional sports memoir, House of Nails, by former world champion, multimillionaire entrepreneur, and imprisoned felon Lenny Dykstra, spins a tragicomic tale of Shakespearean proportions - a relentlessly entertaining American epic that careens between the heights and the abyss. Nicknamed "Nails" for his hustle and grit, Lenny approached the game of baseball - and life - with mythic intensity.
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Self Serving...
- By rwmiller on 07-12-16
By: Lenny Dykstra
What listeners say about Loose Balls
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 10-27-23
Excellent
And I hate sports. Listen to Crime and sports after if you enjoy this book.
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- Dan Tweardy
- 06-04-24
Incredible stories!
One of the best sports oral histories ever written. Hilarious, candid … a rollicking good time! Highly recommend!
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- Gene Strother
- 03-01-20
Better late than never
I took too long to get around to it. Really glad I did! Your turn.
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- l murphy johnston
- 07-03-23
Fun and an education on some of the building blocks of what we now call the NBA!
What a roller coaster ride this book is. Up, down and around. Surprises around every turn. Too bad that so little is preserved for the annals of history. However, this book allows for the stories to live on through its pages. The narration is mostly done by the actual characters recalling the stories they lived through in their own words.
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- TimmyJT
- 01-04-21
Great story lots of mispronunciation
I loved learning about the history. The narrators mispronounced SO many names!! Still worth it
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- Dwayne Walton
- 09-01-22
Great Book! Accurate and Factual.
As a basketball loving 10 year-old, growing up in Chicago, my game was starting to develop, and I became a better player than most of my friends. I learned how to make shots that I could not have imagined a year ago. I learned it from watching the ABA games that I watched on TV. I Remember Mack Calvin, Wise, Jabali ,Dampier, and Brisker, the great Colonels, Pacers, and Stars teams. My transformation came from watching a Squires team that had Dr.J and a young, skinny George Gervin. Doc did things that I never saw in the NBA!
The games were always exciting and usually close, and VERY exciting! But they played the games like we played, with a lot of enthusiasm and enjoyment. And that ball! Every year at Christmas for about five years, i received a new ball, and the only year I didn’t get the ABA ball, I had to earn the money to buy one. Thank you for the insight to the league, and the players and teams that helped fuel my love for this wonderful game!
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- Cattledog
- 04-05-23
Great Telling of Fun Story
Loved to hear the old stories of the league from my childhood. Only negative would be some narrators had no idea who basketball legends were. Names like Dave DeBusschere
Lou Carnesecca
Lefty Driessel
Lew Alcindoor
Adolf Roop
Pete Mavarich
Monty Towe
were all mispronounces multiple times. Otherwise, fantastic!
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- JIM HOWELL
- 12-09-21
Extremely comprehensive look back
Any diehard basketball fan should listen to this. So much history, and so much information about how today’s NBA really got kick-started. Only drawback - although it will be downright hilarious for those listeners that knew the right way to say them - was the massive amount of botched pronunciations of ABA players’ names. And the easiest one was the one they never got right: Larry KEE-nehn. Spurs’ fans will be yelling at their app! (The Dave DeBusschere attempts are pretty funny, too.)
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- K. Taylor
- 01-14-22
Great Memories of My Childhood in the 70’s
I grew up in Indiana following the Pacers and then Dr. J. I had not heard all these player’s names in decades. Really great to relive this era of pro basketball and get such a detailed behind the scenes perspective.
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- Kothel
- 03-28-24
Great Stories of a fun league
The ABA is presented as something that was almost started on a whim and only survived through a combination of great ideas, the right investors at the right time, and sheer dumb luck. The multiple readers help you with the oral history nature of it. The owners, coaches, and players all make for fun characters, and it is good for younger NBA fans to learn that many of the best parts of today's game only came in with the NBA/ABA merger. Had a great time listening.
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