Sports Book Club

I have been looking for a book to read this New Year and I want it to be sports related. While I was searching for a good book in the sports genre, I came up with a list of the top 10 sports book that I would like to read before I die. So here they go.

10. Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior by Phil Jackson

Phil Jackson has been someone who I have admired with his 11 NBA Championships as a coach and 2 NBA championships as a player for the New York Knicks. I really want to read about the Michael Jordan years and his relationship with my favorite player of all time Kobe Bryant. The Zen Master’s tactics and personal life are something I am hugely interested in.

This is pretty apropos that I would choose to talk about a football book after three straight weeks of basketball books. I say this because I was actually much more of a basketball fan than a football fan growing up. It was actually Brett Favre and his story that captivated me and made football my number one sport and form of entertainment. There are too many highlights that Favre had but for a guy my age and being a Minnesota resident, most of my favorite parts of his career were towards the end of it. Some of these memorable moments were the 2007 NFC Championship game against the eventual Super bowl champs the New York Giants, the sweep of the Green Bay Packers in Favre’s first season with the Vikings and the media attention surrounding him in the summer of 2010.

I am sticking with the basketball theme from last week. However rather than focusing on one superstar, I will be switching it up and talking about five of them. This was one of the more memorable books that I read during college. The nationally recognized author, Mitch Albom, truly brings to light the legendary tale of the Fab Five. I learned about the Fab Five through the Big Ten Network that I used to watch all the time as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota. This group of 1991 freshman at the University of Michigan revolutionized the college game by introducing a hip hop twist. Longer, baggier gym shorts, shaved heads and trash talk were now here to stay. The Fab Five also famously copied the NBA’s greatest showman Michael Jordan and notably wore black basketball shoes and black socks.