Basketball books often focus on the players, the championships and the defining moments on the court. But behind almost every great team is a coach who helped make it happen. Men in the Huddle turns the spotlight on those figures, attempting to rank the 50 greatest professional basketball coaches of all time.
What makes this particularly interesting is the scope, author Matthew DiBiase goes right back to the early days of professional basketball, covering the NBA and its predecessor leagues, as well as the ABA. This isn’t simply a list of familiar NBA names; it reaches into the less explored corners of the game’s history, too.
Naturally, the well know figures are also here, Red Auerbach, Phil Jackson, Pat Riley and Gregg Popovich all feature, alongside tactical innovators such as Jack Ramsay, Doug Moe and Mike D’Antoni. It’s a reminder that coaching isn’t one single discipline, there are different ways to build a team, manage personalities and find an edge, and the history of basketball is richer for those differences.
The book also brings together some fascinating first hand perspectives, with interviews featuring coaches including John Kundla, Larry Brown, Billy Cunningham, Jerry Sloan, Rudy Tomjanovich and Lenny Wilkens. Those voices are particularly appealing because coaching is about so much more than drawing up plays. It’s about leadership, relationships, adapting to players and knowing when to change direction.
And, of course, you can’t separate great coaches from the teams they built, it therefore includes exploration of the Celtics dynasties, the Showtime Lakers, the Bad Boys Pistons, Jordan’s Bulls, the Spurs and the Warriors. Looking at those teams through the coaches who shaped them offers another way of understanding some of basketball’s greatest eras.
One of the more intriguing aspects is DiBiase’s attempt to rank coaches using a composite statistical system, any all-time ranking is going to provoke arguments among basketball fans, and that’s part of the fun. How do you compare a coach from the pre shot clock era with one who transformed the modern game? How much weight should championships carry against tactical innovation, longevity or the ability to build a winning culture?
For anyone who enjoys basketball history, coaching philosophy and the personalities behind the game, this book is a fascinating addition to the bookshelf. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably find yourself disagreeing with at least a few of the rankings along the way — which is half the enjoyment of a book like this.

While Kareem had more points and better stats than Bill Russell (who had more rebound and titles) who was the better author?

Kareem has written 17 books versus Russell's 4. On Good Reads Russell books have a 4.14 average and KAJ's score 4.0 .

I don't think I've read either of their autobiography and will add them to my TBR,

What if building an NBA champion is as much about finding the right marginal gains as it is about finding the next superstar? We spend so much time talking about the Jordans, LeBrons and Currys of the world that it’s easy to overlook the less glamorous side of building a great basketball team. The scouting departments, the player development staff, the analysts buried in data, and the people trying to work out whether an overlooked role player might be the difference between a good team and a championship team.
This Book, Chasing Perfection, authored by Andy Glockner, is a fascinating look at how the NBA was changing during the analytics revolution of the mid-2010s. Using the 2014/15 season as his backdrop, Glockner looks at how teams were using technology, statistics and sports science to understand players better than ever before. It’s about everything from tracking player movement and refining shooting mechanics to sleep, conditioning, injury prevention and the increasingly sophisticated business of building a roster. Presenting the hypothesis that the aim of building a championship isn’t necessarily and always to find another superstar, sometimes it’s to find a way to get a little more out of the players you already have.
What I love about this kind of basketball book is that it changes how you watch the game. You start thinking about the players who make the right rotation, the bench guy who gives you ten valuable minutes, or the seemingly ordinary signing who turns out to be exactly what a team needs. Championship teams aren’t simply assembled by collecting the biggest names; they’re built by identifying strengths, understanding limitations and finding ways to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
There’s also something particularly interesting about reading this now, with the benefit of hindsight, the technology and analytical thinking that seemed cutting edge in 2015 have become an increasingly ordinary part of how modern basketball operates. It’s a snapshot of a league working out what the future of the sport might look like.
This isn’t a traditional basketball history book full of legendary games and larger than life personalities, I t’s more of a behind the scenes look at the brains, systems and science that help turn talent into winning basketball. If you enjoy the strategy and team-building side of the NBA, or you’ve ever gone down a rabbit hole wondering how certain franchises consistently find value where others don’t, there’s plenty here to get your teeth into.
A really interesting read for anyone who wants to understand not just what happens on the court, but all the work that goes into making it happen.

Lloyd "Swee'pea" Daniels is his generations biggest NYC playground legend that wasted his god given talent amid struggles with drug addiction and the street life. Swee'pea and Other Playground Legends by John Valenti and Ron Naclerio tells not just the story of Lloyd Daniels but also the many other NYC hooper who struggled to escape poverty and the War on Drugs. For every Kenny Anderson that made it there were several Lloyd Daniels, Earl the Goat Manigault, Red Bruin, and more that struggled. The book tells Daniels highs and lows including his time at UNLV with Jerry Tarkanian, his time with CBA's Topeka Sizzler, and New Zealand's semi pro Waitemata Dolphins . I believe the 2017 version of the book is updated to show Daniel's time in the NBA (he played 200 games over 5 seasons from 92 to 96). Not the best written book (at time it just lists different ball players that struggled) but a very real telling of NYC hoop legend.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1860386.Swee_Pea_and_Other_Playground_Legend

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Daniels

There’s a tendency to remember the great teams as happy families, everyone pulling in the same direction, everyone buying into the same vision, and the championship being the inevitable result of all that harmony.
The 1990–91 Chicago Bulls are a pretty good reminder that things are rarely that simple, authored by Sam Smith this classic takes you inside the Bulls’ first championship season, when Michael Jordan was already the best player on the planet but the team still had to figure out how to turn his extraordinary individual talent into something that could win it all.
And what a fascinating group they were, Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, Phil Jackson; all the personalities, tensions, rivalries and competing egos that went into building a dynasty. This is a classic for a reason and ostensibly the first book about Jordan that wasn’t a hagiography. What I love about this kind of basketball writing is that it takes you beyond the highlights and the mythology, you get the difficult relationships, the insecurities, the arguments and the less flattering sides of people we’ve spent decades turning into legends.
Jordan’s competitive intensity is central to the story, but so is the question of what it actually takes to build a team around a player like that. How much do you accommodate greatness, and how much do you challenge it?
For anyone interested in the Bulls, Jordan, or the inner workings of championship teams, this classic is essential reading, it’s also a fascinating snapshot of the NBA at a particular moment, just before the Bulls became the dominant force that would define the decade.

What’s your favourite basketball book about a championship team? I’m particularly interested in books that show what was happening behind the scenes rather than simply retelling the season.

In some ways In These Girls, Hope Is A Muscle by Madeline Blais is a cliche retelling of the sports team finally wins championship after coming short the year before. In other ways its a pretty decent recap of the ups and downs of a High School season in the early 90's and a good snap shot of Amherst, MA area. The book follows Jamila Wideman (later played at Stanford and then the W), Jen Pariseau, Coach Ron Moyer and rest of the Lady Hurricanes of Amherst High School in 1992-3. The author is not a sports writer and gives a fair amount of context of Amherst (home of UMASS) as a college town with liberal tendencies and New England roots. I recommend especially if you have spent any time in the Pioneer Valley. I especially recommend the 2017 version as the author's epilogue tells what the players did after high school.

Any one else read this? What are your favorite books about a high school team in addition to Boys of Dunbar?

I just finished a book my Grandpa owned. Always been fascinated by Coach Knight. Hes not a goos guy and not someone who would last long in the modern game, but he was pretty interesting and he was a great coach. But, yeah not a nice person or a good person

Good prose, and it gives you a lot about his own life. It does tend to be a puff piece but its not as bad as some Knight haters have made it out to be, he does accept some fault for his controversies but they do get a light touch. So yeah its a bit of glaze, but its still pretty good ans gives you a look at the person and who Knight is behind the lines. It was also kinda cool to know some of the things he did outside of coaching and the pranks he played (though some went too far and others are uncomfortable reading about now)

If you’ve ever wondered how someone who played just 20 games in the NBA could become a genuine basketball legend, The Word of God, authored by God Shammgod highlights the answer.
God Shammgod grew up in 1980s and ’90s New York, became a legendary playground player, went on to star at Providence, made it to the NBA and gave the basketball world one of its most recognisable moves. The Shammgod crossover is now part of the game’s vocabulary, but his own career was much more complicated than that gift he bestowed upon all of us hoopers.
What makes this book particularly fascinating is everything around the basketball, Shammgod grew up around some of the most colourful characters in New York, crossed paths with future NBA stars and musicians and eventually reinvented himself as a coach and mentor, working with players including Kobe Bryant and Luka Dončic. The book is funny, raw, occasionally chaotic and completely unapologetic.
Despite the relatively brief NBA career, there seems to be an extraordinary amount of basketball history packed into it. I’ve always loved books about the characters who existed slightly outside the conventional NBA story, and Shammgod is about as good an example as you could ask for.
Definitely one I’d recommend to anyone who loves basketball history, streetball culture and the stories behind the game. Has anyone else read this one yet? And how good was your Shannon if you had one?

Hey, everyone! I’m pretty new to this sub, but I feel like I’ve happened upon a great little community here, full of people who love the game and its history like I do. Has anyone read this book? I’d love to know anyone’s thoughts on it. Wooden’s legend looms so large in basketball mythology but I’ve never done a deep dive into his history.

I’m in Portland, Oregon for work and checked Powell‘s Books, the largest independent bookstore. Only 2 shelves of basketball books but some solid selections. I picked up Sweet Pea as well as Jump. Reviews to come once I read them.

any favorite bookstores for bball books?

Having recently recommended Loose Balls, I thought it was probably about time I talked about its equally fascinating NBA companion, Tall Tales.
If Loose Balls tells the story of the wonderfully chaotic ABA, Tall Tales takes us back to the early years of the NBA, when professional basketball was still a very different world from the one we know today.
And once again, Terry Pluto lets the people who were actually there tell the story. Players, coaches, referees, owners and journalists recount the formative years of the league, from its beginnings through the 1950s and 60s. Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Bob Cousy, Red Auerbach, Bob Pettit, Dolph Schayes and plenty of other great names all get their say.
What I particularly love about books like this is the sense that you aren’t simply reading about basketball history — you’re listening to the people who lived it and what a strange world it was. Players had second jobs. Teams played in tiny arenas. The league was struggling for survival. The 24-second clock hadn’t even been introduced. There were fights, dubious officiating, travelling teams and some wonderfully eccentric characters. It feels a million miles away from the NBA of today.
There is also something rather wonderful about hearing these stories from the people themselves. Pluto provides the framework, but for much of the book he simply gets out of the way and lets the characters tell their own stories.
If you’ve read Loose Balls, you’ll immediately recognise the format. If you haven’t, this is a brilliant introduction to the early NBA and to a period of basketball history that can sometimes get overlooked between the game’s origins and the Russell/Wilt era becoming part of basketball folklore. I’ve always thought the best basketball books do more than tell you who won and who lost. They give you a sense of what it actually felt like to be there.
Tall Tales does exactly that, another Terry Pluto classic that deserves a lot more attention. Has anyone else read this one? And if you’ve read both Tall Tales and Loose Balls, which era do you find more fascinating?

I want to improve my game

A very funny, lighthearted book written about the 76ers that focuses only on the more obscure players in their franchise history. Each chapter focuses on one player, so no chapter on Dr. J, Iverson, or Barkley, but guys like Armen Gilliam, Clarence Weatherspoon, Jeff Ruland, etc are covered.

Very different compared to most hoops books out there.

I’ve spent years working with basketball players, and I’ve noticed something:

A lot of athletes spend thousands of hours developing their physical game but very little time developing their mind, confidence, identity and purpose.

That’s why I wrote Inner Game: Spiritual Keys to Supreme Basketball Confidence.

It’s about the part of basketball that doesn’t show up in the box score:

• Confidence
• Fear and pressure
• Identity beyond basketball
• Faith
• Purpose
• Mental discipline
• Handling failure and success
• Building a life beyond the game

The game is bigger than basketball.

If you’re a player, coach, parent, or someone who works with athletes, I’d love for you to check it out.

📖 INNER GAME — Spiritual Keys to Supreme Basketball Confidence

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HJF62524

I’m the author and an NBA skills trainer, and I’d genuinely appreciate the support

‘The Last Pass’, authored by Gary Pomerantz, is a book that manages to be about much more than the player at its centre. It is the story of Bob Cousy, but it is also a story about Basketball, New York, Boston and the extraordinary changes that took place in the game during Cousy’s lifetime. Cousy grew up in New York and became one of the game’s first truly imaginative stars, before becoming the central figure of the Boston Celtics dynasty alongside Red Auerbach and Bill Russell. But what makes this book so interesting is the journey rather than simply the destination.
Pomerantz brings to life a very different basketball world before the modern NBA, before television transformed the sport and before players became global celebrities. There is a wonderful sense of discovery in the early chapters, watching Cousy develop his game and his identity in New York before finding himself at the centre of the Celtics revolution. There is also something rather poignant about the book, Cousy belongs to a generation that helped create the modern game but could scarcely have imagined what it would eventually become and his developing and lasting relationship with Russell is shown with great respect here.
For anyone interested in basketball history, this is a fascinating journey through one of the game’s most important eras, told through the life of one of its most distinctive characters.
Perhaps the best thing about it is that it makes you appreciate just how different basketball once was.

There are basketball books that tell you about the history of the game, and then there are books that remind you just how much of that history has been forgotten. ‘The Black Fives’, authored by Claude Johnson, is very much the latter.
It takes us back to the earliest days of Basketball in America, long before the NBA existed and decades before the players whose names have become part of basketball folklore. The story is rooted particularly strongly in New York, where basketball developed through churches, schools, clubs and community organisations.
What makes the book so compelling is the sheer amount of history that has been uncovered, these weren’t simply anonymous players waiting for the NBA to arrive. They were teams, coaches, organisers and communities creating their own basketball culture at a time when segregation prevented Black players from participating equally in the emerging professional game.
The New York Renaissance are obviously part of that story, but the book goes much further back, introducing a generation of players and teams who have largely disappeared from the popular version of basketball history. It’s beautifully researched and filled with photographs, stories and characters that make the period feel remarkably alive.
For anyone who thinks basketball history begins with the NBA, this is a fascinating reminder that the game had already developed an incredibly rich culture long before the league we know today existed. The author is a staunch advocate fiercely committed to this history, for more than two decades Johnson conducted interviews, mined archives, collected artefacts and helped to preserve this vitally important African American experience that otherwise would have been lost.
A genuinely fascinating piece of basketball history, and one that deserves to be much better known.

Not sure why won't let me add a picture of the cover.

A very interesting read about how sneakers and NBA history intersect. Iconic shoes from the past and the players who wore them. Not overly long, excellent colour inserts. Very good read.

As it was the most mentioned Book from the weekends post about the One book you’d recommend I am rerecommending this amazing Book authored by Terry Pluto. If you like basketball history, there are very few books I’d recommend more enthusiastically than ‘Loose Balls’.
The ABA lasted only nine years, but somehow managed to cram an astonishing amount of basketball madness into that short existence. This Book is the story of the league that gave us Julius Erving, the three point line, the slam dunk contest, the red white and blue basketball and an almost unbelievable collection of characters.
Terry Pluto tells it through the people who were actually there; players, coaches, owners, referees and executives all get their say, and that’s what makes the book so enjoyable. It doesn’t feel like you’re reading a history lesson, it feels like you’re sitting around with a group of old basketball people who have finally decided to tell you what really happened. What happened was, quite often, completely bonkers, teams went broke, players jumped from one franchise to another and owners made decisions that would be difficult to believe if they appeared in a fictional basketball story. There were extraordinary players who never received the recognition they deserved, and personalities who seem almost impossible to imagine existing in today’s NBA.
The great thing about Loose Balls is that it isn’t simply nostalgia for a forgotten league. It’s a fascinating explanation of how the ABA helped change professional basketball. Julius Erving is obviously the biggest name, but one of the pleasures of the book is discovering, or rediscovering, all the other players who made the league special; Artis Gilmore, Roger Brown, Connie Hawkins, David Thompson, Marvin Barnes, George Gervin and so many others and then there’s the basketball itself.
The ABA played with a different attitude, faster, more flamboyant and less constrained by convention. Some of the ideas that seemed radical at the time eventually became completely normal in the NBA. What I love most in reading and rereading it again though is the sense of what might have been. The ABA wasn’t supposed to disappear. For a while, it genuinely looked like professional basketball might develop into two permanent competing leagues. Instead, four ABA franchises joined the NBA in 1976 and the rest became history.
If you’re interested in basketball beyond simply the NBA’s official record book, Loose Balls is essential reading. It’s funny, occasionally outrageous, sometimes surprisingly poignant, and packed with stories about people who loved basketball enough to gamble everything on it.
This community clearly and correctly thinks it’s one of the best basketball books ever written.
For anyone who has read it, who is the one ABA player you wish had received a much bigger NBA career?

Following on from yesterday's post, the one player that absolutely stood out and fascinated me upon my first read was Earl 'Goat' Manigault and so today I wanted to recommend a Book about him, ‘Double Dunk’, authored by Barry Beckham, tells one of the most extraordinary and tragic stories in Basketball history. Earl ‘Goat’ Manigault's legend grew almost entirely through word of mouth with stories of extraordinary athleticism, impossible dunks, including his signature back scratcher dunk that other players would attempt when asked could they 'goat it?', Earl was a player whose talent seemed to belong on a much bigger stage.

But this isn’t really a book about spectacular basketball. It’s about what happened when that talent existed in a world where opportunity, poverty, drugs and circumstance could be just as powerful as ability. Manigault’s story has become part of basketball mythology, sometimes making it difficult to separate the man from the legend and the exaggeration. Beckham’s book is particularly interesting because it attempts to get beyond the mythology and tell the story of the person behind the nickname. There is something inherently fascinating about a player who became famous without ever playing in the NBA. His name became legendary on the streets of New York, passed from one generation of basketball players to another and that is perhaps what makes the book so memorable.

Basketball has always had its superstars, its champions and its Hall of Famers, but it also has the players whose reputations were built on playgrounds rather than arenas, Earl Manigault was one of those players. 'Double Dunk’ isn't the most well written book and it lacks real depth unfortunately but it is a reminder that sometimes the most fascinating basketball stories are the what if's that never made it to the NBA.

Inspired by the post at the weekend about the ONE book you would recommend I wanted to highlight ‘The City Game’, authored by Pete Axthelm, it is one of those Basketball books that feels like much more than a book about Basketball. Axthelm takes you into New York City during the 1970s, a place where the game had become woven into the fabric of the city, from playgrounds and schoolyards to the legendary gyms where young players dreamed of making it Pro.
What makes the book so compelling is the way Axthelm captures the characters who populate this world. The players, coaches, hustlers and spectators are all part of the story, and alongside the basketball there is a vivid portrait of New York itself, its energy, its toughness and the sense that something important was always happening on the next court.
There are familiar names, but this isn’t simply a collection of famous players and their achievements. Axthelm is interested in the culture that produced them and in the people for whom Basketball offered a way out, a way forward, or sometimes simply somewhere to belong. It’s beautifully written, occasionally heartbreaking and completely immersed in the atmosphere of New York basketball. Even if you already know the history of the game, there’s something wonderfully evocative about being taken back to a time when playground Basketball felt like its own universe.
A fantastic book about Basketball, but perhaps even more importantly, a fantastic book about a city and the people who made its game what it was.