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9 sports books for holiday reading and giving

If you like variety, these 2017 sports releases offer an abundance of that.

4. ‘Golden Days: West’s Lakers, Steph’s Warriors, and the California Dreamers Who Reinvented Basketball’ by Jack McCallum

  • By Ross Atkin

In Jerry West, longtime basketball writer Jack McCallum sees an intriguing link between two of the greatest teams in NBA history: the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers of West, Wilt Chamberlain, and Elgin Baylor, which won a record 33 straight games, and the current Golden State Warriors. West is credited with being a key architect of the 2015-16 Warrior squad that became the first in league history to win 73 of 82 regular-season games. “Golden Days” weaves together the stories of West, the exceptional Warriors and Lakers, and the the athletic and social changes that have occurred during the intervening years.  

Here’s an excerpt from Golden Days:

“[Elgin] Baylor went through all the championship-series angst endured by [Jerry] West but always seemed to emerge emotionally unscathed. The Lakers lost and West retreated into the darkness of West World. But Baylor shrugged and said, ‘Did you ever hear the one about ….’ No one took Baylor as seriously as they took West because he didn’t seem to be taking himself seriously.

“But at age eighty-three the man feels his pain. Don’t think he doesn’t. He should hold a monumental place in the history of the NBA, but he has been monumentally marginalized, and marginalized in a way different from, say, the unpopular Rick Barry. Nobody dislikes Baylor. They just don’t remember him the way they should. Russell has his eleven championship rings, Chamberlain his prodigious stats, West his [NBA] Logo, and Barry his underhand free throw. But Baylor, called ‘Elegant Elgin’ by [Bob] Cousy, seems to slip through the cracks, forgotten as the first link on the evolutionary chain that produced Julius Erving, Connie Hawkins, and Michael Jordan, forgotten for being rather the George Washington of modern basketball.”

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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