These basketball books are a slam dunk

Full-court fever is indigenous to North Carolina, but it’s especially strong this winter as we welcome the NBA All-Star Game to our Hive Feb. 15 through Feb. 17. Charlotte Mecklenburg Library can help you prepare to cheer on Kemba Walker as he represents your hometown Hornets with books that cover everything from the history and rules of the game to today’s hottest hoopsters. Check out RBDigital for access to back issues of Slam, and the latest player news in ESPN the Magazine. And teens, join us at ImaginOn: The Joe and Joan Martin Center on Feb. 7 for our NBA Jam Tournament!

Here’s a jam-packed list of All-Star materials to get you in the game.

For adults

• Challenge your friends to find out who knows the rules and penalties the best with NBA Rules Quiz Book by Wayne Wheelwright. 
• Basketball: A Love Story by Jackie MacMullen is a new book that documents hundreds of basketball legends, including Steph Curry, Dr. J, Phil Jackson, Cheryl Miller and Lisa Leslie, talking about their passion for the game.
• Rise and Fire: The Origins, Science, and Evolution of the Jump Shot—And How It Transformed Basketball Forever by Shawn Fury is part history book, tracing the history of the game from dirt courts of the 1930s to state-of-the-art NBA floors, and part memoir, featuring interviews with some of the game’s greatest shooters, including Jerry West and Denise Long.
• Chasing Perfection: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the High-Stakes Game of Creating an NBA Champion by Andy Glockner is everything you want to know about the data analysis and theory that go into building a winning NBA team.

Celebrating Carolina’s own

• The Boy Who Never Gave Up: Stephen Curry by Anthony Curcio is a picture book biography of Charlotte’s own Golden State Warrior.
• Golden: The Miraculous Rise of Steph Curry by Marcus Thompson is a biography for adults, written by a Warriors reporter who focuses on Curry’s work ethic and intensity.
• In Salt in His Shoes: Michael Jordan in Pursuit of a Dream by Roslyn Jordan, Michael’s mother and sister team up to tell children the story of his hard work and dedication.
• There Is No Next: NBA Legends on the Legacy of Michael Jordan by Sam Smith is an oral history featuring interviews with the icons, including Phil Jackson, Reggie Miller and Karl Malone, who coached, competed against and played with Michael.
• Michael Jordan in His Own Words by Geoffrey Giuliano is more than just “his own words,” because the audiobook includes interviews with Scottie Pippin, President Bill Clinton, David Stern and more.
• In In the Land of Giants: My Life in Basketball, Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues tells the story of all 5 feet, 3 inches of himself making it to the NBA.
• Resilience: Faith, Focus, Triumph by Alonzo Mourning details the faith, focus and determination that have carried him through life. (Yes, he spent most of his career with the Miami Heat, but the Hornets drafted him to the NBA, so we can take a little credit for his success!)

Picture books

• H.O.R.S.E.: A Game of Basketball and Imagination by Christopher Myers is a fun look at two friends competing against each other with one crazy shot after the other.
• Dickie V’s ABCs and 1-2-3s: A Great Start for Young Superstars by Dick Vitale is nothing short of “Awesome Baby!”
• Join the crowd at “Mastadon Square Garden” for an entertaining game of Dino-Basketball by Lisa Wheeler.
• George learns kids can overcome obstacles and achieve their goals in Curious George Joins the Team by Cynthia Platt.
• Swish! by Bill Martin offers high-energy rhymes in a fast-paced story of a girls’ championship basketball game.

Fiction and nonfiction for children

• Basketball Belles: How Two Teams and One Scrappy Player Put Women’s Hoops on the Map by Sue Macy tells the story of the first-ever intercollegiate women’s basketball game, when Stanford took on the University of California at Berkeley in 1896.
• In Hoop Genius: How a Desperate Teacher and a Rowdy Gym Class Invented Basketball by John Coy we learn how James Naismith invented the game in 1891.
• Basketball’s Greatest Players by S.A. Kramer is for beginning readers and features 11 legends of the game.
• There’s no better way to get excited about physics than with Slam Dunk! Science Projects with Basketball by Robert Gardner.
• Elena Delle Donne, WNBA MVP, Olympic gold medalist and Global Ambassador for Special Olympics, writes the Hoops series to entertain young readers.
• Free Throw is a title from Jake Maddox’s sports series, in which young athletes find their inner strength through challenge and struggle.
• In Slam Dunk! by Sharon Robinson, the new kid in school works to raise money to start a basketball team at his Harlem middle school.
• Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time, by Lisa Yee tells the story of a basketball prodigy’s struggles with academics and parental expectations.

Young adult basketball-themed fiction

• Chuck Bell’s upset about spending the summer with his grandparents but discovers a passion for basketball in Rebound by Kwame Alexander.
• Hooper by Geoff Herboch is the story of a Polish orphan whose talent for basketball should be his ticket for success in the U.S., but social dynamics complicate his path.
• Teens in Oakland, California, learn the benefits of dedication and teamwork in L.J. Alonge’s Blacktop series.
• Two basketball players with tragic pasts, one African-American and one Irish-American, find friendship in Boy 21 by Matthew Quick.

And, finally, to answer the question that’s been gnawing at you since you began reading this blog post, yes, we do have Space Jam on DVD.

See you on the court and in the Library.

P.S. We’ve compiled all these resources into one comprehensive list so you can easily keep track of your basketball books.