If you're a fan of the Redeem Team then you might want to pick up this book

Basketball fans, you might want to pick up Dan Bickley’s Return of the Gold: The Journey of Jerry Colangelo and the Redeem Team (if you can stomach the sophomoric writing). There are copies of the book at Fully Booked (I saw two copies at the High Street branch) that fetch for Php999 (if you have a FB discount card that that helps bring the price a bit down).

Here’s the synopsis of the book by Dan Bickley:

Six years after Michael Jordan won his last NBA championship, American basketball hit rock bottom.  The perception of NBA players reached an all-time low.  Team USA lost three times, disgracing the nation at the 2004 Olympics.   With great historical sweep, bringing in the voices of all-time greats like Jordan, Bill Russell, Julius Erving and Jerry West, the book will show how American basketball bottomed out.  It will chart the path of Jerry Colangelo, a great sportsman who set out to change the stained image of USA Basketball.  And with great insight and fresh detail, it will show how two of the best players in history – Kobe Bryant and LeBron James – spun their own tails of redemption in while winning gold medals.

The book isn't as well-written in the manner of Jack McCallum, Sam Smith, or John Feinstein but it reads a bit like Filip Bondy who wrote Tip Off: How the 1984 NBA Draft Changed Basketball Forever but the former is still a better read. This is something you pick up for the anecdotes and side stories and not for the writing. It still bothers me though to read sucky writing.