Afbeelding auteur

Digger Phelps

Auteur van Basketball for Dummies

4 Werken 129 Leden 3 Besprekingen

Over de Auteur

Werken van Digger Phelps

Basketball for Dummies (1997) 102 exemplaren
A Coach's World (1974) 8 exemplaren

Tagged

Algemene kennis

Gangbare naam
Phelps, Digger
Officiële naam
Phelp, Richard
Geslacht
male
Nationaliteit
USA
Beroepen
basketball coach
broadcaster

Leden

Besprekingen

Many people probably have an idea of athletes in general and basketball players in particular as being unintelligent, but they actually do tend to know a lot of things about the sport(s) of their choice, you know. My grandfather didn’t really follow basketball, well neither of them did, although one of my uncles likes it, but my one grandfather, who was a very smart guy, when he watched sports on TV, always muted the sound so he didn’t have to hear the commentary, which is a perfectly valid choice—personally I don’t //always// try to follow sports talk—but since he was always slightly miffed whenever he mentioned this, I wonder if on some level he wasn’t annoyed that //they// could understand things that he didn’t; that they could know sports better than he did when he knew literature better than they did, you know. So, I don’t know. Of course, it’s easy to say that basketball and sports “don’t matter”, and obviously in a kinda low-tech way it’s like the building of a fantasy world, an alternative reality…. But if it makes you happy, that is the end at which all particular arts aim, as one of the philosophers said, you know.

Anyway, from this book I learned the rules and basic ideas of basketball, and now I can follow the game in a basic way, which is what I wanted. I love For Dummies books.

…. Now I get why athletes get sports scholarships: they could be earning money in the pros, maybe, so you might as well offer them something of equivalent value. To be honest, it’s only strange that we make basketball players take geometry, but don’t make geometry students play basketball. When the academic argues with the athlete, it’s like the husband arguing with the wife, albeit not gendered quite so simply, but still, it’s like: your interests are your interests. My interests…. Are EVERYONE’S interests…. And besides, you can never go into sales if you play basketball. You need geometry!

Education is education, except, sometimes.

…. “But if we open up to those basketball people, it won’t do us any good; they’ll never open up to us: they’ll always just be Those Basketball People, you know.”

(Leo Gura) How would you know?

(Wizard Hermes) How could you not benefit from truly helping others?

…. 🥱 Of course, ForDummies books tend to be a little long (600 pages in my edition!), and like a lot of sports books, it gets a little stat-happy, in this particular case near the end, you know…. But it’s like, At least you know that sport is pure, so pure and nai—ah, innocent, I mean to say.

God knows I could have been a basketball fan at seven or eight and still been that same nai—innocent little boy, you know. As it happens, I think at that age I thought that the New York Yankees were really the only professional sports team in existence. The other teams were just ordinary guys on their days off who dressed up to give the Yankees a sparring partner, you know. Ah, Lordy.

It’s good though. Much easier for me to stop a recording of a basketball game when I’m waiting for a phone call and they call, than a song, obviously, or even a book—I like to read my books in very regular and organized little packets of time, you know…. ⭐️

And incidentally, although obviously you can be a real tough guy and play basketball and use that energy in a good way, I think that women’s sports is just as good, something that basketball has sorta realized and that professional baseball hasn’t even seriously considered, you know.
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Gemarkeerd
goosecap | 2 andere besprekingen | Jun 23, 2023 |
I'm a middle-aged portly gentleman (my daughter's words) who never paid much attention to basketball until recently. A few years back, though, I made the mistake of checking out that 'March Madness' that was infecting all my friends. That was the year Cinderella team George Mason beat number 1 seed UConn to reach the Final Four. I was hooked. In case you missed it, the game is described on page 215 of this book as an explanation of why "so much excitement is generated in the latter half of March". In addition, my alma mater, Colorado, switched to the Pac 12 and promptly scheduled two games near where I live. How could I not go cheer them on?

My problem was that before this started I knew next to nothing about basketball and was too old to play the ignorant newbie card and ask someone for help. What I needed was an easy source for basic basketball information that could answer my questions and wouldn't laugh at me.

Phelps provides lots of valuable information for all kinds of basketball fans or players. Whether your game is NBA, college, high school, men's or women's basketball or international rules, it's covered in this book. It covers the history of the game, the fundamentals, the rules, statistics & bracketology. As with all books in the 'Dummies' series, it includes the 'Part of Tens'. This lists in this section include ten games that changed basketball history, ten basketball legends and even the ten best basketball websites.

As with many books published these days, ‘Basketball for Dummies’ suffers from some sloppy editing. For example, the section on Michael Jordan (pp. 333-334) includes this head scratcher. “The Bulls have played in six NBA Finals, … none of which have not extended past a sixth game.” On page 332 it says that Wilt Chamberlain scored a record 100 points in one game claiming that “Nobody has come within 28 points of the …record” even though a chart of NBA top scorers on page 47 lists Kobe Bryant’s 81-point game in 2006.

All in all, if you can tolerate Digger Phelp's cornball sense of humor, 'Basketball for Dummies' is a good reference for answering basic questions about the rules of basketball and as I mentioned before, it won't laugh at you.

*Quotations are cited from an advanced reading copy and may not be the same as appears in the final published edition. The review copy of this book was obtained from the publisher via the Amazon Vine Program.
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Gemarkeerd
Unkletom | 2 andere besprekingen | Jan 16, 2012 |
this would be a good book for students who want to learnmore about the sport of basketball and even for students who are interested in playing on a team ho already know about basketball.
 
Gemarkeerd
jessicamarlier | 2 andere besprekingen | Sep 30, 2009 |

Statistieken

Werken
4
Leden
129
Populariteit
#156,299
Waardering
½ 4.3
Besprekingen
3
ISBNs
13
Talen
1

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