When NBA Jam dunked its way into arcades in 1993, players discovered just how fun basketball can be when freed from rules, refs, and gravity itself. But just a few years after the billion-dollar hit conquered the world, developer Midway, publisher Acclaim, and video arcades themselves fell off the map. How did a simple two-on-two basketball game become MVP of the arcade, and how did this champ lose its title? Journalist Reyan Ali dives deep into the saga, tracking the people and decisions that shaped the series. You'll get to know mischievous Jam architect Mark Turmell, go inside Midway's Chicago office where hungry young talent tapped into cutting-edge tech, and explore the sequels, spin-offs, and tributes that came in the game's wake. Built out of exhaustive research and original interviews with a star-studded cast —including Turmell and his original development team, iconic commentator Tim Kitzrow, businessmen and developers at Midway and Acclaim alike, secret characters George Clinton and DJ Jazzy Jeff, Doom co-creator John Romero, and 1990s NBA demigods Glen Rice and Shaq—Ali's NBA Jam returns you to an era when coin-op was king.

Photos and text celebrate basketball's most exciting move--the slam-dunk.

Creating Q*bert and Other Classic Video Arcade Games takes you inside the video arcade game industry during the classic decades of the 1980s and 1990s. Warren Davis, the creator of the groundbreaking Q*bert, worked as a member of the creative teams who developed some of the most popular video games of all time, including Joust 2, Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, and Revolution X. In a witty and entertaining narrative, Davis shares insightful stories that offer a behind-the-scenes look at what it was like to work as a designer and programmer at the most influential and dominant video arcade game manufacturers of the era, including Gottlieb, Williams/Bally/Midway, and Premiere. Likewise, the talented artists, designers, creators, and programmers Davis has collaborated with over the years reads like a who’s who of video gaming history: Eugene Jarvis, Tim Skelly, Ed Boon, Jeff Lee, Dave Thiel, John Newcomer, George Petro, Jack Haegar, and Dennis Nordman, among many others. The impact Davis has had on the video arcade game industry is deep and varied. At Williams, Davis created and maintained the revolutionary digitizing system that allowed actors and other photo-realistic imagery to be utilized in such games as Mortal Kombat, T2, and NBA Jam. When Davis worked on the fabled Us vs. Them, it was the first time a video game integrated a live action story with arcade-style graphics. On the one-of-a-kind Exterminator, Davis developed a brand new video game hardware system, and created a unique joystick that sensed both omni-directional movement and rotation, a first at that time. For Revolution X, he created a display system that simulated a pseudo-3D environment on 2D hardware, as well as a tool for artists that facilitated the building of virtual worlds and the seamless integration of the artist’s work into game code. Whether you’re looking for insights into the Golden Age of Arcades, would like to learn how Davis first discovered his design and programming skills as a teenager working with a 1960s computer called a Monrobot XI, or want to get the inside scoop on what it was like to film the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band Aerosmith for Revolution X, Davis’s memoir provides a backstage tour of the arcade and video game industry during its most definitive and influential period.

Explores the trend of teenage basketball stars skipping college and making the transition to playing professionally, resulting in the 2005 age limit instituted by the NBA, mandating that all players must attend college or another developmental program for at least a year.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The NBA according to The Sports Guy—now updated with fresh takes on LeBron, the Celtics, and more! Foreword by Malcom Gladwell • “The work of a true fan . . . it might just represent the next phase of sports commentary.”—The Atlantic Bill Simmons, the wildly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining basketball addict known to millions as ESPN’s The Sports Guy, has written the definitive book on the past, present, and future of the NBA. From the age-old question of who actually won the rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to the one about which team was truly the best of all time, Simmons opens—and then closes, once and for all—every major pro basketball debate. Then he takes it further by completely reevaluating not only how NBA Hall of Fame inductees should be chosen but how the institution must be reshaped from the ground up, the result being the Pyramid: Simmons’s one-of-a-kind five-level shrine to the ninety-six greatest players in the history of pro basketball. And ultimately he takes fans to the heart of it all, as he uses a conversation with one NBA great to uncover that coveted thing: The Secret of Basketball. Comprehensive, authoritative, controversial, hilarious, and impossible to put down (even for Celtic-haters), The Book of Basketball offers every hardwood fan a courtside seat beside the game’s finest, funniest, and fiercest chronicler.

How can you maximize success—and limit failure? Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Cohen brilliantly investigates the mystery and science of streaks, from basketball to business. "A feast for anyone interested in the secrets of excellence." —Andre Agassi For decades, statisticians, social scientists, psychologists, and economists (among them Nobel Prize winners) have spent massive amounts of precious time thinking about whether streaks actually exist. After all, a substantial number of decisions that we make in our everyday lives are quietly rooted in this one question: If something happened before, will it happen again? Is there such a thing as being in the zone? Can someone have a “hot hand”? Or is it simply a case of seeing patterns in randomness? Or, if streaks are possible, where can they be found? In The Hot Hand, Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Cohen offers an unfailingly entertaining and provocative investigation into these questions. He begins with how a $35,000 fine and a wild night in New York revived a debate about the existence of streaks that was several generations in the making. We learn how the ability to recognize and then bet against streaks turned a business school dropout named David Booth into a billionaire, and how the subconscious nature of streak-related bias can make the difference between life and death for asylum seekers. We see how previously unrecognized streaks hidden amidst archival data helped solve one of the most haunting mysteries of the twentieth century, the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg. Cohen also exposes how streak-related incentives can be manipulated, from the five-syllable word that helped break arcade profit records to an arc of black paint that allowed Stephen Curry to transform from future junior high coach into the greatest three-point shooter in NBA history. Crucially, Cohen also explores why false recognition of nonexistent streaks can have cataclysmic results, particularly if you are a sugar beet farmer or the sort of gambler who likes to switch to black on the ninth spin of the roulette wheel.

A legendary NBA player shares his remarkable story, infused with hard-earned wisdom about the journey to self-mastery from a life at the highest level of professional sports Chris Bosh, NBA Hall of Famer, eleven-time All-Star, two-time NBA champion, Olympic gold medalist, and the league’s Global Ambassador, had his playing days cut short at their prime by a freak medical condition. His extraordinary career ended “in a doctor’s office in the middle of the afternoon.” Forced to reckon with moving forward, he found himself looking back over the course he'd taken, to the pinnacle of the NBA and beyond. Reflecting on all he had learned from a long list of basketball legends, from LeBron and Kobe to Pat Riley and Coach K, he saw that his important lessons weren’t about basketball so much as the inner game of success—right attitude, right commitment, right flow within a team. Now he shares that journey, giving us a view from the inside of what greatness feels like and what it takes. Letters to a Young Athlete offers a proven path for taming your inner voice and making it your ally, through the challenges of failure and success alike.