From team and league histories to a preview of the 2000-2001 season, this guide has it all. Officially licensed by the NBA, this title includes easy-to-use, comprehensive schedules, plus a list of national television games and updated NBA rules.

In just two short years, this sports almanac has broken onto bestseller lists all over the country. This comes as no surprise to sportswriters and fans, who recognize it as the most complete annual sports record ever assembled. Includes comprehensive sections on the 18 major sports, complete statistics team by team, year by year, and more than 200 prize-winning photographs.

The definitive portrait of Kobe Bryant, from the author of Michael Jordan. "Lazenby's detailed research and fantastic writing paint a complex, engaging picture of one of the NBA's greats" (Kurt Helin, NBC Sports). Eighteen-time All-Star, scorer of 81 points in a single game, MVP, and one of the best shooting guards in NBA league history: Kobe Bryant is among basketball's absolute greatest players, and his importance to the sport is undeniable. Third on the NBA career scoring list and owner of five championship rings, he is an undisputed all-time great, one deserving of this deep and definitive biography. Even within the flashiest franchise in all of sports -- the Los Angeles Lakers, where he played his entire career -- Bryant always took center stage, and his final game captivated the basketball world, indeed the country. Roland Lazenby delves deep to look behind this public image, using classic basketball reporting and dozens of new interviews to reveal the whole picture, from Bryant's childhood through his playing years. Showboatis filled with large personalities and provocative stories, including details of Bryant's complicated personal life and explosive relationships on the court, and is a riveting and essential read for every hoops fan.

One of the most stylized facts in labor economics is the finding that wages tend to rise with job duration but what is the role of productivity between this relation? Intuitively, it seems rather unspectacular that experienced workers' earnings are higher than otherwise comparable junior workers', but economic literature offers three competing theories explaining this phenomenon. A unique database from a single professional sports industry, covering the past decade of player performance and wages in the National Basketball Association (NBA) is used to test the superiority of one model over others in explaining players' upwards sloping age-earnings profiles. The empirical results show little evidence of the notion that player wages are solely determined on the basis of their productivity. Findings are rather in accordance with shirking and matching ideas: Returns to tenure are found to be significant but it's magnitude is reduced when the spurious bias - stemming from OLS - is controlled for. The fact that tenure remains considerably large - unaffected of productivity - but is simultaneously mitigated due to job match specific effects, is in harmony with incentive and matching arguments.Joachim Prinz, born 1971, studied economics at the University of Trier, Copenhagen Business School and American University, Washington D.C. From 1999-2001 he was a scientific co-worker at the University of Greifswald, Department of Economics. Since 2001 University of Witten/ Herdecke.