"Showtime - Inside the Lakers' Breakthrough Season" by Coach Pat Riley - Hardcover w/dustjacket - Published in 1988 by Warner Books - 269 pages (8 pages of great black white photos) - both book and DJ are in very good condition. How do you build a championship season? First, take a great National Basketball Association team like the Los Angeles Lakers, a team, in the words of David Halberstam that embodies "basketball as it will be played in the next century." Then, find a special coach like Pat Riley, a coach uniquely capable of inspiring his men with a driving sense of mission. Finally, stitch it all together with the unbeatable spirit of teamwork. As Pat Riley himself - the winningest coach in NBA history and the fastest to reach 300 Wins - says: "The essence of life is teamwork. Teamwork rules everything from moonshots to the creation of cities to the renewal of life." This book is Pat Riley's first-person account of one particularly poignant season in the evolution of a team, its coach, and the teamwork that made it all happen. For if any pro-basketball club thirsted for the miraculous tonic of teamwork. It was the L.A. Lakers after their monumentally disastrous 1986 playoff loss to Houston. As the new 1987 season started. skeptics had already dismissed the Lakers as over the hill. Yet, against all odds, '87 proved to be the Lakers' spectacular breakthrough season. With stellar players like Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and James Worthy striving together for a career-best effort, the Lakers powered their way to yet another championship one more incredible time - putting Pat Riley's Show Time style on full and dazzlingly successful display. Here, at last, for all the world to see, are the inner workings of a team that has won four championships in eight years and now threatens to win the first back-to-back NBA championships in nearly two decades. A team so rich in talent that it outshines the movie stars who pack the courtside seats. A team so reviled that fans of opposing teams inflict shocking acts of violence against them and yet so respected by other rival tans that Lakers' stars are greeted as warmly as the home team. There is some light wrinkling on the DJ near the spine (doesn't show in the scan because of the white background on the cover), but this book is still in very good condition.  No collection of Los Angeles Lakers items is complete without this outstanding book. Check out the scan for the great photo of Riley on the cover.  You can try to buy this book for less money from one of those eBay booksellers with hundreds, if not thousands of negatives (you know the ones I refer to) and be lucky if the book is delivered to you in the stated condition (if you even get it at all), or you can buy it from me and be assured of a prompt delivery and of receiving a quality item true to the condition indicated.  You won't be disappointed. All previous buyers of my sports books have been completely satisfied.  I have many others available; please inquire.  The book will be sent via Media mail shipping in the USA.  I will combine shipping to reduce charges for multiple items.  If you purchase more than one item, please wait until I send you an invoice with the appropriate combined shipping discount.  Credit cards are accepted through PayPal.com.  Please see my auctions and my eBay store for hundreds of books and a wide variety of sports and non-sports collectibles.  All items are packed with care to insure safe delivery.  Please contact me if you have any questions. 

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