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The Pivotal Season: How the 1971--72 Los Angeles Lakers Changed the NBA | 
 enlarge | Author: Charley Rosen
Creator: Phil Jackson
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $2.50
You Save: $22.45 (90%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 361236
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 0312325096
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.323640979494
EAN: 9780312325091
ASIN: 0312325096
Publication Date: February 1, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new condition
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Product Description
An in-depth look at the most influential Lakers championship team-the coach, the players, the season that changed the NBA.
The 1971-72 basketball season was one to go down in history. For the Los Angeles Lakers it was a season of records, an incredible championship, and many personal victories-by a team featuring several players bound for the NBA Hall of Fame. For the sport of basketball it was a season of transition, when West Coast style overcame East Coast sophistication. And for the fans, it was simply a season to remember.
Charley Rosen, one of the best sports historians in recent years, brings to life all of the memories, events, and spectacles. Featuring an iconic all-star roster that includes Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West, The Pivotal Season is an account of some of the greatest names in the game and their contributions to one of the most remarkable seasons in history. This dramatic narrative credits the Lakers coach, Bill Sharman, who, though virtually unknown today, was the best basketball coach of his time.
Photographs and action-packed narrative portray the pivotal 1971-72 season in this memorable book of sports history, which includes a special foreword by Phil Jackson. Basketball fans will be able to relive this amazing story of despair turned to triumph, when the Los Angeles Lakers won a record thirty-three consecutive games, persevered and defeated their archrival, the New York Knicks, won the championship-and in so doing changed the sport of basketball forever.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
Check facts before criticizing June 23, 2008
While reviewer Judd Vance seems to take perverse pleasure in verbally castigating the author for his notable errors, Mr. Vance is himself guilty of falsifying the truth in his review. Examples:
1) Of the 1969 Finals in game 7, Mr. Vance writes: "Counts was 4-for-13 shooting with 5 points. " If Counts made 4 baskets, then he would have totaled at least 8 points (2 points per basket, as there was no allwance for the 3-point shot in 1969-70).
2) Of the 1970 Finals in game 5, Mr. Vance writes: "...when Reed went down in game 5, the Lakers collapsed on Chamberlain and Rosen's idol Jerry West took only 2 shots the 2nd half, missing both, while the Lakers committed 30 turnovers, trying to force the ball into Wilt, rather than taking the open shot." In reality, it was the KNICKS who collapsed on Chamberlain, not the Lakers. Indeed, why would the Lakers collapse on their own teammate?!
Before writing another condemnatory review, Mr. Vance should fact-check his verbal rocks before he tosses them again from his glass house.
 A VERY NICE READ September 24, 2006
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I REALLY LIKED THIS BOOK CONCERNING THE GREAT 1971-72 SEASON OF THE LOS ANGELES LAKERS. THE BOOK GOES INTO GREAT DETAIL HOW THE LAKERS ASSEMBLED THIS AWESOME TEAM AND GIVES US A NICE GAME BY GAME SUMMARY. I FOUND SOME GREAT FACTS ABOUT ALL THE LAKERS, ESPECIALLY WILT, WEST, BAYLOR AND SHARMAN. I KNOW SOME ARE ERRORS APPEAR IN THIS BOOK BUT OVERALL I REALLY ENJOYED IT. I RECOMMEND THIS FOR ALL LAKER FANS WHO WANT TO READ ABOUT THE FIRST NBA TITLE THIS GREAT FRANCHISE WON. WORTH IT.
 Great Team, Lousy Writer September 13, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
First off, hats off to Judd Vance for his wonderful review. My comments are similar, there are so many lazy errors in this book that it diminishes a wonderful team.
Page 1 compares the Laker-Buck series of that year to rivalries like Dodgers-Yankees, Hatfields-McCoys, Louis-Schmeling and Michigan-Michigan State.
First off, comparing two good teams that met a couple of times does not make a rivalry. Second, Michigan-Michigan State is a big rivalry? I thought it was Michigan and Ohio State.
Rosen repeats the old cliche that LA anything is style and no substance. What a schlocky and wrong stereotype. I am a born and bred New Yorker and even I think it is a stereotype.
Page 3, if the Bucks double-teamed West and Goodrich, that leaves one man to cover Hairston, McMillan and Chamberlain. Is that ridiculous?
Page 62, Chamberlain and Russell were two vastly different people off the court and on. They were good friends.
Page 247, eastern teams do not play fast-break basketball. I guess the Celtics in the 50s and 60s never ran the ball.
Page 273, the Knicks in the early 70s were not a 1-hit wonder. In 70 they won it, 71 had them in the divisional finals, 72 had them lose to Lakers in finals, 73 they were champions, with the same core team.
It is a shame that this great team received such a careless and slipshod book like this.
 Flawed January 4, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I was looking forward to this book based on my enjoyment of Rosen's book on Jack Molinas (Wizard of Odds). I was severely disappointed and question my own judgment of the Molinas book. There are a staggering number of factual errors in this book that could have been corrected by thumbing through a copy of the Basketball Encyclopedia or any number of websites that include boxscores of playoff games. I wouldn't have done that but for my own recollections that were at odds with Rosen's reports. I now question whether anything in his other books is worth the paper its written on.
East Coast Bias but Smells OK September 6, 2005
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
When I heard that Charley Rosen was writing a book about my beloved '71-'72 Lakers, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I love reading Charley Rosen's stuff. I love his "old school" intuitive and theoretical sense of the game, his insider's knowledge of history, his humor, his passion, and his no-BS approach. In recent years, I have read some of his books and have avidly consumed his columns for ESPN and later Fox Sports. He has instant credibility with me. On the other hand, I've always imagined (fairly or not) that he's primarily a New York kinda guy with a malodorous east coast bias. I've always imagined him (fairly or not) to be Phil Jackson's devoted but undisciplined pit bull, with an un-housebroken attraction to the triangle offense and Jackson's dynastic teams. I imagined that he was going to chew my favorite childhood team to bits, and that his analysis would be a bunch of Bull (note multiple meanings). I couldn't imagine Charley Rosen writing a "nice" book about the '71-'72 Lakers (and certainly not about Wilt Chamberlain).
I figured the subtitle of the book had to be a bit sarcastic: "How the 1971-72 Lakers Changed the NBA." Was Rosen serious? As fond as I was of that Lakers team and its profound success, I couldn't imagine it in any way as being transformative or "pivotal." I remembered a team and a group of players that had spent over a generation losing to Boston and (ugh) New York teams. They WERE my childhood heroes, but I always had the sense that they had finally held it together enough to squeek through the toes of giants. Sure, there was the phenomenal 33-game win streak, but there were also all those turnovers, those worn out looks in the eyes of tired veterans who had habitually lost championships, and the ascendancy of young Kareem over aging Wilt (who seemed to be a forlorn but highly effective defender, but not a focus of the offense). I could imagine a book about the "pivotal" 1980 Lakers, because they really did make a significant dent in the NBA, according to my memory. But the '71-'72 Lakers? No way!
Well, I really enjoyed the book. It really did re-create the season, the time, and the place. It did this in a way that allowed me to look at events through adult eyes. It resurrected heroes from that era who do not get their due - Bill Sharman, Jim MacMillian, and more (and predictably, it attempted to take Wilt down several notches). The book was written in a way that I, a west coast Laker guy, can appreciate. So I wholly recommend the book.
Read the book but don't forget Rosen's east coast bias. He wrote the book to solve a mystery (and perhaps to tap in to the HUGE market of Laker fans). Because west coast basketball wasn't a blip on Rosen's radar until 1972, Rosen wanted to know more about the California team that brought home a championship for the first time. Well, fair enough, but I had to laugh at what Rosen considers to be "pivotal, transformative" part. In fact, the east coast "bias" was at the heart of what made the season "pivotal" for Rosen. Until 1972, "Hollywood" basketball was perceived (by Rosen and folks on the east coast) as glitzy, emotional, superstar-laden, lazy, fake basketball that wasn't effective and didn't measure up to NBA standards. The basketball "universe" was on the east coast, nowhere near L.A. Never mind that UCLA dominated college ball, or that the Lakers very nearly beat the Celtics a few times. Those California guys didn't measure up in the NBA. According to Rosen, the '71-'72 was "pivotal" because they made all those east coast dudes pay attention and acknowledge "Hollywood" basketball. According to Rosen, Coach Sharman's goal as coach was to "alchemize tinsel into gold and thereby establish Holiywood as the center of the basketball universe." Really? "West coast style overcame east coast sophistication." You get the sense that Rosen and Woody Allen look at the west coast through the same eyes. What "changed everything" in Rosen's world is that the those east coast guys had to recognize that the west coast actually existed.
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