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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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BETABALL

Erik Malinowski

How Silicon Valley and Science Built One of the Greatest Basketball Teams in History

Moneyball meets The City Game in this compelling look at how the world champion Golden State Warriors embraced savvy business practices, next-generation science, and Silicon Valley's technocentric culture to not only produce the most talented basketball team ever assembled but revolutionize the modern NBA.
Betaball is the definitive, inside account of how the Warriors -- under the leadership of venture capitalist Joe Lacob and Hollywood producer Peter Guber -- quickly became one of the most remarkable success stories ever witnessed in sports or business. In just five years, the duo turned a declining franchise with no immediate hope into the NBA's dominant force, facilitated the rise of All-Star point guard Stephen Curry, produced the best single-season record in league history, and won two championships over a three-year span.

Lacob and Guber (along with their executives, coaches, and players) did so by urging employees to speak out; encouraging cross-collaboration; investing in bold, new technologies; and never resisting the urge to innovate, no matter how successful they became. In the tech industry, the term for this development stage -- when your product isn't quite fully baked, so you're always in flux and open to change yet focused on the end-goal -- is "beta."

By operating in "beta," the Warriors morphed into a model organization for American professional sports, instituting the best workplace principles found inside the world's most successful corporations and instilling a top-down organizational ethos that allowed all of their employees to thrive, from the front office to the free-throw line.

With in-depth access and meticulous reporting on and off the court, acclaimed journalist Erik Malinowski recounts a gripping tale of worlds colliding, a team's reinvention, ordinary people being pushed to extraordinary heights, and the Golden State Warriors' unending quest to remain the best.


As a reporter and features writer in the Bay Area, Erik Malinowski has written for many publications (including Wired, Rolling Stone, and Deadspin) and covered the Golden State Warriors for Bleacher Report and Sports on Earth. He's a frequent guest on National Public Radio's "Only a Game" and has been recognized in three editions of the Best American Sports Writing anthology. He lives in San Mateo, California, with his wife and son.
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Book

Published 2017-10-03 by Atria

Book

Published 2017-10-03 by Atria

Comments

Malinowski has written an outstanding book that Warriors fans are sure to enjoy from cover to cover.

Combining an insider's reporting, intelligent analysis, and rip-roaring prose, Erik Malinowski masterfully reveals how a pair of savvy owners transformed the moribund Warriors into American sports' model franchise. Betaball's fascinating rags-to-rings tale won't just appeal to NBA obsessives; it's a book for fans of all sports and science, business and analytics, Silicon Valley and Wall Street, front offices and locker rooms, money and winning. And it's a helluva lot of fun. Buckle up for the sports book of the year.

Instructive reading for every coach and every player in every sport -- and fun, too.

Overall, this is a book I'd recommend to any basketball. Erik Malinowski does a nice job of going through the recent years and explaining how they were able to put together this super team.

If you're an NBA fan, you'll enjoy this book (Cavs fans possibly excepted). If you're trying to run a pro sports team or, hell, any organization - it ought to be required reading.

As Erik Malinowski, the author of Betaball, a new book about the Warriors, puts it, if 201617 was about Durant 'evolving as a player and a teammate,' the upcoming season will be about carrying forward a legacy, and proving that he deserves the fame that has followed him for the better part of a decade.

The NBA champion Golden State Warriors are considered a budding dynasty as well as a well-run business, and here journalist Malinowski, who covers the team for Bleacher Report, adroitly details the franchise's long and bumpy road to success. ...Malinowski describes the on-court action with humorous flair while also capturing the sophistication required to properly run a professional sports team.

The book does a fantastic job detailing the franchise's history and eventual tenuous experience.