Audiobooks by Jack McCallum

Golden Days: West's Lakers, Steph's Warriors, and the California Dreamers Who Reinvented Basketball

The bestselling author of Dream Team tells the interconnected stories of the NBA champion Golden State Warriors and the early-1970s Los Angeles Lakers, two extraordinary teams playing in extraordinary times and linked by one extraordinary man: Jerry West. During their 1971-72 championship season, the L.A. Lakers won thirty-three games in a row, a streak that still stands as the longest and greatest in the history of American professional sports. It was a run of uninterrupted dominance that predated by decades the overwhelming firepower of today's Warriors, a revolutionary team whose recent seasons include some record-threatening win streaks of their own. In Golden Days, acclaimed sports journalist Jack McCallum uses these two teams-the Jerry West/Wilt Chamberlain/Elgin Baylor Lakers and the Stephen Curry/Kevin Durant/Draymond Green Warriors-to trace the dynamic history of the National Basketball Association, which for much of the last half-century has marched memorably through the state of California. Tying together the two strands of McCallum's story is Hall of Famer West, the ferociously competitive Laker guard who later became one of the key architects of the Warriors. With "the Logo" as his guide, McCallum takes us deep into the locker rooms and front offices of these two era-defining teams, leveraging the access and authority he has amassed over his forty-year career to create a picture of the cultural juggernaut that the NBA has become. Featuring up-close-and-personal portraits of some of the biggest names in basketball history, from the larger-than-life Wilt Chamberlain to the innovative Warriors coach Steve Kerr to the transcendent duo of Curry and Durant, Golden Days is a history, not just of a changing sport, but a changing America, as seen through the prism of two teams that ruled the league during times of violence and political turmoil-the Charles Manson murders and the athlete-activist in the age of Trump among the narrative backdrops. In the end, McCallum's book leaves an indelible portrait of West, the man who lived, played, and worked through it all-and who remains, on the cusp of his eightieth birthday, one of the most vital, complicated, and compelling figures in all of sports. Advance praise for Golden Days "With his classic eye for detail and deadpan wit, Jack McCallum connects two of the greatest teams in sports history through the endlessly fascinating persona of Jerry West. McCallum manages to unearth new details about some of the giants of the game, while shining a light on overlooked figures such as Elgin Baylor, delivering an original, fascinating, and breezy read."-Zach Lowe, senior writer, ESPN "I spent some of the 2016-17 season working as a consultant for the Golden State Warriors, but even I didn't know every detail of how this championship team came together. Golden Days breaks that all down and shows how the Warriors have revolutionized basketball."-Steve Nash, two-time MVP

Jack McCallum (Author), Jack McCallum (Narrator)

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Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the Worl

Acclaimed sports journalist Jack McCallum delivers the untold story of the greatest team ever assembled: the 1992 U.S. Olympic men's basketball team that captivated the world, kindled hoop dreams, and remade the NBA into a global sensation. They were the Beatles of basketball, the Mercury Seven in sneakers. In Dream Team, acclaimed sports journalist Jack McCallum delivers the untold story of the greatest team ever assembled: the 1992 U.S. Olympic men's basketball team that captivated the world, kindled the hoop dreams of countless children around the planet, and remade the NBA into a global sensation. As a senior staff writer for Sports Illustrated, McCallum enjoyed a courtside seat for the most exciting basketball spectacle on earth, covering the Dream Team from its inception to the gold medal ceremony in Barcelona. For the duration of the Olympics, he lived with, golfed with, and-most important-drank with some of the greatest players of the NBA's Golden Age: Magic Johnson, the ebullient showman who shrugged off his recent diagnosis of HIV to become the team's unquestioned captain and leader; Michael Jordan, the transcendent talent at the height of his powers as a player-and a marketing juggernaut; and Charles Barkley, the outspoken iconoclast whose utterances on and off the court threatened to ignite an international incident. Presiding over the entire traveling circus was the Dream Team's beloved coach, Chuck Daly, whose laissez faire approach proved instrumental in getting the most out of such disparate personalities and superstars such as Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, and Scottie Pippen. Drawing on fresh interviews with the players, McCallum provides the definitive account of the Dream Team phenomenon. He offers a behind-the-scenes look at the controversial selection process. He takes us inside the team's Olympic suites for late-night card games and bull sessions where the players debate both the finer points of basketball and their respective places in the NBA pantheon. And he narrates a riveting possession-by-possession account of the legendary July 1992 intrasquad scrimmage that pitted the Dream Teamers against one another in what may have been the greatest pickup game-and the greatest exhibition of trash talk-in history. In the twenty years since the Dream Team first captivated the world's attention, its mystique has only grown-and so has its influence. The NBA is now flush with international stars, many of them inspired by the exuberant spirit of '92. Dream Team vividly re-creates the moment when a once-in-a-millennium group of athletes came together, outperformed the hype, and changed the future of sports-one perfectly executed fast break at a time.

Jack McCallum (Author), Dick Hill (Narrator)

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