One Last Shot
The Story of Michael Jordan's Comeback
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
One Last Shot gives Jordan fans the inside scoop they're looking for on basketball's greatest legend, with exclusive interviews from NBA executives, players, and coaches. Mitchell Krugel uses his fifteen years of following Michael Jordan's every move to explain why the man who left the game as The Greatest Player of All Time would risk his unparalleled legend to play again.
After delivering the Chicago Bulls their sixth championship in 1998 by pulling off what became known as the greatest money shot in the history of the NBA, Michael believed he still had much of that Greatest-Player-Of-All-Time left in his game. But he felt that retirement was forced on him in 1999, and he left the game craving more doses of fifty-point binges, winner-take-all confrontations, and repeated nights of reminding fans they just saw the greatest player ever.
One Last Shot not only explains why Michael Jordan came back to the court but also looks at his transition from Wizards executive to player, his struggle to join a team that had grown up with his posters on their walls, and his glories and setbacks in a Wizards season chock full of both struggles and surprises. Krugel also details the star-laden workouts Michael designed in the summer of 2001 to get his game back into shape.
This look at Michael Jordan, circa 2001-2002, shows how much basketball had changed since his last coming and how much it hadn't, and how his drive pushed him to the verge of a crippling knee injury all in the pursuit of winning. And for six weeks he did make it back. He made the shots. He made good on his mission to teach the Wizards how to be winners, to teach talented teammate Richard Hamilton to be a shooting star, and to whip Kwame Brown, the high school kid he made the first-ever first pick in the NBA draft, into a man. And he did the things that only a man of legend could do.
Krugel analyzes both the man and the legend to trace how the First Coming led to a Second and to a Third, and he chronicles the season that defines Michael Jordan as a man who will forever be playing for one last shot.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As the author of two previous books on basketball legend Jordan, sportswriter Krugel (Michael Jordan: A Biography) has shown himself to be perhaps the most knowledgeable current observer of the life and times of the basketball great. This third look focuses on "the drama within Michael Jordan's Third Coming," when the superstar came out of his second not-so-happy retirement in 2000 to become president of operations for the Washington Wizards, and his subsequent return in 2001 to the court as a player. For fans of Jordan as well as anyone who loved basketball during the 1990s, when Jordan's Chicago Bulls won six championships, this is an insightful depiction of Jordan's attempt "to recapture that endorphin of being the ultimate winner" in a new era. Krugel has done his homework, offering insider reports with much new information on Jordan's initial negotiations with the Wizards and his super-secret preseason practices. The author also presents excellent accounts of key games and even includes an appendix featuring a game-by-game review of Jordan's 2001 2002 season. But Krugel's access and insight also unintentionally produce some of the book's problems: while Krugel deftly analyzes Jordan's desire to be the sole arbiter of what will be his "last shot" not the sports media world his attempts to present the inner world of Jordan's comeback year are too often uncritical and awkward ("Something about pain attracted Michael, even tempted him"). Overall, this is an excellent look at an aging superstar's struggle "to find other places besides the basketball court to define his worth."
