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

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

• 
  Brina

  The basketball playoffs are here once again, and the games are as exciting as ever to watch. As a Chicago Bulls fan in the 1990s, the NBA playoffs were the event of the year. I rarely missed a game, even having family members record games if I knew I would not be home, this in the days before DVR. Yet, as a baseball fan, my knowledge of the history of the NBA is sorely lacking, something I have tried to fill in the gaps on in recent years. Other than Michael, Magic, Kobe, and current players, I am not a walking basketball encyclopedia the way I am for baseball stats. When my friend the Sports Book Guy last year read Golden Dreams comparing and contrasting two eras of California basketball, I knew it was a book that I eventually had to read. As the current edition of the Golden State Warriors steamroll through the playoffs, it was as good as time as any to brush up on my NBA knowledge.
  
  Since Phil Jackson was unceremoniously let go from the Bulls following the 1998 championship season and joined the Lakers a year later, I have rooted for the team. Kobe Bryant’s ascendancy to the top of the basketball world coincided with Michael Jordan leaving the Bulls. The league needed a new star, and I needed a team to follow; perfect timing. Yet, before Kobe, before Magic, the Lakers were actually the league’s perennial bridesmaids both in Minneapolis and following their move to Los Angeles. In the 1960s the Lakers lead by Jerry West and Elgin Baylor fell short against their rival Boston Celtics lead by Bill Russell and Bob Cousy and later a whole other cast of top players. West, although the logo for the NBA and a star in his own right, could not shed the label of loser, as his team’s finished second in the finals eight times during the first decade of his career. In today’s sports landscape, a tandem of stars would not be given this many opportunities before their team was gutted; yet, in the days where the sports reserve clause ruled the day, players were tied to one team for their entire career unless they were traded. Thus, West and his teammates were destined to be foils for the Celtics unless their roster got shaken up.
  
  Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke was cheap like many owners of the era but he wanted to win badly. In 1968 he traded for aging star Wilt Chamberlain to take a load off of West and Baylor, yet even Wilt was not enough, as the Lakers fell to the Celtics, Sixers, and Bucks teams. Before the 1971-72 season, Cooke wanted a new coach and got his man in Bill Sharman, ironically a former Celtics player. West was rightfully skeptical, yet Sharman turned out to be the man for the job, implementing techniques new to the NBA at the time- preseason training camp in Hawaii, morning shoot-arounds, a high octane offense, and a predecessor of the triangle that the 1990s Bulls made famous. Even Chamberlain bought into the system, being named the team’s captain, and the Lakers raced to a thirty three game win streak and the league’s top record. In the days before the three point shot, the Lakers scored over 100 points on a consistent basis; tough defenses were a thing of the future, and California basketball had taken hold in the NBA. A title seemed within the team’s grasp of only they could get by a Bucks team led by Oscar Robertson and future Laker Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the western conference finals. Miraculously, the Lakers prevailed, and Cooke got his title, and, like many owners of the era, proceeded to break up the team to save money. It would not be until new ownership and coaching eight years later that the Magic Johnson Lakers would dominate the NBA; in the interim years, the team would middle, with only the 1971-72 team to buoy their spirits.
  
  Today’s Golden State Warriors are the cream of the NBA, but it was not always so. In the 1990s, the Warriors were perennial also rans, and star players dreaded being traded there. This changed in 2011-12 when current owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber bought the team, and emblematic of its Silicon Valley home, attempted to be as innovative as possible en route to transforming the organization to be winners. One hire overlooked is not one of their star players or coach but a consultant evaluating player talent, none other than Jerry West who is still going strong as he approaches his eightieth birthday. Although West is not responsible for drafting star Steph Curry, he had input in the decision to keep Curry and trade Monta Ellis, the top guard on the team prior to Curry’s 2009 arrival in the league. West had a hand in obtaining the rest of the pieces of the puzzle as well, and, as fans well know today, the Warriors rule the NBA, including an eighteen point comeback last night to take a three games to none lead in their current playoff series. Comprised of two super stars in Curry and Kevin Durant and two additional All Stars in the starting lineup in Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, the Warriors seem unbeatable. With quality personnel from their owners down to the support staff, the Warriors have been built for sustained success, and this should only increase when they move to their new, modern arena next season. This is a far cry from a team that consistently finished near the bottom of the league in the 1980s and 1990s. With players who launch shots from 35 feet away and constantly search for new ways to have an edge over their opponents, the Warriors are going to be a force in the NBA for years to come.
  
  West stamped his mark on the Warriors as well before moving back to Los Angeles as a consultant for the Clippers, in what is likely his last career stop, that is, unless the Lakers ask for his services so he can end his career with the team where it all began. Jack McCallum spent a year researching this book with West as his primary subject. I enjoyed the sections about the Lakers more than the Warriors as they helped fill in my gaps of NBA knowledge. Today the tables are turned with the Warriors on top and the Lakers searching for championship mettle, and it will be intriguing to see how long this scenario will last. In the meantime, I will sit back and enjoy the ride that is the NBA playoffs with more exciting games yet to come.
  
  4 stars
• 
  John

  It is appropriate that I finish Jack McCallum’s latest book in the midst of what will almost surely be the Golden State Warriors's third NBA championship in a four-year span. For all of the—accurate—talk about how only a handful of teams have captured titles throughout the course of professional basketball, winning with this frequency is still unusual. The Spurs came close in winning 3 titles between 2003 and 2007, and the Lakers and Bulls won three-peats in the early 2000s and 1990s; the Lakers won 3 in 4 in 1985, 1987, and 1988. And of course, the Celtics of the 1960s and the Minneapolis (!!) Lakers of the 1950s won boatloads of titles.
  
  'Golden Days', as the subtitle notes, is in part an examination of these Warriors and how their success in this half of the decade would’ve been ludicrous to an outside observer at the start of the decade. Unusually, or so it may first appear, it is also an examination of Jerry West and his Lakers teams of the 1960s and early 1970s, especially the 33-consecutive-game-winning and championship-grabbing 1971-72 team. This is not a coincidence (though one gets the impression that the author could easily have chosen one of these subjects and dedicated the entirety of the book to them). It is more than just geographical proximity that weaves these two narratives together. West joined the Warriors in 2011 and served as a consultant and board member until he left last year to pursue a similar position with the Los Angeles Clippers. The inclusion of West in the Warriors’s ascendency is nothing short of amazing. This was a man who has known nothing but professional basketball for nearly 60 years, having been drafted by the Lakers in 1960 (only one player was drafted ahead of him, another electric guard by the name of Oscar Robertson) then serving as a coach and then an executive for decades. In examining West and his Lakers teams on the one hand and Curry and his Warriors teams on the other, we are presented with stark analysis of success in the pro game. With the solitary exception of that title in ’72, those Lakers knew nothing but heartbreak as they repeatedly served as bridesmaid to Russell’s Celtics (and others) year after year after year. Their owner was a tyrant, their popularity only regional, their star players seemingly cursed, their collective spirit one of anger and frustration. The modern-day Warriors, on the other hand, could not be more different. Since being bought out of misery by Joe Lacob, Peter Guber, and others in 2010, the Warriors have probably been the team of the decade, even as Lebron James has been the player of the decade. They have made four Finals appearances, won three titles, had a two-time MVP, and, for the most part, possessed a constantly high approval rating since 2014. They play a new style of basketball that is unlocked by Steph Curry’s brilliance. Unlike those Lakers teams, they play with harmony and joy, even as they carry an institutional arrogance. The team has increased in value from $450 million to nearly $4 billion. There is, seemingly, no Wilt Chamberlain lurking to hurt the team from within. Their future is blindingly bright.
  
  The comparative analysis of these two teams, while not the central objective of the book, is impossible to miss as McCallum tells their stories. The downcast trudging and joyful leaping are nicely woven together by the appreciative pen of one of America’s preeminent basketball writers. It is full of the informal wit and incisive eye that makes McCallum so enjoyable. It is also more ambitious than his previous books. Two of those dealt with single teams across one season (the 1990-91 Celtics and 2005-2006 Suns [a book that had a profound affect on me]). Another focused on the 1992 Olympic team (the Dream Team). In covering so many years, events, and people, 'Golden Days’ at times loses focus, and as I noted earlier, seems confused about which story is the central subject. Even as Curry is an important factor in the Warriors’s chapters, the central subject must be Jerry West. Though the book is divided nearly perfectly between the past and present, it is West that seems to be the thread that ties the book together. And I didn’t really mind that, as West (and his long-suffering teammate Elgin Baylor) is repeatedly undervalued by modern pundits when ranking the best players ever. West, perhaps more so than any other player besides Wilt, was a crucial star in the challenging early decades of the league. The fact that he is still around and as sharp as ever at 80 speaks to the timelessness of this great game. If it succeeded at nothing else, ‘Golden Days’ was a pleasant reminder of the past giants, present riches, and open future of this sport I love.
• 
  Judd Vance

  Jack McCallum seems to fancy himself the Stephen Hawking of the NBA and he's discovered the Grand Unified Theory in the form of the God Particle himself, or shall we call it "The Logo?"
  
  Jerry West (the God particle) unites the 1972 Los Angeles Lakers and the 2017 Golden State Warriors: the two greatest teams in NBA history (at least according to the picture that McCallum is painting). He is the nucleus and greatness swirls around him.
  
  Well, apart from my sarcastic take on this, let me get this out of the way: I am not a Celtics fan nor am I a fan of "Da Boolz!" I'm actually a Sixers fan, and yes, I do think the 1967 team is the greatest team of all time followed up by the 1983 team: I am a homer, but I don't think Billy Cunningham is the cosmic center of it all.
  
  West was an advisor. He did not draft Stephen Curry, that GM went against the flow and saw the greatness in Curry when others did not. If anything, he is the true seer. West came on board afterward. How much was West responsible for Draymond Green (and if he had that insight, how did Green fall to the 2nd round)? Klay Thompson? Steve Kerr? Who knows? Did he sway the Warriors' management to select these all-stars? He did say Mark Jackson needed to go, but it sounds like that was self-evident to ownership. So what was his impact? Who knows? And the fact that McCallum cannot point to instances show that his cosmic oneness linking the 1972 Lakers to the 2017 Warriors is little more than the reach of a desperate fanboy. Ownership wanted to cut West's pay in 2017, causing West to leave, so it doesn't sound like his advice was indispensable. I believe Phil Jackson has a stronger link to the Holtzman Knicks and the Jordan Bulls than West has to these two teams. At times, the premise seem as far-fetched as a conspiracy theory.
  
  West WAS the man on the 1972 Lakers: the best player on a great team that won 33 games in a row and set a record for number of wins (69) in a season that stood for 24 years. Yet at the same time, and to McCallum's credit, he confronts this head on, West lost in the finals 7 times to the Celtics and then to the Knicks. While he shined against the Celtics, he was destroyed by Walt Frazier in 1970. McCallum does point to the team effort (especially to contributions from Bill Sharman, Wilt Chamberlain, Happy Hairston, Jim McMillan, and Gail Goodrich) that went into that effect but never mentions the lack of quality in the overall league due to over-expansion and the American Basketball Association creating a dilution of talent.
  
  But despite all that, this where it gets weird: McCallum alternates time periods each chapter: time traveling between 1972 and 2017. The reader feels like Jean-Luc Picard in the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation and the effect is almost as disorienting. Nowhere was it worse than when you read about Mark Jackson's season and his firing, interrupted with a LONG chapter covering the 33-game winning streak from 1971-72.
  
  My impression is that McCallum is a huge fanboy of West with almost a school-girl like crush. Hey, I get it: I still have a Graig Nettles poster on my wall. You never forget your first love. And the Logo is, well, the Logo. His place as one of the 5 greatest guards in history is secure. His reputation as the greatest General Manager in NBA history is also secure (and I'll debate any Celtic fan who wants to argue West vs. Red Auerbach), but I think McCallum is going a bridge too far by presenting the idea that Jerry West is the common ingredient of greatness.
  
  While West is his true love, there is quite a man crush developing for Curry. Don't get me wrong: Curry is great, but at times, it seems like a hagiography, especially when he lists the "revolutions" in basketball and lists Curry with very FEW others (such as Bob Cousy and Hank Luisetti) while ignoring Elgin Baylor's revolution. Have you ever watched footage of games BEFORE Baylor? Ever wonder why the game more closely resembles the high flying athleticism of Baylor and those who came after him, such as Connie Hawkins, Dr. J, David Thompson, Kobe Bryant, and Michael Jordan. I'm not saying Curry's long-ranged bombing hasn't been a modern revolution, but McCallum was selling a lot of the game short in an attempt to elevate Curry. It is ironic that McCallum talks about Baylor getting shortchanged by history when he did the exact same thing.
  
  I really enjoyed McCallum's book ":07 or less" about the Phoenix Suns. I like how he gets on the inside with the team and reports the season. He was doing the same thing here. This book would have been better had he stuck to the Warriors and had a few chapters on West's background and contribution, but to connect this team spiritually, scientifically, and/or metaphysically to the 1972 Lakers is just plain weird. All but 4 of them are dead.
  
  For that matter, I think this should have been TWO books. A second book on the 1972 Lakers would be a welcome addition. To my knowledge, the only dedicated book to that team is "The Pivotal Year" by Charlie Rosen, and that book is full of so many errors that it is at best, artistic license, and at worst, fan fiction. I found it disturbing that McCallum quoted him at all (to know more about my beef with that book, read my review on Goodreads or Amazon: I rip apart a small passage and show numerous errors made just to perform a character assassination of Wilt Chamberlain).
  
  But in defense of McCallum, he does quite a bit of research from excellent books, many of which I have read and reviewed, such as David Shaw and Robert Cherry's biographies on the Big Dipper, as well as Wilt 1962, Tall Tales, and Roland Lazenby's excellent West biography and book on the Lakers' history.
  
  One last beef: the pop culture/musical references need to go. It's distracting and adds nothing to the book other than letting us know what McCallum's favorite music was. At least when Bill Walton started every chapter of his autobiography with a Grateful Dead lyric, it made sense, since Walton was so closely associated with that band. McCallum's references did not work.
  
  Overall, this could have been a really, really good book on the 2015-17 Warriors, instead, it's a mediocre disjointed book about two teams with little in common while not doing either one enough justice while confusing the reader and leaving (this) reader wanting more.
  
  I don't regret reading it, but in the genre of one-season NBA books, this is a far cry from "The Franchise" (Cameron Stauth), Blood on the Horns (Roland Lazenby), :07 or Less (McCallum), Life on the Run (Bill Bradley), or the Jordan Rules (Sam Smith).
• 
  Alex

  My brother wrote a great review; find that one.
  I enjoyed all of this, but always wanted a little more from the 71-72 Lakers chapters. The book made me think I’ve been a little unfair to Wilt.
• 
  Mwalizadeh

  I grew up with Magic’s Showtime Lakers. Now living with Steph/KD’s Warriors Dynasty. So this great sports book was perfect for me. Great stories, from so many sources, of two very different franchise and how they connect
• 
  Lance

  Two of the best teams in the history of professional basketball are the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers and the 2016-17 Golden State Warriors. Both teams had lengthy winning streaks – Golden State had a 24 game streak and the Lakers had a 33 game streak that still stands as the longest winning streak by a professional team in the four major sports. Both teams won their respective championships. Both teams had several all-star players on the roster. The comparison between the two teams is captured in this wonderfully written book by Jack McCallum, considered one of the better basketball authors in the business.
  
  There is one link between the two teams from different eras – Jerry West. West was one of those all-star players on that Lakers team, and was relieved to finally win a championship after many years of finishing second to either the Boston Celtics or New York Knicks. After his playing career, he worked in the front office for several teams, but his best work was with the Warriors in putting together the team that includes Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Drayman Green.
  
  The book is fast paced, has many humorous passages and is a wonderful looks back at both teams’ construction and the championship seasons. One chapter is dedicated to each game of the Lakers’ historic winning streak – this was my favorite section of the book as a reader will either have great memories of the team or, if too young to have seen this team, will learn what the culture of professional basketball was at the time and the colorful characters that made up the Los Angeles Lakers.
  
  This doesn’t mean McCallum shorts changes his quality work for the Warriors either. The reader will learn how the Warriors went from laughing stock to domination through the hard work of new-thinking owners, sheer luck on draft night in 2009 that allowed them to draft Curry and how they have become the hip team of the current basketball culture. I enjoyed reading about this team as well, mainly because McCallum writes in such a manner that he shows great respect for both teams without the book coming off as a love fest for either one of them. It is simply a lot of great information and stories about two legendary teams. This book is highly recommended for all basketball fans of all ages.
  
  I wish to thank Ballantine Books for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
  
  
  http://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/201...
  
• 
  Mary

  The Logo never won MVP and only one championship. How things have changed with players moving from team to team in search of winning a ring. Is it us or them that caused this change? Regardless, still love watching the Warriors play.
• 
  RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN

  RICK “SHAQ” GOLDSTEIN SAYS: A REAL STRETCH TRYING TO DIRECT LINK 1971-72 LAKERS WITH CURRENT WARRIORS
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  First of all… I think it’s important to note that as of this writing… I am only the second reviewer who ACTUALLY BOUGHT AND PAID FOR THIS BOOK. I also am a lifelong Laker and NBA fan… and in high school in Los Angeles… and all the way through when I played on a United States Military Basketball Team… I wore number 44 in honor of my childhood basketball idol Jerry West. I have read just about every credible book on West and the Lakers of that time period… and of course that includes Jerry’s autobiography “West By West” in 2011… and since the author Jack McCallum quotes heavily from that book… there is not an awful lot new from that time period. It is always nice to relive some of that great historical past… including the still standing record of *THIRTY-THREE-CONSECUTIVE-WINS-BY-THE-71-72 LAKERS… WHICH IS THE GREATEST CONSECUTIVE GAME WINNING STREAK IN THE HISTORY OF ALL FOUR MAJOR PROFESSIONAL SPORTS!* (See attached… if Amazon displays it… the actual sports section from this reviewer’s private collection of the day they broke the record.) One thirty page chapter is nothing more than listing each victory with some very minor statistical info and a comment from the sports reporting of that time.
  
  A nice interesting part of the book… is whenever the older information… is updated with a recent… post “West By West” autobiography… quote from West himself. Jumping back and forth between the 71-72 Lakers (See attached… if Amazon displays it… of actual sports section of Lakers 71-72 NBA Championship victory… from this reviewer’s private collection.) to the current Warriors… can be described two ways…. 1) a deflected bounce pass… or… 2) the type of movie that constantly uses “flash-backs”… and ���flash-forwards” so incessantly… that you lose interest in trying to get your mind into whatever time line you just bounced into. It is nice to read once again about the difference a coach can make with almost the same talent… as Bill Sharman did with the Lakers… and Steve Kerr did with the Warriors… and that is one of the points that connects. I must also add that if you’re a true “old-school” NBA fan… you’ll enjoy the periodic parenthetical humor… and or… comment that you would understand… but newbies may not grasp as effortlessly. Kind of like the difference in Jerry West the Mr. Clutch ballplayer… hitting game winning… after game winning… shot… with everything on the line… and remaining stoic… and Steph Curry hitting a routine shot in the middle of the game… and distorting his face like a rabid werewolf… howling at the moon… while punching himself in the chest… and having a mouthpiece dripping with liquid bacteria… hanging out of the side of his mouth. Those polar opposite images… is emblematic… of many reasons… this book (though interesting to read if you accept the two generational teams really don’t have much to share other than the self-proclaimed neurotic Jerry West being within “six-degrees-of-separation”) is not the poetic-linked circle of history that the author intends.
  
  An additional heads up to any Jerry West fans who *HAVE* read his autobiography and other books on West and his Lakers.. I have to say directly from my heart… that it really gets old reading once again about all of West’s mental and psychological issues throughout his life.
  
  Take for granted you are going to hear once again ad nauseam about him not being able to stay in the arena during championship games… as Laker general manager… about him driving aimlessly around in his car during games… about going to sit in movie theatres during games… and of course… even becoming ill thinking of the Celtic color green… over and over and over.
  
• 
  Jake

  (3.5) For any NBA fan, McCallum's books are must reads. This one is no exception and the stories here are fascinating, particularly the ones about the 72 Lakers and Wilt Chamberlain. And though I found his autobiography to be uninteresting, I'd read anything about Jerry West.
  
  However, I'm not sure the structure fully works with this one. McCallum tries to bounce back and forth between the two teams but he's cramming three years worth of storyline into the Warriors chapters while only having to deal with one monumental season for the Lakers. It leaves for a lot of redundancy. I think it would have been better for 90% of the book to have been about the Lakers and 10% about West's time with the Warriors.
  
  Also, McCallum has been writing for decades. And while I'm sure he is attuned to racial issues, I get the sense that he is trying to play catch up in these charged times more than writing about racism in a way that is organic to the story. For example, he talks about the Warriors getting set to play LeBron James in the 2017 Finals where he casually mentions that LeBron's house was vandalized with racist graffiti a few days prior. Yes that's horrible. But there's no other relation to context. Nothing about the racism most of LeBron's fellow players have faced. Nothing about how this may have affected LeBron in game one. Just an oh-by-the-way reference to something that happened in a paragraph (and page) that was about the Warriors. It was awful and it probably needed to be referenced but there were other parts in the book where he could have placed it.
  
  Otherwise, it's a good story that again, as an NBA fan, you have to read for the Laker tales (the Golden State stuff was, at least for me, mostly a rehash save for some inside baseball from West).
• 
  Joe

  Having read a lot of Jack McCallum over the years in Sports Illustrated, this book was familiar in a lot of good ways. McCallum's features always have a relaxed flow to them, even on the most action packed pieces of a basketball game. In a lot of ways, this was like reading an extremely extended feature from SI, where he could take all of the extra info that he found and show it to us. I felt like the strongest pieces of the book were the parts on the '72 Lakers. I think part of that comes from the distance from the subject, and that McCallum wasn't up against time to bring all the info in and really let us soak in the atmosphere of the team. The Warriors' parts weren't bad by any means, but they clearly didn't have the context around them and the extra information that McCallum was able to bring into the Lakers' sections. I think that mostly stems from the Warriors section happening in real time, and he had to write about it as it happened.
  
  While I was reading, I kept expecting to see more of a connection between the Lakers and the Warriors, besides the connection of Jerry West. In a lot of ways it seemed like West was an integral part of the Lakers sections but wasn't really as much of a focus on the Warriors sections, which could admittedly come from West's estrangement and eventual departure from the Warriors franchise at the end of the book. Really, that was my only complaint - I wanted to see more of a connection between the two, whether it was the way that they represented their times, or the way that West put an imprint on both of them. It was fine the way it was written, but it could come off as disjointed from time to time. Still, an enjoyable and recommended read!
  
  I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.
• 
  Kyle

  I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
  
  A compelling and informative exploration of the history of the NBA with Jerry West serving as the catalyst. Comparing the Wilt/West/Elgin Lakers with the Curry/Durant/Green Warriors and how these teams have shaped and have been shaped by the rest of the league is fascinating. Each team deserves (and has) books dedicated to their successes and failures, but this book was excellent at treating each team with the respect that they deserved without becoming a lovefest for one particular team. Jerry West being the connective tissue for both teams was quite inventive, and makes the book more interesting because you have a central figure to rely upon as the narrative progresses. This is a must read for any NBA fan, not just a Lakers or Warriors fan.
• 
  matteo

  While it was fun to read about the Warriors of recent years and Jerry West's general history, this also felt like a Cliffs Notes version--it had some good stories, but it jumped around and could have been longer. The alternate Lakers/Warriors chapters were both interesting and annoying. I was surprised at the number of times the author made what seemed like unnecessary comments or observations--for some reason I had expected him to be more of an unbiased fly on the wall (and a better writer), but he threw his opinion into places for no particular reason.
• 
  Nick Weil

  It's a little confusing how the book jumps between timeframes (between the years that Jerry West played and when he advised the Warriors). But I do see how there is a method to the madness. And the actual stories are fascinating. So much on-court success drips from this book. Is West the golden thread that ties all that success together? Maybe, maybe not, since the Warriors have continued to win even after West left. And West hasnt had success with the Clippers, which he now advises. Regardless, it works to appreciate the book for what it is, essential NBA lore.
• 
  Leandro Cordobez

  Entretenido y lleno de historias, como todo libro de McCallum. Leí Betaball unos días antes, por eso me enganchó mucho más la historia de los viejos Lakers, pero si bien a veces forzada, la conexión entre Lakers 71-72 y estos Warriors, termina funcionando.
  Párrafo aparte para dos personajes top: Wilt y sus interminables anécdotas y el verdadero protagonista: Jerry West. Un personaje inabarcable.
  Lleno de fuentes primarias. Muy recomendable para amantes de la NBA.
• 
  Chris Ruggeri

  McCallum wrote a fine book, but it's not for me. I had a hard time connecting with the writing, and I'm still not convinced there's much to link West's Lakers and Steph's Warriors besides Jerry West himself, and a few other superficial touchstones (long winning streak, superstar players).
  
  I can appreciate McCallum trying to find a new angle for writing about two highly-scrutinized, celebrated teams; unfortunately for me it just fell flat.
• 
  Jeff Alexy

  Interesting book that parallels the Lakers run in the 60s with Jerry West and the Warriors run in recent years with Steph Curry. The Lakers half was a repeat for me, having read West by West, written by Jerry West himself. But the Warriors side of things was interesting.
• 
  David Barney

  I have enjoyed Jack McCallum’s writing. He wrote a great book about the Dream Team and about the Phoenix Suns. He writes a good basketball book. I liked how Jerry West and the Golden State Warriors weaved together.
• 
  Perry

  A really nice read about Jerry West, the connective person between the 33-win in a row Lakers of the early 70s and the current Warriors. There's some curmudgeon in the author.
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  Jim Blessing

  Very nice read about Jerry West and the 71-72 Lakers, who won 33 straight games. It also covered the present day Golden State Warriors
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  Matt M

  Skipped around a bit much but really good info and interesting