The Show: The Inside Story of the Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers in the Words of Those Who Lived It

For some reason, sports lends itself perfectly to oral biographies, especially basketball. The Terry Pluto book about the ABA, "Loose Balls" is one of the greatest sports books ever written. This is a delightful book, an easy read and incredibly informative. All eras of the Lakers are covered, from startup through current. There are a lot of sources from every era, many of them contradicting each other, which is great. Jerry West is quoted throughout and that is reason enough to buy the book. He is notoriously reticent and the author deserves a huge amount of praise for getting him to open up. Even the soap opera between Bryant, Shaq and Phil Jackson is told in a way that is readable. Great book!!!

What a wonderful book on the inside story of the Lakers. Having been a huge Laker fan since the early '70's, I found this book to be very informative and easy reading. This book brought back all the heartache of all the loses to Celtics, to the first championship in the '72 season.The Lakers had a great team with Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain. The 33 wins in a row will most likely never be beat. As the book moves through the '80's, I could visualize each year and the outcomes. Magic Johnson, Kareem, James Worthy and company brought alot of excitement and winning during this time. The '90's were exciting in its own right if you are fans of Kobe and Shaq. I tend to favor the early years. I would recommend this book to Laker fans of yester-year and today. Well done.

The author keeps the narrative going with many voices. He does a great job of keeping your interest. Lots of colorful characters. I tuned in during the Jerry West era and then back for the Shaq and Kobe era, so it is great to learn about the in betweens. I wish it came with a DVD package.

This is a fantastic and absolutely worthwhile read for any sports fan. I am primarily a hockey fan and being a transplanted Philadelphian living in Los Angeles for 20 years, I have a profound hatred for the Lakers yet I would GLADLY shell out the cover price for a book of this quaility with content of this much interest. Many biographies and autobiographies have been produced by the Laker organization over the years. I enjoyed reading about Chamberlain (Philly's finest!), Jabbar, Magic, Jerry West, the Buss family and others indiviually. This book is a concise and comprehensive look at the whole bunch as well as many other significant figures whose contributions are not as well-chronicled. The Lakers DVD set is considerably more expensive and insofar as telling the story of the franchise, I do not think it does the quality job Lazenby and company do here. This is really a marvelous compilation of accounts of a truly fascinating franchise that has dominated the NBA in four different eras and been highly competitive in most others. This book should come as a gift with Laker season tickets and really is great for anyone interested in basketball or sports in general.

This is by far the best book on pro basketball in recent memory. If you're a fan of the NBA, not just the Lakers, you owe it to yourself to read this book. An absolutely fascinating oral history. Highly recommended.