Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant

(Paperback)

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Shortlisted for the 2017 Cross Sports Book Awards Best Biography of the Year

Bryant is one of basketball's greatest-ever players, a fascinating and complicated character who says he knew when he was a boy that he would be better than Michael Jordan.

Aloof and uncompromising, Bryant is the grand enigma of American professional basketball, easily the most driven player in the history of the sport, the absolute master of study and preparation. But his career has also been one of almost constant conflict: with his teammate Shaquille O'Neal; with Phil Jackson, coach of the championship-winning Lakers team that Kobe led; with the law; with his wife Vanessa; and with so many of his contemporaries, opponents and teammates.

Comprehensive and unflinching, SHOWBOAT unravels the conundrum that is Kobe Bryant.

Reviews

There is more than enough analysis of Bryant's on-court accomplishments to satisfy the hard-core hoops fan, but the meatier material is in the Bryant family dynamics . . . Showboat is an often insightful look at a complicated and still relatively young man - Washington Post

In his thoughtful, extraordinarily well-researched biography Michael Jordan: The Life, Roland Lazenby ... gives us the life and much more - New York Times Book Review, on Michael Jordan: The Life

An utterly definitive biography ... The most comprehensive attempt yet made to explain the factors that have gone into producing the most famous basketball player and marketing phenom in the history of world sports - Chicago Tribune, on Michael Jordan: The Life

Author Bio

Roland Lazenby is the author of the critically acclaimed bestsellers Jerry West: The Life and Legend of a Basketball Icon and Michael Jordan: The Life.

He has spent the past three decades interviewing NBA players, coaches and staff members while writing about the league. Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant was shortlisted in the best biography category at the 2017 British Sports Book Awards.

He lives in Virginia.