NBA Street Series Vol 4 Class of 03

NBA Street Series Vol 4 Class of 03

The fourth version of the NBA Street Series collection focuses on the outstanding draft class of 2003 and the incredible impact they?ve already had on the NBA. The program will take a close look at the ?Big Three? of LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade, along with fellow All-Star Chris Bosh. Get an inside look at the members of this incredible class and see their greatest highlights from the 2006 NBA season as well as the best plays from the beginning of the 2007 campaign. Hosted by Chris Brown.

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2002 NBA Finals Los Angeles Lakers Championship Video

2002 NBA Finals Los Angeles Lakers Championship Video

At the beginning of the 2001-02 NBA season, the Los Angeles Lakers were the two-time defending champions… at the end, they were an NBA DYNASTY! The daunting challenge of winning three titles in a row was put to the test in a grueling, seven-game series against the Sacramento Kings that found the Lakers on the brink of elimination. Led by perennial All-Stars Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, they swept the New Jersey Nets in the 2002 NBA Finals and forever put their stamp on history.

Take an in-depth look into the Lakers’ roller coaster season that culminated with a third straight championship. This official NBA collectible features exclusive interviews, behind-the-scenes locker-room access, and heart-pounding game action. From Robert Horry’s thrilling game-winning three pointers to Phil Jackson’s inspiring on-court huddles, this DVD captures it all in championship fashion! 60 minutes.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Awesome DVD! If you’re a laker fan, BUY IT
The lakers are the best team of all time in the NBA. That is evident in the way they play. This dvd is worth every single penny spent on it… My former girlfriends kids destroyed it one day. I was so mad. I said, “Did you know that was my favorite dvd?” She told me that she would buy me another one but never did. Did not like it when I wore my Kobe Bryant jersey. Why would she buy me another disc? I’m gonna buy another one next month when I get paid and nothing is going to happen to this one!

Anyway, to the dvd: It has great interviews with Robert Horry about his game winning buzzer beater against the Portland Trailblazers in game 3 of the NBA playoffs in 2002. Great highlights of all playoff games are included and the miraculous buzzer beater shot by Robert Horry against the Sacremento Kings was unbelievable! I remember that game very clearly. I was over at my best friends house watching the game and he thought they were going to lose. I kind of did too, but I felt confident that they would pull off a win.

I told him, “The game is not over yet. Anything can happen.” When that ball left Robert Horrys hands with one tenth of a second left on the clock, I knew that shot was going in. I jumped up, raised my arms, and was shouting my head off so loud you could have heard me down the block. I can see now why Tim Duncan calls him “big shot bob.” I mean who in the hell can hit a shot like that? The people who knock the lakers, don’t what they are talking about. If people say the lakers suck, then why are they considered one of the greatest NBA teams of all time?

Don’t knock a team of this caliber until you see all of their achievements over the years and then maybe you’ll learn to appreciate a good team when you see it.

5 Stars Great Retrospective
Regardless of what “Laker-haters” may think, this team was an incredible dynasty. Even when it seemed they were on the ropes, someone always stepped up (i.e.-Robert Horry). Jason Kidd was the true 2002 MVP, but the Lakers are still the champions. Sacramento may be upset, but it’s their fault. They were challenging, but who won Game 7 of the Western Finals, on the road, in overtime? Kobe and Shaq was a 1-2 punch that was unstoppable. Even though the dynasty is over, they rank as one of the best teams of all time. This is a great DVD because of the inside footage, as well as the extras. Definitely a 10 in my book.

1 Star NBA = 2 Stars Lakers = 0 Likeable Stars
I respect that the NBA produces these “best of” videos for championship teams. This one is as shoddily produced and quickly knocked off as any of them. However, has there ever been a championship team as smug and unlikeable as the Lakers? Probably not. If you enjoy watching smirking millionaires bathe their egos at the alter of their league-office mandated success go ahead and buy this video. If you actually like sports with real meaning, go watch your local high school basketball team.

5 Stars Great Video on the Champs
truly enjoyed watching this over&over again.while Jason Kidd was my Personal MVP Last year the Nets just were no match for the Lakers.the true Finals was the Lakers&Kings.it was very exciting.while I don’t care much for the kings overall I Respect there depth&hardwork.but it’s great seeing Shaq just Dominate&Kobe getting better each Year&Crew do there thing.Phil Jackson just adding too His Legacy yearly.a Must for Laker Fans.

4 Stars Three Years… No Improvement
Three years, no improvement. No, not the Lakers, I’m talking about this horrible NBA Finals package. I own the DVD of the first Championship title of 1999-2000, and I am sad to say that their has been virtually no improvement in the quality of this product.

Most noticeable to those like me who have the other DVD will immediately notice that they have “recycled” some of the bad keyboard music featured before. Also, at barely 60 mins, they are still doing a VHS-to-DVD conversion, which is frustrating considering that you could cram 3, maybe 4 hours of Lakers footage on the DVD format.

The Western Conference Finals vs. Sacramento is the sole reason I bought the DVD. For the third year in a row, the Conference Finals were acknowledged by everyone as the true NBA Finals, yet the people behind this product do a shabby job of covering the finals and focusing instead on the boring NBA Finals vs. New Jersey Nets. I could really do without the wacked-out Nets fans: the psycho guy with the veins bulging out of his neck and face screaming “NO THREE-PEAT TONIGHT LAKERS! NO THREE-PEAT TONIGHT!” or the moron with the red wig and stockings on his arms chanting “N-E-T-S, NETS, NETS, NETS!”, or even the sight of that guy who jumps up into the camera wearing that HORRIFIC green sweater. There is about 30 minutes of this nonsense, and I actually sat through it hoping to see something that would make me happy I bought this DVD.

Getting back to the Sacramento series. So much is cut out! First of all, NO MENTION of Kobe Bryant’s food poisoning between games 1 and 2. NO MENTION that Shaq is hobbling around after the games from the pain in his foot. The trash talk, one of the highlights of the rivalry, only occurs during one quick scene between Robert Horry and Vlade Divac over the game-winning 3. Those 20 seconds of Robert Horry manage to make the DVD worth buying, though.

Speaking of Horry, one thing I really liked about this DVD that isn’t in the other one is that they play the 2 big game-winning Horry shots (against Portland and Sacramento) in real-time as they were broadcast by NBC. What sort of messes this up for me is that they dub the ESPN announcers over the NBC footage, which is annoying because I HATE THE ESPN ANNOUNCERS! It’s obvious the guy (sorry, forgot his name) hates the Lakers! Pay attention to the sound bytes and you will notice he is always rooting for the other team. Example, Lakers down big in game 4, and he starts comparing the Kings beating the Lakers to the Michael Jordan Bulls beating the Detroit Pistons way back in the early 90’s. The Kings are no Bulls, not in a million years, but they are full of Bull(you-know-what).

Please, if the people who make these DVDs are reading this, try to take advantage of the DVD format. Make the program longer, add better special features (sorry, but Samake Walker and Brian Shaw fishing? ZZZ) and put the emphasis on the Conference Finals, because the Finals, and the East for that matter, are a joke.

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Black Planet Facing Race During an NBA Season

Black Planet Facing Race During an NBA Season

In his earlier work, David Shields came across as a fairly traditional storyteller. Even Dead Languages, his fictional rumination on a stutterer’s tongue-tied existence, was essentially a coming-of-age story. But he began to show his true colors with Remote, a fractured, full-body immersion in media culture. This deeply amusing work of nonfiction revealed the author to be a neurotic, navel-gazing cousin of Nicholson Baker. Now comes Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season, whose putative topic–professional basketball–would seem to return Shields to his extroverted roots. (His first novel, in fact, revolved around a college basketball player.) Yet this is ultimately as postmodernist a work as its predecessor, and it takes us not only into the author’s heart but his boudoir. Black Planet’s fusion of public spectacle with private mortification makes it his funniest book to date.

A word of explanation: technically speaking, Black Planet is a chronicle of the Seattle SuperSonics during the 1994-1995 season. Since the team blew its shot at the playoffs, there’s no chance for an uplifting grand finale. Yet Shields had a different sort of hoop dream in mind from the very beginning. “The NBA,” he writes, “is a place where, without ever acknowledging it–and because it’s never acknowledged, it’s that much more potent and telling–white fans and black players enact and quietly explode virtually every racial issue and tension in the culture at large. Race, the league’s taboo topic, is the league’s true subject.” It’s the author’s true subject, too, and he goes at it from every angle–attending games, recording call-in radio shows, and making some abortive attempts to cozy up to the players. Point guard Gary Payton is his true Penelope. Why? Well, his motormouth style does suggest an “indivisibility… of playing and talking, of life and language.” But more to the point, he offers a handy tabula rasa for Shields’s fantasy life, a trash-talking personification of bad behavior: “Which is why, in Seattle the Good, I so love Gary Payton. He’s not really bad, he’s only pretend-bad–I know that–but he allows me to fantasize about being bad.”

If Shields were simply slapping society on the wrist for its half-submerged racism, Black Planet would wear out its welcome in the first quarter. But he’s consistently hardest on himself, so the book becomes not only a social critique but a critique of social critiques, cutting the ground from under itself in an infinite and entertaining loop-the-loop. Shields may not be the first writer to transform a fan’s notes into literary gold–Frederick Exley beat him to the punch–but he’s the most rigorously intelligent one in a long, long time. Swish! –James Marcus

User Ratings and Reviews

1 Star I Want My Money Back!
I picked up a hardbound version of this book for $0.10 at a library book sale, and would take it back for a refund if I could. It seems to me the author is convinced of his premise, then tries to use peoples’ words and actions to justify/prove it, often unsuccessfully. I think one problem is his professorial way of writing: the numerous “Cf.s” were a distraction and contrived.

I tried to finish the book but couldn’t take it anymore about halfway through.

4 Stars Good, journal-style book
I read this book several years ago and in retrospect it couldn’t have come out at a better time.

Conversations on race is the larger topic of this book which uses the changing landscape of the NBA as a metaphor for the growing indifference & misunderstandings of whites of African-Americans.

The book explores the passing of the grinning, assimilationist & non-threatening generation of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas being supplanted by an increasingly urban-flavored generation not as concerned with making McDonald’s commercials and appealing to Middle Class America.

(NOTE: this book is written just before the invasion of the “hip hop generation” led by Allen Iverson whose gangsta, thugged-out image, braids, baggy pants and corn rows rubbed a predominantly white fanbase the wrong way, opening all sorts of new NBA image discussions).

Shields chronicles the Seattle SuperSonics in the mid-1990s, attends games and stays up on every notable on court act or off court run-in and then examines how hoops fans make judgments based upon stereotypes or racial perceptions.

The book’s premise is that the overwhelming black, overwhelming rags-to-riches tales of its majority of players combine to create the one forum in the country where whites are the outsiders and thus forced to (and ultimately resist, if you consider the standing of the overwhelmingly white media and white hoops fans) relate to a group of players from the wrong side of the tracks that otherwise had always been forced to assimilate and relate to Middle America (and thus, a juxtaposition of the two roles in the NBA).

For me, this book’s topic couldn’t be more relevant today given the emergence of an NBA generation that’s as polarizing as any the sport’s world has ever seen.

It might be a little harder to stomach though if you’re a reader not in touch with your own honest racial perceptions.

5 Stars Fascinating
Insightful, observant and brave, David Shields’ Black Planet is a thought-provoking look at America’s sports culture and, ultimately, America’s culture in general. Never afraid to use himself as a subject, the author takes a look at the racial dynamic apparant -but rarely confronted upon- in the NBA.

Even for the non-sports fan, this book will prove to be an enlightening read because basketball only provides the backdrop for the author’s exploration of society and self.

It should be noted that the author is not a sports writer. In fact, the author often seems out of place in the various professional basketball environments he roams and inhabits in the book. Such a feeling of disconnect, however, aids the text, I believe; such an outside-looking-in perspective gives the book a voice I suspect many readers will recognize–their own.

5 Stars A sports book for intellectuals
Remote is an intelligent exploration of the deeper meanings of basketball. David Shields follows the Seattle Sonics during the ‘94-’95 season, commenting not only on the dynamics of play but also on issues of race and our need for the other, for transcendence from our lives through sports fandom.

So compelling is Shield’s case for an intellectual take on basketball that I, a nonsportsfan type, began watching basketball games after reading this book. If you’re up for delving into the greater meanings of fandom and the catharsis of sports, this is a great book to read. If you’re a fan looking for basketball stats and play by play description look elsewhere. This is more than just a book about sports–it’s a book about what sports mean to us.

4 Stars This book is honest
This book is courageous in attempting to take an honest look at something we’re all tired of talking about, but is still a very real problem facing America: the salience of racism.

What better arena to examine the still lingering remnants of racism in this great country of ours then sports — and more specifically, the NBA.

In a league dominated by African American players, where the term “minority” is given a new meaning, Shields begins this book by observing and analyzing the very real, but often ignored racial dynamic.

Contrary to popular belief, and as this book shows, racism is a problem in this country — one that doesn’t end just because one steps off the street and onto a basketball court.

BUT THIS BOOK ISN”T ABOUT RACISM, per se, but the power of human perspective.

Shields has a fascination with observing African American players, but documents his very real opinions and emotions as it relates to what he observes.

The twist is he goes back-and-forth analyzing how his opinions, judgments and thoughts are all shaped, in part, by who he is as a middle aged white man (not meant to sound negative, just truthful).

Truth is everybody, black, white or whatever, uses such lenses when viewing society. Sociology supports this theory (but that’s another subject).

Shields uses his book to function as somewhat of a microcosm for how whites view blacks in this country by exploring how sport — specifically here the popularity and racial makeup of the NBA — exploits, exposes and reveals every racial attitude, myth and misconception some whites have about blacks.

Black Planet is a magnifying glass that flips the script on the mainstream while showing the power of difference and misunderstanding.

I, as an African American sports writer, also find this book humorous just to see the number of white-bread reporters whose attempts to sound more urban, hip & cool when dealing with black athletes are, unbeknowngst to the reporters, igorant, condescending and insulting.

This alone is a bold-faced reflection that books are still judged by their covers.

The astounding part of the issue Black Planet addresses is the fact that White America can pretty much live in ignorance — involuntarily and unknowingly — to the great divide in how African Americans experience this country.

But one of the few avenues in which White America is forced to care and at least deal with the difference in experience is sport — and especially the NBA.

Shields’ is honest and I’d say accurate in his assessment of how race does in fact play a critical part in how sports reporters interact with and interpret the actions of black athletes — something to think about the next time we pick up our papers and read a story about Allen Iverson, Randy Moss (or for that matter, Kobe Bryant).

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NBA Dynasty Series Boston Celtics The Complete History

NBA Dynasty Series Boston Celtics The Complete History

Over the past 50 years the Celtics have won an unprecedented 16 World Championships including 8 in a row from 1959-1966, making them the the most storied franchise in NBA history. This 5-disc special edition collector’s set features the complete Boston Celtics history including year-end compilation programs highlighting the Championship seasons. Plus for the first time ever on DVD, the team’s most memorable games in franchise history.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars The way basketball should be played.
Brillant dvd pack with all the best plays of Celtic basketball and the added bonus of Bird vs Magic.This is the way basketball should be played -entertaining TEAM basketball.Great viewing for all Celtic & basketball fans.

4 Stars HAVLICEK STOLE THE BALL !!
The other reviewers have said it all. There’s not much to add.

I’d emphasize each disc, of the five in the set, has video on BOTH sides … so we are talking about LOTS of highlights and full-length copies of games. It takes a whole “rainy day” to watch it.

DISC ONE

A-

INTRO

VIDEO: “THE CELTICS DYNASTY”

B-

VIDEO: BOSTON CELTICS: “A TRADITION OF GREATNESS”

THE CELTS ARE BACK: 1974 NBA PLAY-OFFS

THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED: 1976 NBA PLAY-OFFS

RIVALRY RENEWED: 1984 NBA PLAY-OFFS

DISC TWO

A-

DYNASTY RENEWED: 1981 NBA PLAY-OFFS

1983-84 NBA SEASON: “PRIDE AND PASSION”

B-

SWEET SIXTEEN: 1986 NBA PLAY-OFFS

1986-87 NBA SEASON: “HOME OF THE BRAVE”

VIDEO: “SEARCHING FOR NUMBER 17″

DISC THREE

A-

1969 NBA FINALS: CELTICS V. LAKERS (GAME 7)

[4TH QUARTER/POST-GAME ONLY]

1976 NBA FINALS: CELTICS V. PHOENIX SUNS (GAME 5)

B-

1981 NBA EAST CONF FINALS: CELTICS V. SIXERS (GAME 7)

DISC FOUR

A-

1984 NBA FINALS: CELTICS V. LAKERS (GAME 4)

B-

1984 NBA FINALS: CELTICS V. LAKERS (GAME 7)

DISC FIVE

A-

1986 NBA FINALS: CELTICS V. ROCKETS (GAME 4)

B-

1987 NBA EAST CONF FINALS: CELTICS V. PISTONS (GAME 5)

My favorite segment of the entire series had to have been Game #7, as won by the Celts over the Lakers, in 1969, as Bill Russell and Sam Jones were retiring. You get 4th Quater and post-game only.

I still liked it because, as a grade-schooler at the time, I was not allowed to stay up late enough, on a Monday night, to watch that game live from Los Angeles. In those days, the networks lacked the “juice,” so as to get weekday games from out west into “prime time.”

I think that game may have tipped off at 10:30 p.m. EST — way too late for me, then !! So I love seeing it now.

Pass the word … the Celts are back !!

5 Stars Great DVD Set For Celtics Fans
This five-disc set chronicles the history of the Boston Celtics, the National Basketball Association’s most successful franchise.

The first two discs contain miscellaneous features highlighting the complete history of the team, from the early days of the NBA to today. There is footage covering the Russell-led teams of the Fifties and Sixties, and coverage of the mid-1970s title teams. Also included are the championship videos describing the titles that the team won in the 1980s.

The last three discs contain portions of games or complete games as they were originally broadcast from the 1969, 1976, 1981, 1984, and 1986 title drives, as well as Game 5 of the 1987 Eastern Conference Finals when Larry Bird stole the Isiah Thomas pass to preserve what ultimately led to another trip to the NBA Finals.

This set contains some of the greatest basketball ever played. Owners of this set will be able to see, in the old Celtic clubs and the squads that they faced in these games, some of the greatest teams in NBA history. And what Celtics fan wouldn’t love to have Game 7 of the 1984 NBA Finals in all its glory on DVD?

5 Stars A must for celtic fans
This collection is a must for celtic fans. Unfortunately 5 DVDs can not cover the entire history of a team that has won 16 NBA titles. The games presented in their entirety are mostly from the 80s (Bird, Parish, McHale era) with the addition of the triple overtime classic of 1976 against the Suns. One could argue that one game against the Milwalky Bucks during the 79s could have made it to the collection. It is also a pity that no whole game from the Russell era made it to the set in it’ s entirety, but probably the 60’s footage wasn’ t that good to be included in the DVD, and the documentaries included make up for that omission.

On the technical side, there are very few technical hitches and the games are presented in their original broadcast (not as shown in the NBA’s greatest games show, as for example in the Lakers box set)

4 Stars buy it at wal mart for 25$
i have really enjoyed it so far, esp complete epic playoff games that arent edited…where have all the good times gone?

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