The Hoops Whisperer: Inside the Heads of Basketball's Best Players

No question we are at the apogee of basketball playoffs. Today, almost as much attention gets focused on star coaches as on the star players. After all, who but stars can manage the egos of today’s NBA players?

However, one man, who is not yet a star, but who gets these players to pay attention, is Idan Ravin. He’s been called “The Hoops Whisperer,” because of the positive impact he has been able to have on so many, already great, NBA players.

He’s a trainer but so much and more. His success says a lot about what it takes to succeed in anything today. He shares his story in The Hoops Whisperer: On the Court and Inside the Heads of Basketball's Best Players.

My conversation with Idan Ravin:

And now onto basketball...

The reporting of and understanding of sports always seems to be a balancing act between the importance of teams vs. the primacy of an individual player.

Certainly in basketball, the decision was made a long time ago, that individuals stars would drive the NBA. Certainly many have over the years. But as much as any one player, one coach has stood atop the sport. With eleven championships, Phil Jackson is the master.

But what got him there? Was it luck, timing, sheer basketball smarts, or a unique ability, almost like a film director in his prime, to manage huge egos and diverse personalities and consistently get the best out of them?

Long time sports journalist Peter Richmond, tries in Phil Jackson: Lord of the Rings,
to pin down who Phil Jackson is and what has made him so successful.

My conversation with Peter Richmond:

Clash of cultures on the court.

Yao Ming, the Chinese basketball star said, when he first came to America, that "basketball, in America, is like a culture. For me it is like a foreigner learning a new language. It is difficult to learn foreign languages and it will also be difficult for me to learn the culture for basketball here." Pulitzer Prize winning NY Times foreign correspondent Jim Yardley proves the reverse is also true. That Chinese basketball has its own culture, its own landscape and its own unique language, just as difficult for Americans to learn.

Yardley, in his book Brave Dragons: A Chinese Basketball Team, an American Coach, and Two Cultures Clashing, take us inside the world of Chinese basketball. At a time when Linsanity is overtaking our game Yarldey gives us a whole new prospective on basketball inside a country that's been playing the game for as long as we have.

My conversation with Jim Yardley:

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