Betaball: how Silicon Valley and science built one of the greatest basketball teams in history

Much the way David Kaplan chronicled the creation of the 2016 champion Chicago Cubs in The Plan (2017), so free-lance sportswriter Malinowski has laid out the construction, piece by piece, of the powerhouse Golden State Warriors, who won NBA titles in 2015 and 2017, and in the 2016 regular season won a record-breaking 79 games. And just as the Ricketts family did when they purchased the Cubs in 2009, so majority owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber took extraordinary patience in understanding the culture they needed to build when they purchased the Warriors in 2010, the puzzle pieces they had inherited, the pieces they needed to acquire, and how they had to make those acquisitions without taking any steps back all against a firestorm of criticism from their frustrated fan base and from local and national media. Malinowski also does a good job of recounting the team's on-court play over the years, leading up to, and including, their banner 2015 and 2016 seasons, with an epilogue on their 2017 finals win. An insightful portrait of, yes, one of the all-time great NBA teams.--Moores, Alan Copyright 2017 Booklist

The NBA champion Golden State Warriors are considered a budding dynasty as well as a well-run business, and here journalist Malinowski, who covers the team for Bleacher Report, adroitly details the franchise's long and bumpy road to success. The team's drafting of point guard Stephen Curry certainly helped, as did the business plan of co-owners Peter Guber, a Hollywood producer, and Joe Lacob, a former Silicon Valley venture capitalist. According to Lacob, the Warriors are not a basketball team but "much more than that. We're a sports, media, and technology entity." Lacob formed a collaborative framework for the Warriors that relied on both traditional basketball men such as team president Rick Welts and unconventional hires such as general manager Bob Myers (a former agent) and head coach Steve Kerr (a player and general manager who had never coached). The team employed science as a tool-including to refine players' sleep patterns-and embraced fan interaction: Guber set up an email address so that fans can ask questions of coaches and players. Malinowski describes the on-court action with humorous flair while also capturing the sophistication required to properly run a professional sports team. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Since 2010, when an ownership group led by venture-capitalist Joe Lacob and film producer Peter Guber, purchased the NBA's Golden State Warriors, the team has transformed from the laughingstock of the league to a championship-winning team. Sportswriter Malinowski assiduously documents their sudden rise by examining the owners' goal of making the Warriors function less like a sports team and more like a Silicon Valley tech company, including revamping the facilities, hiring science-minded staff, and relentlessly datamining players and opponents. These changes also included optimizing travel patterns so that players were not exposed to late-night flights. Within five years, the team reached the NBA Finals by eschewing norms and emboldening a diminutive point guard, Steph Curry, to become skilled at three-point shots. Though there is sometimes bias that the Warriors can almost do no wrong, Malinowski does question some personnel and coaching decisions. He also does a wonderful job of describing a sports franchise working on the precipice of technology to create a juggernaut. VERDICT While readers interested in the triumph of the 2017 season might be disappointed (the book was finalized before the end of this series), basketball fans everywhere will come to appreciate this version of Michael Lewis's classic Moneyball. A timely and necessary purchase for libraries where there is NBA fever.-Keith Klang, Port Washington P.L., NY © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

An exploration of how to rebuild a professional basketball team.For those still marveling at how the once-inconsequential Golden State Warriors won two out of the last three NBA championships, look no further than Bay Area basketball reporter Malinowski's lively book, which documents the many-moving-parts project of rebuilding the Warriors, very much as Michael Lewis' Moneyball did so for another hapless Oakland squad, the A's. When new owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber, bringing venture capital and Hollywood money, came onto the scene at the turn of the decade, they initiated massive changes, firing a hapless front office with a knack for losing talented players while overpaying mediocre ones and bringing in basketball legend Jerry West to work with the players. What no one had appreciated, writes the author, was that they had one key ingredient to success and didn't really realize itnamely, Wardell Stephen Curry II, who was drafted by the team in 2009 and "was seen as a scrawny college star who performed feats that couldn't be replicated in the pro game." Wedding Curry's skills to solid coaching provided by West, Steve Kerr, and a host of lieutenants, the Warriors began to show their stuff. At the same time, those strategists began to pull together other elements of success, including "an improved and retooled defense" and, yes, lots of number-crunching that gave them uncanny insight into who ought to be on the court at any given moment: "With [Kevin] Durant sitting, Golden State shot 13 percent better from the floor and a whopping 29 percent better from three," Malinowski writes, good reason for Kerr to be constantly mindful of moving his roster in and out of the game depending on who they were up against. Obviously, it worked. Instructive reading for every coach and every player in every sportand fun, too. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Much the way David Kaplan chronicled the creation of the 2016 champion Chicago Cubs in The Plan (2017), so free-lance sportswriter Malinowski has laid out the construction, piece by piece, of the powerhouse Golden State Warriors, who won NBA titles in 2015 and 2017, and in the 2016 regular season won a record-breaking 79 games. And just as the Ricketts family did when they purchased the Cubs in 2009, so majority owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber took extraordinary patience in understanding the culture they needed to build when they purchased the Warriors in 2010, the puzzle pieces they had inherited, the pieces they needed to acquire, and how they had to make those acquisitions without taking any steps back—all against a firestorm of criticism from their frustrated fan base and from local and national media. Malinowski also does a good job of recounting the team's on-court play over the years, leading up to, and including, their banner 2015 and 2016 seasons, with an epilogue on their 2017 finals win. An insightful portrait of, yes, one of the all-time great NBA teams. Copyright 2017 Booklist Reviews.

Since 2010, when an ownership group led by venture-capitalist Joe Lacob and film producer Peter Guber, purchased the NBA's Golden State Warriors, the team has transformed from the laughingstock of the league to a championship-winning team. Sportswriter Malinowski assiduously documents their sudden rise by examining the owners' goal of making the Warriors function less like a sports team and more like a Silicon Valley tech company, including revamping the facilities, hiring science-minded staff, and relentlessly datamining players and opponents. These changes also included optimizing travel patterns so that players were not exposed to late-night flights. Within five years, the team reached the NBA Finals by eschewing norms and emboldening a diminutive point guard, Steph Curry, to become skilled at three-point shots. Though there is sometimes bias that the Warriors can almost do no wrong, Malinowski does question some personnel and coaching decisions. He also does a wonderful job of describing a sports franchise working on the precipice of technology to create a juggernaut. VERDICT While readers interested in the triumph of the 2017 season might be disappointed (the book was finalized before the end of this series), basketball fans everywhere will come to appreciate this version of Michael Lewis's classic Moneyball. A timely and necessary purchase for libraries where there is NBA fever.—Keith Klang, Port Washington P.L., NY

The NBA champion Golden State Warriors are considered a budding dynasty as well as a well-run business, and here journalist Malinowski, who covers the team for Bleacher Report, adroitly details the franchise's long and bumpy road to success. The team's drafting of point guard Stephen Curry certainly helped, as did the business plan of co-owners Peter Guber, a Hollywood producer, and Joe Lacob, a former Silicon Valley venture capitalist. According to Lacob, the Warriors are not a basketball team but "much more than that. We're a sports, media, and technology entity." Lacob formed a collaborative framework for the Warriors that relied on both traditional basketball men such as team president Rick Welts and unconventional hires such as general manager Bob Myers (a former agent) and head coach Steve Kerr (a player and general manager who had never coached). The team employed science as a tool—including to refine players' sleep patterns—and embraced fan interaction: Guber set up an email address so that fans can ask questions of coaches and players. Malinowski describes the on-court action with humorous flair while also capturing the sophistication required to properly run a professional sports team. (Oct.)