Shooting Stars

Review
"When I first saw LeBron James play as a professional, it was his selflessness that dazzled me the most. After reading Shooting Stars, I now understand why. It is a book of five boys coming together to learn the true meaning of teamwork and togetherness, loyalty and love, through highs and lows and thick and thin. It is a book filled with excitement and unforgettable characters. It is a book that will incredibly move and inspire you." --Jay-Z

"Our sense of modern athletes is often limited to what highlight reels and marketing campaigns reveal or obscure. Shooting Stars is the compelling and often poignant story of a remarkable group of young men only one of whom happens to be a future NBA superstar. In the end we care about them all, even as we come away with a truer understanding and appreciation of the circumstances and relationships that forged one of the most significant sports figures of our time." --Bob Costas, HBO and NBC sports commentator

"A heartwarming story of boys who became men, teammates who became brothers, players who became champions, wonderfully told through the maturing eyes of basketball's greatest star." --John Grisham

"In the Olympics, LeBron was a star, a leader, and the ultimate teammate. He helped our team become a family. Reading Shooting Stars taught me how he became that kind of a teammate, developing the selflessness and loyalty that define who he is. What an amazing story." --Mike Krzyzewski, Duke University men's basketball coach, gold-medal-winning coach of the U.S. men's basketball team, 2008 Olympics

"Reading about LeBron James' transition from boyhood to manhood was a thrill for me. Shooting Stars is a remarkable and riveting story, filled with lessons of life we can all learn from." --Warren Buffett

"The clock ticks, the suspense tightens, the scrappy kids from hard-luck Akron leave you hanging on every shot. But the wonder of Shooting Stars is that it's hardly about basketball. Instead it is a nuanced coming-of-age drama about American culture and race, about organized sports as redeemer and exploiter, and about the blessing and curse of celebrity. At this book's heart, though, is an uncommon bond forged in youthful innocence and desire, a friendship at least as meaningful as anything LeBron James will ever add to his trophy case." --Steve Lopez, author of The Soloist

"Told in a voice that is streetwise yet gentle, Shooting Stars shows how inner determination trumps bad breaks and how a winning combination of coaches, mentors, and friends turns lucky breaks into a way of life. If a book can have game, this one does." --Madeleine Blaise, author of In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle



Product Description
From the ultimate team—basketball superstar LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Friday Night Lights and Three Nights in August—a poignant, thrilling tale of the power of teamwork to transform young lives, including James’s own

The Shooting Stars were a bunch of kids—LeBron James and his best friends—from Akron, Ohio, who first met on a youth basketball team of the same name when they were ten and eleven years old. United by their love of the game and their yearning for companionship, they quickly forged a bond that would carry them through thick and thin (a lot of thin) and, at last, to a national championship in their senior year of high school.

They were a motley group who faced challenges all too typical of inner-city America. LeBron grew up without a father and had moved with his mother more than a dozen times by the age of ten. Willie McGee, the quiet one, had left both his parents behind in Chicago to be raised by his older brother in Akron. Dru Joyce was outspoken, and his dad was ever present; he would end up coaching all five of the boys in high school. Sian Cotton, who also played football, was the happy-go-lucky enforcer, while Romeo Travis was unhappy, bitter, even surly, until he finally opened himself up to the bond his teammates offered him.

In the summer after seventh grade, the Shooting Stars tasted glory when they qualified for a national championship tournament in Memphis. But they lost their focus and had to go home early. They promised one another they would stay together and do whatever it took to win a national title.

They had no idea how hard it would be to fulfill that promise. In the years that followed, they would endure jealousy, hostility, exploitation, resentment from the black community (because they went to a “white” high school), and the consequences of their own overconfidence. Not least, they would all have to wrestle with LeBron’s outsize success, which brought too much attention and even a whiff of scandal their way. But together these five boys became men, and together they claimed the prize they had fought for all those years—a national championship.

Shooting Stars is a stirring depiction of the challenges that face America’s youth today and a gorgeous evocation of the transcendent impact of teamwork.


About the Author

LeBron Jamesplays for the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers. His superstardom is hard to overstate: At seventeen he was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated; at nineteen he became the youngest Rookie of the Year in NBA history; at twenty-four he is the third highest paid athlete in the world (including endorsements) after Tiger Woods and David Beckham. He has hosted Saturday Night Live, graced Oprah’s stage, and appeared on the cover of Fortune.

Buzz Bissinger wrote what is widely regarded as the best and bestselling book about high school sports ever—Friday Night Lights. That work has sold almost two million copies to date and spawned a film and TV series. His other books include A Prayer for the City and The New York Times bestseller Three Nights in August. He is a contributing writer to Vanity Fair. END