Ain't No Tomorrow : Kobe, Shaq, and the Making of a Lakers Dynasty

by Elizabeth Kaye

An all-access look at the Lakers' championship season . . "Elizabeth Kaye is a wonderful writer--as a reporter she's like a bulldog--she grabs onto you and doesn't let go until she figures out everything about you. Throughout Ain't No Tomorrow , she discovers and explains the game of basketball in a way that no one ever has. She takes the reader through the mental preparation, coaching strategies, and personal struggles of players--who are part Rocky and part Rambo. If you like to read, you'll love Ain't No Tomorrow ."
--Sylvester Stallone . . At the start of the 2000 NBA playoffs, the famously underachieving Los Angeles Lakers found themselves the focus of national attention. The team that had limped along since the golden era of Magic Johnson was now endowed with basketball's two most gifted and dominant players, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, and was led by none other than Phil Jackson, the most fabled coach in the NBA. By the time the Lakers beat Indiana in game six of the championship series, they showed themselves unstoppable, a team above and apart and blessed with a glamour and facility that made them the obvious franchise to lead pro basketball into the new millennium. . . Then everything began to fall apart. Jackson had warned his team that the truly challenging season is the one after an initial big win, and his words were quickly becoming reality as the great team slipped into profound disarray at the start of the new season. Ain't No Tomorrow is an intimate look at the astonishing eight-month roller-coaster ride that became the Lakers' 2000�-2001 a time of tumult and drama when impulses toward brotherhood and unity dissolved into petty, ugly battles and bruised egos; when men who previously rose to a great challenge grew greedy and slack. . . Combining brilliant reporting and original perspective, Elizabeth Kaye��--a journalist granted special access to Jackson, Shaq, Kobe, and other major players--��takes you into the minds and hearts of the team members. She chronicles the unique story of a team that ultimately righted itself, united, and found its way to a second championship title--��but only after an extraordinary season in which exciting sports drama becomes human drama at its most compelling and complex. .

Genres: Sports, Basketball

256 pages, Hardcover

First published March 25, 2002

Reviews

[Fareedo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ain't No Tomorrow is a book about the struggles and successes of the Championship Lakers. This book dives into the entire 2000-2001 season, about Kobe and Shaq, and the rest of the team. As they face their problems, but in the end, it comes out as the ultimate victory. This book is about a true story but reads like a novel. Definitely one of my more unique reads. I would recommend this book to a basketball or NBA fan. Give this read a 'pretty good' rating.

[Casey Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Project
“Ain’t No Tomorrow” was really good because it talks about how the sport of basketball made the Los Angeles Lakers became a great basketball team. Elizabeth kaye also talks about how Kobe Bryant had the greatest Duo with Shaquille O’Neal and making the Lakers better than ever.
In the beginning of Ain’t No Tomorrow, Elizabeth kaye talks about the Los Angeles Lakers breaking out of their huddle and taking the floor of the staple center. In the next minutes, they defeated the Indiana Pacers and seize the NBA championship. As the clock ran, they fired off the barrage of slam dunks and layups. Then the buzzer sounded the crowd roared and Kobe Bryant took a running leap into Shaquille O'Neal's arms cheering as the Lakers have won yet another NBA championship.
When the Lakers were just coming to be a team they had tons of legends, like Jerry West. He’s even the NBA’s logo. More legends were Wilt Chamberlain who has the record for most scored points in NBA history. When the Laker were just the Lakers they won all the time but got stopped a lot of times too. But then here comes this guy named Magic Johnson. His full name is Earvin Johnson jr, but they only call him Magic because of his flashy passing.
When Magic came in the league to the Lakers, he was everywhere. People loved him. They loved what he did. The fans love that he just touched the ball. Magic made his debut in the NBA in 1980 at starting Point Guard. His first game he came in for the injured Kareem-Abdul-Jabbar. Another Laker legends that made so much success coming off the bench and making the laker win, win, and win, was Kobe Bryant.
Kobe Bryant was drafted by the charlotte hornets and was immediately traded to the Los Angeles Lakers for this player Vlade Divac who later joined the Lakers. Kobe started his journey as a starting point guard with his teammates Shaq, Derek Fisher, Robert Horry and others in the year that kobe got drafted they went 56-26 and finished 2nd in the Pacific division. Kobe would spend the next 20 years with the Lakers and finish his career in 2016. Two years later, both his number 8 and number 24 jersey would be retired and that night it would be known as Kobe night. The character development was good because Elizabeth Kaye the author gave really good description of the player in the book and what happened to them when they made it to the league and how there success made there team a lot better than it used to be. All the fans remember who they are because they made something great happen to there team and made them better teammates than ever.
In conclusion, the Lakers were going to be known has the 2nd greatest basketball team in history winning 16 national titles 1 behind the Boston Celtics. The Lakers aren’t just a team; they would become much more than that going down with a bunch of legends, and many more to come in the future. The Lakers Franchise would become better than ever with Kobe, Shaq, Kareem, Magic, Wilt and a bunch of more legends to come along the way.

[Tom Gase · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well-researched and written book on the 2000-2001 Los Angeles Lakers. About a month ago I read a book on the 1999-2000 squad, the first of Shaq and Kobe's titles, so naturally I wanted to read a book on their repeat year soon after. This was the year where Shaq was coming off winning an MVP, but instead of Kobe wanting to play second fiddle, he practiced all year and was planning on becoming not only the best player on the team, but one of the best ever. However, that sort of play didn't always fit into how the team won games and there was a power struggle during the regular season between Shaq and Kobe. But by the end of the season they realized they needed each other. When they were BOTH playing their A games this team was unstoppable with a nice supporting cast of Robert Horry, Rick Fox, Ron Harper, Horace Grant, Derek Fisher and Brian Shaw among others. Remember J.R. Rider?? Yep, he was on this team, but didn't make the playoff roster. This was the Laker squad that had its best postseason run ever, going 15-1. I wish this book had a little more on the postseason games, especially the series against the Kings and Spurs and Blazers, but I guess it had just enough on the 2001 finals and more than enough about the regular season. Laker fans will love. NBA fans? Eh, probably split. A quick read at around 230 pages. I enjoyed, a nice nostalgic read.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly a great book. Extremely well reported. It felt like I was in the locker room, on the bench and on the team plane with the 2000-01 Lakers. Thoughtful examinations of Shaq, Kobe and Phil, and the culture of the early 2000s NBA as a whole.

But the book is uneven. The first 200 pages are on the slog of the regular season and how broken the Lakers were; then it was only 20 pages on the playoffs, when the team had the most dominant run in NBA history. Like, what changed? Could’ve used more on that.

[Zac P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the novel “Ain’t No Tomorrow” by Elizabeth Kaye the whole story is based on the Lakers before and after winning there NBA championship. This novel talks all about all of the players and coaches on the Lakers during their time period of building there dynasty to win the championship and then there effort and hard work after their championship win to get another one. The main message in this book I believe is to always put in a hundred and ten percent effort to reach your goal and to give inspiration to all of the people who read this book. The setting of this book is in the Los Angeles Lakers basketball court mostly and at all of the places where the players went to relax and party.
One character in this book that I felt very strongly about, in a positive way was Kobe Bryant. Kobe’s role in this story was really to show all young athletes what he went through to get to where he ended up today. Kobe shows all athletes that in order to reach your goal you need to make sacrifices to your social life to reach your goal as an athlete. Kobe spent countless hours in season and in the offseason working out in the weight room to improve his strength, working out in the gym to improve his on the court moves, and working on his social acts so when he talked to media he wouldn’t make a fool out of himself to the world. Kobe also showed athletes that you don’t have to be a vocal and conceited guy to be a professional athlete because he himself was a very humble man. I connected with this character very much throughout the story because we were both extremely athletic and skilled, we both put in time in and out of season to get better at what we do, we are both humble men when it comes to our sports that we play, and we both always put in a hundred and ten percent effort during games and during practices to get better and help out our teams as much as we can. This character actually did evolve throughout the story from when he was drafted straight out of high school he got much better than he used to be by the end of the story because of all of the hard work and dedication that he puts into basketball.
Honestly I do believe that this is a very good book, but this book and how it took place was just awful to do this assignment on. In this book the author did an amazing job of getting resources from people or the papers of what was going on with the Lakers at this whole time that the Lakers were forming there dynasty. I didn’t see anything wrong with how the author wrote this book at all and I actually think that she did an amazing job writing the book and finding a way to get all of the information that she got to write this book. I would definitely recommend this book to other people but specifically young athletes that are looking for an inspiration of some sort, or just any people that like to learn about sports history or that just like the Lakers. This is a very good book for any type of athlete to read and it really inspired me and should inspire other athletes who read this book as well.

[Andrew Burin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A decent book. The main issue is that it basically reads like more of a glorified research paper than an insider look at one of the NBA's most successful and entertaining teams. There were literally dozens of story lines on this championship squad, and the book doesn't really give us any new insights. Some of this is understandable considering the author's lack of basketball knowledge, but let me put it this way: if a true basketball fan with decent literary ability had been given access to this team, a much better book would have been written. I don't know if I read one direct quote garnered from the players by the author, and it seems that this is basically a compilation of newspaper articles and second-hand observations. Another small issue I had was with the description of Phil Jackson's paragraphs. For no (apparent) reason other than their Christianity, they are described as rabid haters of everything fun. Though this is a book on basketball the author's liberal bias does manifest itself at least one. Not really worth a read unless you are a huge Lakers fan just looking to take a nostalgia trip.

[Ignas Bernotas · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was okay nothing amazing or memorable. The reason this book was not very good I believe was because it is written poorly and does not sustain my attention when I was reading it. The book was primarily about Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O Neal as well as the lakers journey through their three NBA championships. I would not recommend this book and I believe it focused too much on facts and did not go deep enough into the players themselves or the team which is what I was hoping the book was going to go into and it did not therefore this is just a below average book.

[Kaleb Wuenschel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book isn't like most books. This book is about Kobe Bryant and the Lakers and they make it to 4 finals and win 3 of them. Kobe gets injury and injury as the years go in his career. He retired in 2016 with 5 final trophies and 3 MVP trophies. Kobe Bryant was one of the most hard working NBA players to ever play.

[Mick Maye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Covers the Lakers 2001 championship with Shaq and Kobe. Partly covers Kobe emergence into believing he was the main player in the team and the clashes with Shaq that that caused. Not overly informative but covers enough.