Return of the Gold: The Journey of Jerry Colangelo and the Redeem Team

by Dan Bickley

Six years after Michael Jordan won his last NBA championship, American basketball hit rock bottom.  The perception of NBA players reached an all-time low.  Team USA lost three times, disgracing the nation at the 2004 Olympics.   With great historical sweep, bringing in the voices of all-time greats like Jordan, Bill Russell, Julius Erving and Jerry West, the book will show how American basketball bottomed out.  It will chart the path of Jerry Colangelo, a great sportsman who set out to change the stained image of USA Basketball.  And with great insight and fresh detail, it will show how two of the best players in history – Kobe Bryant and LeBron James – spun their own tails of redemption in while winning gold medals.

Genres: Sports, Basketball

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Mushfique Mallick · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's closer to a 3.5 rating I guess. Overall it's a good read and delves into the personal journey of most of the main characters. But it's a little meandering, pulling you into different time zones at the turn of each chapter, while also not keeping a consistent and well constructed narrative. I'm not sure how much sense it makes to tell the story from Jerry Colangelo's lens either. The benchmark for the redeem team is the dream team and the same goes for the book as well, and in that respect it doesn't quite inspire the same feeling.

[Luis Perez · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best thing about this book is the inside look and interesting anecdotes about how USA basketball was forced to take a hard look at its approach and attitude to regain the glory to which it had become accustomed. But the writing is average, editing is sloppy and factual mistakes (such as saying Kobe Bryant dropped 81 points on the Nuggets [it was the Raptors!]) are inexcusable. The writer's love affair with LeBron James, as other reviews have noted, is misplaced and overbearing. Without Kobe, there would have been no gold for "King" James or anyone else. Still, I'm glad I read it.