Love them or hate them, they’re the most successful team in professional hockey … just not on the scoresheet.The Toronto Maple Leafs are an exception to every law of the sporting jungle. They miss the playoffs and the sellouts keep coming. They haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1967, but the earning power of that blue-and-white maple leaf, no matter the chronic woes of the blue-and-white’s power play, never ceases to increase. In this description of failure and prescription for hope,...

From the authors of the national bestseller Leafs AbomiNation, the story behind the success of one of Canada's greatest athletes, NBA all-star Steve Nash.A small man in a big man's game, a white man in a game dominated by black men, a rare Canadian in a US-based industry, the unlikely rise of Steve Nash, from Victoria high school to Hollywood hardwood, is compelling proof that great things await those who refuse to accept less of themselves. Nearly 2 decades into a Hall of...

Every year since 1968, Leaf fans hope that the new season will be the one that breaks the Stanley Cup drought. Sadly, those hopes are usually dashed mid-season. In the biggest hockey market in North America, with such a huge and loyal fan base, how has the team missed it for so long?It’s the question that every Leafs fan asks (and has been afraid to have answered). Now updated to include both the disastrous 2009–10 season and the 2010–11 season, Al Strachan covers what’s gone wrong...

Sports Illustrated's chief NBA writer Jack McCallum gets in the paint with the Phoenix Suns and takes a season-long look at the NBA's most exciting and controversial team.Jack McCallum—NBA writer for Sports Illustrated—only planned to spend the preseason with the Phoenix Suns as an "assistant coach" and then write a story about his experiences. Instead, he stayed on with the Suns throughout their exciting and controversial 2005 to 2006 season. McC...

In hockey, goalies have always been a contradiction — solitary men in a team game, the last line of defence and the stalwarts expected to save the day after any and every miscue and collapse from his teammates. It’s no wonder that anyone who played the position has had his sanity questioned; yet some of the biggest innovations in the game have come from its puckstoppers. In The Goaltenders’ Union, Greg Oliver and Richard Kamchen talk to more than 60 keepers of yesterday and today, finding ...

A great collection of hockey stories from one of Canada's best writers.Al Strachan (Bestselling author and Toronto Sun sportswriter) is a fixture in the hockey world. His insights are read and enjoyed by fans across North America. Well liked and respected by players and coaches, Al is often given special privileges due to a personal relationship he shares with a hockey insiders that allows him the scoop on a breaking story.Strachan knows hockey and has been writing about it...

Bestselling author and Toronto Sun sportswriter Al Strachan shares more insider stories from his more-than-forty-year career covering pro hockey.Bestselling author and Toronto Sun sportswriter Al Strachan is a permanent fixture in the illustrious world of professional ice hockey. His opinion, backed by an extensive knowledge of the game and his sharp sense of humour, is read and enjoyed by millions of fans internationally. He has established uniqu...

The New York Times bestselling author of Sweetness delivers the first all-encompassing account of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers, one of professional sports’ most-revered—and dominant—dynasties.The Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s personified the flamboyance and excess of the decade over which they reigned. Beginning with the arrival of Earvin “Magic” Johnson as the number-one overall pick of the 1979 draft, the Lake...

A fresh, analytical, and entertaining take on hockey’s tough guysIn professional hockey, enforcers are often as popular with fans as the stars who cash the big paycheques. Called upon to duke it out with a fellow troublemaker, or to shadow (and bruise) an opponent’s top scorer, these men get the crowds out of their seats, the sports-radio shows buzzing, and the TV audience spilling their beers in excitement. Don’t Call Me Goon gives the mayhem-makers their...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The wildly opinionated, thoroughly entertaining, and arguably definitive book on the past, present, and future of the NBA—from the founder of The Ringer and host of The Bill Simmons Podcast“Enough provocative arguments to fuel barstool arguments far into the future.”—The Wall Street JournalIn The Book of Basketball, Bill Simmons opens—and then closes, once and for a...

The definitive biography of a legendary athlete.The Shrug. The Shot. The Flu Game. Michael Jordan is responsible for sublime moments so ingrained in sports history that they have their own names. When most people think of him, they think of his beautiful shots with the game on the line, his body totally in sync with the ball -- hitting nothing but net.But for all his greatness, this scion of a complex family from North Carolina's Coastal Plain has a darker ...

The Hall of Fame story of Grant Fuhr, the first black superstar in the National Hockey League and the last line of defense for the Edmonton Oilers dynasty, told through Fuhr's 10 most important games.Grant Fuhr was the best goalie in the league at a time when hockey was at its most exciting. Wayne Gretzky's Edmonton Oilers were arguably the greatest team in league history, and during the 1980s arguably the most popular team across the United States, even if many ha...