Sports (HarperCollins)

A celebration of basketball by way of the 100 greatest players to ever grace the court in the history of the NBA, from The Athletic's foremost basketball writers and analysts the game has to offer. Over the course of 100 luminous player profiles, the best sports newsroom on the planet paints vivid portraits of the game's most compelling characters. There's George Mikan, who was cut from his high school team because he wore glasses, then went on to become the fledgling NBA's first transcendent star. Gary Payton, called "The Glove" for his skintight defense, who talked as much trash to his teammates as he did to his opponents on the court. Dennis Rodman, who started playing basketball at age 20, and in a few short years went from working as a janitor at the airport to being one of the strangest superstars that sport has ever known. Allen Iverson, who drew inspiration from hip hop for his inimitable style and swagger, on and off the court. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was so dominant in the paint that they changed the rules, and Steph Curry, who was so dominant outside it that he seemed to expand the very boundaries of the court. “The Basketball 100”, edited by award-winning reporters David Aldridge and John Hollinger, also answers the game's toughest, most important questions: How should we weight championship rings, versus statistical profiles, versus the "eye test"? Were the great players of yesteryear, like Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell, propelled by the inferior athleticism of their competition or would they have been transcendent in any era? And of course, who's the GOAT-MJ or LeBron? Speaking of GOATs, for the book, Hollinger (inventor of the statistical metric PER) has created a new benchmark, GOAT Points. Wonderfully written, authoritative, and full of joy, “The Basketball 100” is a fitting tribute to the greatest sport in the world.

In this must-have follow-up to the bestselling The Baseball 100, the sports media powerhouse The Athletic now turns to the definitive ranking of the greatest football players of all time. It is a question that has bedeviled football fans for generations: Who's the best? Of the more than 25,000 men who have suited up during the NFL's century of existence, which ones stood head and shoulders above all others? At The Athletic, this question would become a labor of love for dozens of the best football writers on the planet, including Mike Sando and Dan Pompei. Over the course of 100 essays, spanning more than 600 pages, these writers reveal their findings-and uncover the history of the NFL in the process. In the early days of the NFL, the game bore little resemblance to the product we see today. Points were scarce, the forward pass was an exotic strategic curiosity, and most players played all 60 minutes-both sides of the ball. It was on the shoulders of the many greats who starred in the League over the last century that the game of football blossomed. Each profile in The Football 100 uses the vivid narrative storytelling for which The Athletic is known to bring to life extraordinary athletic talents, tactical geniuses who changed the way the game is played, and legendary, outsized personalities. Based on many hundreds of interviews with players, coaches, broadcasters, and others, this is an intimate look at the greatest players to ever don cleats and pads, as well as a view from the trenches of the harsh realities of a brutal game. 100 photographs throughout the text offer testament to both the glory and the physical toll of football. From #100 (Fran Tarkenton) to #1 (Tom Brady), from the Patriots in the east to the 49ers in the west, with names like Night Train (Lane, #51), Iron Mike (Webster, #58), Bulldog (Turner, #85), and Crazylegs (Hirsch, #93), The Football 100 is a joyful, deeply entertaining, maximalist ode to "America's game."