The Franchise: Lebron James and the Remaking of the Cleveland Cavaliers

Front Cover
Gray, Publishers, 2015 M01 30 - 192 pages

An in-depth look at how a team and a city were rebuilt around LeBron James ...

When the Cleveland Cavaliers drew the top pick in the 2003 NBA draft, the entire city buzzed with excitement. How often does a superstar come along? Especially for Cleveland, a midmarket Rust Belt city without a sports championship in forty years. Especially for the Cavaliers, a long-struggling team that had never reached the NBA finals.

Soon, everyone had something riding on LeBron: a billionaire team owner wanting a return on his investment ... teammates eager for a championship ring ... the league looking for the next Michael Jordan to promote ... the shoe company with its record-breaking endorsement deal ... even popcorn vendors in the stands of Quicken Loans Arena and servers waiting tables at downtown restaurants.

Award-winning sports journalists Terry Pluto and Brian Windhorst tell the converging stories of a struggling franchise and a hometown teenage phenom. This book will fascinate any basketball fan who wants the inside story of how LeBron James became the young superstar shouldering the weight of an entire NBA franchise.

Other editions - View all

The Franchise: LeBron James and the Remaking of the Cleveland Cavaliers
Terry Pluto,Brian Windhorst
Limited preview - 2007
The Franchise: Lebron James and the Remaking of the Cleveland Cavaliers
Terry Pluto,Brian Windhorst
No preview available - 2007

About the author (2015)

Terry Pluto is a sports columnist for The Plain Dealer. He has twice been honored by the Associated Press Sports Editors as the nation's top sports columnist for medium-sized newspapers. He is a ten-time winner of the Ohio Sports Writer of the Year award and has received more than 50 state and local writing awards. In 2005 he was inducted into the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame. He is the author of more than 30 books, including The Curse of Rocky Colavito (selected by the New York Times as one of the five notable sports books of 1989), and Loose Balls, which was ranked number 13 on Sports Illustrated's list of the top 100 sports books of all time. He was called "Perhaps the best American writer of sports books," by the Chicago Tribune in 1997. Brian Windhorst covers the NBA for ESPN.com. His writing has been honored by the Professional Basketball Writers Association and the Associated Press. He has also written for The Plain Dealer and The Beacon Journal. He earned a degree in journalism from Kent State University in 2000. He lives in Brook Park, Ohio, and Jupiter, Florida.

Bibliographic information

TitleThe Franchise: Lebron James and the Remaking of the Cleveland Cavaliers
AuthorsTerry Pluto, Brian Windhorst
Editionillustrated
PublisherGray, Publishers, 2015
ISBN1938441613, 9781938441615
Length192 pages
  
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