Boston Celtics Book Release: Top of the World by Peter May

October 27, 2008 – Dr. Anklesnap

There have been very few magical seasons like the one last year of the revamped Boston Celtics and ‘The Big Three’. We just wanted to let you all know about a book being released tomorrow to coincide with the start of the new NBA season. I know i’m personally going to read this one the first chance I get. So go pick up yours and let me know what you think about it. We can swap reviews!!

Here are some words we received from the publisher about the book:

TOP OF THE WORLD
The Inside Story of the BOSTON CELTICS’ Amazing One-Year Turnaround to Become NBA Champions

The Boston Celtics won just 24 games in the 2006-2007 season. National television abandoned the team wholesale: all of their originally scheduled games on ESPN were dropped, and they went the entire year without a network appearance. The season was, by all accounts, an unmitigated disaster.

Then came the single greatest turnaround in NBA history. Unbelievably, in the very next season, the Celtics won their first NBA championship in over twenty years and hung a seventeenth banner from the rafters. How did they do it?

On October 28th, as the Celtics open their new season, Da Capo Press will publish sportswriter Peter May’s TOP OF THE WORLD, the only book to chronicle the Celtics’ championship season.

Drawing on interviews with coach Doc Rivers and general manager Danny Ainge, May reveals the strategy behind constructing a championship team from scratch. Ainge campaigned to the ownership to go after an unconventional star: Ray Allen, a 32-year old player recovering from
double ankle surgery. After Kevin Garnett announced that he would not go to the Celtics, what changed his mind? May reveals several factors-the addition of Allen to the team, advice from Detroit’s
Chauncey Billups, and a meeting with Ainge in which he mapped out his plan for the Celtics among them. And not only did the Celtics securethose two All Stars in pursuit of the trophy, they revamped the entire team, adding a total of eight new players. Meanwhile, the original of the “Big Three,” Paul Pierce, had been promised “help” by the Celtics ownership and was kept up to speed on every move.

May talked to all of the key players, and brings the season to life in these pages-the heart-stopping suspense, the games in the balance, and, most importantly, the behind-the-scenes stories never reported on before.

NBA enthusiasts will be fascinated by the inner-workings of building the team, and Celtics fans will revel in the insider stories, reliving every minute of the glorious season that had KG screaming into an ESPN sideline microphone “Top of the world, man. Top of the world.”