Skip to main content

Three Ring Circus by Jeff Pearlman

A good documentary of the dysfunctions that can strike any organization with star employees, and as such this book is both entertaining sports history and useful business history. 

All work teams have jealousies and dramas, but this team had prima donnas all the way down, starting with two all-time MVP prima donnas: Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, whose mutual antagonism broke apart what could have been one of the most dominant teams in sports history.

Notes: 
* "You bring glory to this redneck, one-horse town, and this is what they think of you? Get out as soon as you can. Fuck these people." Charles Barkley to Shaquille O'Neal on his treatment by the Orlando, FL community.  

* "Look at all these people laughing at you. One day we're going to get them back." Shaq to Kobe after Kobe as a rookie launched four straight air balls at the end of a critical playoff game loss, ending the Lakers' season.

* The author wrote this book with more confidence than his prior book Showtime, but the reader is the loser for it. In Three Ring Circus he flings an unfunny witticism at the reader every few pages; see for example this unfortunate dangling modifier: "At the same time the Lakers were trying to make sure Rodman wasn't lying dead in a gutter with three hookers and a needle protruding from his left nipple."

* Kobe as a juvenile narcissist per Phil Jackson, uncoachable, has all the answers, will not listen to anyone, etc. At the same time, he's an unbelievably hard worker, training and working on his game constantly. 

* Fascinating and disturbing to see Kobe's astoundingly naive behavior in front of the Colorado police during sexual assault allegations. Note that the police flat out lied to him without any consequences, but the reverse was not true:


* If you are ever unfortunate enough to find yourself under investigation by law enforcement, the Kobe rape trial gives tremendous advice on what not to do and say. 

* Hard not to have extra respect for (or fear of?) Vanessa Williams after reading this, she was trying to track down her then-husband, Laker forward Rick Fox: 


* And then, depressingly, after three consecutive NBA championships, this entire superteam just disintegrated, with Kobe "I'm tired of being a sidekick" Bryant in conflict with nearly all his teammates, with Shaq leaving the team unable to work with Kobe, with coach Phil Jackson getting fired and then writing a tell-all book right after... the whole thing became a wrecked monument to Kobe's self-absorption.

* Finally, note this book had already been written (and was scheduled for publication) shortly before Kobe Bryant's death. This book is about the young, narcissistic, immature, foolish, arrogant and uncoachable Kobe Bryant, not the statesman-like Kobe Bryant he later grew into. 

To Read: 
Del Harris: On Point, also Winning Defense
Jerry West: West By West
Vanessa Williams: You Have No Idea
Phil Jackson: The Last Season, also Sacred Hoops
Kent Babb: Not a Game: The Incredible Rise and Unthinkable Fall of Allen Iverson
See also: Shaq's surprisingly good freestyle about Kobe Bryant 

More Posts

The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain by John H. Gleason

In-depth (and surprisingly interesting!) analysis of the shifting public and government opinion on Russia during late 18th and early/mid 19th century England, plus a useful (and telling) exploration of the various propaganda and media narratives used to drive these opinions. I've written before on this site, many times, that history rhymes, it doesn't repeat exactly, so you have to know your history--and by this I mean know your actual history, not your country's preferred propaganda narrative of history--in order to see that rhyme to make useful, accurate predictions. It is fascinating to see England in the 1800s applying various forms of the same propagandized and manufactured Russophobia that we see in the United States today. England went from a literal  alliance with Russia (against Napoleonic France) to a state of paranoid loathing of Russia in a matter of decades; the USA likewise went from " aren't they our friends now? " after the Soviet collapse to...
Read more

The Kybalion: Hermetic Philosophy by "Three Initiates" [William Walker Atkinson]

The best way to think about this unusual book from 1908 is to group it with other New Thought works from the same era (see the nearly incomprehensible Your Invisible Power by Genevieve Behrend  for example), and then draw a lineage directly down through various foundational success literature works of the early/mid-20th century (see Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich , or his lesser-known but much more impactful book Outwitting the Devil ).  [A quick  affiliate link to readers to the book here . You can support my work here by buying all your Amazon products via any affiliate link from this site, or my sister site  Casual Kitchen . Thank you!] We can also see the ancestry here of "positive thinking" books by Norman Vincent Peale as well as  Emile Coué's surprisingly useful works on autosuggestion , and we can continue this lineage through Maxwell Maltz's famous Psycho-Cybernetics right down to the 1980s-era birth of NLP literature, the wor...
Read more

Kroll on Futures Trading Strategy by Stanley Kroll

A simple and direct book, written in plain language, but the ideas here are the result of years of thought, practice and genuine mastery.  In fact, to a novice (or even intermediate) investor, some of author Stanley Kroll's trading advice may appear obvious, even tautological. I recommend instead to read them as koans: ruminate and chew them over, think of analogous situations you've been in yourself, and then think of ways to apply the idea. See for example, when the author discusses how long he holds a "long-term" position, he says, "You hold a position for as long as the market continues going your way." A novice investor would see this as inane; the advanced investor sees it for the wisdom it is, and knows he needs the reminder. [A quick  affiliate link to readers to the book here . You can support my work here by buying all your Amazon products via any affiliate link from this site, or my sister site  Casual Kitchen . Thank you!] The author counsels rea...
Read more