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 Stress of Life by Hans Selye

Gives a very useful set of lenses for how to think about stress in all its forms and manifestations. The bulk of the book deals with stress in medical biology and human physiology, but there are applications beyond our bodies, to our lives, communities, even among civilizations. A very interesting work.  The chapter "When Scientists Disagree" by itself makes this entire book worth reading. It is an eloquent articulation of the nature of scientific debate (including the implications of when scientific debate turns insulting and hostile), and the author quite humbly provides the reader *all* of the professional disagreements and contentions with his model of stress. This part of the book really sings out with humility, sincerity and a scientific rigor we seems to have lost in the postmodern era. Notes:  * General adaptation syndrome (G.A.S.): how we adapt to stressors: various shock therapies across history (fever treatments, electric shock, etc) provided improvement with n...

Stress Without Distress by Hans Selye

A short book distilling Hans Selye's groundbreaking technical work The Stress of Life  into practical principles for handling daily life. Articulates a basic philosophy that can be boiled down to "earn thy neighbor's love." Selye calls this "altruistic egotism" and argues that satisfaction in life can be achieved by seeking genuinely satisfying work, earning the goodwill and gratitude of others through that work, and by living with a philosophy of gratitude. Not his finest book, but it is interesting and useful to hear the values and prescriptive statements of one of biology's most eminent scientists. The ideas in this book are not original--the author candidly admits as much--but offer helpful guideposts for how to live. Notes: 1) The first chapter is essentially a layperson's summary of Selye's main work The Stress of Life , defining key terms, what he means (in biological terms) when he talks about stress, describing the evolution of the stres...

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...