Sports Literati

The two Daves dig into one of the most highly touted sports books in recent memory, Open by Andre Agassi. Andre Agassi was a child tennis prodigy who eventually became one of the top players in the world. If you followed sports in the 1990s, you couldn't have missed Agassi's fancy hairdos, neon coloured outfits and elaborate marketing campaigns. In Open, written a few years after his retirement, A...

The Sports Literati take a look at the business side of sports and the early years of one of the foundational brands in the modern sports world. Shoe Dog is a bestselling memoir of Nike's early years as told by the company's founder, Phil Knight. The book traces the origins of Nike from a humble, bunch of salesmen selling a Japanese track shoe named the Onitsuka Tiger out of the back of their trun...

The Sports Literati induct the founding book title into the Pantheon of Sports Literature. The Game by Ken Dryden was published in 1983 and remains quite possibly the most highly regarded hockey book, if not sports book, of all time. Ken Dryden was a Hall of Fame goalie for the Montreal Canadiens in the 1970s, and later became a writer and a Member of Parliament in Canada's federal government. He...

This month, the two Daves sit down to discuss Gridiron Genius: A Master Class in Winning Championships and Building Dynasties in the NFL by Michael Lombardi. They follow Lombardi behind the scenes on Bill Walsh's 49ers dynasty teams and Bill Belichek's Patriots, and try to learn about the inner workings of what goes on on a professional football team.

In the premiere episode of The Sports Literati, Dave and Dave break down Three-Ring Circus by Jeff Pearlman, a scintillating look at the Shaq-Kobe Lakers dynasty of the early 2000s, from the dark days following Magic Johnson's retirement through to the story of one of the first failed super teams, with Karl Malone and Gary Payton in 2003-2004. This book is an in depth portrait of a madcap basketba...