Brooks Henderson's Blog

LeBron has just finished his junior year and is still continuing his summer league AAU The Shooting Stars. At the start of the summer The King was having a successful summer then out of nowhere during a summer tournament, LeBron James suffers from a break in his arm and forced to sit on the bench. Although his injury forces him to miss the football season, another sport LeBron was successful at, it reminded him of how careful he needed to be while playing. As his senior year starts back up, he trains harder and harder for basketball while in the mean time his arm heals. His high school team now starts to play nationally ranked high schools and LeBron and his team are on a quest to be the #1 ranked high school in the nation. LeBron leads his team and rolls through competition in the state tournament winning the state title and gain the title of #1 best high school basketball team in the U.S. He then contends in summer All-Star competitions and camps. Also, the whole nation knows LeBron will soon enlist in the NBA 2003 Draft as soon as he is eligible to do so.

LeBron started out living in poverty with only his mother, Gloria James. They moved from apartment to apartment with an occasional visits to his mother's friends' houses. He was always athletic and learned new things quick but didn't start with basketball till the age of 10 years old. He was always a football star though. LeBron being tall, athletic with two pairs of large, soft gloves for hands as if he was made for sports. Due to the fact of being in poverty and struggling with school with his mother LeBron has been taken into the care of Coach Dru who plans to stabilize the little James so his grades improve and stays out of the streets. LeBron then prospers and joins an AAU basketball team called "The Shooting Stars" where he meets his teammates for the rest of his teenage career.

After The Einstein Theory of Relativity I decided to read LeBron James A Biography. This book was written during his time playing with the Cleveland Cavaliers. It has no record of his time at the Miami Heat, which he gained all of his NBA Championship titles there. The book, however, does talk about his accomplishments at Cleveland such as the youngest player ever to reach 2,000 points. Also, it talks about his non-professional life style. It talks about his children and their effect on LeBron's life. In all, I'm excited to start this book and learn more about "The King."

After finishing up reading Drive by Larry Bird, I've decided to choose another book. The Einstein Theory of Relativity by Lillian R. Lieber was the book I've decided to pick up. Although I'm only within the first 30 pages, I've comprehended the first portion of the famous theory. The theory, in the beginning, talks about ether and the theories that either Earth travels through ether or ether travels through the Earth. In the first theory, the Earth traveling through ether, in which there would be an ether wind much like that of a current of a river. The second, ether travels through the Earth, in which there would be no ether wind. This was experimented by a scientists named Michelson and Morley by that of a swimmer in a river to two different points.

Larry Bird is now at his current career point and decides to talk, in depth, about other players and arenas. He explains how Los Angelos' arena is the second best place(only to Boston's Garden) because he loves everything from the crowd, to the basket rims, all the way to the arena placing in Los Angelos. Larry also attests to the playoffs being so much more intense than the regular season. Larry explains, "I tried to relax myself, but sometimes in the playoffs you can't do it because it's just too emotionally draining" which shows the pressure and attachment the players have toward basketball during the playoffs. Bird gives his opinion that Michael Jordan is the best basketball player he'd ever seen but Michael Cooper was the best defender he'd ever see. MJ could do anything he wanted to do, offense or defense, yet Michael had done everything to disrupt MJ's, Bird's, and Dominique Wilkin's(famous basketball player of out of Atlanta) game. Although everyone believes in stats and "triple-doubles"(reference to when a player earns double figures in 3 categories of stats), Larry thinks this is a shallow way to keep track of people's performance since one player can have an incredible game and earn a "triple-double" while he is just an average player overall.

As I am wrapping up my novel, Larry Bird is coming down to his most recent awards and accomplishes. The book tells of how Larry had won the first NBA Three-Point Contest ever and how he finished his last one with flair as he threw up a fist as he released the ball and headed to the winner's circle. Swish. Larry, now winding down his career due to the inevitable injuries, wishes to play the next 90-91 season with the Boston Celtics with a  renewed contract. Yet, Bird doesn't know it yet, he'll only get to play a few seasons left.

The characters in my story are Larry, Kevin, Danny, more NBA players, Dinah and Larry's coach, Coach Fitch. So far, Larry and the Celtics have gone through three seasons and have won one NBA Championship. Yet during the 1982 regular season, Bird had dislocated his jaw during going for a rebound and got an "bow" to the right side of his face. Despite the fact that Larry is handicapped, he decides to play as the '6th man' (a phrase used to describe the first player to check in after the game has started). During this time, his teammates Kevin, Parish, Ainge, Tiny, and Carr are helping him get through the games by helping take "the load off" of scoring or rebounding. Even though I already know what will happen due to the fact that I know numerous facts about Bird, I am excited to read on. I can feel the excitement and competitiveness of The Bird Era Celtics as they play through seasons and games. 

In my Silent Sustained Reading book the main character, Larry Bird, has just finished Celtic's rookie training camp. His partner, Dinah, is in full support of his decisions while his ex-wife and mother of his baby girl, Janet, was not supportive. Larry, while finishing camp, meets more of the veteran Celtics. Maxwell, Carr, and Cowens all challenge Larry as he being the rookie must do so. All of these events have happened within 2 weeks of Bird's arrival to Boston. Larry is yet to discover he will win 3 NBA Championship, Rookie of the Year, and MVP awards.

Drive by Larry Bird is a book written on Larry Bird's life. His autobiography tells how he grew up and lived in French Lick/West Baden in Indiana. Later in the book, it tells about his life playing for the Celtics and in Boston. I enjoy this book cause not only am I a huge basketball fan but Larry Bird is my favorite player ever to have played. To read and learn about his life is one of the main reasons I love reading this book.