Golden Days: West's Lakers, Steph's Warriors, and the California Dreamers Who Reinvented Basketball

The bestselling author of Dream Team tells the interconnected stories of the twenty-first-century Golden State Warriors and the early-1970s Los Angeles Lakers, two extraordinary teams playing in extraordinary times and linked by one extraordinary man: Jerry West.

“Full of juicy anecdotes and wagging fun . . . [Jack] McCallum holds legitimate claim for being the greatest NBA writer of all time.”—The Wall Street Journal

Featuring vintage photos and contemporary shots of NBA greats including Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Pat Riley, and more.

In Golden Days, acclaimed sports journalist Jack McCallum chronicles two teams—the Golden State Warriors of the 2010s and the L.A. Lakers of the early 1970s—to trace the dynamic history of the National Basketball Association, which for much of the last half-century has marched memorably through the state of California. Tying together the two strands of McCallum’s story is Hall of Famer Jerry West, the ferociously competitive Laker guard who decades later became one of the key architects of the Warriors. With “the Logo” as his guide, McCallum takes us deep into the locker rooms and front offices of these two era-defining teams, leveraging the access and authority he has amassed over his forty-year career to create a picture of the cultural juggernaut that the NBA has become.

Featuring up-close-and-personal portraits of some of the biggest names in basketball history, from Wilt Chamberlain to Steve Kerr to the transcendent duo of Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, as well as an update on the Warriors’ run of dominance and West’s first season with the L.A. Clippers, Golden Days is a history of not just of a changing sport but a changing America.