Basketball: The Math of the Game (Sports Illustrated Kids: Sports Math)

Gr 5-9—These books delve deep into the statistics of favorite pastimes. They are not written for novices; acronyms and terms are used freely and not always defined. For example, readers learn how to calculate OPS in baseball, but what does OPS stand for? What is "the lane" in basketball? The math gets complicated and in a couple of places a diagram would have been helpful. The full-color photographs depict well-known sports figures. The spreads are busy with stats, graphs, tables, and interesting sidebars. Each book discusses the field or court, the basics of the game, the offensive and defensive stats, and how to make projections of performance for teams and individual players. Overall these books will appeal to serious sports fans who want to learn more about the numbers of the game.