Lute! The Seasons of My Life

It was love at first sight . . . One day I picked up a basketball, and it never let me go. For fifty seasons Lute Olson has been teaching young athletes the skills of basketball---and life. Starting as a high school coach, he worked his way to the top of the basketball world---winning more than a thousand games, a national championship and world championship, producing some of the NBA's biggest stars, and eventually being enshrined in the basketball Hall of Fame. But Lute is far more than a basketball story. His partner for forty-seven years in building championship programs was his high school sweetheart; his story is also a love story of a couple who together built a sports legend. Lute and Bobbi Olson were a team. Their almost half-century love affair ended with Bobbi's death from cancer. Lute explores how he dealt with her death and how he moved forward to find a new love. This is the chronicle of one American boy's dream to become a great basketball coach---his achievements, his coaching strategies, and how he dealt with his beloved wife's death---the wins and losses he faced as boy, man, and coach. But always with one constant in his life, the game of basketball. This is the story of fifty seasons in the life of Lute Olson. Praise for Lute! "Lute Olson's story is the true American dream. He is a legendary coach who has shared his vision of winning with all his players---now we are given the chance to learn too. It's inspirational and downright heartwarming." ---Jim Nantz, CBS Sports ". . . it is exactly what you would expect from Olson---intelligent, first-class, sprinkled with dry wit---personal in ways you might not anticipate." ---Tucson Citizen "This is not a basketball book. It is not a book about a coach. It is the most unexpected of all things from the inscrutable Olson: the story of his personal life." ---Arizona Daily StarOlson, Lute is the author of 'Lute! The Seasons of My Life', published 2007 under ISBN 9780312359423 and ISBN 031235942X.