Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant - Hardcover

Roland Lazenby is the author of the bestselling and definitive biographies Michael Jordan and Jerry West, among other books. He has spent the past three decades interviewing NBA players, coaches, staff members, and other figures while writing about the league. He lives in Salem, VA.

A Men's Journal Best Book of the YearFinalist for the Sunday Times Biography of the Year Finalist for the Cross British Sports Book Award
Praise for SHOWBOAT

"With surgical precision, Roland Lazenby expertly dissects the life of this generation's most fascinating basketball player. What made Kobe Bryant tick so loud for so long? Lazenby shows you with a tour de force in reporting and an intimate inspection at Bryant's trials, accomplishments and tribulations."―Jonathan Abrams, author of Boys Among Men

"With the publication of Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant, it is high time we recognized author Roland Lazenby for what he has become: the finest sports biographer of our time. First with the astonishing Michael Jordan: The Life and now his having written an incredibly researched, beautifully written biography of this enigmatic Laker superstar, Lazenby has entered rarified air: one is wowed by what one learns and at the same time you can't wait to read what comes next."―Peter Golenbock, author of ten New York Times bestsellers

"Lazenby tells Bryant's story well...this is bound to be the best biography of Kobe Bryant for some time."―Kirkus

"Like [Lazenby's] recent book about Michael Jordan, [Showboat] finds new angles to approach people we've been looking at every day their whole careers. Mr. Lazenby smartly focuses much of the book at the last few years of Mr. Bryant's career."―Will Leitch, Wall Street Journal

"This book is easily going to end up on some definitive must-read list for Lakers books. I've read Phil Jackson's Eleven Rings, Jeanie Buss' Laker Girl, and Madmen's Ball, but none of those quite compare to Showboat.

Check out the book and grab a copy of it."―Lakers Outsider

"Lazenby's detailed research and fantastic writing paint a complex, engaging picture of one of the NBA's greats."―Kurt Helin, Pro Basketball Talk, NBC Sports

"Roland Lazenby's the David McCullough of the sports biography."
―Matt "Money" Smith, Fox Sports Radio


"There is more than enough analysis of Bryant's on-court accomplishments to satisfy the hard-core hoops fan, but the meatier material is in the Bryant family dynamics....Showboat is an often insightful look at a complicated and still relatively young man."―Phil Taylor, Washington Post

"'Showboat' is more than just for show. It's a tell all that shows us there's more to a man than the name on the back of his jersey...or even the one on the front."―Tim David Harvey, Basketball Buzz