Game Changers with Marcus Thompson
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What is the new book "Game Changers" about and why was it created?
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily. I'm Dave DeFor here with Marcus Thompson. Coming up, we're gonna talk about Marcus's book Game Changers coming out September fifteenth. We'll hit the Jonathan Kuminga signing in Minnesota and the latest on the Golden State Warriors and Steph Curry.
Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Marcus. Marcus Thompson, our senior columnist at The Athletic, here to talk about his new book, Game Changers, The Goats Who Revolutionize Basketball. Welcome back to the show, Marcus. How's it going? Look at you hold hold my baby. Yeah, that's right.
See it.
I you know what? I feel very lucky to have gotten an advanced copy. I got a chance to flip through it over the weekend.
Hey, listen, pe I didn't know this was a deal. Like, people really like advanced copies. I remember last time I would be like, Man, I can get an advanced copy. I'm like Bro, how yeah I'm not thinking about advanced. Well it makes you feel kind
of VIP, you know, like I got an email. You texted me, I got an email from your publisher. I was like, ooh, all right, I'm being treated like like the chef. I don't know how to work it. Now I know how to move you, but it just feels a little like really a book? What? I mean, I honestly uh for well for th for this, like I don't know if I could have if we could have the conversation, probably could have the conversation without it. But it's nice to see what the book is about because you and I, we've talked about it a little bit over the the last year or so. Um I I love the idea of it. Uh uh, you know, basically Even on the cover, it's got Barkley Bird, Caitlin, Candice, Cheryl, Curry, Dirk. I mean it's it's people who legitimately change the sport in some way.
Oh, not spoiler story.
Go ahead. The initial remission covered. I had like a literal like a mini panic attack. Because they set the cover over, right? Mm-hmm. But The the names on the cover they weren't There wasn't a really a rhyme or reason. Like and some of the names, I w all I could hear was the internet going crazy about you put so-and-so over so-and-so. I was like, listen, for the love of God, do it alphabetically. Yeah. Like do not do this to me. You didn't have the you
didn't have the guts to go curry first? Come on, Mark.
Marcus. I I would have I would have had to guess to do that, but that it wasn't my choosing. Like I did if it's like yeah, here's how I ranked them fine. Somebody else did this somewhere and it was the order was wild and I was just like, Yeah, nah we're not that's not No, I would get crucified at the stake. Like that's not happening.
Uh all right. What so what was the inspiration for the book? Is it just that that we always talk about who the best are and you wanted to sort of uh you know, aggregate that and and come up with your own idea of what it means or or what?
So it's a it's a a spin-off of my last book, which was uh Dynasties, right? The ten GOAT teams that changed the NBA forever. Yeah. So the the purpose is to like all right, we looked at the teams. That forever altered basketball, right? Like what about the individuals? And to be honest, like this was way harder. like way harder. In part because the discourse around this stuff is never actually like healthy. Right? But also just from the sheer fact that it's hard. Like it there's just so many there's just so many players. So Like at first I was like, Man, what a What what are we doing? Like w like w w what are we trying to get at here? Right? Right. Like is this is this just another way to throw out a ranking and get some buzz? 'Cause I'm really not into that.
Like I'm more of a I'm like Bert Sugar in boxing. Like I don't care about how y'all rank. I just wanna talk about Rocky Maciano's left, right? Or like whatever y'all say. Like that's what I wanna do. I wanna I'd I'd much rather celebrate this this this thing that I actually got to witness. I'm so I'm I'm too appreciative of that to to water this down into a ranking. So but when when it was delivered to me as like The the innovation and helping people understand like this product in front of them didn't just drop out of the sky.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the new book "Game Changers" about and why was it created?
0:00–8:46
2
How did Marcus Thompson decide what players and innovations qualify as game‑changers?
8:46–15:01
3
How does the book define a "game changer" and why is it more about impact than ranking?
15:01–31:51
4
What criteria and process were used to select the figures featured in the book?
31:51–57:17
5
Why does Marcus consider Steph Curry the greatest game‑changing player in basketball history?
57:17–1:02:46