A struggling basketball team in a poor neighborhood becomes changed when a mysterious coach named Rolabi Wizenard suddenly appears and agrees to help them. - (Baker & Taylor)

The basketball legend and Academy Award-winning content creator presents a first entry in a series about five young athletes and their coach, who navigate personal struggles while discovering the transformative power of mental stamina, emotional clarity and teamwork. 80,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)

<b>#1 <i>New York Times</i> Bestseller</b><br><br><b>A <i>People</i> Kid Pick of the week</b><br><br><b>From the mind of basketball legend and Academy Award–winning storyteller Kobe Bryant comes this radically original portrait of five young basketball players, one enlightening coach, and the awesome transformative power of the game. Filled with insights about the mental stamina and emotional clarity that peak performance requires, this is an indispensable story for young athletes, coaches, educators, and anyone interested in the astonishing potential of team sports to unlock individual growth.</b><br><br>THE GAME WILL NEVER BE THE SAME<br><br>Magic doesn’t seem possible for the West Bottom Badgers. They’re the lowest-ranked basketball team in their league, and they live in the poorest neighborhood in Dren. Nobody expects them to succeed at anything. Plus, every kid on the team has secret struggles of his own.<br>When a new coach named Professor Wizenard arrives on the first day of training camp, the Badgers can’t explain the magical-seeming things they see and hear. Every player experiences unique and strange visions—visions that challenge everything they thought they knew about basketball, and about their lives and their secrets off the court. To survive the increasingly intense ordeals of training, the Badgers will need to take unimaginable risks, learn to trust their teammates, and confront the darkness within themselves. - (Perseus Publishing)

A youth basketball team is challenged to face their inner fears by a mysterious and magical coach named Rolabi Wizenard. - (Two Rivers Distribution)

Kobe Bryant was an Academy Award winner, a New York Times best-selling author, and the CEO of Granity Studios, a multimedia content creation company. He was also a five-time NBA champion, two-time NBA Finals MVP, NBA MVP, and two-time Olympic gold medalist. Above all else, he was a loving husband and a doting father to four girls. In everything he built, Kobe was driven to teach the next generation how to reach their full potential. He believed in the beauty of the process, in the strength that comes from inner magic, and in achieving the impossible. His legacy continues today.

Wesley King is the New York Times best-selling author author of eleven novels, including The Wizenard Series: Training Camp, OCDaniel, the Vindico series, and A World Below. His books have been optioned for film and television and translated for release worldwide. Besides writing, he is working on a circumnavigation on a 1967 sailboat. You can follow him on Instagram @wesleykingauthor or on Twitter @WesleyTKing. - (Perseus Publishing)

Kobe Bryant is an Academy Award–winning storyteller and content creator. He spends his days building stories to inspire the next generation of athletes to be the best versions of themselves. In a previous life, Kobe was a five-time NBA champion, two-time NBA Finals MVP, NBA MVP, and two-time Olympic gold medalist. He hopes to share all he learned with young athletes around the world.

Wesley King is the award-winning author of eight novels. His works include OCDaniel, The Vindico, and 2018’s A World Below. His books have accumulated more than ten literary awards and multiple Junior Library Guild Selections and have been optioned for film and television and translated for release worldwide. When he is not writing, Wesley travels extensively around the world and gives workshops and presentations for thousands of students annually. Wesley is also known for his height (6'7?) and his fondness for all things Star Wars and sports. - (Two Rivers Distribution)

The West Bottom Badgers are the worst youth basketball team in the league. That is until one summer when a new coach gives them the chance to change everything. Rolabi Wizenard and his magical coaching techniques cover offense, defense, individual strengths and weaknesses, and physical conditioning. Through basketball, he shows his players that working at each of these will not only make them stronger physically, but also mentally and emotionally.The Badgers players - Rain, Twig, Cash, Lab, and Peño - each have their own story, their own challenges, and their own fears. Over the course of a two-week basketball camp, we get to know each character and their struggles, where they've come from, and where they are going.Each story teaches readers empathy, the understanding that there are multiple sides to every story, and that accepting our differences will help us become better friends as well as better athletes. - (Two Rivers Distribution)

Kirkus Reviews

A former NBA superstar is part of a writing duo that combines basketball and magic to tell the story of a struggling inner-city team.Twelve-year-old Rain treasures the Fairwood Community Center and his team, the West Bottom Badgers. Although it is run-down, the walls hung with tattered banners, for Rain, the gym represents his best chance of becoming a success. The team owner, Freddy, has also brought in a new coach, professor Rolabi Wizenard, with a decidedly different way of running things. He seems to speak in riddles and use magic—the appearance of a tiger to assist in a drill, for example. As Rain contemplates life, he hears Rolabi in his head, challenging his fears and his thoughts about himself. Teammate Alfie, aka Twig, is from a comfortable suburban family, and some of the guys never let him forget it. Mercilessly teased, he has no one to confide in—but he might be the one to unlock the secret behind their new coach. The novel is unusual in structure and plot as readers experience the same incidents portrayed through different perspectives, each revealing another layer of the story. The end of training camp and the approach of actual games concludes the novel, leaving a cliffhanger for the next volume. Physical descriptions are limited, but most major characters are brown-skinned. Solid, authentic basketball action with plenty of food for thought, colored with elements of fantasy. (Sports fantasy. 10-13) Copyright Kirkus 2019 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

PW Annex Reviews

Five basketball teammates offer accounts of a 10-day training camp in this inspirational yet uneven fantasy. In a near-contemporary land called Dren, the down-on-their-luck West Bottom Badgers catch a break with the arrival of their new coach, the self-styled Professor Rolabi Wizenard, who uses motivational messages and magic to train the players in "the nature of all things." As team leader Rain, gentle giant Devon, awkward outcast Twig, and brothers Peno and Lab face off against their deepest fears and insecurities and an actual tiger, the players slowly come together as a team and learn that they must fight their greatest battles alone. Working from a concept created by basketball superstar Kobe Bryant, King (A World Below)does an admirable job of capturing the characters' distinct voices and challenges, but the gimmicky nature of the Rashomon-like story line, which repeats the same events five times, leaves little room for deepening the worldbuilding, supporting cast, and the vague hints at a greater problem looming in the background. The story does manage to capture the joy of sports and the satisfaction of working as a team—the Badgers, a mostly brown-skinned group, undergo internal and external conflicts that result in realistic struggles and strong lessons learned. Ages 10–up (Mar.)