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About Paul Knepper

Paul Knepper used to cover the Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book, The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All was published in September 2020.

Paul Knepper used to cover the Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book, The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All was published in September 2020. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep.

Paul's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Paul:

Sports March 11, 2023

Black Ball

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation That Saved the Soul of the NBA

Theresa Runstedtler

Hosted by Paul Knepper
Against a backdrop of ongoing resistance to racial desegregation and strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation’s imagined descent into disorder. A new generation …
Sports February 22, 2023

Spies on the Sidelines

The High-Stakes World of NFL Espionage

Kevin Bryant

Hosted by Paul Knepper
Kevin Bryant's Spies on the Sidelines: The High-Stakes World of NFL Espionage (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) is first book to fully explore the extraordinary covert actions NFL teams are willing to …
Sports February 11, 2023

Figure It Out

My Thirty-Two-Year Journey While Revolutionizing Pro Football's Special Teams

Mike Westhoff

Hosted by Paul Knepper
Simply put, Mike Westhoff is the greatest special teams coach in National Football League history. Sharp-witted, creative, and intensely focused, Westhoff spent 32 years working alongside and learning from some …
Sports December 11, 2022

Lost in the Game

A Book about Basketball

Thomas Beller

Hosted by Paul Knepper
For players, coaches, writers, and fans, basketball is a science and an art, a religious sacrament, a source of entertainment, and a way of interacting with the world. In Lost …
Sports November 24, 2022

The NBA in Black and White

The Memoir of a Trailblazing NBA Player and Coach

Ray Scott with Charley Rosen

Hosted by Paul Knepper
“There’s a basic insecurity with Black guys my size,” Scott writes. “We can’t hide and everybody turns to stare when we walk down the street. … Whites believe that their …
Sports November 10, 2022

Muggsy

My Life from a Kid in the Projects to the Godfather of Small Ball

Muggsy Bogues and Jake Uitti

Hosted by Paul Knepper
Growing up, Muggsy Bogues was always told he should do something else, anything besides basketball. He never acknowledged his many doubters except to prove them spectacularly wrong. Twenty years after …
Sports October 20, 2022

Passion Plays

How Religion Shaped Sports in North America

Randall Balmer

Hosted by Paul Knepper
Randall Balmer was a late convert to sports talk radio, but he quickly became addicted, just like millions of other devoted American sports fans. As a historian of religion, the …
Sports September 16, 2022

The Least Among Them

29 Players, Their Brief Moments in the Big Leagues, and a Unique History of the New York Yankees

Paul Russell Semendinger

Hosted by Paul Knepper
The Least Among Them: 29 Players, Their Brief Moments in the Big Leagues, and a Unique History of the New York Yankees (Artemesia, 2021) is a most special baseball book …
Sports May 30, 2022

The Duke

The Life and Lies of Tommy Morrison

Carlos Acevedo

Hosted by Paul Knepper
In the early 1990s, Tommy Morrison, a young roughneck from Jay, Oklahoma, burst onto the boxing scene to become one of the most controversial fighters of his era. Handsome, eloquent …
Sports April 27, 2022

Hoops

A Cultural History of Basketball in America

Thomas Aiello

Hosted by Paul Knepper
From its early days as a sport to build “muscular Christianity” among young men flooding nineteenth-century cities to its position today as a global symbol of American culture, basketball has …
Sports March 21, 2022

By the Grace of the Game

The Holocaust, a Basketball Legacy, and an Unprecedented American Dream

Dan Grunfeld

Hosted by Paul Knepper
When Lily and Alex entered a packed gymnasium in Queens, New York in 1972, they barely recognized their son. The boy who escaped to America with them, who was bullied as …
Sports February 18, 2022

The Master

The Brilliant Career of Roger Federer

Christopher Clarey

Hosted by Paul Knepper
There have been other biographies of Roger Federer, but never one with this kind of access to the man himself, his support team, and the most prominent figures in the …
Sports December 8, 2021

The Kaepernick Effect

Taking a Knee, Changing the World

Dave Zirin

Hosted by Paul Knepper
In 2016, amid an epidemic of police shootings of African Americans, the celebrated NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began a series of quiet protests on the field, refusing to stand during …
Sports November 5, 2021

Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball

A Namibian Odyssey

Ben Guest

Hosted by Paul Knepper
Today I talked to Ben Guest about his new book Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball: A Namibian Odyssey (2021).Pressure plays, buzzer-beaters, and mindfulness meditation: A team of teenagers goes for …
Sports October 27, 2021

Egypt’s Football Revolution

Emotion, Masculinity, and Uneasy Politics

Carl Rommel

Hosted by Paul Knepper
Both a symbol of the Mubarak government’s power and a component in its construction of national identity, football served as fertile ground for Egyptians to confront the regime’s overthrow during …
Sports October 25, 2021

The War

Hagler-Hearns and Three Rounds for the Ages

Don Stradley

Hosted by Paul Knepper
The battle between Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns is remembered as one of the greatest fights of all time. But in the months before the two finally collided on …
Sports September 16, 2021

Our Team

The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball

Luke Epplin

Hosted by Paul Knepper
In July 1947, not even three months after Jackie Robinson debuted on the Brooklyn Dodgers, snapping the color line that had segregated Major League Baseball, Larry Doby would follow in …
Sports July 16, 2021

Boxed Out of the NBA

Remembering the Eastern Professional Basketball League

Syl Sobel and Jay Rosenstein

Hosted by Paul Knepper
The Eastern Professional Basketball League (1946-78) was fast and physical, often played in tiny, smoke-filled gyms across the northeast and featuring the best players who just couldn’t make the NBA—many …
Sports June 14, 2021

Shake and Bake

The Life and Times of NBA Great Archie Clark

Bob Kuska and Archie Clark

Hosted by Paul Knepper
Shake and Bake is the story of Archie Clark, one of the top playmaking guards in the 1970s pre-merger NBA. While not one of the game’s most recognized superstars, Clark …
Sports May 10, 2021

Singled Out

The True Story of Glenn Burke

Andrew Maraniss

Hosted by Paul Knepper
On October 2nd, 1977, Glenn Burke, outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers, made history without even swinging a bat. When his teammate Dusty Baker hit a historic home run, Glenn …
Sports May 3, 2021

The Eagles of Heart Mountain

A True Story of Football, Incarceration, and Resistance in World War II America

Bradford Pearson

Hosted by Paul Knepper
In the spring of 1942, the United States government forced 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes in California, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona and sent them to incarceration camps across the …
Sports April 5, 2021

Pro Sports in 1993

A Signature Season in Football, Basketball, Hockey and Baseball

David Ostrowsky

Hosted by Paul Knepper
America and Canada both saw historic sports milestones in 1993. While the Dallas Cowboys and Chicago Bulls reigned supreme, the Toronto Blue Jays won a second consecutive World Series on …
Sports February 2, 2021

The Cap

How Larry Fleisher and David Stern Built the Modern NBA

Joshua Mendelsohn

Hosted by Paul Knepper
Today the salary cap is an NBA institution, something fans take for granted as part of the fabric of the league or an obstacle to their favorite team’s chances to …
Sports December 21, 2020

From Hang Time to Prime Time

Business, Entertainment, and the Birth of the Modern-Day NBA

Pete Croatto

Hosted by Paul Knepper
The birth of the modern-day NBA is often attributed to Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan and David Stern. In From Hang Time to Prime Time: Business, Entertainment, and the …