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)

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.)