The old Boston Sports Guy, Bill Simmons, utilizes his firsthand knowledge of watching games, tapes of old games, interviews he did himself, and a collection of great basketball books and condenses them into a book that explores every era, every league and every relevant player and issue.
The Book of Basketball Review
This book is jam packed with over 700 pages of material and includes many footnotes, which act as humorous sidebars on different topics. Simmons is first and foremost a fan, so he writes in a tone that isn't objective, but from a fan's perspective, specifically a Boston Celtics fan. That includes obvious biases and jabs at the Los Angeles Lakers and some of their players, but Simmons does not let his hatred of the purple and gold overtake the book. He does, however, keep an informal tone that makes it easy to read and understand for any fan.
The basic premise of "The Book of Basketball" is that one should not judge players solely on statistics. One needs to go beyond the stats into who these players actually are/were and what their peers thought of them in order to determine their overall value to the history of the sport. It is quite an ambitious undertaking and one that requires a thorough examination of the sport and all its leagues and eras.
Bill Simmons and Basketball
Simmons brilliantly opens the book with a chronicle of a conversation he had with Isiah Thomas (a guy Simmons attacked in many-a-column) and closes it with a chronicle of a conversation he had with Bill Walton. These two book-ending chronicles set up the rest of the book and how one should value players and teams.
What Isiah calls "The Secret" and what Walton calls "The Choice" is that intangible quality that makes an NBA player and a team successful. Armed with the concept of "The Secret" (or "The Choice"), Simmons examines and sometimes reexamines those players and teams that grasped this concept and those that didn't and used this as a variable to determine the greatness of that player or that team. Simmons reexamines the "Russell versus Wilt" debate and creates the "Hall of Fame Pyramid" where players are placed on different tiers depending on where their play ranks in the overall importance of the history of the league.
The Sports Guy Basketball Book
The Sports Guy poses the great "What Ifs?" of NBA history, looks at the greatest single-season teams from a different viewpoint and looks at specific individual player seasons that you would want in the NBA "Wine Cellar". Without creating separate chapters, Simmons also examines the spread of cocaine in the NBA during the late 70s to late 80s, the personality traits/flaws of certain players and the role that race and racism played in the history of the NBA.
Simmons NBA Book Review
Formerly a television comedy writer, Simmons never gets too serious or melodramatic with any of the topics. He includes many footnotes, which really act as humorous sidebars on different topics.
Simmons injects a lot of comedy in his NBA book. For those unfamiliar with Simmons' columns and podcasts, Simmons combines analyses and personal stories in this book with many humorous pop-culture references to Hoosiers, Teen Wolf, Scarface, the Wire, Mad Men, Shawshank Redemption, the Godfather and many well known and lesser known ones (the references to porn are why this book is not for kids).
So who is this book for primarily?
- Any adult NBA fan
- Any fan of Simmons' podcasts and columns
All told, this book has freakish athleticism, jumpability, length, and tremendous upside.
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