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The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy (Hardcover)

by Malcolm Gladwell (Foreword), Bill Simmons (Author)

4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Hardcover: 736 pages
Publisher: ESPN (Oct 27 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 034551176X
ISBN-13: 978-0345511768
Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.2 x 4.3 cm
Shipping Weight: 1.1 Kg

Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #43 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in these categories:
#1 in Books > Sports > Miscellaneous > History of Sports
#1 in Books > Sports > Basketball > Professional

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Product Description

There is only one writer on the planet who possesses enough basketball knowledge and passion to write the definitive book on the NBA.* Bill Simmons, the from-the-womb hoops addict known to millions as ESPN.com’s Sports Guy, is that writer. And The Book of Basketball is that book.

Nowhere in the roundball universe will you find another single volume that covers as much in such depth as this wildly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining look at the past, present, and future of pro basketball.

From the age-old question of who actually won the rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to the one about which team was truly the best of all time, Simmons opens–and then closes, once and for all–every major pro basketball debate. Then he takes it further by completely reevaluating not only how NBA Hall of Fame inductees should be chosen but how the institution must be reshaped from the ground up, the result being the Pyramid: Simmons’s one-of-a-kind, five-level shrine to the ninety-six greatest players in the history of pro basketball. And ultimately he takes fans to the heart of it all, as he uses a conversation with one NBA great to uncover that coveted thing: The Secret of Basketball.

Comprehensive, authoritative, controversial, hilarious, and impossible to put down (even for Celtic-haters), The Book of Basketball offers every hardwood fan a courtside seat beside the game’s finest, funniest, and fiercest chronicler.

* More to the point, he’s the only one crazy enough to try to pull it off.

About the Author

Bill Simmons writes “The Sports Guy” column for ESPN.com’s Page 2 and ESPN: The Magazine. He is the author of Now I Can Die In Peace, founded the award-winning bostonsportsguy.com website, and was a writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live. He commutes between his home in Los Angeles and Fenway Park.

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Inside This Book (Learn More)

Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index

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5.0 out of 5 stars Back in the dorm, Nov 20 2009

By	B Gray "Hoop nut who likes good writing!" (Prince Edward Island, Canada) - See all my reviews

This is a great great book -- made me an NBA fan again. Love Bill Simmons, one of the great professional smart alecks, who actually worked diligently at research for this tome, with very few errors beyond the odd editing 'whoops.' A warning to parents and grandparents -- this is sprinkled with college dorm humour -- as is all of Simmons's work -- with references to porn stars and lots of drug comments (well deserved) about the eighties and nineties in the league. But it's a wonderful read -- couldn't put it down.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About Basketball, but Never Thought to Ask, Nov 12 2009

By	J. Christopher Murphy (Toronto) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Bill Simmons, AKA The Sports Guy, is obsessed with basketball. As Malcolm Gladwell points out in his forward to Simmons' mammoth Book of Basketball, Simmons is one of the few people in America who can afford to follow sports so closely that he can spend three years researching and writing the history of the NBA. The rest of us - we have jobs, spouses, hobbies, and sleep schedules. Some of us want to watch sports all the time, but we either feel guilty or we get in trouble for allowing them to dominate our lives. Myself, I have all day Sunday and Monday night. That's my time (though not all the time). I can sit down in front of the TV at 1 pm on Sunday, watch 10 hours of football, eat when I remember to, and then go to bed. The rest of the week, sports are mainly off limits. For Simmons, a man who has made himself wealthy as a sportswriter and podcasting pioneer, watching sports is his job.

In The Book of Basketball, Simmons makes it a point to right basketball history's wrongs. He corrects and expands the reader's perceptions about hundreds of players who have excelled at the game. In one lengthy section, he ranks the top 98 basketball players of all time, placing them into five levels of a excellence that accounts for the player's individual statistics, his team's success, and the era in which he played. In another chapter, he reviews the league's MVP award, telling us which players deserved to win that year and which did not, even pointing out the absolute travesties. Additionally, since his message through the book is that basketball is a team game based upon secret knowledge few players attain, he examines the best single season teams of all time. Wait, there's more, not content with the game's history, he pieces together his perfect team, taking players at their peak, putting them into a time machine, and preparing the team's plays for a hypothetical basketball game versus an alien race, with the fate of the human race hanging in the balance. (I can see the movie now. Think of Bill and Ted recruiting players to challenge the aliens in Mars Attacks. Only it's not a comedy.)

Simmons' examination of the NBA history would be a little dull if not for the pop culture humor he sprinkles throughout the book, comparing movie plots to basketball scenarios (with a multitude of fantastic Boogie Nights analogies). Few people care about the NBA as much as Simmons. He is like the high school English teacher who loves Shakespeare far more than his students, but cares enough to take the time to translate the prose. Here, Simmons explains the brilliance of certain superstars, as well as the true nature and motivation of basketball's greatest villains. He makes an effective argument as to why Bill Russell is better than Wilt Chamberlain, and explains in detail what makes Michael Jordon such an unstoppable force of nature (and not just on the basketball court). He is sharing his esoteric understanding of the game with those willing to listen and he certainly has my attention.

Those who follow Simmons' podcast, The B.S. Report, will know that he put a lot of hard work into this book and that he is very proud of the result. He has been writing brilliant columns for ESPN over the past decade and this is his first book of original material. He claims that it is the best book he will ever write. I disagree. Simmons is too good to be delving into statistics and writing what is essentially a history of the NBA. When he talks about the players and teams he loves, its riveting; when he outlines the statistical achievements of players he has never seen play, I wasn't nearly as engaged. The best section of this book is his description of Paul Pierce, a career Celtic who was nearly stabbed to death in his 2nd year in the league, spent almost a decade starring on a team that had no championship hopes (even losing 18 games in a row at one point), and seemed to be heading down the wrong path mentally. Simmons' description of Pierce's resurgence, attitude adjustment, and eventual starring role on the 2008 NBA Champions is a heartfelt account of a player that The Sports Guy cheered for throughout the decade. Simmons is a Boston native, probably the Celtic's biggest fan, and the perfect person to describe Pierce because he cares so much about the player's legacy. These are the stories I want to hear. Now that he has given us a full account of the game's history, I want to hear more about his history with the game.

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