User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Ultimately, a pretty disappointing book. As a big fan of the Sports Guy's columns about the NBA, I thought I would be laughing from beginning to end and learning a lot. Neither turned out to be true. By expanding upon the worst parts of his columns - his obsessive biases towards certain types of players and teams - and mostly ignoring the profound insight he usually incites with his biting humor, Simmons comes off as someone who spent too much time watching pro basketball and now can do nothing but rant about it. I wanted to learn about all the great players of history in this book, but instead I mostly learned what Simmons thinks is wrong with them.
It's clear that Simmons has thrived online due to the work of his editors in corralling his babbling and refining his humor. The supposedly hilarious footnotes in this book consist of nothing but bad porn star humor, bad 80's movie humor, and Simmmons making jokes about how he can't stop making porn star and drug jokes. It is to our great benefit that ESPN keeps this boorish immaturity out of his columns. I began glazing over them about halfway through the book. I thought, perhaps, that I was just on Sports Guy overload, but I kept reading his columns online while I read this book, and they continued to make me chortle. By the last section, "the best teams ever," I was skipping pages entirely, as it was obvious that Simmons was just blasting out whatever it took to prove his favorite team of all time, the '86 Celtics, were also the best team of all time.
You could pick apart this book's rhetoric from many different angles, but I think it can be nicely summarized by saying that Bill Simmons is a second rate writer who, because of the popularity of his humor and his honest insights, has been tricked into thinking he is in the upper echelon. The best parts of this book are when Bill quotes other writers. But just because you hang out with Malcolm Gladwell and Chuck Klosterman (and get them to contribute amazing passages to your tome of rants) doesn't mean you can keep up with them on the page.
Rating: really liked it
When Chuck Klosterman and, of all intellectual giants, Bill Walton can destroy the theoretical foundation of your 700-page book's analysis in ten pages worth of cameos...well, it's probably asking too much for you to admit that you wasted the last two years of your life and start over from scratch, but that's probably what you should do. The Book of Basketball works alright as entertainment, though the expanded license for dick jokes fails to enhance Simmons' humor much, but as a work of analysis, it's a complete waste. In what field besides sports could someone claim to be an expert on a widely discussed subject without even attempting to engage the latest rigorous research devoted to it? Wait, Sarah Palin, don't answer that.
Most every potentially interesting position Simmons takes depends on just-so stories or special pleading or just plain circular logic. The Bill Russell vs Wilt Chamberlain chapter has been widely deplored, and rightfully so. I became viscerally angry as I read it. Most of the player-ranking section is less maddening, but the bit at the end in which Simmons ranks the top teams in NBA history sets our teeth to gritting once more. A more accurate and less risible version would've been called "Top NBA teams that Bill Simmons enjoyed watching or, having not been alive to see them, enjoys the idea of watching." Not a very interesting list, sure, but at least it would have been honestly labelled.
Nothing is as dumb as the Isiah Thomas / "The Secret" story, though (no, not that Secret. It's a different Secret that applies only to the NBA). He'd teased the story in his column for years, and I was fully prepared to have my mind blown. And then it turns out to be a fairly uneventful conversation between three minor celebrities about the fake almost-fight that two of them had, which culminates in the earth-rending revelation that BASKETBALL IS A TEAM SPORT. I could see how, if you were Bill Simmons, this whole episode might have seemed a bit surreal, but to a third party it's not that astonishing at all.
Or at least Simmons lacks the ability, even though he strains, to convey the surreality and astonishment to we the reading third parties. And that's the main problem: Bill Simmons is at best a competent writer. He's agreeably conversational for the most part, and he has excellent comic timing (although if you've read many of his columns you can anticipate his rhythms as they unfold by now), but eliciting emotional responses is beyond him and has always been. So is producing prose that is a pleasure to read just for its construction (a rare gift, sure, but one that Klosterman possesses so obviously that his one-page passage makes the text around it seem little but a vast ashen wasteland). Simmons knows this, and apologizes for it frequently, but the best apology would have been to abstain from mediocrity in the first place.
Rating: really liked it
It's incredibly entertaining at best, infuriating and a drunken digression at others. Simmons views himself as an expert, and that comes through on every page - whether in his decision that John Stockton played in era of "inflated assists" or his condemnation of the last twenty minutes of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. He's just not that smart, frankly. In both cases, he makes specious claims and then moves on to more specious claims or backs them up with statistics that are supposed to be taken at face value.
The most embarrassing section is early, when he reveals "The Secret." Spoiler alert: the secret is that championship teams rely on teamwork, not individual superstars. Wooah!!! I've never heard that before! Oh, except I have - my T-Ball coach told me that when we just assumed that we would win every game with the help of this skinny, white-headed kid named Kevin Geshke who hit solo home runs every time he walked to the tee (we did, thus disproving Simmons thesis). But Simmons dedicates pages and pages to a point that my Grandmother understood, without attempting to figure out the groups who disproved that (the '06 Heat for instance, or the early 00's Lakers).
Simmons ranking of players is arbitrary and ultimate critic-proof, but he finds a way to take pot-shots at the players he doesn't like (like Stockton and Clyde Drexler) and elevates those he does on revisionist history (like Allen Iverson).
The best part, and what it makes it ultimately worth reading for the ardent NBA fan, is his "What if" section: when he takes episodes from NBA History and wonders what would have happened if the ball had swung a different way: what if Len Bias hadn't died and the Celtics had an extra big man in the late 80s? what if Jordan got drafted by Portland?
Still, while entertaining, it's pretty maddening.
Rating: really liked it
If you're a huge NBA fan, a guy, are between the ages 40 and 48 (as of 2012) and have watched an insane amount of TV and movies this is a no-brainier 5 star book(1). Otherwise I don't think you'll like it.
I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a very long time. Malcom Gladwell nails it in the forward here he says Bill Simmons is what you would be if you had endless hours to devote to being a fan. Bill Simmons is hilarious + his love of the NBA and his ability to create analogies from random stuff (mostly movies and TV shows) that I love gave me great joy. I've seen other people criticize B.S. for his lack of objectivity in compiling his rankings. It didn't bother me. B.S.'s excruciatingly detailed arguments and justifications for each ranking were mostly ingenious, interesting and often hilarious. The book opens with a love letter to the Celtics and then he proceeds to claim he's objective for the ensuing 750 pages(2). But he is a homer and that's part of what makes the book such a joy to read. Seeing the game through his eyes makes it difficult not to love the NBA more(3).
I'll spoil it for you cause there's no suspense: Russel was better than Chamberlain and the 85 Celtics were better than the 96 Bulls (4).
(1) I'm considering it for my sports book pantheon. Definitely better than Halbertsam's breaks of the game, which, ironically, would be sacrilege for B.S.
(2) citing his ranking Magic Johnson 1 spot above Larry Bird as definitive proof that he's not a homer.
(3) I almost had to go double negative I was so excited about this observation.
(4) Claiming anyone other than the 96 Bulls was the best team in the history of the NBA is definitive proof that B.S. is a total homer.
Rating: really liked it
I have to confess that finishing this book felt like something of a chore. At 700 pages, you really have to love basketball, or Bill Simmons - or both - to get through it. I like basketball a lot, but I can't pretend to have followed it very closely, historically. The Book of Baseball would have been an easier read for me, because I already know more about the main characters. I started this months ago and plugged away, plugged away, finally devoting the better part of a weekend to finishing it. I told myself, "You bought this book, now read it!"
And why did I buy it? I do love Bill Simmons. Or, at least, I did. I think I need a little break from him, for the time being. His writing is much better suited to (relatively) pithy internet columns. In this book, he makes too many jokes about his forthcoming Pulitzer for any of them to be very funny. And enough jokes about the inevitable publication of "The Second Book of Basketball" to make me nervous. I need a two-week vacation from any sentence beginning "The Mount Rushmore of [obscure pop culture reference:] would have to include...."
But he IS entertaining, and that's why I stuck with it. I definitely learned a lot about a sport of whose history I was fairly ignorant. The huge middle section of the book is devoted to the ranking - and detailed analysis - of the players Simmons deems the 96 greatest of all time. Ninety-six! (He's leaving room for four more to emerge in the modern era.) He starts with #96 and works his way up, so it was somewhere in the eighties that I lost steam and gave up for a while. However amusingly written, it is really hard to read pages and pages about Arvydas Sabonis and Cliff Hagan if you knew next to nothing about them, going into it. But once I renewed my commitment to finish the damn thing, his countdown grew more and more interesting, as we entered the territory of players with whom I was more familiar. A statistical comparison of Bailey Howell and Bobby Dandrige is tough going for me, but by the time I reached Simmons' Top 30 I was much more interested.
Here's the thing, though: Simmons ends his book by assembling - with the previous 650 pages as evidence - The Greatest Team of All Time. He's not just picking the twelve greatest players, of course, but the twelve who would best function together, complementing each other and assuring victory. And guess what? He picks all post-merger players. Going back to his Top 96 ranking, he included Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Oscar Robertson and Moses Malone in his Top 12 "Pantheon" - but none of these merit inclusion on his Greatest Team Ever roster. Not even on the bench. The reason is obvious: we aren't confident that their game would translate to the modern era. I understand that, and I even agree. But what, then, is the point of ranking those top 96 all on one scale, if we're admittedly judging them on completely different criteria? And, since this list takes up 300+ pages, the obvious next question is: What is the point of this goddamn book?
Simmons finally comes close to offering an answer, in his epilogue: he visits Bill Walton at his San Diego home and, in the course of their conversation, Walton jokes about being known to later generations as "Luke's dad." Simmons is enraged, but his motivation for writing this book comes into clearer focus for me, as the reader. He just wants us to know and appreciate these guys. I don't know how many people will make it through the whole thing, but I appreciate what he's trying to do: pay homage to a sport's history, and to the men who helped it evolve.
Ultimately, I'd say that Simmons failed to convince me that lists like these - the bread and butter of his NBA columns - are anything less than wildly arbitrary. He does, however, provide a terrific reading list of the NBA-related books mentioned throughout his own, and once I finally feel the need to pick up a basketball book again, there are several on there I definitely want to check out. Just give me a couple of months.
Rating: really liked it
Here's the problem with being a huge fan of a prolific columnist: When you've read every single word a guy has squeaked out for 7-plus years, you start to know all his (or her, I suppose) jokes, all their beats and all their tendencies. You lose the element of surprise.
So when it was announced that The Sports Guys new basketball book was more than 700 pages, I cringed. Not sure if I could take that many pages of Karate Kid jokes and Celtics handjobs. My infatuation with the guy has died wuite a bit over the last year and a half, and I absolutley planned to avoid this monstrosity. But goddamn Amazon roped me in for like $12, and I couldn't pass it up. I put it next to the shitter and away we went.
For the most part, I was very pleasantly surprised. Yeah, a lot of the jokes and riffs are familiar, and huge chunks are just over-expanded versions of ideas he shat out in columns ad nauseum over the years, but for the most part, I was entertained. There isn't a single person who knows the NBA better than this guy. As one of the last true basketball fans alive, that means something to me. And except for an entire chapter devoted to tongue-bathing Bill Russell's taint, Simmons manages to keep his Boston-centric blatherings to a minimum. Even the Russell chapter is digestable because it destroys Wilt Chamberlain at the same time, and that is always a good thing.
Anyway. If you haven't been exposed to Simmons nonstop for the last decade, and you give a shit about the NBA at all, give her a read. It's beter than you think.
Rating: really liked it
Bill Simmons - A terrific story himself, does a phenomenally good job here. Not only does Simmons’ trademark cheek & humour fall off the page in bunches, but the statistical analyses alone is staggeringly good & highly engaging, however the fact that he is able to infuse it consistently with posing & thought evoking narrative is just a treat to enjoy & escape into, even if his New England bias does become somewhat tiresome.. but yet it isn’t because he’s so aware of it, he throws it in there often without trying to be clever about it.
Excellence in how to write a sports book, that’s fun, entertaining, argument sparking & that is able to be returned to again and again without ever getting old!!!
Rating: really liked it
Thoughts (Simmons style):
Simmons must have hired John Iriving's editor to edit this book... and that's not a complement. What was the point of the Grumpy Old Editor? To not edit?
I think this is the world longest coffee table book.
The Most Valuable Chapter? Why was this in the book? This was excruciating to read...
Over all, it's hard to disagree with where Simmons ranked everyone. The only WTF ranking I saw was Garnett over Isiah and Pippen. But everything else is nitpicking.
I'm not sure I needed a few thousand words about how Simmons once sat next to Jordan at a resturant. Actually, I'm positive.
Again, the editing of this book killed my rating of it. Stories are told twice, footnotes are repeated, guys are mislabeled or represented... crappy editing that absolutely killed this book. When talking about the '83 Philadelphia 76ers, when mentioning who they lose to in the playoffs next year, it says Philly in five. Apperently Vancouver and Minnesota entered the league at the same time (they didn't, Toronto and Vancouver did). These mistakes happen all the time. I know mistakes are made in a 700 page book, I expect three or five things to get past people... but twenty-five or more?
Most annoying aspect of the Book of Basketball? When Simmons starts out with quote from a former player (say Bill Bradley) discussing another player (random 70s player). Simmons tells us that this PERFECTLY describes random 70s player... and then Bill spends a few thousand words discussing random 70s player. 'hey look, I know that Bill Bradley just totally nailed Jerry West, but I'm going to lob on an extra 2,900 words to hammer home my own views on a guy I never saw play and as I said, is perfectly described by what Bill Bradley said already!'
Finally, I should say, Simmons' passion and love of basketball comes though and his endearing style makes the book hard to hate. But the flaws are too great to over come what should have been a fantastic book. The book wasn't a history of basketball as much as a review of the games great players and a few teams. I can't help but think that a "Fever Pitch" type book where Bill discusses his love for the Celtics would have been a trillion times better. I know Bill has said that this is the best book he'll ever write... but he's setting the bar far too low.
Rating: really liked it
This highly entertaining book is many things: a fan's love letter to his favorite sport (and the players and teams who made it so), an attempt to place professional basketball in the cultural (and racial) landscape of twentieth century America, and an attempt to settle arguments about what matters on the basketball court.
Bill Simmons is successful on the first two counts, but is tenuous on the third. The first is the emotion of the fan's experience; there are passages that sent shivers down my spine, particularly about the nearly indescribable feeling of watching someone like Michael Jordan or Larry Bird walk into a packed basketball stadium with very little doubt as to who would win the game in the end. The second refers to both the author's facility with pop culture references and analogies, which provoke genuine laughter page after page, but also the league's impact on the American consciousness as it has evolved since the 1950's.
Simmons provides insights into players' psychology and experience, mainly to try to explain the Secret of basketball, which is that team play and unselfishness trump ball-hogging and stats in a sport which often seems to revolve around individual excellence. Can we really say that a player like Wilt Chamberlain was great when he often obsessed over reaching various statistical milestones rather than willing his team to win at all costs? What if his teammates considered him a pain to play with, and being around him often made the game more difficult?
On an emotional level, all of these arguments make great sense, which to me invalidates the central structure of the book, which is a comprehensive ranking of the greatest NBA players from 1-96 (in addition to the best teams). As Simmons says himself, there have been maybe fifteen players who have understood the Secret. That's it. An ordered ranking of these players seems like splitting hairs, and it distracts from the central pleasure of the Book of Basketball: a steady stream of great anecdotes about inhuman talents, flashy dunkers, the kinds of men who couldn't bear anything but winning, and those who could never quite push themselves to lift the veil.
Rating: really liked it
The Sports Guy is known for his willingness to authoritatively state his opinions in an entertaining manner featuring his parenthetical prowess, command of pop cultural metaphor, crazed zeal for his subject matter, seemingly endless encyclopedic dissertation of facts, and personal connection to the material and the reader. His 700-page tome features all of these Simmons standby techniques, as well as his signature voice, punctuated by his overactive love of footnotes and casually vulgar interjections. You have to like Simmons to like the book, especially since it contains many ideas, considerations, or even direct excerpts from his past decade of work. It's not hard to like Simmons; the challenge is the subject matter, as he delves as deeply as almost anyone has into the history of the NBA statistically, anecdotally, and argumentatively. The result is a highly informative and entertaining read that sustains its momentum throughout its length, though it occasionally succumbs to fatigue (a point not unnoticed by Simmons in his myriad footnotes). It allowed a casual fan like me to appreciate the game more intimately, and I now have an authoritative source to whom I can appeal if ever I feel the need to reiterate some of the assertive assumptions provided in the book. I am not sure if I would sit down and re-read the entire book, but it will certainly stick around as a resource and a source of entertainment. It was a great summer holiday read (I've read the book in the context of being away from home over the past ten days), and a great reminder of some of the things I love about sports and writing. Now if only someone would write a book like this about the NHL...
Rating: really liked it
This book was very fun to read. It was full of everything from basketball to movies, and it wasn't just another boring informational. It reads very well, and even if you don't read all of it order, each section could be a miniature book.
Along with entertaining you throughout, Bill Simmons puts a lot of thought into his writing. He takes everything from the Hall of Fame to An All time All-NBA team. Even if you are an NBA fan yourself, and don't agree with his choices at first, he explains them in such a way that you have to at least consider what he's saying. He truly fits the definition of a sports guy, and he is, even at place as full of analysts like ESPN. I have come to agree with almost everything he says, mainly because of the facts that he has backing up his arguments. Even if you just want to read a book about the NBA, without all of the extra facts, you can (most of the details are in the footnotes, and there are a lot of footnotes), but if you begin to read this book, you'll get pulled in and won't let go.
Rating: really liked it
So I read this book during the basketball lockout to keep me company. And I finished just as the strike ended. I didn't buy this book as a hardcover even though I know a lot of people who raved about it. But when I flipped through it in the store, I just couldn't get myself to pay for it because the writer is such a die hard Celtics fan.
When it came out in paperback, and was updated to incorporate the Lakers winning the championship (yeah, you guessed it, I'm a Lakers fan) I saw that the writer took that into account and it was what got me to buy it.
I'm glad I waited to read this version because obviously his opinions are updated with the recent success of the Lakers, but also there's a lot of info that's been updated (with footnotes that are clearly marked as "updated" footnotes - I would have hated to have been this guy's editor!) which adds to his opinions, even changes some (in the case of Kobe).
Look Simmons has a ton of insight that not just a long love of the game has given him. Like any expert who has insight one of the requirements has to be an obsessive attraction to the subject matter and there is no question Simmons has that. And he is an entertaining writer. Yes, many of his pop culture references will probably be dated in less than a decade, but as he points out in the book, so will the appreciation we have for the athletes we so admire... then forget after they retire.
And Celtic and Laker rivalry aside, Simmons tried to be fair when he needed to be. He rags on Kareem throughout the book... except when he breaks down his standing in the player greats section. He sets aside the jabs and writes a very clear headed, balanced assessment of his game, ranking him number 3 of alltime. No Laker/Kareem fan can really ask for better treatment than that. On other Lakers he is also insightful. His chapter on Magic is very smart as Simmons is able to put Johnson in the proper perspective not only as a great player, but someone that changed the sport... and even transcended it with his personal life. His writing throughout the book on Wilt Chamberlain seems accurate enough, but will come off as harsh to his supporters. Too bad the big guy is not alive to have his say (wonder if Simmons planned it that way!). His chapter on Jerry West was really interesting, something I wasn't sure I felt captured the vibe of the player and the franchise he played for (and where I thought one of the places Simmon's bias for the Celtics showed through). But now that I've read West's book, I had to reassess Simmon's take -- it is very consistent with the way West himself saw his own playing days!
The problem I had with the book is obvious. As a fan of the Celtics I believe the writer gives too much credit to players like Russell and Bird and even Hondo. Look all three were great players, and two of the three changed the sport, but I have a problem with Bird being ranked 5th (again to his credit, Simmons ranks Magic 4th) when arguably one of the things that Bird lacked was defense. Obviously a fantastic shooter and passer and a great teammate... but not a great defender. He was obviously... a winner and that's why I concede Bird certainly belongs in the top ten with his offensive prowess. Again, I believe that if Simmons is going to rank Bird 4th he got it right with putting magic ahead of him. Magic was a better all around player and he could change his game to fit whatever personnel and style his teammates were capable of playing. Russell is another matter entirely. He is ranked 2nd. Should he be that high? Perhaps, but still Russell dominated as a player playing on a string of great teams in a very talent light league. I don't put Chamberlain as high for exactly the same reason (and more, which Simmons goes into relentlessly).
The other place the bias shows is the ranking of the greatest teams of all time. He has the 72 lakers at 9th. I watched every game that year and I can tell you, that team was amazing. Way better than they come off on paper. I tell people, this team was so good... Elgin Baylor started on the team at the beginning of the year... and retired. But the real egregious mistake is ranking the 2001 Los Angeles Lakers as 5th all time. As Simmons points out, this team had injuries throughout the season, but come March, and then throughout the playoffs, they were unbeatable... and I mean that almost literally. They came within one game of sweeping the entire playoffs. I got to believe that may never happen again. And you want to know something, I still don't think the above covers how awesome this team was. Again, saw every game and there was no question the Lakers were going to win it all... no one was even close.
So who does Simmons rank higher: the 89 Pistons (please!!!); 87 Lakers (I agree that team is in the running) the 96 Bulls (despite their W-L record, I believe they are a bit overrated, but yes I will acknowledge they are certainly in the top 5; and... wait for it... the 1986 Celtics. C'mon... really... seriously??? Simmons actually says that the 86 celtics would have "swollowed up" the 2001 lakers. Only in Simmon's dreams. First off, I think the 87 Lakers were better, and so were the 96 bulls.
So, as you can see, I had some problems. And I focused on these problems in this review... but it takes nothing away from what Bill Simmons achieved with this book (which I certainly hope he continues to update like Bill James once did with the Baseball Abstract). In fact this book is hands down the best book ever written on capturing the sport's greatness, and all over newcomers will probably be compared to this as the first and final test. This book was so insightful... that the last year Phil Jackson coached the Lakers he handed out a few copies to chosen players he knew were hoping to be students of the game.
Rating: really liked it
Really interesting book. I give it 5 stars for basketball stuff and 1 for the author's attempts at sophomoric humor. I didn't think sophomoric humor was particularly funny when I was, you know - a sophomore!! It was great fun to read about the exploits of some of the guys on my favorite basketball cards. Anxiously waiting for the one NBA game on TV that week whomever was playing - great memories of watching Bob Lanier and Wes Unseld even though I was a Celtics fan. This book takes me back to those days as well as new info to me on LeBron and Kobe since I no longer follow the NBA like I did as a kid. Over 800 pages chock full of basketball tidbits and insights. Overall it is definitely a book for basketball junkies but not for a casual reader.
Rating: really liked it
Good historical overview of best players and best teams in NBA history. You have to be a hardcore NBA fan to enjoy this book, and even if you are Simmons’ *unique* writing style can be a lot.
Rating: really liked it
Each summer we in the United States go from having 3 great sports to watch and talk about, to having one okay sport. But sports television keeps going for 24 hours a day. I watch sports TV with lunch, but in summer, it's so boring that I often end up doing the dishes instead.
For the last three years, I've spent my summer lunches going through this book. Simmons is better than most sports journalists inasmuch as he can write more than one sentence without making me cringe, and he has a sense of humor. Is that worth 700 pages? It if you're reading it over three years. It is not if you think these sorts of things should be 'objective,' which is ridiculous.
Well, this is not objective, and who cares, it's *freaking sports people, one small step up from daytime soap operas in terms of importance*. One fairly embarassing problem with this book, though. Allow me a digression.
I had a friend in high school who, for some reason, had an extremely upper class English accent. Was he English? No. He wasn't faking it either. But it made him stand out among the rest of us, all proud strines ('Australian'). To fit in, he tried to swear a lot. It was even worse than the original accent. Imagine if someone in the middle of a BBC mini series suddenly started calling the women bitches.
I bring this up because Simmons, too, tries to fit in, only in his case he's trying to fit in with a very blokey sports culture. So every second page has a story about a strip club, or how women should stay in the kitchen, or how WNBA isn't basketball. Bill Simmons: any WNBA player could beat you at basketball, and any WNBA player could beat you in a fight. So could any stripper. Please stop with the "I'm just one of the guys" shtick. It's embarrassing for you, and more than a little demeaning to, well, all women.
But as I mentioned, this is a book about basketball. It is entertainment, and that is all. No need to get too upset.
