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The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy |  | Author: Bill Simmons
Creator: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: ESPN
Category: Book
List Price: $30.00
Buy New: $12.50
as of 11/23/2009 00:05 MST details
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Rating:  48 reviews
Sales Rank: 23
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Printing
Pages: 736
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.5
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6 x 1.7
ISBN: 034551176X
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.323640973
EAN: 9780345511768
ASIN: 034551176X
Publication Date: October 27, 2009 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, October 2009: The Book of Basketball is a 700-page work of hoops genius that would make Dr. James Naismith beam proudly – and probably blush. Author Bill Simmons, best known as ESPN.com's "The Sports Guy," explores the NBA with hilarious insight, brilliant analysis, and a bevy of irreverent footnotes. Simmons is a fan first – a fact best explained in an entertaining foreword by Malcolm Gladwell – and writes from the stands, not the press room. His knowledge and passion for the game provide him with few peers, yet his voice represents those who stick by their teams through thick and thin. As a result, The Book of Basketball is not just a tribute to hardwood heroes, but also a celebration of yelling at TV sets, revering lucky jerseys, and holding our breath until the final buzzer sounds. Throw in pages of nearly-insane statistical breakdowns (including a projected boxscore from the movie Teen Wolf), and it's easy to see why fans of all levels should clear shelf space for this instant classic. --Dave Callanan
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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 48
 A book of NBA arguments November 22, 2009
Neil C. Ligon (Atlanta, GA)
This book is wildly entertaining, chalk full of footnotes showcasing The Sports Guy's usual sense of humor, and is a great way to brush up on NBA history, especially if you came to the NBA late as I did. Like his columns, this book is a blend of pop culture and sports, contains his unique opinions and insights as well as the research which he used to arrive at them, and it can be read in multiple installments without sacrificing the overall experience.
 Mediocre At Best November 22, 2009
B. Brown (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I received "The Book of Basketball" as a gift. It's the only reason I read it. For me, getting Bill Simmons' take on the greatest basketball players is similar to getting Bobby Knight's opinion on the 100 finest French recipes. Although I realize that any ranking of the 100 best players is bound to include some players that are controversial, one would expect that the players selected would be very close to the Top 100. For me, the inclusion of Robert Horry as all-time player #85 is an unforgiveable joke and the notion that Dennis Rodman is the 69th best player of all-time leaves me speechless. At no time was Dennis Rodman any better than the 3rd best player on his team and he is the 69th best player of all-time? Give me a break. I got the impression that selections like these were supposed to add some spice to this book. It simply caused me to question the credibility of the author. Simmons list excludes many players. I'll mention four- Maurice Lucas, Bob Love, Chet Walker and Alonzo Mourning. I would find it astounding that someone who watched basketball in the 70's would take Bobby Dandridge (Player 79) over Lucas, Love or Walker. I would find it silly that someone would take Horry and/or Rodman over the aforementioned players. I will acknowledge that Simmons' did provide some good insights. However, a readers assessment of the insights will ultimately be a function of Simmons' ultimate decisions as to which players were included in the list (as well as their ranking on the list) and which were excluded. For me, Simmons' ultimate rankings are so poor that it causes me to question the value of the insights.
Great Basketball For NBA Gym Rats! November 21, 2009
Jason Bresson (New York City, NY)
As a life long Knicks fan, some of the material (Celtics)
is hard to digest. However, Bill Simmons does a more than credible job.
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Answer: Bison's Deli, The Trinity, and Pulling the Goalie November 21, 2009
Matt C. (West Lafayette, IN USA)
Question: What are three titles Bill Simmons wanted to name his fantasy basketball teams? (I lied about the Pulling the Goalie part -- only because I forgot the third one and couldn't find it again amidst the 730 pages). You'll have to read the book to find out why -- it's worth it.
I'm jealous. Bill Simmons knows much, much, much more about basketball then me. I'm jealous he was able to attend hundreds of Boston Celtics games back in the day, and in the process see many of the greatest NBA players ever in the flesh. Me? I had to make due with two-paragraph game re-caps and a grainy 3" X 3" black & white photo (if I was lucky)in the next day's newspaper. Maybe, just maybe, a game was airing on TV a given weekend (and my beloved Pistons with Lanier and Bing were involved exactly once that I can remember).
But I'm happy for Bill. Some guys are lucky enough to be born near the ocean, and, as a result, become gnarly surfer dudes who are perpetually surrounded by a bevy of bikini babes; others are blessed to grow up in a beautiful landscape and enjoy the best of nature that most of us make special travel plans to visit; Bill's gift was to be immersed as a young lad in the NBA Experience at the perfect time -- the mid-seventies.
Yes, I know -- I hear the chorus of "Say Wha?" and "What you smokin'?" The early eighties (Bird/Magic Salvation) or early ninties (Jordan Rising) were the perfect times to be introduced to the NBA, right? No -- hear me out. If you were hooked by the NBA in the early to mid-seventies, you were a true fan. Anyone could jump on the bandwagon when the NBA was soaring to unprecedented heights. No, the perfect time to be introduced to the NBA (and, peripherally, the ABA) was the 70s.
It was during this time that the seeds of greatness were being sown. No disrepect to earlier eras (I'm old school to a fault), but the league desperately needed to evolve. Sky walkin'... afro growin'... dunk throwin' -- the stew was getting spicier, and to an awkward young kid who desperately wanted to be tall, smooth, and most importantly, Coooooool, the NBA was all that.
This is the basketball book I've always wanted to read: opiniated, highly-informed, up-front, even brash in places. At the same time, it is surprisingly insightful, fair, and even touching. (This book absolutely shines in the Elgin Baylor and Bill Walton sections -- as it does whenever Bill mentions his dad). I love the fact that Bill is unrestrained in these pages; regular readers of his [...] column know that he is akin to a spirited horse straining against the tight reins of editorship. There's a time and place for everything -- this is Bill's time and place to truly unleash the "Sports Guy" experience (or something).
I wish I could have rated this book with four-and-a-half stars. It provided all the color, personality, and pizazz that was missing from those brief newspaper write ups of my youth. It injected that absolutely subjective sub-text that makes any topic infinitely more interesting. In fact, the two reasons I docked a star from my rankings:
1) The title. Boooooooooring. A travesty -- it does the content, spirit, and impact of this book no justice. For a guy who is always skirting the edge and pushing the envelope (especially in a un-PC way), this is what you settled on for a title?!? You mentioned in a footnote that you almost went with A Brief and Occassionaly Biased History of the NBA --THERE'S YOUR TITLE!!! To use a basketball analogy: you stepped inside the three-point line on this one.
2) No special chapter on the NBA referees. An egregious ommission! A key running theme of Mr. Simmon's public discourse is eviscerating the zebras (a national pastime beloved by millions -- although, I admit, often unfair). Bill frequently skewers various whistle-blowers, so when I first heard about this book one of my initial thoughts was, "Wow, now Simmons can really let the fur fly and tell us unfortunate souls who haven't been able to see many games in person just why some of these guys were/are incompetent hacks." I wanted the same level of detail and unvarnished criticism he heaped upon Wilt, Kareem, and Rick (The Dick) Barry. In turn, I wanted praise for the true professionals -- the ones that enabled the game to be the quality product it was in its best moments. Alas, there are only a smattering of mutterings of calls gone wrong, and a nod of approval to the once-common, now long-gone practice of whistle-swallowing. Perhaps in his frequently promised (threatened?) volume due in 2016?
The bottom line is this: If you love the NBA (and the ABA); enjoy laughing; have a passing interest in pop culture, gambling and porn; are not offended by some raw language; have patience to let the book unfold (read the footnotes! Some take up more than half the page -- are those navel notes? Nipple notes?); then this book is for you.
Great book November 20, 2009
Greenleaf36
For any NBA fan, casual or die-hard, this is a great read with Bill Simmons view on the history of the league. Because he presents his theories and integrates his fan perspective analysis, it makes this an NBA book like none other.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 48
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