"Book of Basketball' by Bill Simmons

Norman Mailer used to talk of being compelled to "read competitively" when it came to the work of contemporary novelists. So I approached the decision as to whether to read Bill Simmons's The Book of Basketball quite gingerly: Here was yet another big book about the game I like to think I know best. Upon reading it, would I curse my sloth and cowardice for not having written it myself?

I resolved this question one night when I glanced at my local paper and saw that Simmons was reading on a Thursday, only to find, when I arrived at the appointed venue, that I was a week late: He had appeared the previous Thursday. So instead, I browsed the book and immediately divined that Simmons fully and adequately appreciated Bill Walton's majestic artistry and injury-aborted greatness for a season and a half in Portland, just before Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were to enter and commercially transform the National Basketball Association.

Moving on in my exploratory browse, I found that Simmons was equally appreciative of the destructively satanic influence of that legendary mercenary Spencer Haywood, who scabbed the U.S. into another Olympic gold medal in 1968 when the more heralded black collegiate stars were banding together in a rare spirit of collective action to boycott the games and jeopardize Amerika's hitherto unchallenged basketball hegemony. Enter the 19-year-old Haywood, an unknown junior college phenom who was willing to carry the U.S. banner that Lew Alcindor, Wesley Unseld and Elvin Hayes had left lying around, and the narcissistic blow of an American Olympic hoops loss was deferred for a while.

Then I noticed the big "30% off" sticker, and happily bought the book, thinking myself altogether smart and temperate, insouciantly jettisoning my apprehensions. Besides, my son— a pretty discerning 22-year-old Division III point guard and ESPN maven, gave Simmons his stamp of approval.

All the major debates

I'm now stalled around page 60 of 704, but I've browsed, darted around, and peeked ahead at Simmons's comprehensive ranking of the best players and teams of all time sufficiently know where his argument is going and to appreciate the comprehensive scope of his endeavor, not to mention his objective of settling all the major debates (from Bill Russell vs. Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West vs. Oscar Robertson on down).

Simmons delights in flaunting his credentials and implicit biases (which he seems to believe his immersion in data can override). He grew up sharing his divorced father's season tickets to the Boston Celtics, and lived through the Bird-and-Magic Era from his catbird seat in Boston Garden. Moving on to ESPN, he has seen it all, Simmons cheerfully tells us. But he really isn't old enough to have seen the early greats coming up, as I did back in the '50s and '60s.

Does this matter? For a basketball historian, is being younger than the NBA really such a problem?

A glaring factual error

Maybe not, I thought, if the factual and opinion-devouring scope of the book is so grand. But then, on page 41, I discovered a glaring factual error. Simmons has inflated Eric "Sleepy" Floyd's incredible 29-point quarter in a 1987 playoff game against the Minneapolis Lakers to 33. I happen to have seen that marvelous performance live, making the error rankle more in my eyes, and stick more adhesively in my craw. Simmons ought to know that 33 would be a record, whereas 29 is simply a great great quarter. This difference should matter, on the author's own terms. If not, one has to question whether his claimed expertise is betrayed by arbitrariness disguised as factoid.

But OK, I told myself— he gets one error. Never mind that I've started to feel more and more annoyed by the footnotes, admittedly self-indulgent excursions in which Simmons raises his internal dialogues to what he seems to feel is a new art form— a hard sell when he's discussing pornography and Las Vegas as if these constitute subject areas that any real basketball lover is sure to value in equal measure to Picasso and Shakespeare.

"'What if?' scenarios

Then I started to browse again and was drawn to several "What if?" scenarios. I was most intrigued when Simmons asked: "What if the Knicks had drafted Rick Barry in 1965 instead of Bill Bradley?" But I was dismayed to find that Simmons has Barry graduating from the University of San Francisco (alma mater of his beloved Bill Russell), instead of the University of Miami, where Barry was "coached" by his future father-in-law, Bruce Hale.

Enough, I cried, in spleen! I recalled how something similar happened with a book that I still manage to love, Nelson George's Elevating the Game: A History of Black Men and Basketball, in which I nearly lost it when George has Guy Rodgers playing for Villanova (instead of Temple). But George is a music guy who researched basketball history comprehensively for his book, which is brilliant because of its social history and clever analogizing of basketball styles to musical ones.

So for George, what's the difference between Temple and Villanova? At least George got the city right, and this particular error doesn't undercut his argument at all.

Tragic curmudgeon?

On the other hand, if you're going to tell me— as Bill Simmons does— that you can really show that Russell was better than Wilt, and that Jerry West was superior to Oscar Robertson, you can't afford to miss lay-ups along the way. If your stock in trade is data, please get it right. And stop calling Oscar Robertson a tragic curmudgeon because he doesn't buy into all the crap that went along with the kindergartenization of the NBA.

In many respects Simmons makes a convincing case that Russell should be ranked ahead of Chamberlain— not a conclusion that I easily accept. But his assessment of the relative talent level of their respective supporting tasks (in an effort to show that they were not so equal as is generally thought) incorporates spurious groupings and arbitrary categories that obscure and mislead more than they illuminate. There are all-stars and all-stars, as Simmons himself points out.

The always wise and sagacious Russell used to call basketball a simple game, played by grown men in short pants. Well, the pants ain't short any more. When you claim to have all the answers, the devil in the details will have the last word.♦


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