Basketball Bill Simmons Book Report

“The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy” by Bill Simmons, was a book only the Sports Guy could write. Save a few hundred pages for Simmons to inform the readers on how he became the basketball and Celtics fan he is today (hint: it was his dad choosing between a motorcycle and season tickets to the Celtics), why as a child he called himself Jabaal Abdul-Simmons, footnotes galore, his hatred for Isiah Thomas and Wilt Chamberlain, and many of the greatest “What-if’s” in basketball history. Other than that, Bill Simmons uses this behemoth of a book to indulge on what he has thought to be “The Secret” of basketball and winning championships, and gives his take on how the NBA Hall of Fame should be constructed. In a pyramid style ranking with five levels Bill Simmons has who he thinks should be where, as of 2009, and each level getting smaller and smaller due to the higher standard. It all ends with the 12 best of all time, sitting atop the pyramid like kings with Michael Jordan number one. Again there was no one other than Simmons to write this book. Who else could write “You could dress me red, drop in into a Crips neighborhood, tell me that I have 12 minutes to start a high-caliber NBA conversation before somebody puts a cap in my

For example, Grant Hughes describes in an article, written in 2014, about the San Antonio Spurs, and how their “style”, unselfishness, and no “me first” guys have been the base of their dynasty over the last 20 years or so. Compare the article to Bill Simmons’ secret of basketball, and Hughes uses it perfectly to describe how the Spurs have built their dynasty. Ultimately, Simmons does it better, mainly for the fact the Spurs are nearly perfect and merely describing them would give you a pretty good idea of the secret told by Bill