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Nov 28, 2009

William rated it:

Reprinted from my website Secure Immaturity:

The Sports Guy (aka Bill Simmons) is an engaging, Internet personality. He previously wrote a book that was a collection of his highly successful and entertaining Internet postings regarding his beloved Red Sox. Any fan of Simmons knows that he is a rabid Boston sports fanatic, most notably the Celtics and Red Sox. If there is any weakness to his writing it is that he is insanely biased to those Boston teams. When approaching topics from a More...

11 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jul 20, 2011

Jesse rated it:

a lot of great basketball history almost ruined by two things: 1) a sometimes sickening love for the boston celtics and 2) finding david fosters wallace's style in a book about basketball (replete, with made-up proper noun titles, exuberant friendly narrative voice and a scholarly knowledge mixed with bawdy asides and metaphors, oh - and the dead giveaway - footnotes (not that dfw has a total claim to footnotes, but simmons uses them in almost the exact same way)... but other than these two thin More...

10 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 27, 2011

David rated 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 t More...

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Oct 29, 2011

Courtney rated it:

I figure I read about half this book, and I understood maybe a third of what I did read, and I've retained perhaps 10 percent of what I did read (in fact, I believe this is what I learned: basketball is a game that, at the professional level, rewards individuals for playing selfishly, and thus endangers team success; the NBA had a long spell when players were coked out of their skulls; the NBA was deeply racist for its first few decades; Michael Jordon is indisputably the greatest basketball pla More...

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Oct 12, 2011

Ricardo rated it:

Second to Peter King, Bill Simmons is one of my favorite sports writers, as he provides a neat outlook to the world of sports. A self-proclaimed basketball connoisseur, Simmons tackles the history of basketball in this mammoth of a book. There's A LOT of information to take in from this, as Simmons gives his insights on what was and what should be of the NBA, notably his notion of transforming the Hall of Fame into a "Pantheon" system where players are ranked by tiers.

The w More...

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Jul 29, 2011

Ben rated it:

Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of Simmons. Sure he's not the "best" sportswriter (my personal favorite is ESPN's Phil Ball, who covers the Spanish soccer league, La Liga) but it is easy to chuckle while reading his columns and appreciate how he weaves pop culture into his columns. His new fabulous Grantland website is also something that should be applauded.

While I enjoyed parts of this book, the problems I see with it are as follows:
1) length (750 pages) 2) part More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 29, 2011

Derek rated 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 interjec More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 14, 2011

Bradley rated it:

Disclosure: I regularly listen to Bill Simmons B.S. Report podcasts and I usually read his columns on espn.com thus I'm a fan of his work.

That being said, I was somewhat disappointed with TBOB. Overall it was very insightful, but parts of it were a little tiresome. I found myself skimming certain portions - especially if they dealt with players that played in the NBA during the 50s and 60s. Other than a few interesting tidbits about the history of the NBA (evolution of the shot clo More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 28, 2011

Dalton added it

this is not the book i read but there was a different one but the book i read was pretty good because i like the lakers and there was a lot a pages on the lakers and it talked about on how kobe Bryant used to be number 8 but now he is number 24 and he still plays for the lakers and they talked about all the old players like magic johnson,larry bird, Micheal Jordan but i really loved this book and this is probably the best book that i have read about sports in a long time but there was really any More...

1 comment like

Apr 25, 2011

Ian rated it:

Phew! Just finished this massive tome (it's so big it stopped a bullet on ESPN's Sports Nation)-- totally worth it! Unfortunately, because of his penchant for writing about pop culture almost as much as he writes about sports (and for the 'unforgiveable' sin of actually being funny), Simmons is often overlooked when people think of the nationâs top sportswriters and his insights are similarly underrated. But, in my humble opinion, thereâs no doubt that the man is the greatest sportswriter More...

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Feb 25, 2011

Tony rated it:

What would possess me, a person who's interest in basketball never went beyond an admiration of Magic Johnson and a unfounded love for Dr. J and the 76ers, to read a 700 page book about the sport? Not even a history of the sport, nope, just a huge book about the NBA, why would I even remotely want to read this?

A couple of factor's worked in it's favor here. My relatively newly found love for sports (that would make 15 year old Tony stab me with a lightsaber). A desperate yearn to r More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 03, 2011

Matt rated it:

Ok this book was much larger than I ever thought it would be (700 pages), but was probably the quickest i ever got through 700 pages. Bill Simmons is a new-age sports journalist that avoids contact with the athletes themselves and writes from a fan's perspective using only common sense and his own observation to come to his conclusions. He also mixes in a heavy dose of popular culture references in his sports writing which makes him accesible to a wide range of fans and is probably one of the mo More...

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Apr 12, 2010

Paul rated 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 analysi More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 29, 2010

Blog on Books rated it:

With the NCAA March Madness in full effect, we thought it would be a good time to take a look at one of the definitive books on basketball. And while Bill Simmons’ new brick is based on the NBA, the seasonal fanaticism of both worlds is equally intense.

Simmons has spent his life absorbing all things NBA from his childhood as a Boston Celtics fanatic (when Simmons was just five, his dad chose Celtics season tickets over a new motorcycle for his own birthday gift – which got young Simm More...

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Feb 13, 2010

Daniel rated it:

In the interest of complete disclosure, I have to say that I am one of the biggest fans of the NBA that you will find. I have been since about 1980 and I have a lot of useless basketball trivia floating around in my head. That said, I have nothing on Bill Simmons (though I would love to chat with him about it some day).

If you are a casual fan of the sport, this book is probably not for you except maybe for use as a sports reference book or some great bathroom fodder. It reads sort o More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 06, 2010

Nate rated it:

I was hoping for a more concise opinion on what makes basketball great, but this book was mostly entertaining, pretty informative, and definitely comprehensive, if you like professional basketball. I didn't realize the book would leave out the last 10 years of basketball.

I loved the descriptions on what makes basketball players and teams great, and what makes basketball great. And I learned about a lot of stars that influenced the game but were great in the days before I was born or More...

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Jan 28, 2010

Nick rated it:

I am a fan of Bill Simmons' columns and podcasts. I also read his earlier book on the Boston Redsox.

Compared to his other work, this book was just a grind. I didn't read it so much as cross it off my todo list. At 700 pages, it is long, but I actually didn't notice myself watching the page number too much. It was more that the different rankings and lists just seem to go on forever. I also don't think the book turned out this way due to a lack of effort on Simmons' part. It just see More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 10, 2010

Hilary rated 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 More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 01, 2010

Man Ching rated it:

I read Bill Simmons’s The Book of Basketball. I enjoyed his book, as it is a fun survey of NBA history. The book isn’t just a numbers game or just breaking down plays. It includes enough human interest elements that it should appeal to a casual fan or diffident parties (like me; I can count the number of basketball games I’ve seen – TV or live – on both hands.) Simmons does a fantastic job of conveying his love of basketball. For me, he really brought different basketball eras to life, inserting More...

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Dec 18, 2009

Jake rated 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 d More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 14, 2009

Joe rated it:

Wow. Simmons' masterpiece. An exhaustive and very readable book about the NBA. Extremely thoroughly researched, he ranks the 96 top players in NBA history, giving a slightly nonsensical explanation of why he chose the number 96. The ranking is the centerpiece of his new vision for the basketball hall of fame--a vision which would almost certainly make it the greatest of all sporting halls of fame. Even if you disagree with his arguments, you cannot disagree with the level of his research. More...

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Dec 12, 2009

Brett rated it:

Ok, so I'm a huge Bill Simmons fan, between his columns and his podcast. I'm a decent NBA fan, following it from afar during the season and closer during the playoffs. I much prefer the NFL. However, a book about basketball now and in the past is probably more interesting than just about any other sport, and having Simmons do the work makes is much more interesting than just about anything else.

The premise is this: how do teams and players over the past 50 years of the NBA really More...

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Dec 05, 2009

Andrew rated 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 ta More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 18, 2009

Jan rated 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 shiv More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 09, 2009

David rated it:

Excellent book. I wasn't familiar with this guy but plan to start checking out his column on the web. A true NBA mega-fanatic of about the same age as me, biased toward the Celtics (he names '86 Celtics ahead of '96 Bulls as best team ever, which I agree with but which I suspect would be a minority view), so a lot of his comments/analyses are simpatico.

700 pages with about 1000 footnotes might seem like a bit much, but his 96 thru 1 countdowns of best players ever, 20 through 1 of More...

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Nov 08, 2009

Patrick rated it:

You need to have your YouTube page up and running when you're reading this so you can check out all the references Simmons makes. From the Hawks celebrating when Larry Bird makes an impossible shot against them to Gabe Kaplan in Battle of the Network Stars, you'll be marveling at the twin towers of sports and pop culture that Simmons knows so very, very well.

Simmons entertains and instructs like no other sports columnist today. Whether making pronouncements or asides, raising or sett More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 22, 2012

Tasos rated it:

After dealing with a book about baseball in the beginning of the year I thought it would be better to read something more familiar to me so I can be totally aware of stats and terms that I am so much fond of it. I thought that due to my love for the particular sport it won’t take me so much time to finish it despite the fact that it was more than 700 pages but it proved that I was wrong. Not so easy to catch up with the challenge now that I saw at a moment that I was already five books behind. S More...

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Oct 09, 2011

Michael rated it:

This book is entertaining. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants an entertaining book about basketball. However, if someone wants an objective, encyclopedic account on the history of the sport, well... it would be for the best that I steer them elsewhere. Simmons writes from the fan experience, which makes sense because he is a basketball fan (or addict, to be more accurate). When he discusses players, games or eras, he simply cannot provide all the minute insights that a player wo More...

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Apr 08, 2010

Dkmoorhead rated it:

Picture the following scenario...your favorite blogger or web columnist decides essentially take a year off from blogging, only the keep writing about the one subject they truly know anything about. Only instead of writing about a bunch of other stuff too, they focus on that one thing and go vertical on you, writing more expansively about the history of that subject and not just what's happening today. Also, they can swear and openly discuss porn.

Now imagine that what came out of tha More...

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Dec 03, 2011

Joyce added it

In the midst of one of the NBA's periodic dry spells, the long-time fan finds comfort and refreshment by going to the well of the past every so often. Bill Simmons's book is perfect for someone from Gen X like me, who lived through the great era of the sport stretching from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Michael Jordan. I sort of wonder how relevant the meat of this book -- Simmons' list of the greatest players of pro basketball -- would seem to younger fans who maybe have never even seen video of Moses More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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