The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy

by Bill Simmons

According to Goldman, great athletes fade from memory not because they’re surpassed by better ones, but because we forget about them or our memories are tainted by things that have nothing to do with their career (like Bill Russell being a lousy announcer or O.J. being a lousy ex-husband). Here’s the killer excerpt: “The greatest struggle an athlete undergoes is the battle for our memories. It’s gradual. It begins before you’re aware that it’s begun, and it ends with a terrible fall from grace. It really is a battle to the death.”

Of any sports figure that I could have possibly met at any time in my life, getting introduced to Isiah that summer would have been my number one draft pick for the Holy Shit, Is This Gonna Be Awkward draft. Isiah doubled as the beleaguered GM of the Knicks and a frequent column target, someone who once threatened “trouble” if we ever crossed paths.7 This particular moment seemed to qualify. After the PR guy and I explained to Gus why a Simmons-Isiah introduction would be a stupefyingly horrific idea, Gus confidently countered, “Hold on, I got this, I got this, I’ll fix this.” And he wandered off as our terrified PR buddy said, “I’m getting out of here—good luck!”

“The secret of basketball,” he told me, “is that it’s not about basketball.” The secret of basketball is that it’s not about basketball.

They won because they liked each other, knew their roles, ignored statistics and valued winning over everything else. They won because their best players sacrificed to make everyone else happy. They won as long as everyone remained on the same page. By that same token, they lost if any of those three factors weren’t in place.

The success of the group assures the success of the individual, but not the other way around.

You know what it’s like, actually? O. J. Simpson’s murder trial. A few days after the Goldman/Brown killings, when the Juice made his aborted attempt to flee to Mexico, an overwhelming majority of Americans assumed he was guilty. His criminal trial started and we learned about a pattern of corruption and racism within the L.A. Police Department. We discovered that much of the blood evidence was mishandled. We watched the overwhelmed prosecution team unforgivably botch its case. But none of it mattered because this guy had to be guilty. After all, his blood dripped all over the crime scene, he didn’t have an alibi during the time of the murders, he had a mysterious cut on his left middle finger that matched the drips of blood from someone who fled the crime scene, he had a history of threatening and beating his wife, there were no other suspects and it seemed preposterous that so many inept policemen and forensic scientists could collaboratively conspire to frame someone on such short notice.2 Smartly, if not reprehensibly, the defense team battered the race card home—that was their only chance to get a guilty person acquitted, even if it meant splintering the country and damaging the relationship between blacks and whites in the process—and lucked out because many of the dense jurors couldn’t understand the damaging DNA evidence in the pre-CSI era. To everyone’s disbelief, O. J. Simpson walked. Facing more competent attorneys and a lesser level of proof one year later, the...

There was the time Fort Wayne famously beat the Lakers 19–18. There was the five-OT playoff game between Rochester and Indy in which the winner of each overtime tap held the ball for the rest of the period to attempt a winning shot, leading to a bizarre situation in which Rochester’s home fans booed and booed and ultimately started leaving in droves even with the game still going. The ’53 Playoffs averaged an unbelievable eighty free throws per game. The anti-electrifying ’54 Finals featured scores of 79–68, 62–60, 81–67, 80–69, 84–73, 65–63 and 87–80. You get the idea.

When Syracuse owner Danny Biasone7 created the 24-second shot clock, his brainstorm didn’t do much except for speeding up possessions, eliminating stalling, hiking league scoring by 13.6 points per team and basically saving the league. How did he arrive at 24? Biasone studied games he remembered enjoying and realized that, in each of those games, both teams took around 60 shots. Well, 60 + 60 = 120. So Biasone settled on 120 shots as the minimum combined total that would be acceptable from a “I’d rather kill myself than watch another NBA game like this” standpoint. And if you shoot every 24 seconds over the course of a 48-minute game, that comes out to … wait for it … 120 shots! Biasone came up with the idea in 1951 and spent three years selling the other owners on it, even staging an exhibition game for them in August 1954, using a shot clock, to prove the idea worked. That’s how we ended up with a 24-second clock. Of course, the nitwits in Springfield didn’t induct him until 2000, which would have been touching if poor Biasone hadn’t been dead for eight years. Really, inventing the shot clock and saving professional basketball wasn’t enough of an accomplishment to make the Basketball Hall of Fame for forty-one years? And you wonder why I’m blowing it up later in the book. Personally, I think we should create a $24 bill and put Biasone’s picture on it.

Hard to take those numbers at face value, right? And that’s before factoring in offensive goaltending (legal at the time), the lack of athletic big men (significant) and poor conditioning (which meant nobody played defense). I watched a DVD of Wilt’s 73-point game in New York and two things stood out: First, he looked like a McDonald’s All-American center playing junior high kids; nobody had the size or strength to consider dealing with him. Second, because of the balls-to-the-wall speed of the games, the number of touches Wilt received per quarter was almost unfathomable. Wilt averaged nearly 40 field goal attempts and another 17 free throw attempts per game during his 50-point season. Exactly forty years later, Shaq and Kobe averaged a combined 52 points a game on nearly the same amount of combined field-goal/free-throw attempts.

Chicago’s 72-win season. The perfect storm of the right era (the league at its most diluted), right team (a pissed-off Bulls team hell-bent on reclaiming its throne) and right alpha dog (a possessed Jordan coming off his “baseball sabbatical” and a humiliating playoff defeat). I can’t imagine anyone finishing a season with fewer than 10 losses. It’s too improbable.

Rasheed Wallace’s 41 technicals. In just 77 games! In other words, Sheed averaged an astonishing 0.53 technicals per game for the 2000–01 season; it’s like Teddy Ballgame’s .406 but for semi-homicidal sports marks.P5

What if Kobe was convicted of sexual assault instead of settling with his accuser out of court for big bucks? Whoops, I forgot that in 2005 everyone in the Los Angeles area agreed to pretend this never happened. Now they act perturbed if anyone else brings it up (or broaches it). I live in L.A. right now, so unfortunately, I have to follow the code. When I move back East someday, we’ll update this section in the next printing. Stay tuned.

What if the Suns didn’t screw up a potential Nash dynasty with some of the cheapest and most perplexing moves ever made? I wanted to avoid playing the “What if the front office did this instead of this?” game because it’s so subjective, but Phoenix’s wretched game plan from 2004 to 2008 had to be commemorated in some way. Here’s a detailed look. During the same summer they signed Nash, Phoenix traded the seventh pick in the ’04 Draft (and a chance to take either Luol Deng or Andre Iguodala) to Chicago for $3 million and a 2006 number one. One week later, they signed Quentin Richardson to a six-year, $42.6 million deal, even though they could have drafted Deng or Iguodala and paid either of them one-third what Richardson was getting. They kept Richardson for one year before swapping Q and their twenty-first pick (Nate Robinson) in the ’05 draft to the Knicks for Kurt Thomas. Two summers later, they dumped Thomas on Seattle along with two number ones just to shed him off their cap for tax purposes. As astounding as this sounds, Bryan Colangelo’s decision to sign Richardson instead of just drafting Deng or Iguodala—which was dumb at the time, by the way—ended up costing them four first-round picks!

I hate delving into the Marty McFly Zone when many of the aforementioned screwups were interrelated, but let’s figure out how the Suns could have turned out if cheapskate owner Sarver didn’t sign off on the aforementioned game plan in 2004. They could have had a six-man nucleus of Nash, Marion, Stoudemire, Johnson, Leandro Barbosa and Deng/Iguodala from 2004 to the present that shouldn’t have been touched; now add first-rounders in ’05, ’06 and ’08 for tax purposes. Even if they surrounded that nucleus with draft picks, minimum-wage veterans and February buyout guys and did nothing else, wouldn’t they have been positioned for the short term and long term better than any franchise in the latter half of this decade? The bigger question: why own an NBA team if you’re going to cut costs? What’s the point? Why would that be fun? So people could stare at you during dinner and whisper, “Hey, that’s the cheap-ass who owns the Suns”? This pisses me off. What a wasted chance, and what a waste of Nash’s prime. (Note to the Phoenix fans: you can now light yourselves on fire.)

Question no. 1: If you replaced each MVP candidate with a decent player at his position for the entire season, what would be the hypothetical effect on his team’s records? You can’t define the word “valuable” any better. Say you switched Rasual Butler for Kevin Durant during the summer of ’09. How would Oklahoma City’s 2009–10 season have turned out? They grabbed the eighth seed in a wicked conference thanks to Durant, a beloved leader, teammate, spokesman and crunch-time guy for the youngest roster in the league. Switch him with Butler and the Zombie Sonics probably finish 23–59 instead of 50–32. Ranking the 2010 MVP candidates by this question alone, LeBron ranks first, Durant ranks second, Dwyane Wade third, Dwight Howard fourth and Eddy Curry last.

Question no. 2: In a giant pickup game with every NBA player available and two knowledgeable fans forced to pick five-man teams, with their lives depending on the game’s outcome, who would be the first player picked based on how everyone played that season?

Question no. 3: Ten years from now, who will be the first player from that season who pops into my head?

For Jazz fans, watching Stockton was like being trapped in the missionary position for two decades. Yeah, you were having regular sex (or in this case, winning games), but you weren’t exactly bragging to your friends or anything. He was very, very, very, very good but never great, personified by all those second-team and third-team All-NBA appearances and the fact that he never cracked the top six of the MVP voting. He bored everyone to death with those predictable high screens with Malone, the blank expression on his face77 and a sweeping lack of flair. He made the Dream Team only because Isiah had burned so many bridges that Stockton was a much safer choice.78 I always thought he was more fun not to like. He didn’t have a nickname and modeled his haircut after the LEGO Man. He deserves partial responsibility for Utah’s appallingly methodical style of play in the nineties. He pulled enough dirty stunts over the years to make Bruce Bowen blush, routinely tripping opponents as they curled off screens, setting moving picks by sticking his knee out at the last second, “mistakenly” punching in the nuts anyone who blind-picked him … and yet nobody ever called him out on this shit because he looked like he could have replaced Brenda and Brandon’s dad on 90210.79

And so where you stand on Scottie depends on one question: do you give up on anyone who ever made a stupid mistake? We all remember that fateful ’94 Knicks series, when Scottie refused to finish Game 3 because Phil Jackson called the final play for Kukoc (who swished the game-winner with Pippen sulking on the bench). A betrayed Bill Cartwright screamed at Pippen afterward with tears rolling down his face, later calling it the biggest disappointment of his career.7 And maybe it was. Of course, Scottie carried a Jordan-less Bulls squad to 55 wins by himself. It had become his team, and when it’s your team, a mind-set takes hold: everything rests on your shoulders, everyone is gunning for you and you can’t take a night off. You become the pumped-up star of your own action movie. Unless you think like a superhero, you won’t survive. Scottie wasn’t wired that way, so he had to play the role of the alpha dog

Chris was right: in Cleveland, LeBron wanted to amaze over anything else. Once he finally tired of carrying lesser players and sought help, he announced his decision during a callously hateful free agency special on ESPN, just two days after his Twitter account opened, a few days before his website and management company launched, and a few weeks before he started filming his first sports movie.41 You could say The Decision amazed, that’s for sure.42 Throughout the summer, its stench lingered like a decomposing body trapped in a hot attic. In the span of sixty minutes, LeBron blindsided Cleveland as viciously as any athlete ever did; turned the country against him without doing drugs, saying something offensive, committing a crime or doing something sexually inappropriate; came off like a giant pussy for wanting to join forces with Wade over wanting to beat him (something Jordan never, ever, ever would have done); angered everyone in the Legends Club (none of whom could believe Wade and Jordan wanted to be each other’s Robin over being Batman on their own teams); created a phrase that quickly became a euphemism for leaving a job, jerking off or taking a dump (“I’m taking my talents to South Beach”); dejuvenated Jim Gray’s career (which wasn’t even juvenated to begin with); nearly blew up the Internet and sports radio; and sparked two months of intense psychoanalysis in which writers wondered if LeBron played it so stupidly because (a) he was a child star who had too much s...

Solid analogy at the time, even better now. Dominant, but not the best. Memorable, but not the best. Unstoppable, but not the best. Shaq won three Finals MVP’s in overpowering fashion, but he only took home one regular season MVP. He won four rings and could have won a fifth if Dwyane Wade hadn’t gotten hurt in 2005 … but he somehow got swept out of the playoffs six other times. He became such a singular fantasy advantage that my league forced teams to pay a Shaq Tax for two straight years (pick him and lose a sixth-round pick)8 … but his free throw struggles made him such a liability that he was pulled late from a few close playoff battles.9 He only took basketball seriously for one entire season (1999–2000) and intermittently for the other eighteen …

Now that we have that settled, let’s quickly delve into something that I normally hate: numbers. You always hear about stats with Wilt, Oscar, Bird, Magic and LeBron, but Hakeem never comes up even though he’s the all-time “holy shit” stat guy other than Wilt. He averaged a 20–11 as a rookie and never dipped below a 21–12 for the next twelve years, seemingly peaking in ’89 and ’90 (averaging a 25–14–3 with 2.3 steals and 4.1 blocks), then peaking again from ’92 to ’95 (a 27–11–4 with 3.9 blocks). If we created a stat called “stocks” (just steals plus blocks), Hakeem topped 300-plus stocks with at least 100 blocks/steals in twelve different seasons (nearly double anyone else),25 notched 550 in 1990 (the only time anyone’s ever topped 500) and finished with 1,045 combined in ’89 and ’90 (the only time anyone ever topped 1,000 combined in two years). During his peak, Dream caused five turnovers per game along with countless other layups and runners he probably affected from game to game. (Note: I like “stocks” because it gives you an accurate reflection of his athletic ability and the havoc he wreaked on both ends. No modern center was better offensively and defensively than Dream. I should have come up with “stocks” four hundred pages ago. Crap.) He finished with 5,992 career stocks in 1,238 games (and another 717 stocks in 145 playoff games), coming within 8 stocks of becoming the only living member of the 6,000 Stock Club. As it is, he’ll have to settle for being the only ...

Kobe’s 81-point game defined his pre-Gasol legacy for better and worse. He was bitterly selfish that season—irritated by his brutal supporting cast, Shaq’s success in Miami and the thought of his prime wasting away—to the degree that I joked, “The best part about playing craps with Kobe must be watching him eventually drift over to the ‘Don’t Pass’ line.”54 But 81 points??? No perimeter player can hit that mark without a disarming amount of ballhogging. I watched with my father: we found ourselves fascinated by Kobe’s icy demeanor, the lack of enthusiasm from L.A.’s bench, even the dysfunctional way his teammates killed themselves going for rebounds and steals to get him more shots.55 When an exhausted Kobe reached eighty-one and Jackson (who had returned that season) subbed for him, his teammates greeted him with halfhearted hugs and high-fives. The best reaction belonged to Jackson, who seemed amused, supportive and somewhat mortified, like how Halle Berry’s husband probably looked after sitting through his first screening of Monster’s Ball. Only later would we appreciate the significance of the second-highest scoring outburst ever … as well as the comedy of Kobe finishing with just two assists. Never has an NBA star wolfed it up quite like that.

I once asked my father, “Would you read a column about how underrated Tim Duncan is?” Dad made a face. He played with his hair. He seemed confused. “A whole column on Tim Duncan?” “You wouldn’t read it?” “I don’t think so. I’d see the headline, skim the first two paragraphs, and flip to the next article.” “Seriously? He’s the best player of the past ten years!” “Nahhhhhhh,” Dad maintained. “Nobody wants to read about Tim Duncan. He’s not that interesting.”

Nobody in NBA history can approach the next two lines: Kareem, 1971: 27-19-3, 61% FG, Finals MVP Kareem, 1985: 26-9-5, 61% FG, Finals MVP Chew on that one for a second. Kareem took home Finals MVPs fourteen seasons apart—once during year three of the Nixon presidency, once during year five of the Reagan presidency.

Story no. 1: It’s Game 1 of the 1992 NBA Finals and the painfully forced “Drexler or Jordan?” storyline (this page) is in full swing, as well as Portland’s “we’re gonna make them beat us by shooting threes” plan that they were stupid enough to mention to the press. Clyde Drexler is about to get athletically sodomized by Jordan on national television. We just don’t know it yet. Portland jumps out to a 17–9 lead with six minutes remaining. Chicago’s crowd can’t get into it. Portland is running the floor and gaining confidence. Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version of the next 17 minutes of game time: MJ 3 … MJ 2 + 1 … MJ 3 … MJ 3 … MJ 2 … MJ 2 (first quarter ends: 33–30, Blazers, Jordan has 18 and sits down for a breather) … MJ comes back in (45–44, Chicago) … MJ 2 … MJ 3 … MJ steal +2 … MJ 2 … MJ 3 … MJ follow-up dunk for 2 … awkward Drexler air ball 3 … MJ 3 + shrug114 … third Portland time-out of quarter … Chicago 66, Portland 49. Jordan scored 33 points in 17 minutes, 35 for the half, outscored Drexler by 27, and broke the record for playoff threes in one half. This actually happened.

The Best Porn Name All-Stars: Dick Pound, Pete LaCock, Ken Bone, Misty Hyman, Ben Gay, Magic Johnson, Rich Harden, Dick Trickle, Rusty Kuntz, Billy “the Whopper” Paultz, Butch Huskey, Randy “Big Unit” Johnson, Hot Rod Williams, Dick Pole and Wayne Chism, with Mo Cheeks and Dick Harter as coaches.

But not for much longer—she filed for divorce a couple of months later. The good news is that Juanita Jordan will always live on for this story, as well as for one of the most awkward TV moments ever: when MJ was celebrating his first title in the locker room, they threw it to Bob Costas, who mistakenly introduced Juanita as Michael’s mother, followed by Michael coldly saying, “That’s my wife.”