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

by Bill Simmons

On the flip side, we have copious amounts of evidence to suggest that West elevated his teams—he didn’t just make them better, they wanted to win for him, and not just that, he connected with them in the right way. Jerry West had a better handle on The Secret than Oscar Robertson, and that’s why West was better. By a hair, but still.

“Whites will always beat blacks in basketball because they care more and they are smarter” (just kidding; that joke was for Spike Lee, who thought Hoosiers was secretly racist and might be right);

After Fox first transforms into the wolf—the

once the shock wears off and the Wolf starts kicking ass, his teammates turn into props.

With his personal life falling apart as well, he makes a stunning decision to play the regional championship game as himself. You know the rest. The team meshes together and everyone plays a key role (especially number 45, who turns into Bill Russell); Fox explodes for an 18–8 with three steals52 and sinks the winning free throws (after recovering from a flagrant foul on a give-and-go that took eight seconds to complete even with four seconds left on the clock); the fans happily pour onto the court as Fox plants a smooch on his homely friend Boof; and we learn that you can still derive individual glory from winning. The end.

He spent his career vacillating between a Fox and a Wolf. The Fox persona dominated his first five NBA seasons, peaking in Year Five with his unparalled uber-sidekick performance in the ’01 playoffs. He battled an identity crisis during Los Angeles’ third title season—half-man, half-wolf—before morphing into the Wolf over the following two seasons,

Kobe is missing out by not finding a way to become part of a system that involves giving something larger than himself. He could have been heir apparent to MJ and maybe won as many championships. He may still win a championship or two, but the boyish hero image has been replaced by that of a callous gunslinger.”).

Was I surprised? Yes, but not entirely. Kobe can be consumed with surprising anger, which he’s displayed toward me and his teammates.” Yeeesh. You weren’t entirely surprised that your best player was accused of rape???

Three Finals appearances and two titles later, the consensus seems to be that Kobe “gets it,” although every time the Wolf creeps out—like during Game 7 of the 2010 Finals, when Boston swarmed him with double-teams and dared him to hoist low-percentage shots (and for three quarters, he obliged)—we’re reminded that Kobe never totally figured this thing out. He always wants to win, but he always wants to be the hero. And sometimes, you can’t be both.

2000—with the Fox/Wolf internal struggle symbolizing everything. He spent the past five years systematically rehabbing his image as a player and public figure, starting with a number change (from 8 to 24), then a self-provided nickname (“Black Mamba”)P58, then an identity change (he’s evolved into a devoted family man and marvelous teammate with a wonderful sense of humor, or so we’re expected to believe), then a “coolness” change (Nike fake-leaked a video of Kobe apparently jumping a speeding car), then a stylistic change (smartly shifting to an efficient offensive game centered around an improved outside shot, a deadly fallaway and multiple low-post moves), eventually finding himself as the defensive specialist and crunch-time stud of our 2008 Olympic team.

Instead, everyone deferred to Kobe and he came through. Never has the best-player-alive argument been resolved so organically.

years. It went beyond heeding Jordan’s “every summer, I need to add one thing to my game” lesson (like Kobe learning low-post moves from Olajuwon after winning the ’09 title), or Malone’s “take care of your body and your body will take care of you” lesson. A defining Kobe story: when Michael Lewis wrote about Shane Battier studying hours of video to help himself defend Kobe’s moves, Kobe had someone create a similar video breakdown, broke down his own moves, then added a few wrinkles to keep Battier on his toes (almost like they were playing chess).

their department head confessed that Kobe was their favorite client. Why? Because he kept pushing them to make perfect shoes for him, repeatedly putting himself through grueling workouts with sensors all over his body. After the 2009 playoffs, Kobe pressed them to create a low-top sneaker that would prevent him from rolling his ankles—which seems incongruous on paper—yet Nike believed they pulled it off. And only because he kept challenging them.

Gladwell thought I was describing a capitalization rate, “which refers to how efficiently any group makes use of its talent. Sub-Saharan Africa is radically undercapitalized when it comes to, say, physics: There are a large number of people who live there who have the ability to be physicists but never get the chance to develop that talent. Canada, by contrast, is highly capitalized when it comes to hockey players: If you can play hockey in Canada, trust me, we will find you.

That suggests we have a lot of room for improvement. What you’re saying with the NBA is that over the past decade, it has become more and more highly capitalized: There isn’t more talent than before, but there is—for a variety of reasons—a more efficient use of talent.”

Which is why Kobe never scratched Jordan’s ceiling as a player, but his career—the totality of it—might end up being greater.

So those are the stakes for Kobe, someone who remade his career thanks to a fortuitous trade and a breathtaking amount of hard work. He only cares about getting better and keeping what he already earned. He learned to trust his teammates—not totally, but enough.

During the 2004 playoffs, Phil Jackson said about him, “Sometimes his needs to overwhelm the rest of the ballclub’s necessity … as we get into the playoffs, that’ll dissipate, because he knows that he’s got to put his ego aside and conform to what we have to do if we’re going to go anywhere in the playoffs. Any player that takes it on himself to do that [play for himself] knows that he’s going against the basic principles of basketball. That’s a selfish approach to the game. You know when you’re breaking down the team or you’re breaking down and doing things individualistic, you’re going to have, you know, some unhappy teammates … and he knows these things … Intuitively, I have to trust the fact that he’s going to come back to that spot and know that the timing’s right. The season’s over, things have been accomplished, records have been stuck in the books, statistics are all jelled in, now let’s go ahead and play basketball as we’re supposed to play it.”

Kobe knew the right way to play, but for many years, playing that way wasn’t his first choice. He’s the only great player who knew The Secret and didn’t take care of it.

He played basketball with a singular mentality, trusting his own exploits would lift teammates but only intermittently bothering to make them better in a conventional way.

Do you realize his best teammates were Robinson (turned thirty-three in Duncan’s rookie year), Ginobili (never a top-fifteen player) and Tony Parker (ditto)? Or that he never played for a dominant team because the Spurs were always trapped atop the standings, relying on failed lottery picks, foreign rookies, journeymen, aging vets and head cases with baggage for “new” blood? Maybe that’s one reason we failed to appreciate him: he never starred for a potential 70-win juggernaut that generated a slew of regular season hype.

He lacked Shaq’s sense of humor, Kobe’s singular intensity, KG’s menacing demeanor, Iverson’s swagger, LeBron’s jaw-dropping athleticism, Wade’s knack for self-promotion, Nash’s fan-friendly skills or even Dirk’s villainous fist pump.

Harrison Ford pumped out monster hits for fifteen solid years before everyone suddenly noticed, “Wait a second—Harrison Ford is unquestionably the biggest movie star of his generation!” From 1977 to 1992, Ford starred in three Star Wars movies, three Indiana Jones movies, Blade Runner, Working Girl, Witness, Presumed Innocent and Patriot Games, but it wasn’t until he carried The Fugitive that everyone realized he was consistently more bankable than Stallone, Reynolds, Eastwood, Cruise, Costner, Schwarzenegger and every other peer.

Of course, I had to ask him about Russell and Chamberlain. His response: “Wilt was the most talented player I ever saw, but Russell just wanted it more.” And I thought, “Great—I wasted a ten-thousand-word chapter explaining what this guy just summed up in one sentence.”

Anything described as “tangibly good” is inferred to mean “intangibly flawed.” This is why Chamberlain always loses in any comparison with Bill Russell. Russell possessed intangible greatness, which means sportswriters can make him into whatever metaphor they desire. Russell was the central figure for a superior franchise, so history suggests he was the greater, more meaningful force. His wins validate everything. If you side with Chamberlain, it seems like you’re siding with the absurdity of numbers.

The real question is this: who was better in a vacuum? If we erase the social meaning of their careers—in other words, if we ignore the unsophisticated cliché that suggests the only thing valuable about sports is who wins the last game of the season—which of these two men was better at the game?

The Bird-Magic argument mirrors Oscar-West because we reached a definitive conclusion—Oscar was better than West (1965), Bird was better than Magic (1986)—that shifted improbably over the second half of their careers. Would you rather have nine transcendent seasons from Bird, followed by a four-year stretch where he wasn’t remotely the same (and missed 60 percent of his games), or a twelve-year stretch of A-plus Magic seasons without a dip in impact? I’d rather have those three extra Magic years.

That’s the crazy thing about Bird: his game was never about stats, but nobody put up numbers quite like his.

Watching the newspaper industry battle the Internet these past ten years. Sorry, fellas, the old days are over. You’re gonna lose. I wish I had better news for you. So let’s say Bird bridged the gap between newspapers and the Internet for the forward position. If he’d come along ten or fifteen years later, he would have been the New York Times or Wall Street Journal: still successful, still a must-read, but not quite as iconic.

He battled Erving, Bird, Moses, Isiah and Jordan in the Finals over the span of twelve years as the league evolved from tape delay to mainstream. He meshed with his city on and off the court like nobody in league history. He was called a savior, a winner, a coach-killer, a choke artist and a loser, and then a winner again … and his prime hadn’t even happened yet.

image. Even Kareem’s 1983 autobiography dismissed the long-believed assumption that Magic’s enthusiasm rejuvenated his career, griped about the 1980 Finals MVP vote and proclaimed, “We didn’t repeat as champs in 1981 because Earvin got injured, and when he came back he had forgotten what made us and him so successful.”

That’s when Magic 3.0 peaked as a point guard extraordinaire and the King of Showtime, but someone who still needed an alpha dog (in this case, Kareem) to carry the scoring load for him.

That stretch did more damage to the perception of his basketball career than anyone realizes.

(Important note: This relentless campaign inadvertently hampered the sex lives of all red-blooded American males between the ages of eighteen and forty for the next eight years. For the first four years, everyone was terrified to have unprotected sex unless they were shitfaced drunk. For the next four, the guys weren’t terrified but the girls still were, although it’s possible they were just out of shape and didn’t want us to see them naked. Then the Paris Hilton/Britney Spears era happened, women got in shape and started dressing more provocatively, we figured out that you had a better chance of winning the lottery than getting HIV from conventional sex and it became a sexual free-for-all. Of course, I was married by then. Awesome. Thanks for ruining my twenties, Magic.)

Undaunted, he returned after the ’96 All-Star Break and reinvented himself as L.A.’s new power forward for 32 games. This was fun for a week before we realized an older, bulkier Magic couldn’t possibly shed five solid years of basketball rust. Even if his opponents accepted him—an underrated milestone for the acceptance of HIV in this country, by the way—Earvin had turned into Chris Rock’s joke about how “you never want to be the guy who’s just a little too old to be in the club” before retiring again that summer.83 He quickly created a syndicated late night

Magic Johnson was just as exceptional as Larry Bird. Beyond that, he remains the most breathtaking player who ever ran a fast break—better than Cousy, better than Nash, better than anyone—because his height, huge hands, Gretzky-like vision and sneaky-long arms allowed him to reach the rim faster than opponents anticipated. (I grew up in a sports world that had seven certainties: you weren’t stopping Kareem’s sky hook, you weren’t covering Rice with one guy, you weren’t blocking LT with one guy, you couldn’t let Gretzky hang behind the net on a power play, you weren’t sacking Marino, you weren’t getting Boggs to chase a bad pitch and you weren’t stopping Magic on a three-on-one.)

Digging a little further, only two modern players (Bird and Magic) played with enough unselfishness and intuition that those qualities permeated to everyone else. They lifted their teammates offensively much the way Russell lifted his teammates defensively, a domino effect that can’t be measured by any statistic or formula other than wins. Play with Bird or Magic long enough and you started seeing angles that you’d never ordinarily see …

If you loved basketball—if you truly loved it—you treasured them both and savored every season, every series, every game, every play, every moment. That’s just the way it was. They brought the game to a better place.

Kareem took home Finals MVPs fourteen seasons apart—once during year three of the Nixon presidency, once during year five of the Reagan presidency.

By 1985, Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen were the four biggest stars on the planet, the Cold War was at an all-time fervor, and Kareem was still cranking out Finals MVP trophies. Only Jack Nicklaus can claim such extended athletic superiority, winning the Masters twenty-three years apart (1963 and 1986)—but really, what’s more impressive, peaking over fifteen years in basketball, or peaking over twenty-three years in a sport that can be played with love handles and a potbelly?

They relied on him at that advanced age for one reason: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the surest two points in NBA history.

his unstoppable sky hook remains the only basketball shot that couldn’t be blocked, an artistic achievement because of its consistency and efficiency.

He handled every interview like he was disarming a hand grenade: too smart for dumb questions, too serious for frivolous jokes, too reserved for any semblance of personal candor. Unlike Chamberlain, he didn’t have a compulsive need to be loved; he just wanted to be left alone. And for the most part, that’s what fans did. When he changed his name a few weeks after Milwaukee won the ’71 title, the NBA’s dominant player was suddenly an introverted, intermittently sullen Muslim who towered over every center except Wilt, abhorred the press, relied on a robotic hook shot and pushed away the general public. You wouldn’t exactly throw in a “Good times!” to end the previous sentence.

I always liked the fact that the best two athletes to adopt Muslim names happened to pick tremendously cool names—Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Kareem’s public stature suffered for four unrelated reasons: the goofy combination of his afro, facial hair and goggles added to his detachment (it almost seemed like a Halloween mask); his trade demands (Milwaukee finally obliged in 1975) made him seem like just another petulant black athlete who wanted his way (the public perception, not the reality); 1977’s sucker punch of Kent Benson went over like a fart in church; and his ongoing battle with migraines made fans wonder if he was looking for excuses not to play. So

By his last scene, when Kareem was being lugged from the cockpit with his Laker uniform and goggles on, everyone had the same reaction. Kareem has a sense of humor? What?

The thing that made him greater than Wilt—his staggering longevity—wounded the perception of his career after the fact. Wilt broke every record. Russell won eleven titles. Jordan dominated the nineties. Kareem? He’s the moody guy who peaked during the NBA’s darkest era and wouldn’t leave when it was time. What’s fun about celebrating that?

So yeah, Wilt’s statistical resume pops your eyes out on paper. But Kareem’s peak was nearly as impressive. He excelled for a longer period of time. His teams performed consistently better and won three times as many titles. He was more reliable in clutch moments and a much safer bet at the free throw line. He had an infinitely better grasp of The Secret. The gap between his first and last Finals MVPs lasted as long as Wilt’s entire career.

“Russell never got as much recognition as he deserved. Race was one reason. During the early sixties no black artist got adequate publicity. Then, too, perhaps pro basketball didn’t have the national following sufficient to merit enormous press attention. Most probably, I think he was overlooked because his greatest accomplishments were in the game’s subtleties and in seeking to guarantee team victory in a society which tends to focus attention on the individual achiever.”

But Bradley missed one crucial part of the Russell Experience: Russell was obsessed with winning.