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The book of basketball
715 pages
An obsessive, wildly entertaining barroom debate about the history, mythology, and soul of professional basketball.
What it feels like
Reading this feels like pulling up a stool next to the most knowledgeable, wildly opinionated sports fanatic at your local bar and letting him hold court for hours. It is a massive, sprawling love letter to the NBA, fueled by an infectious, obsessive energy that makes its daunting page count fly by. The prose is famously conversational, packed to the brim with sprawling footnotes, pop-culture analogies, and irreverent humor that captures the golden era of sports blogging. Yet beneath the relentless jokes and fierce historical debates lies a deeply earnest quest to understand what makes a player truly great. It is a nostalgic, propulsive, and deeply immersive experience designed to delight hardcore hoops junkies and pop-culture nerds alike.
- Mood
- energetic
- nostalgic
- passionate
- argumentative
- Tone
- opinionated
- conversational
- irreverent
- obsessive
- humorous
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- sports mythology · obsessive fandom · historical legacy · pop culture intersection · the nature of greatness
- The writing
- A relentlessly energetic, footnote-heavy barrage of pop-culture analogies and conversational barroom arguments.
- The arc
- Begins as a wildly opinionated historical teardown and builds into an earnest, almost spiritual appreciation for the secret of the game.
- Who it's for
- Die-hard NBA fans who love debating all-time rankings and appreciate a heavy dose of pop culture.
Content notes
- profanity
- crude humor
About the book
There is only one writer on the planet who possesses enough basketball knowledge and passion to write the definitive book on the NBA. Bill Simmons, the from-the-womb hoops addict known to millions as ESPN.com's Sports Guy, is that writer. And The Book of Basketball is that book. Nowhere in the roundball universe will you find another single volume that covers as much in such depth as this wildly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining look at the past, present, and future of pro basketball.From the age-old question of who actually won the rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to the one about which team was truly the best of all time, Simmons opens--and then closes, once and for all--every major pro basketball debate. Then he takes it further by completely reevaluating not only how NBA Hall of Fame inductees should be chosen but how the institution must be reshaped from the ground up, the result being the Pyramid: Simmons's one-of-a-kind, five-level shrine to the ninety-six greatest players in the history of pro basketball. And ultimately he takes fans to the heart of it all, as he uses a conversation with one NBA great to uncover that coveted thing: The Secret of Basketball.Comprehensive, authoritative, controversial, hilarious, and impossible to put down (even for Celtic-haters), The Book of Basketball offers every hardwood fan a courtside seat beside the game's finest, funniest, and fiercest chronicler. More to the point, he's the only one crazy enough to try to pull it off. From the Hardcover edition.
Description from Open Library.
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