The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons

Bill Simmons, AKA The Sports Guy, is obsessed with basketball. As Malcolm Gladwell points out in his forward to Simmons’ mammoth Book of Basketball, Simmons is one of the few people in America who can afford to follow sports so closely that he can spend three years researching and writing the history of the NBA. The rest of us – we have jobs, spouses, hobbies, and sleep schedules. Some of us want to watch sports all the time, but we either feel guilty or we get in trouble for allowing them to dominate our lives. Myself, I have all day Sunday and Monday night. That’s my time (though not all the time). I can sit down in front of the TV at 1 pm on Sunday, watch 10 hours of football, eat when I remember to, and then go to bed. The rest of the week, sports are mainly off limits. For Simmons, a man who has made himself wealthy as a sportswriter and podcasting pioneer, watching sports is his job.

In The Book of Basketball, Simmons makes it a point to right basketball history’s wrongs. He corrects and expands the reader’s perceptions about hundreds of players who have excelled at the game. In one lengthy section, he ranks the top 98 basketball players of all time, placing them into five levels of a excellence that accounts for the player’s individual statistics, his team’s success, and the era in which he played. In another chapter, he reviews the league’s MVP award, telling us which players deserved to win that year and which did not, even pointing out the absolute travesties. Additionally, since his message through the book is that basketball is a team game based upon secret knowledge few players attain, he examines the best single season teams of all time. Wait, there’s more, not content with the game’s history, he pieces together his perfect team, taking players at their peak, putting them into a time machine, and preparing the team’s plays for a hypothetical basketball game versus an alien race, with the fate of the human race hanging in the balance. (I can see the movie now. Think of Bill and Ted recruiting players to challenge the aliens in Mars Attacks. Only it’s not a comedy.)

Simmons’ examination of the NBA history would be a little dull if not for the pop culture humor he sprinkles throughout the book, comparing movie plots to basketball scenarios (with a multitude of fantastic Boogie Nights analogies). Few people care about the NBA as much as Simmons. He is like the high school English teacher who loves Shakespeare far more than his students, but cares enough to take the time to translate the prose. Here, Simmons explains the brilliance of certain superstars, as well as the true nature and motivation of basketball’s greatest villains. He makes an effective argument as to why Bill Russell is better than Wilt Chamberlain, and explains in detail what makes Michael Jordon such an unstoppable force of nature (and not just on the basketball court). He is sharing his esoteric understanding of the game with those willing to listen and he certainly has my attention.

Those who follow Simmons’ podcast, The B.S. Report, will know that he put a lot of hard work into this book and that he is very proud of the result. He has been writing brilliant columns for ESPN over the past decade and this is his first book of original material. He claims that it is the best book he will ever write. I disagree. Simmons is too good to be delving into statistics and writing what is essentially a history of the NBA. When he talks about the players and teams he loves, its riveting; when he outlines the statistical achievements of players he has never seen play, I wasn’t nearly as engaged. The best section of this book is his description of Paul Pierce, a career Celtic who was nearly stabbed to death in his 2nd year in the league, spent almost a decade starring on a team that had no championship hopes (even losing 18 games in a row at one point), and seemed to be heading down the wrong path mentally. Simmons’ description of Pierce’s resurgence, attitude adjustment, and eventual starring role on the 2008 NBA Champions is a heartfelt account of a player that The Sports Guy cheered for throughout the decade. Simmons is a Boston native, probably the Celtic’s biggest fan, and the perfect person to describe Pierce because he cares so much about the player’s legacy. These are the stories I want to hear. Now that he has given us a full account of the game’s history, I want to hear more about his history with the game.

The Bin Ladens

Around 5 years after 9/11, I started to become interested in the factors that led to that infamous day, easily the defining world event of my life and a turning point in the escalating clash between Eastern and Western Civilization. In the first few years after the attack, researchers focused on two key questions: how had the CIA failed to thwart the attack and what chain of events led to the rise of Bin Laden and Al Qaida. Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies and Robert Baur’s See No Evil (the inspiration for the film Syriana) provided excellent recounts of oversights within the CIA, the carelessness of the Bush Administration, and the failure of government agencies to work together to identify threats. Other prominent works include Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower, which did an excellent job charting the rise of the Al Qaida, and Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars, a must read examination into how the Afghanistan War created a culture of resistance in the Arab world, leading to the Jihad on America. Both The Looming Tower and Ghost Wars won Pulitzer Prizes, and thankfully, Steve Coll has continued to examine 9/11 with his new book, The Bin Ladens.

In studying Osama Bin Laden’s rise and excommunication from the wealthy Bin Laden family, The Bin Ladens moves past Osama in taking a close look at those in the family who curried the favour of Saudi Arabia’s royal family to earn numerous construction contacts. The Saudi Royal Family spent billions of dollars in the 20th century on palaces and mosques, using its fortuitous oil reserves to spend lavishly on themselves, giving little thought to generating an economy. The rise of the Bin Ladens, led by Mahammed Bin Laden, is a fascinating story, expertly described by Coll, who focuses on the family’s entrepreneurial drive in a book that has closer parallels to Richard Branson’s autobiography, Losing My Virginity, than to other books centered on the events of 9/11. First Mahammed, then his oldest son Salem, Osama’s half-brother, are described for the leadership roles they took in creating one of the most successful corporations in the Saudi Kingdom. In fact, the family’s passion for flying would have helped them get along well with Branson, whose wild ways mirrored those of Salem Bin Laden, a businessman who did not like to involve himself in religion or politics, and lived a life that was more suited to a Hollywood movie star than a prominant figure in one of the most religious societies in the world. Compared to his father Mahammed, who fathered more that 50 children, and his half-brother Salem, Osama’s pious and narrow minded views, and contradictory rhetoric, make him a fairly uninteresting figure.

Osama’s actions hang over Coll’s story from start to finish. As he describes the personalities and accomplishments of the Bin Laden children, including a Harvard PHD and a multitude of accomplished businessmen and engineers, Osama’s betrayal makes tragic figures of the extended Bin Laden family. Coll examines numerous legal documents and conducts an extensive series of interviews which seem to exonerate the Bin Laden family from any wrong doing associated with Bin Laden’s war, and he paints a picture of a proud family, ashamed by Osama’s action, which makes them more noble than the droves of individuals in the Arab world who consider Osama to be a hero. Coll does the Bin Laden family a great service with this recount of their rise to prominence, and except for his occasional attacks on Osama’s hypocritical actions and unfounded religious doctines (much deserved), he maintains an unbiased view throughout the book. In describing the rise of the Bin Ladens, the concomitant rise of the Al-Saud family is nicely outlined as well, providing insight into the birth of Saudi Arabia and the work of the Saudi Royal family in making Mecca, the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammed, and Medina, the place of his exile, the glamorous centers of the Muslim world, possibly the only good use of their oil wealth to date.

Steve Coll is one of the foremost experts on Osama Bin Laden’s world, and his works give us important details on Osama’s rise, his psychological state-of-mind, and his leadership role in Al Qaida. His books are riveting, I read this recent 600 page epic in 4 days, unable to stop sometimes late into the night. Hopefully, someday soon, Osama will be found, and I sincerity hope Coll will tell that story too.