The Book of Basketball (120 page)

Bill Simmons
July 4, 2009

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I plowed through nearly one hundred books that helped me write this one. Here’s how they broke down by category and influence on my book.

INFLUENTIAL MUST-READS:
Life on the Run
(Bill Bradley) …
The Season
(Kenny Dryden) …
Wait ’Til Next Year
(William Goldman and Mike Lupica) …
The Breaks of the Game; Playing for Keeps
(David Halberstam)
… 24 Seconds to Shoot
(Leonard Koppett) …
Unfinished Business
(Jack MacCallum) …
Loose Balls; Tall Tales
(Terry Pluto) …
Second Wind
(Bill Russell and Taylor Branch) …
The Franchise
(Cameron Stauth)

VERY HELPFUL AND HIGHLY ENJOYABLE:
The City Game
(by Pete Axthelm) …
Wilt
(Wilt Chamberlain and David Shaw) …
Hang Time
(Bob Greene) …
Sacred Hoops
(Phil Jackson) …
Wilt, 1962
(Gary Pomerantz) …
The Jordan Rules
(Sam Smith) …
Foul
(David Wolf)

EXTREMELY USEFUL:
Who’s Better, Who’s Best in Basketball?
(Elliott Kalb) …
Showtime
(Pat Riley) …
The Big O
(Oscar Robertson) …
The NBA’s Top 50
(Ken Shouler) …
The Golden Boys
(Cameron Stauth) …
The Official 2008–09 NBA Register … The Official 2008–09 NBA Guide

ENJOYABLE BOOKS THAT HELPED A LITTLE:
The Fab Five
(Mitch Albom) …
Everything They Had
(David Halberstam) …
The Best American Sports Writing of the Century
(edited by David Halberstam) …
Fathers Playing Catch with Sons
(Donald Hall) …
The Last Season
(Phil Jackson with Charley Rosen) …
Pistol
(Mark Kriegel) …
Best Seat in the House
(Spike Lee and Ralph Wiley)
… 07 Seconds or Less
(Jack McCallum) …
The Franchise
(Michael McCambridge) …
A Sense of Where You Are
(John McPhee) …
The Short Season
(John Powers) …
Sports Guy
(Charles P. Pierce) …
The Twentieth Century Treasury of Sports
(edited by Al and Brian Silverman) …
Classic Wiley
(Ralph Wiley)

HELPFUL, NOT A TOTAL WASTE OF TIME:
Giant Steps
(Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) …
Drive
(Larry Bird and Bob Ryan) …
Tip Off
(Filip Bondy) …
The Perfect Team
(Foreword by Chuck Daly) …
The Inside Game
(Waybe Embry with Mary Schmidt Boyer) …
Maravich
(Wayne Federman and Marshall Terrell) …
Hondo
(John Havlicek with Bob Ryan) …
Give ’Em the Hook
(Tommy Heinsohn and Joe Fitzgerald) …
More Than a Game
(Phil Jackson with Charley Rosen) …
Sacred Hoops
(Phil Jackson with Hugh Delancy) …
My Life
(Magic Johnson and Bill Novak) …
Goliath
(Bill Libby) …
Only the Strong Survive
(Larry Platt) …
Red and Me
(Bill Russell with Alan Steinberg)
… 48 Minutes
(Bob Ryan and Terry Pluto) …
Calling the Shots
(Earl Strom) …
The Rivalry
(John Taylor)

NOT PARTICULARLY HELPFUL:
The Long Season
(Rick Adelman and Dwight Jaynes) …
Auerbach on Auerbach; On and Off the Court; Red Auerbach
(Red Auerbach with Joe Fitzgerald) …
Confessions of a Basketball Gypsy
(Rick Barry and David Wolf) …
Out of Bounds (Jeff Benedict) … The Last Loud Roar
(Bob Cousy) …
Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob
(Bob Delaney) …
The Punch
(John Feinstein) …
Champions Remembered
(Ray Fitzgerald) …
Rebound
(Bob Greene) …
The Jump
(Ian O’Connor) …
When Nothing Else Matters
(Michael Leahy) …
The Big Three; The Last Banner
(Peter May) …
The Drive Within Me
(Bob Pettit with Bob Wolff) …
Falling from Grace
(Terry Pluto) …
But They Can’t Beat Us
(Randy Roberts) …
The Pro Game
(Bob Ryan) …
Black Planet
(David Shields) …
Can I Keep My Jersey?
(Paul Shirley) …
Second Coming
(Sam Smith) …
Evergreen; Seeing Red
(Dan Shaughnessy) …
Basketball My Way
(Jerry West and Bill Libby) …
Mr. Clutch
(Jerry West)

Also, I plowed through every relevant NBA feature from 1954 through 2000 in
Sports Illustrated
, as well as countless pieces from
The New York Times
and
The Boston Globe
spanning that same time frame. All can be found on-line at the
Times/Globe
websites or
www.SIVault.com
. Old issues of
Inside Sports
from 1980–84 were particularly helpful.
Basketballreference.com
and
ESPN.com
couldn’t have been more helpful. For visual references, I burned over three hundred classic games to DVD from NBA TV or ESPN Classic from 2002 to 2007, traded for a few others on-line and eagerly devoured nearly one hundred rarely seen games that NBA Entertainment was gracious enough to send me. Shows like
Greatest NBA Games
(ESPN 2),
NBA Vault
(ESPN),
SportsCentury
(ESPN Classic) and
Beyond the Glory
(Fox Sports Net) also filled in a few holes. Another unbelievable help: The treasure chest of interviews, highlights and uncut games on YouTube. It would have been nearly impossible to write this particular book as recently as five years ago. So thanks to all.

Last note: Before the release of my book, I am hoping to compile an interactive section of links and YouTube clips that will correspond to the pages and chapters of this book at
www.thebookofbasketball.com
.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

B
ILL
S
IMMONS
writes the “Sports Guy” column for
ESPN.com
’s Page 2 and
ESPN: The Magazine.
He is the author of
Now I Can Die in Peace
, founded the award-winning
bostonsportsguy.com
website and was a writer for
Jimmy Kimmel Live.
He commutes between his home in Los Angeles and Fenway Park.

Copyright © 2009 by Bill Simmons All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by ESPN Books, an imprint of ESPN, Inc., New York, and Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. The ESPN Books name and logo are registered trademarks of ESPN, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to HarperCollins Publishers for permission to reprint an excerpt from
The Franchise
by Cameron Stauth.

Copyright © 1990 by Cameron Stauth. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Simmons, Bill.
The book of basketball : the NBA according to the sports guy / Bill Simmons.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-34551311-3
1. Basketball. 2. National Basketball Association. I. Title.
GV885.1.S46 2009
796.323.′640973—dc22 2009036006

www.ballantinebooks.com
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