The BSTN ‘Book Club‘ is a series of in-depth book reviews about hand-picked publications from the ever-growing portfolio of books available at BSTN. Like dropping a cup of yogurt on the floor, this series is going all over the place, tackling a variety of topics from sports and traveling to collectibles and sneaker/fashion culture. Curating personal favorites of various BSTN Fam member as well as in-depth stories and stunning photography, the Book Club strives to deliver new favorites for your coffee-table as well as your book shelf.
Writing a book about basketball and boldly calling it The Book Of Basketball takes a certain amount of testicular fortitude. Who would be this brash? Bill Simmons, that’s who. And in addition to being an award-winning journalist (formerly of ESPN & Grantland) and the founder of (sports) media platform The Ringer, Simmons is one more thing: He is damn right about naming his book.
There are numerous other titles – e.g. written by Roland Lazenby – that go into more detail on certain players or specific teams/eras, but when it comes to a bird’s eye view on the overall state of the game and connecting the history of basketball with its present form (at the time TBOB was published), no single title can hold a candle to The Book Of Basketball.
It’s worth noting that Bill Simmons is the biggest homer since J. Simpson (the J stands for Jay). He is also the undisputed grand master of footnotes1, alongside an extensive list of other titles including The Pod Father, Conspiracy Bill (RIP season previews w/ Jalen), the future Sports Czar, and (recently) Sad Bill Simmons.
Simmons puts a vast amount of teams, players, and story lines into context, thinks through the most relevant what-if scenarios in NBA history, drops a casual billion references to his privileged position of growing up as the son of a Celtics season ticket holder2, and even builds an entirely new wing for the basketball hall of fame. Essentially, he put in the work, making the book worth reading – for the first time or one more time.
The list of hoops-related publications is growing like MJ in his Junior year and while BSTN is constantly stocking more titles, very few people outside of BS have the time or the drive to read them all. But in every bookshelf filled with basketball titles from biographies to in-depth reports and everything in between, there is one book you’ll take out again and again. That book is The Book Of Basketball.
1. Trust us on this one, the footnotes alone are worth a re-read of TBOB. If you thought our Kobe & LeBron story had a lot of them then gas up the Ford, Martha, because Bill is going to take you for a drive.
2. Guaranteed to cause envy in any basketball fan that grew on this side of the pond with every read.
