Bill Simmons Book of Basketball is a great read and I really enjoyed it.  But this critique from an astute reviewer sums up why I found parts of the book infuriating: This inconsistency drives me crazy, and it crops up throughout The Book of Basketball. Simmons’s favorite players who never win a championship are heroic martyrs struck down by fate. His least-favorite players who never win a championship are whiny baby losers who never won because of some flaw deep in their soul. He unfairly rags on people like Ewing and Malone, then somehow manages to adore Allen Iverson beyond all reason. The book’s entry on Iverson is a real piece of work: Four solid pages of gushing and excuses, with all of his many obvious faults (ballhog, gunner, turnover machine) actually stuck into a footnote. “And yeah,” Simmons writes at one point, “his field goal percentage wasn’t that good and he took too many shots. Whatever.” No, not whatever! His field-goal percentage wasn’t that good and he took too many shots! Those things tend to matter in basketball. Simmons inconsistency was even more evident in the chapter comparing George Gervin and Sam Jones.  Instead of celebrating the art and grace of Gervin’s game, he chooses to hold him up as the prototype of a “selfish” NBA star, in stark contrast to  Jones who “played the right way.” Whatever.  Gervin deserved better than to be used as a straw man for Simmons’ argument in favor of Sam Jones. —A biased Spurs fan

Bill Simmons Book of Basketball is a great read and I really enjoyed it.  But this critique from an astute reviewer sums up why I found parts of the book infuriating:

This inconsistency drives me crazy, and it crops up throughout The Book of Basketball. Simmons’s favorite players who never win a championship are heroic martyrs struck down by fate. His least-favorite players who never win a championship are whiny baby losers who never won because of some flaw deep in their soul. He unfairly rags on people like Ewing and Malone, then somehow manages to adore Allen Iverson beyond all reason. The book’s entry on Iverson is a real piece of work: Four solid pages of gushing and excuses, with all of his many obvious faults (ballhog, gunner, turnover machine) actually stuck into a footnote. “And yeah,” Simmons writes at one point, “his field goal percentage wasn’t that good and he took too many shots. Whatever.” No, not whatever! His field-goal percentage wasn’t that good and he took too many shots! Those things tend to matter in basketball.

Simmons inconsistency was even more evident in the chapter comparing George Gervin and Sam Jones.  Instead of celebrating the art and grace of Gervin’s game, he chooses to hold him up as the prototype of a “selfish” NBA star, in stark contrast to  Jones who “played the right way.”

Whatever.  Gervin deserved better than to be used as a straw man for Simmons’ argument in favor of Sam Jones.

—A biased Spurs fan