More Thoughts on The B.S. Book of Basketball

"Vast, I allow: but vile. Cloacae: sewers."

- Ulysses, pg. 131

I am not the type of person to trash someone's work. I've never given a book one or two stars on Amazon because, quite honestly, if a book sucks then I won't read it. I've always loved Bill Simmons' basketball writing. As I said in my post reviewing the first half of his book, I've always been eager to read his latest NBA columns because the thoroughly expressed passion and knowledge serves to spring up my interest in the game. In short, for many years Bill Simmons' writing always precipitated my basketball interest.

And yet, given the opportunity to write a full-fledged epic treatise on the game, he gave a sloppy effort and stuffed in so much self-praise, dirty jokes, and rambling bullshit that the book was often insufferable. Never in my life have I actually thrown a book in a fit of disgust until this one. And, after slogging through every last bit of it, the final lines made me want to rip the book in half. There's a part when he's talking about Kobe Bryant, and he uses an analogy that I think accurately describes how I felt about the book:

[It] was like having a friend purchase a beautiful $10 million mansion...then paint it a weird color, refuse to hire a housekeeper, decorate it with goofy modern furniture and basically ruin the house. Buddy, what the fuck are you doing? Don't you realize what you have here? (pg 578)

The book is certainly not all bad. I mostly enjoyed the first half (though the silly footnotes and jokes were irritating) and there is some great stuff in the enormous Pyramid section covering his list of the top 96 players of all time. That section takes up the bulk of the book (about 400 pages) and there are some bad stretches that made me question whether he just threw some paragraphs together and submitted a first draft, but I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed the writing for Bob Cousy, Elgin Baylor, and especially Dr. J. His thorough breakdown of Hakeem Olajuwon's uniqueness was also very good.

But most of the time his writing style sinks down to that of a frat boy or some other numb-minded "bro." That might be why he's so popular but it's just brutal to read. In my first review, I complained about his incessant dick jokes. Once I made it around page 600 I realized the man is thoroughly obsessed with penises and can't keep his mind off them for more than a page or two (a Freudian would have a field day with this, I thought). He also frequently feels the need to homophobically insist that he's not gay. Yet, the book also wreaks of misogyny; as one of the New York Magazine reviewers put it: "In my notes on TBOB, I actually stopped bothering to copy down the most egregious comments and figured I'd just note when Simmons mentioned a woman for any reason other than evaluating her appeal as something to put a penis in."

In the abstract, that stuff doesn't bother me so much. I'm obsessed with Joyce's books and during his life he was lambasted and his books burned because they were so "obscene" plus I listen to some of the grimiest hip hop music ever made. The main problem for me: this is a book about basketball! It's titled "THE Book of Basketball" and has the word BASKETBALL in huge letters along the spine. Yet, it's filled with the author's idiotic Vegas adventures, shitty pop culture references, and a ridiculous amount of the dirty stuff, while providing often sloppy basketball analysis. He constantly decries the use of stats to evaluate a player's true value and yet---just like the ignorant baseball writers who diss sabermetrics and then make arguments with RBIs and batting average---he always refers to the basic stats (points, rebounds, assists) and often jumbles them together in convoluted ways that support his argument. His arguments, of course, are always presented in an overly proud, assertive manner (basically, "what I say is right, fuck you if you don't like it") as he frequently alludes to a player as top-5, top-10 or whatever and never explains what these rankings are determined by.

Early in the book when he's using a bunch of Bill Russell quotes to proclaim the power of basketball's nebulous "Secret," he follows the Celtic legend's words with this comment: "I didn't see the word 'stats' or 'numbers' in there. It's all about winning." There are a few times he says stuff like that and so I laughed when reading the last chapter where he presents us with Kobe's entire playoff stat line to dismiss the possibility of Bryant "getting it" and becoming a team player when the Lakers won the 2009 championship.

If all of that weren't enough to deter me from enjoying the book, there's the sad fact that Simmons has embraced his popularity so much that he frequently feels the need to tell us how great he is or share lame celebrity anecdotes. Because, after all, he's a celebrity living in Los Angeles. An internet writer who gained his fame because of his "regular opinionated sports fan" character, he's now been bloated into a D-list celebrity sycophant. Name-dropping, shouting out famous friends, and the book's laughably conceited conclusion (driving up the Pacific coast in a convertible) serve to get in the way of hoops talk and confront the reader with the image of a corny mid-40s white guy in a sports jacket, standing at a bar scoping out the joint. That image, combined with Simmons' frequent allusions to his favorite show Miami Vice, make the author a perfect fit for Ben Stiller's character in that old ridiculous SNL short "The H is O".

I wanted to keep this brief but I'm going to Simmons-esque length already. I'll concede that the book is probably better if taken in small bites or as a reference guide. Reading it page-by-page, front-to-back was not pleasant and there were many times where I'd flip back to the praising reviews quoted at the front of the book and wonder if they were really talking about this book. There is so much more I can say about it but I'll leave it at that because I've spilled too much hate already plus there are other writers saying the same things more articulately than I can. In the end, I'm just so goddamn thankful for FreeDarko.

Holding a Golden Mac

It's getting late. I'm tired and my eyes feel like they're half shut. What better time to write a little post about one of my favorite basketball players ever, one who is known in some circles as The Big Sleep: Tracy McGrady.

At the annual Sloan Sports Analytics Conference this weekend, McGrady was held up as an example of wasted talent; greatness squandered through laziness. His former coach, Jeff Van Gundy, cracked some jokes about poor practice habits and a whole auditorium laughed and listened to a few gentleman on a stage talk about how great T-Mac should have been, if only he gave a shit. If only he worked harder or practiced more.

Back in 2000, I read a Sports Illustrated piece about McGrady and his new role as Grant Hill's sidekick on the remade Orlando Magic. Interested in checking out what this McGrady guy had to offer, I started checking for any games on television featuring the Magic and watching him closely. It was right around this time that my NBA fanhood was reborn after a brief hiatus. McGrady was a spectacle to watch, a visual feast for basketball fans. A long, lanky athlete, he frequently looked like a pro who'd stepped onto a street ball court to have some fun. With his size and athleticism, he was basically the perfect basketball player. His jumpshot was a thing of beauty, a sudden rise and quick release that always seemed to create a perfect crisp snap of the net; he was one of the league's most exciting finishers at the rim; he possessed amazing court vision and passing skills that somehow forced his crappy teammates to make baskets (the superstar Hill was always in street clothes with severe ankle problems); his long-limbed, blanketing defense brought comparisons to Scottie Pippen---and he was only 21 years old.

With his droopy eyes and smooth lanky motions, the guy often looked like he was doing it all in his sleep. Writers and TV commentators often mentioned the humorous fact that one of his listed hobbies was sleeping. It didn't take long for the 6-foot-8 McGrady to acquire the nickname The Big Sleep.

During that time the Magic's games became must-see TV for me. I started tape-recording (with VHS tapes...on a VCR) their games any time they were on national TV or going up against the Knicks or Nets on a local channel. My favorite team, the Knicks, was clearly his favorite team to play against and he would frequently bring new moves to the table against them, embarrassing my team in such a way that I didn't care that they were getting their asses whooped. It was fun to watch! Even his headfakes were cool. Instead of just lifting up his chin for an apparent jumpshot, he lifted the ball high above his head like a yo-yo and then zoomed past the befuddled defender for a dunk or lay-up. On defense, he would frustrate and embarrass my favorite Knick, Allan Houston, with his long arms providing the perfect stopgap to Houston's only real weapon, a standstill jumper.

Over the next few years T-Mac became a superstar, his arrival punctuated by a self-pass-off-the-backboard dunk in the All Star Game. With Grant Hill sitting out on a bad ankle, McGrady established himself as a one-man show, carrying the Magic to three straight playoff appearances. His team fell short in the first round each time although McGrady averaged over 30 points in every series. A prolific scorer, passer, and defender---he still couldn't win by himself.


In 2004, the Houston Rockets acquired McGrady to team up with Yao Ming for a perfect match against the West Coast powerhouses but Yao soon succumbed to a series of injuries and left T-Mac to carry the team once again. There were many great moments with the Rockets, especially the epic 13-points-in-35-seconds to defeat the Spurs, one of those events which I'll always remember where I was when I saw it (standing enraptured right in front of my bedroom TV with my arms folded). But, once again, McGrady failed to lead his team past the first round of the playoffs and was harshly criticized for it.

Before turning 30, he was hit with a number of injuries that helped to erode his skills and over the last few seasons he's languished as an oft-injured part-timer for a couple of crappy teams (Knicks and Pistons). Because of an apparently poor work ethic, his career narrative is becoming imbued with a sense of failure and missed opportunity. Van Gundy and the Analytics Conference folks weren't the first to point it out. (Heck, I even mentioned it in my very first post on this blog.)

In opposition to this somber view, a few NBA bloggers have stepped up recently to defend the T-Mac legacy, reminding us of the heights he reached when he was healthy and the Hall of Fame career he had despite our best efforts to label him a failure. I particularly liked this piece from Dan Devine (a fellow Staten Island native, I've just realized) over at the Yahoo blog Ball Don't Lie and Zach Lowe of Sports Illustrated assertively set the record straight as well. Via Outside the NBA's Twitter page, here is another great post in defense of McGrady's excellence entitled Have Respect: He Was Legend which, among other things, calls to our attention that we once had to debate who was better: T-Mac or Kobe. Because of his defense and point guard-like passing skills, I still say T-Mac was better at that point in time but, of course, Kobe has gone on to win two more rings since then and continues to lead the Lakers to one of the best records in the West.

While farting around on Basketball-Reference.com a bit, I came across an interesting comparison between McGrady and Hall of Fame forward Billy Cunningham, a highly regarded player from the 60s and 70s. His career was also derailed by injuries yet Bill Simmons listed him as the 49th greatest player of all time (with McGrady at #77). The all-encompassing Win Shares statistic is by no means perfect but one of its best uses is for comparing players across different eras. Looking at their careers: McGrady had four seasons that were better than Cunningham's best year. T-Mac was also a more accurate shooter, better passer, and better defender. Cunningham was done as a player by the time he was 33 and, as he's currently playing out the string for shitty teams at age 31, we might soon see the last of The Big Sleep.

Let us hope the hoops community can open their eyes to his greatness instead of whining over our own shattered dreams for him.

The Court of Raw Talents

I've really been in a basketball mood lately.

There are a couple of great highlights (courtesy of Outside the NBA) from the Warriors-Pacers game the other night that I must share. The matchup sounds like a pretty unspectacular game but it featured plenty of exciting players and (this is a main point I'd like to make in an upcoming lengthy write-up of the league's 1st half), really, there are very few teams that aren't fun to watch right now in the NBA.


The Golden State Warriors are one of my favorite teams to watch as they've got a flashy, darting young backcourt of Monta Ellis and Stephen Curry. The other night against the Pacers, Curry tossed up an alley-oop across almost the entire distance of the court:


and Ellis drilled a fadeaway jumper to win the game:


I haven't had a chance yet to write a full review for Pro Basketball Prospectus 2010-11 but it's an awesome read, covers every little nook & cranny of every single team with entertaining writing, and (just like their grandpappies at Baseball Prospectus) they present thoroughly revealing statistics and projections for the upcoming season. The 2010-11 projections have this young Golden State squad finishing as the 4th best team in the West which goes to show how much explosive potential is contained within this nascent squad. Currently, they're at 18-23, struggling to stay in the mix for the final playoff spot in the conference but they've won their last three and tonight they play against another team of raw, young, highly talented players---the Sacramento Kings. Their last matchup, an overtime clash won by the Warriors in Sacramento, was deemed a classic by hoops connoisseurs.

I must also mention that I freakin' love the Warriors current logo.

*   *   *

I'm still eating up The Book of Basketball feast and really enjoying its list of the top 96 players of all time. Just finished the entry for one of my favorite ballers, Vince Carter, who is also one of Simmons' most hated players. With good reason: "Of anyone in the league over the past fifteen years, his peers felt like Vince Carter was the one who could do anything. Well, except give a shit on a consistent basis." Carter is naturally gifted with the ability to do things on a basketball court that humans shouldn't be able to do, that's why his nickname was always Half-Man, Half-Amazin'. But, the majority of the time, he plays passively and lazily, bursting out for 40 points and highlight reel drives only here and there. He's admitted before that he often doesn't play the most inspired basketball and earlier this year when he blew up with a big performance for the Orlando Magic, his coach quipped that "Vince can play like that when he wants to."

He became a favorite of mine when I got to watch him regularly on TV while he was playing alongside Jason Kidd in New Jersey (where he played some of his best basketball) but he truly exemplifies the player that is supremely fun to watch but extremely frustrating to root for.



The above highlight video is from 2001, ten years ago, when my basketball fanhood was at its absolute peak. The final highlight is from the All-Star game that year, a game that I recorded on a VCR and then watched over and over again many times. I consider it the best All-Star Game I've ever seen (in any sport). Bill Simmons has a new piece up on ESPN.com, it's characteristically lengthy but a good read, and he thoroughly explains why he believes the upcoming 2011 All Star Game might be the best one ever. Certainly the best one since 2001:

Our last meaningful one happened in 2001, when a new generation of franchise guys tried to seize control of the post-Jordan era. All of them were looking for the upper hand like Marlo after Avon went to the clink. Kobe wanted to show that he wasn't just riding Shaq's coattails. Ex-teammates Vince and T-Mac wanted to prove they didn't need each other. Duncan, C-Webb and Garnett were vying for the "Best Power Forward Alive" crown; same for Kidd and Payton and the "Best Point Guard Alive" title. Iverson wanted to show everyone that the league now belonged to him. Marbury and Allen wanted to prove they were franchise guys. Throw in the magic of Chocolate City (that year's host), and everyone went hard. Iverson won the MVP; Kobe emerged as the West's crunch-time alpha dog; and in the fourth quarter, the East erased a 21-point deficit and ended up winning thanks to two gigantic 3-pointers from … (wait for it) … Stephon Marbury!

Ten years later, the box score doubles as a snapshot of the ensuing decade: The West was almost comically loaded; the East had waaaaaaaaaay too much riding on Iverson, Marbury, McGrady, Allen and Jermaine O'Neal; and there just weren't enough up-and-coming stars. It's no wonder the league swooned from 2002 to 2007. The All-Star Game teaches us more than you'd think. This year, it's going to teach us that the league is obscenely loaded right now.

Just as he does in his book, he crowns the 1987 All Star Game the greatest one ever and so, since we're in a YouTube mood, here's a vid of the top ten plays from the '87 All Star Game.



You can also actually watch the original broadcast of this game in its entirety on YouTube, here's Part 1.

Sports Guy farts, pulls potato chip from couch crevice and eats it, disrespects women, scratches nuts and pens epic NBA philosophy tome

So I've been immersed in The Book of Basketball by ESPN's Bill Simmons (known as The Sports Guy) for a few weeks now and, as I'm now about halfway through the enormous (704 pages) book, I'd like to share a few thoughts on it. Specifically, I'd like to take a closer look at his list of undeserving MVP award winners throughout NBA history but first, some thoughts on the first five chapters.

Simmons' writing style is extremely readable. This book was one of many that I received for Christmas but once I started reading a couple pages, I was sucked into it and have mostly neglected the other books so far. There's really no doubt that he writes very well. What gets annoying very quickly, though, are the comically absurd number of footnotes on every single page. A glut of footnotes will always get annoying in any book because they interrupt or distract the reader's flow of information absorption, but here the footnotes almost seem to mock and tease the reader, bothering him to stop and look to the bottom of the page when all that's there is a horrifically inane or misogynistic sex joke, reality TV or pop culture reference, or some other bullshit.

He also has a tendency to be self-aware and self-conscious (basically, talking about the sentence he's writing while he's writing it) a bit too much and while his background as a comedy writer allows for some gems (I laughed out loud about 5 times already) it also leads to plenty of overdone jokes that completely miss the humor target. I find myself zooming past sentences and passages at times just because I literally don't want to waste the 2 seconds of time (and 2 milliliters of brain juice) that it takes to read a joke about Desperate Housewives or a Vegas strip club experience. Or dicks. Or cocaine. Enough already.

I'm giving complaints and criticism about it not because it's a terrible book, absolutely not. Overall the book is great and universally acknowledged as such. It was a New York Times bestseller, has a rating of 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon, and Simmons remains an extremely popular sportswriter. The New York Magazine book section had a nice series of columns discussing the merits and demerits of Simmons' basketball epic. I've been reading his NBA columns on ESPN.com for probably 5 or 6 years now and they alone usually awaken my NBA fanhood each season and get me following and caring about the games. I've definitely enjoyed the book and, when you dig past all the cloacal excess, there certainly is a basketball book in here and a very good one.

*   *   *

Simmons is positively obsessed with basketball and has been for many years. His sheer depth of knowledge is entertaining in and of itself sometimes. His thoughts are long-winded but precise, well-delivered, and always organized either in lists, bullet-points, or a marked tendency to title his own theory or award name which occurs on pretty much every other page ("Dumbest Commish Moment Ever"; "The Mom Test"; "Great Player Turned Bad TV Analyst"; "The League That Was Too Black had become the League That Raked in Shitloads of Money"). The Sports Guy is highly opinionated and he pretty much always states his case convincingly. In the Wilt-vs-Russell chapter, he does occasionally take his subjective snark too far but he definitely has me convinced Bill Russell was a greater player than Wilt Chamberlain. The What-If chapter didn't seem like it would be that appealing at first but it turned out to be the best chapter thus far. He properly lambasts the Trail Blazers for their selection of Greg Oden over Kevin Durant in the draft and deftly deconstructs the follies of the Phoenix Suns during the Steve Nash era. This book is truly Simmons' philosophical treatise on the NBA.

But when I was reading the "Most Valuable Chapter," cutting through the vines of his many arguments, I couldn't stop thinking about the stats. Simmons describes eight past MVP choices as "Outright Travesties" and delivers his reasons but I was left thinking what the advanced NBA stats might say about it. Particularly the stats that work to come up with a single number for a player's value, like Win Shares. In the chapter, Simmons takes a small swipe at these kind of stats and the analysts who have developed them saying "over the past ten years, a series of stat freaks inspired by the baseball revolution pushed a variety of convoluted statistics on us." But then his first question in the criteria for evaluating the true MVP is: "If you replaced each MVP candidate with a decent player at his position for the entire season, what would be the hypothetical effect on his team's record?" Those "stat freaks" have come up with something to measure exactly that.

While I'm still pretty new to the highbrow basketball stats world (I read Basketball Prospectus for the first time this year and loved it), I think it would be interesting to look at whether the basketball Win Shares statistic agrees with Simmons' assertions. Win Shares was originally a baseball stat created by Bill James to determine in one number, congealed and drawn out of a steaming stew of many statistics (including defensive numbers), how many wins a player was worth during a given season (it bears mentioning that, in baseball, a bunch of newer and better win value statistics have come about and surpassed James' relatively sloppy Win Shares by now, particularly Baseball Prospectus' WARP or Wins Above Replacement Player).

The stat was later adapted to measure the value of NBA players (you can read all the boring details here). While it's certainly not perfect, and I'm not positing that Win Shares should be the main determinant of the MVP award, I think it'll be worth looking at.

In Chapter 5, after elaborating 14 "features and subplots" that distinguish basketball from every other sport (most of which don't seem particular to basketball at all), The Sports Guy asserts that the Most Valuable Player award in the NBA matters more than in any other sport. His argument:

Wait, you don't believe me? Can you name the last ten NFL MVPs? You can't. Can you name the last ten MVPs in each baseball league, then definitively say which guy was better each year? Nope.

Then he insults hockey, a common punching bag for ignorant sportswriters (if you and SportsCenter don't have interest in something that doesn't automatically disqualify it from being cool---hockey's awesomeness is at its heights right now, same with basketball) before traveling back in time to "correct every mistake in MVP history." He has three categories of false MVPs, in order: Fishy But Ultimately Okay, Fishy and Ultimately Not Okay, and Outright Travesties.

Let's look at his eight travesties starting with #8 and comparing the Win Shares leaders (taken from basketball-reference.com) for each season in question. (FYI: Win Shares shows how many wins a player has created compared to what a dude-off-the-street, replacement player would produce.)

8. Kobe Bryant (2007-08 MVP)
Simmons rips Kobe often in the book and here he says this "should have been Chris Paul's trophy---nobody meant more to his team or his city---and if not him, then Garnett."

2007-08 Win Shares leaders

1.	Chris Paul-NOH	17.8
2.	LeBron James-CLE	15.2
3.	Amare Stoudemire-PHO	14.6
4.	Kobe Bryant-LAL	13.8
5.	Chauncey Billups-DET	13.5

He's certainly right about Chris Paul. In fact, Paul is already leading the NBA in Win Shares this current season and he finished 2nd in 2009 but still hasn't won an MVP yet. So here, Simmons is on the money except for throwing Garnett in. He was 2nd in the league in Defensive Win Shares but overall was at just eighth in overall Win Shares with 12.9. (Although he was the leader and catalyst on the champion Celtics that season.)

7. Steve Nash (2004-05 MVP)

This one is preposterous for Simmons because it was the first time that "(a) a table setter won the award; (b) a non-franchise player won; and (c) a defensive liability won." He certainly admires Nash's game (who doesn't?) and describes him perfectly: "Here was a Canadian dude with floppy hair and a nonstop motor who looked like Kelly Leak, made throwback plays (like his trademark running hook), knew how to handle a fast break, made teammates better and always handled himself with class." But he feels that, in the MVP awards voting, "poor Shaq ended up getting robbed."

2004-05 Win Shares leaders

1.	Kevin Garnett-MIN	16.1
2.	Dirk Nowitzki-DAL	15.6
3.	Amare Stoudemire-PHO	14.6
4.	LeBron James-CLE	14.3
5.	Shawn Marion-PHO	12.5

Looks like two of Nash's teammates may have been robbed. Though you can definitely argue that Nash propelled Amare and Marion to top-5 status that season and deserves a lot of credit for that. KG had a monster year but his team missed the playoffs, Dirk was great too but his Mavericks were knocked out of the playoffs by Steve Nash's Suns. Simmons (admitting "I'm no Bill James") makes the outlandish assertion that Shaq was responsible for a 40-game swing that season (the Heat gaining 17 wins once they acquired him and the Lakers losing 23) although Shaq sat out injured for 10 games and Win Shares-wise doesn't come close to the top even if considered on a per-minute basis. So, yes: Nash was a bad pick. But there are a few guys that should've had first dibs before Shaq.

6. Magic Johnson (1989-90 MVP)

"Everyone remembers Charles Barkley getting screwed when Jordan had a bigger gripe," he says before stating MJ's choice. He's got this one exactly right. 

1989-90 Win Shares leaders

1.	Michael Jordan*-CHI	19.0
2.	Charles Barkley*-PHI	17.3
3.	Magic Johnson*-LAL	16.5
4.	Karl Malone*-UTA	15.9
5.	David Robinson*-SAS	15.1

Simmons explains why Jordan didn't win the vote for this award, one of the reasons was because "the media kept perpetuating the bullshit that Bird and Magic 'knew how to win' and Jordan 'didn't know how to win yet.' (What a farce.)" That perpetuated bullshit "know how to win" idea seems to be dying a slow death in sports coverage right now. Baseball especially is seemingly starting to move from that penumbra of ignorance.

5. Dave Cowens (1972-73 MVP)

Simmons concludes: "Kareem got robbed" and it certainly looks that way.

1972-73 Win Shares leaders

1.	Kareem Abdul-Jabbar*-MIL	21.9
2.	Wilt Chamberlain*-LAL	18.2
3.	Tiny Archibald*-KCO	14.2
4.	Walt Frazier*-NYK	13.0
5.	John Havlicek*-BOS	12.1

Kareem had won the MVP in both seasons prior and, during a turbulent '72-73 season both on and off the court (seven friends were murdered at his house), led the league in Win Shares while carrying his debilitated team to 60 wins. Cowens does show up at the top of the Defensive Win Shares list but Kareem is far ahead of the rest of the pack on this one.


4. Charles Barkley (1992-93 MVP)

Here's where it starts getting heated (and the argumentative tone often produces the most entertaining and engaging writing in Simmons' opus). He lists the numbers for the top 3 MVP vote-getters that year: Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Charles Barkley. "That's right, signature seasons from three of the best twenty players ever! Unfortunately, eighty-six voters overlooked the fact that Jordan and Hakeem were two of the most destructive defensive players ever and Barkley couldn't guard Ron Kovic."

1992-93 Win Shares leaders

1.	Michael Jordan*-CHI	17.2
2.	Hakeem Olajuwon*-HOU	15.8
3.	Karl Malone*-UTA	15.4
4.	Charles Barkley*-PHO	14.4
5.	David Robinson*-SAS	13.2

On point once again. Sports Guy says it should have been MJ, Hakeem, then Barkley. MJ's Bulls went on to scorch the Suns in that year's championship giving Jordan vindication. The underappreciated greatness of Hakeem's 1990s domination was covered lengthily and brilliantly at FreeDarko not too long ago.

3. Steve Nash (2005-06 MVP)

So, Nash has to hand in both of his trophies, huh? This was the part of the chapter that made me want to look up the Win Shares, as Simmons asserts that Kobe was worth a minimum of 25 victories for his Lakers that year.

2005-06 Win Shares leaders

1.	Dirk Nowitzki-DAL	17.7
2.	LeBron James-CLE	16.3
3.	Chauncey Billups-DET	15.5
4.	Kobe Bryant-LAL	15.3
5.	Kevin Garnett-MIN	14.9

He's about 10 wins off on Kobe. He doesn't even mention Dirk who carried his team to 60 wins and the NBA Finals (losing to the Heat). Regardless, it's definitely fun to read about Kobe's performance that season. "The dude scored 62 in three quarters against Dallas, then 81 against Toronto a few weeks later." And he was sure as hell fun to watch.



2. Willis Reed (1969-70 MVP)

Willis starred for the Knicks team that year that won a league-high 60 games and was such an endearing team that over a dozen books have been written about that Knicks season. As covered in The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History , even a bunch of the players on that team wrote books. One of those books, Rockin' Steady: A Guide to Basketball & Cool, was writ by the great Walt "Clyde" Frazier whom Simmons mentions as a viable candidate for co-MVP with Reed for 1970. But that's just because, with the way the Knicks took the league by storm that year, "a Knick was getting the MVP and that was that." But Simmons argues that Jerry West was the best player in the league that year.

1969-70 Win Shares leaders

1.	Jerry West*-LAL	15.2
2.	Walt Frazier*-NYK	15.0
3.	Willis Reed*-NYK	14.6
4.	Kareem Abdul-Jabbar*-MIL	13.8
5.	Oscar Robertson*-CIN	11.4

I'm impressed with how on point he is with this one. It's no wonder he has this one at #2 on the travesties list because West was indeed more valuable than Reed and just a tick above Frazier, while dragging his beaten-up team (Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor missed a big chunk of the season) to 2nd place in the Western Conference and taking them all the way to a Finals matchup with the Knicks (they lost). He argues that this was West's finest year and, as one of the 8 greatest players of all time, he should've won at least one MVP trophy in his career. This was his best chance, and he lost it because the Knicks were so damn entertaining. As a Knicks fan, I say: tough shit.


1. Karl Malone (1996-97 MVP)

Jordan had won the previous season, would win the award the following season, and should've won it this season too. The voting was pretty close and Karl Malone somehow came out on top. Simmons bubbles up a Vegas bachelor party story to state his case then blames it all on a silly "Malone-for-MVP" campaign among sportswriters that "got the ball rolling, and within a couple of weeks, this became the cute story du jour."

1996-97 Win Shares leaders

1.	Michael Jordan*-CHI	18.3
2.	Karl Malone*-UTA	16.7
3.	Grant Hill-DET	14.6
4.	John Stockton*-UTA	13.6
5.	Scottie Pippen*-CHI	13.1

Not only was Jordan clearly the best player in the league, but his team won more games (69) than anybody that year and eventually met Karl Malone's Utah Jazz in the NBA Finals, smote them mightily and Jordan won Finals MVP. So there. Moral of the story: don't mess with Jordan.


While researching this post, I came across a cool piece by Kevin Pelton at Basketball Prospectus using win statistics to look at all the best players from the 1990s. Check it out here.

Xmas Loot

Just a quick rundown of the Christmas loot I acquired, mostly a pretty spectacular array of books.

- The first thing I received was a book from my girlfriend's father, an artist himself who had listened to all my blabberings about Dali and the paranoaic-critical method which led to him getting for me an amazing book of trompe l'oeil and anamorphosis art including the works of Dali and M.C. Escher (another favorite of mine). The book is called Masters of Deception: Escher, Dali & the Artists of Optical Illusion and it's probably the coolest art book I've ever seen.




- Next thing, also from my girlfriend's pops, was a book I had been looking at in bookstores for a while and was hoping somebody would eventually get for me. It's a full exploration of the life and works of the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. I've been fascinated by Klimt's style since first seeing his work a few months ago. With many of his paintings I look at them and hear music, which is the exact opposite synesthetic sensation induced by my favorite music which often conjures pictures, images, shades of different colors. I fuckin love art. Here's Klimt's Death and Life.

- Totally switching gears... The last five or six years, ever since I've gotten into reading books as a serious hobby, each Christmas there seems to be a theme. It's whatever I'm heavily interested in at the time or throughout that year. Years back it was Carl Sagan's work, then Joseph Campbell, last year it was James Joyce. This year it was basketball. As I've mentioned a few times, my interest in the NBA has been rejuvenated this season and I've been devouring basketball literature ever since. So my lady hooked me up with a nice trio of b-ball books this year:

• FreeDarko presents The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History. I was absolutely blown away by their first book (reviewed here) and was eager to check this one out. So far I've only had a chance to flip through it a couple times but the artwork is beautiful and once again they're inventing cool ways to graphically display vast amounts of data and stats. The chart of NBA fights is nuts. In my history as a sports fan, there's been no doubt that baseball inspires the greatest collection of literature. But basketball seemed to have been catching up lately and the FreeDarko books have blasted forward lightyears ahead of anything I've come across in sports books of any kind.
• The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons (new paperback edition). When this first came out a last year I was so immersed in Joyce books that I didn't care to check it out. I also figured it would make sense to hold out and wait for the paperback since all the errors would then be corrected and there would certainly be new material added. I'm glad I held out. Simmons' NBA columns have always been entertaining for me but after reading the reviews for his book, all of which seem to complain that there's almost as many porn and reality show references as basketball talk, I wasn't all that eager to start reading it nor did I have high expectations. But, of all the books I got for Xmas, this is the one I haven't been able to put down. His writing is annoyingly great, no big words and the candor is that of a diehard fan, yet it's a smooth and entertaining read if you're into basketball. It's also vast, the 700 pages cover the top 96 players of all time, the best teams ever, the worst MVP winners ever and much, more more.
• Rockin' Steady: A Guide to Basketball & Cool by Walt Frazier. One of the few things I truly miss about living in New York is getting to hear Frazier as the color commentator on Knicks' games. His voice purls like a fountain while delivering a vast vocabulary, often with rhymes. The book was written during his playing days with the Knicks, though, and features lots of clear color photos of 1970s basketball, cool drawings, and Clyde's basketball wisdom plus, of course, how to be cool. I dig it.

- Last but not least is a book that I'd been reading on Google Books for a while but didn't want to pick up because it's an expensive, obscure scholarly text. The title, James Joyce and the Politics of Egoism, makes it sound extremely boring and dense but it's been a great read. With plenty of material on Jacques Lacan's studies of Joyce, I needed this book to finish up preparing for an essay I'm about to write on that subject. The book goes into much more than that, though, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in Joyce as it delves into a wide range of stuff that I've never heard of before.

Among the other blessings bestowed upon me by my immediate family were a Space Pen, an iPad, and a pair of tube socks. Thank you to all, and to all a good night.