The IBIC Guide to Books About Basketball

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Basketball Book FAQs

1. What's the best book ever written on basketball?

One opinion was offered by Bill Walton at page 206 of NOTHING BUT NET (Hyperion, 1994):

"I learned a lot from the books I've read on the history of basketball. The best were Wilt Chamberlain's WILT--JUST LIKE ANY OTHER 7-FOOT BLACK MILLIONAIRE WHO LIVES NEXT DOOR, Bill Russell's SECOND WIND, and Jabbar's KAREEM. But no book had a greater effect on the way that I approached the game of basketball than Russell's GO UP FOR GLORY. I still have my first paperback copy of that book. The book had a profound effect on the way I approached the game and my life."

2. Can you recommend a good book about X?

Remarks from the IBIC Editor's Journal

May 25, 1996

Terry Pluto's FALLING FROM GRACE: CAN PRO BASKETBALL BE SAVED?, which came out last fall, purports to be a stinging indictment of the dismal state of the NBA. This book's already become a bit dated in that, writing in 1995, Pluto failed to anticipate the two big stories of the 1995-1996 basketball season: the destruction of the college game by the pro draft, and the emergence of a team for the ages in the 72-10 Chicago Bulls.

Pluto spends a lot of time hammering away on easy targets like the immaturity and greed of various players and owners (and he often uses the same anecdote in three or four different places, which gets a bit tiresome). But, frankly, he seems like a whiner. Sure, there are a lot of jerks in pro athletics, but what did you expect?

11/3/95--To celebrate the beginning of the National Basketball Association season, the featured book of the week is REBOUND by Bob Greene (Viking), the account of Michael Jordan's retirement from and return to basketball. An excellent book, not so much for its basketball content, which is surprisingly modest, but instead for its exploration of the nature of celebrity in America.

Also noteworthy in this connection: SACRED HOOPS by Phil Jackson (Hyperion). More basketball content plus some worthwhile Zen musings. Made me want to read his "real" autobiography, MAVERICK, published a while back.

But the best basketball book I've read this year is HOOP DREAMS by Ben Joravsky (Turner Publishing). Lives up to all the hype about the movie.

November 4, 1994

When I got married 5 years ago (September 2, 1989, 2 pm ;-) I looked at all my past and present hobbies and interests, and I decided which ones I truly cared about and which ones did not really fit with my life anymore. I dropped war games, but I kept military history. I dropped the ambition of screenwriting, but I kept my lifelong love of books. I dropped jogging, but I kept basketball.

I love this game!

Every year, without fail, on or about October 15, I buy a copy of DICK VITALE'S COLLEGE BASKETBALL (College Sports). I had found that Dickie Vee's rag was the best of the college basketball annuals-- it was more opinionated (YES!!!!) and better production values than its peers such as Street and Smith's, plus it was the only magazine that covered both college and pro in a single large issue. Last year, they split into two magazines (the pro version edited by Hubie Brown), and this year, they abandoned the large format. And as a result, it's no longer significantly better than the competition. But it's still fun, especially if you like Vitale's lists.

I've found myself watching pro basketball more and more the past couple of years. I'm so busy that it's hard to invest the time to learn a new year's players in the college game. (I did much better watching the college game when daughter Kelsey was a newborn--I spent an awful lot of time getting up at 230 am with crying baby to watch East Chicago State play Lower Volta.) So this year I decided to take a look at THE SPORTING NEWS OFFICIAL NBA GUIDE: 1994-1995 EDITION, edited by Craig Carter and Alex Sachare, and THE SPORTING NEWS OFFICIAL NBA REGISTER 1994-1995 EDITION, edited by George Puro, Alex Sachare, and Kyle Veltrop (The Sporting News Publishing Company).

These books live up to their billing as the authoritative references for anyone who loves the pro game. Between them, they provide all the information that any sportscaster, loyal hometeam fan, rotisserie gm, insomniac, or homework-avoider could conceivably want. (I qualify as 4 out of 5).

And now, with the NBA season beginning tonight, November 4th, it's time to announce the roster for my purely subjective, purely solitaire fantasy team. These are the players I'll be rooting for this year. I don't participate in a league and I don't do a competitive draft. These players are selected purely on the basis of my personal interest in following them. Introducing the 1994-1995 Ann Arbor Faculty Brats:

Finally, I should add that no discussion of professional basketball on the Internet would be complete without a mention of ESPN's NBA page, a comprehensive resource for anyone who follows the game, including both historical information and current season statistics, updated almost daily.

October 4, 1994

IL BASKET D'ITALIA by Jim Patton (Simon & Schuster) is an interesting book. If you're an American who's wondered what Italian basketball is like, as I often have, this book will tell you. The upside is when you're done, you'll like the author and you'll like Italian basketball. Unlike most basketball authors--both athletes and journalists--Patton is candid about his perspective as a small-time sports journalist: sometimes envious of the arrogant millionaires who populate the world of expatriate basketball, very human in his discussion of his failed marriage and the appealing warmth of Italian social life,and (above all) anything but grandiose.

The downside to this book is that you'll realize that unless you are planning to move to Europe for a couple of years, there's not much reason to follow Italian basketball. Even if you're a deranged basketball junkie who wants to scoop his fantasy league by bringing players back from European sojourn, or an insomniac new father in search of that crucial 501st channel of late night basketball on TV (as I was about 2 years ago, thanks to our adorable daughter Kelsey Paige), you'd be better off watching those 4 am games between Morehead State and Lower Alaska Community College, or even trying to find your local CBA franchise on community-access TV. Patton makes it clear that Italian basketball isn't ready for cable yet and probably never will be. Patton thinks you've got to be there to appreciate the personalities, the intense fan loyalty, the slow-paced conference races, the refreshingly lower profile of the sport.

All in all, a minor subject, but a quite satisfactory treatment.

Summer 1994

What is Bill Walton's rightful place in basketball history?

You might say that the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame settled the question when it enshrined Walton on May 10, 1993. As Walton points out in his new autobiography, NOTHING BUT NET, co-written with Gene Wojciechowski (Hyperion, 1994) "Of all the thousands of players who have worn an NBA uniform, fewer than 60 have made it into the Hall of Fame."

But, as Walton himself acknowledges in the next sentence, it is a little more complicated than that. " [W]hile it is true that I averaged only 33 games and 13.3 points during my fourteen-year professional career, nobody cherished playing ball more than I did." When Walton was fully healthy, he was one of the greatest ever; but he wasn't healthy much. Where, then, does he stand in the basketball pantheon?

NOTHING BUT NET offers one answer at page 206. "I learned a lot from the books I've read on the history of basketball," Walton observes. "The best were Wilt Chamberlain's WILT--JUST LIKE ANY OTHER 7-FOOT BLACK MILLIONAIRE WHO LIVES NEXT DOOR, Bill Russell's SECOND WIND, and Jabbar's KAREEM. But no book had a greater effect on the way that I approached the game of basketball than Russell's GO UP FOR GLORY. I still have my first paperback copy of that book. The book had a profound effect on the way I approached the game and my life. ... I wanted to be just like Russell. He believed that you measured a player's success by the number of championships you won." By that standard, Walton, who won championships in high school, college, and the NBA, clearly deserves to stand in Russell's company at Hoops Valhalla; there may never have been a better college center.

But what about NOTHING BUT NET as a book? Does it belong on the same shelf as GO UP FOR GLORY?

When you read this book, you get the impression that Walton had harsh standards for himself. Those harsh standards explain some of Walton's more puzzling moments, like the time he gratuitously bashed the Michigan Wolverine Fab Five as "underachievers", or the times, in his early years in the NBA, that he called up the Portland Trail Blazer team owner in the night and told him he was quitting. "'I hate this,' I would say. "'I hate everything about this. This is terrible. I can't do it anymore. I quit.' Then I'd hang up the phone, toss and turn the rest of the night, unable to sleep. By daybreak, I'd call him back and rescind the previous evening's announcement." Walton continues: "One day it finally dawned on me that I wasn't the one with the problem. It was them. My teammates didn't share my love, passion, and commitment for the game. ... I stopped making those nighttime retirement calls to the owner and concentrated on changing the existing order of the Trail Blazers."

If that story leaves you with a feeling that there's just a little bit missing--for example, why was Walton so critical of himself that he felt impelled to make the nighttime quitting calls in the first place--you're right.

That's the failing in this book. It does not tell you enough about Bill Walton as a man. Where GO UP FOR GLORY seethes with Bill Russell's resentment at racism, NOTHING BUT NET merely simmers, because Walton leaves out the most important stuff about what makes him tick as a person. We learn almost nothing about his parents, his wife Lori, or his four sons. Another example that illustrates why Walton is not a Hall of Famer as a writer is that he mentions that he attended Stanford Law School for two years, but never says anything more, and never explains why he didn't finish. Compare that to Scott Turow, an occasional All-Star of a writer, who parlayed just one year at Harvard into his perennial best-seller ONE-L.

Walton performs better when it comes to writing about basketball--especially in his portrayal of John Wooden's greatness--but there are still some irritating omissions. For example, Walton gives very short shrift to the Trail Blazer championship in 1977, without which he would not be in the Hall of Fame, and completely skips over the years from 1977 to 1984. He gives a lot more attention to the 1986 season, where he was only a sub to the best frontcourt in basketball history, Bird, McHale, and Parish. Was he even the best sixth man in basketball history? It's hard to say he was better than John Havlicek. ("HAVLICEK STOLE THE BALL! HAVLICEK STOLE THE BALL!")

Paradoxically, though, Walton is a better writer when he talks about those 1986 Celtics. In particular, the chapter on Larry Bird conveys Bird's greatness better than any other basketball book I have read. And when Walton talks about his basketball "Dream Team," he's completely convincing. The 1992 Olympic Dream Time "was a nice collection of players, but an All-Time Dream Time lineup would require quite a few roster changes. For instance, Christian Laettner . . . gone."

What finally resolved NOTHING BUT NET's status on my basketball bookshelf was not Walton's mixed prowess as a writer, but a photograph, just preceding page 147, of Walton; Bill Russell; Shaquille O'Neal; Wilt Chamberlain; and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, gathered round a seated John Wooden. (The caption reads: "Wilt asked, 'Okay, Coach Wooden, we're all here, now who gets to start?' Wooden's immediate response: "Well, is there anyone here who won three NCAA championships?'" ) When you look at the photograph, you notice that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a good three inches taller than Wilt, and that Shaquille O'Neal is very, very, very strong. But the most interesting thing about the photograph is that when you look at it, you realize that Bill Walton belongs there.

B>June 19, 1994

SHAQ ATTAQ by Shaquille O'Neal with Jack McCallum (Hyperion) is a noteworthy basketball book. For one thing, it will very probably be the first in several volumes of autobiography in a variety of media that will chronicle this future Hall of Famer's career There are lots of important questions still to be answered about Shaq. Will he bring an NBA championship to Orlando? When will he displace the elder generation that shut him out at this year's NBA All-Star game? It's a bit hard to imagine S haq as a grizzled veteran leader, but, then again, he's only 22.

I enjoyed this book more than I expected. Shaquille's got charisma on the printed page too. He's funny, he had good parents, and he's got a refreshing, youthful perspective on life.

From TV and media, I had gotten an impression that he didn't really understand what championshp basketball is all about. After reading this book, and comparing it to the perspective of the greats like Russell, Magic, and Bird, I still think he's got a lot to learn. But now I think there's a good chance that he will learn what he needs to learn in the next few years, and that you will see an NBA championship in Orlando in the mid-nineties (when their team starts getting deeper and deeper thanks to all those #1s that Golden State gave away to get Chris Webber).

(And, by the way, I don't think you're going to see Nick Anderson at Orlando very much longer. In a book filled with friendly comments about his teammates, and honest admiration for the level of play in an NBA where people you don't know can kill you every night, Shaq never says a personal word about Nick Anderson, not even when Nick scores 50 in a game.)

My most noteworthy memory of this book is Shaq's discussion of his body. It's worth quoting because it's such a wonderful example of how relative body image is:

"When you live with a body maybe you look at it a little different than everyone else. For example, I probably can't do many more than ten pushups. I can't do many situps. I could hardly do one pullup. I can't stand on my hands and walk around, like David Robinson used to do at the Naval Academy. I can bench press about 250 pounds but not like ten times, maybe just once or twice. A guy like Greg Kite would be better than me lifting weights. I have a good vertical jump for a 'footer, something like 28 or 29 inches, but it could stand improvement. And I'll tell you something else ... I've got a bad chest for someone my size. My arms are funny, too. If I look at them when I'm not doing anything at all they seem all flabby. But when I look at pictures of myself when I get the ball down low, holding people off and ready to attack the basket or something, they look real big. I'm like two different people sometimes. What I think I have is inner strength--the drive, the will, the determination to succeed."
Maybe he does, at that.


Comments from IBIC Readers

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Editor's Recommendations, Summer 1996

In this inaugural edition of IBIC's Featured Books, I'd like to draw your attention to several titles which have helped to shape my life and thinking.

  • When I was around fifteen, I came across Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's science fiction novel, INFERNO. This '70s remake of Dante's classic describes science fiction writer Allen Carpentier's descent into Hell. It's still a very fresh, accessible take on the classic. What a great movie it would make!
  • The Niven/Pournelle INFERNO immediately inspired me to read the original Divine Comedy. I've read a number of translations over the years, but my favorite is the one by Dorothy Sayers (INFERNO; PURGATORY; PARADISE). The notes are excellent, and Sayers had such a knowledgeable and witty mind that reading her prose is a pleasure in itself. (For those interested in a more contemporary translation, I should mention that Robert Pinsky received excellent notices for his 1995 THE INFERNO OF DANTE : A NEW VERSE TRANSLATION; it's a very handsome book.)
  • I also want to tell you about the late Henry Fairlie's THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS TODAY, which probably did more than any other single book to galvanize me into a lifetime interest in Christianity that led me, eventually, to faith. Ironic, because Fairlie was a self-proclaimed agnostic socialist! But reading between the lines of this insightful and deeply feeling book, one realizes that the love of God cannot have been far from Fairlie's heart.
  • Finally, I should draw to your attention a more recent acquisition, the very handsome NIV STUDY BIBLE (10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION) from Zondervan, indexed and bonded in leather in IBIC's theme color, burgundy (black and brown are also available). The notes to this Bible are amazing. They appear to provide you with a very substantial portion of what you need to know to have an intelligent layman's appreciation of the linguistic and historical issues involved in understanding Scripture.

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