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have Simmons.
    3.
    You will have noticed, by now, that The Book of Basketball is very large. I can safely say that it is the longest book that I have read since I was in college. Please do not be put off by this fact. If this were a novel, you would be under some obligation to read it all at once or otherwise you’d lose track of the plot. (Wait. Was Celeste married to Ambrose, or were they the ones who had the affair at the Holiday Inn?) But it isn’t a novel. It is, rather, a series of loosely connected arguments and riffs and lists and stories that you can pick up and put down at any time. This is the basketball version of the old Baseball Abstracts that Bill James used to put out in the 1980s. It’s long because it needs to be long—because the goal of this book is to help us understand the connection between things like, say, Elgin Baylor and Michael Jordan, and to do that you have to understand exactly who Baylor was. And because Bill didn’t want to just rank the top ten players of all time, or the top twenty-five, since those are the ones that we know about. He wanted to rank the top ninety-six, and then also mention the ones who almost made the cut, and he wanted to make the case for every one of his positions—with wit and evidence and reason. And as you read it you’ll realize not only that you now understand basketball in a way that you never have before but also that there’s never been a book about basketball quite like this. So take your time. Set aside a few weeks. You won’t lose track of the characters. You know the characters. What you may not know is just how good Bernard King was, or why Pippen belongs on the all-time team. (By the way, make sure to read the footnotes. God knows why, but Simmons is the master of the footnote.)
    One last point. This book is supposed to start arguments. I’m still flabbergasted at how high he ranks Allen Iverson, for example, or why Kevin Johnson barely cracks the pyramid. I seem to remember that in his day K.J. was unstoppable. But then again, I’m relying on my memory. Simmons went back and looked at the tape some random Tuesday afternoon when the rest of us were at work. Lucky bastard.

THIRTEEN
THE WINE CELLAR

    TIME TO PUT the jigsaw pieces together and make a puzzle.
    The puzzle revolves around the Martian Premise. Let’s say basketball-playing aliens land on earth, blow things up Independence Day– style, then challenge us to a seven-game series for control of the universe. And let’s say we have access to the time machine from Lost , allowing us to travel back Sarah Conner–style and grab any twelve NBA legends from 1946 through 2009, transport them to the present day, then hold practices for eight weeks before the Final Finals. Again, we have to prevail or planet Earth as we know it ends. Which twelve players would you pick?
    If you learned anything from this book other than “Simmons is incapable of editing himself” and “Rick Barry wore a Burt Reynolds–like wig during the 1975–76 season,” I hope and pray that it’s this: instead of picking the greatest players, you should pick twelve who complement each other in the best possible way … right? (Please nod. Thank you.) Youwant a basketball team. A group that understands The Secret. A pecking order of personalities/talents that no rogue player would dare challenge. A crunch-time unit that includes one vocal leader, one leader by example and one unquestioned alpha dog. Bench guys who will accept limited roles and not care about minutes. Roster flexibility with heights, styles and athleticism. At least four white guys so we can market more jerseys and posters. (Whoops, I screwed that up—I was thinking of the logic behind the ’92 Dream Team. Scratch that one.) In a perfect world, our best twelve would care only about winning and meshing as a team.
    I call it the Wine Cellar Team, and here’s why: Whenever someone makes an all-time team, they casually throw out names without context.