Are top scorers really the most valuable players? Are games decided in the final few minutes? Does the team with the best player usually win?Thinking Basketball challenges a number of common beliefs about the game by taking a deep dive into the patterns and history of the NBA. Explore how certain myths arose while using our own cognition as a window into the game's popular narratives. New basketball concepts are introduced, such as power plays, portability and why the best player shouldn't always shoot. Discover how the box score can be misleading, why "closers" are overrated and how the outcome of a game fundamentally alters our memory. Behavioral economics, traffic paradoxes and other metaphors highlight this thought-provoking insight into the NBA and our own thinking. A must-read for any basketball fan -- you'll never view the sport, and maybe the world, the same again.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The NBA according to The Sports Guy—now updated with fresh takes on LeBron, the Celtics, and more! Foreword by Malcom Gladwell • “The work of a true fan . . . it might just represent the next phase of sports commentary.”—The Atlantic Bill Simmons, the wildly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining basketball addict known to millions as ESPN’s The Sports Guy, has written the definitive book on the past, present, and future of the NBA. From the age-old question of who actually won the rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to the one about which team was truly the best of all time, Simmons opens—and then closes, once and for all—every major pro basketball debate. Then he takes it further by completely reevaluating not only how NBA Hall of Fame inductees should be chosen but how the institution must be reshaped from the ground up, the result being the Pyramid: Simmons’s one-of-a-kind five-level shrine to the ninety-six greatest players in the history of pro basketball. And ultimately he takes fans to the heart of it all, as he uses a conversation with one NBA great to uncover that coveted thing: The Secret of Basketball. Comprehensive, authoritative, controversial, hilarious, and impossible to put down (even for Celtic-haters), The Book of Basketball offers every hardwood fan a courtside seat beside the game’s finest, funniest, and fiercest chronicler.

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The Eastern Professional Basketball League (1946-78) was fast and physical, often played in tiny, smoke-filled gyms across the northeast and featuring the best players who just couldn’t make the NBA—many because of unofficial quotas on Black players, some because of scandals, and others because they weren’t quite good enough in the years when the NBA had less than 100 players. In Boxed out of the NBA: Remembering the Eastern Professional Basketball League, Syl Sobel and Jay Rosenstein tell the fascinating story of a league that was a pro basketball institution for over 30 years, showcasing top players from around the country. During the early years of professional basketball, the Eastern League was the next-best professional league in the world after the NBA. It was home to big-name players such as Sherman White, Jack Molinas, and Bill Spivey, who were implicated in college gambling scandals in the 1950s and were barred from the NBA, and top Black players such as Hal “King” Lear, Julius McCoy, and Wally Choice, who could not make the NBA into the early 1960s due to unwritten team quotas on African-American players. Featuring interviews with some 40 former Eastern League coaches, referees, fans, and players—including Syracuse University coach Jim Boeheim, former Temple University coach John Chaney, former Detroit Pistons player and coach Ray Scott, former NBA coach and ESPN analyst Hubie Brown, and former NBA player and coach Bob Weiss—this book provides an intimate, first-hand account of small-town professional basketball at its best.

For most of its existence, the National Basketball Association was a league filled with (almost) all American-born players. Players from overseas were looked at as less-skilled and not worth the risk. Americans playing overseas were looked at as those who couldn’t cut it in the NBA, now playing in, essentially, the minor leagues of basketball. But that’s no longer the case. Today, a full one-third of those in the league were born overseas. Out are the days of foreign-born players from unknown countries sitting at the end of the bench. Now, they’re the face of the franchise. A lottery draft pick. They are carrying the game into the new millennium. So the question remains: what brought about this change? How did the skillsets of players born overseas become comparable to those in the states? In The (Inter) National Basketball Association, author Joel Gunderson explores how the international game has become so integral to the growth of the NBA. It’s not, as former commissioner David Stern described at the 1985 NBA Draft, “America’s Game.” No longer does Team USA expect to steamroll through the Olympics. With stars such as Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece), Luka Doncic (Slovenia), Joel Embiid (Cameroon), Kristaps Porzingis (Latvia), and many more, the game of basketball has become a universal language. With almost forty different countries represented in the National Basketball Association today, the evolution of the sport has transcended across international waters. Teams no longer shy away from players born abroad, but instead welcome them with open arms. And for those who come over, not knowing the language, unfamiliar with the American lifestyle, they are now arriving with fluency in the most important language: basketball.

"Beautifully illustrated and sharply written, SprawlBall is both a celebration and a critique of the 3-point shot. If you want to understand how the modern NBA came to be, you'll need to read this book." --Nate Silver, editor of fivethirtyeight.com From the leading expert in the exploding field of basketball analytics, a stunning infographic decoding of the modern NBA: who shoots where, and how. The field of basketball analytics has leaped to overdrive thanks to Kirk Goldsberry, whose visual maps of players, teams, and positions have helped teams understand who really is the most valuable player at any position. SprawlBall combines stunning visuals, in-depth analysis, fun, behind-the-scenes stories and gee-whiz facts to chart a modern revolution. From the introduction of the 3-point line to today, the game has changed drastically . . . Now, players like Steph Curry and Draymond Green are leading the charge. In chapters like "The Geography of the NBA," "The Interior Minister (Lebron James)," "The Evolution of Steph Curry," and "The Investor (James Harden)," Goldsberry explains why today's on-court product--with its emphasis on shooting, passing, and spacing--has never been prettier or more democratic. And it's never been more popular. For fans of Bill Simmons and FreeDarko, SprawlBall is a bold new vision of the game, presenting an innovative, cutting-edge look at the sport based on the latest research, as well as a visual and infographic feast for fans.