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How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius: What Game Designers, Economists, Ballet Choreographers, and Theoretical Astrophysicists Reveal About the Greatest Game on Earth
A brilliant, entertaining deconstruction of basketball, drawing on the expertise of board-game creators, magicians, therapists, and more
“Really novel way to approach the game, and pretty unique to basketball.” —Sopan Deb, New York Times
Basketball is the second-most popular sport in the world—an insanely complicated game built on a combination of athleticism, craftiness, rules, intangibles, and superstardom. However, while it’s enjoyable to watch, the real reason it works is because it’s a game of culture, art, and all the things that make us human.
Nick Greene’s How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius deconstructs the sport from top to bottom and then puts it back together again, detailing its intricacies through reporting and dozens of interviews with experts. These experts, however, are a diverse wine critics weighing in on LeBron’s ability to delegate on the fly, magicians analyzing Chris Paul’s mystifying dribbling techniques, cartographers breaking down Steph Curry’s deadeye three-point shooting. Every chapter treats basketball to a multidisciplined study that adventures far beyond the lines of the court, examining key elements of the sport from some surprising and revealing angles. There’s a reason it has conquered the world, and every game is a chance to learn about pop culture, fashion, history, science, art, and anything else that bounces our way.
“Really novel way to approach the game, and pretty unique to basketball.” —Sopan Deb, New York Times
Basketball is the second-most popular sport in the world—an insanely complicated game built on a combination of athleticism, craftiness, rules, intangibles, and superstardom. However, while it’s enjoyable to watch, the real reason it works is because it’s a game of culture, art, and all the things that make us human.
Nick Greene’s How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius deconstructs the sport from top to bottom and then puts it back together again, detailing its intricacies through reporting and dozens of interviews with experts. These experts, however, are a diverse wine critics weighing in on LeBron’s ability to delegate on the fly, magicians analyzing Chris Paul’s mystifying dribbling techniques, cartographers breaking down Steph Curry’s deadeye three-point shooting. Every chapter treats basketball to a multidisciplined study that adventures far beyond the lines of the court, examining key elements of the sport from some surprising and revealing angles. There’s a reason it has conquered the world, and every game is a chance to learn about pop culture, fashion, history, science, art, and anything else that bounces our way.
272 pages, Paperback
Published April 12, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 189 reviews
December 2, 2020
4 1/2 Stars.
I thoroughly enjoyed “How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius by Nick Greene.” I’ve been a lifelong fan and basketball player in my youth. So, this book was something I would’ve picked off the shelf anyway.
The strength of this book was the detail and the references that he put into the work. A very impressive section was taking Dr Naismith’s original rules and explain them for us in relation to basketball today
Additionally he carried l basketball examples to the modern day. He touched on the fundamentals of the game shooting, scoring, 3 point shooting and rebounding just the nam a few.
On a negative point, I thought the cover was not very attractive and would not draw my eye. The book is much more serious than the silly cover shows.
I recommend this book to others.
This book was provided By NetGalley for my review and honest.feedback
I thoroughly enjoyed “How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius by Nick Greene.” I’ve been a lifelong fan and basketball player in my youth. So, this book was something I would’ve picked off the shelf anyway.
The strength of this book was the detail and the references that he put into the work. A very impressive section was taking Dr Naismith’s original rules and explain them for us in relation to basketball today
Additionally he carried l basketball examples to the modern day. He touched on the fundamentals of the game shooting, scoring, 3 point shooting and rebounding just the nam a few.
On a negative point, I thought the cover was not very attractive and would not draw my eye. The book is much more serious than the silly cover shows.
I recommend this book to others.
This book was provided By NetGalley for my review and honest.feedback
April 3, 2021
I was excited to pick this book up in the month of March, hoping that it would add some unique perspective to my consumption of March Madness, but I think the title of the book was a little misleading. This book had less to do with watching the sport of basketball as it did uncovering similarities between basketball and other professions. Perspectives from scientists, engineers, etc. helped frame the sport of basketball in their career terms but did not really alter the way I watch the sport. I wasn’t looking for a “fundamentals of basketball” type book but am a little disappointed at the time spent on non-basketball discussion instead of dissecting what makes great players so great, for example. I don’t regret reading but probably won’t recommend to others looking to improve the way they watch basketball!
July 5, 2021
I love to analyze things, particularly sports, so when I came across How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius I was hoping for some next level insights. What do people who really know basketball see when they watch the sport? I bought the book online based on its front cover, so I didn’t do much due diligence, but it soon became apparent that this was not the book that I was after. Greene does a reasonable job setting out the book in terms of basketball themes: the game’s rules, including the 24 second clock and the three point line; dribbling; shooting (free throws, jump shots, dunks); passing; rebounding; and successful offensive & defensive schemes. And while he excels at providing historical context to the many innovations made over the years to make the game more exciting, he loses me when he brings in specialists from other fields to comment on each subject. For example: executives from modern gaming companies are asked their views on James Naismith’s original rules; magicians are questioned on the sleight of hand wizardry of great dribblers. The tangential connections continue: great jump shooters are likened to great bagel makers; the artistic director of the Oakland ballet opines on dunking; aerospace engineers and couples therapists discuss the art of good passing. The list goes on. It is clear that Nick Greene knows his basketball. The passages where he explores the game’s evolution are interesting and informative (his attempt to explain Tex Winter’s triangle offence was particularly useful), but his idea of roping in outsiders for their expert perspectives, while commendably creative, did not work in my opinion. It diluted the good content, while adding very little to the overall experience.
May 15, 2024
Don’t get me wrong, I love a sports book that’s just other people at the top of their professions talking about how much they love the sport (s/o Murakami’s ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running’ huge banger) but I gotta say this one just fell super flat to me 😐 I can tell Nick Greene is trying to be funny and witty but it comes off as try hard, and a lot of the similarities he tried to pull off between basketball and something like launching satellites into space just doesn’t quite click. The only medium I can imagine this making sense is as a conversation between 6 guys at a bar after their 9-5s. It gets 2 stars for trying to explain the Phil Jackson triangle offense in a palatable way.
November 21, 2020
As a lifelong basketball fan, I was really intrigued by this book. The cover caught my eye, but the synopsis sealed my interest, and I was thrilled to be approved for this title.
In How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius, Nick Greene pulls from various professions, perspectives, and experiences in order to dissect and examine the international sensation that is professional basketball. Spanning decades and points of view, Greene breaks down how basketball became the multi-billion dollar industry it is today, how the rules have changed over time, and what exactly makes basketball so damn watchable.
I can't say enough good things about this book. From the first page, Greene had me hooked. His sarcastic, oftentimes self-deprecating humor was both clever and engrossing. I've gone to the HoF many times in my life, but he managed to relay brand new information about a sport I've always loved without info dumping or succumbing to the dreaded tour-guide reciting monotone.
This book has everything: facts, figures, jokes, historical tidbits, and hilarious anecdotes.
And while I requested this because of my love of the sport, this is definitely not just a book for basketball fans. Sure, it helps to be familiar with the game and players, but there's so much to love about how Greene approaches the ins and outs of success and popularity that gives this universal appeal. I think many readers will respond to his anecdotal structure and diverse figures.
On a personal note, I loved getting to read about some of my favorite teams and players, and I knew this book was legit when Greene included a breakdown of Andre Drummond's free throw style.
Overall, How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius is one of my top books to look for in 2021. As entertaining as it is enlightening, add this to your TBRs now.
Huge thanks to Abrams Press for providing an eARC in exchange for honest review consideration.
In How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius, Nick Greene pulls from various professions, perspectives, and experiences in order to dissect and examine the international sensation that is professional basketball. Spanning decades and points of view, Greene breaks down how basketball became the multi-billion dollar industry it is today, how the rules have changed over time, and what exactly makes basketball so damn watchable.
I can't say enough good things about this book. From the first page, Greene had me hooked. His sarcastic, oftentimes self-deprecating humor was both clever and engrossing. I've gone to the HoF many times in my life, but he managed to relay brand new information about a sport I've always loved without info dumping or succumbing to the dreaded tour-guide reciting monotone.
This book has everything: facts, figures, jokes, historical tidbits, and hilarious anecdotes.
And while I requested this because of my love of the sport, this is definitely not just a book for basketball fans. Sure, it helps to be familiar with the game and players, but there's so much to love about how Greene approaches the ins and outs of success and popularity that gives this universal appeal. I think many readers will respond to his anecdotal structure and diverse figures.
On a personal note, I loved getting to read about some of my favorite teams and players, and I knew this book was legit when Greene included a breakdown of Andre Drummond's free throw style.
Overall, How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius is one of my top books to look for in 2021. As entertaining as it is enlightening, add this to your TBRs now.
Huge thanks to Abrams Press for providing an eARC in exchange for honest review consideration.
July 29, 2025
definitely a unique & interesting book! its very much a “basketball is for everyone” kind of book, as the author emphasizes everyone brings something different to the game, even just as a spectator. i wish there was more wnba/wbb and of course will hold a lifelong grudge because of it, but thats just me 😭😭😭 oh and geno auriemma is the college basketball coach with the most championships, not john wooden 😒
February 23, 2023
I enjoyed but didn’t love this. It was fascinating whenever it focused on the pop history of basketball, like the invention of the game, rule changes, and the evolution of play-styles that made the sport what it is today. But Greene’s commitment to his clever little premise—that the fundamentals of basketball might be illuminated by insights learned from “geniuses” in random and totally unrelated fields of study, such as astrophysicists, ballerinas, couples therapists, close-up magicians, bagel chefs, and many more—grew strained and repetitive as the book went on. It makes for a top-notch book-jacket synopsis, I’ll admit, but it gets boring after a while.
By the final third of the book, I came to dread every shallow, unenlightening foray into some new area of expertise. Each of these wrapped up with the cadence of “haven’t we learned something here?” while rarely ever providing a real insight into basketball. During the few times he focused on experts who had actually applied their craft to analyzing some part of the game of basketball, I longed for an entire book that was just about the sport without all of the extraneous crap.
Many of his interviews with experts gave me the impression that he pressed them to connect their profession to basketball in some predetermined way, printed their half-hearted response, then wrote paragraphs of awe-filled surprise at how clever and fitting the analogy that he came up with turned out to be. He also has this slightly forced whimsy and a constant need to restate that he himself is no expert, just a normal person like you or me—the same rhetorical strategy used in “Well, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I may just be a simple country lawyer...” Not my favorite writing style! It’s like reading a really long blog post crossed with a New Yorker article at times. Whatever. I had fun.
By the final third of the book, I came to dread every shallow, unenlightening foray into some new area of expertise. Each of these wrapped up with the cadence of “haven’t we learned something here?” while rarely ever providing a real insight into basketball. During the few times he focused on experts who had actually applied their craft to analyzing some part of the game of basketball, I longed for an entire book that was just about the sport without all of the extraneous crap.
Many of his interviews with experts gave me the impression that he pressed them to connect their profession to basketball in some predetermined way, printed their half-hearted response, then wrote paragraphs of awe-filled surprise at how clever and fitting the analogy that he came up with turned out to be. He also has this slightly forced whimsy and a constant need to restate that he himself is no expert, just a normal person like you or me—the same rhetorical strategy used in “Well, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I may just be a simple country lawyer...” Not my favorite writing style! It’s like reading a really long blog post crossed with a New Yorker article at times. Whatever. I had fun.
June 30, 2024
This is such a unique exploration of basketball. It takes such neat lenses to explore the beautiful game in new ways. Like how traffic lights are related to the shot clock or how the Triangle Offense is like a Rube Goldberg machine. Just fascinating and fun on every page.
August 5, 2025
Oh, Goodreads. Feels like I haven't had a chance to log on here in months, but it's really only been a couple of weeks. After all of my travel this month, you'd think I'd had plenty of time to read and ponder books, but alas, this was not the case. Being booked and busy (no pun intended) is great sometimes, but other times, it just eats into the things I want to be doing. Like reading this book.
I purchased this book during the NBA Finals this year, after having close to zero interest in a Pacers v Thunder match up (I say close to zero because the only thing I cared about was the Thunder losing... and look where that got us). The NBA Finals are famously in June, you might notice. So, I've been wanting to pick up this book for well over a month, but I've had no good chances to start it and really dig in. After an insane travel experience on the way to Belfast, this book still sat unread in my backpack. It wasn't until the back half of our trip I was able to finally crack it open in a cafe in Belfast. And once I picked it up, it was hard to put down. Four flights and three cities later, I've finally had the chance to finish it. It was genuinely the perfect book to bring along for my flights.
I love books like this one. Any time someone is passionate enough about a topic to sit down and analyze it according to their own worldview, I'm going to lock in. What I found most interesting about this book was the way the author was able to connect the history and evolution of basketball to areas of life I would have never considered having any sort of overlap. Of course, that's in the title of the book, but I liked seeing it all come together. I liked hearing about how rocket scientists are able to see hoops in their interplanetary rocket prep, enjoyed getting to see a therapist consider how LeBron works within his team, and ballet choreographers get excited about Michael Jordan's airtime. That particular parallel was perfect to me as someone who enjoys the Mr. Blue Sky scene in the Game Plan.
At the end of the day, I guess we all do this! We all see the beauty of sports within every area of life. Whether it's practicing a golf swing with your umbrella, shooting used paper into a wastebasket and yelling "Kobe!," or playing catch with any sort of ball-shaped object - we all integrate sports into our daily lives, no matter the perceived distance between ourselves and LeBron James or Scottie Scheffler. It's what makes sports so compelling to me. We all get giddy over sports in one way or another.
Another reason I appreciated this book is the insight I gained into basketball as a sport. I'll be the first to admit - basketball (and particularly the NBA) has never been my favorite sport. I definitely enjoy it a lot more now than I did five or ten years ago, but I think I'd rank English football, American football, and Formula 1 as much higher on my list, with other sports like hockey and golf drawing my interest more frequently (and all-consuming-ly) than basketball. But I've been on a journey these past couple of years. My brother and my best friend are into basketball in a huge way. Because of this, I've been more and more interested in basketball since graduating from college.
Layne made me watch a lot of Celtics games that first year after graduation, but thankfully, Avery brought me along to enough Mavs games that I became an official #MFFL. Up in section 308, I fell in love with a team - with my home team - and the artistry that basketball can produce. Weirdly, most of my favorite sports teams aren't actually located in Dallas. I didn't know if I'd even really want to be a Mavs fan, but it was more than easy to become one. I loved Luka, I loved the young guys, I loved the core players being fielded night after night. I loved the excitement of trades and the hope of new seasons stacking up into anticipation - knowing a championship was destined to be right around the corner. I loved Kyrie and Luka becoming LuKai, I loved DLive, and I'll always love DP7. And... I'll always miss Luka. I'll miss the 2024 NBA Finals run. I'll miss QDot and Maxi. I'll miss the team I fell in love with. Because that's the danger of falling in love with a team - nothing lasts forever. Of course, I was able to wax poetic about my Dallas Mavericks in my review of "There's Always This Year," so I'll spare you any more lament. I just think it's important to note just how far I've come in my basketball journey. Just far enough to experience the biggest fallout of any sports team I've supported, naturally.
All of this to say, I've really enjoyed getting to grow and evolve in my appreciation for basketball. I've loved getting to see how this sport has touched so many different people and communities - and this book is the perfect example of this. Scientists and artists and writers and coaches all fall in love with a sport designed to evolve, a sport designed to showcase grace, sophistication, grit, and chaos. A sport that can be traced back to one man. A sport created to captivate young minds and keep them focused on pushing forward rather than moving backwards. Not many sports were birthed like basketball, and even fewer have evolved like basketball (and you can argue whether it's been evolving for better or for worse. I'll just say my opinion has softened on this since picking up this book). After reading this book, I'm excited about the conversations I have ahead of me - conversations with fans of the sport and people with a bone to pick. I'm excited to watch this upcoming season with fresh eyes and renewed hope... even after everything I've gone through this season and off season. As my new favorite Luka edit says... Cooper - they didn't bring us here to change the past.
I purchased this book during the NBA Finals this year, after having close to zero interest in a Pacers v Thunder match up (I say close to zero because the only thing I cared about was the Thunder losing... and look where that got us). The NBA Finals are famously in June, you might notice. So, I've been wanting to pick up this book for well over a month, but I've had no good chances to start it and really dig in. After an insane travel experience on the way to Belfast, this book still sat unread in my backpack. It wasn't until the back half of our trip I was able to finally crack it open in a cafe in Belfast. And once I picked it up, it was hard to put down. Four flights and three cities later, I've finally had the chance to finish it. It was genuinely the perfect book to bring along for my flights.
I love books like this one. Any time someone is passionate enough about a topic to sit down and analyze it according to their own worldview, I'm going to lock in. What I found most interesting about this book was the way the author was able to connect the history and evolution of basketball to areas of life I would have never considered having any sort of overlap. Of course, that's in the title of the book, but I liked seeing it all come together. I liked hearing about how rocket scientists are able to see hoops in their interplanetary rocket prep, enjoyed getting to see a therapist consider how LeBron works within his team, and ballet choreographers get excited about Michael Jordan's airtime. That particular parallel was perfect to me as someone who enjoys the Mr. Blue Sky scene in the Game Plan.
At the end of the day, I guess we all do this! We all see the beauty of sports within every area of life. Whether it's practicing a golf swing with your umbrella, shooting used paper into a wastebasket and yelling "Kobe!," or playing catch with any sort of ball-shaped object - we all integrate sports into our daily lives, no matter the perceived distance between ourselves and LeBron James or Scottie Scheffler. It's what makes sports so compelling to me. We all get giddy over sports in one way or another.
Another reason I appreciated this book is the insight I gained into basketball as a sport. I'll be the first to admit - basketball (and particularly the NBA) has never been my favorite sport. I definitely enjoy it a lot more now than I did five or ten years ago, but I think I'd rank English football, American football, and Formula 1 as much higher on my list, with other sports like hockey and golf drawing my interest more frequently (and all-consuming-ly) than basketball. But I've been on a journey these past couple of years. My brother and my best friend are into basketball in a huge way. Because of this, I've been more and more interested in basketball since graduating from college.
Layne made me watch a lot of Celtics games that first year after graduation, but thankfully, Avery brought me along to enough Mavs games that I became an official #MFFL. Up in section 308, I fell in love with a team - with my home team - and the artistry that basketball can produce. Weirdly, most of my favorite sports teams aren't actually located in Dallas. I didn't know if I'd even really want to be a Mavs fan, but it was more than easy to become one. I loved Luka, I loved the young guys, I loved the core players being fielded night after night. I loved the excitement of trades and the hope of new seasons stacking up into anticipation - knowing a championship was destined to be right around the corner. I loved Kyrie and Luka becoming LuKai, I loved DLive, and I'll always love DP7. And... I'll always miss Luka. I'll miss the 2024 NBA Finals run. I'll miss QDot and Maxi. I'll miss the team I fell in love with. Because that's the danger of falling in love with a team - nothing lasts forever. Of course, I was able to wax poetic about my Dallas Mavericks in my review of "There's Always This Year," so I'll spare you any more lament. I just think it's important to note just how far I've come in my basketball journey. Just far enough to experience the biggest fallout of any sports team I've supported, naturally.
All of this to say, I've really enjoyed getting to grow and evolve in my appreciation for basketball. I've loved getting to see how this sport has touched so many different people and communities - and this book is the perfect example of this. Scientists and artists and writers and coaches all fall in love with a sport designed to evolve, a sport designed to showcase grace, sophistication, grit, and chaos. A sport that can be traced back to one man. A sport created to captivate young minds and keep them focused on pushing forward rather than moving backwards. Not many sports were birthed like basketball, and even fewer have evolved like basketball (and you can argue whether it's been evolving for better or for worse. I'll just say my opinion has softened on this since picking up this book). After reading this book, I'm excited about the conversations I have ahead of me - conversations with fans of the sport and people with a bone to pick. I'm excited to watch this upcoming season with fresh eyes and renewed hope... even after everything I've gone through this season and off season. As my new favorite Luka edit says... Cooper - they didn't bring us here to change the past.
November 9, 2022
I loved this book. I'm not sure on the title, though; it felt more like a history of the sport and its primary activities and less like a primer on how to watch it. Maybe someone new to the game would disagree with me. Having watched basketball most of my life and playing weekly until Covid-19 shut down our group for good, I thoroughly enjoyed the deep dive in to the evolution of this great sport from day one until now. And this book is full of humor and interesting takes from basketball fans from all walks of life as the title suggests.
The author starts with the detailed telling of the invention of the game by John Naismith in 1891. During a New England blizzard during which his rowdy phy ed students were stuck inside for days roughhousing and up to no good, Naismith attached some peach baskets to the gym balcony and invented 13 rules for his new game. He intended it to be a mixture of soccer and football for the indoors, a way to for his students to burn off their energy while cooped up. The rest is history. In the rest of the book the author explains how the 13 rules were modified and changed over the years to result in the game we have today. This book was published in 2021 and is therefore very current; the author spends some time talking about the highly successful NBA 2020 "bubble" in which the entire league was sealed off from society at Disney World in Orlando during the pandemic and was able to complete the the rest of their season with some great basketball in empty gyms with fans on screens in the background like a giant WebEx or Zoom meeting.
Each chapter deals with a particular aspect of the game and how it developed over the years. In order: dribbling, the shot clock, the three pointer, dunking, the jump shot, defense, assists, and offensive strategy (focusing on the triangle offense the Chicago Bulls made famous). Rebounding was regulated to the epilogue for some reason despite the fact that it's second in importance to scoring. The author explains that since it is perceived as an afterthought and not sexy in real life that he treated it that way in his book.
I enjoyed every chapter and whipped right through this book. Some interesting tidbits:
- George Mikan, the gentle giant of the 1950s Minneapolis Lakers was pretty much responsible for four rule changes due to his absolute dominance: the adoption of goaltending, the three second rule, the 24 second clock, and widening the lane from six to twelve feet!
- Joan Crawford commented in Sports Illustrated in 1957 about how the jump shot made the game of basketball much better. The author notes that he wouldn't recommend taking parenting advice from Joan but her basketball analysis was spot-on.
- Dennis Rodman would spend time during warm-ups just watching his teammates shots, and made mental notes of each person's shot arc and ball spin, and during the game would then know based on the angle of the shot where the ball would end up if it wouldn't go in. He literally had rebounding down to a science and won seven straight NBA rebounding titles in addition to being the US's most famous delegate to North Korea.
- While some NBA players struggle to hit 50% of their free throws, the WNBA's Elena Delle Donne is the best free throw shooter in the history of professional basketball at 93.8%. Steve Nash is the NBA's all-time free throw leader at 90.4%. Granted, the women play with a slightly smaller ball, but Delle Donne has it down to a science and it's amazing to watch her just knock down free throws like a machine.
The book chock full of interesting facts such as these and after finishing you'll be an expert on the history of basketball and have some knowledge about some of the secondary topics such as ballet, astrophysics, and dough preparation. He also references some special moments in the game, many of which are available to see on YouTube, which is fun, and had me taking a break to grab my phone.
Five stars from me, and would highly recommend to any basketball fan.
The author starts with the detailed telling of the invention of the game by John Naismith in 1891. During a New England blizzard during which his rowdy phy ed students were stuck inside for days roughhousing and up to no good, Naismith attached some peach baskets to the gym balcony and invented 13 rules for his new game. He intended it to be a mixture of soccer and football for the indoors, a way to for his students to burn off their energy while cooped up. The rest is history. In the rest of the book the author explains how the 13 rules were modified and changed over the years to result in the game we have today. This book was published in 2021 and is therefore very current; the author spends some time talking about the highly successful NBA 2020 "bubble" in which the entire league was sealed off from society at Disney World in Orlando during the pandemic and was able to complete the the rest of their season with some great basketball in empty gyms with fans on screens in the background like a giant WebEx or Zoom meeting.
Each chapter deals with a particular aspect of the game and how it developed over the years. In order: dribbling, the shot clock, the three pointer, dunking, the jump shot, defense, assists, and offensive strategy (focusing on the triangle offense the Chicago Bulls made famous). Rebounding was regulated to the epilogue for some reason despite the fact that it's second in importance to scoring. The author explains that since it is perceived as an afterthought and not sexy in real life that he treated it that way in his book.
I enjoyed every chapter and whipped right through this book. Some interesting tidbits:
- George Mikan, the gentle giant of the 1950s Minneapolis Lakers was pretty much responsible for four rule changes due to his absolute dominance: the adoption of goaltending, the three second rule, the 24 second clock, and widening the lane from six to twelve feet!
- Joan Crawford commented in Sports Illustrated in 1957 about how the jump shot made the game of basketball much better. The author notes that he wouldn't recommend taking parenting advice from Joan but her basketball analysis was spot-on.
- Dennis Rodman would spend time during warm-ups just watching his teammates shots, and made mental notes of each person's shot arc and ball spin, and during the game would then know based on the angle of the shot where the ball would end up if it wouldn't go in. He literally had rebounding down to a science and won seven straight NBA rebounding titles in addition to being the US's most famous delegate to North Korea.
- While some NBA players struggle to hit 50% of their free throws, the WNBA's Elena Delle Donne is the best free throw shooter in the history of professional basketball at 93.8%. Steve Nash is the NBA's all-time free throw leader at 90.4%. Granted, the women play with a slightly smaller ball, but Delle Donne has it down to a science and it's amazing to watch her just knock down free throws like a machine.
The book chock full of interesting facts such as these and after finishing you'll be an expert on the history of basketball and have some knowledge about some of the secondary topics such as ballet, astrophysics, and dough preparation. He also references some special moments in the game, many of which are available to see on YouTube, which is fun, and had me taking a break to grab my phone.
Five stars from me, and would highly recommend to any basketball fan.
February 15, 2021
This is a book on basketball that is really like no other one on the market today. Author Nick Green breaks down the sport in its basic areas such as shooting three-point shots, dribbling and free throws. But he doesn't stop there – he solicits input from other industries and art forms as varied as ballet, baking and cartography and compares those skills to the skills necessary to perform these basketball skills. Add in a chapter at the beginning about the early history of the game described in this same manner and you have a terrific book on the sport.
That beginning chapter, in which the tone for the rest of the book is set, is brilliant in its way that it will draw a reader into the early version of the sport the way Dr. James Naismith drew it up and the original rules. Green injects plenty of humor in this chapter that he liberally sprinkles throughout the book. He will use examples of NBA stars and what they do extremely well such as Steph Curry's three-point shooting or Chris Paul's dribbling skills to illustrate why not only are special talents, but how they are analyzed by experts in other, non-basketball areas. Green doesn't forget past masters of the game either, such as Marques Haynes for his dribbling skills with the Harlem Globetrotters. I also liked his references to George Mikan – not only for his career as the first NBA "big man" but also for his use of the three-point line when Mikan was the first commissioner of the ABA and that league's use of the arc.
What is also impressive is the variety of other industries that Green was able to compare to basketball and how they related to basketball. Before reading this book, I never would have thought to wonder if Mikhail Baryshnikov, the famous Russian ballerina, would be able to dunk a basketball. Who knew that making pasta from scratch had skills relatable to dribbling? These are just two of the wonderful skills that Green introduces to the reader that really enhance one's basketball knowledges and appreciation.
If a reader follows basketball at all, no matter the interest level or whether high school, college or professional, this book is a must-read. This review barely scratches the surface of the treasure trove of knowledge that a fan will learn. This book is, well, a stroke of genius.
I wish to thank Abrams Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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That beginning chapter, in which the tone for the rest of the book is set, is brilliant in its way that it will draw a reader into the early version of the sport the way Dr. James Naismith drew it up and the original rules. Green injects plenty of humor in this chapter that he liberally sprinkles throughout the book. He will use examples of NBA stars and what they do extremely well such as Steph Curry's three-point shooting or Chris Paul's dribbling skills to illustrate why not only are special talents, but how they are analyzed by experts in other, non-basketball areas. Green doesn't forget past masters of the game either, such as Marques Haynes for his dribbling skills with the Harlem Globetrotters. I also liked his references to George Mikan – not only for his career as the first NBA "big man" but also for his use of the three-point line when Mikan was the first commissioner of the ABA and that league's use of the arc.
What is also impressive is the variety of other industries that Green was able to compare to basketball and how they related to basketball. Before reading this book, I never would have thought to wonder if Mikhail Baryshnikov, the famous Russian ballerina, would be able to dunk a basketball. Who knew that making pasta from scratch had skills relatable to dribbling? These are just two of the wonderful skills that Green introduces to the reader that really enhance one's basketball knowledges and appreciation.
If a reader follows basketball at all, no matter the interest level or whether high school, college or professional, this book is a must-read. This review barely scratches the surface of the treasure trove of knowledge that a fan will learn. This book is, well, a stroke of genius.
I wish to thank Abrams Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...
May 22, 2022
This book has an intriguing idea: how to understand better what happens on a basketball court when discussing the game with experts from completely other fields. At the same time the idea is to track the evolution of the game from its early days with the famous peach basket to the full-blown entertainment industry of today.
Greene is really into his subject which is both good and bad. Good in the sense that he really dwells into his topics and is visibly enjoying his conversations on basketball with all the different people he interviewed for the book. Bad in the sense that (at least for a non American whose main focus is not in NBA basketball) the book appears somewhat of a inside joke at times.
Having said that, the book nevertheless does open new views into the game even at the very low level here in Finland, and makes one think how to improve it in your own team with the means that you have at hands. And obviously, from thinking the next step is only practicing, practicing and practicing...
Greene is really into his subject which is both good and bad. Good in the sense that he really dwells into his topics and is visibly enjoying his conversations on basketball with all the different people he interviewed for the book. Bad in the sense that (at least for a non American whose main focus is not in NBA basketball) the book appears somewhat of a inside joke at times.
Having said that, the book nevertheless does open new views into the game even at the very low level here in Finland, and makes one think how to improve it in your own team with the means that you have at hands. And obviously, from thinking the next step is only practicing, practicing and practicing...
October 14, 2025
Good book, but in my opinion, the author got a bit too excited with some of his analogies that I found myself reading multiple pages in a row about astrophysics when that is not what I came to this book for. It was a bit gimmicky. My most valuable takeaway from the book was the evolution of basketball rules through decades and how basketball, among other games, needs rules to be fun (as paradoxical as it sounds). There was also some valuable content on the purposes of dunking and three-pointers. Very interesting stuff!
Read
May 10, 2024DNF I actually really like this book but its deceptively long (damn small fonts). I got halfway through and realized I just wanted to actually watch basketball. This is very funny though and is a great way to learn about the history of bball in a fun way. And it's a very crazy history. I'll try to come back to this soon.
Read
May 11, 2023An interdisciplinary understanding of a subject through a variety of professions - all applied to basketball. Loved this approach for a book. It also dove into the history of the sport’s evolution which was interesting to track the implementation of dribbling, shot clock, the goaltending rule, the jumpshot, dunking, and the implementation of the three-pointer and the analytics revolution. A fun read while rooting for the Boston Celtics during the NBA playoffs.
“We all watch basketball differently. Not only did this realization help me build a greater appreciation for what had already been my favorite sport, but it also sparked the idea for this book. If one person's unique perspective on the game can help expand my own, what else have I been missing? I'm no genius, but I knew well enough to assume there was much more to learn.”
“Zimmerman is attuned to seeing games as products, and basketball's journey through the marketplace follows a familiar path. "If you think about it, the YMCA was the platform for that game in the way that a Nintendo Switch is a platform for a piece of software," he says. "As we say in the game industry, there was an embedded base." Had Naismith invented basketball outside the purview of the YMCA's worldwide network, it could have remained a regional curiosity and fizzled into obscurity.”
“While basketball is the only major sport that can be traced to a single person, that person's most important contribution was that he relinquished control of his invention. The game has never been perfect. That was the case on day one, whether or not Naismith's students ripped each other's limbs off. It continues to be a work in progress.”
“The biggest question (the only one, really), was how much time teams should be granted for each possession.
The men brainstormed at the bar of Biasone's bowling alley and scribbled some ingeniously simple math onto a cocktail napkin. "I looked at the box scores from the games I enjoyed, games where they didn't screw around and stall, Biasone explained. "I noticed each team took about 60 shots. That meant 120 shots per game. So I took 2,880 seconds [48 minutes] and divided that by 120 shots. The result was 24 seconds per shot."… That story of simple napkin math is a sterling endorsement for the genius of working backward. Teams attempted this many shots in games that were fun. If we force teams to shoot that many times during every game, then all the games will be fun. It's pretty damned elegant, if you ask me.”
““That squeaky wheel is often what triggers action," Dr. Benjamin Coifman tells me. Coifman doesn't know much about the Fort Wayne Pistons, but he knows everything about intersections. He's a civil engineer and traffic expert who teaches at The Ohio State University.”
“"It is so important for creative people to have rules," John Emmerling tells me. "You don't want to hand them a blank sheet of paper." Emmerling is an advertising veteran who cut his teeth on Madison Avenue at Young & Rubicam in the 1960s, during the industry's Mad Men-era heyday.”
“Teams averaged 2.8 attempts per game and 0.8 makes from behind the arc during that first season (of the three-pointer in 1978-79), and the shot accounted for just 3 percent of the league's total field goal attempts. The following year saw even less three-point enthusiasm, with teams averaging only two long-range shots per contest. The Atlanta Hawks, for example, made ten three-pointers all season. Compare those statistics to the 2018-19 NBA season, when teams averaged thirty two long-range attempts per game, and 36 percent of all shots were taken from behind the arc. Players combined to make 27,955 three-pointers that year, which eclipses the total number of threes made during the 1980s. As in the entire decade.”
“Goldsberry, meanwhile, had everything he needed to paint a fuller picture of basketball's trends thanks to all that valuable data he borrowed from ESPN.com. NBA players attempt around 200,000 field goals in a given season (in 2018-19, there were 219,404 field goal attempts during the regular season), and he now knew exactly where each one was taken. "I got millions of shots spatially referenced, and with my training as a geographer I needed to understand where the league as a whole was shooting and how efficient they were," he says. "I needed to establish a baseline."… That baseline helped explain which players were above or below average shooters from various locations, but it also revealed a shocking truth about basketball's geography. Goldsberry crammed multiple seasons worth of shooting data through a "smoothing algorithm" to construct a map that displayed the estimated average point values for shots taken all over the floor. He found that, overall, an average field goal attempted in the BA can be expected to yield 1.02 points. However, in the zones between the lane and three-point line, the crowded mid-range area where games coalesced for decades, Goldsberry discovered that shots taken there were Only expected to yield 0.85 points per attempt. That's a pretty rotten return on an investment… The real value, Goldsberry learned, came from behind the three-point arc. There, shots could be expected to yield more than 1.05 points per attempt. Jumpers from the two corners, where Abe Saperstein's arc collapses into a straight line, were even better. These areas produced an average of 1.10
to 1.20 points per shot. "I knew there would be a difference in efficiency behind the three-point line and in the mid-range," Goldsberry says. "I was not prepared for how stark that difference was. It definitely changed how I watched basketball."”
“The three-point line may have been introduced to the NBA in the 1970s, but it took decades before there was the collective realization that, if the league offers you an extra point for a shot, you should probably take them up on it. But it wasn't just blithe ignorance that accounted for the delay. In those early years, players were objectively worse at making long-range buckets. Every shot was worth two points for most of their basketball-playing lives; why would they have bothered practicing twenty-five-footers?”
“The Daryl Morey experiment was very, very close to getting to the Finals, Goldsberry says. "It was the most poetic collapse of the decade." The Rockets may have lost that round, but the effects of the three-point line will continue to warp how the game looks. It's no longer enough to dump the ball down low and have your big man go to work; the action takes place at a more distant orbital plane. The three-pointer, subsidized as it is, is simply too enticing, and players who aren't able to shoot (and defend) it at a respectable clip are exiled to Outmoded Island where they must watch Betamax tapes and wait for the fax machine to bring news from the mainland.”
“WANT TO LEARN something weird about free throws? For pretty much the entire history of modern competitive basketball, players haven't gotten any better or any worse at the game's most practicable shot.
Since the middle of the century, men's and women's college players have made roughly 69 percent of their attempts. In the pros, the average always hovers around 75 percent. Two- and three-point averages have steadily improved over time and across leagues and associations, but free throws have remained bafflingly consistent.
Since 1960, the NBA's league-wide season average has never climbed higher than 77.2 percent or fallen below 71.4 percent. Just take a look at this thre-decade cross-section: Teams shot 75.2 percent from the line in 1978, 768 percent in 1988, and 76.7 percent in 2018.”
“The jump shot seems obvious: By releasing the ball at the highest possible point you greatly reduce the chances of it getting blocked. It's a real no-brainer, but the move didn't appear in organized basketball until around the 1930s… It's difficult to convey just how novel the move was in those days. I'll leave that to a December 8, 1957, issue of Sports Illustrated. The magazine had a recurring feature where a panel of celebrities and athletic luminaries were presented with sports-related questions. For that week's issue, basketball's newest craze was put up for debate: "Do you think that old-time, low-scoring basketball-before Hank Luisetti popularized the one-hand jump shot-was a better and more interesting game than it is today?"… The switch to the jump shot was jarring, even for those who managed to thrive during its emergence. "Kids today don't even think about playmaking. All they think about is getting off the jump shot," Celtics Legend Bob Cousy told reporters in 1963, about a month before he retired from the NBA. The Hall of Famer was a renowned dribbler and passer, but, for all his talent, he never had much of a jumper, and he exited the league cursing the move's existence. "I think the jump shot is the worst thing that has happened to basketball in ten years. Any time you can do something on the ground, it's better? For a Freudian reading of that statement, refer to the fact that Cousy's father worked for an airline.”
“On January 8, 2019, Thompson scored forty-three points against the New York Knicks. He only needed to take four dribbles to do so… Thompson scored sixty points against the Indiana Pacers on December 5, 2016. His time of possession during that game was ninety seconds.”
“But the thing about basketball that most enamors Lustig is what it Jasnt have in common with his line of work. "What we do in the ballet is diways rehearsed," he tells me. "There is no element of surprise. When you kane the ground, it's a jump that you've rehearsed thousands of times before.
You know exactly what you are going to do. But these guys," he says, referring othe NBA players he and his troupe watched as they readied themselves to perform The Nutcracker before a Christmastime crowd in Oakland, "what they are doing is absolutely and incredibly spontaneous."”
“Restricting the opponent to a low-percentage shot attempt is nice, but for defensive-minded squads, forcing a shot clock violation at the end of a possession is the grandest prize of all. The way some teams cele-brate, you'd think they'd just withstood the Siege of Leningrad and not the Charlotte Hornets.”
“The Boston Celtics' Marcus Smart is perhaps the most prolific flopper in the NBA right now. Whereas most stars have YouTube videos dedicated to their best highlights, Smart is the subject of more than a dozen flop compilations featuring his most outlandish pratfalls. When the league fined him in 2016 for a particularly egregious flop, one where he went flying like a stuntman off the balcony of the O.K. Corral, Smart laughed the whole thing off. "That's a flop. Let's get that straight, that's a flop, this was hilarious," he told ESPN. "I deserved everything that came my way after that.”… It's worth noting that Smart and Beverley are two of the best defenders in the league. They don't need to flop. But the potential reward is often worth the risk. Smart's take on the act is similar to Frias's, in that it is a form of strategy. "I flop on defense, your favorite player flops on offense," he told ESPN. "That's the only difference. Especially in a game where the offense has nothing but the advantage, the defense has to do something to get the advantage back." He's referring to how some superstars resort to histrionics while attacking the basket in order to get a foul call. That's known as "selling contact," and it's a largely accepted way for players to get the officials' attention.”
“It may seem like mindless grunt work, but every rebound requires a plan. There is no better example for this than Dennis Rodman, who won seven straight rebounding titles between 1992 and 1998. The Hall of Famer may be known for his untethered aggressiveness (and foreign relations work with North Korea), but his brain is what made him one of history's greatest rebounders. During pregame warmups, he would stand to the side and stare at the action going on near the baskets. When his Detroit Pistons teammate Sith Thomas chastised him early in his career for not participating, Rodman explained, I'm just watching the rotations on the basketball." He then told Thomas that his shots usually spun three times in the air before hitting the rim.”
“Watch a game on television, and the ball looks like a snug fit for the hoop. But, as Winter explains, this isn't exactly true: "The diameter of a basketball is between 9.125 and 9.25 inches. Since the inside diameter of the rim is 18 inches, two basketballs will go into the basket at once. The basket is twice as big as the ball. It's important for the players to understand this; otherwise they may get the idea that one won't even fit. Every coach will agree there have been occasions when he wondered." The game is interesting not because the ball goes through a comfortably-sized hoop, but because of all the different things a team must do in order to reach that final step. Every offensive basketball play is a Rube Goldberg machine… Fluid, instinctive basketball might be a miracle. No matter the rules, skill level, or court size, if a team plays well together, then the game is going to be fun to watch. Extremely smart basketball fans are able to identify specific sequences and plays (they're running elevators!) but most of us get to enjoy these elegant interchanges and movements like children watching a Rube Goldberg machine.”
“We all watch basketball differently. Not only did this realization help me build a greater appreciation for what had already been my favorite sport, but it also sparked the idea for this book. If one person's unique perspective on the game can help expand my own, what else have I been missing? I'm no genius, but I knew well enough to assume there was much more to learn.”
“Zimmerman is attuned to seeing games as products, and basketball's journey through the marketplace follows a familiar path. "If you think about it, the YMCA was the platform for that game in the way that a Nintendo Switch is a platform for a piece of software," he says. "As we say in the game industry, there was an embedded base." Had Naismith invented basketball outside the purview of the YMCA's worldwide network, it could have remained a regional curiosity and fizzled into obscurity.”
“While basketball is the only major sport that can be traced to a single person, that person's most important contribution was that he relinquished control of his invention. The game has never been perfect. That was the case on day one, whether or not Naismith's students ripped each other's limbs off. It continues to be a work in progress.”
“The biggest question (the only one, really), was how much time teams should be granted for each possession.
The men brainstormed at the bar of Biasone's bowling alley and scribbled some ingeniously simple math onto a cocktail napkin. "I looked at the box scores from the games I enjoyed, games where they didn't screw around and stall, Biasone explained. "I noticed each team took about 60 shots. That meant 120 shots per game. So I took 2,880 seconds [48 minutes] and divided that by 120 shots. The result was 24 seconds per shot."… That story of simple napkin math is a sterling endorsement for the genius of working backward. Teams attempted this many shots in games that were fun. If we force teams to shoot that many times during every game, then all the games will be fun. It's pretty damned elegant, if you ask me.”
““That squeaky wheel is often what triggers action," Dr. Benjamin Coifman tells me. Coifman doesn't know much about the Fort Wayne Pistons, but he knows everything about intersections. He's a civil engineer and traffic expert who teaches at The Ohio State University.”
“"It is so important for creative people to have rules," John Emmerling tells me. "You don't want to hand them a blank sheet of paper." Emmerling is an advertising veteran who cut his teeth on Madison Avenue at Young & Rubicam in the 1960s, during the industry's Mad Men-era heyday.”
“Teams averaged 2.8 attempts per game and 0.8 makes from behind the arc during that first season (of the three-pointer in 1978-79), and the shot accounted for just 3 percent of the league's total field goal attempts. The following year saw even less three-point enthusiasm, with teams averaging only two long-range shots per contest. The Atlanta Hawks, for example, made ten three-pointers all season. Compare those statistics to the 2018-19 NBA season, when teams averaged thirty two long-range attempts per game, and 36 percent of all shots were taken from behind the arc. Players combined to make 27,955 three-pointers that year, which eclipses the total number of threes made during the 1980s. As in the entire decade.”
“Goldsberry, meanwhile, had everything he needed to paint a fuller picture of basketball's trends thanks to all that valuable data he borrowed from ESPN.com. NBA players attempt around 200,000 field goals in a given season (in 2018-19, there were 219,404 field goal attempts during the regular season), and he now knew exactly where each one was taken. "I got millions of shots spatially referenced, and with my training as a geographer I needed to understand where the league as a whole was shooting and how efficient they were," he says. "I needed to establish a baseline."… That baseline helped explain which players were above or below average shooters from various locations, but it also revealed a shocking truth about basketball's geography. Goldsberry crammed multiple seasons worth of shooting data through a "smoothing algorithm" to construct a map that displayed the estimated average point values for shots taken all over the floor. He found that, overall, an average field goal attempted in the BA can be expected to yield 1.02 points. However, in the zones between the lane and three-point line, the crowded mid-range area where games coalesced for decades, Goldsberry discovered that shots taken there were Only expected to yield 0.85 points per attempt. That's a pretty rotten return on an investment… The real value, Goldsberry learned, came from behind the three-point arc. There, shots could be expected to yield more than 1.05 points per attempt. Jumpers from the two corners, where Abe Saperstein's arc collapses into a straight line, were even better. These areas produced an average of 1.10
to 1.20 points per shot. "I knew there would be a difference in efficiency behind the three-point line and in the mid-range," Goldsberry says. "I was not prepared for how stark that difference was. It definitely changed how I watched basketball."”
“The three-point line may have been introduced to the NBA in the 1970s, but it took decades before there was the collective realization that, if the league offers you an extra point for a shot, you should probably take them up on it. But it wasn't just blithe ignorance that accounted for the delay. In those early years, players were objectively worse at making long-range buckets. Every shot was worth two points for most of their basketball-playing lives; why would they have bothered practicing twenty-five-footers?”
“The Daryl Morey experiment was very, very close to getting to the Finals, Goldsberry says. "It was the most poetic collapse of the decade." The Rockets may have lost that round, but the effects of the three-point line will continue to warp how the game looks. It's no longer enough to dump the ball down low and have your big man go to work; the action takes place at a more distant orbital plane. The three-pointer, subsidized as it is, is simply too enticing, and players who aren't able to shoot (and defend) it at a respectable clip are exiled to Outmoded Island where they must watch Betamax tapes and wait for the fax machine to bring news from the mainland.”
“WANT TO LEARN something weird about free throws? For pretty much the entire history of modern competitive basketball, players haven't gotten any better or any worse at the game's most practicable shot.
Since the middle of the century, men's and women's college players have made roughly 69 percent of their attempts. In the pros, the average always hovers around 75 percent. Two- and three-point averages have steadily improved over time and across leagues and associations, but free throws have remained bafflingly consistent.
Since 1960, the NBA's league-wide season average has never climbed higher than 77.2 percent or fallen below 71.4 percent. Just take a look at this thre-decade cross-section: Teams shot 75.2 percent from the line in 1978, 768 percent in 1988, and 76.7 percent in 2018.”
“The jump shot seems obvious: By releasing the ball at the highest possible point you greatly reduce the chances of it getting blocked. It's a real no-brainer, but the move didn't appear in organized basketball until around the 1930s… It's difficult to convey just how novel the move was in those days. I'll leave that to a December 8, 1957, issue of Sports Illustrated. The magazine had a recurring feature where a panel of celebrities and athletic luminaries were presented with sports-related questions. For that week's issue, basketball's newest craze was put up for debate: "Do you think that old-time, low-scoring basketball-before Hank Luisetti popularized the one-hand jump shot-was a better and more interesting game than it is today?"… The switch to the jump shot was jarring, even for those who managed to thrive during its emergence. "Kids today don't even think about playmaking. All they think about is getting off the jump shot," Celtics Legend Bob Cousy told reporters in 1963, about a month before he retired from the NBA. The Hall of Famer was a renowned dribbler and passer, but, for all his talent, he never had much of a jumper, and he exited the league cursing the move's existence. "I think the jump shot is the worst thing that has happened to basketball in ten years. Any time you can do something on the ground, it's better? For a Freudian reading of that statement, refer to the fact that Cousy's father worked for an airline.”
“On January 8, 2019, Thompson scored forty-three points against the New York Knicks. He only needed to take four dribbles to do so… Thompson scored sixty points against the Indiana Pacers on December 5, 2016. His time of possession during that game was ninety seconds.”
“But the thing about basketball that most enamors Lustig is what it Jasnt have in common with his line of work. "What we do in the ballet is diways rehearsed," he tells me. "There is no element of surprise. When you kane the ground, it's a jump that you've rehearsed thousands of times before.
You know exactly what you are going to do. But these guys," he says, referring othe NBA players he and his troupe watched as they readied themselves to perform The Nutcracker before a Christmastime crowd in Oakland, "what they are doing is absolutely and incredibly spontaneous."”
“Restricting the opponent to a low-percentage shot attempt is nice, but for defensive-minded squads, forcing a shot clock violation at the end of a possession is the grandest prize of all. The way some teams cele-brate, you'd think they'd just withstood the Siege of Leningrad and not the Charlotte Hornets.”
“The Boston Celtics' Marcus Smart is perhaps the most prolific flopper in the NBA right now. Whereas most stars have YouTube videos dedicated to their best highlights, Smart is the subject of more than a dozen flop compilations featuring his most outlandish pratfalls. When the league fined him in 2016 for a particularly egregious flop, one where he went flying like a stuntman off the balcony of the O.K. Corral, Smart laughed the whole thing off. "That's a flop. Let's get that straight, that's a flop, this was hilarious," he told ESPN. "I deserved everything that came my way after that.”… It's worth noting that Smart and Beverley are two of the best defenders in the league. They don't need to flop. But the potential reward is often worth the risk. Smart's take on the act is similar to Frias's, in that it is a form of strategy. "I flop on defense, your favorite player flops on offense," he told ESPN. "That's the only difference. Especially in a game where the offense has nothing but the advantage, the defense has to do something to get the advantage back." He's referring to how some superstars resort to histrionics while attacking the basket in order to get a foul call. That's known as "selling contact," and it's a largely accepted way for players to get the officials' attention.”
“It may seem like mindless grunt work, but every rebound requires a plan. There is no better example for this than Dennis Rodman, who won seven straight rebounding titles between 1992 and 1998. The Hall of Famer may be known for his untethered aggressiveness (and foreign relations work with North Korea), but his brain is what made him one of history's greatest rebounders. During pregame warmups, he would stand to the side and stare at the action going on near the baskets. When his Detroit Pistons teammate Sith Thomas chastised him early in his career for not participating, Rodman explained, I'm just watching the rotations on the basketball." He then told Thomas that his shots usually spun three times in the air before hitting the rim.”
“Watch a game on television, and the ball looks like a snug fit for the hoop. But, as Winter explains, this isn't exactly true: "The diameter of a basketball is between 9.125 and 9.25 inches. Since the inside diameter of the rim is 18 inches, two basketballs will go into the basket at once. The basket is twice as big as the ball. It's important for the players to understand this; otherwise they may get the idea that one won't even fit. Every coach will agree there have been occasions when he wondered." The game is interesting not because the ball goes through a comfortably-sized hoop, but because of all the different things a team must do in order to reach that final step. Every offensive basketball play is a Rube Goldberg machine… Fluid, instinctive basketball might be a miracle. No matter the rules, skill level, or court size, if a team plays well together, then the game is going to be fun to watch. Extremely smart basketball fans are able to identify specific sequences and plays (they're running elevators!) but most of us get to enjoy these elegant interchanges and movements like children watching a Rube Goldberg machine.”
March 12, 2023
This book says it's a history of basketball, but it's really only a history of US basketball. If you read this book knowing nothing about basketball, you would come away thinking that US is the only country where basketball is played. I was really looking forward to exploration of how Europe vs US basketball culture developed and how that resulted in differences in the sport, but this book does mention European basketball (let alone basketball in all other continents) once.
July 16, 2021
a book written just for me
April 26, 2022
A clever idea. Greene analyzes the various parts of basketball by consulting experts in other fields. He analyzes Naismith's original rules by talking to experts on designing games. He discusses the shot clock by talking to traffic experts who design traffic lights and intersections. He has a great chapter about understanding dunking as a kind of ballet. He talks to great ballet teachers.
Greene is having fun. A designer of Rube Goldberg machines helps him understand the famously intricate triangle offense. Jump shooters are discussed with great bagel bakers. They both have to have perfectly consistent ingredients and timing every night.
He also has some great basketball nuggets.
In 1891 James Naismith invented basketball in a YMCA gym in Springfield, MA. In 1936 he attended the gold medal game at the summer Olympics where a Chinese referee officiated the game between Canada and the United States.
The original rules said that the player with the ball could not run. He had to pass or shot. Those sneaks at Yale argued that a dribble was legal because it was a pass to yourself.
On December 5, 2016, Klay Thompson scored 60 points. His time of possession was 90 seconds.
Wilt Chamberlin was bored by the 1967-68 season so he decided he would win the assist title to answer all the critics who said he was selfish. He beat Lennie Wilkins by 23 assists. It is the only time in the history of the NBA that a center won the assist title.
Greene is a basketball junkie with a knack for coming at the game from quirky directions.
Greene is having fun. A designer of Rube Goldberg machines helps him understand the famously intricate triangle offense. Jump shooters are discussed with great bagel bakers. They both have to have perfectly consistent ingredients and timing every night.
He also has some great basketball nuggets.
In 1891 James Naismith invented basketball in a YMCA gym in Springfield, MA. In 1936 he attended the gold medal game at the summer Olympics where a Chinese referee officiated the game between Canada and the United States.
The original rules said that the player with the ball could not run. He had to pass or shot. Those sneaks at Yale argued that a dribble was legal because it was a pass to yourself.
On December 5, 2016, Klay Thompson scored 60 points. His time of possession was 90 seconds.
Wilt Chamberlin was bored by the 1967-68 season so he decided he would win the assist title to answer all the critics who said he was selfish. He beat Lennie Wilkins by 23 assists. It is the only time in the history of the NBA that a center won the assist title.
Greene is a basketball junkie with a knack for coming at the game from quirky directions.
September 18, 2023
In sum, basketball is so silly and the evolution of the sport itself borders on pure absurdity. also if I could time travel I would be BFFs with James Naismith.
this book manages to be equally humorous as it is profound. as someone who works in sports media sometimes I get stuck in the feedback loop of being fed sports content all the time and Greene was able to take me right out of that by pulling in all these seemingly unrelated fields to investigate WHY we continue to play, evolve, and appreciate games at all. Even if you’re only casually interested in basketball, I promise this will 100% be a thought-provoking, fun read!
Also now I HAVE to read Wilt Chamberlain’s memoir because that shit sounds utterly unhinged.
this book manages to be equally humorous as it is profound. as someone who works in sports media sometimes I get stuck in the feedback loop of being fed sports content all the time and Greene was able to take me right out of that by pulling in all these seemingly unrelated fields to investigate WHY we continue to play, evolve, and appreciate games at all. Even if you’re only casually interested in basketball, I promise this will 100% be a thought-provoking, fun read!
Also now I HAVE to read Wilt Chamberlain’s memoir because that shit sounds utterly unhinged.
January 28, 2024
i liked this book, suprisingly! i dont know if i feel like a basketball genius but i do feel a little more knowledgable about basketball/have more understanding of all the different elements of it and will definitely be more invested in it when i watch it, which is cool. i will say its not exactly game-changing (pun intended), but i liked how approachable it was and how self-aware/not annoying the writer was, unlike many basketball boyz.
March 2, 2024
This was nothing like I expected but I had so much fun reading it. The author does a great job blending the sport I love with fields I know next to nothing about and helping me to see the parallels. It looks at the game in a different way and while I didn’t necessarily learn anything, I feel like I see the sport a little differently now, like it’s a little more magic.
September 18, 2023
Well, I still don’t really understand the Triangle Offense, but it’s a very fun book to read. Greene is a Wilt hater and LeBron lover, so he has opinions which is part of the fun. The dozens of analogies between basketball and other disciplines are fascinating and entertaining. It’s notable that Greene makes no mention of basketball being restricted to white players, and there is no basketball Jackie Robinson story about how that changed. Still I learned a lot and enjoyed doing it.
Read
July 14, 2025Started very strong but he started to make some loose career connections at some point. Still, the origins of basketball as a sport and its ever evolving rules was very interesting. Especially since I was reading this during the playoffs, which I watched for the first time in years this year!
(Go Dubs & Valkyries!!)
(Go Dubs & Valkyries!!)
March 26, 2022
I would definitely read this book, if like me you’ve found yourself a relationship where their whole family is basketball obsessed. The bball bug but me too and now with this book I have a deeper appreciation for the game’s history and the many different facets of the game.
January 16, 2023
Very fun book. The prose is very engaging and the experts spoke about basketball in a way that gave the sport new perspectives to long time fans and made its appeal more understandable to new fans. That said, some experts/sections kinda fell flat but overall very good.
Also, I admired his inclusion of female basketball players throughout history.
Also, I admired his inclusion of female basketball players throughout history.
March 12, 2023
Super fun read, the way Greene allows you to take mini dive ins to how other people see the sport in such a different way allows for even more appreciation for the sport and its characters in it
December 28, 2023
Funny & engaging! I love basketball
December 31, 2024
enjoyable
Not what I was expecting, but I did enjoy it. It was a bit about the history of basketball, and I was looking for keys to watch the game effectively.
Marked down a star for language and glamorization of athletes who are not good moral people to look up to.
Not what I was expecting, but I did enjoy it. It was a bit about the history of basketball, and I was looking for keys to watch the game effectively.
Marked down a star for language and glamorization of athletes who are not good moral people to look up to.
April 18, 2025
I knew I would learn a lot, but I never expected it to be so fun
December 6, 2025
A fun and interesting book to read with my basketball loving son!
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