EPILOGUE
Life After The Secret
JUNE 30, 2009
WILLIAM THEODORE WALTON III lives in a sprawling house filled with hundreds of books, pictures, mementos, artifacts and everything else that should definitely be in Bill Walton’s house. Turn left and you might see a Vietnam book next to a Hunter S. Thompson book. Turn right and you might see a photo of Bill and Bob Dylan hanging next to a picture of Bill and John Wooden. A lifelong resident of the most beautiful city in America, Walton owns a Spanish-style home that makes you think, “I am definitely, undoubtedly in San Diego right now.” The house features a basketball half-court and a pool, as well as his lovely wife, Lori, two pooches named Annie and Shasta, and a black cat named Charcoal. That’s right, a black cat.
This blows me away. Bill Walton seems like the last guy who should tempt fate with a black cat. Instead of being mentioned in the same breath with Russell, Wilt and Kareem, he’s remembered for bad luck and what could have been. His body continues to pay for an injury-riddled career that ended 22 years ago; only recently could he start moving around after major back surgery left him bedridden for months. His feet betrayed him so egregiously that, within ten minutes of sitting down with him, I glance at his swollen, scarred, almost unrecognizable right foot, become distracted and lose my train of thought. Walton was blessed with a gift and cursed with a body that couldn’t handle that gift. The curse trumped the gift. One of the few players who understood The Secret completely and totally, poor Walton never had an extended chance to harvest it.
What would make him want a black cat? Why not hire Spencer Haywood as a butler and stick ladders in front of every doorway? This is one of many questions I plan on asking him. We’re chatting fifteen days after the Lakers captured the 2009 title and sent my book into a tailspin. I turned in my manuscript right before the playoffs, then spent the next ten weeks praying nothing would alter The Pyramid or The Secret. You know, like LeBron’s team majestically failing and raising legitimate questions about his future in Cleveland. (Damn.) Like Dwight Howard inexplicably leading Orlando to the Finals and creeping up a few Pyramid spots. (Crap.) Like Kobe winning his first title, leapfrogging West and Oscar and reinventing himself as a team player in the minds of many writers and fans. (Shit.)1 Although the Lakers clearly prevailed as a group, with Pau Gasol (the league’s most talented offensive center), Lamar Odom (a gifted all-around forward), Trevor Ariza (a breakout swingman with a little Robert Horry in him) and Derek Fisher (who drained the two biggest shots of the Finals) all shining throughout the playoffs, the media became obsessed that Los Angeles was only winning because “Kobe, really really wants this!” and “Kobe finally trusts his teammates!” Too bad the relevant per-game numbers didn’t back that rhetoric up.
2008 KOBE (21 PLAYOFF GAMES):
30.1 pts, 5.7 reb, 5.6 ast, 3.3 TO, 22.0 FGA, 9.2 FTA, 47.9 FG%, 81 FT%, 30 3FG%, 41.1 MPG.
2009 KOBE (23 PLAYOFF GAMES):
30.2 pts, 5.3 reb, 5.5 ast, 2.6 TO, 23.0 FGA, 8.6 FTA, 45.7 FG%, 88 FT%, 35 3FG%, 40.9 MPG.2
If anything, Kobe’s circumstances changed. Boston, San Antonio and Houston were crippled by season-ending injuries to Kevin Garnett, Manu Ginobili and Yao Ming. Cleveland made an infuriating and indefensible decision to stand pat at the trade deadline.3 As all of this was happening, Ariza’s maturation pushed the Lakers to another level. This is what I believe. Then again, I am a diehard Boston fan. Do I believe Kobe’s “growth” as a teammate was smoke and mirrors because I’m biased, or because it’s true? This was why I called Walton. Since his son joined the Lakers in 2003, Luke and Bill probably had every conceivable conversation about Kobe Bryant.4 Of the living basketball players who understood and executed The Secret—call it The Secret Club—Walton should have the best perspective on him. At least I hope so. Or else I plan on driving my car into oncoming traffic on the way home.
We sit down in Walton’s living room and a purring Charcoal nudges against me, jumps on my lap and nestles into my belly. Walton finally shoos her away. You could choke on the irony. We spend the first 30 minutes talking basketball before I explain The Secret to him. I tell him the Isiah/Vegas story and read two excerpts from The Franchise. Walton stares ahead and digests everything. Finally …
“It’s not a secret,” he decides, “as much as a choice. Look at the forces fighting against that choice. Look at the forces pushing you to make the other choice, the wrong choice. It’s all about you. It’s all about material acquisitions, physical gratification, stats and highlights. Everywhere you go, you’re bombarded with the opposite message of what really matters. And you wouldn’t even know otherwise unless you played with the right player or right coach: the Woodens, the Auerbachs, the Ramseys, the Russells, the Birds. How many people get that lucky? Kobe was blessed to have Phil [Jackson] and eventually realized that. With a truly great coach, it’s not about a diagram, it’s not about a play, it’s not about a practice, it’s the course of time over history. It’s the impact a coach has on the lives around him. That’s what Phil has done for Kobe. The history of life is that most people figure it out. Most of the time it’s too late. That’s the real frustrating part—the squandered opportunities that you can’t get back. Kobe figured it out. It took awhile, but he figured it out.”
Perfect. Couldn’t have scripted a better rebuttal. So what if Walton hijacked my premise and changed it to “The Choice”? (Which, I have to admit, has a nice ring to it.) Jackson definitely wore Kobe down over time—a little like Andy Dufresne believing that his tiny rock hammer scheme would propel him through the walls of Shawshank (remember, pressure over time?)—and that subtle pressure allowed the Lakers to gell. Just enough. It’s one more reason why Jackson wears the “greatest NBA coach” title belt: He harnessed the talents of the league’s single most difficult superstar other than Wilt. Jackson did this gradually, over the span of a solid decade, even walking away once for effect. You can’t credit him for fundamentally changing Kobe, just for nudging him in the right direction and helping him find the balance between dominating and winning. What Kobe did with that understanding, ultimately, was up to him. Remember when I wrote that the vast majority of NBA coaches don’t ultimately matter? Jackson matters.
My favorite image of the 2009 Finals was Phil’s face after Kobe went one-on-four at the end of Game 2 (ignoring three wide-open teammates) and had a hideous shot blocked. With an overtime period looming, Kobe stormed back to his bench while a sitting Jackson watched from a few seats away, looking slightly amused, slightly disgusted and absolutely unwilling to blow the moment out of proportion.5 You know what Jackson’s reaction reminded me of, actually? Being married. Spend enough time with someone and you accept their strengths and weaknesses for what they are. For instance, I am messy. I leave clothes on the floor. I make coffee in the morning, mistakenly leave grounds on the counter and forget to clean them up. I’m selfishly absentminded like that. My wife stopped complaining about it three years ago. When I do those things now, she makes the Phil Jackson Face. Crap. I’m stuck with him. It’s not even worth getting into it. The plusses outweigh the minuses. Let’s move forward. Jackson never made that face with his first wife (MJ); with his second wife (Kobe), he makes it every so often. You could say they’re an imperfect match, and if you want to keep the domestic analogy going, they even legally separated in 2004 after a few unhappy years. Now they might go on like this indefinitely. When a coach spends enough time with the same star, they really do start to feel like a married couple.6
Even Kobe admits that Jackson allowed him to reach his potential. He became more forgiving of teammates and more invested in their individual success. He pushed himself to another level physically, hiring trainer Tim Glover to travel with him full-time, tweaking his game constantly and hoping his work ethic would lift teammates just by proxy. He submitted an unforgettable display of human will from Halloween 2007 through June 2009, leading his team to consecutive Finals, winning an NBA title, and playing in the maximum 164 regular-season games and 44 playoff games without a summer break, thanks to the Olympics. He was the Terminator. He was Schwarzenegger with bullets bouncing off him. For such a polarizing player, I found it fascinating that so many living basketball legends (Walton, Russell, West, Bird and Magic, to name five) professed such profound appreciation of Kobe’s talents. And really, the best basketball players are like elite chefs, writers or singers—they know instinctively when someone else has reached their level. When Bird or Walton explains that, yes, Kobe Bryant is truly magnificent, you cannot disagree.7 Still, I believe that Kobe only became transcendent on his terms. He made sacrifices as long as he kept receiving the lion’s share of credit and attention. If anything, his teammates and coaches were the ones practicing The Secret—they allowed themselves to be portrayed like backup singers, filled their respective roles, allowed Kobe to thrive, handed over the spotlight and never complained. Like an arrangement of sorts. No different from the Clintons looking at each other once upon a time and probably deciding, “Maybe this isn’t ideal, but we give each other the best chance to win.” Kobe may have bent a little, I tell Walton, but his teammates bent more. Once the Disease of More kicks in, they may not be as willing.8
“Kobe only wants to win,” Walton counters. “It doesn’t matter what your motivation is, or that your game or your style is different, or that it’s not perceived to be right or acceptable. We have seen an entire spectrum [of things] from him this decade, and right now he’s really really good. Look, you want him to be perfect for you. This comes back to your choice—who your heroes are. You chose to value a certain type of player over anyone else. He has the right to make his choice, too.”
Game, set, match, Walton.
“I guess you’re right,” I tell him. “Kobe made a choice to play that way, and I made a choice not to totally like it. But I still believe he can get better. I want him to reach the point where I’m watching him and believing that he doesn’t care who gets the credit, just who wins. I didn’t feel that way after the Finals. Does that make sense?”
“It makes sense.” Walton nods. “Your dislike of Kobe’s style makes it impossible for you to be happy for the Laker championship. Guys like Bird, Magic and Russell played a style that even opposing fans enjoyed and ultimately liked.”
“And you,” I add.
“Well …”
Walton glances down to the ground. He hates discussing his own career but loves discussing anyone who played with him. Mention Bird to Walton and he starts gushing and rattling off Larry Legend stories. Mention the time Walton dunked on Kareem’s head in the ’77 Playoffs and he reacts like he’s awaiting the results of a colonscopy. That’s just the way he is. Thirty-two years later, he still wants people to believe that Maurice Lucas was the heart and soul of the ’77 Blazers. Even retired, he remains unselfish.9
I mention that we may have just figured out the final level of basketball—when a team plays so well together that even opposing fans concede. “I gotta say, even though we got our asses kicked, that was beautiful to watch.” Magic’s Lakers were like that. Bird’s Celtics were like that. The ’96 Bulls and ’70 Knicks were like that.
“You played on two teams like that,” I tell him. “Eighty-six and Seventy-seven.”
“I did,” he says. “I definitely did.”
He changes the subject because that’s what Bill Walton does when these things come up. He reveals that he’s been watching a lot of international soccer lately, which is interesting because I have been doing the same. A world-class soccer team and a world-class basketball team succeed for the same reason: They control the flow of the proceedings. In soccer, the best players are usually midfielders, like Kaka on Brazil, who can dominate offensively without scoring a goal. Players like Kaka are impossibly skilled.10 They see angles others can’t see. They are always a split-second ahead of their peers. Their unselfishness permeates to everyone else. If you watch closely enough, you will notice Kaka and a teammate occasionally clicking much like Walton and Bird did back in the day. You know, the ESP thing. There isn’t enough of it in basketball anymore. How many times can we watch an alpha dog aimlessly dribbling 25 feet from the basket while his teammates stand around watching him? Maybe that’s why Bill Walton and I have gravitated toward soccer. Just a little.
“It all starts with the flow,” Walton says. “Throw in the performance aspect and that’s when you really have something. Larry [Bird] played with passion, persistance, and purpose. There was meaning to his performances. Same for Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Jerry Garcia, Jordan, Magic…. It was important to them, which made it important to us. The personality of the lead player brings with it all kinds of responsibilities. Not just a job, it’s a way of life. With Larry, people would buy tickets where they couldn’t even see the game. Obstructed seats … just to be there! People just wanted to be in the arena and feel that golden glow. He was incomparable. He could do things that nobody else could even think of doing and he would do them in the biggest moments on the grandest stages. That’s control of the flow. Flow plus meaning equals performance.”
“And Kobe controlled the flow in his own way,” I add. “Maybe not in the ideal basketball sense for someone like you or me, but still, he’s controlling the flow.”
“Exactly,” Bill Walton says.
We have been talking for two hours now. The ’77 Blazers came up earlier when I mentioned an anecdote from Breaks of the Game and Walton reacted like he had never heard the story before. And he hadn’t. That’s how I learned that Bill Walton, one of the most well-read athletes of my lifetime and the focal point of the best sports book ever written, had never actually read the book. Breaks was released in 1982. Walton tried to read it when it came out. He couldn’t. He tried to read it a few months later. He couldn’t. Over the past three decades, Walton estimates that he started Breaks fifteen times. He never made it past the first few pages.11
“It’s too sad,” he said wistfully. “Such a special part of my life. So fantastic.”
“Wait, wouldn’t that make you want to read it?”
“I know how it ended,” Walton said grimly.
At the time, I changed topics because he seemed on the verge of breaking down. Two hours later, I come back to it. I have to. The truth is, I don’t really care about Kobe. I thought I did … but I don’t. I didn’t drive all the way to San Diego to ask Bill Walton about Kobe Bryant. I had another reason. Even if I didn’t want to admit it.
“There are only like fourteen, fifteen guys ever who understood basketball the way you did,” I tell him. “You call it a choice, I call it a secret, but either way, it’s an exclusive club. You’re the only one who didn’t really get to use that gift. Now we have two generations of people who don’t realize that you were one of the best centers who ever lived.”
“I’m Luke’s dad,” Walton jokes.
Only it isn’t a joke. Now I’m angry. I glance at his mangled feet. I want to chastise them. I want to scream, “Look at what you did! YOU DID THIS!” Instead, I make an awkward comparison to the late Jerry Garcia—former lead singer of Walton’s favorite band—and how Walton lasting for just 517 professional games would be like the Dead’s career getting cut short by Garcia’s faulty throat.12 It seems cruel even three decades later. Throw in the undeniable fact that nobody—ever, not in the history of mankind—openly relished and treasured the experience of playing on special teams more than Walton did, and that’s when it becomes somewhat tragic. The Secret should never get screwed up like this. Right?
“I can’t think about it,” Walton explains simply. “It’s about what’s next. That’s what I think about.”
And that’s how he handles it … by not thinking about it. Walton won’t watch any tapes from when he played. He won’t read an unforgettable book about the pinnacle of his playing career. Something like twenty surgeries later, Bill Walton is still healing. He looks forward and not back. That’s why he owns a black cat. He is telling the Gods of Bad Luck, “even after everything that just happened, you cannot break me.” I love this about Walton. I love the fact that he has a black cat. I f*cking love it.
On the other hand, I am suddenly worried that he won’t read my book. I want him to read my book. I tell him this.
“Of course I’ll read it,” he says. “I read everything you write.”
“Yeah, but you’re in it, and you said you don’t like thinking about—”
“I will absolutely read your book,” Bill Walton says again. I wish I could believe him.
We say our goodbyes a few minutes later. On my way home, I call my father and recount the entire experience with him, right down to the part where one of Walton’s sons (Adam) opened the front door to greet me.
“Wow, remember watching those kids jumping on each other in the Garden?” my father says. “You told them we were right there for those games, right?”
I did.
“What a year that was,” my father says. “All our Celtic years blend together for me now, but I can still remember everything about the eighty-six season. You tell him that?”
I did.
Only a few weeks earlier, my father renewed his tickets for the thirty-sixth time. After too many years toiling away in coach, he’s back in first class: The Celtics won the 2008 title and should contend for the next few years at least. Funny how life works out. We hang up only because I am entering a highway with my convertible top down. I leave San Diego with my epilogue already written in my head, with Bill Walton’s house behind me and the Pacific Ocean to my left, with the sun shining and blue skies above, with my family waiting for me to come home. Picture me rollin’.
1. For the paperback, I’m expanding the Pyramid to 13 and sticking Kobe at No. 8. And you know what? Duncan’s No. 7 spot isn’t safe. Let’s see how the next few years play out.
2. Kobe’s numbers jumped from 21.9 FGA and 5.0 APG in the ’08 Finals to 27.0 FGA and 7.4 APG in ’09. The Magic didn’t have a traditional 2-guard to stop him; ’08 Celtics were superior defensively and handled him straight up.
3. The Cavs could have dealt Wally Szezcerbiak’s expiring contract for Shaq, Antwan Jamison or Vince Carter and stupidly opted to do nothing. After Orlando shocked them in the Eastern Finals, they traded for Shaq four weeks later. This was like a family buying homeowner’s insurance four weeks after robbers cleaned out their house.
4. Thanks to the ’09 Finals, Luke and Bill became the third father-son combo to win an NBA title along with the Barrys (Rick and Jon) and Goukases (Matt and Matt). I wanted to make a Nick/Teresa Weatherspoon joke here—badly—but they aren’t related.
5. In my column the following day, I called it the “Phil Jackson ‘Should I point out that MJ would have absolutely passed there? Nahhhhhhh’ Face.”
6. Russell and Auerbach were the Cleavers. Havlicek and Heinsohn were the Bunkers. Magic and Riley were the Huxtables. Jordan and Jackson were the Simpsons. Duncan and Popovich were the Barones. Phil and Kobe? They were definitely the Sopranos. And I don’t need to tell you who was Tony.
7. Bird even blessed Kobe publicly as his favorite active player. I will now peel the skin off my body.
8. Not even 36 hours after I visited Walton, the Lakers allowed Ariza to sign with Houston and replaced him with Ron Artest, a loose cannon and attention hog with a penchant for taking bad shots at the wrong times. This won’t end well.
9. Walton believes basketball’s highest level comes down to one question: “Can you make the choice that your happiness can come from someone else’s success?” He then added, “My favorite part of the game was starting the fast break.” That’s the closest he’d come to saying that his way was the best way.
10. You know you’ve been watching too much soccer when you stop noticing how funny Kaka’s name is. At this point, I don’t even blink when I hear announcers yell things like “Here comes the great Kaka!”
11. I brought two ’86 Celtics DVDs to watch with Walton: the third quarter of Game 5 vs. Atlanta, and the fourth quarter of Game 4 in Milwaukee. They never came out of my bag. Obviously.
12. A better comparison: Springsteen, who openly relished performing with others much like Walton did. Imagine Bruce only appearing on stage for 517 concerts spread over 15 years. Imagine him wistfully remembering those few times he leaned into Little Stevie’s microphone and happily spat all over it, wondering why he couldn’t have played 5,000 concerts instead of 517. Depressing, right?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was a labor of love and could not have been executed correctly without the unyielding support of John Skipper, John Walsh, Gary Hoenig, Gary Belsky and Rob King from ESPN. They believed in this project and afforded me the scheduling flexibility to pull it off. Thanks to all. Special thanks to Hoenig for being the greatest Grumpiest Old Editor ever. His enthusiasm and savvy helped me through some dark times.
Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell for the foreword and for his advice, friendship and feedback. He’s one of my top 700 favorite biracial Canadians. Thanks to William Goldman and Chuck Klosterman for making crucial cameos in the book. (I will always remember when Goldman read me a rough draft of what he had written over the phone. One of the true highlights of my career.)
Thanks to Isiah Thomas, Steve Kerr and especially Bill Walton for making this book better.
Thanks a thousand times over to Paul Hirschheimer of NBA Entertainment, a good friend who attached himself to my book from the beginning and made it 9.33 percent better. Thanks as well to David Stern, Adam Silver, Matt Bourne, John Hareas and David Zubrzycki.
Thanks to Hirschy and my buddy Joe House for their early feedback on chapters and Pyramid rankings. House deserves special commendation for twenty-one years of NBA conversations that shaped this book to some degree. Also, thanks to Wally and Gus Ramsey for three decades of friendship, including that fortuitous day when we created the Pyramid while driving to Shea.
Thanks to a remarkable group of friends (a few made cameos in this book) for making me funnier by osmosis. In particular, John O’Connell, Kevin Wildes, Dave Jacoby, Connor Schell, Jamie Horowitz and House had valuable suggestions every time I emailed them footnote-related questions like “Who were the worst celebrity dads ever?” Thanks to my old boss, Jimmy Kimmel, for seven years of friendship and career advice, as well as Shawn Sullivan (the MVP of my wedding) and Rob Strikwerda for their friendship and help with the Celtics/Clippers. Thanks to my friend Russell Sherman for coming up with this book’s title. And thanks to every reader who ever took time to email me, especially the ones who appeared in this book.
Thanks to Neil Fine, Kevin Jackson, David Schoenfield, Michael Philbrick, Michael Knisley, Jay Lovinger and Mark Giles for their editing expertise from 2001–2009. And thanks to Gary Sulentic, Bob Holmes and John Wilpers for giving me chances all those years ago.
Thanks to Random House’s Mark Tavani for his help and for convincing me that this book wouldn’t get screwed up like my first one did. Thanks to everyone else at Random House, as well as Steve Wulf, Sandy DeShong and everyone at ESPN Books. Thanks to my agent, the legendary James “Baby Doll” Dixon, someone who should have become my teammate before 2009. Thanks to Lewis Kay, Dan Klores and Ellie Seifert for everything they’re about to do. Thanks to every writer and teacher who inspired me (too many to list). And thanks to Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Bob Ryan and the late David Halberstam for teaching me Basketball 101 once upon a time.
Thanks to my parents, stepparents and extended family for their unwavering support. You already know how my father affected this book, but my poor mother didn’t get enough credit for giving me the writing gene and for being my single biggest fan.
Thanks to my wonderful wife, Kari, for putting up with me these last three years. Her take: “Thank God life is back to normal. If you ever start another seven-hundred-page book, I’m going to murder you in your sleep. Either way, I wish I had married Zack Galifianakis.” Good to know.
Thanks to Ben for everything that’s about to happen. He’s my best-friend-in-training.
Finally, thanks to Zoe. I could have turned into Jack Nicholson in The Shining these past three years if not for my beautiful daughter cheering me up, making me laugh and constantly putting a smile on my face. She won’t remember this a few years from now, so I wanted to mention it here. I wish I knew her secret.
Bill Simmons
July 4, 2009
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I plowed through nearly one hundred books that helped me write this one. Here’s how they broke down by category and influence on my book.
INFLUENTIAL MUST-READS: Life on the Run (Bill Bradley) … The Season (Kenny Dryden) … Wait ’Til Next Year (William Goldman and Mike Lupica) … The Breaks of the Game; Playing for Keeps (David Halberstam) … 24 Seconds to Shoot (Leonard Koppett) … Unfinished Business (Jack MacCallum) … Loose Balls; Tall Tales (Terry Pluto) … Second Wind (Bill Russell and Taylor Branch) … The Franchise (Cameron Stauth)
VERY HELPFUL AND HIGHLY ENJOYABLE: The City Game (by Pete Axthelm) … Wilt (Wilt Chamberlain and David Shaw) … Hang Time (Bob Greene) … Sacred Hoops (Phil Jackson) … Wilt, 1962 (Gary Pomerantz) … The Jordan Rules (Sam Smith) … Foul (David Wolf)
EXTREMELY USEFUL: Who’s Better, Who’s Best in Basketball? (Elliott Kalb) … Showtime (Pat Riley) … The Big O (Oscar Robertson) … The NBA’s Top 50 (Ken Shouler) … The Golden Boys (Cameron Stauth) … The Official 2008–09 NBA Register … The Official 2008–09 NBA Guide
ENJOYABLE BOOKS THAT HELPED A LITTLE: The Fab Five (Mitch Albom) … Everything They Had (David Halberstam) … The Best American Sports Writing of the Century (edited by David Halberstam) … Fathers Playing Catch with Sons (Donald Hall) … The Last Season (Phil Jackson with Charley Rosen) … Pistol (Mark Kriegel) … Best Seat in the House (Spike Lee and Ralph Wiley) … 07 Seconds or Less (Jack McCallum) … The Franchise (Michael McCambridge) … A Sense of Where You Are (John McPhee) … The Short Season (John Powers) … Sports Guy (Charles P. Pierce) … The Twentieth Century Treasury of Sports (edited by Al and Brian Silverman) … Classic Wiley (Ralph Wiley)
HELPFUL, NOT A TOTAL WASTE OF TIME: Giant Steps (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) … Drive (Larry Bird and Bob Ryan) … Tip Off (Filip Bondy) … The Perfect Team (Foreword by Chuck Daly) … The Inside Game (Waybe Embry with Mary Schmidt Boyer) … Maravich (Wayne Federman and Marshall Terrell) … Hondo (John Havlicek with Bob Ryan) … Give ’Em the Hook (Tommy Heinsohn and Joe Fitzgerald) … More Than a Game (Phil Jackson with Charley Rosen) … Sacred Hoops (Phil Jackson with Hugh Delancy) … My Life (Magic Johnson and Bill Novak) … Goliath (Bill Libby) … Only the Strong Survive (Larry Platt) … Red and Me (Bill Russell with Alan Steinberg) … 48 Minutes (Bob Ryan and Terry Pluto) … Calling the Shots (Earl Strom) … The Rivalry (John Taylor)
NOT PARTICULARLY HELPFUL: The Long Season (Rick Adelman and Dwight Jaynes) … Auerbach on Auerbach; On and Off the Court; Red Auerbach (Red Auerbach with Joe Fitzgerald) … Confessions of a Basketball Gypsy (Rick Barry and David Wolf) … Out of Bounds (Jeff Benedict) … The Last Loud Roar (Bob Cousy) … Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob (Bob Delaney) … The Punch (John Feinstein) … Champions Remembered (Ray Fitzgerald) … Rebound (Bob Greene) … The Jump (Ian O’Connor) … When Nothing Else Matters (Michael Leahy) … The Big Three; The Last Banner (Peter May) … The Drive Within Me (Bob Pettit with Bob Wolff) … Falling from Grace (Terry Pluto) … But They Can’t Beat Us (Randy Roberts) … The Pro Game (Bob Ryan) … Black Planet (David Shields) … Can I Keep My Jersey? (Paul Shirley) … Second Coming (Sam Smith) … Evergreen; Seeing Red (Dan Shaughnessy) … Basketball My Way (Jerry West and Bill Libby) … Mr. Clutch (Jerry West)
Also, I plowed through every relevant NBA feature from 1954 through 2000 in Sports Illustrated, as well as countless pieces from The New York Times and The Boston Globe spanning that same time frame. All can be found on-line at the Times/Globe websites or www.SIVault.com. Old issues of Inside Sports from 1980–84 were particularly helpful. Basketballreference.com and ESPN.com couldn’t have been more helpful. For visual references, I burned over three hundred classic games to DVD from NBA TV or ESPN Classic from 2002 to 2007, traded for a few others on-line and eagerly devoured nearly one hundred rarely seen games that NBA Entertainment was gracious enough to send me. Shows like Greatest NBA Games (ESPN 2), NBA Vault (ESPN), SportsCentury (ESPN Classic) and Beyond the Glory (Fox Sports Net) also filled in a few holes. Another unbelievable help: The treasure chest of interviews, highlights and uncut games on YouTube. It would have been nearly impossible to write this particular book as recently as five years ago. So thanks to all.
Last note: Before the release of my book, I am hoping to compile an interactive section of links and YouTube clips that will correspond to the pages and chapters of this book at www.thebookofbasketball.com.