Elliot Ritzema

Tag: basketball

  • More NBA Than You Could Ever Want: A Review

    I enjoy reading Bill Simmons’s sports columns. They’re clever, funny, and contain a lot of pop culture references. I’ve been reading them semi-regularly since 2010, a little before he launched the sports and pop culture website Grantland.

    After reading The Book of Basketball, Simmons’s 700-plus-page magnum opus on the NBA, I came to an important realization: I enjoy reading Bill Simmons’s columns. The book, while it was entertaining in spots, and contained everything about his writing that I like in smaller doses, just seemed baggy and stretched out by the time I was done.

    I enjoyed the first part of the book, where Simmons reminisces about what it was like to grow up in Boston as a Celtics fan in the ’70s and ’80s. I am not a Celtics fan, but it was easy to catch his enthusiasm for that era. As the book went on, though, it boiled down to just two things: hypothetical scenarios (“What if this happened differently?”) and rankings (best players, best teams, best hair, etc.). Some of them are pretty funny, like the various All-Star teams Simmons creates based on traits people have in common: the What If All-Stars, the Looks Better on Paper All-Stars, the Thank God They Didn’t Have HD Back Then All-Stars, the All-Time Bearded All-Stars, the Billy Hoyle All-Stars (named for the Woody Harrelson character in White Men Can’t Jump, for white players who are “deceivingly white”), the What the F— Did He Do to His Hair? All-Stars, the “Crap, It’s Just Not in Me” All-Stars, the Tony La Russa All-Stars (for people whose appearance never changes), the Head Case All-Stars, the Diane Lane All-Stars (for “over-40 celebs who remain smoking hot”), and the Best Porn Name All-Stars. But by the end, I was all ranked and hypothesized out. It is fine to include rankings and hypothetical situations as part of the story you’re trying to tell, but the rankings and hypotheticals should never become the story. That’s what I think happened with this book.

    But I did finish it, and that’s a point in its favor. While I could wish that it was written differently (or at least shorter), it was entertaining enough for me to keep going. And writing that is easy to read is hard work. So I give it 3 stars.

  • The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons from a Life in Coaching

    Normally I write short reviews of every book I read grouped together by month. Since I’ve been busy lately, though, I haven’t done one of those monthly roundups since March. Now the prospect of writing several monthly roundups is becoming daunting, so I will try to post short reviews of each book as I have time to write them.

    When I was growing up in North Carolina, it was hard to not be aware of college basketball. There are a lot of great teams in the area, and people can be quite emotionally invested in their favorite teams. Though I did not have a personal connection to the University of North Carolina, I did root for their basketball team. A big part of the reason for that was my admiration for their long-time coach, Dean Smith.

    This book, which Smith wrote a few years after he retired in 1997, is his attempt to reflect on what he learned about leadership during his 36 years of coaching at UNC. Each chapter consists of Smith’s reflections on a particular topic (for example, “Why Unselfishness Works”), followed by reflections from some of Smith’s former players on that same topic. The players are usually ones who have spent time in the business world, and they talk about the influence Smith has had on the way they live and work. The chapter then closes with a reflection on that topic geared toward the realm of business written by Gerald Bell, a consultant and professor at UNC’s business school.

    What Smith taught his basketball teams boiled down to three main principles: play smart, play together, and play hard. He rarely talked about winning, he writes, because winning was out of his team’s control. He wanted his players to focus on execution, and the outcome would take care of itself.

    In reading this book, I learned a lot about Smith and what made him so successful. He has strong opinions, and they are part of what made the book entertaining. For example, he called tardiness “the height of arrogance,” because you are saying that your time is more important than someone else’s. I’d recommend this book to anyone with an interest in leadership, teaching or college basketball.