Books: "The Basketball 100," From The Athletic

 

The Basketball 100: The Story of the Greatest Players in NBA History

By David Aldrige & John Hollinger, with The Athletic NBA Staff; Foreword by Charles Barkley

William Morrow; hardcover, 608 pages; $40.00; available today, Tuesday, November 26th

The Athletic has built the world's largest sports newsroom with its trademark being a focus on deep reporting, expert analysis, and unmatched journalism. Now a part of The New York Times Company, its breadth of coverage can be found on their website and in their Sports section in their daily newspaper.

The Basketball 100 is the second of three books in The Athletic's partnership with William Morrow, along with The Football 100, which was released last year (please click here for our review from November 2023), and The Hockey 100, projected to be released in 2025.

David Aldrige is a senior columnist for The Athletic. He has had a distinguished career reporting on the NBA, and he has previously covered it for Turner, ESPN, and the Washington Post. In 2016, he received the Curt Gowdy Award from the Basketball Hall of Fame, and the Legacy Award from the National Association of Black Journalists.

John Hollinger is a senior writer for The Athletic. For the past two decades, he has been a part of basketball's statistical revolution, including several advanced metrics, including PER. He has written for ESPN.com and SI.com, and also spent seven seasons as the Memphis Grizzlies' Vice President of Basketball Operations. In 2018, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

The Basketball 100 is the definitive guide to the top players to ever dominate the court, and it includes essays on each player from Aldridge and Hollinger, as well as other basketball writers from The Athletic, including Fred Katz and Marcus Thompson II.

There are 18 active players that made the list, including LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler, and Damian Lillard, and 82 retired players, including Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, Jerry West, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen.

The players in The Basketball 100 have put together some impressice figures, which of course will increase as the current players keep adding accolades to their careers. They have combined to play in 100,000-plus games, made 869 All-Star Game appearances, accumulated nearly 3.5 million minutes played, made over 748,000 field goals, made close to 61,000 three-pointers, snatched 783,000-plus rebounds, dished 445,000-plus assists, and scored over two million points.

The Nets players, who starred for the franchise in Long Island, New Jersey, and Brooklyn, that you will find in The Basketball 100 are: Tiny Archibald (1976-77), Vince Carter (2004-09), Kevin Durant (2020-23), Kevin Garnett (2013-15), James Harden (2021-22), Kyrie Irving (2019-23), Jason Kidd (2001-08), Bernard King (1977-79, 1992-93),  Bob McAdoo (1981), Alonzo Mourning (2003-04), Paul Pierce (2013-14).

Hollinger produced the essay on Bernard King, of who he writes, "King's journey began in Brooklyn, where he started at Fort Hamilton High, but his first national exposure came as an All-American at Tennessee. He teamed there with another New Yorker, Ernie Grunfeld, to form the 'Ernie and Bernie Show' and lead the Vols to the 1977 SEC title. (Grunfeld would eventually be his teammate with the Knicks for three seasons as well.)

King turned pro after his junior year and was selected seventh in the 1977 draft by New Jersey. He pumped in 24 points a game as a rookie, but arrests and alcoholism pocketed his early career and threatened to drag it down.

King was traded to Utah in 1979, where he struggled through 19 games before he was suspended by the Jazz, entered rehab, and regained control of his career...

King was the 1980-81 NBA Comeback Player of the Year, and in his fifth season in 1981-82, he made his first All-Star team. However, King became a free agent after the season. Under the different salary cap rules of that time, the Warriors matched a five-year offer sheet from the Knicks in the summer of 1982...only for the cash-strapped franchise to trade him days before the 1982-83 season started for Michael Ray Richardson.

King had a solid first year with the Knicks, but his career took off a season later in 1983-84, when he averaged 26.3 points per game and finished second in the MVP voting to Larry Bird. The Knicks won 47 games and took Bird's Celtics to seven games in the second round before faltering. Going head-to-head against Bird in the conference semifinals, King was nearly unstoppable, averaging 29.1 points on 54.5 percent shooting."

King also is one of the Knicks to earn a spot in The Basketball 100, as he called Madison Square Garden home in from 1982-85 and in the 1986-87 season. 

In addition to King, the Knicks you will find include: Carmelo Anthony (2011-17), Dave DeBusschere (1968-74), Patrick Ewing (1985-2000), Walt Frazier (1967-77), Spencer Haywood (1975-79), Jason Kidd (2012-13), Jerry Lucas (1971-74), Bob McAdoo (1976-79), Tracy McGrady (2010), Earl Monroe (1971-80), and Willis Reed (1964-74).

Most of the Knicks legends listed here comprised the rosters of their two championship teams, including DeBusschere, who Hollinger writes of, "The term 'Stretch 4' didn't exist in the late 1960s, but the connecting thread from the game of that era to the spaced-out modern game we see today flows directly through the New York Knicks teams that won titles in 1969 and 1973. The key catalyst? A trade for a strong 6-foot-6 power forward who could shoot from the perimeter.

The Knicks aquired DeBusschere from Detroit for Walt Bellamy and Howard Komives on December 19, 1968, and morphed into a powerhouse. They won 14 of 15 immediately after the trade and made the Eastern Conference finals, began the next season 23-1, and would win two championships and make a third NBA Finals in the following five years."

When looking at how a list like this gets put together, it is interesting to think how many players were part of the NBA's two most prolific teams, the Boston Celtics, who just won their 18th championship this past June, and the Los Angeles Lakers, who have 17 banners.

The Celtics who earned a spot in The Basketball 100 are: Ray Allen (2007-12), Tiny Archibald (1978-83), Dave Bing (1977-78) Larry Bird (1979-92), Bob Cousy (1950-63), Dave Cowens (1970-80), Kevin Garnett (2007-13), Artis Gilmore (1987-88), John Havlicek (1962-78), Kyrie Irving (2017-19), Dennis Johnson (1983-90), Sam Jones (1957-69), Pete Maravich (1980), Bob McAdoo (1979), Kevin McHale (1980-93), Shaquille O'Neal (2010-11), Robert Parish (1980-94), Gary Payton (2004-05), Paul Pierce (1998-2013), Bill Russell (1956-69), Bill Sharman (1951-61), Jayson Tatum (2017-present).

The Lakers, who started as a franchise in Minneapolis before moving to L.A. in 1960, legends that are a part of The Basketball 100 are: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1975-89), Carmelo Anthony (2021-22), Elgin Baylor (1958-72), Kobe Bryant (1996-2016), Wilt Chamberlain (1968-73), Anthony Davis (2019-present), Pau Gasol (2008-14), Spencer Haywood (1979-80), Dwight Howard (2012-13, 2019-20, 2021-22), LeBron James (2018-present), Magic Johnson (1979-91, 1995-96), Karl Malone (2003-04), Bob McAdoo (1981-85), George Mikan (1947-54, 1955-56), Steve Nash (2012-14), Shaquille O'Neal (1996-2004), Gary Payton (2003-04), Dennis Rodman (1998-99), Jerry West (1960-74), Russell Westbrook (2021-23), James Worthy (1982-94).

In this excerpt, Aldridge writes in the Introducion of what sets this sport apart: "Basketball, my friend Ed Tapscott said, is a culture.

There is an unspoken camaraderie in the game, a syncopation, that links those who are the greatest at playing it with those who never played it at all, or not very well if they did. People of all ages come to the game, seeking, striving for...unity. Basketball connects communities, schools, races, genders. We are drawn to it, the notion that five people, working together, can create something magical. The game is unique among sports, one that allows - demands - improvisation within structure. 

It is true whether you loved John Wooden's UCLA teams, which dominated the college basketball landscape for a decade, or if you became an ardent supporter of Coach K and Duke - or if you were, and are, a fanatical supporter of a low-major school like my beloved American University.

It is equally true if you follow the pro game, vibing with the generational greatness of the Lakers and Celtics, or if you rock, have rocked, and will rock, with the Wizards and Kings. True hoop heads love basketball at all levels, finding the beauty in a midweek high school clash between fierce rivals who want, who need, to beat one another.

You come to love the people: the ushers and the vendors, the coaches and the athletic trainers, the always-hopeful fans, the mellow play-by-play voice on the radio (or, now, on your laptop/iPad tablet/phone), passed from parent to child, and the public address announcer at the arena. 'Julius...the Doctor...Errrrrviiiing,' said Dave Zinkoff, in Philly, in the late '70s and early '80s, and you can hear it even now, decades after the Doc and Zink left the main stage, can't you?

Many have written about the similarities between basketball and jazz, where the sorties of the sax player, the drum or piano solos mid-number, align perfectly within the strivings of the unit as a whole - just as Stephen Curry's historic shooting range works perfectly off of Draymond Green's ability to play downhill and make the right read. Individually, each is sublime; together, they won championships.

Their progenitors were many: Clyde Frazier's cool and two-way excellence, pairing like AirPods and the iPhone, with Dave DeBusschere's rugged rebounding and Willis Reed's impenetrable post defense in New York. Or Earl 'the Pearl' Monroe's iconic spins and floaters, his unstoppable drives - meshing perfectly with Wes Unseld's outlet passes and bone-crushing picks in Baltimore...

This book is about talent and will.

Inspiring, often maddening, never controllable, but never dull either.

If you truly love the game, you appreciate its history, and the stars of the early era, from George Mikan and Bob Cousy to Bob Pettit and Dolph Schayes. They were not plumbers and firemen; they were the best athletes of their generation, men to be respected.

And talent doesn't stumble on race. Larry Bird was a damned virtuoso, a White man up from poverty just as paralyzing as the deprivation so many young Black men faced, but transcended, as they made their way to the NBA. No true basketball fan would deny Bird's greatness, any more than you'd try to argue that Magic Johnson wasn't breathtaking. Why do you think Magic and Bird first hated one another so fiercely, but then came to love each other so deeply?

Because they were the same guy. Look at one, and you see the other.

The Basketball 100 is one of the deepest, most-engaging books you will ever read, consistent with the breadth of coverage The Athletic is known for. It no doubt is perfect if you love the NBA, and fit for a spot under the Christmas tree for that hoops fan in your life.