It is no secret to the seven of you who've recently listened to our Treehouse Fort podcast that one of my sports goals this winter is to reintroduce myself to the NBA. There have been more than a few changes since I last watched the league closely (Oklahoma City has a team?), including the phenomenon of basketball writers, bloggers, and fans taking to the Internet and creating a network of brilliance and eloquence. This is true for any sport, but it doubly applies to the NBA in that their proponents and media members are not only passionate about their sport, but unduly coherent and intelligent in their writing. I'm jealous.
Ballard's book does nothing but reinforce this. His core mission with The Art of a Beautiful Game: The Thinking Fan's Tour of the NBA is not necessarily to proselytize (although if it has that effect, I'm sure he wouldn't mind) but rather to dispel a myth that I find myself half-believing: the league is a bunch of gifted athletes with little skill. So much is happening on the hardwood that greenhorns and even seasoned fans may not notice, and through his years writing for Sports Illustrated, he sets forth ignoring the melodrama of league politics and transactional hearsay and simply talks to basketball people about friggin' basketball.
With that, The Art Of A Beautiful Game is organized according to each realm of the sport. Naturally, the first chapter covers Kobe Bryant and his killer instinct, with the final one analyzing LeBron James as a physical specimen. In between are many other facets of the sport: shot blocking, rebounding, dunking, conditioning, and pure shooting. But of course an NBA book begins with Kobe and ends with LeBron.
Each skill, as promised, provides a smart and multilayered perspective. When discussing free throw rituals, for example, he'll roll through many famous idiosyncrasies, such as Karl Malone's muttering before each shot. I had always wondered what he said, and sure enough, he gives one lip reader's theory. Someone could probably write an entire encyclopedic book on free throw superstitions and I might not get bored with it.
But the best chapter zeroed in on defense, perhaps the most enigmatic and yet critical element of basketball, because it's so difficult to measure "a good defensive player." Specifically, Ballard looks at Houston Rockets forward Shane Battier's back-to-back tasks guarding Brandon Roy and LeBron James. Retelling these games extended the worth beyond "what it means to be a defensive player," such as Shane Battier feeding the ego of a referee who called a foul on him. While the outcomes were inconsequential, the anecdotes within the games never biodegrade.
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