Drowning in Bill Simmons

After about five weeks, I sit on page 550 of 697 of Bill Simmons' most recent book, "The Book of Basketball," and can't remember feeling so drained from reading. Simmons, now perhaps the country's most famous sports columnist, takes shots and give shots with equal ease, which is one of his most endearing qualities. He writes like he's your friend and that's why his ESPN.com columns are easy to read, sometimes funny and sometimes insightful, and easy to forgive when they make frequent missteps and generally absurd claims.

But Simmons has never been brief, including in column form, which has ultimately made this book tough to bear. Truly skillful writers can make their wise points succinctly and poor writers often experience the opposite -- the former group is deft enough with language to captivate and the latter fumbles to the point of frustration. Columns hide this because as a reader, you know you'll hit the high points relatively soon and the end is always in sight; books don't cover this up. At this point, I'm on the book's third mammoth list, ranking basketball's best-ever players, and I already know most of Simmons' major anecdotes for each player because he's told them earlier. Someone hire him an editor.

Simmons' simplistic frat-bro tendencies are exposed more glaringly here too. For example, he's always been willing to write about race in sports, in a relatively simple but relatively appealing way, which is hard to do. Few writers take it on, so he deserves credit for this. But here, there are numerous examples where he can't get beyond the stereotypes that he claims to detest because he doesn't take the time to think critically about such a weighty topic. When he decides to compose the all-time teams of best white and black NBA players, he credits the white team for featuring crafty, cerebral players who are great passers and would be a pleasure to have as a teammate. The black players, meanwhile, would have too much talent and have difficulty getting along and sharing the spotlight, and two of them might be distracted by their gambling problems. Isn't this the box we're always trying to break out of, or is writing and talking about race always too hard? Or maybe Simmons should should take a breath and stop writing so much?