looking up stats

I am enjoying this book immensely in the first few pages. I can see one of my activities during my reading will be looking up the stats of the players that Halberstam is describing. The first of these is Greg Bunch, though his stats are sparse, 12 games with the Knicks. These stats are available at http://www.basketball-reference.com/. It really is like looking at the documentation behind history. So much is different when you really look at what happened. I remember the coverage more then the stats. Many times players were better then I remember because certain columnists had maligned them. Not that stats can't lie as well.

I love looking at these names that I don't remember. This book is written for the 1979-80 season, at that point I am just getting into the NBA, so many names are unfamiliar.

As with so many books, this one sounds like it could be describing today's game. Political books are the same. And yet, experts blather on and on every night as if they possess secret decoder rings. They are truly saying nothing new.

With new technology, everything is more accessible and more pervasive, but the descriptions given then could easily pass for commentary about today's nba game, or presidential election.