At the time of the book's publishing, Simmons had been writing under the name “The Sports Guy” for 12 years, 9 of them with ESPN, and was receiving 1.4 million page views per month.^[2] In 2006, he started developing the idea for The Book of Basketball, spending three years reading over 80 books on basketball and watching 400 game tapes.^[3][4]

Simmons's goal in the book was to figure out why some players or teams matter more than others.^[5] The original premise for the book was to "blow up the Basketball Hall of Fame and reconstruct it like an Egyptian pyramid."^[6][7] As he continued his research, he realized that there was "no real way to compare players from different eras without a common theme in place."^[6] Simmons derived an idea that he admitted was not perfect, but helped in finding a fair ranking system for players past and present. He took into account NBA championships, regular season and playoff statistics, as well as longevity and flair. Simmons chose Tom Chambers as the first player in his new Pyramid (96th out of 96) because he saw Chambers as the "Was Player A better than...?" example for power forwards, and wanted to establish that baseline to underline the multi-tiered structure of his reimagined, moved-to-Indiana Hall of Fame.