bill simmons IS bill simmons IN the book of BASKETBALL

i did wonder if the overnights for that last gbh played a part, if it was just skipper realising 'this guy is never going to be worth the headache, the internet doesn't translate to bigger mediums, we've maximized what we're getting out of him' but it sounds like it really was just espn still being so damn sore at dan patrick. in lighter news cowherd might jump to do his own political talk radio show.

i think they prob fired him cause they were mad abt nfl/patrick/general difficultness but his ingenious ideas falling flat had to have made it easier

yea i'm sure it was a conglomeration of all those things

god help us all re: cowherd

and for all the speculation w/ goodell i doubt simmons was really on his radar. in terms of journalists he'd like shitcanned i suspect rachel nichols is higher on that list, nevermind don van natta.

seems like its more an affront to the espn brass that simmons isnt being a team player

i sometimes wonder if you're gregg easterbrook irl

xp

― balls, Monday, May 11, 2015 12:52 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

LOW BLOW

the calculus isn't hard to figure out, if he were a team player they could ignore the financial return and if grantland were printing money he'd get license to keep being a pain in the ass

i admit that i am in fact gregg easterbrook

(not totally sure who gregg easterbrook is)

a distinctly atrocious espn person

he sounds good

er, former espn person

brookings institute fellow responsible for the most tedious football writing ever published

and that's when i wrote in my notebook, 'thread over'

close but this is actually me irl

http://i.imgur.com/uxIziBR.jpg

http://loudgif.com/?g=http://i.imgur.com/uxIziBR.jpg&v=i_kF4zLNKio&s=5

lol ty, i feel like we've accomplished something here

beautiful and terrible to behold

"trap queen" is naturally the beautiful part

There was a gap in the market for middlebrow sports docs and bill was smart enough to realize that and push for the project, to find directors to give it some street cred, and to fight to keep it on the air after the initial run. Now ESPN has a product they can put on Netflix. The rest of their shows are built around the present day and have no shelf life. Plus, 30 for 30 won ESPN a Peabody and a few other awards, which are nice feathers in your cap for when people say you're the devil. So they have an middlebrow prestige show that people actually watch and from which they continue to make money, and Simmons made it happen. And every hour they air is an hour where Rick Bayless's brother isn't saying something racist.

Does not compute, where's your bow tie man?

Rick Bayless's brother

lol i kiss u poly

i'd love for simmons to go to deadspin and demand they fire whoever "albert burneko" is

they cant fire albert burneko... he follows me on twitter

hating on simmons like that is just like...bless your heart man. gotta churn out those $20 a pop columns somehow i guess

if someone did a comprehensive simmons take down i wld be there for it but yeah deadspin been zinging him so long its hard to feel anything abt it

who am i joking i am there for the zings too

what would a simmons "takedown" even consist of that that article didn't already address? that he leans on his old schtick a little too much? ok. he's enormously successful, produces quality content (in one form or another), and seems to be a decent guy. it's not like he's whitlock. i mean i get that he's the sort of guy a nobody like "albert burneko" has to punch up at, but at least come hard if you're gonna come at him. you think simmons, or anyone who reads him, gives a shit about this dude's "I graduated from a journalism school and THIS i tell you is poor journalism!" really? get a life man. or at least find someone worthy of the takedown

dik what a takedown wld look like but i am ready to find out

simmons shd open a bar and blog abt the bar imo

it's just laughable coming from deadspin given how their (arguably) best-known writer is a fusion of simmons and...idk the worst matt taibbi columns, not to mention if anyone thinks deadspin has a vested interest in the quality of sports writing and /that's/ why they're mocking simmons or pretty much anyone else they mock...chuckle

there is nothing remotely edgy or fresh about saying that simmons is repetitive/schticky/etc

i guess they could dredge up old casual-sexist sports guy shit that is admittedly a bad look but he hasn't been doing much of that in some time

examining what his schtick is what it means from a cultural standpoint how its evolved how that fits in with espn corporate culture etc cld be interesting

simmons shd open a bar and blog abt the bar imo

― lag∞n, Monday, May 11, 2015 3:21 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe he should do what he (allegedly) boasted about the possibility of doing and come back to boston to do that, people would eat that shit up

he's enormously successful and seems like kind of a dick; what is deadspin for if not that

welp, rick reilly and his readers don't give a shit that he sucks, no point in even bringing it up

xxp agreed, but that would involve work & thought rather than 900 words that say nothing more substantive "LOL simmdog u homer dummy" and some c&ping as is the (usual) gawkblog takedown standard

for me simmons is very much apiece with the common current prosumer approach of like the onion av club ppl who pretend to know things who dont know anything and see the world as primarily existing in the context of craft and narrative, which is interesting as simmons started out as a i dont know anything guy

Drew Magary is pretty funny though, I'll admit it

he's enormously successful and seems like kind of a dick; what is deadspin for if not that

i thought it was for sports-tmz shit about athletes at first and that's quite entertaining every once in a while the same way fast food is good in moderation, plus the occasional specialty-item in the form of a feature or something that's actually good, but now they have extremely transparent delusions of righteousness or morality or quality

yeah deadspin is for finding out that somehow chris christie spent eighty grand in taxpayer money on stadium nachos

xp the why your team sucks series is fun i can't lie but he's just as aggressively schticky as simmons but puts a lot of (literal and figurative) airquotey bullshit around it so readers who are suckers for that shit are like "oh lol it's meta and edgy"

(xxp actually my bad)

yeah deadspin is for finding out that somehow chris christie spent eighty grand in taxpayer money on stadium nachos

― balls, Monday, May 11, 2015 3:36 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

intuitively we all knew this tho

omg I thought you guys were making up that Chris Christie thing.

haha nope

to be fair, they're very good nachos
actually they are not

for me simmons is very much apiece with the common current prosumer approach of like the onion av club ppl who pretend to know things who dont know anything and see the world as primarily existing in the context of /craft/ and /narrative/, which is interesting as simmons started out as a /i dont know anything/ guy

The whole concept of a sportswriter who claims expertise on every sport is totally ridiculous and needs to be shitcanned

Bleacher report/TNT seems like the best fit for Simmons

Whoa balls used shitcanned too, hive mind ilh shit