bill simmons IS bill simmons IN the book of BASKETBALL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpk_zOfxkhc

I think Simmons is definitely at his best when he's doing straight NBA analysis, so I'm enjoying this so far (roughly 100pp in). The Isiah/Vegas chapter is really great.

One criticism I have is that weird semantic thing he does sometimes when he's discussing race in sports; for instance, in the Bird chapter he chalks part of Bird's career decline up to "a wave of athletic black forwards that were slowly making the Kelly Tripuckas and Kiki Vandeweghes obsolete."

I don't think anybody who's read Simmons for a while is at risk of misreading that, but I'm kinda surprised they left it in, y'know?

The black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way — because of his high thighs and big thighs that goes up into his back, and they can jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs. This goes back all the way to the Civil War when during the slave trading, the owner — the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid.

I was a big Jimmy the Greek fan as a little kid and was bummed when they fired him. :/

this is a little off topic, but I can't stand the way he speaks on podcasts and stuff - sounds like I'm listening to a college sophomore with a bunch of flattened KEYSTONE LIGHT boxes taped to his wall

he's on colbert tonight, should be coming on pretty soon...

this is a little off topic, but I can't stand the way he speaks on podcasts and stuff - sounds like I'm listening to a college sophomore with a bunch of flattened KEYSTONE LIGHT boxes taped to his wall

― 囧 (dyao), Thursday, October 29, 2009 11:25 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i always liked this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQbcVnsK9g8

Well, if you look at who he's talking about that replaced Bird, Vandeweigh, and Tripuka, et al., he's not wrong. There were a bunch of really good, athletic power forwards who could run, rebound and dunk over a city bus, who happened to be black. The phrasing is awkward, and makes him seem to be placing the race thing a little high in the analysis.

I am looking forward to this book - his knowledge of NBA stuff is pretty amazing, and he tends to do some pretty inventive statistical analysis.

And yes, this dude was totally a douchebag in college.

the first real chapter ("the secret") is pretty good. simmon's tim duncan reclamation project is almost working on me. ive always found him the most boring superstar and basically hated him for wiping out the fun-n-suns year after year but always respected him as a player and think he's probably a great guy.

putting him in stark contrast now with shaq: four rings on the same team, cycled through good roleplayers that he made great (both did this), still in title contention with that same team, while shaq is now basically a big media presence journeyman...i think i'm convinced that timmy is the best of the era ending right about now.

duncan as the best of his generation is pretty indisputable imo

Duncan = not of Kobe's era?

B/c -

Four rings with same team
Cycled through journeymen and made them better
Still in title contention with same team

Could also describe Kobe.

buddy sry kobe is not better than duncan - also shaq was the best player on 3/4 of those teams

1 duncan
2 shaq
then kobe garnett et al

says the celts, fan get outta here

anyway duncan and kobe are apples n oranges

lol "celts fan, get"

as afar as know neither duncan or shaq are or have ever been on the celtics

fan, get as afar as know

In school, Duncan was a bright pupil and dreamt of becoming an Olympic-level swimmer like his sister, Tricia.[5][6] His parents were very supportive and Duncan excelled at swimming, becoming a teenage standout in the 50, 100 and 400 meters freestyle and aiming to make the 1992 Olympic Games as a member of the United States Team.[5]

When Hurricane Hugo destroyed the island's only Olympic-sized swimming pool in 1989, forcing Duncan to swim in the ocean, he soon lost enthusiasm because of his fear of sharks.[4]

this is why he's #1

also spurs teams with duncan on them have never won fewer than 53 games (lockout season excepted)

buddy sry kobe is not better than duncan

http://hillbilly10commandments.com/images/moses3.bmp

huh, i never really think about kobe v duncan.

like kobe used to get compared to his contemporaries like pierce, ray allen, carter, mcgrady, but now that it's clear that none of them are as good as he is, he tends to get compared to jordan and maybe lebron.

they're definitely the best of the nba players who emerged in the late '90s, and both of them started out on teams that were immediately successful, but in terms of position and temperament they're completely different.

yah its a tough comparison but i think if kobe goes on a run the next few years with a ring or two and consistent finals appearances before he starts to decline, we'll end up looking at the 08 lakers/celts series as the start of the post-timmy era...esp if TD doesn't get another ring before he retires. i tend to think that kobe's first three rings dont count quite as much *for him* in this kind of discussion because he wasn't the undisputed leader of those teams. even more so than points, stats, etc i think thats what simmons convinced me about-- even on the 99 team with robinson, it was absolutely td's team.

bought this book today iirc. chapter one was great--plenty of lols and good writing.

bill simmons is sitting in with the commentators @ celtics/bulls rite now

not a good voice

never heard him before colbert, if anything douchier than advertised

haha ive heard him like 100x via podcasts and such, but yeah as much as i like dude he gets frattier every element of him you discover writing -> voice -> irl

yeah i don't mind reading him actually, lets you know where he stands and puts teeth into it. entertaining as far as it goes

i remember when he was on colbert a while back, he got booed when he made fun of clinton for throwing like a girl

yah its a tough comparison but i think if kobe goes on a run the next few years with a ring or two and consistent finals appearances before he starts to decline, we'll end up looking at the 08 lakers/celts series as the start of the post-timmy era...esp if TD doesn't get another ring before he retires. i tend to think that kobe's first three rings dont count quite as much *for him* in this kind of discussion because he wasn't the undisputed leader of those teams. even more so than points, stats, etc i think thats what simmons convinced me about-- even on the 99 team with robinson, it was absolutely td's team.

This is what is going to make the Western Conf. so interesting this year. They both have good teams and something to prove.

I can't imagine "something to prove" matters as much to Tim as it does to Kobes. I'm not trying to argue Duncan isn't driven or whatever, I just don't think he cares as much about what people think about him. (Tbf, he also doesn't have as much negativity to cope with.)

Yeah. That's probably a pretty fair assessment on both of them.

Have purchased. Have read the first 100 or so pages. Have learned a lot about Boston basketball. Woo, this guy is a HOMER.

http://www.chicagobreakingsports.com/2009/11/espns-simmons-says-86-celtics-better-than-96-bulls.html

What else would you expect from Bill Simmons? ESPN's "The Sports Guy" was in town on Monday promoting his lastest book, "The Book of Basketball," and told the Tribune's Luis Arroyave that it's no contest, the 1986 Celtics were better than the '96 Bulls.

"When Bill Wennington and Luc Longley are your two centers, you're instantly eliminated from being the best team ever," Simmons said.

No contest Robert Parish was a better center than Longley and Wennington. But using that logic, a Bulls fan could counter, no team with Danny Ainge as its shooting guard should ever be mentioned in the argument, since his Bulls counterpart was Michael Jordan.

Plus, Wennington was a backup. Does that mean Bulls fans can bring up Celtics backups Jerry Sichting and Greg Kite, whom the Boston Globe's Bob Ryan once called "the least talented player in the NBA."

Then again Jack Haley was on the '96 Bulls roster.

96 bulls greater than the sum of their parts imo. also 72 wins, gotdamn, ur move simmons.

I'm still pissed they got double-digit losses.they lost against at least one garbage team right near the end.

mj made $290K more than kukoc that season 0_o
their last 2 losses were against raptors (21-61) and hornets (41-41)

yeah jordan was like paid peanuts save for those last 2 years which were like 30 mil a year or something, right?

man do i wish he'd gone through with calling this book "tell me how my book tastes"

Xpost^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Either that title or "Black Men Can Jump." It would have been funny.

Now, look...I'm not a Boston fan. I wasn't when I didn't live in LA, and now I really hate them.

But Ainge back in the day? He was SO fast and really pesky as fuck on defense. I can't take away from him as a player. He wasn't MJ, of course, but the degrees of difference b/t him and MJ and Longley/Wennington v. Parish? No damn contest.

http://deadspin.com/5403430/you-are-not-the-cosmos-a-review-of-bill-simmons-book-of-basketball

i like pierce but there's a lot of bullshit in that review

he comes off with a serious case of U MAD? in that review imo

i've been entangled in a long email back & forth with my friend about simmons as sparked by that piece

pretty much hate this guy but i would like him more if he cut the pop culture/bro shit b/c he can make some interesting points. and sometimes i feel like reading his pieces is like reading [nabisco] on sports.

obv it's a takedown of simmons in the guise of a book review, but he is pretty accurate. dude is so in love with his own hit-or-miss shtick that the worthwhile content sometimes gets buired (xpost: ie what omar said)

altho i don't hate him, i kinda read around it

years of training have left me v. adept at ignoring the pop culture/bro shit.

it's pretty fucking funny for charles pierce to not recognize shtick as such since you know EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE GETTING when you read both him and simmons.

^^those 2 posts are exactly my response too

jesus

this one was funny

https://x.com/billsimmons/status/1691930025648369827?s=46&t=delhXlmZBYazm252j4iaFA

prob what happened more or less

yeah it seems fairly obvious (and predictable!) how it went down

yeah it's all reasonable my only note is that if philly *did* promise a wink wink deal a lot of these things could be seen as harden's camp (awkwardly ) keeping the pressure on to make that happen. i don't think it's like one or the other.

the one no-doubt thing is that he assumed he had a houston backtop option as leverage until he didn't.

I have a physical revulsion to this word and can’t wrap my head around how or why anyone would use it 5 million times in an article let alone write “let us not pretend the word doesn’t rule.” Wtf. I’m sure Bill personally had nothing to do with this Ringer abomination but not sure where else to put this. Is there a thread about the mainstreaming of 4chan incel culture or some shit?

The Official Taxonomy of Cinematic Cucks

Cuck cinema is having a mainstream moment. Song and her husband, Justin Kuritzkes, have independently written (and in Song’s case, directed) two films centered almost exclusively on the act of cucking. That’s the aforementioned Past Lives, in which Greta Lee cucks John Magaro until they hug it out, and the upcoming Challengers, in which Zendaya appears to cuck Josh O’Connor and/or Mike Faist. (Side note: After being set for a September 15 release date, Challengers has now been postponed to 2024, no doubt for fear of an excess of Hollywood cucking.)

Sure, “cuck” has had a long and winding journey to its current moment in the cinematic spotlight, from Geoffrey Chaucer’s use of “cuckold” to cuck’s place as the insult du jour of myriad far-right trolls. But let us not pretend that the word “cuck” itself, with its monosyllabic brevity and hard consonant punch, doesn’t rule. Let us also not pretend that during the last several years, it has not become (for better or worse) something far more universal, its definition stretching from “insult for a man whose wife is cheating on him” to a sort of catchall for any spineless or subservient specimen.

thats some very bad writing wow

i get why this is the case w/ CEO bill and all, but there's something funny that happens not infrequently on his podcast where he will have one of his employees on and will be like "so have you paid attention to [team] at all this year?" and the guy will reply "yeah you know i actually went down to training camp last month for 5 days for an article on the ringer, and"

you get the sense he may not be the world's greatest boss

idk his main people have worked for him for years, i think you can make a lot of criticisms more accurate than that.

yeah say what you want about him, and god knows one day something terrible might come out, but all indications point to him being a pretty good boss I think!

im ready to release some terrible info about him

hes a podcaster

iirc there was something where some lesser ringer staffers had their podcasts taken away and he told them they just didnt have the capacity to produce everything and he gave his teenage daughter a podcast at the same time

Yet somehow Verrier remains.

i now make active effort to avoid content from the ringer dot com

their stuff is so bad, pure slop

they employ kevin oconnor

yeah we all agree koc sucks, but they have some other writers who are good

they all have the residual stink of bill simmons tho

feel like every time i encounter something by them its notably unserious but at the same time not entertaining

i leave neither edified nor amused

both teams end up neither edified or amused, who says no?

lol

depends what you mean by "good boss" because I think there's a Peter Principle thing going on with him, he's a good writer (or at least one that can command a large audience) and I think he knows what sports bros want to see but I don't know how good he is at actually running things

iirc most of the Grantland writers said he was a good dude to work for

I think he knows what sports bros want to see but I don't know how good he is at actually running things

― frogbs, Saturday, December 2, 2023 12:18 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

pretty common scenario of someone with vision whos not necessarily expert at the day to day stuff, usually when you see a someone like that build a successful business someone else is just doing the operations things

lol didn't mean much by it, just seems like he'd be an annoying personality type. the one thing that I've noticed is that whenever any writers leave the ringer he never acknowledges their departure or existence

i'm sure there are worse bosses out there

he is annoying tbf

my post wasn't to allege that bill is a bad boss, just that it's funny when he has his writers on his podcast and reveals that he doesn't know what they're publishing, even though that is a fairly standard dynamic at a place w/ as many editorial layers as the ringer. it's just that most places like the ringer don't have a hugely popular podcast where its founder speaks frequently w/ his writers

that being said i know enough ppl that have worked for him to say definitively that whether he is a bad boss or a good boss depends on who you are talking to. there is a core group of people who have been w/ him for ages, there are also people who have found working for him untenable and have parted on bad terms. this is prob a fairly common dynamic among bosses.

why do the untenable people find it untenable

i don't think you have to know anyone behind the scenes to say that bill can be petty and vindictive. he deals w/ conflict in a way that can feel righteous when his opponent is ESPN and disney -- it's far more problematic when he is managing employees. i know that when the ringer union was forming, some people who were very active & vocal in the union drive felt that he was doing stuff like no longer tweeting out links to their stories from his personal account etc. boss fighting union is not exactly a breaking news story but there were some ppl there who felt like he was taking it to a more personal level

there's also just stuff like, the ringer having very few black people on staff, bill being confronted about this by his staff, and then his response being to hire ppl like raja bell and cc sabathia to host podcasts. like...

Above all, the four former employees said, it was difficult for black staff members to win more responsibility and visibility at the company — especially since late 2017, when company leaders appeared to make podcasting a priority. At that point, they said, top editors started claiming shows for themselves.

The outlet’s popular R3w4tch4bl3s podcast, in which staff members revisit old movies, led by Mr. Simmons, allowed for a variety of guests when it started. By the spring of 2018, the ensemble approach faded as the show came to rely more on Mr. Simmons along with S34n F3nn3ss3y and Chr1s Ry4n, both founding editors who are white.

“The Rewatchables was pitched as, ‘Let’s get the rest of you participating in podcasts,’” Mr. Collins said. “It very quickly became Sean, Bill and Chris.”

Mr. Simmons said by email that the company needed to spotlight its best podcasters. “It’s a business,” he said. “This isn’t Open Mic Night.”

responding to concerns by your (at the time) handful of black employees that there wasn't enough room for advancement by saying, to the new york times, that you aren't hosting an open mic night is a style of management that, um, isn't going to work for everyone. again this is the kinda thing that works when you're the david, not the goliath. but i think he always sees himself as the former despite having been the latter for quite some time.

good post thank you