bill simmons IS bill simmons IN the book of BASKETBALL

"deputy entertainment editor"--i guess he will be the main pop-culture person or something

the pop culture part of this site is going to be painful as will the aspiration toward a literary sports writing ideal, predictions

klosterman's sports essays are usually p. good, really liked the football one in his new book, basically in favor of anything that lets him do some more sportswriting

not in favor of anything that lets simmons write more pop culture stuff, his dedication to survivor and road rules is mind-boggling

another writer for his new site http://thisrecording.com/today/2011/3/4/in-which-we-sound-the-airhorn-for-mollys-very-last-this-reco.html

interesting considering how strange he can be abt women in his writing that he hired a woman who is often overtly feminist in hers, good on him http://thisrecording.com/today/2011/2/22/in-which-we-teach-you-how-to-be-a-woman-in-any-boys-club.html

let's hope they don't have to be in the same office, let alone the same fantasy football league

yeah, guessing she'll be in "culture" section, not simmons' man-cave

the new site is called "grantland" and a couple of preview pieces has been posted via his twitter

named after Grantland Rice, "a legend in the sports journalism world"

Anyone read anything by Grantland Rice? I'm not familiar.

no i had no idea who he was

a 6k word molly lambert piece published by espn.com = the definition of http://fourfour.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b8c369e2014e5f4860df970c-800wi

u don't like molly?

anyway i'm excited for this -- i don't really care about a lot of the big names but chris ryan, bill barnwell, katie baker & tommy craggs (assuming he stays on) are all A++

xp her writing style, not really no

in doses

omg this katie baker piece is a monster too.

good thing i am stuck in this classroom.

yeah that thing is long as hell

I rate players on the Larry Bird scale. How close are they to Larry Bird. Magic Johnson was 97% Larry Bird, and Lebron is 93% Larry. Eric Dampier and Brendan Haywood are separated by about 73 MicroLarries, mostly because Haywood brings more presence.

The biggest question when determining how Larry someone is: does he have that "it"? Larry bird had "it." That presence that made the fans in the stand know that any minute, you could hit that big shot. I came up with this talking to my friend Dwayne at the Celtics versus Bulls in 1988. It was pretty cold February evening, and the Cs were down by 2 with 5 seconds left on the clock. If they didn't hit this shot, it would be a long, cold walk back to my car. Bird got the ball at the elbow on an inbounds, and I turned to Dwayne and said, "Bird's going to hit it. I can feel it." As the shot went in, I knew I was on to something.

Back then it was tough to get by as a sports journalist. Povitch, Kornheiser, and a few other dominated the columns. I would sell some columns to the Globe occasionally, but it was mostly local papers. None of them, of course, covered travel or tickets. I would suck dicks in times square at $5 a pop so I could buy a ticket to the Garden, which was what we called MSG at the time since TD hadn't been built yet, to cover the Cs at the Knicks. Tickets were $22.75, but I wasn't about to charge $2.75 for that fifth dick. Besides, I wanted a soda, usually Sprite. One time this guy hit me right between the eyes with his cum. It was amazing. "You've got Bird accuracy, man." I told him. He paused for a second before he zipped up. "Yeah, uh, sure," he said before he walked away. I was hoping he recognized me from my columns but then remembered none of them had printed my picture next to them yet. My big break would be five years and two Celtics championships away

I turned to my buddy Weasel and asked "Hey Weez, what do you think Paul Pierce's dick looks like?" He was like "Oh for sure it's gotta be wicked huge. Do you think Bill Russell had a bigger dick? Which one would you rather suck?" I told him that Russel probably had a bigger dick, but it would get uncomfortable with his hands on the back of your head since he had all those championship rings.

I got into the office and asked Cheryl, the intern, what she thought. Anyway, I've been suspended and my column will be back on ESPN.com at a date to be determined.

think abt "it"

he said in his 'the wire'/playoffs column today that he or GMs (or whoever) never thought that z-bo would have a sense of 'the moment' like he did when he went off at the end of game 5 vs the spurs & it struck me as such a dumb thing to say -- z-bo taking over the end of a game when he's clearly been the best player in the series doesn't mean he had any sense greater than common sense

lol ade

Whenever you put together a circlejerk, you've got to follow my formula. Five megasplashers aren't going to get the job done, because they all bring the same thing to the table. It's like five Daniel-sans all trying to crane kick one Billy Zabka. That's too many cooks in the kitchen, which is something that's just going to spill, something I learned when cooking chicken wings with too many guys in Jimmy Kimmel's kitchen, and we lost a bunch on the floor to my dog Dooze.

Anyway, what you want is a real jizzmaker, someone like Peter North, who is the Larry Bird of cum. Then you want a quiet leader type, your Parrish/Bill Russell types, someone like Sean Michaels. Then want a playmaker, someone willing to do it all himself, your Ray Allen/Seymour Butts. Finally, you round it out with two character guys willing to cum off the bench, the kind of guys who'll do the face drip from above or maybe let out a YAAAAAHHH that gets the crowd going.

Without it, you're the Heat, and you're not going to win according to my formula, which I wrote here in 1999 and updated here in 2001, and here, here, here and here, after last year's finals. But this will always work.

haha it makes sense that youre a goon

at least that wire piece had the upside of being the last straw with me ever reading this guy again. been waiting on that one for a few years.

the funny thing is that i found the durant/westbrook = avon/stringer analogy from months ago to be acceptable, but this was a bit much

wondering if z-bo or jamal crawford has had the bad guy gone good story this playoffs

jamal crawford's an extremely good guy! just not a Proven Winner or w/e

yeah def! he's been a fave of mine for years, z-bo too. and one day ya'll are gonna come around on j.r. smith too

so is this grantland thing gonna fail horribly or what, seems like classic overreach

The best thing Simmons can do is just let the folks he hired run the thing, because he did hire a lot of worthwhile people.

Still, "Grantland"?

I'm picturing a fansite devoted to brian grant, run by bill simmons

thatd be a site i could really get into

i like some of the writers but i dont think theyll necessarily have wide appeal particularly to the espn demo - the whole high minded long form anti news cycle concept is not exactly a proven page view generator - and simmons has p much lost his fastball and seems uninterested in writing, he at least used to be v readable now its just like v sludgy

poor brian grant has Parkinson's :(

!!!! whaaaaa

damn guy is only like 40

yeah he lives in Portland now and does some work with the team. There's a big Parkinson's dinner at the RG every year that he hosts (my gf worked it and served Michael J Fox last year!) but every time he speaks during halftime during a fundraiser or whatever it's super heartbreaking :(

he at least used to be v readable now its just like v sludgy

yeah there are some people who could keep cranking out good columns while also doing hours of podcasts and managing a new website and having a family and whatever else, but he is not one of those people.

kinda doubt family takes up much of his time tbh

ill probably drop in on this site just to see what a few of the writers (and klosterman- he's a great sports almost-troll) are doing but yeah...even the name seems off.

and agreed that wire/playoffs column was just so much overworked gimmick. like a four hour epic film based on a mad lib.

"Grantland" is such a stupid name.

is he feuding with olbermann just because olbermann thought a jfk joke was offensive?

yep.

christ olbermann

Not the first time they've been mad at each other.

http://www.mrdestructo.com/2011/05/bill-simmons-and-grantland.html

Bill Simmons is to Grantland Rice what Tucker Max is to Hunter Thompson.

that was... very hardbody

pretty sure that blog post was longer than the entire output of grantland to date