bill simmons IS bill simmons IN the book of BASKETBALL

—“Ding Dong the witch is dead.” (That’s how one ESPN staffer describes the vibe in Bristol.)

lol if espn thinks that bill simmons out of all their personalities is the fuckin wicked witch there's...quite a lot wrong with that network

naw hell prob make the same or more from some thirsty startfucking company, still doesnt make it good business, like has katie courics contract paid off for yahoo prob not

http://sports.genius.com/

LOL @ http://sports.genius.com/ is actually a thing on the internet.

lmao wld be interested in rubbernecking that marriage tbh

lol if espn thinks that bill simmons out of all their personalities is the fuckin wicked witch there's...quite a lot wrong with that network

― slothroprhymes, Friday, May 8, 2015 1:29 PM (46 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya it is clearly a post apocalyptic hellscape

was gonna say genius seems a good fit, let's see

man i blinked and missed rap genius exploding, i knew they broadened to like lyrics in general or w/e but i had no idea they were doing sports and shit thats kinda scary

trying to reach escape velocity from the seo wasteland

Christopher Hayes ‏@chrislhayes 20s20 seconds ago Manhattan, NY
ESPN brass showing a surprising degree of confidence that @BillSimmons isn't going to proceed to tell the world every one of their secrets.

best possible outcome is a 50k word multipart tell all hit piece

spread over 500 genius annotations of course

this is almost certainly going to happen

can't wait

i'd say deadspin would kill to host that but it won't matter b/c they'll just cut up various simmdog revelations into multiple kinja posts and shit them out at staggered intervals throughout the day for optimum #views

hes got to have signed a non disclosure but maybe doesnt gaf

will prob just talk abt it on the pod then i will have to beg ilh posters to tell me what he said

burns me up how pods r where all the good gossip is

he doesn't have dgaf money as much as i would love for him to just destroy espn

kimmel could prob float him some safety net cash on the d/l if he wants to go on an anti-ESPN blitzkrieg

wld be a reasonable enough calculation that its not worth it for espn to sue him, tho obvs itd hurt his future employment prospects

how much is dgaf money he def has way more than it wld take for me to not gaf lol

rather than a huge hit piece hell prob just be taking weird passive agressive shots at them til the end of time

idk $3m/year for the past five years doesn't seem like "i could definitely survive getting sued by the walt disney corp" money

pass/agg shots much more his style

the no way sna of sports personalities

i have a theory that grantland will be much better now simmons has gone, sorta like when the knicks lost patrick ewing

http://www.si.com/more-sports/2015/05/08/bill-simmons-espn-part-ways

i have a theory that grantland will be much better now simmons has gone, sorta like when the knicks lost patrick ewing

noiiiiice

the majority of the Grantland staff swear by Simmons and hold him responsible for the creative freedom and large salaries that have.

well yea, i mean something tells me disney/espn suits were not the impetus behind wesley morris earning 6 figures to write about movies

(which, knowing a handful of paid movie critics, i can say is pretty high for someone w/o ebertesque syndication!)

yeah if i had to guess grantland is prob fd

then again, the SI piece makes a good point saying that they'll prob run it as long as absolutely possible just to prove that they don't need simmons's #name and #brand

or close it/ruin it out of spite/disinterest

feel like if its true they want a more buzzfeedy site than thats prob what theyll do

countdown to zach lowe getting rolled into insider

yeah the speculation i've seen (and the skipper quote seems to confirm) is that in the short term at least they'll continue it out of spite to 'prove' that bill simmons had nothing to do w/ grantland's success

is grantland successful tho

i mean its successful enough, it prob gets slightly more/about the same viewers as deadspin

if i had to guess id say deadspin is much bigger

and they dont have espn.com feeding them traffic either

blatant kinja partisanship, smh

yeah if i had to guess grantland is prob fd

I will weep for lambert and netw3rk and that's about it

lowe tho? morris?

i like andy greenwald's tv reviewing, when he gets into This Is What TV Means In Culture stuff that gets annoying though

rembert is a clown who while not an /entirely/ untalented writer steers into literally every cliche about people my age who write for the internet and seems to really enjoy doing so

i think most if not all of the grantland writers will bolt over the course of the next few months unless they are under contract

I've complained abt Lowe a lot actually. I like him as a talker much more than I do a writer. He's just not graceful as a stylist.

i respect that zach will debate himself and conclude with "i'm not sure what i think" but sometimes he hems and haws a bit much

can't believe i got a nytimes notification on my phone about bill simmons this morning btw like since when is this boston basketball blogger that big a deal, congrats to thebostonsportsguy on his impeccable brand

i mean of boston sports people better it happen to him than shaughnessy or literally anyone from fucking WEEI

hes the biggest sportswriter in the country, also espn gave nytimes the exclusive xp

apparently they docked his pay for getting suspended last year, but they waited until 6 days before christmas to do it. classy!