bill simmons IS bill simmons IN the book of BASKETBALL

"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

i don't think he "claims expertise" on anything other than maybe the NBA, but he definitely talks about everything at great length, which is not precisely the same thing

it is sometimes insufferable and sometimes w/e

idk it's like who caaaaares, there are sportswriters out there who are bigoted or are genuinely vicious and not just more or less harmlessly dumb, this act of pointing at the foibles of simmons like, "SEE? SEE?" as if those doing the pointing are having these brave truth-to-power moments of insight that will really /tell it like it is mannnn/, is fucking laughable

um no its actually very cool

If you make the pronouncements he does about sports he doesn't really follow (boxing, hockey, etc) you are implicitly claiming expertise. I guess you could just say he's talking out of his ass but claiming expertise is a nicer way to put it.

It's not like he's the only guy who does it, it's a long established role for sports writers to be an oracle about every fucking sport

feel like thats just standard sports writer behavior and while not defendable is just kinda boring and typical simmons sends it over the top by fusing that tendency with the most begging ass bro naratives

Idk I find it kind of outrageous as a fan of niche sports when some dickhead lies about being a lifelong scholar of it. Less boring and more nails on chalkboard.

you guys sure seem to know quite a bit about sports writers, but do you have any credentials that I can look over?

hes working so hard to get u to buy in and just has no chill, this is particularly off putting on tv where while hes supposedly having a conversation hes just picking his prewritten dumb stories and pop culture references out of a hat and it just comes off super stilted and contrived, im sure every tv person operates off a script to some extent but he is very bad at making it seem natural at all, there is no flow he just has to share his amazing ideas abt why the warriors are like 90210

Idk I find it kind of outrageous as a fan of niche sports when some dickhead lies about being a lifelong scholar of it. Less boring and more nails on chalkboard.

― Matt Armstrong, Monday, May 11, 2015 5:41 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbf this is also bad

i could see simmons going to turner if they let him build his own website, no way he does anything with bleacher report though

Well I kind of think of bleacher report as just a company/media entity, he's not gonna be a blogger.

Simmons to Vice seems like a no brainer

omg what if inside the nba adds simmons /kills self/

He'll go to pitchfork.

lol

there is no flow he just has to share his amazing ideas abt why the warriors are like 90210

i dont think anyone really has flow or chill when talking about sports on tv to be fair although he can be pretty awkward, the pop culture references are obviously tired but so are 75% of the standard stylistic tactics on virtually every other sports website

It would be funny to see Simmons wuss out whenever shaq or chuck says something really dumb (Kenny he'd engage)