bill simmons IS bill simmons IN the book of BASKETBALL

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)

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

― slothroprhymes, Monday, May 11, 2015 5:47 PM (21 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

things have distinctive characteristics did u know that

would watch a sports chat show on Vice where norm macdonald just makes fun of simmons and klosterman

do they now xp? im not sure how i offended yr sensibilities with that statement

the shit deadspin does is repetitive, the shit bleacher report does is repetitive, the shit simmons does is repetitive like how is this any different? it's sportswriting

actually everything is like that is the goto slothp rhetorical gambit

actually that's everybody's gambit

/bows/

yeah i highly doubt im the first person to default to "everything is kinda shitty/weird/etc." when they don't understand why one particular thing is a source of outrage vs. others

JIM ROSS: OH MY GOD! That's that's Bill Simmons' music!

SIMMONS: http://www.onlineworldofwrestling.com/pictures/h/hulkhogan2/15.jpg

ROSS: NO!!

lol

yeah i highly doubt im the first person to default to "everything is kinda shitty/weird/etc." when they don't understand why one particular thing is a source of outrage vs. others

― slothroprhymes, Monday, May 11, 2015 5:56 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

its true everyone does it

http://deadspin.com/how-jason-whitlock-is-poisoning-espns-black-grantland-1698683962

like here is an example of a good takedown piece that happens to contain -- gasp -- some actual journalism. i'll wait for the simmons one

-- gasp --

some journalism is reporting, some journalism is summarizing/synthesizing, some journalism is opinon

reporting is obv the preferred route

if you're gonna resort to the latter two for a takedown piece, naked professional jealousy kind of hurts the credibility, imho

no reporting is not obvs the preferred route, different approaches are appropriate for different situations and they are all actual journalism

if criticism necessarily involved reporting then criticism wouldn't exist

the whitlock piece and the simmons takedown are two functionally different things -- not everyone is a whitlock... the cases against whitlock and simmons are different: one is a bad boss and monster, the other is a hack. those require different pieces -- you don't need to report out whether you think someone is bad at writing