bill simmons IS bill simmons IN the book of BASKETBALL

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

deadspin has reported on simmons also though in a fashion that is rather sympathetic to him http://deadspin.com/the-sports-guy-vs-espn-how-bill-simmons-lost-bristol-1639533260

i'm not going to bother restating my point that a takedown piece with original reporting is better than one without, this is not debatable

xp funny how that works, huh?

explain to me how you report out criticism of someone's writing? this is like saying that you need to report out why wale is bad instead of just writing that wale is bad

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

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, May 12, 2015 10:38 AM (1 minute ago)

this is a fair point, sort of limits the impact a piece like that can have tho

sure they are totally different things. like i said, not everyone is a whitlock. that's a very unique situation (for various reasons) which is what has given those pieces their power.

security cam footage of them typing

i hadn't read your post i just quoted yet xp jordan

like i said yesterday given what we know about simmons, that he is generally regarded to be a decent guy if a little egotistical, it's going to be hard to craft a takedown piece with a whole lot of impact. hence what we get are some pieces griping about his writing that amount to not much more than professional jealousy

imo theres a very good takedown or criticism to be written of bill simmons, i think some of these pieces touch on it but no ones really done a comprehensive job

i mean maybe someone has im sure the ones i havent read far out number the ones i have

i think lagoon made some very good points re: simmons's television presence yday, like as an example of legit criticisms to levy bc in that case the product he's pushing, the grantland bball hour, doesn't really work that well (it's not bad as a podcast! he just doesn't have great on-camera presence and those weird animations are dumb as hell). the point being, you could say something like, he's overextended, he should stay in his lane, and that functions as a fair criticism of how his egotism has gotten a bit out of control.

naturally, deadspin has to tie in some shit about how he's TEH VOICE OF BROS, which is funny imo because i know more bros who read deadspin and fucking barstool sports (vomit) for their sports #content than i do sports fans of the bro or non-bro variety who bother to have much of an opinion about simmons.

lol maybe bro culture has passed simmons by :(

hes pretty middle aged these days

he's cooked

its settled then

lol, i mean it kinda has. but yeah uhhh burnenko, petechesky, magary, deadspin crew - do you know who reads your site or do you think it's all #cultured people from coastal cities who happen to like sports gossip? you're not like the fuckin thinking person's sports site (does such a thing exist? could it? lol) by a long shot

feel like they consider themselves more counter cultural than intellectual, which very well also may not be reflected in their readership

or their writing staff. leitch is george plimpton compared to those guys.

kinda think about the 'we need a definitive/good simmons takedown' talk the way i do when i hear 'someone better than joss whedon needs to be making the marvel movies'. like no, these are trivial generally worthless pursuits, the ppl doing these things are generally the best ppl you want doing these things, anyone capable of better doesn't need to doing something like a bill simmons takedown or hulk movie. i mean say this much for gawker media, there's nobody there where you can say 'wow this person is capable of so much more than this', nobody's talent is being held back, they're all maximizing their potential there.

bill simmons is the most successful guy in his profession and worthy of being criticized well!

his profession is generally irrelevant to the larger world!

its not like the most important thing but a good critic writing a few thousand words on it is not going to rob society of anything really

lol lagoon ur just a drama queen we found u out

in it for the juicy deets

hey man i never denied loving juice deets

he is the juicydeetsman

there are a few pretty good people at deadspin, most if not all of whom are decidedly not the ones bothering to do pot/kettle zingtastic alternatingly faux-naif bloggy/online-hardman posts raging against the sins of ultimately harmless sports media doofuses

the howard longform pieces about whitlock are another thing entirely bc that dude is actively toxic and ruining people's professional careers and pushing viewpoints that the author finds genuinely harmful

cant believe u all wont get behind bullying bill simmons smh what has this bord come to

also have really enjoyed diana moskovitz's articles and that recent oral history of the clippers series

yeah i enjoyed that though i did lol at them even then just openly going 'we should do some grantland shit', clickhole doing an oral history of the flu game like a day later just made it even funnier

lol

those clickhole oral histories obvs better than the grantland and deadspin ones put together

*are obvs

oh would you speak of the devil:

Rembert Browne ‏@rembert 2m2 minutes ago
list of grantland pieces about deadspin, since 2011:

i've made fun of rem before but he has a point

yeah deadspin went hard at grantland from day one, even publishing a list of grammar mistakes in their first few articles which struck me as being really bitchy

I decided to re-read this for some reason.

http://grantland.com/features/welcome-grantland/