bill simmons IS bill simmons IN the book of BASKETBALL

yeah he is a guy who for better or worse likes to make predictions and brag about his correct predictions and it’s something you think he’d mention when the topic comes up if he were proud of it

bill setting it up and immediately armchair fan tut-tutting the thing is just so pure

whats a cheap assist lol

Bill Simmons' in his latest podcast: "Luka's assists are like Bird's - they're not cheap assists... like the James Harden type of assists'.

— Andrew Soukup (@asoukuptx) August 10, 2020

crash toward the basket and kick it out for a three?

BS almost ruins Luka for me

he was basically talking about seeing passes that most ppl don't see vs. passing to a spot and knowing someone is there. it was pretty forced.

not sure where to put this, but netw3rk is leaving the ringer

some personal news! pic.twitter.com/flfHRoK9ax

— ☕netw3rk (@netw3rk) October 30, 2020

boooo

somethings afoot at spotify ringer

hi! today is my last day at the ringer. it’s been a delight working with so many thoughtful and brilliant people over the last four years. i was 22 and waiting tables in kentucky when they called me - i’ll be grateful always, to the ringer and to any of you who followed along ❤️

— haley o'shaughnessy (@HaleyOSomething) October 30, 2020

it's not spotify. people don't like working for bill because he's an asshole

is that what's going on? losing newtork seems like a big deal

idk about each individual situation but from what i've heard in aggregate yeah

also the union stuff there has been a huge battle even before spotify. i'm sure it hasn't been helped by the acquisition, but it was bill vs his employees in a way that really brought a lot of the underlying issues w/ working there to the surface (again, from what i understand). it doesn't seem like any of it has been resolved really

Too many of our members have said that they struggle to cover basic living expenses from month to month, and too many of our members say that they have received little to no salary increases even as they take on more responsibilities.

— Ringer Union (@RingerUnion) August 20, 2020

athletic gonna take on all these people leaving? makes the most sense. seems like their personalities might be capped a bit there vs ringer tho

maybe this was naive of me working for a gigantic company but i was extremely surprised at the lack of basic HR and career dev stuff at the ringer based on what the union was claiming. is it uncommon in internet media?

at start up type websites definitely not. for the ringer you could make an argument that it’s different bcuz bill has run a website before and should have also learned from the mistakes of similar type websites before him, but speaking from what i know personally, the HR/office infrastructure situations at places like pre-conde pitchfork or the fader (or gawker lol) were shoestring at best to nonexistent + actively harmful at worst. the career dev aspect is trickier and that’s a huge issue at the ringer specifically as it pertains to the divisions between writing and podcasting and video and who got the opportunities to do what, but in general when you have ppl competing for scarce opportunities and a belief that certain ppl will do better in front facing roles (i.e. being on camera) than others you run into these types of situations pretty quickly where a select few ppl seem to be elevated at the expense of their coworkers. bill is just really bad at this — his response to a reckoning this year about the lack of diversity in his podcasts was (largely) to hire a bunch of celebs like bakari sellers, raja bell, ryan shazier etc, while also giving shows/jobs to his children and relatives and then claiming that he was simply running a meritocracy.

presumably espn handled all the annoying HR stuff at bill's previous website

athletic seems to be stressing podcasting lately, but apart from that i think the era of them hiring everyone is long over

network could probaly just do his own thing

yeah he’ll get into TV or something i’m sure

the ringer trending toward celeb podcasts is a disappointing and predictable development with the spotify purchase

btw can someone explain to me, a non-podcast listener, how this has become so huge and lucrative? like i understand rogan or whomever, i guess, but there are only so many hours in a day to listen/pay attention to hour-long sound files and their ads. idgi

is it just venture capital

podcasts are very popular and usually very cheap to produce but yeah prob just vc

it was possible until recently to do pretty well with an independent podcast that had a decent listener base using ads alone. i think reduction in commuting time this year plus some consolidation of the ad market for podcasts is changing that. my favorite basketball pod recently went from ad-supported to a subscription model, which i could see happening with a lot of pods not backed by a major company.

Yah my pod listening is down to like one per week or two where I used to listen daily

what do y'all actually pay for?

i pay for the athletic, and a non-commenting defector account, and am about to cancel my sling.tv subscription because there are no sporps

right now i pay for the athletic and the aforementioned subscription to dunc’d on.

not sure i’ll stick with the athletic tbh. i like it but i don’t love it.

I pay for Athletic, that's about it

Netwerk had the only Ringer podcast I still listened to so I'm down to zero on that front.

This fucking baby https://t.co/0Mdul4O0RJ pic.twitter.com/ta99MMAqeT

— Barry Petchesky (@barry) November 19, 2020

Oh no, he unfollowed someone. This is so stupid.

its stupid but not in the way you think

he never mentions writers who left the company (like netw3rk and robert mays). they wrote gracious "thank you" posts too, but no response from him.

i mean how soon does he just drop the written/web component of the ringer and make it the celebrity podcast network that he and spotify want it to be?

yeah

there arent enough celeb pods already huh

until every celebrity has a pod our work is not done

are any of those celebrity pods actually successful?

a lot of celeb pods are huge

he never mentions writers who left the company (like netw3rk and robert mays). they wrote gracious "thank you" posts too, but no response from him.

― Wayne Grotski (symsymsym), Thursday, November 19, 2020 5:49 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

he quit twitter when the “this isn’t open mic” story happened.

or doesn't talk about them on his pods, make a statement...they become persona non grata

he'd kill a GM who managed personnel as sullenly as he does

"I think, from people we talked to and stuff we’ve read, the shooting kind of set the tone for how the city thinks about stuff. Even, when we were at Game 3: Great crowd, they fall behind, and the whole crowd got tense. It was like, 'Oh no, something bad's gonna happen.' And I think it starts from that shooting. And it's just that mindset they have."

I am happy to report that I have stopped listening to Bill Simmons' podcast. I am sorry to report that I now listen to Ryen's podcast.

a lateral move

the first step is recognizing that pods are bad

i, on the other hand, have just started faithfully listening to Bill's podcast in the past six months. it is full of insane and inane statements, and it makes me laugh.

post some funny things he said

he isn’t even semi-coherent on basketball anymore.

I would not listen to the bill simmons podcast and I’m only dimly aware of who he is (a man who wrote for some websites?) but I suspect I would enjoy a podcast that just makes fun of his podcast

I still dig his podcast.

I suspect I would enjoy a podcast that just makes fun of his podcast

this has to exist somewhere