bill simmons IS bill simmons IN the book of BASKETBALL

I am stupid

it was still pretty good tho

SIMMONS

It reminds me of the time those three guys came up to you in a restaurant in Chicago and told you that they were reading "The Tipping Point" in their book club and were big fans.

GLADWELL

How could I forget?

SIMMONS

Baron Davis, Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes.

GLADWELL

Greatest moment of my life.

lol

Tiger's comeback tougher than Ali's

Note to ESPN’s Bill Simmons: Tiger Woods is not Muhammad Ali

lol @

There was a famous story about two of the Dream Team IIers--definitely Shaq and someone else, I can't remember the second guy--pulling the players together before a key Olympic game and Dumars thinking, "Great, they're finally going to take this seriously." Then the two guys started singing a rap song they had written for the game.

That Bill Simmons Woods/Ali column is unbelievably moronic even for Bill Simmons.

lol tweeting about freddie gibbs today

called him the savior of gangsta rap

i should send him some gucci

i got pretty grossed out by some of the joeks by the end of this book frankly. a sprinkling of the frattier stuff goes a long way, the occasional vegas column is fine but it kind of wore me down

the footnote about the all-dong team was just massively hilarious tho

yeah the strip club/boob size analogies are pretty awful

How has Simmons not become the Godfather of bros icing bros?

too old

Thus the Godfather. Like Neil Young and grunge.

I really enjoyed the book despite the length and Simmons' crutches that prop up huge sections of it. Though the end made me realize I want "Bill & Bill" as the followup. Walton's insights made Simmons a better writer; it freed him from his persona.

this is a really bad paragraph

Digging deeper: 2012 will be the first time since 1992 that we had this many mega-stars in their primes or near-primes -- LeBron, Wade, Howard, Durant, Paul, Williams, Carmelo Anthony -- all of whom will also be battling for NBA titles in 2011 and 2012 (throw Kobe in there as well). Can they shut off that competitive switch and come together on short notice? What if Durant fully supplants LeBron and Kobe as America's basketball darling by that time? What if Miami just battled Oklahoma City in a NBA Finals bloodbath? In 1992, the pecking order was pretty established: Jordan and Pippen were the champs/alpha dogs, Bird and Magic were the washed-up leaders, Barkley was the unstoppable wild card, and everyone else fell into place behind them. There will be no established pecking order in 2012. If anything, there might be multiple stars who believe in a pecking order that's different from what the other stars believe. Verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry interesting. Hold this thought for 22 months.

jordan, did you transcribe that

yeah considering the calling card of this generation of talent is that they all get along and they're all unselfish i don't think this is really anything worth thinking about for the next 22 mos.

is bill simmons to the nba what pitchfork reviews reviews is to pitchfork

nah that doesn't really work as an analogy tho i'm not sure why right now

bill is still soooo stuck in this idea of "alpha dogs" & all that crap and you would think that after this summer he would've dropped that idea, but yet here it is again -- i think all of these guys have proven that they like each other a lot and want to win when they play each other -- i mean dwayne wade came off the bench in the last olympics ffs, i don't think any of those dudes are gonna be back stabbing each other in 2012 -- i think this has been demonstrated at various, various times in the past 2-3 years -- bill has spent a lot of time lamenting this fact, but he still can't get it through his head

jordan, did you transcribe that

― ice cr?m, Monday, September 13, 2010 8:50 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

no he posted a column today

gonna think abt all this for the next 22 months, brb

enjoy nepal

this is good tho

One of the frustrating things about this tournament: Iguodala has been a revelation as a fourth banana/swing defender/energy guy/uber-athlete, which really should have been his NBA destiny -- mega-glue guy on a great team, like a much more devastating version of Trevor Ariza on the 2008-09 Lakers -- only we don't have nearly enough quality players to fill 30 NBA teams, so instead he's forced to carry a lottery team, take terrible shots, play with inferior teammates and do everything that the Basketball Gods never meant for him to do. He's like Roger Sterling in "Mad Men" -- you don't want him carrying the show, but in short doses, harnessed correctly, he can be a weapon. I had given up on Iguodala as a meaningful basketball player; now I think he'll be reincarnated on a contender within the next two seasons. He's one trade away.

enjoy nepal

― banaka socka flame (J0rdan S.), Monday, September 13, 2010 9:56 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

loll

bill simmons isn't really pitchfork reviews reviews he's just pitchfork

I don't know who's taking the crunch-time shots on the 2010-11 Miami Heat

this discussion makes me want to steal a car and drive it into a lake

looool

in miami heats, there is no crunch time, only time 4 crunching opponents with superior basketball talent

I think I'm gonna appropriate that as my disapproval card in all irl conversations from nwo on

2:35: As Billups hits two free throws (USA by 10), the announcers discuss how physical the game has been compared to NBA games. "You got the feeling that both teams were trying to work one another before the game," Kestecher said. "There was a lot of staring, no smiling, trying to intimidate each other." Not sure how this fits into our new world order in which NBA superstars take the easy way out and choose to team up over beating each other. I'm a little discombobulated.

here i will explain it to you -- lots of players in the nba are friends and when they play basketball they don't hate each other and stare at each other in a fabricated attempt to intimidate -- but when they're playing on the same team in an international competition against an unlikable team from eastern europe, they might grill some dudes

not that discombobulating

"He's accepted his role as a garbageman on that second unit," Fraschilla says of Gay. Pretty expensive garbageman: He just re-signed with Memphis for $80 million. I love the world championships.

otm tho

I don't know who's taking the crunch-time shots on the 2010-11 Miami Heat

btw they're going to lose a playoff game and this will be a valid discussion

but he is way too into it as a concept

yes he is

the problem with the "crunch-time shots" discussion is that in modern nba all that means is "who is gonna take the crunch-time drives to the basket in an attempt to get fouled" and with bron AND wade on the same team, i don't think it's gonna manifest itself in a negative way

think you're oversimplifying it a bit; the cavs lost that series to the magic two years ago because 4 dudes stood around and waited for bron to do something. it will be an interesting discussion, at some point--i don't think it's gonna manifest itself as a conflict or problem but maybe more as a strategic challenge.

but basically, does the play start with bron having the ball or wade having the ball--that is going to matter, and it is going to mean something

lwade is gonna take the crunch time shots ok, next question

hehe

wade's a little bit crunchtime, bron's a lil bit pick n roll

anyway re: this book - i love simmons when he talks basketball (and basically ignore him when he talks about anything else) so this seems like a great idea to me - i'll deffo read it someday - and honestly, i can probably count on one hand the number of sportswriters i consider better than him (nb. this is more an indictment of sportswriting than an endorsement of simmons)

― NEW YORK DESERVED 9-11 (cankles), Friday, November 13, 2009 6:39 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

btw i read this book and it sucked and he sucks

simmons note: do i rc that he was a comedy writer? how is this possible? i have never laughed at a single thing he's ever written.

simmons gets way too much mileage out of the "this situation is like some obscure pop culture reference, let me break it down for you with x's and o's"

thing is it's never that obscure, it's like 80s/90s bargain bin bullshit, but yeah he does do that thing u just said

he wrote for kimmel's late night show when it was starting out, after he was already espn famous. why he moved to l.a. iirc.

i have not read simmons in probably a year but have always felt that if the world needed one person like bill simmons we could do a lot worse than bill simmons, if you feel me

i always felt his clowning of doc rivers for using ubuntu was a little o_O and i'm kinda hoping during one of his vegas jaunts he gets lost and walks right into a wnba team.

haha

still think there's a lot of good stuff in tbob--the pyramid, especially, is really fun to read

it's also kind of pissing me off that he's moving into broadcasting. he blows chunks on PTI and I heard he was gonna broadcast some game? I mean granted, reggie miller sets the bar pretty low but I don't need a dude with the voice of some pimply faced fratboy feebly trying to channel excitement after a great dunk

i always felt his clowning of doc rivers for using ubuntu was a little o_O

― omar little, Sunday, December 12, 2010 11:09 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

eh feel like his arguments in favor of debian were pretty strong tbh