bill simmons IS bill simmons IN the book of BASKETBALL

...the movie

who's gonna dunk this tome with me over the next few weeks? i love simmons on hoops even when he's challopsy or even just wrong but i think this book might be amazing

sitting in the package on my desk right now to start after cavs/celts when i get home-- thanking u amazon

speaking of this guy, anyone watching that 30 for 30 series
http://30for30.espn.com/

a 30 for 30 thread

i kinda want to read this - i h8 this guys whole steez but sort of love his basketball writing - o jeez i just dont know - ive never read a sports book before this is weird for me

i started it last night and the prologue is a big sloppy bj for larry bird of course, but its supposed to be a more personal intro before the nitty gritty starts up. i think its tolerable even if yr not a celtics fan and there's lots of good stuff. the footnotes are really funny!

i think there's going to be tons of quality kareem bashing too, which is a big plus in my book

you should read it ice cr*m, i think if you like his bball writing theres going to be too much fun stuff in here to ignore-- i learned that dave cowens took off a third of a season to DRIVE A CAB

i missed the colts band 30 for 30 but the other two so far have been great-- thought berg's gretzky one was actually a great film, very cool and affecting, outstanding style

I don't think I could read an entire book of Simmons' writing.

i think i totally could - i just def dont have the time atm

to echo those above, though, it would have to be abt hoops

yeah i'm not sure i'll have time for this until like the holidays

freedarko book vs book of basketball

freedarko i have a hard time reading 2 paragraphs - srsly learn writing guys!

freedarko is awful and dumb imo

i don't really want to read either of them!

good thing it's a free country, am0n!

freedarko book has been sitting on my dresser since the day it dropped, i love those guys tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpk_zOfxkhc

I think Simmons is definitely at his best when he's doing straight NBA analysis, so I'm enjoying this so far (roughly 100pp in). The Isiah/Vegas chapter is really great.

One criticism I have is that weird semantic thing he does sometimes when he's discussing race in sports; for instance, in the Bird chapter he chalks part of Bird's career decline up to "a wave of athletic black forwards that were slowly making the Kelly Tripuckas and Kiki Vandeweghes obsolete."

I don't think anybody who's read Simmons for a while is at risk of misreading that, but I'm kinda surprised they left it in, y'know?

The black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way — because of his high thighs and big thighs that goes up into his back, and they can jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs. This goes back all the way to the Civil War when during the slave trading, the owner — the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid.

I was a big Jimmy the Greek fan as a little kid and was bummed when they fired him. :/

this is a little off topic, but I can't stand the way he speaks on podcasts and stuff - sounds like I'm listening to a college sophomore with a bunch of flattened KEYSTONE LIGHT boxes taped to his wall

he's on colbert tonight, should be coming on pretty soon...

this is a little off topic, but I can't stand the way he speaks on podcasts and stuff - sounds like I'm listening to a college sophomore with a bunch of flattened KEYSTONE LIGHT boxes taped to his wall

― 囧 (dyao), Thursday, October 29, 2009 11:25 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i always liked this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQbcVnsK9g8

Well, if you look at who he's talking about that replaced Bird, Vandeweigh, and Tripuka, et al., he's not wrong. There were a bunch of really good, athletic power forwards who could run, rebound and dunk over a city bus, who happened to be black. The phrasing is awkward, and makes him seem to be placing the race thing a little high in the analysis.

I am looking forward to this book - his knowledge of NBA stuff is pretty amazing, and he tends to do some pretty inventive statistical analysis.

And yes, this dude was totally a douchebag in college.

the first real chapter ("the secret") is pretty good. simmon's tim duncan reclamation project is almost working on me. ive always found him the most boring superstar and basically hated him for wiping out the fun-n-suns year after year but always respected him as a player and think he's probably a great guy.

putting him in stark contrast now with shaq: four rings on the same team, cycled through good roleplayers that he made great (both did this), still in title contention with that same team, while shaq is now basically a big media presence journeyman...i think i'm convinced that timmy is the best of the era ending right about now.

duncan as the best of his generation is pretty indisputable imo

Duncan = not of Kobe's era?

B/c -

Four rings with same team
Cycled through journeymen and made them better
Still in title contention with same team

Could also describe Kobe.

buddy sry kobe is not better than duncan - also shaq was the best player on 3/4 of those teams

1 duncan
2 shaq
then kobe garnett et al

says the celts, fan get outta here

anyway duncan and kobe are apples n oranges

lol "celts fan, get"

as afar as know neither duncan or shaq are or have ever been on the celtics

fan, get as afar as know

In school, Duncan was a bright pupil and dreamt of becoming an Olympic-level swimmer like his sister, Tricia.[5][6] His parents were very supportive and Duncan excelled at swimming, becoming a teenage standout in the 50, 100 and 400 meters freestyle and aiming to make the 1992 Olympic Games as a member of the United States Team.[5]

When Hurricane Hugo destroyed the island's only Olympic-sized swimming pool in 1989, forcing Duncan to swim in the ocean, he soon lost enthusiasm because of his fear of sharks.[4]

this is why he's #1

also spurs teams with duncan on them have never won fewer than 53 games (lockout season excepted)

buddy sry kobe is not better than duncan

http://hillbilly10commandments.com/images/moses3.bmp

huh, i never really think about kobe v duncan.

like kobe used to get compared to his contemporaries like pierce, ray allen, carter, mcgrady, but now that it's clear that none of them are as good as he is, he tends to get compared to jordan and maybe lebron.

they're definitely the best of the nba players who emerged in the late '90s, and both of them started out on teams that were immediately successful, but in terms of position and temperament they're completely different.

yah its a tough comparison but i think if kobe goes on a run the next few years with a ring or two and consistent finals appearances before he starts to decline, we'll end up looking at the 08 lakers/celts series as the start of the post-timmy era...esp if TD doesn't get another ring before he retires. i tend to think that kobe's first three rings dont count quite as much *for him* in this kind of discussion because he wasn't the undisputed leader of those teams. even more so than points, stats, etc i think thats what simmons convinced me about-- even on the 99 team with robinson, it was absolutely td's team.

bought this book today iirc. chapter one was great--plenty of lols and good writing.

bill simmons is sitting in with the commentators @ celtics/bulls rite now

not a good voice

never heard him before colbert, if anything douchier than advertised

haha ive heard him like 100x via podcasts and such, but yeah as much as i like dude he gets frattier every element of him you discover writing -> voice -> irl

yeah i don't mind reading him actually, lets you know where he stands and puts teeth into it. entertaining as far as it goes

i remember when he was on colbert a while back, he got booed when he made fun of clinton for throwing like a girl

yah its a tough comparison but i think if kobe goes on a run the next few years with a ring or two and consistent finals appearances before he starts to decline, we'll end up looking at the 08 lakers/celts series as the start of the post-timmy era...esp if TD doesn't get another ring before he retires. i tend to think that kobe's first three rings dont count quite as much *for him* in this kind of discussion because he wasn't the undisputed leader of those teams. even more so than points, stats, etc i think thats what simmons convinced me about-- even on the 99 team with robinson, it was absolutely td's team.

This is what is going to make the Western Conf. so interesting this year. They both have good teams and something to prove.

I can't imagine "something to prove" matters as much to Tim as it does to Kobes. I'm not trying to argue Duncan isn't driven or whatever, I just don't think he cares as much about what people think about him. (Tbf, he also doesn't have as much negativity to cope with.)

Yeah. That's probably a pretty fair assessment on both of them.

Have purchased. Have read the first 100 or so pages. Have learned a lot about Boston basketball. Woo, this guy is a HOMER.

haha, i sprinted here to post the same thing.

they’re saying the 50 most rewatchable movies of the 21st century is the best podcast of all time

well, that’s dumb.

lock thread

it’s what the people are saying tom

I have not listened to it personally though the clips have been very funny

the people have not taken the time to consider APOCRYPALS featuring Benito Cereno and Chris Sims

A FanDuel spokesperson tells @FOS that it has reported the matter to the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, voided the bets, and actioned the account after being made aware of Simmons’s comments. https://t.co/mzLGRjLSyR

— Ben Axelrod (@BenAxelrod) September 1, 2026

bill’s flying a bit too close to the sun lol

lmao

“There was a couple bets I really wanted to get in. I wanted—there was UCLA overs, but Houston, the market had not shifted appropriately yet,” Simmons, who lives in California, where sports betting is not legal, said. “I can’t have my daughter do it. My dad would have no idea how to do it. But [my daughter’s boyfriend] Hank, I really trust Hank. I let Hank log into my FanDuel as me. I get the code to make sure it’s me to my phone. I give him the code, he logs in, and I have all this money that I had from last year because I actually hit a bunch of futures last year. And he’s putting in bets for me, and honestly, it was the closest I’ve ever felt to Hank. It’s a real bonding moment for us.”

Simmons added: “A week later, called him up, ran it back. We did some more.”

Ooops

it's great for a multi-millionaire to go to these lengths to exploit betting markets, and then also to podcast about it

Damn. he got his daughter's boyfriend banned from Fan Duel. Truly degenerate.

bill simmons vpn challenge

"honestly, it was the closest I’ve ever felt to Hank. It’s a real bonding moment for us."

this is fucked up but also lol

I can't believe he actually said this on air

one of the true 21st-century pieces of shit

that seems a little harsh given the true monsters that populate our current era but whatev

he wasn't even betting that much money, they were just $200 which isn't much for a guy who's worth like a hundred million

more than anything he just seems kinda dumb. that's always been his shtick really, he's fairly good at talking people into stupid ideas, all his betting advice is shit like "PHILIP RIVERS REVENGE GAME??!". mostly I'm surprised he apparently doesn't know what a VPN is, this guy has been gambling online for decades you'd think at one point he might've been introduced

maybe he just enjoyed having hank place the bets

i am baffled by how much air this story seems to be getting

thought this revive was going to be about him AI-resurrecting Roger Ebert

that is so much more objectionable if you want to moan about simmons!

Bill is hilarious and this is just part of the rich tapestry of the Simmons experience.

AI Roger Ebert is something a number of dumb guys desperate for content would do, proxy betting via Hank and admitting to it on air completely unprompted is pure Billy

He should make AI Roger Ebert guess the lines each week

He wore an Anduril hat on one of his shows the other day

that seems a little harsh given the true monsters that populate our current era but whatev

look up his proud proclamation of 'pulling the goalie'

i mean yeah he's not trump/epstein/etc. but fuck him nevertheless

just looked that up, pretty messed up

that being said, my sense as a longtime reader/listener is that he’s mellowed out significantly over time. there’s still some bulkshit of course. the union stuff is unfortunate, though bosses be bossing. as someone who organizes in his free time I don’t love that. and the chatgpt stuff is pretty depressing. but overall he’s toned it down over the years.

reggae mike love (polyphonic) at 3:31 2 Sep 26

He wore an Anduril hat on one of his shows the other day

every day i learn about a new thing that sucks

haha same

gotta keep up on yr b-list silicon valley fascists

dude's whole thing was 'he's just like us!' but that involved the 'us' of white gen-xers 25 years ago

he did some good stuff! 30 for 30 was interesting for a bit, grantland was cool apart from driving trans people to suicide, ringer has had some decent things amidst the rampant nepotism and complete sell-out to gambling interests

but then he started to think he actually knew more than people who were much smarter than he is

at heart he's just a guy who loves going to las vegas -- the fakest place in the world -- and watching gonzo porn. and apparently we've moved on to sleeveless former punters for that viewpoint

not disagreeing just pointing out all of sports media has sold out to gambling interests

tru

at heart he's just a guy who loves going to las vegas -- the fakest place in the world -- and watching gonzo porn. and apparently we've moved on to sleeveless former punters for that viewpoint

― mookieproof, Wednesday, September 2, 2026 7:08 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah i mean he’s a rich guy

yeah i mean he's an asshole

I mean, if he’s an asshole, then what’s Dave Portnoy?

a bigger asshole?

we don't have to set the bar for assholery at 'dave portnoy'

I always thought of it as a binary thing, not degrees!

xxxp slight edit:

not disagreeing just pointing out all of sports media has sold out to gambling interests

he's at least capable of doing something interesting every now and then, McAfee's whole persona is wahh waah everyone hates me for who I am and Portnoy is just a dumb bitch through and through, with Simmons there's at least some degree of internal monologue going on and maybe even a little reflection. though based on everything that I'm hearing about him now is brain may be cooked for good

imo simmons is good at what he does, its not really something that im interested in but credit where its due hes a pro

I am not a huge Simmons fan but he's not even in the same realm as Portnoy or McAfee

portnoy is a legitimately malevolent entity, mcafee is a just a generic blowhard chud

did not know he was a punter btw thats hilarious

right wing sports talk punter with a giant chip on his shoulder hey its the shittiest possible thing lol, also he raps

sharpling spent about 20 minutes listening to the pat mcafee album, was very vintage best show stuff lol

I just got to the Hank part listening to the AFC over/unders. So funny. So, didn't get Hank's account "actioned" , but his own. Yeah, someone needs to teach him about VPN. I'm fairly sure he's read ads for them, but I'm sure he isn't drinking Michelob Light, or eating Subway either.

pains me to acknowledge that mcafee is a pittsburgh kid . . . but also that totally tracks

as does his having gone to wvu lol