Bill Simmons Forces Me to Follow His Every Step

NBA Preview!

10 minutes after I post my TMQ analysis, Bill Simmons puts out an NBA preview, so of course I immediately read it and though it was not horrible, it was still worthy of a mention. I much prefer his chats, where you get his unfiltered opinion. It is easier to mock him.

If the 2008-09 NBA season were a TV character, it would definitely be Joan Holloway from "Mad Men."

He started the column off with a comparison to something non NBA related to describe the NBA. If Bill Simmons were a columnist he would be the type that takes up 100 words to write something he could write in 20 words.

In 1962, you could take Joan on a date to a diner, and she would order a patty melt, onion rings and a vanilla malt and finish off everything with a smile on her face.

Bill would never be able to take Joan on a date to a diner, she would reject him because he would still be considered lame because he quotes Casablanca and tells everyone about how fast he can drive his car down the strip...but no one has ever seen this. Bill would never be able to pull Joan either, even for one date, Bill would only get Peggy Olson, and trust me, that is not a compliment.

Call me crazy, but I liked the old days a little more.

No shit? You mean the fact you quote 20 year old movies and make the same jokes over and over again, means you like the old days better? If were a movie character I would be Bruce Willis from The Sixth Sense, stepping back realizing something I truly knew, but refused to acknowledge.

People were gaping at her the same way everyone would stare at a UFO if it just randomly landed on the stage. What's wrong with curves? What's wrong with a few female celebs defying the unwritten rule that it's much more appealing to men if they whittle themselves down to an unnatural weight like they're training to fight Brian Chute? Nothing against Courteney Cox, but I walked by her in Hollywood last year, and she was built like a manhole cover. It was genuinely depressing. I miss "Dancing in the Dark" Courteney Cox. You could have ordered her a milkshake or a Guinness without worrying about having it thrown back in your face. And while we're here, if I ever see Lindsay Lohan in person, I just might sob Nancy Kerrigan-style and start screaming, "Why????? Why???????"

If you don't believe now that the Sports Gal is writing portions of Bill's columns, then you are either naive or super naive.

This sounds like a Sports Gal rant if I have ever read one. If not, Bill can never knock the NBA for being the "No Balls Association."

Parity might work for the NFL, but for the NBA's purposes, we're always better off as fans when there are nine or 10 teams that fall somewhere among "wildly entertaining," "very good" and "potentially excellent."

Especially when the Celtics are one of them right Bill? Why is it that teams who are in larger markets always think it is better if there is little parity? If Green Bay was located in New York, we would get 1,000 annual columns about how dedicated and adoring their fans are. Alas, all we get are mentions every once in a while.

After 15 grueling years, we're back to having some curves again.

What he means by this is because his favorite team is good again, the league is obviously in a boom with popularity increasing and the quality of play increasing tremendously as well. All caused by the Celtics winning the championship...and Bill was there to see it. Everything Bill likes is awesome and he has experienced everything great in the world firsthand. Bill's ego has curves.
You may ask yourself, wasn't the league in a boom in the mid to late 90's when the Bulls were winning titles and the league was very popular? How about when the Lakers were winning three straight titles and two of the greatest players ever were playing on the same team? The answer is no. Larry Bird retired 15 years ago and the league has been in a decline since. I am not even sure the league counts any of the titles that Michael Jordan, Hakeem, Shaq, and Kobe have won due to Larry Bird not being around.

Maybe this isn't a good thing if you root for Memphis, New Jersey, Sacramento, Minnesota, Golden State, Charlotte, Milwaukee or the City That Shall Not Be Named, but everywhere else?

Those cities fucking suck so who really gives a shit if they field good teams? Nobody cares, that is the answer. Fuck Milwaukee says Bill Simmons, they did not give him that GM position. Even though, they do have a good history with Lew Alcindor starting his career there and Charlotte once sold out 358 consecutive games. They all suck.

Bill thinks the league would be so much better if there was an "A" League, filled with the Celtics and other older teams and a "B" league filled with teams that he knows nothing about because they are not important enough to warrant a mention.

Why do you think the league was in such good shape from 1984 through 1993?

Because Larry Bird played for the Celtics and the Celtics were a good team, that is why.

(Important note: If the Knicks land Ricky Rubio two years from now, the previous paragraph becomes moot and the Bill Walsh/Mike D. scenario immediately goes back into play. Hey, did the fact that I nearly set up a Google alert for Rubio last week make me a fan or a stalker? Since I held off, I say I'm still a fan. Although that might change when I move to whichever city drafts him. OK, I'm a semi-stalker.)

Somewhere Chad Ford is chuckling to himself welcoming Bill to the dark side and probably wondering, like I am, if Bill has ever seen Ricky Rubio play. The answer? No, because Rubio does not play for the Celtics nor in Los Angeles, but Bill does have a friend who is in upper management with DKV Joventut who says Rubio is going to be an incredible player and his friend also has some really funny stories that Bill could relay to Jimmy Kimmel, if Jimmy will hire him back.

Also, Rubio is eligible to play in the NBA this upcoming year, so Bill may not have to wait two years for this to happen. Don't tell him that though, I can't wait to see him change two years to one year without a mention of how he was wrong.

Remember how excited we were when the NBA briefly shed the "No Balls Association" tag this past February and Dallas (Jason Kidd) and Phoenix (Shaq) swung for the fences?

You mean how excited YOU were that teams finally took your advice and showed some guts and made tough trades after years of writing columns about how more teams should swing for the fences. Then it failed and you are predicting both teams are not going to have championship caliber teams for the foreseeable future, basically hopping off the bandwagon of this idea so it doesn't stick to you? Isn't it ironic that the one idea Bill has lauded for years, has failed miserably? It is not ironic, it shows how much Bill really, really knows about his favorite sport.

Bill Simmons for Bucks GM? Remember this? How much fun would that have been when he has ideas like this?

Well, it didn't work -- the Kidd gamble was doomed from the start, and the Shaq gamble was nullified when Phoenix suffered a colossal Stomach Punch loss in Game 1 of the Spurs series (and by the way, the Suns choked that game away, so I'm not absolving them).

Why was the Kidd gamble doomed from the start? Because it would ruin your half ass No Balls Association theory? I also doubt that Phoenix's gamble was nullified by some magical Stomach Punch theory that you made up. Maybe if you make up some more fake names for things that occurred it won't reflect on the truth that both gambles did not work out because they were not a good idea to begin with.

"Will Oden ever be the guy we thought he would be?" and "Isn't it a bad sign that a 20-year-old franchise center looks and runs like he's 37?"

You don't know how sick it makes me that Oden got hurt last night and Bill may end up being right about Oden being injury prone. I just threw up.

The Cavs are desperate. The LeBron Clock is ticking. I threw out the Michael Redd/Dan Gadzuric for Wally/Sasha Pavlovic possibility in Friday's column.

Milwaukee, consider yourself being really lucky to save yourself from Bill Simmons as your GM. Not only would you have ended up with Wally and Sasha Pavlovic to sit the bench behind Richard Jefferson and Joe Alexander but you get to lose your best player also!

As far as the Cavaliers are concerned with this ingenius trade can't you just see LeBron, Michael Redd, Daniel Gibson, Varejao, and Mo Williams hanging out on the perimeter in the last five minutes of a game, while LeBron gets severly injured attempting to drive to the basket? Granted, this is currently happening now, but it would even be more fun to see Redd a part of it. Can't we all just accept the fact LeBron is leaving Cleveland in 2010?

I would love to see Michael Redd, who requires 45 shots a game, play with LeBron. It would be like a game of H-O-R-S-E except the players are on the same team.

You want a sleeper contender in the East? Check out the goofy team Pat Riley slapped together in Miami. Could a healthy Dwyane Wade win 40 games by himself? Hell, yeah! He's Dwyane Wade! Then you have Michael Beasley (a guaranteed 18 and 8), Shawn Marion (either what he gives them or what they get when they deal him), Udonis Haslem (a playoff-proven banger) … and what if they get something from Shaun Livingston?

If Bill is able to make blanket statements about who "everyone" think is going to be good this year, then I will too. I think the Miami Heat have a 1996-1997 San Antonio Spurs thing going for them. They have a great nucleus of players who can contribute, one certified All Star who had a down year, and now get a top pick in the draft. I think the Heat are the team to watch in the Heat and it would not shock me if they had 55 wins this year. I am not kidding, I really think they could pull this off as long as Michael Beasley doesn't spray paint someone's car or do something else stupid like put Pat Riley in a headlock and mess up his hair.

So Bill's sleeper is really not a huge sleeper in my world.

What is a sunk cost? In financial terms, it's a lost cause -- you're paying for something that has lost its value to you.

I am not kidding, he is about to tell us what a sunk cost is and give us an economic lesson.

I will explain it to you in Bill's terms a little better. A sunk cost is like ESPN signing Bill Simmons for 4 years, realizing he is not progressing as a writer and he has more aspirations of Hollywood, and will never be able to write a decent personal interest story because he is so focused on himself. They want someone who can do this, so they hire Rick Reilly, but they already have Bill Simmons, so they piss off Bill Simmons constantly knowing he won't leave and they have to pay him the rest of the contract he signed. He is a sunk cost.

10. You will regret not fully appreciating Cleveland for swiping Mo Williams from Milwaukee.

Now here's a trade that didn't get enough attention: Cleveland's swipe of Mo Williams from Milwaukee.

That trade would never have happened if Bill Simmons was GM of the Bucks. He would have tried to organize a 4 team 14 player trade that was overly complicated, but he wanted to make it to prove he understands basketball. He would be trying to get a good team together to sign Kevin Durant and draft Ricky Rubio in two years. Unfortunately there is a restraining order against Bill Simmons by Kevin Durant and Bill will not be able to draft Rubio in two years because he entered the draft in 2009.

I think everyone thinks they could be an NBA GM. It seems so easy, get good players, don't sign old and useless players.

11. With Isiah finally gone from the Knicks, Charlotte will assume the mantle as the most frustrated franchise in the NBA.

This depresses me. Charlotte used to be NBA crazy. Thanks George Shinn. I hope when you are burning in Hell and trying to fondle Satan's secretary, someone kicks you in your balls.

I blame a lot of the problems this team has on the need to get a crowd in to watch ex- North Carolina Tar Heels play. The franchise has struggled in its beginning and is having problems drawing crowds. They started drafting ex-Tar Heels who are clearly not going to make it in the NBA (paging Sean May) and decide this is not enough. So they give Michael Jordan, the worst GM not named Isiah Thomas, a high end position and brings in Larry Brown to coach a young team, which Larry Brown hates to coach, and hope that tons of Tar Heel fans come to watch the games. It's not happening and Charlotte is going to lose their second franchise in 10 years because David Stern did not have enough balls to stand up to George Shinn.

The last NBA champ that defended its crown with vigor was the '97 Bulls. They loved being "The Champs."

How do you measure vigor, you may be asking yourself? With the Vigorosity Scale 3000! It measures the vigorosity a team defends its championship with. The '97 Bulls were a 76 on a scale of 1 to 100. This year the Celtics are going to be a 97, as predicted by Basketball Prospectus, defeating by an enormous amount the Spurs annual average vigorosity rating of 13.

The Lakers that won three straight at the beginning of the decade actually scored a 98, but do not count because that would ruin Bill's fake point. Unless he forgot about them in his eagerness to talk about the Celtics, which is also likely.

Either they were saving their legs for the playoffs (the '04 and '08 Spurs); they were overly arrogant and/or battling the usual array of demons that come after winning the title (the Kobe-Shaq teams, the '05 Pistons); or they were battling injuries/age/complacency (the '99 Bulls, '01 Spurs and '07 Heat).

The Kobe-Shaq won three straight NBA Titles, losing only three games in those three Finals! Three straight championships and none of them were competitive NBA Finals. Bill just ignores them because they had been "battling demons." I have to say regardless of the "demons" they definitely defended their title twice with great vigor. They did score a 98 on the Vigorosity Scale two years in a row.

Bill has an insatiable need to make the Boston Celtics special and will literally just make shit up to get to that point.

And then there's this: No team since Magic's last two Lakers teams has enjoyed a title more than last year's Celtics.

This has nothing to do with the NBA and also will have nothing to do with how they defend their title. Absolutely nothing.

I don't think the Celtics will win a second straight title, but they will kill themselves trying. And that's really all you can ask for.

I hate to take a piss in Bill's cereal but if they don't win the NBA Title this year, that won't count as having defended the title at all. They will be just like the every other team who won one NBA Title and then crapped out the next year. Sure they may play hard to defend it, but that really means absolutely nothing.

Important note: My dad hated the move. Hated it.

Not an important note: Anything Bill's father thinks.

"The whole point is to win a title," Dad kept saying. "I don't care about 2012. I might not be around in 2012! I care about 2009. We would have repeated with Posey. Instead, I have to watch Tony Allen for two more years? Put this in your column: We should have re-signed James Posey. Huge mistake. These guys won a title and decided they were geniuses -- it's just like what happened with the Red Sox."

Clearly idiocy runs in the family. First, J.S. had described incredibly well how James Posey is worth 11 wins this year, so the Celtics should have re-signed him. I mean come on, he is the glue to the team, it's not like you can just sign somebody before the season and get that type of production...you know, even though that is exactly what the Celtics did last year with Posey. He is a one of a kind player.

Also, what is with the Red Sox bashing by Bill's papa? The Red Sox management have completely set that team up to be in contention for the next five years. They did not decide they were geniuses, they just made smart short term moves that will benefit them in the long term and accumulated draft picks while making smart draft choices along the way. Apparently Bill's papa does not stick to the grace period after a championship where you can not whine about a team.

Ouch. I agree with Dad on one thing: The Celts probably would have repeated with Posey.

No, they would have won 11 more games with him, he would have quit basketball, found Osama Bin Laden in late July, and finally revealed himself to be Christ in early October. That is what would have happened if they had resigned Posey. Stupid move.

So let's say the Lakers win the title this year. If you're Kobe, and you have nothing left to prove, and your NBA odometer is running close to 1,100 games ... why not make a Pele-like jump overseas for twice as much money and 10 times the attention and become a global superduperstar?

I can't believe Bill really thinks Kobe would somehow become more popular playing outside of the United States. America is so egotistical we ignore any person who plays overseas until they play over here. So by jumping to Europe Kobe pretty much gives a big "F you" to American basketball and becomes an afterthought over here. Sure he may be big in Europe, but this will in no way improve his chances to be known as the best basketball player ever, which is his overall goal. I don't see him doing it.

F. Chad Ford watching a Nets-Grizzlies game this winter, seeing Yi Jianlian and Darko Milicic awkwardly bouncing off one another like bumper cars in an amusement park for a few minutes, then sadly making himself a pina colada in a giant half-coconut.

I am sorry chairman of the Ricky Rubio Fan Club, what did you say?

J. The ongoing "I still can't believe I talked myself into a head coaching job" look on Vinny Del Negro's face. Vinny, we can't believe it either.

I remember Vinny playing for NC State and me making fun of the way he shot foul shots. Whether it translates correctly or not, I still like calling him Vinny of the Black.

I am in love with Eric Gordon's jump shot. I want to marry it. I want to have kids with it. I will go to at least one practice or shootaround this year just to see him hoist 200 of them. And by the way, the kid is going to be great -- he's bigger than I thought, and when he drives to the lane, defenders just bounce off him. He will end up being the third-best guy in that draft.

Bill Simmons: If Boston had not won the championship last year there is a good chance I would have used a Boston Bruin-esque excuse to become a LA Clippers fan.

If Gordon becomes a perennial All Star I bet Bill erases his entire archive of Celtic columns and starts talking about how he can switch teams because the Celtics made moves he did not agree with that hurt the team. Look for this in 2011.

20. We will see LeBron win the Finals MVP as well.

My pick: Cleveland over New Orleans in the 2009 Finals. You will remember it as the first LeBron/CP3 Finals some day, a seminal moment in the league's history, the season when a new generation of stars symbolically moved the previous regime out of the way.

You know he does not believe this. He thinks the Celtics are going to repeat, he just doesn't want to jinx them. Even though he does not believe in that type of thing of course.

The NBA ... where rejuvenation happens.

ESPN...where only shit like Bill Simmons' gets printed and becomes popular because he has the co-dependent relationship with the 18-25 crowd that makes them both feel relevant.