Quotes from Movies/TV Shows...Bill Simmons...Sports...You Know the Drill by Now, Part 1

Bill Simmons is famous for taking movie quotes and using them to talk about either the NFL preseason, the NBA pre-/postseason or any part of any sport's year. It's something he has done for a while now and like some of his other standby gimmicks it doesn't feel newer and newer every times he does it. Bill uses "Game of Thrones" for his quotes to break down the winners and losers of the NBA offseason. It is a little annoying how he does this because there are some spoiler-y type bits of information in this column about the show and to fully appreciate what some of the quotes are saying you have to have seen the show. Of course if you haven't seen the show, then there are sometimes minor spoilers in what Bill writes. You could ignore these spoiler-y items, but then you wouldn't get a full grasp on what parts of the column mean. I think the best move is to just not read this column at all. I sort of wish Bill wouldn't rely as much on his old fallback ideas. It seems Bill is still out of fresh column ideas, so he marches out the same type of column built around quotes from a movie or television show.

From there, I'd explain that the whole dragon/sword/forest era was never really my thing — dating back to the 1980s, when the Dungeons and Dragons kids took it to a pretty creepy place — and somewhere along the line, I decided that I just didn't enjoy voyaging into the forest. For any reason. If I could hold out on Lord of the Rings, then I could hold out on Game of Thrones.

Just as an aside to make everyone hate me, I don't like the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. I think they were long, tedious and I found it very hard to get engaged with any of the characters' fate. I wanted Frodo to die the entire time and was very disappointed he didn't. He was such an incredibly weak person and I would like to have seen him die in a fire. So now that you hate me, let's hate on Bill some too.

What changed?

Everyone else watched the show and Bill has never been afraid to jump on a bandwagon?

At one point, Hollywood Prospectus editor Mark Lisanti glanced over to me and said, "I can't believe you don't watch this show."

I can't believe Bill thinks we care about how he came to watch the show. Don't bore us, get to the chorus.

That night on the phone, my buddy House agreed with Lisanti's disbelief and added, "Just so you know, that show has a ton of nudity." Well then! I started watching that weekend and the rest was history.

Because nudity is just so incredibly hard to find these days, it is important to sit through 20 one hour-long episodes of a show in order to see some nudity. What self-respecting 40 year old man not named "Gregg Easterbrook" would watch a show simply to see nudity? Don't answer that.

Actually, this is just further proof Bill is just like you and me! The only differences in him and you are that he makes a lot more money that you do, is famous and knows a lot of famous people the names of which he can easily provide if you want him to, and he probably wouldn't care to engage you in even the briefest of conversations if you attempted to say hello to him in public because you are such a big fan of his. Other than the fact Bill is better than you, he is just like you!

By the fourth episode, I knew we had a winner for my annual "Recap the NBA's summer movement by handing out TV/movie quotes as awards" column.

Again, Bill NEEDS column ideas, so it took him four episodes to realize "I can churn out another tired movie quote-sports column using 'Game of Thrones.' Here was concerned I was going to have to use quotes from 'Back to the Future' for my 2012 NBA postseason column."

Feel free to submit ideas to Bill so he can say your idea is dumb, slightly change it around and then come out with a "better" column idea...at least that's how Bill seems to write his mailbags, so it should work for columns too, right?

Maybe the NBA doesn't have dragon babies, beheadings and incest (at least not yet), but it has just about everything else.

Again, if you haven't seen "Game of Thrones" you now know there are dragon babies, beheadings and incest on the show. It's a minor spoiler, but once you watch the show it isn't hard to figure out which characters these pertain to. This probably doesn't bother a lot of people, but if I read this sentence and want to watch the show I know one character who is obsessed with dragons will probably get some dragons at some point. Or I will know two characters who are related probably will have sex. It just takes a small amount of fun out of watching the show if you already know these small plot points.

(As a note, I will be leaving out some of the quotes from "Game of Thrones that Bill uses since I am only concerned with what Bill is typing regarding the NBA)

For Rockets GM Daryl Morey, who took the phrase "all in" to new levels with his dogged pursuit of Dwight Howard. At this point, Dork Elvis

Are we able to call him "Dork Elvis" when his infatuation with numbers and statistics to put together a great basketball team hasn't exactly done that yet? He's not really the "Dork Elvis" since he really hasn't been that successful in using statistics to put together a great team, at least not in my opinion. Do statistics-oriented NBA people say, "We have to find out how to run our team the way Daryl Morey runs the Rockets so we can achieve his level of success?" I'm not sure they do.

His strategy makes sense: You can't win the title without a top-10 player.

His strategy does make sense. Unfortunately, he wants Dwight Howard as his top-10 player and Howard is a waffling PR disaster. I would choose another top-10 player to pursue or possibility try to put two top-20 players together and see if I can break the mold for what it takes to win an NBA Title. Be a pioneer by taking something familiar to a lot of people, changing it around slightly and repackaging it as something new...like Elvis did. Then, and only then, can Daryl Morey be like a Dork Elvis. Morey isn't exactly breaking new ground or being a GM other future and current statistics-loving GM's want to follow if Morey is just following the same plan every other NBA GM follows of finding a top-10 player to join his team and hoping success follows.

Last year, they barely missed the playoffs AND paid the luxury tax, which simply can't happen — in a 30-team league, you either want to bottom out or contend, but you can't be in the middle.

So how is he the "Dork Elvis" if he can't seem to make the playoffs or avoid his team paying the luxury tax? Shouldn't Morey be the "Dork Hank Snow" or some other person who was an innovator but wasn't as successful as those who followed his ideas could end up being? I can't think of a better example, but Morey isn't successful enough to be "Dork Elvis." Let's lower the bar a bit and compare him to someone who is an innovator but didn't experience massive success.

It's Howard, Bynum or Bust.

Given how I feel about Howard and Bynum, it could be "bust" anyway with either of those two big men on the Rockets team.

Then Bill goes on to question the moves Morey has made this offseason. Why do I get the feeling if Bill wasn't friends with Daryl Morey he would start criticizing him even more harshly for his offseason moves?

Were there a few days when it seemed like Morey had outsmarted himself? Actually, yeah. The Rockets allowed an emerging offensive star (Goran Dragic) to leave for Phoenix (four years, $34 million), then dealt one of the league's best bargains (Kyle Lowry, owed just $12 million total for the next two seasons) for a future lottery pick to help The Howard Trade That Might Not Happen, going from two quality point guards to zero in about five nanoseconds.

He salvaged that mini-crisis by giving Jeremy Lin a back-loaded offer sheet ($24.9 million, three years) that the Knicks didn't match. Why not just re-sign Dragic (a better player than Lin) instead of sweating out an offer sheet and banking on James Dolan doing the wrong thing?

If David Kahn did this then Bill would use the worn out "Khannnnnnnnn" joke and make a critical comment about Kahn collecting point guards in the draft and now having zero quality point guards on the roster. Bill is friends with Daryl Morey, so he saves him from criticism.

Lin would have been underpaid in years one and two and violently overpaid in year three (including luxury tax ramifications, Lin would have cost the Knicks $43 million in year three).

That's a pretty tough cap hit in year three. I'm not saying the Knicks should have re-signed Lin, but $43 million in year three is a tough hit to take, especially for a guy who hasn't even played a full year in the NBA and commits turnovers like they are going out of style.

Well … so what? What about Lin's value overseas, or even his undeniable effect on MSG's stock? (It couldn't have been a coincidence that Houston, the one team that knew exactly how valuable someone with a Far East marketing reach could be, was the one that pursued Lin.)

No, it wasn't a coincidence that Houston pursued Lin, but the Rockets also didn't have inside knowledge on what having an Asian player on their team can do to increase the team's fan base. Every NBA team saw the epic madness that Lin caused in New York this year. The Rockets don't need knowledge how valuable someone with a Far East marketing reach can because they saw how valuable this was with the ESPN dubbed "Linsanity" this past season. There was no inside knowledge of Yao Ming's impact required for an NBA team to see Lin's potential impact in the Far East. You could just turn on the television to see Lin's impact. Don't try to make the Rockets seem smarter than they really are.

Couldn't Lin have helped the Knicks contend next season? And after that, they could have traded him in year two or year three to a team with cap space (or for a better player) with other pieces thrown in.

Maybe, maybe not. Why would the Knicks sign Lin to a contract and then plan to trade him the very next year? Does this really make sense? What if Lin gets injured and no other NBA team wants him and his contract? Then the Knicks are stuck with (another) player they don't want making a large amount of money. Bill makes it seem so simple to sign Lin and then trade him when it could be anything but simple. That's Bill Simmons though. Many of his ideas are based on assumptions that everyone thinks like he does and will do what he would do.

Who said they had to keep him for all three years? Why not bring him back and figure the rest out later?

Is this really a preferable way to run the Knicks as opposed to simply not re-signing Lin? Fuck it, just give him a new contract and figure out the details later. Isn't that what Bill criticizes the Knicks for having done in the past and now he advocates they do this by re-signing Jeremy Lin?

For everyone dismissing last season's Linsanity binge as something of a fluke, here's a news flash for you: This isn't baseball.

Well, thanks. That clears everything up perfectly.

This isn't Kevin Maas or Phil Plantier catching fire for a few weeks before the league figured them out. I watched those games.

Bill watched those games. He believes himself to be a fucking genius and infallible. His thoughts are the thoughts you should have, but you are too damn stupid to have those thoughts. If Bill had not watched those games, then perhaps Linsanity could be a fluke. Because Bill is vouching for Linsanity, there's no way in hell Linsanity could be a fluke since someone as smart as Bill, namely the only person on Earth as smart as Bill, Bill himself, watched those games.

Even in a somewhat small sample size, Lin proved that he's either a quality starter (best-case scenario) or something of a rich man's J.J. Barea, an irrational confidence guy who gives you instant offense off the bench (worst-case scenario).

And why wouldn't you give a guy who could be like a rich man's J.J. Barea 3 years and $24.9 million? Who says "no" to this?

That's really stupid AND an appallingly bad business decision.

As would be the decision to re-sign Lin only to want to trade him one year later or re-sign Lin without a long-term plan as to what role he would play on the team. Who am I to judge though? Bill Simmons has many supporters (okay fine, only him) who believes he could be an NBA GM.

Or, you could be a loyal sap, remain a Knicks fan and be perpetually bitter … but at the very least, sleep well at night knowing that you stuck with your boys through thick and thin. I support any of those three choices. Either way, it's a shame that one of the best fan bases in any sport is saddled with an owner like that.

They are cursed! There is a Dolan Curse! Get Mike Lupica on the phone to write an entire book about this curse!

(Important note: As many Knicks fans have pointed out, "On paper, the Brooklyn switch makes sense … but is it really a peace-of-mind upgrade to go from James Dolan to Billy King and an absentee Russian owner?" Solid counter.)

I like how Bill makes his point about how Knicks fans should switch to the Brooklyn Nets and then in the very next paragraph he explains why his idea is stupid. Two years from now, he will be taking credit for saying Knicks fans should have jumped ship or he will be mentioning how the Nets have an absentee owner. It all depends on whether the Knicks or Nets have more success over the next two years. The conclusion we come to? Knicks fans should or should not jump ship. Either way, I have a feeling Bill has all his bases covered to where if Knicks fans should have jumped ship he can point out he was correct they had a chance to switch to the Nets or if the Nets stink then he can point out he was correct about the Nets owner.

I didn't expect to be interested in the Hornets for League Pass purposes before 2014 at least. Who knew?

"I didn't expect this would happen until 2014. Who could have seen that I wouldn't have expected this to occur?"

To David Stern, who turned out to be right (retroactively, but still) when he vetoed a package that netted New Orleans Luis Scola (amnesthetized last week and signed for half the cost), Kevin Martin (very available), Dragic and Houston's 2012 first-rounder, didn't save the Hornets money, didn't allow them to bottom out AND gift-wrapped Chris Paul to the Lakers while somehow saving them millions.

David Stern was still wrong to veto that trade. I don't care if Bill thinks it worked out for the Hornets or not. Stern never should have vetoed that Chris Paul trade. I don't care about the outcome of this process, I care about Stern's process for vetoing this trade.

Looking back, it's no contest and I'm embarrassed that I defended the first deal, especially when they didn't dump Okafor's contract or Ariza's contract in it. And did we learn something that even the people running the NBA believe that, unless you can contend for the title, you're better off bottoming out and buying a lottery ticket? Yes. Yes we did.

Here's the issue. We have no idea what the Hornets would have done if the Paul-to-the-Lakers trade had gone through. They still may have ended up with a lottery pick from the Rockets and we have no idea if the Hornets would have kept Scola, Martin or Dragic. Things feel like they worked out for the Hornets, but who is to say things wouldn't have worked out if the Paul-to-the-Lakers trade had gone through? The truth is that Bill just doesn't want Chris Paul to play for the Lakers, so he's happy the trade went through the way it did and kept Paul from the Lakers.

Does that mean Stern was vindicated by The Veto? Nooooooooooo! He disgraced the league (and his own legacy, and Dell Demps) with the pigheaded way he handled it. The end did not justify the means. I don't think he cares.

Ah yes, playing both sides again. Stern was right to veto the trade, but he didn't handle it well and the end didn't justify the means? How does this make sense? If Bill thinks Stern was right to veto the trade, doesn't this mean the end justifies the means? Since the end was that Stern was right to veto the trade because the Hornets got cap room and the #1 overall pick? Bill was just defending "the end" of the failed Paul-to-the-Lakers trade.

Will we ever see another sports commissioner cup his ears and encourage the boos at a league event (like Stern did during this year's draft)? I say no.

"Do you still rape (as pointed out in the comments, it is "beat" your wife, not "rape." I firmly believe David Stern thinks he could get away with saying "rape" instead of "beat" though) your wife?" Best. Commissioner. In. Sports.

He's like Lorne Michaels in this respect — both guys know that, as long as they're running the NBA or SNL, everyone will return their calls, everyone will take their meetings, everyone will kiss their asses and fall all over themselves trying to please them, everyone will give them the best table in the restaurant and the best suite in the hotel, nobody will question them using the company jet, and basically, they're going to matter.

Who ever said David Stern wasn't a good commissioner? His ego drives his decisions and he is incapable of believing he could ever be second-guessed. What's wrong with that?

One of the show's funniest moments goes to one of the month's funniest moments — Mark Cuban missing Deron Williams's visit to Dallas for the Mavericks' big "Here's why you should play for us, Deron" pitch. Why? Because Cuban was in Los Angeles taping that week's episode of Shark Tank.

This is the part where Bill does some passive-aggressive needling of Mark Cuban after the one-sided Twitter fight last week. We all know how this will end. Bill will passively-aggressively go at Mark Cuban until they meet up face-to-face and Bill eventually backs down using humor as a defense. Bill will explain "he talked to Cuban and he made me understand the moves" much like the excuse Bill used when he spoke with Isiah Thomas face-to-face after ripping him for years. We talk about bloggers who hide behind their keyboard, but I think Bill did the same thing when he spoke with Thomas face-to-face in Las Vegas a few years ago. I see a similar occurrence will happen in his beef with Mark Cuban.

Normally I'd have more barbs here … but I actually enjoy Shark Tank. I fully support Cuban's decision to throw away Dallas's 2012 title defense to create enough cap space to potentially sign a marquee free agent like Williams, then to miss THE crucial pitch meeting with Williams because he was contractually obligated to tape a reality-TV show. I care more about Shark Tank than the fate of the Mavericks. If I rooted for the Mavericks? I might not be as happy.

But again, taking on Jeremy Lin's contract when you could have had a comparable point guard cheaper, clearing cap space for a marquee player that may or may not accept a trade to your team and that may or may not re-sign with your team, and putting a 30-52 team filled with rookies on the court is pure genius.

It pays to be Bill Simmons' friend. He won't criticize you nearly as much as compared to if you dare to question something he says on Twitter.

Speaking of Hasheem the Dream, Memphis got a combined five and a half years total out of Thabeet and O.J. Mayo — picked no. 2 overall and no. 3 overall, respectively, in back-to-back drafts — and nobody cares because they still stumbled into having a pseudo-contender of a team. Will we ever see THAT happen again?

Will we ever see that hyper-specific scenario again? No, we will not. Will we see a team waste (not sure Mayo was a waste) two lottery picks in back-to-back drafts and be a contender anyway? Probably.

If you're a Rockets fan, wouldn't you be mildly petrified of amnestying Luis Scola (the best amnesty guy ever, by far — nobody else comes close),

But again, Bill thinks it was a brilliant move by David Stern to prevent the Hornets from getting Scola. He would have had zero value to the Hornets if they decided to trade him. In Bill's world, you can trade Jeremy Lin anytime you want, but Luis Scola has no trade value.

dumping Kevin Martin in a contract year (when you know he'll play well), dealing two potential lottery picks AND swapping one or two of your promising 2012 first-rounders just so you can a) deliver Howard to a contender in your own conference, and b) roll the dice with Bynum?

Of course Rockets fans should be concerned. They are going all-in for Dwight Howard or Andrew Bynum. Neither player has proven he can carry a team to a championship. Howard comes close, but he still requires a quality #2 player on the roster (in my opinion) and a few guys on roster that can hit three-point shots.

The case for Bynum: He's the league's second-best center and a guaranteed 20/10 guy when healthy.

The case against Bynum: He's still immature, he handled L.A.'s last two playoff exits more than a little erratically, and he played 80 percent of his team's games last season for the first time since 2007.

I still say if any GM that wasn't named "Daryl Morey" did this then Bill would castigate him. Because it is Daryl Morey making these moves Bill says Rockets fans should merely be "worried."

How did everything work out for the Lakers again? In the late '60s, Wilt fell into their laps. In the mid-'70s, Kareem fell into their laps. In the late '70s, they exploited two incompetent franchises (New Orleans and Cleveland) and somehow landed no. 1 overall picks in 1980 (Magic) and 1982 (Worthy). In the mid-'90s, Shaq fell into their laps and they smartly stole Kobe during the same summer. In 2008, Memphis gift-wrapped Pau Gasol for them. And now, with yet another dead end looming in 2012 — triggered by last December's Chris Paul trade that fell through, one of the rare times that the Lakers have ever been screwed over by bad luck — suddenly Steve Nash AND Dwight Howard might fall into their laps? How the heck does this keep happening??????

This coming from a guy who is the fan of a team who had Larry Bird fell in their lap during the 1979 Draft after he re-entered college upon being drafted by the Celtics in 1978. He fell in their lap because a now-gone rule (named after Larry Bird by the way) allowed them to retain Bird's rights even though he had never declared for the NBA Draft in 1978.

Then the Celtics had Kevin McHale (the #3 pick in the 1981 draft) and Robert Parish come to them in one trade for Joe Barry Carroll (the #1 pick in the 1981 draft).

Then the Celtics got the #2 pick in the 1986 draft after having won the NBA Title.

Fast forward to 2007 when the Celtics had Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett traded to them because both players just happened to be fed-up with their situation and wanted to chase a championship.

I'm just saying, NBA teams all have good luck and sometimes they also make their own luck.

Then Bill tries a reverse-jinx on the Lakers with sentences that read like these:

A ring for Dwight Howard less than a year after he acted like the biggest baby in recent sports history. (Yes, I'm operating as if Howard will be a Laker. Might as well get a jump on it.)

You know what really bugs me? He's the first legitimately likable Laker since Magic retired. There isn't a basketball fan on the planet who wouldn't be delighted to see Steve Nash finally win the title … you know, if it were happening in a vacuum.

A 17th title for the Lakers, which would technically match Boston's 17 titles even though five of those Laker titles happened in Minneapolis in the 1940s and 1950s. If you count those five, that's EXACTLY like adding Seattle's 1979 NBA title to Oklahoma City's ongoing total … right? That won't stop Lakers fans from pretending that they "tied" Boston even if they didn't. I'm already pissed off and it hasn't even happened yet.

Bill is working this reverse-jinx really hard. Since he's been doing this whole "movie quotes as it relates to sports" gimmick for a few years now, I should be happy Bill is still working hard at something I guess. Part 2 tomorrow...