7 comments Bill Simmons Is Still Using His Opinion as Fact

I got asked recently on Twitter if BotB was done or not. It's not, though the lack of activity probably gives the illusion of a more definitive answer. I start posts (will I ever post this one? Who knows?) and then get busy and never finish them. I have mixed feelings, as I started a new job two years ago and it felt like a clean break from the writing here that I loved, as writing on this blog took up a large portion of my day and caused me some sort of stress to get completed in a timely fashion. A lot of the posts here had some time sensitivity around them. I still enjoy writing here and that is why I haven't put up a farewell post. I'm also an "all or nothing at all" type of person. I'm in, or I'm out. I write 3-5 times per week or don't do anything, as I hate half-assing things. I want to try to half-ass though. Half-assing is the goal, in terms of posting frequently.

I have not read MMQB, TMQ or any Bill Simmons in the last two years. Okay, maybe a few MMQB, but none of the other two. I didn't even know where TMQ was located on the Interwebs anymore until someone Tweeted the link to me. If I read them, I am compelled to write about them. So no, Bottom of the Barrel is not done, I just haven't figured out how to make it not done. I started this blog in 2008. I was 28 years old and I'm now not 28 years old. I don't want to be Bill Simmons, writing the same shit over and over and over again until nobody cares anymore. I read Drew Magary now and think, "Jesus, this guy is doing the same stuff he was doing 5-6 years ago" and feel sympathy for him despite the fact he's doing quite well for himself. I'm getting older and I have less time to bitch about bad sportswriting. I always feel compelled to adapt and change, because staying in a rut singing all the greatest hits isn't my type of thing. I have to change for fear of becoming stale. The change here was a forced step-back to let off the throttle.

There was always an expiration date on this blog in that I didn't want to and couldn't do the same writing I always did here. Sometimes you just have to stop, because a mid-40 year old person making the same jokes he made 15-20 years ago is just not who I want to be. I can't stand in-authenticity (a word?) and don't want to be in my upper 40's being the person I used to mock for pretending to be younger in order to desperately keep the same readership I used to have. I don't want to be the person quoting Meek Mill when I just had to Google his name in order to make the reference. So it felt like a clean break two years ago, but I knew I didn't want to stop completely. Yes, a clean break involves a break entirely, so you see the contradiction there. I still want to be here writing, just not so badly that it interferes with my job and ruins what I see as the tiny amount of authenticity I have to mail in order to mail-in some posts. You can't cover up bad jokes and bad writing, so I chose/was forced to step back. There is my long answer.

So reading some articles from the same people who I have written about a lot here, they do not have this fear of getting stale. As you will see, Bill Simmons has not changed his jokes at all and Gregg Easterbrook is still rotating the same 4-5 topics every NFL season. It is sad to me. What's even more sad is Bill Simmons has tried other things and failed (which, I predicted on multiple occasions here...he wants to be more than a writer, but that's what he is) or not had the same amount of success he had writing. Now he's bashing ESPN in his writing, because he's free of them! FREE! Finally, he has that annoying corporate backing that made him the name he is and paid for all those nice things he has so he can starfuck all day on his podcast off his back. Did you know he used to write for the Jimmy Kimmel show? I wonder if he's mentioned it recently? Probably. So Bill's new schtick is to bash ESPN and then continue with his old schtick.

So...Bill Simmons hasn't changed at all. Today he tries to figure if the NBA is actually more marketable than the NFL. One could find this answer fairly easily using metrics such as viewership, jersey sales, income the athletes in each sport earn through marketing opportunities, etc., but none of these metrics would be as asinine and kill as much column space as Bill's way of determining the answer. He answer this question in a mailbag where Bill's Simmons Clones write in questions to him, desperately hoping he answers the question this time in order to validate their existence.

Today’s agenda: a mailbag-picks hybrid that ends almost as many times as that Chiefs-Raiders game Thursday night. 

Whoa! A hybrid mailbag!? This is totally different from the other 100 mailbag-picks columns that Bill has released through the years. I'm intrigued enough to read, but first, I need to find out how "The Ringer" is different from "Grantland," how much money HBO has given to get the website going and keep it going, as well as figure out exactly what the hell the site is supposed to be. Other than a hybrid pop-culture/sports site that spent an inordinate amount of space on talking about "Girls," at the behest of the HBO leadership as repayment for their investment in Bill's awful television show ("Any Given Wednesday"? Was that the title?) on HBO which failed for reasons that were ABSOLUTELY NOT Bill's fault...what is the Ringer? We may never know.

Bill blames the time slot, the fact other shows were premiering at the same time and anything other than his ability to run a television show for "Any Given Wednesday's" inability to draw an audience. I'll allow others who actually watched the show figure out the reason the show failed. I can take an educated guess though.

As always, these are actual emails from actual readers.

(Narrator) They were not.

Q: On your podcast you said that the NBA is going to pass the NFL eventually, because NBA players are more likable and marketable. What year did this start occurring in your opinion?
—A. Fitzgerald, Boulder

"A. Fitzgerald"...more like Not A. Realperson.

BS: You know how the WWE tells fans not to try wrestling stunts at home? I’m about to pull a Dan Dierdorf and disagree with myself.

But no one else is allowed to disagree with Bill or prove him wrong, because then he will either (a) change the subject or (b) move the goalposts to show he wasn't wrong. 

How could we actually prove this?

You cannot prove this, as it is not able to be definitively proven by the manner in which Bill will go about it achieving this end. There are ways to prove it, but these ways don't waste nearly as much space and don't involve Bill proving his opinion as fact. 

I hopped on Pro-Football-Reference, determined the biggest stars from the ’97 season, then found their 2017 doppelgängers from an admittedly ambiguous age/talent/career/respect/celebrity/resonance/charisma standpoint. Then, I determined which doppelgänger was, for lack of a better word, bigger.

So to prove this, Bill took his opinion of the stars from 1997 and compared them to his opinion of what these 1997 stars are comparable to in 2017, then he used his opinion on a not-carefully selected seven characteristic scale to compare these two generations of athletes. Adding up these statistics he never complied in which to compare these athletes, he then he used his opinion on which athlete was more marketable. So he based his selections on his opinion, used more of his opinion to think of these characteristics for each athlete that would be used to measure marketability, then didn't use a numerical ranking system of any type to show how he reached his conclusions, instead choosing to use his opinion based on (shrugs shoulders, looks around the room)...but more importantly here is Bill's conclusion! 

Bill couldn't even be bothered to pretend to use random numbers to compare the athletes from '97 and 2017? He's so lazy that he introduces criteria and can't even turn this criteria into numbers at least pretending there was a thought process? Well, onward to the conclusion, which is obviously where Bill wanted to go before he created the question "A. Fitzgerald" had. I mean, before "A. Fitzgerald" emailed the question to him.

Before we get there to the conclusion, let's look at the "Mad Scientist Who Shirks Empirical Data or Numbers Because Because Because Because Let's Just Get to the Conclusion," Bill Simmons, and how he compared NFL players to each other (doppelgangers!) who don't even play the same position. 

Von Miller (’17) > John Randle (’97)

Doppelgangers! One is a LB and the other is a DT and they are separated by 40 pounds. It's all the same though. 

Matthew Stafford/Ben Roethlisberger (’17) > Jeff George/Warren Moon (’97)

I just can't with this comparison. I can't. Warren Moon and Ben Roethlisberger? 

Ndamukong Suh (’17) > Bruce Smith (’97) 

One is a DT and the other is a DE. If Bill thinks Ndamukong Suh and Bruce Smith are doppelgangers then I think that says more about his study based on his opinion which uses no numerical data to reach a conclusion than anything else. 

Bill is mailing in his mailed-in mailbags. 

Khalil Mack/Aaron Donald (’17) = Derrick Brooks/Kevin Greene (’97)

Khalil Mack has 34.5 career sacks in his short career, while Derrick Brooks had 13.5 career sacks over his entire career. Their playing style is the exact same, other than it being entirely different. More like identical twins is what Brooks and Mack are, if the identical twins were not identical and didn't know each other at all. Mack and Brooks are basically Ronde and Tiki Barber, joined at the hip in the lore of NFL history. 

Also, Aaron Donald is the doppelganger of Kevin Greene? Really? I didn't miss reading Bill's drivel. 

Kareem Hunt/Tyreek Hill (’17) = Marshall Faulk/Terry Glenn (’97)
Warren Sapp/Michael Strahan (’97) > Geno Atkins/Myles Garrett (’17)

… and it starts getting silly.

Yes, NOW it starts getting silly. Prior to this moment, the exercise in Bill Simmons circle-jerking was based on proven opinion and the scientific method as shown through the use of 7 carefully chosen categories whose results literally don't exist in any form to show how Bill came to the conclusion based on his opinion. But now, things are getting silly. 

But guess what. I was wrong! 2017’s stars more than held their own against 1997’s stars. There goes that theory. What about hoops? The NBA is more popular today, right? Our 2017 guys would win 80 percent of the matchups, right?

2017: LeBron, Curry, Westbrook, Harden, Durant, Giannis, Kawhi, CP3, Griffin, The Brow, Draymond, Dirk, Klay, Giannis, Kyrie, Wall, Carmelo, Thomas, Love, Embiid, Lillard, Gasol, Hayward, Boogie, Towns, Porzingis, Lonzo, Simmons.

1997: Jordan, Shaq, Iverson, Malone, Barkley, Hakeem, Robinson, Garnett, Kemp, Duncan, Penny, Hill, C-Webb, Ewing, Payton, Miller, Mourning, Hardaway, Kidd, Stockton, Sprewell, Mutombo, Rice, Richmond, Baker, Young Kobe.

Oh shit! Not only were NBA players just as famous and marketable 20 years ago, but Jordan doubled as the biggest basketball star we’ve ever had.

Serious question...are there people who read this and think, "Great point by Bill Simmons!"? I ask because this is honestly pure bullshit and I'm embarrassed that Bill has written it down to where he can share the embarrassment that he has become with the rest of the Internet. 

Where the hell does Bill even get "Our 2017 guys would win 80 percent of the matchups, right?" from? He has absolutely no concrete basis upon which to base this claim. He's basically just typing words. Where in here does it show that NBA players are just as famous and marketable 20 years ago? He literally just wrote down the names of NBA players, typed a curse word and reached his conclusion. I think I can do this.

Is cancer as deadly as the Black Death? 

Cancer: Bones, operations, prostate, breast, Odell Beckham, surgery, brain, liver, doctors, Ewing Theory, Jimmy Kimmel

Black Death: Rat fleas, mice, boats, death, bubonic, Rocky IV, gangrene, pandemic

Oh hell no! Not only is cancer just as deadly as the Black Death, but the Ewing Theory says if I had to have a biopsy to remove malignant tissue, the tissue that grows in it's place could eventually lead to me having even stronger mental and physical abilities. So the Ewing Theory says cancer may not be a bad thing. We all should want it. Let's go to the next mailbag question.

I'm kidding, of course. There is more space to waste with this exercise in showing off Bill's nonsensical findings. 

So, what’s really going on here? Two things …

1. We don’t like football as much because of concussions, greed, Goodell, oversaturation, the gratuitous violence, all the unseemly off-field stuff and everything else I covered in this piece. In 1997, we didn’t cringe when receivers had their clocks cleaned over the middle, or when quarterbacks got annihilated by a weakside blitz and had to be revived with smelling salts. We enjoyed that stuff. That was football, baby! We didn’t feel even remotely guilty about it. The star power didn’t change; we changed.

I see Bill still uses the word "we" to describe himself when he thinks everyone was also wrong or had a misconception. It wasn't Bill that had the misconception, it was all of us. Also, "we" don't like football now as much as "we" liked football in 1997? Really, Bill? Is this a fact? I'm not sure it is.

True story: The Madden NFL ’96 video game arrived with a then-hilarious wrinkle. Whenever a player got injured, you heard a crunch followed by Pat Summerall saying, “Oh no, there’s a man down.” Eventually, anyone playing realized that you could maim players after the whistle, which led to more hilarity, real-life arguments (“How could you do that, you dick????!”) and actual truces between two buddies agreeing NOT to maim players after the whistle. This really happened. I swear to God.

Bill writes this like nobody else in the world has ever played "Madden NFL '96."

He's swearing to God and everything when talking about a video game many people have played and it takes 2 minutes to pull up footage (Bill includes a YouTube link by the way) of this "then-hilarious" wrinkle, but he's perfectly fine blazing through the entirely unprovable conclusion the NBA is more marketable than the NFL without a single shred of empirical evidence outside of his opinion. You can find evidence of the video game wrinkle in a matter of minutes, yet Bill feels the need to swear to God it exists. But proof his conclusion the NBA is more marketable than the NFL, he is confident his complete lack of empirical evidence presented here shows all the proof necessary. No swearing to a deity necessary.

Bill Simmons as a used car dealer:

(Bill) "This car can fly once it gets to the speed of 88 mph."

(Customer) "That's not true."

(Bill) "This car also gets 28 miles per gallon. You have to believe me, I swear to God. Fucking believe me, man."

(Customer) "I do. It's right here on the stic---"

(Bill pulls a knife and threatens a child with it) "You gotta believe me. This car. It gets great gas mileage. Swear to God. It really does!" (starts carving the gas mileage number into his cheek)

(Customer) "I believe you!"

(Bill) "Great, thanks. Also, magic elves are the reason the car flies."

(Customer) "I don't believe you." 

(Bill) "Well, we will just be wrong about that then if the car doesn't really fly. Let's sit down in my office and start talking numbers. I'm kidding, I don't use numbers to quantify anything."

2. We like basketball more than we did in 1997,

There you go. This is how "we" feel. I know you may think you personally feel differently, but you don't. Trust Bill's instinct on this. You like basketball more now than you did in 1997.

YouTube and Twitter allowed us to consume specific plays in easily digestible bites; and the people covering the sport itself went from a bunch of older, out-of-touch white guys to a younger, more diverse group that actually consumed it.

You see how out of touch Bill is? He believes that because the demographics of those who cover basketball has changed, the sport has become popular as a result. Four issues here with these claims: 

1. What? So younger, diverse people were not watching the NBA and now they are because those who cover the sport reflect a younger, diverse crowd? I've heard of people needing to see themselves reflected on a movie screen, television show or in the athletes actually playing a sport, but I've never heard "Well, I would watch the NBA but there just aren't enough young, diverse journalists covering the sport."

It's nonsense, that's what it is.

2. Bill is an older, out of touch white guy.

3. This reasoning could also be used for why the NFL is more popular now. Highlights are everywhere and there is a more diverse group of people covering the sport now. Of course, Bill is functionally incapable of making a cogent point because frankly he doesn't give a shit. Of course, his loyal readers seem to have the same problem solving and reasoning skills as he does.

4. Where is the evidence there is a younger, diverse group of journalists covering the sport and this has caused more people to watch? I'm slowly going dumb at this claim. Bill absolutely does not think his points through. What if the NBA is losing viewers due to white, out of touch white guys not watching it as much due to their demographic no longer represented as often in the sports journalism industry? Bill never thinks about this because he's lost in his tunnel vision, no-facts-used argument right now.

Check out this email from Rez in Sacramento …

“It's October 18 with a full slate of MLB playoff games and another NFL weekend coming, yet it feels like the world is watching the NBA. Boston fans are on suicide watch, Kings fans are screaming the refs screwed them, Giannis is having a statement game, my dad is texting me Thibs is overrated, my girlfriend is arguing Bobby Portis wasn't suspended long enough ... IT'S OCTOBER 18TH!!!! The only people who are supposed to be watching NBA games right now are Zach Lowe and youth groups who scored cheap tickets. No seriously, that's the list. Am I crazy??? This idea of NBA dominance is so delightful my brain won't accept it as possible.”

Until this decade, when did anyone ever treat the preseason, summer league, Opening Night and July 1 like these were monumental events? It’s unbelievable. Did you ever think you’d care about LeBron James’s shirtless workout videos or Russell Westbrook’s passive-aggressive Instagram photos? It never ends. NBA stars stumbled into a way of connecting with fans—during the season, during games, and even during the offseason—that stars from the No Fun League simply can’t replicate.

"Yes, I have anecdotal evidence on line 1, it would like to talk to you." 

This is peak "Here is what my friends and I think, so it must be what everyone else thinks as well" reasoning. I can't argue the NBA didn't have an eventful offseason, but the NFL owns the offseason just as much if not more than the NBA. And NBA diehard fans treated the preseason, summer league, and Opening Night as a monumental event. Did other people who are casual fans feel this way to and this reflects the improved marketability of the NBA? Eh, not so sure. Try to remove yourself from your social media bubble and try to accept that your thoughts are not reflective of everyone else's thoughts. Also, everything that was written here about preseason games being monumental events can be said for the NFL too. 

But again, Bill doesn't care about facts, evidence or anything of the like. He knows the point he wants to prove and will ignore evidence contrary to his point. 

Football isn’t dying by any means; the ratings and attendance and merchandising money tell us as much. 

The ratings say the NFL is more popular than the NBA. 

But culturally? NBA careers last twice as long 

The length of an NBA career is not a culturally related point. Also, the length of a player's NBA career has almost nothing to do with marketability, absent outlying extremely popular players whose careers are cut extremely short for one reason or another. 

and the league’s stars shine a little more brightly.

This is not a fact. This is an opinion. Over the past twenty years Bill has consistently not been able to tell the difference. I'll help him. 

Bill's HBO show was awful - an opinion

Bill's HBO show was canceled- a fact

How does Roger Goodell not get fired yesterday? He’s grown the league so poorly that the NFL’s signature video game was forced to use NBA STARS to seem a little more hip! What?

This is regarding Madden 18 using NBA players in an advertisement for the game. 

I have a very low opinion of  Bill's intelligence. He says a lot of things that are lies, he lives in his own world where the facts are what he chooses them to be, he has the capacity to do better but just doesn't seem to want to go in that direction, and the people who do like him are very loyal, which confuses me. But to say Roger Goodell should be fired because a private company chose to use NBA players in their marketing for an NFL game is an incredibly ridiculous statement. It would be like firing John Skipper because a column on Grantland outed a transgender golfer who eventually committed suicide. There is a lack of causation there.

It's a fucking video game. There are 100 reasons to fire Roger Goodell that are valid. I don't know how Bill Simmons manages human beings at "The Ringer" if he wants to fire the NFL commissioner because of how Madden 18 is marketed. 

Next is a mailbag question about "The Challenge" on MTV. I would think after taking two years off from Bill's mailbags something would change. How naive I am. 

Q: Why don’t we refer to Philip Rivers as Octo-Dad?
—Dean, Juniper Hills, Calif. 

Because it's stupid and only someone who thinks he is funny would call him that. 

BS: I can’t think of a single reason.

As I said. 

Q: Can we find Jared Goff a nickname?
—Tyler Goffi, Shamokin, Pa.

 

BS: Sure—what about J-Go? I’m not afraid of Jared Goff down four with two minutes left. You know who I’m afraid of? J-Go. Done!

Are there really people who read Bill Simmons and are entertained by it? If so, how? Do these people lack friends who can answer these questions? Why must it be Bill who answers them? Also, "J-Go" as a nickname? It's so lazy, but it allows Bill to keep churning content. 

Q: On the heels of Al Michaels's “Harvey Weinstein/Giants” joke, followed by the ensuing apology within an hour, it made me wonder what are the Top 5 or Top 10 Sports “On-Air Comments Then Apologies” of recent memory? A few that come to mind are: Lee Corso's F-bomb, Matt Millen/Jaws Polish Comment, Brent Musburger oozing over Katherine Webb, and Bob Griese's Taco Apology.
—Ross M., San Francisco

BS: Let’s answer this next week. America, please, send me the best on-air apologies you remember to themailbag@theringer.com.

My favorite apology, though it was not on-air, was the one where the editor-in-chief of Grantland apologized for outing a transgender golfer (Dr. V), helping to ruin that golfer's life to the point that golfer committed suicide. That editor-in-chief was really, really sorry for helping to ruin a life though. It's understandable though. Who knew outing someone was a misstep? Certainly not anyone that runs in Bill's young, diverse crowd that has caused the NBA to exceed the NFL in popularity. Bill was surprised to hear you shouldn't just fucking "out" someone:

Caleb’s biggest mistake? Outing Dr. V to one of her investors while she was still alive. I don’t think he understood the moral consequences of that decision, and frankly, neither did anyone working for Grantland. That misstep never occurred to me until I discussed it with Christina Kahrl yesterday. But that speaks to our collective ignorance about the issues facing the transgender community in general, as well as our biggest mistake: not educating ourselves on that front before seriously considering whether to run the piece.

I didn't realize grown adults still needed to be educated on this issue, but again, I also wasn't so concerned with "the scoop and story" that I was willing to publish a story without looking into the impact some parts of the story could have on the subject's life. 

Anyway, Bill needs to bash ESPN real quick. 

I’m always partial to ESPN apologizing at 12:30 a.m. (when just about everyone in Boston was asleep) for erroneously saying two different times that the Patriots illegally taped a St. Louis Rams walkthrough before Super Bowl XXXVI.

Isn't it funny how we didn't hear Bill complain about this a decade ago as ESPN was bankrolling his career, giving him a platform to make his career and throwing money into Grantland? I know Bill is going to bash ESPN, but it's always going to feel spiteful to me based on where he came from and what they helped him to achieve in his career. Bill wasn't a journalist who worked his way up to ESPN like 90% of the other ESPN employees. He was smoking pot, bar tending, and writing a blog when ESPN plucked him up out of obscurity and gave him a platform. It doesn't work that way for most other ESPN employees, so Bill being resentful probably won't ever make sense to me, no matter how it all ended. Plus, I always think Bill is going to come crawling back to ESPN at some point.

Q: In your 9/22 mailbag you wrote: “Bill Simmons is never changing his mind on these six things” and one was “Rocky 3 was the best Rocky movie.” And yet in 2002, you wrote a lengthy breakdown where you not only claimed that “the first Rocky was the finest of the bunch, no question” but went on to rank Rocky IV AHEAD of Rocky III for rewatchability. How can we ever trust you again? My children cried when they found out.
—Ben, Chicago 

Oh no, Bill is contradicting himself again. We all know that Bill is NEVER wrong, so he will weasel out of the fact he can't remember he once had a different opinion based on the point he wants to prove at the time. 

BS: Rocky III is the best Rocky movie. Rocky IV is the most rewatchable movie. Huge difference.

Yes, semantics say this is a massive difference. But let's see how Bill addresses that he ranked "Rocky" ahead of "Rocky 3" in 2002 and now claims in 2017 that he is never changing his mind that "Rocky 3" was the best Rocky movie. I'm sure he will sufficiently expl---

By the way, now Sly Stallone is directing Creed 2? He’s 71 years old!

"By the way, LOOK! SOMETHING SHINY! GO PLAY WITH IT! Now let's go to the next mailbag question and ignore how I ignored a question posed to me about how I contradicted myself. Also, the fact I chose to publish a question where I contradict myself probably doesn't show how little mail I'm getting these days. I'm still popular. It's not like I'm answering questions posed by the same person or anything. THAT would be a clear indication I'm not getting as much email from my SimmonsClones asking me to justify their existence as I used to. Thank goodness that's not happening."

Q: I literally just dropped Aaron Rodgers for Orleans Darkwa on my fantasy football team. Can we all agree to stop doing fantasy football? Thanks.

—Marc, Madison, Wis.

Q: I can't wait for you to mispronounce/misspell Brent Hundley's name for the rest of the Packers season. Or is it Brett Hundley? Brent Hudley?
—Marc, Madison, Wis.

Oh no. There are probably two guys named "Marc" who live in Madison, Wisconsin. Most likely. I doubt Bill gets such little mail these days that he had to publish two unrelated questions from the same person to fill out his mailbag. That would never happen.

Q: The Saints-Packers line moved 10 points with Aaron Rodgers’s injury. Why isn’t this a good way to tell who the MVP is? Which players would cause the biggest line moves?—Eric, Denver

Because gambling lines are not necessarily indicative of which individual players are the most valuable. Gambling lines are set up by Vegas to get gambling action on a game, not an indication of which player that is missing could be the most valuable. Of course, Bill likes this idea because Bill lacks logic and is stupid in that way.

BS: You’re right — only Rodgers swings it by double digits. I’m fine with deciding the MVP this way. 

Okay, I'll play. Drew Brees gets injured and now the line moves 11 points, because Brees' backup isn't as good as the Packers' backup in this scenario. Does this mean Rodgers is not the MVP, instead Brees is? And how in the fucking hell can you tell who the MVP is when that player plays all 16 games? If Tom Brady plays all 16 games and throws for 6000 yards and 98 TD's, is he not the MVP because the line didn't move due to his never getting hurt? This ridiculous method to choose the MVP requires the person to become injured in order to see how much the line would move. Also, this theory is subject to so many outside influences that can affect a gambling line that I can't believe I've wasted this many words talking about it. It's dumb, Eric. That's why it's not a good way to tell who the MVP is.  

My old ESPN teammate Chad Millman once came up with a great “I wish I had thought of that!” idea called PSVAR (point spread value above replacement) that’s basically gambling VORP. Guess who had the highest number every year? Aaron Rodgers. 

It would be really nice if Bill shared how this PSVAR was calculated, but anybody who knows Bill Simmons or how he writes his columns know that PSVAR is calculated through a really shitty process that we are better off never knowing. More than likely, it uses subjective numbers to get to the PSVAR calculation. 

Our PSVAR top five for this goofy 2017 season probably looks like this:

Rodgers: +10
Brees: +8
Brady: +7
Ryan: +7
Wentz: +7
Watson: +7

That. Is. Six. Players. Not. Five. Learn. To. Count. You. Fraud.

What’s the most amazing thing about that list? 

That you are incapable of counting to the number 6? That you don't tell your readers how you came to these numbers which make up PSVAR? That even you don't know how you came to these numbers because you wrote the word "probably" meaning you haven't calculated the actual numbers and are making them up in order to prove the point that Aaron Rodgers is #1 and to feign surprise when your made up list of five players that is really six players comes to a conclusion based on fake data that you think should surprise everyone but really shouldn't, because again, YOU ARE MAKING IT ALL UP OUT OF THIN AIR?

I find all of those things amazing.

Deshaun Watson! Who knew?

Yes, who knew that Deshaun Watson would make the Top of PSVAR? Certainly not anyone who can count to 5 and knew that Watson was number 6 on the list. Certainly not anyone who still has no idea how PSVAR is calculated.

Also, I can't emphasize enough that Bill is feigning surprise at the fact Deshaun Watson is in the Top 6 of PSVAR when it appears to be a metric based on absolutely no real data. In fact, here are my Top 5 NFL players in PSVAR this year:

Aaron Rodgers (+10)
Blake Bortles (+3)
Brian Hoyer (+2)
Drew Brees (-2)
Frank Gore (-455)

OH MY GOD! WHO KNEW THAT FRANK GORE WAS THE FIFTH MOST VALUABLE PLAYER IN THE NFL THIS YEAR? AND HIS NUMBER IS NEGATIVE, WHICH JUST GOES TO SHOW HOW ALL NFL PLAYERS ARE TRASH THIS YEAR AND WHY MADDEN 18 HAD TO USE NBA PLAYERS TO MARKET THE GAME WHICH PROVES THE NBA IS MORE MARKETABLE THAN THE NFL!

This is empirical evidence that PSVAR proves the NFL is less marketable than the NBA right now!

Q: I am perplexed about the cries that the NFL is conspiring to keep Kaepernick out of the league. Isn’t this just a case of the talent not matching the headache? Other notables chased from a job for the same reason: Ray Rice, Greg Hardy, Tim Tebow, Bill Simmons.

—Britt 

If you want circumstantial proof that Bill makes up these mailbag questions, this is an email from "Britt" who apparently doesn't live in a city or state. More than likely, Bill put this fake mailbag question in here as an inside joke. As Britt McHenry, the ex-ESPNer and now conservative pundit, believes that Kaepernick is being kept out of the NFL because of his talent level, not as a result of his being blackballed by the NFL. So I am betting this is a made-up mailbag question that Bill put in as an inside joke directed at an ex-coworker and this is one of many mailbag questions Bill has made up over the years. 

Then Bill outlines the plot for "Speed 3." It's so bad I didn't even have the energy to copy and paste it here. I like you all that much, as there are some things I will spare you from. 

Q: There has been a lot of talk about how the Browns have blundered by passing on good QBs such as Wentz and Watson. I think this wrongly assumes that these quarterbacks would play at a similarly high level if they were with the Browns—it’s the opposite of the Ewing Theory, players of a high caliber will get dragged down on a terrible team. Can you come up with a snappier title than the “Our shit team will always result in shit players” theory?
—Brendan, New York, N.Y.

BS: The Pewing Theory? [Wincing.] Come on! He baited me into that one! Don’t judge me!

So a theory based on money charged for pews. Ummmm...okay. 

By the way? I actually believe in the Pewing Theory. 

No way! Bill believes in a ridiculous theory where he will have to manipulate certain information and leave out certain information in order to show the veracity of his theory? This is so unlike Bill.

We have nearly 20 years of evidence now that the Browns ruin everything. Twenty years! The 2.0 Browns are right around the same age as Shawn Mendes, Lonzo Ball, Markelle Fultz, the daughter from Modern Family and 528 different YouTube stars.

Bill is pretending like he doesn't know who Ariel Winter is. That's funny and kind of inexplicable from the guy who made part of his fame from making it okay to ogle Anna Kournikova when she was still underage. But whatever.

The Browns kept turning away franchise QBs like one of those tortured TV heartthrobs who doesn’t want anyone to fall in love with him because he knows they’ll get hurt.

I mean...what? This is the best tortured comparison Bill can make? 

They’re basically Dylan McKay after he came back to 90210 a few years after his gorgeous wife was murdered by her father’s mafia hitmen, only now he had a heroin problem and even MORE baggage. Guess what. Even THAT pop culture reference was older than the 2.0 Browns.

The self-awareness around knowing you are using an old pop culture reference doesn't take away from the fact that you still used that pop culture reference. That reference is from 1995, so it would be the equivalent of someone in 1995 repeatedly making a pop culture reference to a television show from 1973. Feels old. 

Q: What did you think of your dad’s performance on Curb Your Enthusiasm?

—Brendan, Perth, Australia

BS: It’s been a brutal October for my dad. The Red Sox got knocked out. The Yankees are still alive. It’s the worst Patriots team in eight years.

Oh yeah, cue those violins for Bill's father that this is the worst Patriots team in the past 8 years. This team may not even make the AFC Championship Game, which makes me wonder how Bill's father will ever get past such misery.

The Hayward-Kyrie era lasted five minutes before being derailed by the most gruesome NBA injury maybe ever.

It's so hard being a Celtics fan these days, knowing your team that spent big money to bring in Hayward in order to not win the NBA title this year still isn't going to win the NBA title this year. What a letdown.

Speaking of letdowns, Bill's mailbags are always a letdown for those who don't worship him.

3 comments Hindsight is a Cold, Cold Bitch to Bill Simmons

What can bring me back? Bill Simmons. That's what. I haven't addressed this but I'm not "gone" and plan on writing here still. I just have to find time. Things get busy, it takes a while to write, so I have taken a forced sabbatical. I loved writing here and it literally took a change in life to where I had zero free time to rip me away from it. So I've moved back into my mom's basement, fired up the computer, and put up my Sabermetrics posters for today.

Scott on Twitter sent me this article and I couldn't not write about it. It's by Bill Simmons and it's from March 2012. It's about how terrible the Golden State Warriors are. It's not true anymore, but hindsight is a cold, cold bitch. As Scott told me, the self-appointed guru of the NBA doesn't look so great on this one. I tend to be long-winded (I know! Me?) so I'm going to only get to the pertinent parts of the column. It's a typical Simmons column. It's too long and he mistakes having a lot of content for quality content.

You might not know this, you might not believe it … but once upon a time, the Golden State Warriors won the NBA championship. 

Last year. 2015. Three years after this column was written the Warriors won a title.

I know some SimmonsClone is going to read this and bitch I'm being unfair to Bill by using hindsight. Get out of here. He uses hindsight all the time to tell us what "we" thought when he was wrong, and since Bill has enough of a ego to appoint himself as an NBA expert (and really believe he can be an NBA GM), it's not unfair at all to pick at him for writing a column about how terrible the Warriors were when this was no longer true less than a year after Bill wrote this column. The Warriors made the Western Conference Semifinals a year after this was written. Bill has to do better. And of course, Bill will NEVER remember he wrote this column or acknowledge it. He's too busy building a media empire.

And so it began. Three and a half decades later, the Golden State Warriors have morphed into the most tortured franchise in professional basketball. 

Professional franchises and fans bitching about how tortured they are? This is all Bill's fault. His whining about the Red Sox in the early 2000's made it okay to wallow in how tortured a team is.

the Warriors lack an identity beyond the whole “they suck every year, they always screw up, but at least they have great fans” tag.

Again, a whole three years later they won a title. I'll let this statement just sit here and let's think about how the Warriors lack an identity for a minute.

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Okay, let's get back to it. I'm not ignoring the Warriors got booed in their own building. That is true. Bill is correct. What he isn't correct about is his criticism of the 2012 Warriors and the direction the team was taking. Bill starts documenting the terrible moves beginning with the 1976-1977 season in this column. The Warriors made the playoffs six times from the 1976-1977 season until the 2011-2012 season (when this column was written).

Bill counts down 60 reasons the Warriors annoyed their fan base. He, of course, essentially repeats many of the same points along the way. He just re-phrases how he writes, "The Warriors traded for Joe Barry Carroll and had a lot of drug users on their team in the 1980's" a few times.

15. Naturally, the Warriors blew things up again, flipping Richmond to Sacramento for the rights to Billy Owens, a talented but sluggish forward who (you’re not going to believe this) never reached his potential for Golden State.

Oh no! Facts are getting in the way of Bill's argument. This is where Bill hopes no one goes to look up whether this statement about Owens never reaching his potential is accurate or not. Spoiler alert: It's a lie. Owens had his best seasons in the NBA while playing for the Warriors. Yes, Richmond was still great after being traded by the Warriors, but Owens never reached his full potential. He came the closest playing for the Warriors early in his career.

Bill also conveniently skips over smart moves like drafting Latrell Sprewell with the #24 pick in the 1992 draft. This is a footnote to the column so as not to distract from Bill's point the Warriors couldn't ever do anything right.

17. The following year, Mullin, Hardaway and Owens missed a combined 107 games for the 34-win Warriors,

Yeah, but Owens never reached his full potential anyway, right?

This is typical Bill Simmons. He writes that trading for the rights to Owens was a mistake because he never reached his full potential with the Warriors and then uses the absence of Owens as a reason the Warriors stunk during the 1993-1994 season. He wants it both ways.

27. Coming off another lottery season (30 wins), the ’97 Warriors fired Adelman, hired college coach P.J. Carlesimo

Again, Bill only pays attention to facts to the extent they support his argument. "College coach" Carlesimo had a 137-109 record over three seasons with the Trail Blazers as their head coach. But yeah, he was a "college coach" and wasn't qualified for an NBA head coaching job. Sure.

Then Bill continues to show what the Warriors "missed" out on if they had drafted perfectly every single year even though this would never happen for any professional team no matter how smart their front office is.

a Hall of Fame Absolutely-Coulda-Drafted-Him Starting Five (Bird, Garnett, Kobe, T-Mac and Payton, with McHale coming off the bench). 

By the time McGrady and Garnett were any good Bird and McHale would have been retired/too old to contribute. But again, let's ignore facts and the passage of time relative to each player's ability level to focus on the point Bill wants to prove. Bill lives in a fantasy world where he is an NBA guru anyway, so may as well just drag ourselves into this fantasy where Larry Bird and Tracy McGrady would be playing meaningful minutes together.

39. The 2001 Warriors had more players (22) than wins (17). The league’s second-worst record earned them the fifth pick (Jason Richardson); they also drafted Troy Murphy (with the pick from the Blaylock/Terry trade) and stole Gilbert Arenas in the second round. Naturally, they celebrated that draft haul by egregiously overpaying Jamison (six years, $85 million). 

A 24 year old in the prime of his career who averaged 24.9 points per game? Was it really an overpay?

47. The ’08 Warriors won 48 games — their highest win total since 1994 — but somehow made history by winning the most games by any team that didn’t make the playoffs. Only the Warriors. 

Or only any other NBA team like the Sonics, Clippers, Cavs, etc that Bill feels like writing a "woe is them" column about. "Only the Warriors," unless this column is about another NBA team. In that case, just exchange "Warriors" for that team name.

53. In July of 2010, former Celtics minority owner Joe Lacob purchased the Warriors from Cohan, said all the right things, seemed intelligent/confident/competent and promised to turn things around.

ONLY THE CELTICS AND THEIR LARRY BIRD MAGIC COULD SAVE THE WARRIORS! NO ONE DENIES THE LUCK OF THE IRISH!

55. The facts heading into this season: The Warriors missed the playoffs 29 times in 35 years … the Warriors won four playoff series total in 34 years … the Warriors haven’t made the playoffs for two straight seasons since 1977 … the Warriors haven’t made the Conference Finals since 1976 … the Warriors haven’t had an All-Star since 1997 … the Warriors have earned spots at 16 of the last 17 lotteries (impossible but true) … the Warriors have made 22 top-14 picks since 1985 (including 11 in the top eight and five in the top three) … and the Warriors made so many bad first-round picks and overpaid so many guys over the past 35 years that I don’t even have time to type all their names again.

It's almost like what a team has done in the past doesn't necessarily matter as it pertains to moves they would make in the future. After "this season" the Warriors made the playoffs three straight years and won an NBA title. Bill Simmons thinks it's crazy that a team's past can't dictate their future. It's crazy because Bill prefers talking about non-sports related reasons why a team can/can't win games.

"This team gives a lot of high-fives! This has directly led to their success!"

"This team has more than one knucklehead on the roster! That means they can't win games!"

"This team has a curse on them!"

"This team isn't fun to watch, which happens to coincide with the team not winning games!"

56. For some reason, despite everything you just read for more than 4,000 words, Lacob decided to guarantee these tortured fans that their Warriors would make the playoffs this season. 

And then the Warriors made the playoffs the next season, made the playoffs again the season after that, won the NBA title that next season, and now are making a run at being one of the best NBA teams in history. Lacob missed by one season. Bill missed by a lot more in writing this column.

57. He hired Mark Jackson as his new coach (someone with no coaching experience whatsoever)

The Warriors then fired Mark Jackson after a 51-31 season and hired another coach WITH NO COACHING EXPERIENCE WHATSOEVER! Again? Why?

This other head coach the Warriors hired with no head coaching experience then immediately led the Warriors to an NBA title. So the Warriors went 188-124 when hiring coaches with no prior coaching experience whatsoever. What dumbasses the Warriors are.

and signed off when Jackson vowed to turn Golden State into an elite defensive team despite the fact that, you know, its best three players couldn’t defend anyone.

How silly of Jackson to vow that he would turn the Warriors into a great defensive team. It would have been better if he had just not tried to teach the Warriors defense at all. That's a much better method of coaching.

Using Bill Simmons' logic, it's ridiculous for a head coach to vow that he will fix his team's biggest deficiency. Remember, Bill considers himself to be brilliant.

58. His team used its amnesty on Charlie Bell (one year, $4 million) instead of Andris Biedrins (three years, $27 million) so the Warriors could overpay DeAndre Jordan (four years, $43 million) … only the Clippers matched their Jordan offer, leaving Golden State without any outs with Biedrins (who’s been in a funk for four solid years, but hey, who’s counting?).

The Warriors later cleared Biedrins' contract by trading him to the Jazz  in order to gain salary cap space that led to them signing Andre Iguodala. Iguodala was a key to the Warriors' championship run and is an integral part of the current Warriors historically great team. But hey, who's counting?

59. His team waived Jeremy Lin to sign second-rounder Charles Jenkins, then claimed after Linsanity took off in New York that they loved Lin and never wanted to lose him.

Jeremy Lin then came back to Earth, was overpaid by the Rockets and now plays in the desolate NBA wasteland known as "Charlotte" for a team run by an owner who also seems to have no clue how to build an NBA team.

60. When his team struggled to compete in a brutally tough Western conference, Lacob’s staff promptly reversed course and made two of the weirdest trades in a while: sending Ellis and Udoh⁷ to Milwaukee for the defensive center/rebounder they’d been recklessly pursuing for months (settling on Andrew Bogut, who’s injured until April and missed a whopping 108 games these past three-plus years)

This trade added another piece to the current Warriors team that is winning games at a historical pace. Bogut is a great defensive center (which of course, who cares if the Warriors are trying to have a good defensive team, that's ridiculous) who has helped the Warriors in ways Udoh and Ellis could not.

and Stephen Jackson’s Non-Expiring Contract (two years, $19.3 million remaining), then flipped Jackson’s Non-Expiring Contract for Richard Jefferson’s Apocalypse of a Contract (three years, $30.5 million remaining) and a late first-round pick

The Warriors later flipped Jefferson to the Jazz, thereby clearing more room for Iguodala's signing, and the late first round pick turned into Festus Ezeli who is another good defensive player that has continued to improve through his career with the Warriors.

AND THEN tried to spin the deal as “We can’t make the playoffs, we need to bottom out this season so we finish in the top seven of the lottery and don’t lose our first-round pick to Utah.”

The Warriors then bottomed out and finished at #7 in the lottery, drafting Harrison Barnes, who has (you guessed it!) been an important part of the 2014-2015 NBA title team and has continued to improve throughout his NBA career. So as dumb as these trades seemed at the time, these two trades ended up netting the Warriors four players that contributed to an NBA title. When writing a column about how dumb these trades were and how the Warriors continue to screw their fan base over, it's probably best Bill just forgets he wrote all this. He hopes we forget too.

Imagine you’re a Warriors fan. Imagine you just endured everything just laid out these past 35 years. Imagine you didn’t trust your owners, your front office, anybody. Imagine they just traded your most entertaining player for an injury-prone center who can’t play,

Yes, imagine the Warriors are building a historically great team that can play and Bill totally went all-in on how bad the franchise was. Imagine that. Imagine how embarrassing that would be in hindsight that Bill wrote this column.

and imagine knowing that you can’t sign anyone else for two more summers because Biedrins and Jefferson

Imagine Bill's assumption are incorrect and they signed Andre Iguodala because they were able to clear Biedrins and Jefferson off the cap.

Imagine you have some of the best fellow fans in the league, only you rarely if ever have a chance to cheer anything

Imagine this isn't true anymore. Imagine this stopped being true less than a year after this column was written.

Imagine hearing that, after months and months of Chris Paul rumors and Dwight Howard rumors

Imagine that Bill Simmons dangles Dwight Howard here as a great free agent signing/trade target and then a year later Bill writes off Howard as a franchise player. Imagine it. You don't have to. It happened.

and “PLAYOFFS! PLAYOFFS! PLAYOFFS!” rhetoric,

Imagine if this happened a year later. We can only imagine...

your team just abruptly told you, “Oh, by the way, we’re going to tank the rest of this season because we don’t want to be haunted by a stupid trade from four years ago, but seriously, thanks for paying for season tickets this year.”

Imagine the Warriors were literally building the skeletal core of their championship basketball team as Bill wrote this column criticizing these moves. Imagine...

Imagine you were a paying customer and Chris Mullin Night doubled as the last bankably fun night of the season. Imagine the emotion inside the building with those Warriors legends on hand. Imagine everything cresting with Mully’s humble speech. Imagine the arrogance of Lacob grabbing that microphone — somehow deciding that he should be the last speaker of the ceremony, not Chris Mullin — and imagine your resentment over the past 35 years suddenly swelling as you realized, “Here’s my one chance to be heard.” 

I ask you … would you boo?

Yeah, I might boo. Imagine you were a huge NBA fan who prided yourself on your knowledge about whether a team was making smart moves or not. This is your identity in many ways. Imagine you were a huge NBA fan and you were also a (part time) writer and struggled when not using hindsight to show how "we" were wrong about something. Imagine you wrote this column about how the Warriors were on the wrong path...again. Imagine you were not correct about this. Imagine you suggested the Warriors fans should have been excited about the prospect of signing/trading a player you would write off a year later.

I ask you .... would you be worried people who read your columns notice you aren't as much of a guru when you can't use hindsight to defend your opinions that are passed off as fact?

3 comments Jay Mariotti Certainly Isn't Going to Allow Bill Simmons to Leave ESPN Without Taking the Opportunity to Take a Crap All Over Him

The "new" Jay Mariotti certainly acts exactly like the "old" Jay Mariotti acted. I figured he wouldn't allow Bill Simmons to leave ESPN without taking a shit on Simmons. It's just the way that Mariotti is. The professional courtesy of not taking a crap on someone who he used to work with is not something that Jay is interested in. It's not hard to see how I feel about Bill Simmons. Check out my vast archives (seriously, it's way too long...eight years of writing here certainly accumulates a lot of posts) to see how I feel about Bill. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend, but the enemy of enemy is certainly an asshole who is dumping on the enemy of my enemy for lacking the same journalistic skills that my enemy lacks. So Jay wants the fanboy phase of journalism to end. I'm not a big fan of fanboy journalism either, but I'm really, really not a fan of the bullshit antagonistic journalism that Jay Mariotti does. How about both forms of writing are done away with?

The Internet has perpetrated too much disarray in the world, giving semi-lives to people with no lives and adding too many reckless, unqualified voices to the daily churn.

Says the guy who does Internet writing and just left a job (got fired? failed miserably?) where all he did was write on the Internet. OF COURSE now that Jay is no longer writing solely on the Internet where he had no print presence he takes a shit on those who solely write on the Internet. Jay hates what he can't do or has been rejected from.

Also, who the fuck is Jay Mariotti to decide which voices are reckless and unqualified? Is he suggesting that sports sites do background checks on the people they hire, just to make sure they haven't pleaded "no contest" to a crime? Probably a good idea. Wouldn't want reckless people like that around the news room.

(I'll go ahead and put the "a lot of cursing" tag on this post)

A new century gave rise to sports websites that had to compete against legitimate journalists who actually broke news responsibly,

When the hell has Jay Mariotti ever broken news? He may have done this two decades ago, but he's a talentless asshole who simply writes reactionary pieces at this point in his career. The only news Jay Mariotti breaks is news like "This is my introductory column for a new site and here is why my old site sucks and everyone at it are assholes who don't understand real journalism and how many chances am I going to get to prove I don't suck?"

interviewed subjects, understood libel/slander law and carried the profession with savvy. 

I agree. The "Examiner" never should have hired you. This, we can agree upon. You have no savvy. You have no talent and the opinion you have of yourself is held by exactly 0 other people.

So, to have any chance, many of these new sites went low-brow and hired fans with no training in anything but how to wear a personally customized jersey to an arena, drink three beers and cheer maniacally for one’s team. 

The idea that Jay Mariotti accuses any site of going "low-brow" in hiring writers is just hilarious. The only places that have hired him are places who are so desperate for pageviews that they make a deal with him, but eventually regret it. Going low-brow should simply be called "Hiring Jay Mariotti" just like "Jumping the Shark" is synonymous with a show no longer being any good. AOL, Sports Talk Florida and now the "Examiner" have hired Jay Mariotti and two of the three seemed to regret the decision. Lacking pageviews? Need your site's name in the news? Hire Jay Mariotti. You will hate yourself in the morning though.

ESPN.com, then a digital embryo in a growing corporate empire, lured the eyeballs of sports fans by hiring one. Simmons had some talent, spoke the fan language and understood the fan perspective, so the hire was a good one … as a blogging niche. 

And when Jay is able to differentiate between the bullshit he writes about teams, which he calls journalism simply because he has some access, and a blogger like Simmons (who supposedly never really wanted access though he eventually got some) then he should just inform everyone. An article about how Michael Phelps is a loser for smoking pot or any of the other opinion-only pieces that Jay has written are basically just him blogging with a corporation behind him. His Sports Talk Florida site was as much of a blog as anything Bill Simmons wrote for ESPN.

So when Jay figures out why he is able to be so high and mighty about a blogging niche, I'd love to know, because I'm really confused.

Sports fanboys began to read the fanboy sportswriter. Traffic grew. Advertisers bought in. Simmons wrote two masturbatory books, both best-sellers.

While true, there is a lot of jealously in Jay's words. Remember the time Jay left the "Chicago Sun-Times" because writing on the Internet is where the future of journalism was? Seven years and two failed writing ventures later and Jay is back with print media, his lack of humility is still intact, while his sense of irony is still desperately broken beyond repair.

Bill's books are masturbatory (maybe THAT is why Bill got so many letters from readers discussing masturbation?), but they were both best-sellers and Bill has consistently sold books and managed to advance his own little empire. Bill Simmons is who Jay Mariotti wants to be.

Jay wanted to write on the Internet with AOL. He failed.

Jay wanted to write AND have his face on ESPN so he can be taken seriously. He failed. 

Jay wanted a multimedia empire with Sports Talk Florida. He failed.

Bill Simmons had/has the site that Jay desperately wanted to build. Jay wanted to be the editor-in-chief and get the validation as a real writer and editor that he so desperately craves. That was his goal with the Sports Talk Florida site. Bill did it without the training Jay thought he should have and he did it while making a ton of money in the process. This is Jay's jealousy talking. Jay, are you a little jel?

Suddenly, it didn’t matter if he never broke news and never quoted anyone but himself and his cousin. 

What's the deal with Jay and his need for quotes? Any person hired as a beat writer or a press pass can get quotes. This doesn't mean this person is a respected journalist.

ESPN created the original fanboy sportswriter, spawning a generation of fanboy sportswriters who also don’t know how to break news responsibly, interview subjects and cover sports properly. 

Again, when Jay Mariotti starts breaking news then I would like to be present for this. I can't recall a single story that Jay has ever broken, unless he wants to count the news that he is a coward and will hide when confronted by an MLB manager as breaking news, but that's just something most people expected of Jay anyway. It wasn't exactly news.

Friday, ESPN uncreated Simmons, choosing not to renew his contract.

At long last, an embarrassing business might have a chance again. 

Bill Simmons is responsible for a lot of things I don't like about sports journalism, but he isn't the person keeping the business of sports journalism in the doldrums. If anyone contributed significantly to this then it was Jay Mariotti with his hateful, reactionary screeds posing as columns and refusal to treat co-workers, athletes or the public's sense of decency with any sense of respect.

The network has only itself to blame, enabling Simmons and turning him loose to the point he was uncontrollable.

I don't know, it seems like Simmons was controlled fairly well by ESPN through the various suspensions and reprimands they imposed on him. He's an opinionated guy who makes an easy target for some within his own organization.

There is a difference between covering sports with fierce independence — my philosophy — and being a megalomaniacal jackass like Simmons, who never took a law class and, thus, didn’t understand why the company suspended him for referring to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell as “a liar.”

Jay Mariotti keeps talking about how other writers "haven't ever taken a law class" like this is supposed to be a huge differentiating factor between him and others. Jay Mariotti may have had court-mandated counseling or taken a law class, but this doesn't make him Justice Scalia by any measure. If Jay HAD taken a law class and understood the law then he would understand Bill Simmons calling Goodell "a liar" probably wouldn't meet the level required by law as libel (as a statement made on a broadcast would qualify as being). Whatever though, Jay thinks because he took one law class that he's now qualified to write legal briefs and fancies himself a sort of journalistic Matlock.

Goodell may have lied about what he knew in the Ray Rice case, but Simmons did not have incontrovertible proof, which means the league could have sued the network for megamillions — and may have done so if ESPN wasn’t a broadcasting bedfellow.

If Jay Mariotti had taken more than one law class then he would know that the statement being made by Bill could be seen as an opinion and not a statement of fact (as Bill could easily claim his calling Goodell "a liar" was an opinion). The fact the comment is an opinion can be a defense to libel, and there is a higher threshold for a public figure to prove libel due to the public figure having to prove actual damages. There is a reason President Obama doesn't sue any member of Congress or random person who accuses him of lying and that's because it's a high threshold to meet and not worth his time. The same would go for Roger Goodell. I'm sure Jay knows this since he's taken a single law class and all.

I feel like I'm correct about this libel issue and if there are real attorneys out there who have taken more than one year of law school or a single law class and I am wrong, please do correct me. 

Simmons also was unequipped to be editor-in-chief of Grantland.com — 

I disagree entirely. I have my issues with Bill Simmons, but he's put a really good team around him at Grantland. I don't like every member of the team, but the site is informative even if it's not a huge financial success. Considering Bill had no past experience as an editor-in-chief, he's done a pretty good job at making Grantland what he wants it to be. His writing still sucks of course. Don't get me wrong.

Anyone else would have been fired after the Goodell and transgender mistakes. Simmons kept his job both times only because ESPN president John Skipper doesn’t acknowledge his own errors until he must.

At ESPN, other people who work there have said dumber things on air then to call Roger Goodell "a liar." The transgender thing was a big mistake and representative of Bill's lack of experience as editor-in-chief. That should not have happened. Still, I can't help but think Jay is jealous of Bill and that's why he's writing all of this.

Simmons destroyed the commissioner because he didn’t immediately announce a suspension in the Tom Brady deflated-balls scandal, and while it’s fair to wonder why Goodell is waiting, his weekend pause doesn’t warrant a nuclear explosion.

So Jay thinks Goodell deserved criticism, but not harsh criticism. Because Roger Goodell has dealt with so many issues over the past year in such a way that no harsh criticism of him should be allowed. I'm sure Jay is the guy who thinks he can do criticism without a nuclear explosion. Because Jay has proven he can criticize without his criticism taking on a life of it's own.

I’ve had my squabbles with corporate management. But my complaints were legitimate — 

Everyone thinks their squabbles are legitimate because everyone thinks they are right in these squabbles. No sane person has an issue with management and admits they are wrong the whole time. So yes, I'm sure Jay thinks his complains were legitimate.

a Chicago radio station demanded I sign a sheet of paper that I wouldn’t criticize the Bulls or White Sox, which would have painted me into an ethical corner had I agreed. When I refused, I was fired the day after Christmas. 

Haha! So replace "Chicago radio station" with "ESPN" and replace "criticize the Bulls or White Sox" with "Roger Goodell" and Jay was in the same situation that Bill Simmons was in. Of course he doesn't see it that way, because Jay's complaints are so legit.

My bosses at the Chicago Sun-Times had business ties with certain sports owners in town, and when they asked me to soften my opinions about those owners, I said no.

This is almost the exact same situation that Bill Simmons was in when he was asked by ESPN to soften his opinion on the NFL and Roger Goodell.

By calling him a liar, and then challenging the network to reprimand him after doing so, Simmons no longer was fighting a free-speech war. He was leaving himself vulnerable to a mountainous lawsuit. 

Oh man, but he was not. Again, I recognize Jay has taken a solitary law class, but Roger Goodell was not going to sue ESPN and Bill Simmons for his comments. He has enough PR issues without suing a popular writer for libel. It would be the equivalent of PR suicide to take a public, heavy-handed approach in reaction to what people were saying about him. It wasn't happening, despite Jay's vast legal knowledge saying it would.

Before he works again, the fanboy needs to take a law class or two. The Internet has enabled recklessness by idiot entrepreneurs — such as the assclown at Gawker Media — who think they can publish lies about anyone because it’s difficult for a public figure to win a libel suit against a web publication.

So Jay, with your vast law experience, has a public figure won a libel suit against Gawker media who has published lies? Has it happened?

The Bleacher Report entrepreneurs, too, are sports fans, making them fanboys much like … Bill Simmons. 

Well obviously Bill Simmons is responsible for the success of Bleacher Report and Deadspin. Naturally. Bill has influenced writers, but he's also responsible for some good writing that is being overlooked by Jay in his attempts to crap on every co-worker he's ever worked with. I should feel lucky that Jay isn't still taking a shit on Roger Ebert's grave.

One of America’s best sportswriters, Bob Kravitz, broke the Deflategate story in his new position at an Indianapolis TV station/website. After the Ted Wells report was issued, Kravitz wrote of unprofessionalism he encountered in the New England media the last few months: “The people who disappointed me most were the folks at The [Boston] Globe’s website, Boston.com. They are renowned pom-pom wearers, so it wasn’t a surrpise. But I was struck at the enthusiasm they displayed while carrying the Patriots’ water. It shocked me that a great newspaper like the Boston Globe would employ such rank amateurs and cheerleaders. Sad.” 

Where did Simmons grow up? Boston. 

From who did younger Boston.com sportswriters learn? Simmons.

Aaron Hernandez was just convicted of murder and may have committed more than one murder, all while playing for the New England Patriots. Tom Brady was revealed to have doctored footballs by deflating them while a member of the New England Patriots. Bill Belichick and the Patriot organization were shown to have been spying on opposing teams several years ago in order to gain an upperhand.

Where did Simmons grow up? Boston. (Except for when he moved to Connecticut of course) What is his favorite NFL team? The New England Patriots. This is not a coincidence either. Bill set up an atmosphere where Aaron Hernandez could commit murder and cheating was acceptable within the Patriots organization.

From whom did Brady, Belichick and Hernandez read glowing words about the organization and it's greatness which caused such hubris? In Bill Simmons' columns.

ESPN also killed sportswriting when it gave a major platform to a statistics geek, Nate Silver, failing to realize that sport is best covered via the exploration of human emotion, not the joyless crunching of numbers.

It's not like Jay is capable of crapping on just one person in a column. He loves to spread his jealously and anger at being rejected by ESPN on every employee within the organization. It's still hilarious to me that Jay holds himself up as this journalistic ideal that every other journalist must meet by getting quotes, taking one law class and exploring human emotion, as if knowing how to say these things means Jay is actually good at doing them.

In the process, the network chased off Rick Reilly, only the greatest sportswriter of his generation and someone who broke news responsibly, covered games and press conferences on site, interviewed subjects, understood libel law and carried the profession with savvy.

Jay is very, very, very concerned about sportswriters knowing libel law. And if making sure while ON-AIR he gets credit for something and plagiarizing his own columns counts as savvy, then Rick Reilly was full of it. Of course, he was also full of something else. 

Next, ESPN is trying an African-American site with an editor, Jason Whitlock, who isn’t liked by many African-American writers

As has been noted repeatedly by Deadspin, but I'm sure Jay would like to gloss over this little fact. 

I appreciated my eight years at ESPN; the TV show was fun, and when I was on, the ratings were much higher and the banter much livelier.

"EVERYTHING WAS BETTER IN THE PAST WHEN I WAS AROUND! SINCE I'VE BEEN GONE NOTHING IS THE SAME!"

Of course everything was better when Jay Mariotti was around. I wouldn't expect him to believe anything different. Most people believe their time at an organization was the golden era of that organization simply because that's how their own ego tends to view things in a more self-centric way.

It’s a political loony bin where Skipper, like Goodell, can’t maintain consistency in issuing disciplinary punishments. Seems he finally got one right Friday. 

Watch out Jay! I know you know with your vast amount of law classes you have taken that you had better be careful calling Roger Goodell not consistent in his punishment. You wouldn't want to be fired in order to avoid a lawsuit.

And, no, I would not hire Bill Simmons at this news organization if he applied. Our standards are too high. 

I don't like Bill Simmons' writing, but if the "Examiner" was given the option of hiring Simmons, but dumping Mariotti, I think I know which direction they would go in. It's funny that Jay thinks the "Examiner's" standards are too high when his presence at the paper proves this statement as absolutely false. 

5 comments Bill Simmons Tackles Whether Tim Duncan Should Retire in a Retro-Diary, Except Not Really

As you have heard unless you were living under a rock (not that there is anything wrong with that), Bill Simmons is out at ESPN. He may be out NOW or he may be out in September when his contract runs out. So another one bites the dust. Gregg Easterbrook is out at ESPN and I have no clue if TMQ will show up anywhere else. It was saved a few years ago after ESPN discarded Gregg for the first time, but who knows if another site will pick it up? I know Bill Simmons is going to land somewhere else, and though I don't think he enjoys writing as much as he used to, I'm sure he'll be writing for whatever site he joins or creates. For the time being, he's not writing for Grantland. So it seems Bill won't keep his mailbag promise during the playoffs. One of his last columns for Grantland is about Tim Duncan. As I explained in the last playoff mailbag Bill did, he loves writing about Duncan. I can only imagine how much he would write about Duncan if the Celtics had actually drafted him.

I was remiss a few weeks ago when I listed the contrivances Bill uses in his columns in place of actually writing a column. There has to be a contrivance. I forgot to mention the contrivance of a retro-diary. It's the lazier version of a running diary. Sort of a "Watch this game a few days later and describe what happened" sort of thing. So rather than simply write a column about "The Tim Duncan Question," Bill has to use a retro-diary as a contrivance for this discussion. It's such a (temporary) loss for this blog if Bill is done writing for Grantland. The list of those I can mock on a consistent basis is being pared down of late.

When my father retired as a school superintendent in 2009, only a few months before his 62nd birthday, I remember friends and family members being surprised that he didn’t stay longer. “You always want to get out a year early, not one or two years too late,” my dad always explained.

While I understand that Bill Simmons doesn't believe anything has occurred prior to his noticing it occurred, this quote has been said in different ways by multiple people through the years. Bill's father did not say it, though I understand that Bill believes because his father said it once then he obviously invented this line.

And if that’s true … what do we do about Tim Duncan?

I don't think there is anything "we" can do about Tim Duncan. He will either to decide to continue playing basketball or retire. "We" have no say in the decision.

Maybe Saturday’s Clippers defeat wasn’t as gut-wrenching as San Antonio’s improbable 2013 Finals collapse, but Duncan’s murky future gave Game 7 a different kind of desperation. He scored 27 points, grabbed 11 rebounds, drained two game-tying, über-clutch free throws with eight seconds to play … and missed blocking Chris Paul’s last-second, double-clutch, series-winning banker by the length of maybe two knuckles.

Otherwise known by most normal human beings as "two inches."

Ten years ago, he absolutely would have blocked that shot.
 
Five years ago, he probably would have blocked it.

Three years ago, he could have blocked it, but maybe not.

Four years ago, he probably would have blocked it, but ask again later.

Thirty years ago, he would not have blocked it.

Fifty years ago, Tim Duncan did not exist as a living, breathing human.

Was that the last play of his career? Duncan isn’t saying yet. Of the 14 greatest NBA players ever — Jordan, then Russell, then Kareem, then Bird and Magic and Duncan and LeBron, then Wilt and Kobe, then West and Oscar, then Hakeem and Shaq and Moses — 10 of the 14 retired at least one or two years too late.

The lesson here is that uber-competitive athletes tend to not understand when they are supposed to retire, because they are uber-competitive athletes who have based their lives on being better than everyone else at their chosen profession.

So only the great Bill Russell definitely got out early — he dropped the mic after winning back-to-back titles and beating Wilt, West AND Elgin.

BILL RUSSELL KNOWS WHEN TO RETIRE BETTER THAN YOUR FAVORITE ATHLETE KNOWS WHEN TO RETIRE! NO ONE DENIES THIS!

So those are the stakes for Tim Duncan. Leave right now. Leave everyone wanting more. Leave people saying, “Keep playing! You’re still good at this!” Leave with your legs still working. (Fine, one of your legs.) Leave knowing that, by any calculation, you were one of the best two-way players ever and one of the most beloved teammates ever. Leave with five titles, two MVPs and an astonishing 15 All-NBA team nods.

Leave after your normally gruff coach said this about you …

“I continue to be amazed by Tim Duncan. He was our most consistent player in the playoffs, at 39. He needed a little more help and I feel badly he didn’t get it. It wasn’t for lack of trying. Even our players shake their heads at his performance at both ends of the floor. He wants it badly and does it the right way. It’s not about bells and whistles and grunting and dancing and doing commercials and all of that stuff. He just does it quietly and that’s why we feel badly when we don’t get it done for him.”

That’s why we feel badly when we don’t get it done for him. Eighteen years and they’re still saying this about Timmaaay???

18 years? Something similar was said about David Robinson during the beginning of Duncan's career and I don't ever recall "Let's get this done for Tim Duncan" being a rallying cry during the first decade of Duncan's career either. But hey, Bill's memory is better than mine I'm sure.

What if he’s leaving two years early? What if he has one more vintage beauty in him?

What if Duncan retires and gets eaten by a grizzly bear while camping in the woods with his family because he couldn't outrun the bear due to no longer being in basketball shape? What if he comes back and has just an "okay" year and then retires at the perfect time for him? (Bill Simmons checks word count to see if he needs to kill more space)

Before he decides, I really hope he watches the last 12 minutes and 10 seconds of Game 7 again. Maybe it will get his juices flowing. Here’s a retro diary to help fill in the blanks.

Yes, Bill is here to help Tim Duncan by providing the contrivance of a retro-diary that Duncan is sure to never actually read. The idea that every NBA player doesn't read his mailbag columns probably would come as a shock to Bill. But hey, here's a retro-diary for old time's sake.

0:10 remaining, third quarter (Clips 76, Spurs 76) With Chris Paul resting on the bench, the Clips just “blew” a four-point lead (three missed 3s, one turnover) and have a foul to give … Manu Ginobili knows it … only Austin Rivers doesn’t realize that Manu knows it … leading to the rarely seen “fouled in the act of shooting a 3 from 65 feet away” call … leading to the incredible sight of Rivers and his son executing matching disbelief/sprint/stomp skids.

So why would Tim Duncan watch these 10 seconds again? This play has nothing to do with him at all and is just an attempt for Bill to mention he was at the game (in case you missed his previous column where he gnashed his teeth over his fate when trying to choose between attending this Game 7 or the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight) while being clever. This play had nothing to do with Duncan.

0:00 remaining, third quarter (Clips 79, Spurs 78) Paul comes back, dribbles over midcourt, takes three steps (no travel call — a pseudo-makeup), banks in a 37-footer and immediately stares down referee Monty McCutchen for the NBA’s first-ever one-legged, double-clutch, 37-foot F.U. banker.

And if bad NBA officiating which entails one bad call resulting in the officials doubling down and making another bad call as a "make up" doesn't bring Tim Duncan back from the brink of retirement then I don't know what will.

Yet another reason why Duncan should retire: Tony Parker might not be Tony Parker anymore. Check out these playoff numbers …

2013: 36.4 mpg, 20.6 ppg, 7.0 apg, 45.8% FG, 5.3 FTA, 21.5 PER
2014: 31.3 mpg, 17.4 ppg, 4.8 apg, 48.6% FG, 3.0 FTA, 15.8 PER
2015: 30.0 mpg, 10.9 ppg, 3.6 apg, 36.3% FG, 2.4 FTA, 6.3 PER

But if the Spurs have Patty Mills ready to fill the point guard role for Parker and they draft Tyus Jones then all will be right in the world.

Even if an Achilles strain hampered Parker, isn’t that the problem with aging point guards? It’s always something, right? 

Great point based off an astute observation. With aging point guards (athletes) it's always something (as these athletes get older their bodies are more prone to breaking down). Maybe Tony Parker is the one who should realize it's time to retire.

11:04 (Clips 82-81) Three-pointer, Chris Paul. Quick tangent …

Yes, quick tangent away from the quick tangent about Tony Parker's regression away from the supposed column topic on why Tim Duncan should not retire quite yet. At some point, the reason Duncan should not/should retire (other than "Your point guard is getting old") will be given, right?

In 1976, I was there when a thoroughly banged-up John Havlicek made his famous off-one-leg running banker in the triple-OT game against Phoenix. I watched Kevin McHale play on a broken foot for four straight rounds in ’87. I watched Larry Legend submit multiple Hardwood Classics moments in ’91 and ’92 while wearing a disturbingly bulky back brace. I watched a gimpy Wade throw on his Batman costume and help out Superman LeBron in those last two 2013 Finals games. But watching Chris Paul’s trial-and-error routine with that faulty hamstring, once he returned to Game 7 Saturday, ranks right up there. He just wouldn’t let that thing derail him.

Bill WAS THERE to experience these things. I thought I remember McHale playing on the broken foot and Larry Bird trying to play with a balky back, but I don't remember because I WASN'T THERE like Bill was. His being there, means he has a perspective that no one else can manage to have on these events. He's more special than you and don't question it because it's true because Bill's parents told him that all the time when he was growing up about how special he was.

These guys happen to be otherworldly athletes; that’s why we watch. They make our dreams come true. 

I really wish Bill would stop constantly referring to "we" and "our" in his columns, as if he speaks for all sports fans. For a guy who is known for a writing style that features a lot of first person accounts where he is JUST LIKE US, Bill seems to write in the third person quite a lot. His writing style has gone from "He's just like us!" to "He's just like how he wants to perceive us as being in order to make a point he wants to prove!" 

It’s incredible to watch. I have been going to Clippers games for four years; that was easily the best game I’ve ever seen Chris Paul play. It was like watching someone win a NASCAR race with three tires. He had no margin for error. None.

Bill will have to tell us what being at the game was like, because obviously on television it was impossible to see that Chris Paul was even hurt. I'm glad Bill was there to relay stories such as this, and I'm glad he has such little respect for his readers' ability to see Chris Paul was hurt, because that means "we" get to experience the game through the eyes of Bill Simmons. It's like viewing sports through the eyes of God.

And if anyone thought Bill wasn't going to write about this Game 7 as if it were the greatest game in the history of sports, then these people were wrong. Granted, it was a great game, but even if it wasn't then Bill would have pretended it was so he can justify his decision to not attend the Manny-Floyd (I like using first names better because it sounds like two really old men fighting) fight.

He’s the best point guard of his generation. Game 7 ended up being his submission to the “Best Point Guards Ever” club — his version of Isiah’s slightly-more-incredible Game 6 of the 1988 Finals. A game that I absolutely revere even though a Bad Boy Piston was involved.

It was just a few short years ago that Bill called Rajon Rondo the best point guard in the NBA. I tried to find where he stated this, but I could not. So believe me or don't. Bill did state this in a column during the season when Chris Paul was injured, so obviously Bill was making an observation based entirely on immediacy. I wish I could find it, because I stated that Chris Paul is still the best point guard in the NBA. Anyway, Bill wants people to forget he ever wrote that.

By the way, is this column about Tim Duncan or Chris Paul?

Last point: After seeing how badly CP3 wanted Saturday’s game, it was fascinating to watch how badly Floyd and Manny didn’t want their fight. They made an exceptionally lucrative arrangement to stage a friendly 12-round boxing exhibition, our first-ever Happy To Be There fight of the century.

Bill streeeeeeeeeeeeeetches to talk about the Floyd-Manny fight in some capacity.

This was the good-natured, hate-free, low-stakes battle that Drago and Creed were supposed to have had.

Isn't it interesting how Bill spent a portion of his last mailbag talking about what a huge fan of boxing he is, yet the only parallel to the Floyd-Manny fight is to a fictional boxing match? I feel like if Bill really was a huge boxing fan (instead of just suddenly becoming one a few weeks ago) then he could think of a real-life parallel and not a parallel based on a fictional fight.

When Manny fell behind heading into the last four rounds, you never felt his urgency — because he didn’t have any. That dude had both arms raised from the moment they told him how much money he was making. Game 7 wasn’t the best undercard for Floyd and Manny, that’s for sure.

Of course, Manny was hurt, but since Bill isn't a boxing fan anymore then he probably doesn't care.

10:06 (Clips 84-84) Missed Kawhi 3, Diaw rebound, Manu 3 (good!), Griffin turnover, Spurs fast break … and Kawhi blows a twisting reverse layup that leads to a Matt Barnes dunk. I didn’t love Kawhi’s last two games — no-showed Game 6, never went full Sharktopus in Game 7. Does he trust his own talent yet?

Or perhaps he is just a really good player that can't carry the Spurs team long-term when other players on the team are struggling? By the way, still no mention of Duncan. So is this column just a cheap excuse to talk about the exciting Game 7 that Bill attended? Probably.

8:27 (Clips 88-87) More back-and-forth action crests with CP3 hitting a jumper, Duncan abusing DeAndre on the low post (he’s officially in Game 6 2013 Finals Jedi mode), then Blake pulling off a reverse layup for a three-point play (“hrrrrrrr-HAHHHHHHHH”).

Son of a bitch, Bill is just giving the play-by-play of the game right now. It's nearly impossible to stay awake. And what the fuck is "hrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-HAHHHHHHHHHHHHH"? What the fuck is that? If this were Bill's last column for Grantland then it would be fitting because this is one of his more obvious mail-in jobs.

That happened in the best two Game 7s I ever caught in person: 1981 Boston-Philly and 1987 Boston-Detroit. Everyone just kept climbing the ladder as the fans glanced around in disbelief. 

I have watched Game 7 of the 1987 Eastern Conference Finals probably 100+ times in my life (easily), so I didn't need to catch the game in person to know how exciting it was.

This was the exact point in Saturday’s game when it started happening — right here. (You’re gonna miss those moments, Timmay.)

Yes, Tim Duncan. You will miss these moments, because this column is about you. Except, it's not.

Then Jamal Crawford throws the ball away and fouls Parker. Let the record show that Crawford scored nine crucial points during the game’s darkest stretch for Clips fans,

So yeah, Jamal might have stunk in Round 1 — 11.7 points, 38 percent shooting, 20 percent from 3 and a ghastly 8.86 PER. But those nine no-CP3 points were nine of the biggest points of his career. The Clips don’t win Game 7 without them.

The Clippers don't win Game 7 without them, mostly because if Crawford didn't score 9 points then the Spurs would have won due to having lost in reality by only two points.

5:58 (Spurs 95-92) Good God, it’s Hack-A-DJ!!!!!! He makes only one of two. Can you really give DeAndre Jordan a $120 million, five-year extension when he’s become such a free throw liability that he’s headed for a Game 7 crunch-time benching?

I probably wouldn't give DeAndre Jordan $120 million regardless, but yes, an NBA team will do this.

5:26 (Spurs 97-94) Duncan scores and CP3 bricks an 18-footer, leading to the game’s second Coulda Woulda Shoulda momentum swing play--Parker grabbed the rebound, only he forgot that Chris Paul loves sneak-picking pockets after missed Clippers shots. Whoops. Pop flipped out after this one. Not protecting a big defensive rebound against Chris Paul — that’s like not moving the leftover pork chops far enough away from the counter if you have a dog.

Great analogy Bill. Not protecting the basketball from Chris Paul is EXACTLY like leaving pork chops close to the edge of the counter where a dog can get them.

5:26 (Spurs 97-94) Barnes comes in for DeAndre. Hold this thought.

It's your thought, Bill. You can do whatever you want with it. "Hold that thought" usually goes for when another person is having a thought, no?

4:00 (Spurs 101-100) Diaw to Duncan inside for a layup, Redick’s second straight 3 (off a nice pick from Blake), Parker with an off-balance banker. Boom, boom, boom. Dizzying. Such a high level of hoops. And the subtweet conversation of this epic run … no DeAndre!

I'm still confused as to what Tim Duncan has to do with this play-by-play that Bill is giving. If Duncan is supposed to miss playing in an extremely exciting Game 7, and that's why he should come back for another year, well these exciting games don't come along every year. Again, in reality Bill is only trying to frame his lazy play-by-play around Tim Duncan's potential retirement. Bill had made the decision to do a retro-diary and needed to frame it around something or else the laziness of it might become clearer.

Doc willingly sacrificed rim protection and defensive rebounding to spread the floor and avoid the Seventh Circle of Hell (a.k.a. Game 7 Crunch-Time Hack-A-DJ). Say what you want about Doc, but this decision took a set of watermelon-size balls. I loved it.

Bill just asked if an NBA team can give Jordan $120 million when he can't be on the court in crunch-time, then he says it takes balls for Rivers to pull Jordan in crunch-time. Was it a gutsy decision or a decision to take advantage of the Clippers outside shooting and move a liability off the court? So Rivers' move makes sense and didn't take a huge set of balls, right?

3:34 (Clips 102-101) Danny Green fouls a driving/careering/fearless Blake and Griffin drains both...How many times was Blake gasping for air on the bench like he’d just finished a triathlon? Nobody played harder. He finally figured it out.

Great power forwards aren’t that complicated — once they hit their playoff peaks, they start going for 24 and 12 every night and that’s just how it goes.

(Bengoodfella chokes to death on hyperbole)

Look up Malone, Barkley, Pettit, Duncan, C-Webb, Garnett, Elgin … it doesn’t matter. Those guys were getting 24 and 12 at their peaks. Blake took it up a notch: For the series, he sent in his 42 Club application by averaging 24, 13 and 7, with a 26.0 PER, which has never been done for an entire NBA postseason.

Ah yes, no Bill Simmons column would be complete without Bill referencing something else he has written or referencing a contrivance he had previously created. By the way, is this column about Tim Duncan or is it about DeAndre Jordan's foul shooting, Blake Griffin, or Chris Paul? I'm becoming confused.

Maybe it IS time for Duncan to get out. Like winter in Game of Thrones, Blake Griffin is coming.

Except winter is never fucking coming in "Game of Thrones," so according to this parallel, the discussion will mostly revolve around Blake Griffin coming but it never actually happens.

2:50 (Spurs 103-102) Diaw misses a 5-footer, Barnes blocks two Green putbacks (TWO!), then Duncan makes a layup AND gets fouled by Griffin, followed by the textbook Duncan/Undertaker dead-eyed shuffle/stomp-away/eye-bulge routine toward the sideline as his bench erupts. Just a stupefyingly competitive sequence that doubles as DeAndre’s best case for a $120 million extension, even before Duncan misses the free throw, Diaw grabs the rebound (PAY DEANDRE!!!!!),

So DeAndre Jordan should get $120 million because the Clippers don't have any other good defensive rebounders? That type of logic is how two years from now the Clippers will be looking to rid themselves of Jordan's contract. It's terrible logic. Simply because the Clippers don't currently have good defensive rebounders means they should go pay Jordan $120 million any more than it means they should find (through free agency) better defensive rebounders to come off the bench.

2:12 (Spurs 105, Clips 105) In the words of Mike Breen, “Bang!!!!!!!!!!” 

In the words of me, "Why the hell are you writing an entire column that consists of play-by-play of that game that provides no further insight into what happened on the court?"

Not since Robert Horry’s heyday has such a statistically shaky, up-and-down, pseudo-journeyman doubled as such a valuable you-can-go-to-war-with-him playoff guy. He made six or seven huge fourth-quarter plays and vindicated Doc’s decision to bench DeAndre. Of anyone who’s ever been married to a real-life reality show character, Barnes is the one you’d want in a do-or-die basketball game — narrowly edging Mauricio from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

I’ve seen Mauricio in action during multiple catfights and near altercations — the dude never loses his composure. Cool as a cucumber.

Yes, anyone who has ever seen that show has seen him during the catfights and near altercations. Bill Simmons does realize other humans have television sets doesn't he? Like, other people were able to view Game 7 of the Spurs-Clippers series and can watch Bravo television shows as well. He isn't the only one who can view and experience these types of things.

The only Spurs who played as well in the 2015 playoffs as they did in the 2014 playoffs: Duncan and Mills. Who woulda thunk? Maybe that’s one more reason for Duncan to come back — new blood! Free agents!

Because the Spurs are well-known for having a lot of roster turnover between seasons. I'm sure it will be attractive for Duncan to come back knowing he'll get to play next to guys he hasn't played with for his entire career and there is a small chance he'll play in an exciting Game 7. Where can he sign up?

0:55 (Spurs 107, Clips 107) Kawhi makes a sweet hesitation move, finds the right shot (an open 12-footer) and totally short-arms it. Rebound, Griffin. (No DeAndre — still!) In the last three second halves of this series, Kawhi shot 3-for-23 and made only one shot that wasn’t a layup. That’s why, in Monday’s end-of-season press conference, Pop broke down Kawhi’s development as a future franchise guy by saying, “It’s a matter of understanding that it will be expected night after night after night.”

Bill Simmons has been pushing Kawhi Leonard as one of the next great superstars in the NBA and even comparing him to Scottie Pippen. But now when he sees evidence this isn't true he is all, "Well Coach Pop said that Leonard has to prove he can do great things on a nightly basis," which is something anyone who had not already compared Leonard to a Hall of Famer knew. I'm sure Bill thinks that he is informing his audience of something new and revelatory by stating Leonard can't consistently be the MVP of the NBA Finals, when in fact it's Bill who needed to be informed of this.

Even if that next-level leap will eventually come, much like it just came for Blake (three years older), Duncan can’t wait around forever. I blame myself for throwing the Apex Scottie comparisons around.

Yes Bill, it's your fault. You made Kawhi Leonard not take "the leap" because you compared him to Scottie Pippen and when Leonard read your column/mailbag (as every professional athlete does, naturally) he thought too much of himself. Perhaps you can simply blame yourself for throwing the comparison to Pippen around and admitting that at this point it was a dumb comparison.

Kawhi isn’t all the way there yet. By the time he gets there, Duncan will be gone. Alas.

Again, it's laughable this column is titled "The Tim Duncan Question" when it seems this retro-diary is about everybody else in the Spurs-Clippers series except Duncan.

Monty McCutcheon belatedly calls Duncan for a body foul about 1.3 seconds after CP3 releases his missed jumper. Ludicrous whistle. When they no-called Barnes’s body block on Parker at 1:23, for me, that was our under-the-radar sign that the players would decide this game. Nope. Pop waves in disgust and turns back to his bench, like he was watching a meter maid writing him a ticket, said “Screw it,” and left the ticket on his car to get coffee. Go figure — Team Whine & Cheese got the shakiest big call of Round 1. Had the roles been reversed, they would have had to airlift a purple Doc out of Staples Center.

(Yes, this was Coulda Woulda Shoulda Play No. 6. And yes, Chris made both free throws — giving him an astonishing 26 straight for the postseason. Timeout, Spurs.)

Throughout this retro-diary, Bill talks about Coulda Woulda Should Plays, which is just a way to restate that certain plays could go either way and change the complexion of the game. Bill is taking an old idea about 50/50 calls or plays and re-naming them in order to make it seem like it's an original thought of his own.

0:08 (Clips 109, Spurs 109) The Spurs run a beauty of a play, getting Duncan rolling to the basket off a switch and forcing Redick to foul him. That means Duncan, hovering at 50 percent for the series, now has to save San Antonio’s season from the free throw line. In the moment, I found myself rooting for him like he was a Boston guy. You can’t go out this way. You have to make these.

This retro-diary is just absolutely riveting. If the sign of quality writing isn't play-by-play of a sporting event with the writer's own personal thoughts inserted into the narrative, then I don't know what is the sign of quality sportswriting. That's the beauty of Bill's writing. You have to give a shit about Bill and what he thinks or else it's wasted time reading what he writes. Everything he writes is framed around his point of view where he imposes his views as being the view of others as well.

Additional Point No. 2: I don’t see how the same guy who made THOSE free throws can retire...But I went to four of those seven games and didn’t see any laboring.

I watched from television and didn't see any laboring. Of course, I'm only watching on television, while Bill WAS THERE, so because Bill lives in a world where those people who watch sports on television aren't actually watching the sporting event then he knows more than anyone else does.

NBA big men and wrestlers age the same way — they get stiff and lose their balance. Happens to everyone. When I went to WrestleMania 31 and watched the actual Undertaker wrestling, guess what?

You tried to subtly brag about attending a sporting event without your audience knowing that you were trying to brag?
  
They played 341 minutes in this series; the Clippers took the lead for good at the 340:59 mark. The Spurs knew what play was coming, and so did the fans, only it didn’t matter. What’s amazing is that Paul always seemed to think it was going in. Everyone went bonkers, obviously. I have been in the building for some ear-splitting, everyone-loses-their-shit NBA reactions, ranging from Havlicek’s aforementioned banker (the triple-OT game) to Bird Steals the Ball to Ray Allen’s 3 to a slew of others. Really, there’s no “loudest” sound. Once you reach Everyone Loses Their Shit level, that’s it. You can’t get higher.

Cue to three years from now when Bill talks about he attended a Celtics game where the crowd was the loudest he's ever heard while at a sporting event and this loudness can never be topped.

CP3 played brilliantly all series, injured himself at the worst possible time, rallied back and ended up making history. And that seven-game series/battle/war/life experience brought that whole team closer together. Don’t sleep on the Clippers.

They were one of eight teams left in the NBA Playoffs, so it's hard to sleep on them.

Our final score: Clippers 111, Spurs 109. A.k.a. the Chris Paul game.

And I don’t care if it was Round 1. That’s one of the 12 best seven-game series since 1976’s ABA-NBA merger if you’re ranking for star power, general story lines, legacy-related story lines, closeness of the games, atmosphere, and iconic games/plays/moments …

So has the Tim Duncan question been answered yet or no? Or was the whole "Here's why Tim Duncan shouldn't retire" just a way for Bill to do a retro-diary play-by-play of Game 7 in the Spurs-Clippers series without seeming like he's just writing a play-by-play of a sporting event?

Honorable Mention: 1978 Bullets-Sonics, 1980 Sonics-Bucks, 1981 Sixers-Bucks, 1988 Mavs-Lakers, 1990 Blazers-Spurs, 1992 Bulls-Knicks, 1993 Suns-Sonics, 1994 Suns-Rockets, 1995 Magic-Pacers, 2000 Knicks-Heat, 2000 Lakers-Blazers, 2004 Kings-Wolves, 2009 Celts-Bulls (lost its “Best Round 1 Series Ever” belt), 2010 Celts-Lakers, 2012 Celts-Heat.

Only three of these series involved the Celtics! That's it!

The Top 12: 1979 Bullets-Spurs (Ice blows a 3-1 lead), 1981 Sixers-Celtics (the championship belt holder), 1984 Celts-Lakers (four iconic games!), 1987 Bucks-Celtics (best second-rounder ever),

You'll never guess this, but Bill knows the 1987 Bucks-Celtics series was the best second-rounder ever because he WAS THERE.

Our lost great 1980s series — they averaged 242.5 points per game, played an OT game and a double-OT game, and Milwaukee led by eight in Game 7 with six minutes to go. Oh, and Jack Sikma’s hair, Paul Mokeski’s mustache, Larry Bird’s hair, Randy Breuer’s body and Kevin McHale’s body were involved! I went to Game 7 and it’s one of my 10 favorite games I have ever attended. So there.

See?

1987 Celts-Pistons (insane), 1988 Lakers-Pistons (doubly insane), 1995 Pacers-Knicks (Reggie vs. Ewing), 1998 Pacers-Bulls (MJ taken to the brink), 2002 Lakers-Kings (the NBA goes WWE), 2006 Mavs-Spurs (the lost great 21st-century series), 2013 Heat-Spurs (a life experience) and 2015 Spurs-Clips.

Only 4 of these 12 series involved the Celtics. That's it!

That’s an unassailable list.

Don't even bother assailing this list. It's unassailable. Questioning Bill Simmons about this list of great series is like questioning the Pope about his commitment to God. I love how Bill states his own list is "unassailable." He's a guy who truly believes the bullshit he writes is the gospel on sports. The ego he has...

The Spurs blew Game 6 at home, couldn’t put Game 7 away and lost when a great player made an even greater shot. Either that was the best possible way for Duncan to go out (with a bang, still playing well) or the worst possible way (because it was, to borrow a poker term, something of an unlucky beat). Only he knows.

So … should Duncan retire?

Oh, so the supposed topic of discussion for this retro-diary is going to be discussed at some point?...but not right now of course.

If it feels like a sports movie moment, that’s because it’s basically the plot in For Love of the Game,

Except it's not the plot of that movie at all, because Kevin Costner threw a perfect game and his team won, while Tim Duncan's team lost. But anyway, I'm sure this is an unassailable comparison so I'm not sure why I bother assailing it.

everyone’s favorite baseball movie that’s locked in the basement of a reprehensible romance drama.

EVERYONE'S favorite! It's Bill's favorite, so of course that means he speaks for everyone else in the world also. The world revolves around Bill and his beliefs.

Like everyone else,

EVERYONE ELSE! NO EXCEPTIONS! THIS IS UNASSAILABLE!

I love Vin Scully. I love Costner’s buddy on the other team who sold out and joined the Yankees. I love watching John C. Reilly pretending to be a catcher. I love the moment when Costner realizes he has a perfect game going. I love Vern Schillinger Whiplash Simmons as Costner’s manager. I love “Clear the mechanism.”

And again, this column is supposedly about Tim Duncan and whether he should retire. Right now, Bill is talking about a baseball movie though. Of course.

And I really love one particular moment, right near the end, when Chapel realizes that everything hurts too much. That he doesn’t want to pitch for anyone else. That he’s too expensive to keep but too stubborn to switch teams. Everything just falls into place for him during that game. He doesn’t want to pitch anymore. He wants to leave on a high. 

This is what is wrong with Bill's writing. He writes, "So...should Duncan retire?" and then immediately does not answer the question, instead going through a long tangent about a movie that he----sorry, I mean everyone---likes in order to answer the question in the most convoluted way possible.

Always gets me. Well, couldn’t you see Duncan leaving that way next month? No press conference, no fanfare, no farewell tour, no exit interviews. Just tell ’em I’m done.

Yes Duncan will not make a big deal out of retiring, not because "For the Love of the Game" is a parallel to Tim Duncan's situation, but because Duncan has done everything without fanfare through his entire NBA career.

When you know it’s time to go, it’s not about the games, the locker rooms, the camaraderie, the charter planes and the salaries anymore. All of that stuff makes you want to keep playing, actually.

But preparing to play — that’s the culprit.

It’s the mental burden that saps you. You start missing your freedom. You have to eat a certain way, sleep a certain way, prepare a certain way. You learn to dread those mornings after back-to-backs. You hate those early wakeup calls, hate being at the gym for hours by yourself, hate working on things that you already learned a million years ago. You already peaked, and you know it, so it’s all about killing yourself so you can be 70 percent as good as you once were.

Bill knows this from his vast experience of never having played professional sports. It's funny how Bill states "we" know things when he cares to speak for everyone else, but when Bill wants to be the expert on the topic he is discussing all of a sudden "we" don't know something and Bill is the only one who has the experience enough to know. "We" thought Kawhi Leonard would be a superstar or "we" love a certain movie, but only Bill knows how good the crowd at the Staples Center was for Game 7 because he WAS THERE.

You have young dudes coming at you left and right, always looking to prove themselves, doing anything possible to put themselves on the map against you. Shit, you could see it with Blake Griffin in Round 1. He didn’t just want to win, he wanted to take it to Duncan. Again and again and again.

So it’s not about one more year. It’s about 18 of them, and how they add up and start subtracting from the current product.

Bill's writing is always very weak when he tries to be serious and insightful about sports. He tends to over-rely on hyperbole and unanswerable questions. These are the things that happen when Bill has 10% of a column idea and has to dream up the other 90% of the content.

Could the Spurs have beaten the Clips with a healthier Parker? Will free agency help? Will Kawhi make The Leap? Could Duncan have blocked that CP3 shot? Did he get there in time? Was he a split second late? Did his brain see it coming, completely and totally, only his body couldn’t quite get there?

As I said, he over-relies on unanswerable questions and hyperbole when he tries to be serious talking about sports.


He will disappear this summer, like he always does, and he will remain in shape by swimming and eating plants and doing whatever else aliens do. Some time before July 1, he will share his plan with the Spurs. Only Duncan knows if it will be one year too early. I just know that he’s one of the best basketball players I have ever seen.

This is the "insightful" ending of the column. I feel insighted.

I hope he comes back. And I hope he doesn’t come back.

Bill ends the column (and perhaps his last column with Grantland) with a reach for a thought-provoking comment. So, Bill doesn't give a shit what Tim Duncan does? That's my conclusion at least. It's funny, because if this is Bill Simmons' last column/mailbag/retro-diary for Grantland, then this last sentence is how I feel about him as well.