I used to complain that Bill Simmons did too many mailbags that were lazy excuses for not writing a column. It's gotten to the point now that Bill's mailbags ARE his columns. Bill's Friday NFL picks column is pretty just a mailbag with some YouTube clips thrown in there. Take a look at Bill's column archives. The number of mailbags in there is endless. That's the current state of Bill's writing. Maybe when he goes to work for another company then he will be more inspired to write. Probably not. Not when he has readers voracious to appear in his mailbag and crave his acceptance. Why go out of his comfort zone when coasting gets the job done and ensures the happiness of Bill's readers? As usual, I will be making fun of some of Bill's readers too because I'm just mean like that, and most likely, they don't exist anyway. Not that Bill would make up questions of course.
We split Friday’s column into two parts. If you missed my piece about Chainsaw Dan Snyder and the Deadskins, click here. Here are the Week 15 picks.
And yes, after complaining that Bill didn't write columns, I will acknowledge he did write a column on Daniel Snyder. He included five comments from readers that he basically bounced the entire column off of, so I'm not quite giving him credit for that yet. He still can't seem to put out a column where his readers don't contribute in some way.
RAMS (-5.5) over Cards
I stand by this now-ridiculous pick.
The Cards scored 12 points and played Ryan Lindley for 30 percent of
the game — what more could you want? Way to kick a field goal down nine
on fourth-and-goal from the 2 with six minutes left, Jeff Fisher. No
wonder you haven’t won a playoff game in 11 years.
Well, he is Jeff "8-8" Fisher. I'm glad others are noticing that Fisher might be a little bit overrated as a coach, though it does not make me happy that person noticing is Bill Simmons. I'm sure Simmons will write an entire column about Fisher and claim to be the first person who noticed just how average to mediocre Fisher has been for the last decade or so. At that point, my blood will boil and I will die.
Anyway, the Cards have scored 64 points total in their last five games,
so Vegas is currently insulting them with 20-to-1 Super Bowl odds.
Repeat: An 11-3 team has 20-1 Super Bowl odds. That’s the best “Nobody
Believes In Us” factoid in a couple of years. Remember, the Cardinals
ARE undefeated at home. And they ARE a Week 16 home victory over Seattle
and a Week 17 road victory over the floundering 49ers away from NEVER
LEAVING ARIZONA FOR THE ENTIRE PLAYOFFS. So why wouldn’t you throw down
$100 on the Cards at 20-to-1?
Bill Simmons, gambling savant who isn't a gambling savant, yet pretends like he knows something about gambling few else know.
Q: WE WANT FAVRE! WE WANT FAVRE! WE WANT FAVRE! WE WANT
FAVRE! Why not go for it if your Arizona GM Steve Keim? You know you
aren’t getting anywhere in the playoffs with a hobbled Drew Stanton or
Ryan Lindley. Hopeful President Elect Bruce Arians needs to show his
power if he wants the Democratic nomination come 2016. Bring back Favre.
Call up Ed Werder right now.
—Jackson, Glendale, AZ
BS: Oh wait, THAT is why the Cards are 20-1. Because I read that email and thought, He’s right, they should totally sign Brett Favre.
Nope, that's a sign you are being an idiot.
Q: The final act of your “4th & God” movie is ready to be
written! (And you know Roger Goodell would LOVE for ESPN to focus on the
wholesome Tim Tebow and not anything else from the past 12 months). Tim
Tebow, out of football and humbled by taking a TV job gets the call
from Kurt Warner (the original inspiration for the don’t bet against God
& Puppies theory) to tell him to do the job he couldn’t finish.
That’s right, take the playoff bound Arizona Cardinals to a Super Bowl
Victory. This is the chills moment of the movie!
—Ron Wade, Plymouth Township
I really feel bad for people who write into Bill and want to interact with him or share their super-original thoughts with him. It makes me feel bad for them craving his acceptance and idolizing him so much.
Q: Do you think JJ Watt ever does that cat interview? Yeah, better bring that Thunderdome line up against Gronk. Watt -5000.
—Justin, Houston
BS: (Belichick voice.) We’re on to Miami.
Bill has five questions where he answers them "We're on to Miami." Five questions and they aren't short either. The man is just killing space in this column.
Q: What’s the over/under for number of kittens Gronk
accidentally murdered Lenny-style during that espnmag photohoot? My
friends and I guessed anywhere from 7 to “so many that they ran out and
had to photoshop some in,” but we’d love your input, too.
—Cara, Weymouth, MA
BS: (Belichick voice.) We’re on to Miami.
See, it gets funnier every time!
Q: Have you noticed that Ryan Tannehill and Alex Smith are
essentially the same player? If you watched the Dolphins-Ravens game,
you saw one of the worst secondaries in the NFL completely unafraid that
Ryan Tannehill could beat them downfield and jumping every short and
intermediate passing route. Remind you of anyone? I can’t wait for the
Dolphins to lock Tannehill up for the next 10 years so we can waste away
in mediocrity. 19th pick in the draft, here we come!
—Justin, Miami
Have you noticed this isn't a very good comparison? Alex Smith's career record for passing yards in a season is 3,313 yards, while Tannehill has more than that in two of his first three seasons, only missing by 19 yards during his rookie season from tying Smith's career high. Tannehill has 22 TD passes this year (24 last year) and Smith has passed 20 TD's just once in his career. But in truth, yards per completion and yards per pass attempt show that Tannehill dinks and dunks the ball around the field. I don't know though, I don't see the Alex Smith comparison. It seems like Tannehill is much better at dinking and dunking, maybe it's because he throws the ball more so his numbers are better than Smith's. Of course, Smith has Jamaal Charles and a decent offensive line, while Ryan Tannehill does not have Jamaal Charles and hasn't had very good offensive lines. It's hard to throw the ball downfield when you don't have time to throw the ball downfield.
So I reject Tannehill as Alex Smith, due to Tannehill not having the same offensive line and running game that Smith has.
Steelers (-2) over FALCONS
Everything you need to know about the pass-friendly rules in 2014: This
is Ben Roethlisberger’s 11th NFL season. He’s 32 years old. He has
thrown for 4,000 yards only four times, and he has topped 30 touchdown
passes only once. He’s never come within 670 yards of a 5,000-yard
season, and he’s never thrown 33 TD passes. This season, he’s on pace to
come within a hair of 5,000 yards and throw 36 TDs … and that’s without
including this Sunday’s “I’m playing Atlanta’s atrocious defense!!!”
bump.
While Bill has a point here about pass-friendly rules, it also helps that Roethlisberger has his best pass-catching running back and maybe his best receiver on the same team at the same time. Antonio Brown and Le'Veon Bell are on pace to put up about 2,600 yards between them. Throw in the reliable Heath Miller and the investment in Wheaton and Bryant, then you can see why Roethlisberger has become more successful throwing the football this year. Bill has a point, but Roethlisberger's yardage isn't chalked up entirely to the pass-friendly rules.
Q: Aren’t you intrigued by the potential of a Mike Smith-Jim Caldwell rematch in Round One?
BS: If Smith-Caldwell happens, Jalen and I might have to do a special Grantland Live postgame studio show on the Grantland Network just to rehash what happened.
That's just a brief, ever-not-subtle plug for Grantland Network and "Grantland Live" from Bill Simmons. He has to pimp Grantland's other material in his column in some fashion. Synergy is important, especially when given the chance to use his readers as a way to spin off other Grantland products.
Jalen, were you surprised when you kicked a field goal down four with three seconds left?
Sadly, many sad and lonely people would listen to this "Grantland Live" to hear Jalen Rose and Bill Simmons discuss this topic.
Deadskins (+7) over GIANTS
Raiders (+10) over CHIEFS
Bucs (+3.5) over PANTHERS
Not even Cam Newton’s Ewing Theory potential can get me excited about any of these three games.
Well, then definitely ignore them. I know these games don't have the drama that a Patriots-Dolphins matchup has. That's some super-intriguing football right there.
Q: You called this year’s Chiefs the worst WR crew of this
century. Don’t the 2009 Browns hold that title? Leading WR: Mohamed
Massaquoi: 34 rec, 624 yards, 3 TDs. Second WR: Chansi Stuckey: 19 rec,
198 yards, 1 TD. It only gets worse. Check it out.
—Matt G., Cleveland
BS: And they had Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson throwing it to them!
Hey, watch the Derek Anderson comments. He's 2-0 this year. The best part is Brady Quinn called the Bucs-Panthers game on Sunday and I couldn't help but think of that 2009 Browns team. I would bet that Brady Quinn was sitting in the broadcast booth just thinking about how if Derek Anderson can be a backup quarterback that maybe he himself should give a comeback a try.
Yet another reason I am rooting for Johnny Football to work out. Come
on, Johnny! The world is more fun when you‘re playing football well.
It’s just a fact. My Not-Quite-An-Upset Special: Browns 30, Bengals 10.
Or not.
Texans (+7) over COLTS
And here’s your legitimate Upset Special: Texans 30, Colts 24, J.J. Watt MVP Campaign +1.
This is the legitimate Upset Special, not to be confused with the Not-Quite-An-Upset Special of course. Either way, neither one worked out. By the way, Bill was 75-75-1 going into this week. So he basically would have been better off simply not making picks or throwing darts at a dartboard, yet he constantly pushes his "gambling theories" on readers based on rules he made up that only pertain to this specific NFL season.
Q: You missed the mark in your Week 15 column. An action flick
starring JJ Watt has to be called Mega Watt. Seriously, ESPN pays you
for this?
—RK, Washington DC
BS: I didn’t miss the mark! Hollywood never comes up with the right
title for an action movie; it’s always 30 percent off and it never
totally achieves its potential. Mega Watt was the obvious pick. But Hollywood would have screwed it up and gone with Power Wattage. Here, I’ll let Scott Rudin and Amy Pascal explain in this recently hacked email exchange.
After reading this fake exchange between Rudin and Pascal, I can't imagine why Bill Simmons didn't stick around on Jimmy Kimmel's show as one of his writers. I mean, this is just some hilarious shit.
RUDIN: Did you read the Simmons column? I liked his idea for the J.J. Watt action movie.
PASCAL: I don’t know who Simmons is. Gene Simmons?
RUDIN: Bill Simmons? You’re seriously a studio executive and you don’t read Grantland?
The "seriously" should be behind the word "you" not "You're" me thinks.
Yes, the guy whose grammar and sentence structure is a partial birth abortion of the English language just corrected someone's grammar and sentence structure. Let's not focus on my issues, but instead on Bill's mistakes.
PASCAL: Don’t talk to me that way!
RUDIN: Next time you send me an email with an exclamation point, I will ram it down your throat.
PASCAL: Don’t you fucking threaten me!
RUDIN: You are the dumbest person in Hollywood! YOU COULDN’T MAKE A CUP OF COFFEE!!!
PASCAL: Why r u punishing me?
Are you entertained by this? Great. That's the sum total of Bill's little skit. I'm still waiting for the punchline. Of course, knowing Bill this whole skit is probably just some inside Hollywood talk that is intended for him and about 10 other people who read his columns. Bill would swing his dick around like that and make an inside joke in his column read by thousands, when only 10 people would get the joke. I can't imagine why he's still not writing punchlines for Kimmel.
Q: A useful tiebreaker for an MVP vote with no runaway candidate: who would we want to get the inevitable invitation to host SNL after the season?
Two things:
1. This is a dumb idea. Or as Bill would write it, this is "legitimately" a dumb idea. Which of course means that Bill is going to love this idea.
2. The "inevitable" invitation to host "SNL"? Here is a list of NFL MVP's. How many have hosted "SNL" again? There is Eli and Peyton and then...ummm...there is Tom Brady. So yeah, "it's an inevitable invitation" that only a few MVP's have received.
Is there anyone you’d rather see than J.J. Watt or Aaron Rodgers?
Steve Smith. I think he would be fun. Rob Gronkowski.
BS: I love this wrinkle.
Of course you do. It's an idea where a sports award will be chosen based on that player's ability to be a part of pop culture. It's a mix of everything ridiculous and inane about Bill's ideas.
Every year, the NFL MVP has to be a REALISTIC choice to host SNL right after the Super Bowl. (That means we’re down to a three-team race: Watt, Rodgers and Gronk.)
I guess Tom Brady isn't in the MVP race then. After all, he has already hosted "SNL" so he wouldn't be a logical choice.
BILLS (+6) over Packers
It’s too much of an Aaron Rodgers love-fest right now. Even Grantland’s
Robert Mays, a die-hard Bears fan, did everything short of reenacting
Scotty J.’s “Can I kiss you on the mouth?” scene from Boogie Nights when he discussed Rodgers in the office yesterday.
Oh, a "Boogie Nights" reference...
Isn’t he due to get banged around by an excellent defense in cold
weather for four quarters, get sacked a few times, throw a tipped pick
or two, maybe even fumble a shotgun snap?
Bill nailed this pick. While remembering he nailed this one, keep in mind that both of his upset specials didn't end up working out and he was .500 for the year when writing this column.
RAVENS (-14) over Jaguars
Q: Based on your criteria for LVU (“Least Valuable Unit”),
shouldn’t 2014’s winner be the Ravens secondary? Keep in mind they’re
solid front 7 — how good would this team be with an average secondary,
especially at the end of games? If not for their secondary, they’d be
sitting at 9-3, leading the division and fighting for a bye. Instead
they’re fighting to make the playoffs.
—Sam, Boulder
You mean the Ravens secondary that just put it's 5th DB on Injured Reserve this season? That LVU? How would the Broncos do if they had lost five DB's this season? How would any NFL team do if they had lost so many members of the secondary? So let's worry more about getting informed and worry less about writing "if not for their secondary..." in an effort to get in Bill's mailbag and justify your existence by writing about LVU's.
BS: I’m still backing Kansas City’s receivers. When you’re running
four-yard outs in a one-minute drill situation down by three in a
must-win game, you know your receivers are an out-and-out travesty.
Besides, Baltimore’s secondary might not come back to haunt the Ravens
until Round 2! They finish the season with Blake Bortles, Ryan
Fitzpatrick and Johnny Manziel — none of those guys is torching them. If
they win the AFC North, they’re hosting a no. 5 seed or a no. 6 seed in
Round 1 — that’s either Phil Rivers (trouble),
Really? No mention of the injuries to the Ravens' secondary? I think this merits a huge mention, but whatever. It's not like Bill should write a weekly NFL picks column and actually be informed about the games he is picking. Also, it's not "Phil Rivers." That's just dumb sounding.
Q: Jim Nantz just previewed next week’s Thursday night game
between the Jags and Titans and Phil Simms responded with “I’m really
looking forward to it.” No laughter, he seemed dead serious.
—Mike, Santa Monica
BS: That’s reason no. 547 why CBS needs to demote Simms next spring and
replace him with Rex Ryan. Sports fans should be allowed to vote every
year on secretly important things like “Who’s our no. 1 NFL color
analyst for the three major networks?” If that CBS vote were “Rex or
Simms,” I think Rex carries 96.7 percent of the vote. But major networks
and local cable networks are abjectly terrified of ever demoting a lead
play-by-play or color announcer.
Part of the reason networks don't do this is because of silly little things like contracts and the fact the public is fickle and would just vote out whatever announcer they just voted for the previous year. Phil Simms gets paid like the #1 color analyst for CBS. If Rex Ryan is promoted to that spot then he is going to want to be paid like the #1 color analyst for CBS. These guys don't work on year-to-year contracts, so at some point CBS would be paying 2-3 guys to be the #1 color analyst for them. That's one reason they don't do this. I would think that someone who has worked in television could understand this.
CHARGERS (+4.5) over Broncos
According to Mike Sando,
only Brian Hoyer (nine) and Andy Dalton (nine) have thrown more picks
than Peyton Manning (eight) since Week 9. Also, this feels like a cross
between a Kitchen Sink Game and a Phil Rivers Doing Phil Rivers Stuff
Game for the Chargers
What's with the "Phil Rivers" thing?
… and if you’re the Broncos, do you REALLY need
this game? Aren’t they locked into a no. 2 seed?
Yes, because if there is anything that the public knows about Peyton Manning it's that he will intentionally not try hard to win a football game because he already has the no. 2 seed locked up in the AFC. Besides the fact that Bill's prediction ended up being wrong, does Bill really think the Broncos would just not try to win this game?
Q: You made a “Worst coach to appear in the Superbowl” list
without Jim Caldwell? I am giving you the Jim Caldwell/Art Shell look
right now.
—Ryan Jacobs, Nashville
BS: I had to cross him off because he’s nine games over .500 for his career (35-26). Believe me … it hurt.
You can still put him on the list if you would like. Don't let his career record stop you from doing this.
Q: I can’t believe you ran a mailbag answer looking at the worst
coaches to make a Super Bowl and didn’t mention Jim Caldwell. People
legitimately wondered if the Colts had installed a mannequin on the
sidelines.
One of the annoying trends that I blame Bill Simmons for is the use of "legitimate" in situations where it is not at all required. Of course, Bill's lemming readers start doing this as well. People didn't just "wonder" if the Colts installed a mannequin on the sidelines (how do you install a mannequin? Can't you just place a mannequin on the sidelines with no installation necessary?), they "legitimately wondered" if the Colts installed a mannequin. If you know the difference, then you are a much smarter person than me.
BS: Looks like the perfect time to break out Week 15’s Shakey’s Pizza Watch:...RG3 unexpectedly turning into the MGMT of football (great debut album, and then the wheels came off);
This is a forced reference, and much like a joke that needs to be explained, if Bill has to explain the reference then it's not a good reference. The point of saying RG3 is "the MGMT of football" is to avoid saying "RG3 had a great debut but then the wheels came off." Naturally, Bill uses the reference and then explains it. It's legitimately counterproductive to use the reference and then explain it, as well as legitimately ruins the purpose of using the reference in the first place.
Goodell’s now-documented performance during the Rice appeal hearing; the
fact that we have to carefully write headlines like “Transcript shows
inconsistencies in Goodell’s testimony on Rice matter.”
When Bill leaves ESPN, the first thing he publishes is his column about Roger Goodell. I know it's written already, he just has to publish it.
SEAHAWKS (-10) over 49ers
They can’t make that Seahawks line high enough. Kaepernick is a broken man — even Mischa Barton didn’t flame out this fast.
See? While this is a Mischa Barton reference, it's a reference that doesn't require an explanation. This is legitimately how it is supposed to work when making a reference.
Q: What would be more fun: Harbaugh going to Oakland, making a
beast out of Carr (who’s been really promising) and taking the Raiders
to the playoffs? Or him going to the Jets, drafting Mariota and laying
waste to the AFC East?
—Ibrahim, João Pessoa, Brazil
Harbaugh isn't laying waste to the AFC East with Brady and Belichick still alive and working for the Patriots.
BS: What about Harbaugh going to Michigan just a few weeks after there
was so much action on a “Harbaugh goes to Michigan bet” that a gambling
site actually had to PULL THAT BET?
They pulled the bet not just because there was so much action on Harbaugh going to Michigan, but because they were afraid someone had insider information and was making that bet. So it was as much about insider information as it was about Harbaugh going to Michigan being a real thing that could happen.
Saints (-3) over BEARS
Q: You mentioned Bill Simmons Road in your last column, which
made me giggle uncontrollably in the middle of class, leading my
professor to stare awkwardly as I played it off.
You are a very sad person if this is true. How did you play giggling uncontrollably in the middle of the class off?
"Oh no professor, I wasn't laughing at you, but I have daddy issues and I need a 40+ year old man to be my role model in life so I read Bill Simmons' column every week in the hopes that one day he will answer one of my emails and justify my existence. I was just laughing at something he wrote because he's the cool dad that I have always wanted to have in my life."
As a longtime resident of Colleyville, TX I can honestly say
that Bill Simmons Road gets little traffic. It’s one of the few roads in
town where there are no streetlights and houses are spread far apart,
which made it an incredibly convenient place to get down with girls in
the backseat of my car when I was in high school.
If you laugh uncontrollably in the middle of the class at something Bill Simmons has written then the odds of you getting down in the backseat of a car in any form other than dancing with a girl who has you in the friend zone in the back of a pickup truck are not high. Not trying to be rude, just a little realistic. Plus, given that I'm not sure Bill's reader questions come from real people, I'm guessing Timothy from Colleyville isn't a real person. I've just been mean to a figment of Bill's imagination.
In fact, many a sexscapade was had on Bill Simmons road by my
friends, classmates, and other town residents. Congratulations on
sharing that legacy. Come visit Bill Simmons Road sometime, although I
suggest seeing it during the daytime in order to avoid seeing more than
you bargained for.
–Timmy J., Colleyville
I shouldn't be mean to someone I don't know. I just feel pity. It's odd to hear a grown person idolize a middle-aged sportswriter as much as some of Bill's lemmings idolize him. Why write in to Bill and talk about this? Other than to be in his mailbag of course.
BS: Good Lord, we’re in range.
Bill has been using the same joke at the end of every mailbag (which means lately it's been at the end of everything Bill writes) for the last 15 years now and in no way is that pathetic.
Q: Just wanted to let you know that every Tuesday and Thursday
evening of my junior year in high school I would drive my car to the top
of the hill on Bill Simmons Road and get some action from my
girlfriend.
Okay, slugger. It sounds great to brag about it in an email to a middle-aged man.
(Again, I doubt this guy exists, so I'm being snarky to a figment of Bill's imagination)
I hope for her sake her Dad doesn’t read this column, not like I give a damn though.
—Tanner, Colleyville
Right, because you are a rebel like that. You don't care if her dad reads this column because what's he going to you? You'd be all like, "'Sup bro? You got something you wanna say to me? I 'got action' from your daughter and won't apologize for it. Come get some of me old man who is probably the same age as the guy I just wrote to bragging about getting some action from your daughter."
BS: Yup, these are my readers.
Yes. They are your readers. You make each other look bad sometimes...if they even exist.
Showing posts with label Simmons corollarycraptastic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Simmons corollarycraptastic. Show all posts
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Friday, May 2, 2014
3 comments Bill Simmons, Still Out of Ideas for a Column, Essentially Writes Another Mailbag
It's getting bad, you know. One of the most frustrating parts of Bill Simmons' writing is he just doesn't give a shit anymore. He's content with sticking with the feel and format of his old columns and doesn't care to challenge himself. While some writers grow and mature with their audience, Bill's writing has stayed in the same place for a decade now. Sure, it helps him capture the key demographic that ESPN/Grantland wants, but his writing doesn't show the maturity of a person who has been writing for almost 15 years. I believe Bill Simmons has not wanted to write columns for a while now. It doesn't help he is out of ideas and so what has happened is a constant stream of uninspired columns and mailbags, while Bill sorts out all of his duties as Grantland editor and tries to figure out how to continue to fool his loyal Simmonites into believing what he's writing is fresh, new material and not the same recycled material and jokes as the same recycled material and jokes he has been doing for 4-5 years now. It's getting harder the busier Bill gets. Fortunately for him, the Simmonites will devour absolutely anything Bill writes, no matter the quality, so there is no need to put effort into what he writes. Today, Bill has 33 burning questions from Round 1 of the playoffs which essentially is another mailbag from him, except this time he admits to writing the questions himself.
Do you realize road teams have won 10 of 19 playoff games so far? Do you realize we’ve had 297 officiating controversies already? Do you realize three 50-win coaches are in real danger of getting canned within the next 10 days? Do you realize we have an 8-seed beating a 1-seed and a 7-seed beating a 2-seed? Do you realize Indiana is slapping together the Mother of All NBA Swoons?
No Bill, we didn't realize this until you just told us about it. Thank God you are here to interpret all NBA-related events for us. You are the only prism through which the NBA playoffs can be understood. Enlighten us all.
Do you realize a Wizards-Clippers Finals is in play? Repeat: Do you realize a Wizards-Clippers Finals is in play????? And that the odds are only 65-to-1 right now??? And that it’s actually a good bet at those odds??????????? WHAT IS HAPPENING?????????
The question mark on your keyboard is broken? You are killing time to make up for a lack of original, creative material by asking the same question over and over again?
Without further ado, let’s tackle 33 burning questions from Round 1.
It's a mailbag that's not a mailbag. Because Bill has already done quite a few mailbags recently and it would be crazy to do another one, right?
Q: Could the Wizards really make the Eastern Conference finals despite whiffing on 2013’s no. 3 overall pick (Otto Porter) and 2011’s no. 6 overall pick (Jan Vesely)?
Let’s flip that around. The Wizards could make the Eastern Conference finals because they didn’t whiff on 2010’s no. 1 overall pick (John Wall) and 2012’s no. 3 overall pick (Bradley Beal).
Because I had an unnatural love for Bradley Beal coming out of college, I have to point out that Bill wasn't exactly high on Bradley Beal coming out of college. Most likely this is because Bill was just saying things about Beal out of his ass like,
With the no. 3 pick for Washington, I'm grabbing Bradley Beal, the silky smooth two-guard who definitely bought Ray Allen's jumper on eBay. I love this pick even though I watched all four of Florida's NCAA Tournament games and never at any point thought to myself, I'm watching the no. 3 pick in June's draft.
Is it a red flag when the alleged best scoring guard available from college basketball couldn't average 15 points a game or make 34 percent of his 3s?
If you follow the link I proved that (a) Bill is an idiot who doesn't really know what he was talking about and (b) Beal played well in the NCAA Tournament and I pointed out Beal was 18 years old so 34% from three-point range isn't terrible. But don't worry, Bill knew nothing about Beal and admitted it,
SIMMONS: I just spent the past 10 minutes watching his YouTube clips, so I'm totally ready to have an opinion here.
Are we sure Beal is Gordon 2.0? The best thing about Gordon other than his stroke is that he's built like a tank — he loves driving into the paint, bouncing off bigger guys and finishing around the rim.
Beal is a few inches taller; really, he's more like a young Mike Miller,
So after watching 10 minutes of YouTube videos of Bradley Beal, Bill Simmons announces that he is like Mike Miller, not Eric Gordon. It's nearly impossible for me to take Bill Simmons seriously knowing how often he talks out of his ass. Does anyone watch Bradley Bill and say, "Man, he reminds me of Mike Miller!"? I would doubt it. Okay, rant done. I had to point out that Bill loves Beal now, but wasn't exactly a fan before Beal was drafted. Hindsight is wonderful isn't it?
They turned Vesely and next year’s first-rounder into Professor Andre Miller and Marcin Gortat, two veterans who made an impact. And Trevor Ariza wouldn’t be thriving without young Porter breathing down his neck. Fine, that’s not true. There’s been no neck-breathing whatsoever. Everything else is true.
Wait, someone just reminded me that Ernie traded the no. 5 pick in 2009 for Mike Miller and Randy Foye, which means he whiffed on three top-six lottery picks in five years. According to the Atrocious GM Summit rulebook, the “David Kahn Corollary” says that at least three top-six whiffs in five years earns you an automatic invite. So, Ernie is coming back no matter what happens! I’m glad we settled this.
See? Bill is still milking the same recycled and tired jokes 4-5 years after he originally tells them. The Atrocious GM Summit, how hilarious!
The Atrocious GM Summit should only serve to remind Bill's readers that at one point in his writing career he actually gave a shit about trying to write creatively and wasn't up his own ass. Those days are gone.
Q: Can the Wizards really make the Eastern finals when their fans are sending emails during playoff games like, “I’d like to report an attempted murder — Randy Wittman is trying to kill me”?
Fans complain about their team's coach no matter how much success that team has had or is currently having. Fans complaining about the coach/manager is going to happen no matter what. So this means nothing, except it's another weak attempt for Bill to try and be clever.
The good news for Wizards fans: Just in the past decade, Alvin Gentry and Mike Brown coached in Round 3; Flip Saunders took two different teams to Round 3; and Scott Brooks made two conference finals and the actual Finals. Don’t those four guys make you feel a little better about Randy Wittman?
Do the Wizards have LeBron James or Kevin Durant? No? Ok.
The NBA isn’t complicated — to blow a series when you have a more talented team, you’d need an offensive game plan that’s two steps below rudimentary, no defensive mind-set whatsoever, a slew of head-scratching rotation decisions, an overall emphasis on aggressively sloppy play, a stubborn refusal to change anything that’s not working, a lack of recognition for basic stuff like “That guy is headed for 40 points again, maybe we try something different defensively,” and the confidence to keep making terrible game-management choices in the final minute without learning from the previous game’s terrible game-management choices.
That's it. That's exactly how to blow a series. You better believe Bill that these are the steps on how to blow a series with a more talented team. After all he DID write the Book of Basketball.
Q: Can the Wizards really make the Eastern Conference finals when they’re the Washington Wizards?
Now THIS is an obstacle.
The Wizards actual talent isn't necessarily an obstacle, it's the Wizards history of not being a very good team that is the real obstacle. After all, I'm sure the young Wizards squad is greatly affected by the history of basketball in Washington they aren't fully even aware exists.
My favorite Wizards fact: Since Wes Unseld and Elvin Hayes left the franchise in 1981, they haven’t employed a single player whose jersey could be retired. Not one! That’s impossible!
Well, it's true so it's not entirely impossible.
My second favorite Wizards fact: I sent House the last two graphs and he wrote back, “You forgot about Ike Austin for Ben Wallace. And Mark Price’s foot. And Gheorge’s pituitary gland … I’ll have more later.” I didn’t hear from him for another 24 hours.
Can you imagine trying to have a conversation with Bill and his friends? Would this conversation contain any other type of discussion outside of whining about their favorite team? Yes, the Wizards/Bullets have been terrible, but every team has made bad decisions over the history of the franchise. Some have made more than others, but more importantly, I'm not sure I wouldn't characterize House's last two "graphs" as a "fact" any more than I would consider it the listing of more Wizards/Bullets missteps over the last 20 years.
Q: Nene is lighting up Joakim Noah!!! LIGHTING HIM UP!!! Also, am I on drugs right now?
You’re not on drugs; you’re fine. Nobody ever doubted Nene’s talent, as evidenced by his earning more than $86 million since 2006 (with another $39 million guaranteed through 2016) despite never averaging 15 points or eight rebounds in any season.
Yes, "you're" not on drugs. By the way, Bill is writing and answering the questions himself, so "you're" not on drugs should be "I'm" not on drugs. But that's beside the point.
We know Nene has talent because he has been well-paid throughout his NBA career and there's no way an NBA team would overpay a player who didn't have talent, right Chris Kaman, Rashard Lewis, Carlos Boozer, Ben Gordon, and Tyrus Thomas?
These guys have some talent, but the NBA (and other sports) has a long history of paying players a lot of money who don't necessarily have talent equivalent to the money that player is getting paid. So the fact Nene got paid $86 million since 2006 doesn't mean Nene has talent and his talent shouldn't be questioned.
Over everything else, you gotta love how HARD Washington is playing: You have Beal and Wall trying to make names for themselves, Ariza and Gortat playing for new contracts, and Nene taking the Noah matchup personally for whatever reason. Yes, yes, yes. They can make the Eastern finals.
What you really have to love is Bill Simmons lauding a professional sports team for playing hard in the playoffs. If I were a lazy person I would state this is the problem with the NBA and why some people don't like to watch the sport. It's not just the perception that the players don't play hard, but a diehard NBA fan like Bill Simmons actually takes the time to congratulate an NBA team for playing hard in the playoffs...like that's not expected or anything.
Q: If Phil Jackson learned the triangle offense from Tex Winter, then who was Scott Brooks’s mentor for Oklahoma City’s “Clogged Toilet” offense? Was it just Mike Brown, or were Vinny Del Negro and Mike Woodson involved as well?
See how creative and hilarious these questions are? Bill isn't recycling old jokes at all. These jokes about Vinny Del Negro, Mike Woodson, and Mike Brown aren't old at all. Hey, maybe Bill could slip an Art Shell joke in there for good measure as well. That's still funny and relevant, right?
Here’s my working theory: Early in Brooks’s playing career, he played in Minnesota for Jimmy Rodgers, the longtime Celtics assistant and honorary head coach of the Ghastly 1980s NBA Permafro Team (a.k.a. The Jack Sikma All-Stars).
Let's see:
1. Half-assed theory Bill believes is more clever than it really is. Check.
2. Mention of the Boston Celtics. Check.
3. Mention of a fictional "All-Stars" team that Bill has put together. Check.
All that remains to be included is a reference to an 80's movie and all of Bill's usual material would be contained in this paragraph...or "graph" as Bill seems to think the kids say.
So Jimmy learned from the Clogged Toilet master. And eventually, Brooks learned from Jimmy, so it’s something of a Clogged Toilet coaching tree. But every time I see OKC barely getting KD the ball 35 feet from the basket — or even better, taking 15 seconds to post him up on the low block, followed by KD dribbling back behind the 3-point line as soon as he gets it — I always picture K.C. Jones and Jimmy Rodgers nodding proudly.
Just remember, Bill is writing these questions AND answering them. So if he truly gave a shit about what he was writing this could be a good column due to the fact he has complete creative control over what is being asked and written. Instead...well, this is what happens.
Q: Are Boston fans allowed to make fun of McHale mangling this Portland series after he helped the Celtics win three titles, clotheslined Rambis, costarred on the greatest NBA team of all time (the ’86 Celts), played on a broken foot in the 1987 Finals, made a cameo on Cheers, got his no. 32 retired, and traded KG to Boston in 2007 over accepting a slightly better deal from the Lakers?
Nope. Not allowed.
Boston Celtics. Just in case you forgot. Boston Celtics. They have to be discussed at some point even if these are burning questions about Round 1 of the playoffs. After all, Boston Celtics. They may not be in Round 1 but this is the second reference to them. The Boston Sports Guy.
Q: The Heat are still the league’s best team, they still have the league’s best player, and they’re still going for a historic three-peat … and yet they’re something like the 27th most relevant story line right now. What happened?
Yeah, what about the story lines for the Heat? I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact the other playoff series are actually exciting while the Heat were slowly tearing down and defeating the woefully undermatched Bobcats. Not at all. Fans like to watch the exciting playoff series and the Heat-Bobcats series was simply Charlotte delaying the inevitable. The Heat weren't losing that series, even if the NBA has to make sure the Heat got 85 free throw attempts in a Game 7.
It’s a combination of Heat fatigue (four solid years of people endlessly dissecting them),
"People" endlessly dissecting them? Doesn't Bill mean "ESPN" endlessly dissecting them? This is an astounding lack of self-awareness considering Bill's employer had an entire portion of ESPN.com dedicated to the Heat called the "Heat Check."
their glaringly obvious on/off switch (which they tried to keep to “off” for both Charlotte games), their undeniably bored crowds (is there a worse playoff game to watch on TV, from an atmosphere standpoint, than Miami when they’re heavily favored at home?),
Perhaps the Heat were "off" because the Miami crowd around them were bored and the Bobcats weren't a very good team who ended up playing with their best player barely able to run up-and-down the court? There could be a correlation here.
and the inevitability of the Heat making a fourth straight Finals (thanks to the East collapsing around them).
It also helps the Heat's chances of making a fourth straight Finals that they have the NBA's best player and a really good team around him. There's that too.
Q: If Doc Rivers fought Jermaine O’Neal in Game 2, would that have been the greatest moment of 2014?
No — Pero Antic fighting David West would have been the greatest moment of 2014.
Speaking of fighting...the Boston Celtics! What's that you say? How aren't the Celtics relevant in a column about playoff questions? Bill just brought the conversation back around to the Celtics so they are totally relevant.
But I’m glad this came up. Once upon a time, the Celtics paid O’Neal $12 million over two years to be their backup big man.
Oh yeah, Bill is completely pulling this conversation back around to the Celtics. It's all he knows how to do.
O’Neal played 24 games in 2011, then disappeared because of knee and wrist injuries. During the ensuing six-month lockout, he never bothered to get surgery for his left wrist — for reasons that remain unclear — then reinjured it two months into the lockout season. What happened next? He opted for season-ending surgery over, you know, playing in a little pain because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you make $6 million a year.
Bill goes further into the story while whining that Ryan Hollins and Greg Stiemsma played big minutes in the 2012 Eastern Conference Finals because O'Neal was injured. Just know that this is very important to know in order for Bill to answer his own question about whether O'Neal and Rivers fighting would have been the greatest moment of 2014.
I’d bet anything that Doc sees O’Neal miraculously flying around like he’s seven years younger in this Warriors-Clips series and thinks to himself, That’s the guy who quit on me two years ago. Could you blame him?
No, I can't blame him. Let's talk more about how the Celtics lost the 2012 Eastern Conference finals with the Celtics "barely" (yes, Bill wrote "barely" except he of course put it in italics) losing to the Heat because Jermaine O'Neal didn't get surgery on his left wrist. This talk would be super-important in a column about Round 1 of the 2014 NBA playoffs. Bill has to mention the Celtics and he has to do a little bit of whining about why the Celtics didn't make the NBA Finals in 2012.
Q: Is Chris Paul better than you think, worse than you think or exactly what you think?
Because it’s the Internet and people have to come up with stuff to talk about every day, you knew this list would start glowing in neon the moment Chris looked shaky in a playoff game …
NUMBER OF PLAYOFF SERIES WON BY THE LOTTERY CLASS OF 2005
Andrew Bynum: 10
Deron Williams: 4
Marvin Williams: 3
Channing Frye: 2
Chris Paul: 2
Andrew Bogut: 1
Ray Felton: 1
I like how Bill blames this list on the Internet when this is the first I personally have ever seen this list. Maybe I just missed it. It's fun to read Bill talking about this list's existence and how it seems he just had no choice but to publish it in this column. Not his fault. His hands were tied.
It's important to remember Andrew Bynum has played with Pau Gasol and Kobe Bryant and Chris Paul isn't that far behind any other player on this list. Paul was stuck in New Orleans for quite a few years with David West as the other best player on the team. Let's be a little fair.
What happened? He helped blow Game 1 on Saturday, and naturally “What has Chris Paul ever won?” became a thing. So here’s a quick story: The following morning, Steve Nash dropped into our NBA Countdown vortex to shoot a few segments with us. During our preshow meeting, I mentioned that Paul was getting criticized for his Game 1 performance, and asked if it might affect someone even as good as Paul if something like “What has he ever won?” morphed into a national story line. What happened? Nash made a face and said, “Chris is the best point guard in the league, it’s not even close. When you have the ball in your hands all the time, you’re going to make mistakes sometimes.”
(The answer: Actually, Chris Paul is better than you think — as you saw last night, when he masterfully fouled Steph Curry on the game’s deciding play in a way that was never, ever, EVER getting called.)
Oh, so we have the answer because Steve Nash said sometimes a player makes mistakes when the ball is in that player's hands. I guess that closes the book on this question then. I do have another question though...what was the point of this question from the perspective of the person reading this column? Why was this fake question even asked? Was it for Bill to be forced to bust out with the list (against his will nonetheless!) of playoff series won by the lottery class of 2005, was it for Bill to remind us that he knows Steve Nash, or was it to kill space in a column where Bill just doesn't have a hell of a lot to say?
I think it's all of the above.
Q: Will we ever figure out what happened to the 2014 Pacers? (Marc Stein)
It’s almost more fun NOT knowing. But I think we know. Here’s the pie-chart breakdown …
Bill did this a few weeks ago where he definitely answered this question in other pie-chart breakdown that didn't involve a pie-chart so it wasn't really a pie-chart breakdown.
Here's how the percentages shook out:
The Chemistry Thing: 40%
Lance Has This: 25%
Identity Loss: 25%
The Collective Slump: 10%
So I'm not sure why Bill is answering the same question yet again in pie-chart form without an actual pie-chart so it isn't really a pie-chart breakdown. He answered the question in early April so I'm not sure how much could really chang---
30 PERCENT: Pat Riley named it “The Disease of Me,” a chemistry-killing toxin that afflicts certain teams after they’ve hit it big.
Wait, what? These percentages have changed drastically in the last four weeks? Outside of Bill making the percentages up in both cases out of his ass (fine, that's the real answer to the question I'm about to pose...Bill just makes shit up, so look no further than these changing pie-chart percentages for proof of this), how come these percentages have changed in such a short time?
But you know the nuts and bolts by now: Lance Stephenson thought he was an All-Star, Paul George thought he was a superstar, Danny Granger disappeared, the big guys stopped getting the ball … before you knew it, a selfless team started thinking selfishly.
So I wonder whether this is filed under "Identity Loss" or "Chemistry Thing" in Bill's original pie-chart column about the Pacers struggles?
20 PERCENT: Wore down because the starting five played too many minutes.
Funny, this wasn't mentioned in Bill's original pie-chart. It's almost like Bill is making things up as he goes along. Bill can't even take the time to be consistent with something he wrote less than a month ago.
10 PERCENT: No superstar scorer to stop the slide and say, “It’s OK, everybody, I got this.”
And here 10% was originally allocated to "The Collective Slump." I guess Bill thinks the Pacers no longer underwent a collective slump and now thinks they needed a superstar scorer to stop the slide.
20 PERCENT: Actually, they had Lance Stephenson saying, “It’s OK, everybody, I got this.” And that’s even worse.
And here "Lance Has This" was 25% of the problem less than a month ago. Perhaps Lance "having it" became less of a problem over the past four weeks.
20 PERCENT: Are we sure they were ever that good? Last season, they won 49 games and had a plus-4 point differential in a lousy conference.
Stop using "we" whenever you are wrong about something. Also, Bill is brilliant at using hindsight isn't he? If you ever need someone to tell you the problem with a team AFTER that problem has occurred and the issue is obvious to everyone, then Bill Simmons is your man. His masterful use of hindsight has no peer, except for maybe Gregg Easterbrook.
I’d say we overrated these guys except for one thing:
STOP SAYING "WE" WHEN "YOU" ARE WRONG! "WE" didn't think anything.
The Indiana guys look like they hate playing with each other — they’re interacting like divorced parents who just ran into each other at their son’s youth soccer game. It’s crazy.
That's exactly what it's like. There's no ubuntu in Indiana. That's the real problem. How Bill isn't now a full-time NBA analyst with insights such as this evades common sense and logic.
Q: Is Roy Hibbert tradable, sort of untradable, or totally untradable?
Sort of tradable. Really tall centers who can block shots and score points are in high demand.
Working against Hibbert …
• He’s guaranteed $30.4 million combined over the next two seasons.
• He turned into Hasheem Thabeet about 10 weeks ago. Couldn’t Thabeet match Hibbert’s production since February 4 if he played 29 minutes a game? You’re telling me 8.6 points, 5.2 rebounds and 1.8 blocks and 39 percent shooting isn’t doable for Thabeet?
Hasheem Thabeet is terrible. I am not sure he could put up 8.6 points, 5.2 rebounds and 1.8 blocks in 29 minutes. Let's cut the hyperbole and be real about Hasheem Thabust's terribleness.
The Law of Mutombo tells us this: You never know when a tall center is about to lose it, but when they lose it, you know right away.
I feel like Bill says this about every athlete. It's probably not true, but I feel like he is always saying, "When Player X loses it, it happens fast." Also, there is no "Law of Mutumbo." Fortunately, Bill will forget he named this law after Mutumbo and will name it after another tall center in a month or so. It's not like Bill even cares what he's writing at this point.
Even if Hibbert is only 27, what if this wasn’t a slump? What if the Law of Mutombo struck him early?
What if this fictional curse did strike early? Is there a fictional "All-Star" team that Bill could put Hibbert on while making an overly-involved comparison of Hibbert to a man in his 30's who used to go out on the club scene and pick up women but now is having a declining success rate, along with a name-dropped reference to Jimmy Kimmel? Can we make this happen? Who says "no"?
Working for Hibbert …
Too many teams value (and overvalue) advanced metrics, which means at least two or three teams would value Hibbert’s rim protection numbers. If he’s standing in front of the rim and you’re driving to the basket, it’s hard to score. You just need to put him in that specific situation, and not situations like “chasing Antic out to the 3-point line” or “trying to catch Anthony Davis sprinting down the court.”
Well, that's good news for the NBA since the trend isn't headed towards centers who can shoot from the outside and don't necessarily spend most of their time on the low block.
You take a flyer on him in Year 1, and if it doesn’t work out, you have a big expiring in Year 2. Wouldn’t Charlotte and Dallas do this tomorrow? Wouldn’t the Celtics sniff around?
That's the fourth reference to the Celtics in a column that is supposed to be about Round 1 of the NBA playoffs. That's four references for a non-playoff team while the Raptors aren't mentioned at all, the Grizzlies are mentioned in passing, the Nets aren't mentioned at all, and the Spurs/Mavericks are both mentioned in passing. Meanwhile the Celtics are mentioned or referenced five times in this column. Imagine how often Bill would talk about them if they were actually in Round 1 of the playoffs.
Wouldn’t OKC have to consider something with Hibbert and Kendrick Perkins’s expiring as the principals? I refuse to believe he’s untradable.
You are the one who asked the question, jackass.
We were just celebrating him two months ago!
"We" were celebrating him two months ago weren't "we"!
But I liked how a reader named Trent in Indy summed up the Hibbert issue … “You know when you drive your car and hear a weird sound, but ignore it? Then you hear it again louder, but you ignore it because you’re really busy? Then you hear it constantly, but you are now
I'm going to have to stop it here. Trent from Indy seems to be the type of guy who takes selfies of himself in the mirror and then uses it as his avatar on Twitter, because he's so damned impressed with himself. This is an overly-long analogy that is specifically intended to get Bill's attention and get a response. Get your own writing style. Why can't Bill and his readers simply just say something as opposed to using an overly-long analogy? An analogy is partially used in order to shorten an explanation, not lengthen it.
worried about the potentially big expense that might be represented by that sound, so you ignore it still? Then your car won’t start, so you take it to the shop and find out it’s even worse than you’d imagined, and so many expensive things are wrong with your car that you decide to fix the bare minimum of the problems in order to sell the piece of crap and make it someone else’s problem? That’s Roy Hibbert.”
Or as a normal person who is actually capable of expressing himself without an overly-long analogy would say, "Roy Hibbert is a problem that can't be ignored and won't simply go away on his own."
Q: Did you know that, since 1985, only MJ, Magic, Shaq, Kobe, Iverson, T-Mac and Aldridge have scored 42-plus points in back-to-back playoff games?
I just furrowed my brow.
Thanks for the update on the status of your brow. My life is now more complete.
Q: What’s crazier — that only three rookies cracked a 10-man rotation for a 2014 playoff team, or that those three rookies are Mason Plumlee, Steven Adams and Cody Zeller?
At some point, we’re going to need a computer to simulate a seven-game series between the 2000 Draft All-Stars and the 2013 Draft All-Stars to officially figure out the worst draft of all time.
Every year Bill says the draft isn't very good. Can we give the 2013 draft class two years in the NBA before writing them off? It doesn't sound like that much to ask.
Q: Is anyone on Miami better at basketball than they were a year ago?
They have LeBron, Bosh, and Wade. Does it matter?
Q: You’re a sportswriter on the Internet — why haven’t you attacked James Harden yet? Didn’t you get the memo? It’s Attack James Harden Week.
Put it this way — I watched him take terrible 3s, shoot himself out of ice-cold stretches and treat defense like a nuisance for six solid months. You know what my reaction was? I voted for him for first-team All-NBA. He’s the league’s streakiest superstar.
Yeah Bill, some people would call "streakiest" as the "most inconsistent" NBA superstar.
During the 2013-14 season, Harden did the following things …
• Missed 14 of 17 shots against Phoenix (including 0-for-10 from 3), then dropped 34 on Golden State two nights later.
• Missed seven of nine shots against Memphis, only he finished with 27 points because he made 22 of 25 FT’s.
• Went 2-for-9 against OKC, finished with eight points … and exploded for 38, 37 and 38 the next three games, respectively.
• Threw up 41, 10 and six with six steals against Portland just six weeks ago.
• From Game 70 through Game 81, he averaged 28.1 ppg, 8.3 apg, 5.1 rpg, 1.9 spg, 44-37-89% splits and made 10.5 of 11.8 FTA. Repeat: Harden MADE 126 free throws in 12 games.
It sounds like he's just another basketball player who has bad nights. That can't be though, because Bill Simmons has decided that in this week's column he will make James Harden the streakiest superstar in the NBA. It's a real thing that Bill just made up.
we appreciate Harden’s 90 percent (the good stuff) and tolerate the 10 percent (the annoying stuff), but occasionally, the 10 percent completely overpowers the 90 percent.
Stop writing "we." You don't speak for anyone but yourself, despite what your massive ego may tell you. Also, this 90/10 rule basically means that James Harden isn't a perfect basketball player. That's not a news flash. 99% of the league falls in this category of not being perfect.
Q: How much pot should Boston fans smoke during Brooklyn’s playoff games to trick themselves into thinking that Pierce and KG still play for the Celtics?
This is the fifth and last Celtics reference in this column. This is a column about Round 1 of the NBA playoffs where Bill didn't mention two playoff teams at all and Bill's favorite team who didn't make the playoffs is mentioned five times.
Q: What’s the best wager for a 2014 Finals matchup right now just from the standpoint of getting great odds?
You gotta love Heat-Grizzlies at +2100. If Memphis gets by OKC, it’ll have the Clippers next, then probably the winner of Spurs-Blazers. Both winnable, right? The Grizzlies have had “The Look” (trademark: Mike Lombardi for a few weeks now)
Mike Lombardi? I thought he was the GM of the Browns. What happened there? Man, I tell you...being associated with Bill Belichick is so much more fun than having to show you can do a job as well as Bill Belichick isn't it?
they’re tough, they’re playoff-proven, they can get stops, and most important, they know who they are.
Bill's grasp of cliched talking is pretty good. He's excellent at talking in generalities and cliches. It must be his "NBA Countdown" experience rubbing off on him.
Q: It’s a bad sign for Brooks that Russell Westbrook’s brother tweeted during Game 3 that OKC needs a new coach, right?
It’s certainly not a GOOD sign...I love watching Durant and Westbrook, but Westbrook’s overcompetitiveness — the trait you want 99 percent of the time — actually hurts Oklahoma City because he’s saying “I GOT THIS!” way too much.
Apparently Bill's new favorite way to describe an NBA player is to talk about him being an "I GOT THIS" guy. Look for a column in the future expanding on this concept for 1000 words followed by a mailbag for the rest of the column.
It’s starting to feel more and more like Durant and Westbrook might need their own teams. But that’s the best thing about Game 4: They could flip that narrative with one monster game in Memphis. Do they have their own everyone-needs-to-shut-the-eff-up 70-27-15 lurking in them?
Bill's answer is that Westbrook and Durant may each need their own NBA team, but they also may not each need their own NBA team. Talk to him in five years and he will tell you definitively whether they each needed their own NBA team. Then Bill will use his powers of hindsight to tell us why "we" thought Durant/Westbrook could co-exist and why it didn't work or if it turns out Durant/Westbrook did work out Bill will tell us how he said it could work. "We" are wrong when Bill is wrong, Bill is right when Bill is right.
Welcome to this weekend’s most fascinating subplot … well, other than Indiana having basketball’s first-ever collective nervous breakdown.
But the most important burning question from Round 1 of the playoffs is how the Pacers collective nervous breakdown affected the Boston Celtics? Is there a Jermaine O'Neal Corollary involved at all?
Do you realize road teams have won 10 of 19 playoff games so far? Do you realize we’ve had 297 officiating controversies already? Do you realize three 50-win coaches are in real danger of getting canned within the next 10 days? Do you realize we have an 8-seed beating a 1-seed and a 7-seed beating a 2-seed? Do you realize Indiana is slapping together the Mother of All NBA Swoons?
No Bill, we didn't realize this until you just told us about it. Thank God you are here to interpret all NBA-related events for us. You are the only prism through which the NBA playoffs can be understood. Enlighten us all.
Do you realize a Wizards-Clippers Finals is in play? Repeat: Do you realize a Wizards-Clippers Finals is in play????? And that the odds are only 65-to-1 right now??? And that it’s actually a good bet at those odds??????????? WHAT IS HAPPENING?????????
The question mark on your keyboard is broken? You are killing time to make up for a lack of original, creative material by asking the same question over and over again?
Without further ado, let’s tackle 33 burning questions from Round 1.
It's a mailbag that's not a mailbag. Because Bill has already done quite a few mailbags recently and it would be crazy to do another one, right?
Q: Could the Wizards really make the Eastern Conference finals despite whiffing on 2013’s no. 3 overall pick (Otto Porter) and 2011’s no. 6 overall pick (Jan Vesely)?
Let’s flip that around. The Wizards could make the Eastern Conference finals because they didn’t whiff on 2010’s no. 1 overall pick (John Wall) and 2012’s no. 3 overall pick (Bradley Beal).
Because I had an unnatural love for Bradley Beal coming out of college, I have to point out that Bill wasn't exactly high on Bradley Beal coming out of college. Most likely this is because Bill was just saying things about Beal out of his ass like,
With the no. 3 pick for Washington, I'm grabbing Bradley Beal, the silky smooth two-guard who definitely bought Ray Allen's jumper on eBay. I love this pick even though I watched all four of Florida's NCAA Tournament games and never at any point thought to myself, I'm watching the no. 3 pick in June's draft.
Is it a red flag when the alleged best scoring guard available from college basketball couldn't average 15 points a game or make 34 percent of his 3s?
If you follow the link I proved that (a) Bill is an idiot who doesn't really know what he was talking about and (b) Beal played well in the NCAA Tournament and I pointed out Beal was 18 years old so 34% from three-point range isn't terrible. But don't worry, Bill knew nothing about Beal and admitted it,
SIMMONS: I just spent the past 10 minutes watching his YouTube clips, so I'm totally ready to have an opinion here.
Are we sure Beal is Gordon 2.0? The best thing about Gordon other than his stroke is that he's built like a tank — he loves driving into the paint, bouncing off bigger guys and finishing around the rim.
Beal is a few inches taller; really, he's more like a young Mike Miller,
So after watching 10 minutes of YouTube videos of Bradley Beal, Bill Simmons announces that he is like Mike Miller, not Eric Gordon. It's nearly impossible for me to take Bill Simmons seriously knowing how often he talks out of his ass. Does anyone watch Bradley Bill and say, "Man, he reminds me of Mike Miller!"? I would doubt it. Okay, rant done. I had to point out that Bill loves Beal now, but wasn't exactly a fan before Beal was drafted. Hindsight is wonderful isn't it?
They turned Vesely and next year’s first-rounder into Professor Andre Miller and Marcin Gortat, two veterans who made an impact. And Trevor Ariza wouldn’t be thriving without young Porter breathing down his neck. Fine, that’s not true. There’s been no neck-breathing whatsoever. Everything else is true.
Wait, someone just reminded me that Ernie traded the no. 5 pick in 2009 for Mike Miller and Randy Foye, which means he whiffed on three top-six lottery picks in five years. According to the Atrocious GM Summit rulebook, the “David Kahn Corollary” says that at least three top-six whiffs in five years earns you an automatic invite. So, Ernie is coming back no matter what happens! I’m glad we settled this.
See? Bill is still milking the same recycled and tired jokes 4-5 years after he originally tells them. The Atrocious GM Summit, how hilarious!
The Atrocious GM Summit should only serve to remind Bill's readers that at one point in his writing career he actually gave a shit about trying to write creatively and wasn't up his own ass. Those days are gone.
Q: Can the Wizards really make the Eastern finals when their fans are sending emails during playoff games like, “I’d like to report an attempted murder — Randy Wittman is trying to kill me”?
Fans complain about their team's coach no matter how much success that team has had or is currently having. Fans complaining about the coach/manager is going to happen no matter what. So this means nothing, except it's another weak attempt for Bill to try and be clever.
The good news for Wizards fans: Just in the past decade, Alvin Gentry and Mike Brown coached in Round 3; Flip Saunders took two different teams to Round 3; and Scott Brooks made two conference finals and the actual Finals. Don’t those four guys make you feel a little better about Randy Wittman?
Do the Wizards have LeBron James or Kevin Durant? No? Ok.
The NBA isn’t complicated — to blow a series when you have a more talented team, you’d need an offensive game plan that’s two steps below rudimentary, no defensive mind-set whatsoever, a slew of head-scratching rotation decisions, an overall emphasis on aggressively sloppy play, a stubborn refusal to change anything that’s not working, a lack of recognition for basic stuff like “That guy is headed for 40 points again, maybe we try something different defensively,” and the confidence to keep making terrible game-management choices in the final minute without learning from the previous game’s terrible game-management choices.
That's it. That's exactly how to blow a series. You better believe Bill that these are the steps on how to blow a series with a more talented team. After all he DID write the Book of Basketball.
Q: Can the Wizards really make the Eastern Conference finals when they’re the Washington Wizards?
Now THIS is an obstacle.
The Wizards actual talent isn't necessarily an obstacle, it's the Wizards history of not being a very good team that is the real obstacle. After all, I'm sure the young Wizards squad is greatly affected by the history of basketball in Washington they aren't fully even aware exists.
My favorite Wizards fact: Since Wes Unseld and Elvin Hayes left the franchise in 1981, they haven’t employed a single player whose jersey could be retired. Not one! That’s impossible!
Well, it's true so it's not entirely impossible.
My second favorite Wizards fact: I sent House the last two graphs and he wrote back, “You forgot about Ike Austin for Ben Wallace. And Mark Price’s foot. And Gheorge’s pituitary gland … I’ll have more later.” I didn’t hear from him for another 24 hours.
Can you imagine trying to have a conversation with Bill and his friends? Would this conversation contain any other type of discussion outside of whining about their favorite team? Yes, the Wizards/Bullets have been terrible, but every team has made bad decisions over the history of the franchise. Some have made more than others, but more importantly, I'm not sure I wouldn't characterize House's last two "graphs" as a "fact" any more than I would consider it the listing of more Wizards/Bullets missteps over the last 20 years.
Q: Nene is lighting up Joakim Noah!!! LIGHTING HIM UP!!! Also, am I on drugs right now?
You’re not on drugs; you’re fine. Nobody ever doubted Nene’s talent, as evidenced by his earning more than $86 million since 2006 (with another $39 million guaranteed through 2016) despite never averaging 15 points or eight rebounds in any season.
Yes, "you're" not on drugs. By the way, Bill is writing and answering the questions himself, so "you're" not on drugs should be "I'm" not on drugs. But that's beside the point.
We know Nene has talent because he has been well-paid throughout his NBA career and there's no way an NBA team would overpay a player who didn't have talent, right Chris Kaman, Rashard Lewis, Carlos Boozer, Ben Gordon, and Tyrus Thomas?
These guys have some talent, but the NBA (and other sports) has a long history of paying players a lot of money who don't necessarily have talent equivalent to the money that player is getting paid. So the fact Nene got paid $86 million since 2006 doesn't mean Nene has talent and his talent shouldn't be questioned.
Over everything else, you gotta love how HARD Washington is playing: You have Beal and Wall trying to make names for themselves, Ariza and Gortat playing for new contracts, and Nene taking the Noah matchup personally for whatever reason. Yes, yes, yes. They can make the Eastern finals.
What you really have to love is Bill Simmons lauding a professional sports team for playing hard in the playoffs. If I were a lazy person I would state this is the problem with the NBA and why some people don't like to watch the sport. It's not just the perception that the players don't play hard, but a diehard NBA fan like Bill Simmons actually takes the time to congratulate an NBA team for playing hard in the playoffs...like that's not expected or anything.
Q: If Phil Jackson learned the triangle offense from Tex Winter, then who was Scott Brooks’s mentor for Oklahoma City’s “Clogged Toilet” offense? Was it just Mike Brown, or were Vinny Del Negro and Mike Woodson involved as well?
See how creative and hilarious these questions are? Bill isn't recycling old jokes at all. These jokes about Vinny Del Negro, Mike Woodson, and Mike Brown aren't old at all. Hey, maybe Bill could slip an Art Shell joke in there for good measure as well. That's still funny and relevant, right?
Here’s my working theory: Early in Brooks’s playing career, he played in Minnesota for Jimmy Rodgers, the longtime Celtics assistant and honorary head coach of the Ghastly 1980s NBA Permafro Team (a.k.a. The Jack Sikma All-Stars).
Let's see:
1. Half-assed theory Bill believes is more clever than it really is. Check.
2. Mention of the Boston Celtics. Check.
3. Mention of a fictional "All-Stars" team that Bill has put together. Check.
All that remains to be included is a reference to an 80's movie and all of Bill's usual material would be contained in this paragraph...or "graph" as Bill seems to think the kids say.
So Jimmy learned from the Clogged Toilet master. And eventually, Brooks learned from Jimmy, so it’s something of a Clogged Toilet coaching tree. But every time I see OKC barely getting KD the ball 35 feet from the basket — or even better, taking 15 seconds to post him up on the low block, followed by KD dribbling back behind the 3-point line as soon as he gets it — I always picture K.C. Jones and Jimmy Rodgers nodding proudly.
Just remember, Bill is writing these questions AND answering them. So if he truly gave a shit about what he was writing this could be a good column due to the fact he has complete creative control over what is being asked and written. Instead...well, this is what happens.
Q: Are Boston fans allowed to make fun of McHale mangling this Portland series after he helped the Celtics win three titles, clotheslined Rambis, costarred on the greatest NBA team of all time (the ’86 Celts), played on a broken foot in the 1987 Finals, made a cameo on Cheers, got his no. 32 retired, and traded KG to Boston in 2007 over accepting a slightly better deal from the Lakers?
Nope. Not allowed.
Boston Celtics. Just in case you forgot. Boston Celtics. They have to be discussed at some point even if these are burning questions about Round 1 of the playoffs. After all, Boston Celtics. They may not be in Round 1 but this is the second reference to them. The Boston Sports Guy.
Q: The Heat are still the league’s best team, they still have the league’s best player, and they’re still going for a historic three-peat … and yet they’re something like the 27th most relevant story line right now. What happened?
Yeah, what about the story lines for the Heat? I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact the other playoff series are actually exciting while the Heat were slowly tearing down and defeating the woefully undermatched Bobcats. Not at all. Fans like to watch the exciting playoff series and the Heat-Bobcats series was simply Charlotte delaying the inevitable. The Heat weren't losing that series, even if the NBA has to make sure the Heat got 85 free throw attempts in a Game 7.
It’s a combination of Heat fatigue (four solid years of people endlessly dissecting them),
"People" endlessly dissecting them? Doesn't Bill mean "ESPN" endlessly dissecting them? This is an astounding lack of self-awareness considering Bill's employer had an entire portion of ESPN.com dedicated to the Heat called the "Heat Check."
their glaringly obvious on/off switch (which they tried to keep to “off” for both Charlotte games), their undeniably bored crowds (is there a worse playoff game to watch on TV, from an atmosphere standpoint, than Miami when they’re heavily favored at home?),
Perhaps the Heat were "off" because the Miami crowd around them were bored and the Bobcats weren't a very good team who ended up playing with their best player barely able to run up-and-down the court? There could be a correlation here.
and the inevitability of the Heat making a fourth straight Finals (thanks to the East collapsing around them).
It also helps the Heat's chances of making a fourth straight Finals that they have the NBA's best player and a really good team around him. There's that too.
Q: If Doc Rivers fought Jermaine O’Neal in Game 2, would that have been the greatest moment of 2014?
No — Pero Antic fighting David West would have been the greatest moment of 2014.
Speaking of fighting...the Boston Celtics! What's that you say? How aren't the Celtics relevant in a column about playoff questions? Bill just brought the conversation back around to the Celtics so they are totally relevant.
But I’m glad this came up. Once upon a time, the Celtics paid O’Neal $12 million over two years to be their backup big man.
Oh yeah, Bill is completely pulling this conversation back around to the Celtics. It's all he knows how to do.
O’Neal played 24 games in 2011, then disappeared because of knee and wrist injuries. During the ensuing six-month lockout, he never bothered to get surgery for his left wrist — for reasons that remain unclear — then reinjured it two months into the lockout season. What happened next? He opted for season-ending surgery over, you know, playing in a little pain because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you make $6 million a year.
Bill goes further into the story while whining that Ryan Hollins and Greg Stiemsma played big minutes in the 2012 Eastern Conference Finals because O'Neal was injured. Just know that this is very important to know in order for Bill to answer his own question about whether O'Neal and Rivers fighting would have been the greatest moment of 2014.
I’d bet anything that Doc sees O’Neal miraculously flying around like he’s seven years younger in this Warriors-Clips series and thinks to himself, That’s the guy who quit on me two years ago. Could you blame him?
No, I can't blame him. Let's talk more about how the Celtics lost the 2012 Eastern Conference finals with the Celtics "barely" (yes, Bill wrote "barely" except he of course put it in italics) losing to the Heat because Jermaine O'Neal didn't get surgery on his left wrist. This talk would be super-important in a column about Round 1 of the 2014 NBA playoffs. Bill has to mention the Celtics and he has to do a little bit of whining about why the Celtics didn't make the NBA Finals in 2012.
Q: Is Chris Paul better than you think, worse than you think or exactly what you think?
Because it’s the Internet and people have to come up with stuff to talk about every day, you knew this list would start glowing in neon the moment Chris looked shaky in a playoff game …
NUMBER OF PLAYOFF SERIES WON BY THE LOTTERY CLASS OF 2005
Andrew Bynum: 10
Deron Williams: 4
Marvin Williams: 3
Channing Frye: 2
Chris Paul: 2
Andrew Bogut: 1
Ray Felton: 1
I like how Bill blames this list on the Internet when this is the first I personally have ever seen this list. Maybe I just missed it. It's fun to read Bill talking about this list's existence and how it seems he just had no choice but to publish it in this column. Not his fault. His hands were tied.
It's important to remember Andrew Bynum has played with Pau Gasol and Kobe Bryant and Chris Paul isn't that far behind any other player on this list. Paul was stuck in New Orleans for quite a few years with David West as the other best player on the team. Let's be a little fair.
What happened? He helped blow Game 1 on Saturday, and naturally “What has Chris Paul ever won?” became a thing. So here’s a quick story: The following morning, Steve Nash dropped into our NBA Countdown vortex to shoot a few segments with us. During our preshow meeting, I mentioned that Paul was getting criticized for his Game 1 performance, and asked if it might affect someone even as good as Paul if something like “What has he ever won?” morphed into a national story line. What happened? Nash made a face and said, “Chris is the best point guard in the league, it’s not even close. When you have the ball in your hands all the time, you’re going to make mistakes sometimes.”
(The answer: Actually, Chris Paul is better than you think — as you saw last night, when he masterfully fouled Steph Curry on the game’s deciding play in a way that was never, ever, EVER getting called.)
Oh, so we have the answer because Steve Nash said sometimes a player makes mistakes when the ball is in that player's hands. I guess that closes the book on this question then. I do have another question though...what was the point of this question from the perspective of the person reading this column? Why was this fake question even asked? Was it for Bill to be forced to bust out with the list (against his will nonetheless!) of playoff series won by the lottery class of 2005, was it for Bill to remind us that he knows Steve Nash, or was it to kill space in a column where Bill just doesn't have a hell of a lot to say?
I think it's all of the above.
Q: Will we ever figure out what happened to the 2014 Pacers? (Marc Stein)
It’s almost more fun NOT knowing. But I think we know. Here’s the pie-chart breakdown …
Bill did this a few weeks ago where he definitely answered this question in other pie-chart breakdown that didn't involve a pie-chart so it wasn't really a pie-chart breakdown.
Here's how the percentages shook out:
The Chemistry Thing: 40%
Lance Has This: 25%
Identity Loss: 25%
The Collective Slump: 10%
So I'm not sure why Bill is answering the same question yet again in pie-chart form without an actual pie-chart so it isn't really a pie-chart breakdown. He answered the question in early April so I'm not sure how much could really chang---
30 PERCENT: Pat Riley named it “The Disease of Me,” a chemistry-killing toxin that afflicts certain teams after they’ve hit it big.
Wait, what? These percentages have changed drastically in the last four weeks? Outside of Bill making the percentages up in both cases out of his ass (fine, that's the real answer to the question I'm about to pose...Bill just makes shit up, so look no further than these changing pie-chart percentages for proof of this), how come these percentages have changed in such a short time?
But you know the nuts and bolts by now: Lance Stephenson thought he was an All-Star, Paul George thought he was a superstar, Danny Granger disappeared, the big guys stopped getting the ball … before you knew it, a selfless team started thinking selfishly.
So I wonder whether this is filed under "Identity Loss" or "Chemistry Thing" in Bill's original pie-chart column about the Pacers struggles?
20 PERCENT: Wore down because the starting five played too many minutes.
Funny, this wasn't mentioned in Bill's original pie-chart. It's almost like Bill is making things up as he goes along. Bill can't even take the time to be consistent with something he wrote less than a month ago.
10 PERCENT: No superstar scorer to stop the slide and say, “It’s OK, everybody, I got this.”
And here 10% was originally allocated to "The Collective Slump." I guess Bill thinks the Pacers no longer underwent a collective slump and now thinks they needed a superstar scorer to stop the slide.
20 PERCENT: Actually, they had Lance Stephenson saying, “It’s OK, everybody, I got this.” And that’s even worse.
And here "Lance Has This" was 25% of the problem less than a month ago. Perhaps Lance "having it" became less of a problem over the past four weeks.
20 PERCENT: Are we sure they were ever that good? Last season, they won 49 games and had a plus-4 point differential in a lousy conference.
Stop using "we" whenever you are wrong about something. Also, Bill is brilliant at using hindsight isn't he? If you ever need someone to tell you the problem with a team AFTER that problem has occurred and the issue is obvious to everyone, then Bill Simmons is your man. His masterful use of hindsight has no peer, except for maybe Gregg Easterbrook.
I’d say we overrated these guys except for one thing:
STOP SAYING "WE" WHEN "YOU" ARE WRONG! "WE" didn't think anything.
The Indiana guys look like they hate playing with each other — they’re interacting like divorced parents who just ran into each other at their son’s youth soccer game. It’s crazy.
That's exactly what it's like. There's no ubuntu in Indiana. That's the real problem. How Bill isn't now a full-time NBA analyst with insights such as this evades common sense and logic.
Q: Is Roy Hibbert tradable, sort of untradable, or totally untradable?
Sort of tradable. Really tall centers who can block shots and score points are in high demand.
Working against Hibbert …
• He’s guaranteed $30.4 million combined over the next two seasons.
• He turned into Hasheem Thabeet about 10 weeks ago. Couldn’t Thabeet match Hibbert’s production since February 4 if he played 29 minutes a game? You’re telling me 8.6 points, 5.2 rebounds and 1.8 blocks and 39 percent shooting isn’t doable for Thabeet?
Hasheem Thabeet is terrible. I am not sure he could put up 8.6 points, 5.2 rebounds and 1.8 blocks in 29 minutes. Let's cut the hyperbole and be real about Hasheem Thabust's terribleness.
The Law of Mutombo tells us this: You never know when a tall center is about to lose it, but when they lose it, you know right away.
I feel like Bill says this about every athlete. It's probably not true, but I feel like he is always saying, "When Player X loses it, it happens fast." Also, there is no "Law of Mutumbo." Fortunately, Bill will forget he named this law after Mutumbo and will name it after another tall center in a month or so. It's not like Bill even cares what he's writing at this point.
Even if Hibbert is only 27, what if this wasn’t a slump? What if the Law of Mutombo struck him early?
What if this fictional curse did strike early? Is there a fictional "All-Star" team that Bill could put Hibbert on while making an overly-involved comparison of Hibbert to a man in his 30's who used to go out on the club scene and pick up women but now is having a declining success rate, along with a name-dropped reference to Jimmy Kimmel? Can we make this happen? Who says "no"?
Working for Hibbert …
Too many teams value (and overvalue) advanced metrics, which means at least two or three teams would value Hibbert’s rim protection numbers. If he’s standing in front of the rim and you’re driving to the basket, it’s hard to score. You just need to put him in that specific situation, and not situations like “chasing Antic out to the 3-point line” or “trying to catch Anthony Davis sprinting down the court.”
Well, that's good news for the NBA since the trend isn't headed towards centers who can shoot from the outside and don't necessarily spend most of their time on the low block.
You take a flyer on him in Year 1, and if it doesn’t work out, you have a big expiring in Year 2. Wouldn’t Charlotte and Dallas do this tomorrow? Wouldn’t the Celtics sniff around?
That's the fourth reference to the Celtics in a column that is supposed to be about Round 1 of the NBA playoffs. That's four references for a non-playoff team while the Raptors aren't mentioned at all, the Grizzlies are mentioned in passing, the Nets aren't mentioned at all, and the Spurs/Mavericks are both mentioned in passing. Meanwhile the Celtics are mentioned or referenced five times in this column. Imagine how often Bill would talk about them if they were actually in Round 1 of the playoffs.
Wouldn’t OKC have to consider something with Hibbert and Kendrick Perkins’s expiring as the principals? I refuse to believe he’s untradable.
You are the one who asked the question, jackass.
We were just celebrating him two months ago!
"We" were celebrating him two months ago weren't "we"!
But I liked how a reader named Trent in Indy summed up the Hibbert issue … “You know when you drive your car and hear a weird sound, but ignore it? Then you hear it again louder, but you ignore it because you’re really busy? Then you hear it constantly, but you are now
I'm going to have to stop it here. Trent from Indy seems to be the type of guy who takes selfies of himself in the mirror and then uses it as his avatar on Twitter, because he's so damned impressed with himself. This is an overly-long analogy that is specifically intended to get Bill's attention and get a response. Get your own writing style. Why can't Bill and his readers simply just say something as opposed to using an overly-long analogy? An analogy is partially used in order to shorten an explanation, not lengthen it.
worried about the potentially big expense that might be represented by that sound, so you ignore it still? Then your car won’t start, so you take it to the shop and find out it’s even worse than you’d imagined, and so many expensive things are wrong with your car that you decide to fix the bare minimum of the problems in order to sell the piece of crap and make it someone else’s problem? That’s Roy Hibbert.”
Or as a normal person who is actually capable of expressing himself without an overly-long analogy would say, "Roy Hibbert is a problem that can't be ignored and won't simply go away on his own."
Q: Did you know that, since 1985, only MJ, Magic, Shaq, Kobe, Iverson, T-Mac and Aldridge have scored 42-plus points in back-to-back playoff games?
I just furrowed my brow.
Thanks for the update on the status of your brow. My life is now more complete.
Q: What’s crazier — that only three rookies cracked a 10-man rotation for a 2014 playoff team, or that those three rookies are Mason Plumlee, Steven Adams and Cody Zeller?
At some point, we’re going to need a computer to simulate a seven-game series between the 2000 Draft All-Stars and the 2013 Draft All-Stars to officially figure out the worst draft of all time.
Every year Bill says the draft isn't very good. Can we give the 2013 draft class two years in the NBA before writing them off? It doesn't sound like that much to ask.
Q: Is anyone on Miami better at basketball than they were a year ago?
They have LeBron, Bosh, and Wade. Does it matter?
Q: You’re a sportswriter on the Internet — why haven’t you attacked James Harden yet? Didn’t you get the memo? It’s Attack James Harden Week.
Put it this way — I watched him take terrible 3s, shoot himself out of ice-cold stretches and treat defense like a nuisance for six solid months. You know what my reaction was? I voted for him for first-team All-NBA. He’s the league’s streakiest superstar.
Yeah Bill, some people would call "streakiest" as the "most inconsistent" NBA superstar.
During the 2013-14 season, Harden did the following things …
• Missed 14 of 17 shots against Phoenix (including 0-for-10 from 3), then dropped 34 on Golden State two nights later.
• Missed seven of nine shots against Memphis, only he finished with 27 points because he made 22 of 25 FT’s.
• Went 2-for-9 against OKC, finished with eight points … and exploded for 38, 37 and 38 the next three games, respectively.
• Threw up 41, 10 and six with six steals against Portland just six weeks ago.
• From Game 70 through Game 81, he averaged 28.1 ppg, 8.3 apg, 5.1 rpg, 1.9 spg, 44-37-89% splits and made 10.5 of 11.8 FTA. Repeat: Harden MADE 126 free throws in 12 games.
It sounds like he's just another basketball player who has bad nights. That can't be though, because Bill Simmons has decided that in this week's column he will make James Harden the streakiest superstar in the NBA. It's a real thing that Bill just made up.
we appreciate Harden’s 90 percent (the good stuff) and tolerate the 10 percent (the annoying stuff), but occasionally, the 10 percent completely overpowers the 90 percent.
Stop writing "we." You don't speak for anyone but yourself, despite what your massive ego may tell you. Also, this 90/10 rule basically means that James Harden isn't a perfect basketball player. That's not a news flash. 99% of the league falls in this category of not being perfect.
Q: How much pot should Boston fans smoke during Brooklyn’s playoff games to trick themselves into thinking that Pierce and KG still play for the Celtics?
This is the fifth and last Celtics reference in this column. This is a column about Round 1 of the NBA playoffs where Bill didn't mention two playoff teams at all and Bill's favorite team who didn't make the playoffs is mentioned five times.
Q: What’s the best wager for a 2014 Finals matchup right now just from the standpoint of getting great odds?
You gotta love Heat-Grizzlies at +2100. If Memphis gets by OKC, it’ll have the Clippers next, then probably the winner of Spurs-Blazers. Both winnable, right? The Grizzlies have had “The Look” (trademark: Mike Lombardi for a few weeks now)
Mike Lombardi? I thought he was the GM of the Browns. What happened there? Man, I tell you...being associated with Bill Belichick is so much more fun than having to show you can do a job as well as Bill Belichick isn't it?
they’re tough, they’re playoff-proven, they can get stops, and most important, they know who they are.
Bill's grasp of cliched talking is pretty good. He's excellent at talking in generalities and cliches. It must be his "NBA Countdown" experience rubbing off on him.
Q: It’s a bad sign for Brooks that Russell Westbrook’s brother tweeted during Game 3 that OKC needs a new coach, right?
It’s certainly not a GOOD sign...I love watching Durant and Westbrook, but Westbrook’s overcompetitiveness — the trait you want 99 percent of the time — actually hurts Oklahoma City because he’s saying “I GOT THIS!” way too much.
Apparently Bill's new favorite way to describe an NBA player is to talk about him being an "I GOT THIS" guy. Look for a column in the future expanding on this concept for 1000 words followed by a mailbag for the rest of the column.
It’s starting to feel more and more like Durant and Westbrook might need their own teams. But that’s the best thing about Game 4: They could flip that narrative with one monster game in Memphis. Do they have their own everyone-needs-to-shut-the-eff-up 70-27-15 lurking in them?
Bill's answer is that Westbrook and Durant may each need their own NBA team, but they also may not each need their own NBA team. Talk to him in five years and he will tell you definitively whether they each needed their own NBA team. Then Bill will use his powers of hindsight to tell us why "we" thought Durant/Westbrook could co-exist and why it didn't work or if it turns out Durant/Westbrook did work out Bill will tell us how he said it could work. "We" are wrong when Bill is wrong, Bill is right when Bill is right.
Welcome to this weekend’s most fascinating subplot … well, other than Indiana having basketball’s first-ever collective nervous breakdown.
But the most important burning question from Round 1 of the playoffs is how the Pacers collective nervous breakdown affected the Boston Celtics? Is there a Jermaine O'Neal Corollary involved at all?
Saturday, September 28, 2013
4 comments Bill Simmons Has 14 Reactions to the Trent Richardson Trade Because a Longer List Means Higher Quality Content, Right?
Bill Simmons has 14 reactions to the Trent Richardson trade. Yes, 14 reactions. Bill is at the point where he is convinced a longer column makes up for less quality in his writing. He's like a band who knows their songwriting isn't as good as it used to be, so they make it up their fans by playing longer songs. It's like saying, "Hey, our work isn't as good as it used to be, but look how long we are playing our new mediocre material." Bill, not shockingly, applauds his good friend Mike Lombardi for trading Trent Richardson and Bill also has his Week 3 picks. NFL season is an exciting time for Bill because he doesn't have to resort to writing a mailbag in order to cover up for his lack of new, original material.
My first reaction: What?????
I'm guessing it took Bill 15 minutes to think of his first reaction. This may be the worst time to mention Bill broke this column up into two pages for no good reason, but I just mentioned it anyway. Neither section is especially long, but he broke up his comments on Richardson from his Week 3 picks. He probably did this just to make me nitpick him. Everything is about me.
My second reaction: Wait, shouldn't the Browns have gotten more for Trent Richardson?
If it were still 1989, then yes, the Browns should have gotten more for Trent Richardson.
My third reaction: If Richardson turns into Edge James 2.0 for the Colts, Lombardi will be back on my podcast in time for the 2014 draft!
Bill rides the fence on this issue on whether he thinks trading Richardson for a first round pick was a smart move. I'm just kidding! Bill basically states that Mike Lombardi has revolutionized tanking and has set a standard other NFL teams will eventually follow while attempting to tank. I feel like trading 2012's first round pick for a 2014 first round is something he would normally rip the Cleveland Browns for doing. Of course this is assuming one of Bill's friend isn't the GM of the Browns, so all bets are off since Lombardi and Bill are friends. Isn't it fun how relationships affect the coverage of sports stories?
My sixth reaction: Wait a second … are we sure Trent Richardson is good?
(Did some Googling … looked at his numbers … noticed he ran for just 3.4 yards per carry behind what we thought was a solid offensive line …
Yes, "we" did think the Browns had a solid offensive line. I love reading Bill Simmons' columns in order to find out what I think.
My seventh reaction: Just because Richardson went third overall in the 2012 draft, does that mean that's where he should have been drafted?
This is the seventh reaction and Bill is already stretching to desperately find a way to start a discussion. This same question could be asked of any NFL player drafted any point in the NFL Draft, regardless of whether that player was traded or not.
found a PFT piece with Jim Brown saying he thought Richardson was "ordinary" and that he "wasn't impressed" with Mark Ingram one day before the draft … found Mel Kiper calling Richardson a "rare talent" in his 2012 draft grades … found a bunch of "Richardson is overrated" articles heading into that draft … remembered how dumb Cleveland's old regime was for trading up one spot to get him when Minnesota just wanted to take Matt Kalil anyway …
Oh yeah, the old Browns regime was stupid for trading up a spot to get Richardson. I would assume based on this comment Bill would ordinarily find trading Richardson for a first round draft choice a year after he has been drafted to be dumb too. After all, if trading up one spot to get a player is dumb, wouldn't trading that same player away a year later for a lesser pick be equally as stupid in Bill's simpleton mind? I'm trying to think overly-logical right now.
My eighth reaction: But wait — Lombardi worked for NFL Network and NFL.com back then. Now he's the GM of the Browns. What did he think of Richardson before that 2012 draft? I looked up his NFL.com archives. Here's what Lombardi wrote.
"I believe the safest pick in the draft — beyond Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III — is Alabama running back Trent Richardson. He's a blue-chip player and has all the skills to quickly establish himself as a top-five player at his position. Forget the nonsense about not taking backs early — everyone would love the chance to get this guy."
My ninth reaction: Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? THE PLOT THICKENS!
This eighth reaction isn't an actual reaction, but more a question. Of course the same could be said for the seventh reaction as well. So the ninth reaction is an actual reaction, while the eight reaction is simply a question posed. I am only being hyper-technical because I think Bill is really stretching to make this Richardson discussion worthy of an entire column.
My 10th reaction: Was Lombardi's premise, "Forget the nonsense about not taking backs early," flawed? Yes and no.
What do you know, Bill rides the fence on this question. Also, this is yet another question and not a reaction.
He's right if you're talking about Adrian Peterson, or a prospect close to Peterson. He's wrong if it's anyone iffier than that. You don't need a franchise back to win a Super Bowl in the 21st century, as the Willie Parkers, Joseph Addais, James Starkses and Ahmad Bradshaws taught us.
Three things:
1. Trent Richardson isn't Adrian Peterson.
2. You don't need a franchise back to win a Super Bowl, but you do need Ben Roethlisberger, Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, or Aaron Rodgers.
3. The idea you don't need a franchise back to win a Super Bowl is a great theory and I support it, but the Browns drafted Trent Richardson in the Top 5 of the NFL Draft, where franchise players are supposed to go. So stating Richardson isn't a franchise back isn't a defense of the Browns in any way. I love the Browns got a first round pick back for Trent Richardson, but I don't think makes them smart any more than it shows the franchise needs to find a direction and go with it. It's a good trade for the Browns if you ask me. They got a first round pick for a player who probably isn't a franchise running back, except they passed up franchise players in drafting that running back a year earlier.
So basically Mike Lombardi the analyst was wrong and Mike Lombardi the GM was correct.
As for "luxury" running backs like Trent Richardson, teams have spent 13 top-16 picks on backs since 2002: Richardson (3), C.J. Spiller (9), Ryan Mathews (12), Knowshon Moreno (12), Jonathan Stewart (13), McFadden (4), Marshawn Lynch (12), Reggie Bush (2), Peterson (7), Ronnie Brown (2), Cedric Benson (4), Cadillac Williams (5), William Green (16). It's a grisly list. Only Peterson and Lynch made it. Bush and McFadden kinda sorta made it. Spiller made it in the "everyone overpaid for him in fantasy this year" sense. And that's it.
This data Bill is using regarding how running backs have performed over the past 20 years in the NFL is completely irrelevant as it relates to the Trent Richardson trade. What Trent Richardson is right now as a running back and what the Browns received in return for Richardson is all that matters. In that, I think the Browns succeeded.
My 11th reaction: If the Browns had just trumped Washington's offer for Robert Griffin III in 2012, they never would have found themselves in this pickle.
I know this isn't what this column is about, but why do people ignore the Rams could have had Griffin and given up nothing? They had the #2 overall pick and all they had to do was pick Griffin and then trade Bradford to get a few more picks. The Rams could have had Robert Griffin AND gained picks out of the deal. I'm done talking about this. Let the Rams keep Sam Bradford and have no one pay attention to the fact the Rams could have had Griffin and another pick(s) to go along with him. I know, I know, it's all hindsight. Still, if the Rams had done their homework on Griffin...
They were outwitted by Daniel Snyder and the Vikings (Daniel Snyder and the Vikings!), then "landed" their QB by rolling the dice with a 28-year-old rookie.
To be fair, the Vikings did make the playoffs last year...mostly because they have a real franchise running back who was drafted in the first round.
My 12th reaction: Is it possible that Cleveland's old regime had no idea what they were doing? We knew the Weeden experiment was probably doomed, but why didn't it bother us more at the time when the Browns spent a top-three pick on a back?
I didn't hate the Richardson pick when it happened. I thought he was going to be a great running back and always thought he was much better than Mark Ingram even when Ingram was the Heisman Trophy winner.
When my illegitimate son Barnwell wrote his 2011 and 2012 Trade Value columns, you might remember, he almost completely devalued running backs. Only Peterson made 2013's list (no. 30). Only Ray Rice made 2012's list (no. 39). So why take one in the top five? What's the point?
This is some good old fashioned Bill Simmons logic. Bill Barnwell wrote his 2011 Trade Value column on August 31, 2012 and Trent Richardson was drafted by the Browns in April 2012. So basically Bill is writing the following question:
"Bill Barnwell devalued running backs in his trade value column. Why didn't the Browns use a time machine to move four months into the future in order to find out Bill Barnwell's opinion on the value of a running back, jump back into the time machine and then base their draft evaluations on Barnwell's opinion? What's the point of taking a running back when Bill Barnwell doesn't think the Browns should, even though the Browns wouldn't have access to this opinion at the time they drafted Richardson?"
So Bill is posing a question that not only would require time travel in order to be answered, but would also require the Browns to ignore their own evaluation of Trent Richardson and pay attention to the opinion of a sportswriter. Bill really amazes me sometimes. He not only believes teams should listen to what his writers at Grantland may say, but also thinks NFL teams should base their draft picks on a column that wasn't written at the time they made the draft pick. Brilliant.
Justin Higdon of DraftBrowns.com defended the Richardson deal and made a shrewd point: He's the first back since Ricky Williams to fetch a first-rounder in a trade. Normally, they go for much less. St. Louis gave up a fifth- and second-rounder for Marshall Faulk. Seattle gave up a fourth and a fifth for Lynch. Indy allowed Edgerrin James to leave for nothing. Now Richardson is fetching a first-round pick? Doesn't this seem … off?
Yes, because I don't think Richardson is worth a first round pick. Of course, and I'm not contradicting myself here I promise, Richardson doesn't have to be a franchise back for the trade to work out for the Colts. Basically, Richardson isn't worth a first round pick overall, but to a team like the Colts who need a running game to help out Andrew Luck then he is worth that price. It's sort of like how Joe Thomas isn't worth a first and third round pick, but the Giants would possibly giving that up to acquire him from the Browns. Maybe not, I'm just spit-balling here and I hope you know what I mean. This is how players get overpaid in free agency. A player's worth is inflated by the needs of one team. So while Richardson probably isn't worth a first round pick to most NFL teams, the Colts perceived need meant he was worth a first round pick to them.
My 13th reaction: Could Cleveland be the first NFL team to steal my NBA-centric concept of "It's better to bottom out than be stuck in no-man's-land?"
Bill is now under the impression that he invented tanking. There's literally nothing Bill won't take credit for. I'm shocked he doesn't take credit for inventing theories since he is the one who proposed the Ewing Theory to the general public.
In the NBA, you either want to be really good or really bad (with no in-between). You don't want to finish 42-40 and lose in Round 1 every year. Basically, you don't want to be the Bucks.
As I wrote previously, the Rockets seem to have done pretty well for themselves recently while being the 8th/9th best team in the Western Conference over the past 5-6 years.
Next March and April, it's only getting worse. We'll see more tanking than we saw in the final 25 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.
Okay. Whatever this is, good job, it was hilarious.
But whenever this happens in the NBA, the general public gets it. They might not like it, but they get it.
Here goes Bill taking on his self-proclaimed role as the official spokesperson of the general public again. "We" as a general public get it.
And that's the most compelling part of this Richardson trade: For the first time, an NFL team is thinking like an NBA team. Fifteen years of futility nudged them there.
Yeah Browns fans, Mike Lombardi isn't continuing the tradition of being the GM for a rudderless, directionless Browns team while promising things will be better in the future and not giving fans a clear picture of how this time is different. Lombardi is revolutionizing the art of sucking by admitting his team sucks and then banking draft picks as a part of the promise things will be better in the future while not giving fans a clear picture of how this time is different.
So they accepted their fate much like the 76ers did and said, "Screw it, this is ridiculous, WE'RE NEVER GONNA HAVE A CHANCE until we find a franchise quarterback."
Interesting, I think Browns fans would recall this same conclusion was reached two years ago and the result was the drafting of Brandon Weeden. Actually, this conclusion was reached when Tim Couch was drafted. I'm not saying the Browns made a bad move by trading Richardson, because they got a first round pick for a player they weren't using effectively anyway. There is a difference in admitting as a GM that your team needs a franchise quarterback and actually having the ability as an organization to evaluate a quarterback, develop him and help him become a franchise quarterback by surrounding him with the right players and coaches. The Browns haven't ever had a problem knowing they need a franchise quarterback. Their issue has been drafting and finding that franchise quarterback.
So if you think about Cleveland's Richardson trade like it's an NBA trade, it makes more sense: The Browns will have a top-five pick at worst (probably higher), and then, if Indy misses the playoffs, that gives them a second chance at finding their QB.
Yes, but if the Colts make the playoffs then the pick is in the 20's. Don't just suggest the ideal situation that helps to prove your point, Bill.
Let's say Jacksonville lands that first pick after losing to Cleveland in the Toilet Bowl on December 1 (yes, they play). Cleveland then ends up with the no. 2 and no. 12 picks, and let's say everyone agrees that Jadeveon Clowney and Teddy Bridgewater dwarf every other prospect.
Don't you love how Bill is working hard to get his buddy Mike Lombardi the best possible pick in order to give him the best possible outcome? Fuck it, let's just say the Browns get the No. 1 and No. 2 picks in the draft because the Colts lose every game from here on out. Wouldn't you take Teddy Bridgewater AND Jadeveon Clowney Browns fans? See, Mike Lombardi is a genius. Say his name.
Translation: Thanks to that trade, the Browns are officially in Drowney for Clowney AND Play Dead for Ted mode. Well, why not? How is that strategy any different from what eight NBA teams just did? Cleveland's brain trust just told its fans, "We've sucked for 14 years, and we're tired of it … it's Quarterback or Bust."
The problem is, and Bill doesn't pay sufficient attention to understand this, but this is the same shit Browns fans have been hearing for 14 years now. It's not "Quarterback or Bust" that has been the issue, but the issue has been picking "Quarterback Busts." The idea of finding a franchise quarterback has always been there, the execution of actually drafting one is the problem the Browns have had.
The short answer: Until they prove otherwise, we don't know if they're different. I know Lombardi, obviously. I know team president Alec Scheiner, a Sloan Conference staple who happens to be one of the smartest sports people I've ever met.
And yes, Bill loves to name-drop.
I know they're trying to build a first-class organization, and I know they believe that big decisions are made collectively, with everyone on the same page, from the owner down to the coach. I know they also believe that an NFL franchise cannot succeed short-term and long-term without such a decision-making structure in place.
Here's the fun part of the column. Bill has in-depth knowledge of what the Browns organization wants to accomplish. He knows what they are trying to do as an organization and knows enough about the Browns organization to vouch for their strategy. All of a sudden though, when it comes to the Browns opinion of Trent Richardson, well, he has no inside information. It's funny how that happens isn't it?
So for them to flip Richardson into a future pick, that tells me (with no inside info, by the way) they didn't want to build around him, worried about his durability and various injuries (red flags when you're trying to get 375 touches per year from the same back), believed he was the wrong fit for Chudinssksglskgskdkskski's offense, and didn't believe he would come back to haunt them.
See? Bill knows enough to know the Browns overall organizational strategy, but all of a sudden his knowledge well runs dry when it comes to specific information about that strategy. But don't worry, Bill's knowledge well fills right back up when it comes time to praise Lombardi for making this move. He knows the Browns thought they would get murdered for the trade, but anything that Mike Lombardi doesn't want Bill to reveal he conveniently doesn't have information about.
They saw the same things we saw — that for a blue-chip running back, Trent Richardson sure looked average as hell. And they KNEW they'd get absolutely murdered for the trade, only they did it anyway.
Gutsy. That's Bill's frien---I mean Mike Lombardi from a purely neutral observer point of view.
Put more simply: THERE IS NO GOING BACK.
That's what makes this such a riveting trade, and that's why it left the football world so stunned. NFL teams rarely make these kind of trades; when they do, it's usually a panic move by a regime on the outs (like Oakland foolishly sacrificing a first and a second for Carson Palmer).
These aren't comparable situations. The Browns traded Richardson for a first round pick while the Raiders traded for Carson Palmer. I think Bill is being a bit overdramatic. Trading a running back for a first round pick isn't an all-in, no going back move. It's not like the Browns gave up picks in this trade.
These Colts weren't one good back away from making the Super Bowl; if anything, they were this season's no. 1 regression candidate, and that's even before they nearly lost to the Raiders and got bested at home by a better Miami team.
Oh hindsight, must you be so cruel to Bill?
After the Colts lose in San Francisco this Sunday,
Oh assumptions, such a frightfully angry mistress thou art.
they'll be 1-2 with a home-and-home against Houston, home games against Seattle and Denver, and road games at San Diego, Tennessee, Cincinnati, Arizona and Kansas City remaining. They won't be favored in any of those nine games. It's true.
Not true. The Colts will be favored against San Diego, Tennessee, and Arizona at least. Of course, Bill will never acknowledge this comment if/when he is proven wrong. That's the best part about being Bill Simmons, your fans ignore your mistakes and focus on how right you are all the time and please can they meet you face-to-face they promise they won't be weird about it.
So instead of Richardson propelling them to 10 or 11 wins, there's a much better chance this trade swings the other way, with Indy missing the playoffs and maybe even losing a top-10 pick. Our friends at PredictionMachine.com simulated the 2013 season 50,000 times and earmarked the "improved" Colts for 6.5 wins, projecting that they'd be handing Cleveland the sixth pick in next April's draft.
I don't care if the pick is #25 in the first round, it was still a good move for the Browns.
My 14th and final reaction: Whatever happens, it's the ballsiest NFL trade in years — two teams that said, "SCREW IT!" for wholly different reasons. We'll remember it as a watershed transaction, because either …
Yes, "we" will always remember it. Thanks for speaking for me since I can't speak for myself.
Just know that, if the Browns REALLY want to bottom out while keeping their fans vaguely intrigued by their 2013 season, I have a 27-letter word for them:
"TEEEEEEEEEEEEE-BOWWWWWWWWWWW!!!"
Ugh, a pretty weak ending. It's clear Bill didn't know how to end this part of his column. So now onto Part 2 with Bill's picks that are all correct. It's true.
Then Bill talks about taking his daughter to a WNBA game. He (not shockingly) name-drops the people he saw and tells us he sat beside Lisa Leslie. Bill is big deal guys, don't ever forget it.
You know what was interesting?
Absolutely nothing you are about to write?
They gave Candace Parker the MVP before the game, even though Taurasi is still the league's best player. As Taurasi laid the smack down — 30 points and seven assists — I was sitting there thinking, This is a little like the game when Hakeem got pissed because David Robinson won the '95 MVP and decided to kick his ass.
It's just like Hakeem and David Robinson, except Taurasi and Parker don't play the same position and no one gives a shit who won the MVP of the WNBA.
Cards (+7.5) over SAINTS
Say this much for the Cards: They're one of those teams that, when they make a big play near their own sideline, suddenly 20 guys are excitedly leaping toward the field with their fists pumped. They just seem locked in.
The amount of useless bullshit Bill writes regarding NFL/NBA/MLB teams is staggering.
Browns (+7) over VIKINGS
EWING THEORY ALERT!!!!!!!
Fine, maybe not. But I'm grabbing the points.
Even with the "Fine, maybe not," caveat you know Bill is taking credit for this prediction. It's happening.
Apparently they make Factory of Sadness T-shirts and everything. I love that there's a "Cleveland comedian." Who knew those words were legally allowed to appear in the same sentence, especially this week, when they're sending me e-mails like this, from Scott in Cleveland:
"Having overcome the shock of the Browns tanking the season before fall begins (literally, it's only September 19th), I sent this email to my friends. It sums up being a Cleveland fan. 'I've been getting weekly junk emails from the Browns for years now and have just been deleting them in case there is really important or awesome news. I just got one about Sunday's game. I finally unsubscribed. Fuck the Browns.
This is no lie. I didn't write this post until after I wrote MMQB for the week. I have no reason to lie. I don't look at Bill's Friday columns until the following Tuesday morning at the earliest, usually after I have written MMQB. In MMQB, Peter wrote the following:
Essentially, the bounty of picks the Browns received for the one the Falcons on Julio Jones resulted in one player likely to be an average to above-average starter: Phil Taylor, who plays about 60 percent of the defensive snaps. And it cost Cleveland the equivalent of Justin Houston to move up to get Taylor.
Then I wrote the following:
If this were Bill Simmons, he would then follow this up with an email from a pathetic Cleveland Browns fan bemoaning how bad the team is.
Well, it happened exactly like that in Bill's Friday column. Bill is very, very predictable. It's actually kind of sad.
Rams (+4) over SAME OLD COWBOYS
Your official "The NFC West Is A Juggernaut And The NFC East Is A Doormat" game. If you add up the rankings for every Week 3 team from my Half-Assed Power Poll and separate them by divisions, the lower the number, the better that division is overall, right? Example: Seattle (1) + San Francisco (3) + Arizona (19) + St. Louis (20) = 43, our lowest number for the eight divisions. Who has the highest number? Well …
NFC West: 43
NFC North: 53
AFC West: 57
NFC South: 66
AFC East: 67
AFC South: 72
AFC North: 84
NFC East: 86
Translation: The NFC East blows.
Oh my. Here Bill is making a statement that the NFC East sucks and then he uses his own opinion through his NFL power rankings as proof that he is correct. Bill does this shit all the time. His ego is massive. Bill is saying, "The NFC sucks and if you don't believe my opinion is correct, here is another example of my opinion that proves I am correct that the NFC sucks."
Maybe Bill just wants credit for keeping his opinion consistent, but either way he is very, very impressed with himself.
Speaking of great things, I'm excited to introduce a new weekly feature called "This Week's Really Mean E-mail About Roger Goodell." Our first installment comes from Jeff Z. in Weston, Florida:
"It appears that the porn industry voluntarily shut itself down after Cameron Bay tested positive for HIV. Who would have thought that porn purveyors would show more responsibility for the safety of employees than Roger Goodell?"
Yep, concussions and HIV. They are the exact same thing.
Bucs (+7.5) over PATRIOTS
The good news for the Bucs: They're a stupid late hit and a missed 46-yard field goal from being 2-0. The bad news for the Bucs: everything else. Meanwhile, here's how bad it's gotten for my Patriots this month (I'm using "we" if that's OK) …
Considering Bill uses "we" to tell us what we all think about a certain topic because he believes he speaks for the sports-loving public, I'm not sure why anyone would have a problem with him using "we" to talk about the Patriots.
Because on Wednesday night, I was watching America's fifth professional sport (The Challenge) and one of America's greatest competitors, CT, described his feelings about making the Challenge finals like this …
This is a reminder that Bill Simmons is "that guy" who still watches "The Challenge" on MTV. In fact, Bill is "that guy" who still watches MTV and believes he is on the cutting edge of today's youth.
As for the Ravens, they're a 30-40-50-40-30 team this year — every time you flip over to one of their games, the football is located somewhere between the 30s. Houston's too good offensively to lose to a 30-40-50-40-30 team right now, especially a team that has Brandon Stokley and Dallas Clark on pace for 128 catches total. That offense is miles away from being good.
Apparently Houston isn't too good to lose to a team who Bill describes using a descriptor that he made up thirty seconds prior to writing about that team's upcoming Week 3 game. Hey, throw shit against the wall and see what sticks. Who really knows what the Simmonsites will like or not like?
Then Bill posts emails from Carolina Panthers fans whining to Bill about how bad their team is. It is fine to whine, just don't write to Bill Simmons and whine. That's all I ask.
To recap: We just heard Ron Rivera compared to a disease, losing your virginity to Lindsay Lohan, getting punched in the dick, and being the Bizarro Mariano Rivera.
He's really a great coach as long as his team is winning 38-0. If you want him making tough calls at the end of a game, then he suddenly becomes absolutely horrendous. So the key is for the Panthers to win by more than seven points, so the 2-14 record (Rivera's record in games decided by 7 points or less) doesn't come into play.
SEAHAWKS (-20) over Jaguars
Poor Gus Bradley — he's returning to Seattle with Chad Henne against a juggernaut with an insane crowd that won its last nine home games by an average of 30-11. They couldn't make this line high enough. There's only two tiny cases for the Jags +20: Bradley knowing how to slow down Seattle's offense,
Knowing how to slow down the Seattle offense and having the players to actually slow down the Seattle offense are two different things. Gus Bradley isn't even close to having the players he needs to slow the Seahawks down or even come close to beating them.
"We need a new statistic to truly define the stink that is the Jaguars offense. I think I have it. You see, my cousin was given a clock with the Jaguars' score as the hour and the visitors' score as the minutes. His coworkers have taken it upon themselves to show up to the Clock whenever the Jaguars are able to successfully complete a clock game. What's a Clock game? Any time the Jaguars score 12 points or less and the opposing team has anywhere from 2 to 59 points.
That's brilliant. A Clock Game! The key for a Clock Game is that you can't get shut out — you'd think the 1977 Bucs (103 points in 14 games and six shutouts) would be the Clock Game leaders, but they were shut out six times. I don't know who had the most Clock Games in NFL history, but I couldn't resist looking up the offensively impotent 1990 Pats — coached by Rod Rust's cadaver, the worst Pats team of my lifetime — and they churned out a whopping NINE Clock Games. NINE! If anyone can beat nine, by all means, lemme know.
Only Bill could seem to take such great pride in his favorite NFL team being so terrible, but the 2010 Carolina Panthers had eight Clock Games. I can't believe I'm actually playing this stupid game.
Bears (-2.5) over STEELERS
I know it's a Kitchen Sink game for the Steelers — they lose this one and they might as well Play Dead For Ted, trade Roethlisberger to the Vikings or Cardinals and blow everything up.
Oh man, so many questions based on this stupid sentence.
1. Why in the hell would the Steelers trade Roethlisberger once they have gone 0-3? He's only 31 years old, I'm not sure it is time to just randomly give up on him because he doesn't have a great offensive line, running game and the defense is underachieving.
2. Why would the Vikings trade for Roethlisberger? They seem happy with Christian Ponder.
3. Why would the Cardinals trade for Roethlisberger? They just traded for Carson Palmer.
4. Every NFL team can't draft Teddy Bridgewater. So far Bill has the Jaguars, Browns and Steelers all trying to get Bridgewater. They can't all draft him.
5. Seriously, why would the Steelers trade the best player on their team simply because the season has started off rough?
6. What could the Steelers reasonably expect in return for Roethlisberger that would make it worth their time to trade him? A first and third round pick? Is that worth getting back in return and starting over because the season started off 0-3? I'm not sure.
You're right, they'll never do that.
Because it seems like a major overreaction to starting the season off 0-3, as well as a move that won't fix the Steelers problems, but only exacerbate their problems.
But if they blow Sunday night, they're screwed. You know what's not helping? Their utter inability to block, run the ball or call a decent sequence of offensive plays. The Steelers stink.
It's shocking what a leaky offensive line and no running game does to hurt an NFL team's chances of winning games.
And I kept fighting off the urge to say, "I think the Bears are legitimately good" until Jaws lavished praise on them on Thursday's PTI as Wilbon beamed like a proud dad. If they have the Jaws Seal of Approval, I'm in.
This is the same Jaws that stated on PTI the Ravens would be a better team than they were last year, the Broncos weren't a better team than last year, and he expects the Broncos to make it to the Super Bowl. So...there's that too.
This Week: 1-0
Last Week: 7-8-1
Season: 14-17-2
I messed up my record last week and mistakenly gave myself an extra win for Week 1. We fixed.
"We fixed." Don't you mean "We fixed it."? Maybe the "it" will be added once Bill corrects this new grammatical error.
My first reaction: What?????
I'm guessing it took Bill 15 minutes to think of his first reaction. This may be the worst time to mention Bill broke this column up into two pages for no good reason, but I just mentioned it anyway. Neither section is especially long, but he broke up his comments on Richardson from his Week 3 picks. He probably did this just to make me nitpick him. Everything is about me.
My second reaction: Wait, shouldn't the Browns have gotten more for Trent Richardson?
If it were still 1989, then yes, the Browns should have gotten more for Trent Richardson.
My third reaction: If Richardson turns into Edge James 2.0 for the Colts, Lombardi will be back on my podcast in time for the 2014 draft!
Bill rides the fence on this issue on whether he thinks trading Richardson for a first round pick was a smart move. I'm just kidding! Bill basically states that Mike Lombardi has revolutionized tanking and has set a standard other NFL teams will eventually follow while attempting to tank. I feel like trading 2012's first round pick for a 2014 first round is something he would normally rip the Cleveland Browns for doing. Of course this is assuming one of Bill's friend isn't the GM of the Browns, so all bets are off since Lombardi and Bill are friends. Isn't it fun how relationships affect the coverage of sports stories?
My sixth reaction: Wait a second … are we sure Trent Richardson is good?
(Did some Googling … looked at his numbers … noticed he ran for just 3.4 yards per carry behind what we thought was a solid offensive line …
Yes, "we" did think the Browns had a solid offensive line. I love reading Bill Simmons' columns in order to find out what I think.
My seventh reaction: Just because Richardson went third overall in the 2012 draft, does that mean that's where he should have been drafted?
This is the seventh reaction and Bill is already stretching to desperately find a way to start a discussion. This same question could be asked of any NFL player drafted any point in the NFL Draft, regardless of whether that player was traded or not.
found a PFT piece with Jim Brown saying he thought Richardson was "ordinary" and that he "wasn't impressed" with Mark Ingram one day before the draft … found Mel Kiper calling Richardson a "rare talent" in his 2012 draft grades … found a bunch of "Richardson is overrated" articles heading into that draft … remembered how dumb Cleveland's old regime was for trading up one spot to get him when Minnesota just wanted to take Matt Kalil anyway …
Oh yeah, the old Browns regime was stupid for trading up a spot to get Richardson. I would assume based on this comment Bill would ordinarily find trading Richardson for a first round draft choice a year after he has been drafted to be dumb too. After all, if trading up one spot to get a player is dumb, wouldn't trading that same player away a year later for a lesser pick be equally as stupid in Bill's simpleton mind? I'm trying to think overly-logical right now.
My eighth reaction: But wait — Lombardi worked for NFL Network and NFL.com back then. Now he's the GM of the Browns. What did he think of Richardson before that 2012 draft? I looked up his NFL.com archives. Here's what Lombardi wrote.
"I believe the safest pick in the draft — beyond Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III — is Alabama running back Trent Richardson. He's a blue-chip player and has all the skills to quickly establish himself as a top-five player at his position. Forget the nonsense about not taking backs early — everyone would love the chance to get this guy."
My ninth reaction: Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? THE PLOT THICKENS!
This eighth reaction isn't an actual reaction, but more a question. Of course the same could be said for the seventh reaction as well. So the ninth reaction is an actual reaction, while the eight reaction is simply a question posed. I am only being hyper-technical because I think Bill is really stretching to make this Richardson discussion worthy of an entire column.
My 10th reaction: Was Lombardi's premise, "Forget the nonsense about not taking backs early," flawed? Yes and no.
What do you know, Bill rides the fence on this question. Also, this is yet another question and not a reaction.
He's right if you're talking about Adrian Peterson, or a prospect close to Peterson. He's wrong if it's anyone iffier than that. You don't need a franchise back to win a Super Bowl in the 21st century, as the Willie Parkers, Joseph Addais, James Starkses and Ahmad Bradshaws taught us.
Three things:
1. Trent Richardson isn't Adrian Peterson.
2. You don't need a franchise back to win a Super Bowl, but you do need Ben Roethlisberger, Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, or Aaron Rodgers.
3. The idea you don't need a franchise back to win a Super Bowl is a great theory and I support it, but the Browns drafted Trent Richardson in the Top 5 of the NFL Draft, where franchise players are supposed to go. So stating Richardson isn't a franchise back isn't a defense of the Browns in any way. I love the Browns got a first round pick back for Trent Richardson, but I don't think makes them smart any more than it shows the franchise needs to find a direction and go with it. It's a good trade for the Browns if you ask me. They got a first round pick for a player who probably isn't a franchise running back, except they passed up franchise players in drafting that running back a year earlier.
So basically Mike Lombardi the analyst was wrong and Mike Lombardi the GM was correct.
As for "luxury" running backs like Trent Richardson, teams have spent 13 top-16 picks on backs since 2002: Richardson (3), C.J. Spiller (9), Ryan Mathews (12), Knowshon Moreno (12), Jonathan Stewart (13), McFadden (4), Marshawn Lynch (12), Reggie Bush (2), Peterson (7), Ronnie Brown (2), Cedric Benson (4), Cadillac Williams (5), William Green (16). It's a grisly list. Only Peterson and Lynch made it. Bush and McFadden kinda sorta made it. Spiller made it in the "everyone overpaid for him in fantasy this year" sense. And that's it.
This data Bill is using regarding how running backs have performed over the past 20 years in the NFL is completely irrelevant as it relates to the Trent Richardson trade. What Trent Richardson is right now as a running back and what the Browns received in return for Richardson is all that matters. In that, I think the Browns succeeded.
My 11th reaction: If the Browns had just trumped Washington's offer for Robert Griffin III in 2012, they never would have found themselves in this pickle.
I know this isn't what this column is about, but why do people ignore the Rams could have had Griffin and given up nothing? They had the #2 overall pick and all they had to do was pick Griffin and then trade Bradford to get a few more picks. The Rams could have had Robert Griffin AND gained picks out of the deal. I'm done talking about this. Let the Rams keep Sam Bradford and have no one pay attention to the fact the Rams could have had Griffin and another pick(s) to go along with him. I know, I know, it's all hindsight. Still, if the Rams had done their homework on Griffin...
They were outwitted by Daniel Snyder and the Vikings (Daniel Snyder and the Vikings!), then "landed" their QB by rolling the dice with a 28-year-old rookie.
To be fair, the Vikings did make the playoffs last year...mostly because they have a real franchise running back who was drafted in the first round.
My 12th reaction: Is it possible that Cleveland's old regime had no idea what they were doing? We knew the Weeden experiment was probably doomed, but why didn't it bother us more at the time when the Browns spent a top-three pick on a back?
I didn't hate the Richardson pick when it happened. I thought he was going to be a great running back and always thought he was much better than Mark Ingram even when Ingram was the Heisman Trophy winner.
When my illegitimate son Barnwell wrote his 2011 and 2012 Trade Value columns, you might remember, he almost completely devalued running backs. Only Peterson made 2013's list (no. 30). Only Ray Rice made 2012's list (no. 39). So why take one in the top five? What's the point?
This is some good old fashioned Bill Simmons logic. Bill Barnwell wrote his 2011 Trade Value column on August 31, 2012 and Trent Richardson was drafted by the Browns in April 2012. So basically Bill is writing the following question:
"Bill Barnwell devalued running backs in his trade value column. Why didn't the Browns use a time machine to move four months into the future in order to find out Bill Barnwell's opinion on the value of a running back, jump back into the time machine and then base their draft evaluations on Barnwell's opinion? What's the point of taking a running back when Bill Barnwell doesn't think the Browns should, even though the Browns wouldn't have access to this opinion at the time they drafted Richardson?"
So Bill is posing a question that not only would require time travel in order to be answered, but would also require the Browns to ignore their own evaluation of Trent Richardson and pay attention to the opinion of a sportswriter. Bill really amazes me sometimes. He not only believes teams should listen to what his writers at Grantland may say, but also thinks NFL teams should base their draft picks on a column that wasn't written at the time they made the draft pick. Brilliant.
Justin Higdon of DraftBrowns.com defended the Richardson deal and made a shrewd point: He's the first back since Ricky Williams to fetch a first-rounder in a trade. Normally, they go for much less. St. Louis gave up a fifth- and second-rounder for Marshall Faulk. Seattle gave up a fourth and a fifth for Lynch. Indy allowed Edgerrin James to leave for nothing. Now Richardson is fetching a first-round pick? Doesn't this seem … off?
Yes, because I don't think Richardson is worth a first round pick. Of course, and I'm not contradicting myself here I promise, Richardson doesn't have to be a franchise back for the trade to work out for the Colts. Basically, Richardson isn't worth a first round pick overall, but to a team like the Colts who need a running game to help out Andrew Luck then he is worth that price. It's sort of like how Joe Thomas isn't worth a first and third round pick, but the Giants would possibly giving that up to acquire him from the Browns. Maybe not, I'm just spit-balling here and I hope you know what I mean. This is how players get overpaid in free agency. A player's worth is inflated by the needs of one team. So while Richardson probably isn't worth a first round pick to most NFL teams, the Colts perceived need meant he was worth a first round pick to them.
My 13th reaction: Could Cleveland be the first NFL team to steal my NBA-centric concept of "It's better to bottom out than be stuck in no-man's-land?"
Bill is now under the impression that he invented tanking. There's literally nothing Bill won't take credit for. I'm shocked he doesn't take credit for inventing theories since he is the one who proposed the Ewing Theory to the general public.
In the NBA, you either want to be really good or really bad (with no in-between). You don't want to finish 42-40 and lose in Round 1 every year. Basically, you don't want to be the Bucks.
As I wrote previously, the Rockets seem to have done pretty well for themselves recently while being the 8th/9th best team in the Western Conference over the past 5-6 years.
Next March and April, it's only getting worse. We'll see more tanking than we saw in the final 25 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.
Okay. Whatever this is, good job, it was hilarious.
But whenever this happens in the NBA, the general public gets it. They might not like it, but they get it.
Here goes Bill taking on his self-proclaimed role as the official spokesperson of the general public again. "We" as a general public get it.
And that's the most compelling part of this Richardson trade: For the first time, an NFL team is thinking like an NBA team. Fifteen years of futility nudged them there.
Yeah Browns fans, Mike Lombardi isn't continuing the tradition of being the GM for a rudderless, directionless Browns team while promising things will be better in the future and not giving fans a clear picture of how this time is different. Lombardi is revolutionizing the art of sucking by admitting his team sucks and then banking draft picks as a part of the promise things will be better in the future while not giving fans a clear picture of how this time is different.
So they accepted their fate much like the 76ers did and said, "Screw it, this is ridiculous, WE'RE NEVER GONNA HAVE A CHANCE until we find a franchise quarterback."
Interesting, I think Browns fans would recall this same conclusion was reached two years ago and the result was the drafting of Brandon Weeden. Actually, this conclusion was reached when Tim Couch was drafted. I'm not saying the Browns made a bad move by trading Richardson, because they got a first round pick for a player they weren't using effectively anyway. There is a difference in admitting as a GM that your team needs a franchise quarterback and actually having the ability as an organization to evaluate a quarterback, develop him and help him become a franchise quarterback by surrounding him with the right players and coaches. The Browns haven't ever had a problem knowing they need a franchise quarterback. Their issue has been drafting and finding that franchise quarterback.
So if you think about Cleveland's Richardson trade like it's an NBA trade, it makes more sense: The Browns will have a top-five pick at worst (probably higher), and then, if Indy misses the playoffs, that gives them a second chance at finding their QB.
Yes, but if the Colts make the playoffs then the pick is in the 20's. Don't just suggest the ideal situation that helps to prove your point, Bill.
Let's say Jacksonville lands that first pick after losing to Cleveland in the Toilet Bowl on December 1 (yes, they play). Cleveland then ends up with the no. 2 and no. 12 picks, and let's say everyone agrees that Jadeveon Clowney and Teddy Bridgewater dwarf every other prospect.
Don't you love how Bill is working hard to get his buddy Mike Lombardi the best possible pick in order to give him the best possible outcome? Fuck it, let's just say the Browns get the No. 1 and No. 2 picks in the draft because the Colts lose every game from here on out. Wouldn't you take Teddy Bridgewater AND Jadeveon Clowney Browns fans? See, Mike Lombardi is a genius. Say his name.
Translation: Thanks to that trade, the Browns are officially in Drowney for Clowney AND Play Dead for Ted mode. Well, why not? How is that strategy any different from what eight NBA teams just did? Cleveland's brain trust just told its fans, "We've sucked for 14 years, and we're tired of it … it's Quarterback or Bust."
The problem is, and Bill doesn't pay sufficient attention to understand this, but this is the same shit Browns fans have been hearing for 14 years now. It's not "Quarterback or Bust" that has been the issue, but the issue has been picking "Quarterback Busts." The idea of finding a franchise quarterback has always been there, the execution of actually drafting one is the problem the Browns have had.
The short answer: Until they prove otherwise, we don't know if they're different. I know Lombardi, obviously. I know team president Alec Scheiner, a Sloan Conference staple who happens to be one of the smartest sports people I've ever met.
And yes, Bill loves to name-drop.
I know they're trying to build a first-class organization, and I know they believe that big decisions are made collectively, with everyone on the same page, from the owner down to the coach. I know they also believe that an NFL franchise cannot succeed short-term and long-term without such a decision-making structure in place.
Here's the fun part of the column. Bill has in-depth knowledge of what the Browns organization wants to accomplish. He knows what they are trying to do as an organization and knows enough about the Browns organization to vouch for their strategy. All of a sudden though, when it comes to the Browns opinion of Trent Richardson, well, he has no inside information. It's funny how that happens isn't it?
So for them to flip Richardson into a future pick, that tells me (with no inside info, by the way) they didn't want to build around him, worried about his durability and various injuries (red flags when you're trying to get 375 touches per year from the same back), believed he was the wrong fit for Chudinssksglskgskdkskski's offense, and didn't believe he would come back to haunt them.
See? Bill knows enough to know the Browns overall organizational strategy, but all of a sudden his knowledge well runs dry when it comes to specific information about that strategy. But don't worry, Bill's knowledge well fills right back up when it comes time to praise Lombardi for making this move. He knows the Browns thought they would get murdered for the trade, but anything that Mike Lombardi doesn't want Bill to reveal he conveniently doesn't have information about.
They saw the same things we saw — that for a blue-chip running back, Trent Richardson sure looked average as hell. And they KNEW they'd get absolutely murdered for the trade, only they did it anyway.
Gutsy. That's Bill's frien---I mean Mike Lombardi from a purely neutral observer point of view.
Put more simply: THERE IS NO GOING BACK.
That's what makes this such a riveting trade, and that's why it left the football world so stunned. NFL teams rarely make these kind of trades; when they do, it's usually a panic move by a regime on the outs (like Oakland foolishly sacrificing a first and a second for Carson Palmer).
These aren't comparable situations. The Browns traded Richardson for a first round pick while the Raiders traded for Carson Palmer. I think Bill is being a bit overdramatic. Trading a running back for a first round pick isn't an all-in, no going back move. It's not like the Browns gave up picks in this trade.
These Colts weren't one good back away from making the Super Bowl; if anything, they were this season's no. 1 regression candidate, and that's even before they nearly lost to the Raiders and got bested at home by a better Miami team.
Oh hindsight, must you be so cruel to Bill?
After the Colts lose in San Francisco this Sunday,
Oh assumptions, such a frightfully angry mistress thou art.
they'll be 1-2 with a home-and-home against Houston, home games against Seattle and Denver, and road games at San Diego, Tennessee, Cincinnati, Arizona and Kansas City remaining. They won't be favored in any of those nine games. It's true.
Not true. The Colts will be favored against San Diego, Tennessee, and Arizona at least. Of course, Bill will never acknowledge this comment if/when he is proven wrong. That's the best part about being Bill Simmons, your fans ignore your mistakes and focus on how right you are all the time and please can they meet you face-to-face they promise they won't be weird about it.
So instead of Richardson propelling them to 10 or 11 wins, there's a much better chance this trade swings the other way, with Indy missing the playoffs and maybe even losing a top-10 pick. Our friends at PredictionMachine.com simulated the 2013 season 50,000 times and earmarked the "improved" Colts for 6.5 wins, projecting that they'd be handing Cleveland the sixth pick in next April's draft.
I don't care if the pick is #25 in the first round, it was still a good move for the Browns.
My 14th and final reaction: Whatever happens, it's the ballsiest NFL trade in years — two teams that said, "SCREW IT!" for wholly different reasons. We'll remember it as a watershed transaction, because either …
Yes, "we" will always remember it. Thanks for speaking for me since I can't speak for myself.
Just know that, if the Browns REALLY want to bottom out while keeping their fans vaguely intrigued by their 2013 season, I have a 27-letter word for them:
"TEEEEEEEEEEEEE-BOWWWWWWWWWWW!!!"
Ugh, a pretty weak ending. It's clear Bill didn't know how to end this part of his column. So now onto Part 2 with Bill's picks that are all correct. It's true.
Then Bill talks about taking his daughter to a WNBA game. He (not shockingly) name-drops the people he saw and tells us he sat beside Lisa Leslie. Bill is big deal guys, don't ever forget it.
You know what was interesting?
Absolutely nothing you are about to write?
They gave Candace Parker the MVP before the game, even though Taurasi is still the league's best player. As Taurasi laid the smack down — 30 points and seven assists — I was sitting there thinking, This is a little like the game when Hakeem got pissed because David Robinson won the '95 MVP and decided to kick his ass.
It's just like Hakeem and David Robinson, except Taurasi and Parker don't play the same position and no one gives a shit who won the MVP of the WNBA.
Cards (+7.5) over SAINTS
Say this much for the Cards: They're one of those teams that, when they make a big play near their own sideline, suddenly 20 guys are excitedly leaping toward the field with their fists pumped. They just seem locked in.
The amount of useless bullshit Bill writes regarding NFL/NBA/MLB teams is staggering.
Browns (+7) over VIKINGS
EWING THEORY ALERT!!!!!!!
Fine, maybe not. But I'm grabbing the points.
Even with the "Fine, maybe not," caveat you know Bill is taking credit for this prediction. It's happening.
Apparently they make Factory of Sadness T-shirts and everything. I love that there's a "Cleveland comedian." Who knew those words were legally allowed to appear in the same sentence, especially this week, when they're sending me e-mails like this, from Scott in Cleveland:
"Having overcome the shock of the Browns tanking the season before fall begins (literally, it's only September 19th), I sent this email to my friends. It sums up being a Cleveland fan. 'I've been getting weekly junk emails from the Browns for years now and have just been deleting them in case there is really important or awesome news. I just got one about Sunday's game. I finally unsubscribed. Fuck the Browns.
This is no lie. I didn't write this post until after I wrote MMQB for the week. I have no reason to lie. I don't look at Bill's Friday columns until the following Tuesday morning at the earliest, usually after I have written MMQB. In MMQB, Peter wrote the following:
Essentially, the bounty of picks the Browns received for the one the Falcons on Julio Jones resulted in one player likely to be an average to above-average starter: Phil Taylor, who plays about 60 percent of the defensive snaps. And it cost Cleveland the equivalent of Justin Houston to move up to get Taylor.
Then I wrote the following:
If this were Bill Simmons, he would then follow this up with an email from a pathetic Cleveland Browns fan bemoaning how bad the team is.
Well, it happened exactly like that in Bill's Friday column. Bill is very, very predictable. It's actually kind of sad.
Rams (+4) over SAME OLD COWBOYS
Your official "The NFC West Is A Juggernaut And The NFC East Is A Doormat" game. If you add up the rankings for every Week 3 team from my Half-Assed Power Poll and separate them by divisions, the lower the number, the better that division is overall, right? Example: Seattle (1) + San Francisco (3) + Arizona (19) + St. Louis (20) = 43, our lowest number for the eight divisions. Who has the highest number? Well …
NFC West: 43
NFC North: 53
AFC West: 57
NFC South: 66
AFC East: 67
AFC South: 72
AFC North: 84
NFC East: 86
Translation: The NFC East blows.
Oh my. Here Bill is making a statement that the NFC East sucks and then he uses his own opinion through his NFL power rankings as proof that he is correct. Bill does this shit all the time. His ego is massive. Bill is saying, "The NFC sucks and if you don't believe my opinion is correct, here is another example of my opinion that proves I am correct that the NFC sucks."
Maybe Bill just wants credit for keeping his opinion consistent, but either way he is very, very impressed with himself.
Speaking of great things, I'm excited to introduce a new weekly feature called "This Week's Really Mean E-mail About Roger Goodell." Our first installment comes from Jeff Z. in Weston, Florida:
"It appears that the porn industry voluntarily shut itself down after Cameron Bay tested positive for HIV. Who would have thought that porn purveyors would show more responsibility for the safety of employees than Roger Goodell?"
Yep, concussions and HIV. They are the exact same thing.
Bucs (+7.5) over PATRIOTS
The good news for the Bucs: They're a stupid late hit and a missed 46-yard field goal from being 2-0. The bad news for the Bucs: everything else. Meanwhile, here's how bad it's gotten for my Patriots this month (I'm using "we" if that's OK) …
Considering Bill uses "we" to tell us what we all think about a certain topic because he believes he speaks for the sports-loving public, I'm not sure why anyone would have a problem with him using "we" to talk about the Patriots.
Because on Wednesday night, I was watching America's fifth professional sport (The Challenge) and one of America's greatest competitors, CT, described his feelings about making the Challenge finals like this …
This is a reminder that Bill Simmons is "that guy" who still watches "The Challenge" on MTV. In fact, Bill is "that guy" who still watches MTV and believes he is on the cutting edge of today's youth.
As for the Ravens, they're a 30-40-50-40-30 team this year — every time you flip over to one of their games, the football is located somewhere between the 30s. Houston's too good offensively to lose to a 30-40-50-40-30 team right now, especially a team that has Brandon Stokley and Dallas Clark on pace for 128 catches total. That offense is miles away from being good.
Apparently Houston isn't too good to lose to a team who Bill describes using a descriptor that he made up thirty seconds prior to writing about that team's upcoming Week 3 game. Hey, throw shit against the wall and see what sticks. Who really knows what the Simmonsites will like or not like?
Then Bill posts emails from Carolina Panthers fans whining to Bill about how bad their team is. It is fine to whine, just don't write to Bill Simmons and whine. That's all I ask.
To recap: We just heard Ron Rivera compared to a disease, losing your virginity to Lindsay Lohan, getting punched in the dick, and being the Bizarro Mariano Rivera.
He's really a great coach as long as his team is winning 38-0. If you want him making tough calls at the end of a game, then he suddenly becomes absolutely horrendous. So the key is for the Panthers to win by more than seven points, so the 2-14 record (Rivera's record in games decided by 7 points or less) doesn't come into play.
SEAHAWKS (-20) over Jaguars
Poor Gus Bradley — he's returning to Seattle with Chad Henne against a juggernaut with an insane crowd that won its last nine home games by an average of 30-11. They couldn't make this line high enough. There's only two tiny cases for the Jags +20: Bradley knowing how to slow down Seattle's offense,
Knowing how to slow down the Seattle offense and having the players to actually slow down the Seattle offense are two different things. Gus Bradley isn't even close to having the players he needs to slow the Seahawks down or even come close to beating them.
"We need a new statistic to truly define the stink that is the Jaguars offense. I think I have it. You see, my cousin was given a clock with the Jaguars' score as the hour and the visitors' score as the minutes. His coworkers have taken it upon themselves to show up to the Clock whenever the Jaguars are able to successfully complete a clock game. What's a Clock game? Any time the Jaguars score 12 points or less and the opposing team has anywhere from 2 to 59 points.
That's brilliant. A Clock Game! The key for a Clock Game is that you can't get shut out — you'd think the 1977 Bucs (103 points in 14 games and six shutouts) would be the Clock Game leaders, but they were shut out six times. I don't know who had the most Clock Games in NFL history, but I couldn't resist looking up the offensively impotent 1990 Pats — coached by Rod Rust's cadaver, the worst Pats team of my lifetime — and they churned out a whopping NINE Clock Games. NINE! If anyone can beat nine, by all means, lemme know.
Only Bill could seem to take such great pride in his favorite NFL team being so terrible, but the 2010 Carolina Panthers had eight Clock Games. I can't believe I'm actually playing this stupid game.
Bears (-2.5) over STEELERS
I know it's a Kitchen Sink game for the Steelers — they lose this one and they might as well Play Dead For Ted, trade Roethlisberger to the Vikings or Cardinals and blow everything up.
Oh man, so many questions based on this stupid sentence.
1. Why in the hell would the Steelers trade Roethlisberger once they have gone 0-3? He's only 31 years old, I'm not sure it is time to just randomly give up on him because he doesn't have a great offensive line, running game and the defense is underachieving.
2. Why would the Vikings trade for Roethlisberger? They seem happy with Christian Ponder.
3. Why would the Cardinals trade for Roethlisberger? They just traded for Carson Palmer.
4. Every NFL team can't draft Teddy Bridgewater. So far Bill has the Jaguars, Browns and Steelers all trying to get Bridgewater. They can't all draft him.
5. Seriously, why would the Steelers trade the best player on their team simply because the season has started off rough?
6. What could the Steelers reasonably expect in return for Roethlisberger that would make it worth their time to trade him? A first and third round pick? Is that worth getting back in return and starting over because the season started off 0-3? I'm not sure.
You're right, they'll never do that.
Because it seems like a major overreaction to starting the season off 0-3, as well as a move that won't fix the Steelers problems, but only exacerbate their problems.
But if they blow Sunday night, they're screwed. You know what's not helping? Their utter inability to block, run the ball or call a decent sequence of offensive plays. The Steelers stink.
It's shocking what a leaky offensive line and no running game does to hurt an NFL team's chances of winning games.
And I kept fighting off the urge to say, "I think the Bears are legitimately good" until Jaws lavished praise on them on Thursday's PTI as Wilbon beamed like a proud dad. If they have the Jaws Seal of Approval, I'm in.
This is the same Jaws that stated on PTI the Ravens would be a better team than they were last year, the Broncos weren't a better team than last year, and he expects the Broncos to make it to the Super Bowl. So...there's that too.
This Week: 1-0
Last Week: 7-8-1
Season: 14-17-2
I messed up my record last week and mistakenly gave myself an extra win for Week 1. We fixed.
"We fixed." Don't you mean "We fixed it."? Maybe the "it" will be added once Bill corrects this new grammatical error.
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