2 comments Rick Telander Finds Something Meaningless to Complain About

One of the last times Rick Telander was heard from on this blog, he was growing more and more discontented with John Fox as the Bears head coach and reminiscing about the days when Bruce Jenner was a manly athlete and not a woman. Rick has a history of complaining about small problems in sports (and apparently others agreed with Rick that the height of the rim was too short in the NBA) and now Rick has noticed that NHL players are sporting playoff beards. Rick says he isn't "splitting hairs" (get it? GET it? GET IT?...it's a play on words about a beard consisting of human hair and it's funny...or not) and that the NHL players need to find a new tradition rather than growing playoff beards. Rick wrote this on June 11, which was smack-dab right in the middle of the Blackhawks march to another Stanley Cup title and all he could do was talk about playoff beards and how bad they suck. One would think there are more meaningful columns to be written during this time. One would be wrong.

Is it possible to have a meaningful discussion about Stanley Cup-winning hockey and beards?

No, because they are beards and pretending these players having playoff beards is important in any way is just laughable, no matter what any NBC executive claims otherwise. It's like having a meaningful discussion about whether Chipotle, Moe's, or Qdoba has better food. Everyone knows it's Chipotle, so there is no point in having the conversation. 

In case you missed it, the players on the Blackhawks and Tampa Bay Lightning, who are tied at two victories apiece in the Stanley Cup Final, have beards. (Unless there’s a hairless renegade hiding in the blade-sharpening room, which I don’t believe there is.)

They have beards! Oh no!

And not just beards. They have gross, tangly, unkempt things often referred to as ‘‘neckbeards,’’ historically featured on anti-social mountain men, deceased presidents and biblical characters. And Captain Ahab had a dandy.

I don't think the purpose of these beards is to look attractive, so the argument, "they should be more attractive" fails as a real, cogent argument as to why these beards should be shaved. The beards don't negatively impact how they perform on the ice and somehow presidents, though deceased (no telling on whether it is the fault of their beard for their present condition or not), managed to achieve something while having beards. 

This is a playoff tradition, so to speak, even though its roots (roots?) can be traced back to something as banal as the New York Islanders growing out their whiskers during playoff runs back in the 1980s.

Yes, the Islanders won four Cups during that period, but have you heard from them lately? Plus, former Islanders defenseman Denis Potvin has been quoted as saying none of the hirsuteness was by design.

Oh, well if it wasn't by design then obviously a terrible mistake has been made. Playoff camaraderie as shown by not shaving isn't something that should just happen, camaraderie has to be built purposefully over a period of time. It's not real unless it's planned and contrived.  

‘‘It was just something that kind of happened,’’ he said.

The end of civilization is nigh'. Unplanned beards are popping up everywhere.

None of this would matter, except that fully bearded hockey players look ugly.

Yep, and as I said, if the argument against playoff beards are "they look ugly," then these beards truly don't matter. The players aren't trying to look attractive, they are growing beards to show camaraderie. "You look ugly" is a dumb retort to hockey players essentially saying through the action of not shaving, "We don't care how we look." 

But it’s the essential ugliness and disguise that come with the beardedness that has NBC Sports chairman Mark Lazarus’ whisker-free face in a grimace.

Oh no, a wealthy television executive is upset. How can he be appeased? Mark Lazarus' opinion on the facial hair of athletes must be addressed and corrected immediately. 

And his opinion matters because NBC Sports has a $2 billion deal to broadcast NHL games.

Actually, Lazarus' opinion still doesn't matter because he doesn't play hockey, isn't married to any of the hockey players and should only care (like the fans do) whether the games are exciting and garnering good ratings. Good ratings do not depend on playoff beards. I can't imagine someone not watching a hockey game because the players' beards are too ugly to look at. It's hockey. Players have broken noses, bloody lips, missing teeth and probably a concussion, being attractive isn't a part of the deal while on the ice. 

Lazarus told sports-media writer Ed Sherman on Tuesday: ‘‘I wish they all would stop growing beards in the postseason. Let’s get their faces out there. Let’s talk about how young and attractive they are, what model citizens they are.’’

You can still talk about how young they are and what model citizens they are. The beard may takeaway attractiveness to some, but I would have to think the big helmet over their head probably hurts the whole "sexy" nature of the sport while it's being played on the ice more than anything else. 

‘‘I think [the beards do] hurt recognition,’’ Lazarus went on. ‘‘They have a great opportunity with more endorsements. Or simply more recognition, with fans saying, ‘That guy looks like the kid next door,’ which many of these guys do.’’

This is a good reason why NFL players have so many problems getting endorsements. What does Russell Wilson even look like? Who knows, because he always has that stupid helmet on his head. Remove the helmet, then maybe an NFL player will have an opportunity to get some endorsements and more recognition. It's the same issue with hockey. Nevermind there is an entire regular season game schedule consisting of 82 games where there are no playoff beards, it's the playoff beards that cause these players to lose endorsements. It seems Mark Lazarus is under the impression there is no regular season in the NHL. 

But I agree with Lazarus — who is, sadly, not related to Sun-Times hockey writer Mark Lazerus — that the beards are dumb and stale.

If anyone knows about things that may be dumb and stale, it's Rick Telander. After all, his writing career is becoming dumb and stale if all he has to discuss in the middle of the Stanley Cup Finals is playoff beards. This is the same Stanley Cup Finals where the hometown team was attempting to win their third Stanley Cup title in less than a decade. Playoff beards, that's what should really be the topic of discussion for a Chicago-based writer though. 

Everybody looks the same with a beard, like genetic splicing run amok.

Perhaps Rick thinks all white people look alike or he has face blindness. I don't watch that much hockey (though I do enjoy it whenever I do) and I can tell the difference in the players. Plus, there are these things on the back of the uniform right above the player's number. It's called "the player's name" which really helps me figure out which players are which. It's the same thing everyone has to use when watching the NFL because it's hard to tell the players apart on the field otherwise. Somehow football fans don't get too confused. Try to pay attention to the names on the back of the uniforms. It may help more than Rick thinks.

My question is this: Why doesn’t a team such as the Hawks have the courage and creativity to do something different with their manliness and be a true difference-making dynasty?

The Blackhawks are not a true difference-making dynasty because they have playoff beards. Obviously.

My question is this: Why should the Blackhawks have to do something different with their manliness and spend time thinking of ways to be courageous and creative when that time could be used figuring out how they will win another Stanley Cup title? Is the Blackhawks' dynasty really going to be dependent on whether they wore playoff beards or not?

‘‘The worst has got to be Teuvo [Teravainen],’’ backup goalie Scott Darling said. ‘‘He’s got the [Justin] Bieber ’stache going. I said, ‘By the time you can actually grow one, it’s going to be illegal.’ ’’

The players enjoy playoff beards. Let them enjoy it and stop being an old man. 

The point is, break away. Do your own thing. Be original.

My advice would be to continue to win hockey games, since that's the entire point of being in the playoffs and all. The Blackhawks are doing their own thing. They are winning Stanley Cup titles, not trying to set a fashion trend. And no, playoff beards aren't holding them back from getting endorsements and or winning "People Magazine's Sexist Man of the Year" award. 

That’s how a team can win titles, too — by thinking outside the, uh, barber’s chair.

Apparently a team can win titles by growing playoff beards, because the Blackhawks have won plenty of Stanley Cup titles when the entire team was growing a playoff beard. And saying they need to "think outside the barber's chair" is an indication the team should not go to the barber's chair, thereby not getting their face shaved. Rick Telander wants hockey players to think inside the barber's chair. Oh, and it's so stupid to equate shaving as a way to win titles. It's just stupid and whether the hockey players shave or not is so irrelevant I don't see how this is an issue for Rick.

Coach Joel Quenneville certainly went all over the place in the Hawks’ victory in Game 4, mixing up his lines as though he had flung a deck of cards in the air.

As we know, we can’t trust either coach to tell us the truth about injuries, strategies or much else. And we won’t know whether Lightning goalie Ben Bishop, who was held out of Game 4, will play in Game 5 until the puck drops.

Rick doesn't have enough material to write an entire column on this issue, so he has to go off-topic briefly in order to hit the word count he wants to hit. Modern sports journalism at it's best. Telander writes an uninspired and irrelevant article bemoaning the existence of playoff beards and still has to pad it with enough rambling to hit the required word count.

But back to the beard thing. Think about it, Hawks. Think about a new tradition.

Yes, think about not having playoff beards because Rick Telander doesn't like them. I also like the idea of starting a new tradition, all while Rick provides no real suggestions for a new tradition. Just do it. It's Rick's decree, so make it be.

Be creative. More creative than Rick Telander, who wrote this uninspired column and can't even be creative enough to suggest another playoff tradition. All he is worried about is ensuring the sexiness of the NHL players shines through. Obviously these playoff beards, not the helmets or the fact hockey isn't the most popular sport in the United States, is the reason these players don't get endorsements.

How about reverse bearding? Start the playoffs with a fully grown beard, then reduce it each series — first to a goatee, then to a mustache before finishing with (ta-da!) soul patches.

Right, but the players would have to grow a beard during the regular season, thereby hurting the chances fans will recognize the players, reducing their sexiness and preventing the players from receiving endorsements. So Rick's only solution to growing playoff beards is for NHL players to grow regular season beards. If you know why regular season beards will not hurt endorsements and recognition for NHL players, like Mark Lazarus and Rick Telander claim occurs when playoff beards are grown, then please tell me. It sounds like Rick is suggesting the players grow a beard for a longer period of time during the regular season (in order to grow a full beard) as an alternative to growing playoff beards. Because apparently endorsements and recognition aren't important during the regular season. The regular season consists of a larger number of games than the playoffs by the way. 

And Coach Q? Well, if he had a full beard, we’d know who Santa Claus really is.

Yes, Rick does know dumb and stale best. This last sentence shows this clearly. 

4 comments How To Fix the NBA Lottery By Making it More Non-Sensical and Absurd

Has anyone been worried about the NBA lottery and how it rewards teams for tanking? No worries from here on out! This problem has been figured out by "Slate." There is a brilliant idea posted on the site on how to fix the NBA lottery and make everything more fair. The best part is this idea takes the lottery process and turns it into a circus atmosphere, where the intention goes away from choosing lottery spots for each team and becomes more of an exercise in creating manufactured drama. Why does everything have to be dramatic and overly-difficult?

On another note, does anyone but sportswriters care that the NBA lottery is fixed to where teams have some incentive to tank? Like, is this a big deal that the normal sports fan really cares about or is the complaining about tanking simply something the media cares about more than a sports fan does? Me personally, I could care less if the 76ers tank and get a high draft pick. It doesn't bother me. The idea some teams are so terrible they get rewarded for being bad just doesn't bother me that much (as long as I'm not a fan of that team). I could be in the minority, but I feel like others in the media are more concerned about this than I am.

This is the year that NBA tanking went off the rails. 

Every year over the past few years, this has been written somewhere. 

The Philadelphia 76ers, for starters, exemplified a whole new level of basketball seppuku with a team so willfully awful that the New York Times Magazine felt compelled to publish a feature story about their willful awfulness.

The 76ers were so terrible that people in the media noticed how terrible they were.

By descending into “tank mode,” the Sixers hoped to lose enough games that they’d receive one of the valuable first picks in the upcoming NBA draft.

Oh, so THAT is how tanking works? Thanks for clearing that one up. By the way, this is the third straight season the 76ers have essentially done this. So if they were "off the rails" this year then it isn't "the year" tanking went "off the rails." There are a lot of quotes in that sentence. More quotes than good points made in this column in fact.

The New York Knicks, Los Angeles Lakers, and other teams were accused of plunging into the tank for large swaths of this season. Which is sad.

Let's be slightly fair, the Lakers stumbled on to tanking. They managed to lose their first round pick to injury, their best player to injury, and their old point guard tried to come back from injury and had to retire instead. The intention wasn't to tank, but at some point they have to throw up their hands and realize it ain't their year.

Tanking makes for ugly basketball and it throws off competitive balance.

(Bengoodfella shrugs his shoulders) As long as a large percentage of the NBA isn't tanking then I really don't feel too concerned about this problem.

Perhaps worst of all: Fans of tanking teams find themselves not only watching putrid hoops but also perversely rooting against their hometown squads

And again, this is very weird and not good for the fans of these teams. Would fixing the lottery so these teams don't get good players really help the situation? The assumption is management would stop tanking, but would it really stop this strategy? I'm not entirely sure. Lest it be forgotten that the current lottery system was put in place to prevent tanking. From the Bondy column:

The lottery was put into place by David Stern after the spring of 1984 turned into an uncomfortable tank-fest. The way it worked, teams with the very worst record in each conference flipped a coin for the first pick and then other selections were made in inverse order of won-loss records. Not surprisingly, the franchises that still owned their first-round picks hemorrhaged defeats. The Rockets dropped 14 of their last 17 games, nine of their last 10, and their final five. They were rewarded with Olajuwon as the No. 1 pick. The Bulls lost 14 of their last 15 to land Jordan at No. 3.

To quell this perception, Stern instituted the draft lottery, which gave teams far less reason to throw away games.

Sounds a lot like the strategy teams are using 30 years later. The draft lottery was supposed to stop teams from tanking. It didn't. So changes are being suggested again. And again, teams will tank anyway.

You know something has gone awry when Knicks coach Derek Fisher feels pressure to apologize to fans for winning.

In that article, Fisher seemed to say he doesn't feel pressure to apologize to fans for winning. He's not going to apologize for it, so therefore I would say he doesn't feel the pressure. OR it could be we are arguing over semantics in regard to a lottery change that won't ever change the fact NBA teams are going to tank.

The best tanking solution would be relegation, as happens in European soccer leagues. Each year, the bottom three teams in the continent’s top divisions are kicked out of the league and relegated to a lower one. Regrettably, with NBA teams currently selling for $2 billion apiece, it's unlikely we'll get owners to agree that a few of them should be banished to the D-League each year to compete against the Sioux Falls Skyforce.

Clearly the author is a fan of Bill Simmons since Bill has floated this idea jokingly (not jokingly?) in columns before. And yes, no NBA team will be relegated. I don't even know how that would work with the NBA Draft and I don't really care either.

A more likely solution would be for the NBA to flatten out the lottery odds. Right now the worst team has a 25 percent chance at the top pick while the 14^th-worst team has a 0.5 percent chance. We could switch to a true lottery, in which all 14 non-playoff teams would get an equal 7.14 percent chance at the top pick.

So basically the same lottery system the NBA used to use, then got rid of in order to discourage teams from tanking? Get rid of the currently lottery system in order to go back to the old lottery system which was changed because it encouraged teams to tank? Gotta have a sense of history. The odds are not as great now that a team would land the #1 pick (it was around 14% thirty years ago), but the system was no longer used for a reason. 

Another draft scheme that’s gotten lots of attention is “the wheel”—a system in which the draft order would be set far in advance so that a team’s draft position would have zero to do with its on-court performance.

Sounds great, but I have a feeling teams would still find a way to tank. I have no idea how, but NBA teams have tanked at times for decades and it is almost a reflex for some teams who are looking to rebuild. 

This would eliminate any reason to tank, but it would also do nothing to help bad teams get better. The worst team in the league might end up picking dead last in the draft.

And therein lies the whole problem with the media's teeth-gnashing over fixing the lottery. How can a lottery be set up for the purpose to help teams that aren't very good so they do become very good, while also not giving teams incentive to tank? The NBA can't help bad teams, while also not giving teams incentive to be bad. That is, unless some convoluted lottery set up over a several year span where to occur. Something like a team can't get a Top 5 pick for a certain amount of years if they have had one in the previous year. But again, this would work at cross purposes to help a team that's trying to get better. The Thunder never would have had the chance to draft James Harden and Russell Westbrook if this rule were in effect over the last decade.

As horrible as the status quo is, some version of reverse-order drafting—and the increased parity it helps create—is still a worthy goal. So the problem seems intractable.

It is. It's very hard to help bad teams while not incentivizing these teams to be bad.

But fear not, NBA fans! A superior answer exists, and a friend of mine has invented it. It’s fair, it’s elegant, and it’s fun. My friend calls it the “You’re the Worst!” draft.

Maybe not ironically, this draft idea is the worst draft idea. It's convoluted and turns the lottery into a drama that becomes more game show than simple lottery to determine draft position.

How would it work? On the day before the regular season began, the NBA would hold a “You’re the Worst!” draft. Selection order for the YTW draft would be determined like any standard reverse-order draft—the team that had the worst win-loss record in the previous season would pick first, the team that had the best record would pick last. But the teams wouldn’t be drafting players.

(Cue overdramatic music)

They’d be choosing the rights to another team’s position in the next NBA draft.

I see that you, as a reader, maybe confused by one part of this. You may be asking, "But, would each team point at each other and say 'you're the worst' during this process?" Fear not, that is something that would happen. Just wait for the full plan to be revealed.

So, for example, the Minnesota Timberwolves, who finished this season with the worst win-loss record, would have the first YTW pick in the fall when the 2015–16 season started. One day before opening day, all of the league’s general managers would gather together in a room. The T-Wolves would look around that room and decide which team they thought would finish worst in 2015–16.

Again, this is over complicating the entire lottery process needlessly. There is no reason to do this, other than to provide needless drama and over-complicate the process. It's a fun idea, but not something that should really happen.

Minnesota general manager Milt Newton might predict that the Knicks would be the worst team next season. In which case he would shout, “You’re the worst!” while pointing at Knicks President Phil Jackson, stealing the Knicks’ position in the 2016 NBA draft.

I wonder if it doesn't count as saying a team is the worst if a team's GM chooses to point but not shout or simply decides to shout without pointing? I would say this is all a joke, but I really don't think it is based on the columnist really defending why this is a good way to determine a team's lottery position.

If the Knicks indeed finished worst next year, the T-wolves would then receive the top pick in the 2016 draft. If the Knicks finished with the third-worst record, the T-Wolves would receive the No. 3 pick.

I'll play this game. I feel like there is some issue with this method if one team owns another team's first round pick in certain situations (if it falls out of the Top 7, etc) that could affect how this idea would work. I'm trying to think of specific examples, but can't. Perhaps this isn't an issue, but it feels to me like this lottery set up could impact draft picks that are lottery protected.

In this scenario, say the Knicks plan on tanking during the 15-16 year to get a better pick and everyone knows this. The Timberwolves know they will end up getting a high pick in the draft no matter what because they have chosen the Knicks as the team with the worst record, so it won't affect whether THEY tank or not. They are free to tank (again) because they know they will get the first (or really close to first) team choice again the next year. Alternatively in this scenario, say the Timberwolves plan on trying to win as many games as possible and they are chosen to have the sixth worst record in the NBA. If the Timberwolves know the Knicks are tanking during the 15-16 season and they are guaranteed to have a high lottery pick, then what's the point in trying to win games? They have another chance to pick early during the 16-17 lottery! Why should the T-Wolves care if another team gets a higher pick through the T-Wolves deciding to tank as long as the Knicks keep losing? At that point, the T-Wolves can continue to tank, but just as long as they know the Knicks are worse than them.

(Hopefully that made sense. Basically, the T-Wolves still have no incentive to be a good team in this lottery system.)

After the Wolves picked, Jackson and the Knicks, with their second-worst record this past season, would look around the room, predict which remaining team might perform most horribly in 2015–16, and select that team’s 2016 draft pick. Preferably while pointing and shouting, “You’re the next worst!”

Yes, preferably there would be pointing and shouting.

Let’s look at how things would have panned out if we’d held a YTW draft for the 2014–15 season. Since the Bucks accumulated the worst win-loss record last year, and the 76ers appeared to be clearly the worst team entering this season, the Bucks would've selected the 76ers first in the YTW draft. It turned out that the 76ers earned the third-worst record, so the Bucks would be getting the third pick in this June’s NBA draft. 

And the Bucks made the playoffs, so naturally they should be rewarded for making the playoffs by receiving a higher draft pick. Wait, that's not the purpose of the lottery is it?

Here’s how the 2015 NBA draft might look if there’d been a YTW draft on Oct. 27, 2014, the day before this season started (we’ll use SCHOENE projections from the start of the season as a proxy for how general managers might have projected other teams):

1. Denver Nuggets (The Nuggets had the 11^th-worst record in 2013–14, so they’d pick 11^th in the YTW draft; the Timberwolves were projected to be the 11^th-worst team this season, so the Nuggets would have stolen their pick. Since the T-Wolves finished with the league’s worst record, the Nuggets would get the first pick in June’s draft.)
2. Sacramento Kings (seventh-worst record in 2013–14, steal New York Knicks pick)
3. Milwaukee Bucks (worst record in 2013–14, steal 76ers pick)
4. Boston Celtics (fifth-worst record in 2013–14, steal Lakers pick)
5. Philadelphia 76ers (second-worst record in 2013–14, steal Orlando Magic pick)

It’s a pretty good result. 

It is a pretty good result based upon your guess on which teams other teams would choose as being the worst. It's always fun when a writer wants to prove his point as correct and then uses his assumptions as the "factual basis" that shows the underlying points as correct.

And it's not exactly pretty good. Two of these teams made the playoffs and out of the 10 worst teams in the NBA this past year only 3 will get a Top 5 pick and of the 5 worst teams in the NBA, only 1 of those teams gets a Top 5 pick. So if the purpose was to stop tanking, it would work, but if the purpose was to help teams like the Knicks, Lakers, T-Wolves, and Magic get better (and really, I would only count one of those teams as truly tanking) then this result doesn't work well at all.

Although the Bucks, last year’s worst team, wouldn't end up with the first pick in this year’s NBA draft—something that often doesn't happen anyway, due to the lottery—the new positions still would be heavily weighted toward the bottom feeders.

As long as you ignore that of the bottom 5 teams in the NBA, only 1 of them gets a Top 5 pick. As I said, it works at cross-purposes to decrease tanking while trying not to award the worst teams with the chance to draft the best players. It's very hard to do both.

Though the Timberwolves wouldn't receive the first pick in the upcoming player draft, despite finishing with the worst record, they would own the YTW No. 1 this fall, which would very likely pay off in 2016.

I like how the author tries to sell this. He sells it as "the T-Wolves didn't get the first pick in the draft, so preventing tanking works, but next year they will get the first chance to pick which NBA team will be the worst, so tanking does pay off."

Funny how that works isn't? Tanking isn't necessarily discouraged any more than a team knows the pay off for tanking will come, but maybe not immediately. The author can't have it both ways. He can't have this system as a way to prevent tanking, then point out how a team that tanks will be set up to have an early pick two drafts from now.

The obvious benefit of this system is that no team would have an incentive to tank throughout the season (barring collusion). Just think about how this season could have been different.

But a team would still have incentive to tank, because as the author just said, the Timberwolves wouldn't receive the first pick in the draft by having the worst record but they would still have the chance to pick the worst team in the NBA the next year. In fact, the author says having the worst record during the 14-15 season would "pay off" in 15-16. So there's the incentive.

If the Knicks didn’t derive a direct benefit from being so terrible, would they have shut down Carmelo? Would the 76ers dare to build a team so nakedly atrocious?

Yes, because teams that tank aren't thinking about the short-term, but only in the long-term. In the long-term, tanking will "pay off" through having the first chance to choose the worst team in the NBA for the upcoming season. There is the incentive to tank.

Another benefit to the “You’re the Worst” system: It would be exciting! 

No, this is the only benefit. Something being exciting doesn't mean that it's also a good idea. I don't think this system would prevent tanking, especially since most teams that are tanking aren't looking at the short-term view. Having to wait another year for tanking to pay off wouldn't be a big deal to an NBA team.

With YTW, we’d replace the lottery with even better drama. Wouldn’t you tune in to see Newton, or better yet Wolves president and coach Flip Saunders, walk up to the podium on national television, look Phil Jackson straight in the eye, and say, “You’re the worst!”? (OK, it would be more like, “With the first pick in the preseason selection-order draft, the Timberwolves select the Knicks.” But the implied insult would be there.)

I probably would not be more inclined to watch this than I'm inclined to watch the current lottery selection show.

Because NBA fans have long memories, animosity would instantly sprout. Consider: If the Knicks visited Philadelphia right after calling them “the worst,” the Philly crowd might get rowdy

There's nothing like trying to manufacture a rivalry AND manufacture drama.

It stinks to root against your own team, but it’s hella fun to root against other teams. Players would also be eager to prove rival teams’ projections wrong. Ultimately, YTW would enhance—wait for it—competitiveness!

It would not in the same way the current lottery system was supposed to stop tanking and it did not. But it's hella fun to pretend NBA teams aren't going to just tank anyway in an effort to stop something that will happen as long as the intent of the lottery is to get the best players to the worst teams.

To be sure, this system is not perfect.

Noooooooooooooooooo. This system seems pretty perfect to me.

It might take a casual fan a few run-throughs to understand. And it puts a heavy premium on the forecasting skills of NBA front offices. Nerdy spreadsheet jockeys would become even more valuable than they already are.

Does the author really believe the Sixers would not have tanked over the past three seasons in an effort to get a good draft pick if they knew they had to wait another year for the tanking to pay off? This is a real belief the author has? A team like the Knicks or 76ers that are trying to cut salary and gather high draft picks won't be willing to wait another year for the tanking to pay off? These teams know they would get a pretty good pick if they tank, because they would get to choose which NBA team they think will be the worst during the upcoming season, and they know a 3-5 year rebuilding plan takes 3-5 years. So what's waiting another year for tanking to pay off?

But it might be better for Sam Hinkie to put his geek skills to use in the service of predictive analysis—or maybe even figuring out how to help his team win—instead of searching for the most efficient way to lose.

Because he wouldn't use that predictive analysis to find out which teams will be the worst so that once the Sixers continue to tank they can choose another team that's just as terrible as they are, all in the name of getting a higher pick. This system won't stop tanking any more than the change to the system used prior to 1985 stopped tanking. 

7 comments Bill Simmons Posts an NBA Playoffs Mailbag and Promises More Mailbags to Come; Essentially Making a Mockery of the "Columns" Heading On His Grantland Page

In the last Bill Simmons post I did, which was about his NBA lottery preview, I wrote the following: 

Bill Simmons must have made a mistake. It seems he actually wrote a column and posted it on Grantland. I keep waiting for it to be pulled back and Bill to admit it was an accident and he didn't mean to actually write a column that isn't a mailbag.

But hey, I'm sure the SimmonsClones are just excited to have another column from Bill they can worship and send in questions to him about, thereby allowing Bill to answer the questions in a mailbag and justify the existence of the SimmonsClone asking the question.

So as expected, Simmons' very next column up on Grantland is in fact a mailbag. Let's just say I'm not entirely shocked. It's all circular. Bill writes a column, waits a week or two and spits out a mailbag. Then his readers respond to ideas in that mailbag and he writes another mailbag about these responses. Hey, it's better than actually having to think of a topic to write about when Bill really has no urge to put his quest for television celebrity status on hold to write like a simple little blogger would write. But, it's expected of him that he spit out words written on to a computer screen, so here is the mailbag reunion tour. Yeah, that's what he is calling it. If you would like to know why, it's easily explained in knowing that Bill Simmons has to have a contrivance for everything he writes now. He just can't write, there has to be a contrivance. Whether it's quotes from a movie, tons of YouTube videos in a column, comparing an athlete to something in pop culture or thinking of a contrivance to call the mailbag to cover up for the fact it's just a fucking mailbag, there will be a contrivance. So here is Bill's mailbag and I can feel Bill's indifference through my computer screen.

But first, it’s a Grantland Basketball Hour alert! On the heels of last night’s “Hardcore Playoff Preview” with me, Jalen Rose and Zach Lowe …

… we have a second playoff special counting down the “25 Most Intriguing People” of 2015’s postseason premiering tonight on ESPN at 7 ET. We’re also running these GBH shows as podcasts and throwing segments online (like this one). And we’re producing four to six more shows during the playoffs, so if you want to contribute a mailbag question, send it to mailbag@grantland.com.

Ah yes, the partial true intent for posting articles or mailbags again rings true. It's a great way to cross-promote Bill's other ventures with Grantland. So Bill answers questions in a mailbag in his columns and answers questions from a mailbag on television. Essentially, he is just answering questions now. He's basically become a sports version of Andy Cohen from "What Watch Happens Live." As usual, I will be making fun of the person asking the question, as well as Bill.

Hey, speaking of mailbags …
 
Q: You do mailbags so infrequently, every time you actually do one, it feels like you’re doing a Mailbag Reunion Tour.
 
—Ryan, Boston

Bill's first question is from a guy who lives in Boston. I don't believe it.

BS: First of all, words hurt. Second, I’d like to welcome everyone to the 2015 Sports Guy Mailbag Reunion Tour! I’m gonna try my hardest to write a Friday mailbag every single week during the 2015 NBA playoffs. That’s 10 weeks in all. If you’ve been reading me for this long, you know that I’m notorious for making column promises that I can never totally keep.

It is difficult to write a mailbag. Bill has to have somebody else pick out the questions he will answer, then that person has to email Bill the questions he is going to answer/ignore/try to top with original ideas of his own, and then finally Bill will have to post the questions and his answers. This time could be better used to try and have conversations with famous people that he can publicly relay to his readers or trying to make tortured comparisons between an NBA team that hasn't won an NBA title in 60+ years and the New England Patriots.

Q: I have gotten laid TWICE since you wrote last. And I am married 10 years with two little kids, so you KNOW that is a long time. Don’t make me get laid again without writing. How about “just a mailbag”? Seriously.
 
—Brian, Harrisburg, PA

It's sad that Brian's life is so empty. His wife probably doesn't want to have sex with him anymore ever since that time she caught him jerking off to one of Bill's podcasts while simultaneously watching a DVR'd re-run of the "Grantland Basketball Hour." That's probably the real reason for his lack of sex.

BS: You got laid twice even though you have two little kids? You need to be happier about this. Cheer up. You’re putting a damper on the 2015 Sports Guy Mailbag Reunion. As always, these are actual emails from actual readers.

Some of these actual readers are Bill Simmons reading his own columns and then asking himself questions, so I guess theoretically they are actual readers.

Q: Admit it Bill — Rather than following your instincts and declaring James Harden as the undisputed MVP candidate, you surveyed the field, figured out which way the winds of popular opinion were blowing and chose to give Steph Curry the edge. How could you do this, especially after coming up with the best way to judge the MVP’s candidacy? (‘Replace the guy with a decent guy in the same position and evaluate how the team would have done.’)

—Ram Sridhar, Rutherford, NJ

BS: There are a couple of other ways too. I spent four solid years working on a trial-and-error method of determining the MVP award,

Jesus Christ. This so worthless. Bill insists on creating rules for things where there are no rules because the situation changes from year-to-year.

I settled on four fool-proof questions for determining every MVP season. What better way to solve our most polarizing MVP race in years: Harden or Curry?

These are four FOOL-PROOF questions for determining every MVP season. These rules will not change until they are proven incorrect, at which point Bill will add an addendum as a way of pretending that he simply wasn't wrong about there being a fool-proof way of determining every MVP season. These four questions will stand the test of time (for one year, at the very most) and will go to prove that Bill's opinion on who the MVP is will consistently agree with Bill's opinion on who the MVP is. Few writers are better at using his own opinion to prove his opinion correct.

"Chipotle is better than Qdoba and Moe's due to this three-prong test I just created. LOOK! The three-prong test I created agrees with my already set conclusion Chipotle is better than Qdoba and Moe's."

Question No. 1: If you replaced an MVP candidate with a decent player at his position for the entire season, what would be the hypothetical effect on his team’s record?

This is a fool-proof question that contains two assumptions or questions that are purely subjective. What is a "decent player" and how do we measure the hypothetical effect on the team's record? Both of these are answers that rely entirely on a person's opinion.

Normally, you’d say James Harden wins under this framework — if you replaced him on that injury-ravaged Rockets team with, say, Arron Afflalo, Houston probably would win 35-38 games instead of 56.

Actually Bill, I have Houston as winning 45 games without James Harden.

I don't think it takes a genius to see how worthless this first question ends up being. Bill takes a guess at how many games Houston will win without Harden. It's an opinion-based question that leads to the answer simply being an opinion as well.

Couldn’t you say the same about the Warriors? Yeah, if you replaced Curry with Reggie Jackson, the Warriors might lose 15-20 more games while grabbing a no. 7 seed. 

No, actually I have the Warriors as losing 20-25 more games with Reggie Jackson AND Jackson will drown while swimming in the ocean midseason. Boy, this hypothetical is a brutal one.

It’s an exceptionally coached team with enough depth to just bench David Lee whenever they feel like it. 

I have absolutely no idea why "bench" is italicized here. It's a huge mystery to me.

And their defense has been as good as their offense, which people always forget because it’s so damned fun to watch their offense.

Nope, "people" remember this. "People" don't forget it simply because it's convenient for you to think "people" forget it so that you can feel like you just made an excellent point.

But Curry was the biggest reason that the 2015 Warriors were the seventh member of our .800/10 Club — any team that finished with an .800-plus winning percentage and a plus-10 point differential — which is relevant because the first six teams won a title.

Again, why italicize "won a title"? If you read this sentence aloud and emphasize "won a title" the sentence sounds ridiculous. Play this game at home if you like. It sounds stupid to read the sentence like Bill wrote it.

Oh, and don't forget if you are reading it aloud to use a grating voice as well for the full Bill Simmons effect.

Harden turned a .500 team into a 56-win team. Curry turned a no. 7 seed into one of the best regular-season teams ever, as well as an unforgettable League Pass team and the single best story of the 2014-15 season. So Curry wins this one.

So basically Bill didn't even get through the first question before he was like, "Fuck it, I'm not going to pay attention to my own rules. I want Steph Curry to win, so he will."

These are FOOL-PROOF questions that MUST be answered in order to find out who the MVP will be. By "fool-proof" Bill must mean "questions with arbitrary answers based on the person answering the question's opinion on the topic of who the MVP is and if the person answering the question wants a certain answer to be correct then he can just make up something on the spot."

Question No. 2: In a giant pickup game with every NBA player available and two knowledgeable fans forced to pick five-man teams with their lives depending on the outcome, who would be the first player picked based on how everyone just played in the regular season?

LeBron James. There are no other answers I would listen to as correct.

I love this question.

Bill loves this question. The same question that HE FUCKING THOUGHT OF HIMSELF! WHAT A GENIUS THAT BILL SIMMONS IS! BILL SIMMONS THINKS THAT BILL SIMMONS IS A GENIUS!

As much as I want to pick Russell Westbrook, the thought of hinging my life on a night when Russ might lose his mind and start going 1-on-5 while maybe earning a 16th technical that the league can’t even rescind because the loser of the hypothetical bet would be dead already … I mean, that scares the bejesus out of me. The safest bet? LeBron James 

I feel like Will Ferrell's version of Alex Trebek on SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy sometimes when I'm covering a Bill Simmons mailbag. I just want to rip up the cards with the questions on them and ask Bill, "What conclusion would you like to reach? Just state what you think and we can ignore all the bullshit you use to get there."

In this case, I'm going to try and ignore what "knowledgeable fans" would be considered in this situation. Again, it's a subjective opinion on who is knowledgeable and who is not.

You know who the answer to this question might be? KAWHI LEONARD!!!! 

It might be Kawhi Leonard or it might be Meyers Leonard or it could be Meyer Lansky. All of these would be the right answer in Crazy Land. This is the same Crazy Land where Kawhi Leonard is the first pick in a draft among knowledgeable NBA fans.

If I take Kawhi — who proved after the All-Star break that he’s the most destructive perimeter defender since Apex Scottie Pippen — then I can lock down the other team’s best offensive player and still grab an elite offensive guy with my second pick.

Or you could pick the elite offensive guy with the first pick and still have a few rounds to select Kawhi Leonard. And what if the other team doesn't choose James Harden? Does that ruin part of Leonard's value? I don't know why I ask these questions...

The truth is, there were too many terrific players this season. Westbrook was 2015’s night-to-night balls-to-the-wall alpha dog; LeBron was 2015’s hibernating alpha dog; Harden was 2015’s alpha-dog-as-long-as-Kawhi-wasn’t-around; Kawhi was 2015’s alpha dog stopper; Anthony Davis was the alpha-dog-in-training; and Curry was the alpha dog on 2015’s alpha dog. It’s a cop-out, but there’s no clear answer.

It's a fool-proof set of questions to where the first question has been ignored and the second question didn't come up with a clear answer. THESE ARE THE GREATEST QUESTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS AND SHOULD BE ASKED BY ST. PETER UPON ENTRANCE TO HEAVEN! WHO SAYS "NO" TO THIS?

Nothing is more typical of Bill Simmons than to take four years to think of four questions to determine who should win MVP that provide no clear answer as to who should win MVP.

(Important: In mid-June, we might feel differently.)

Yes Bill, since you believe yourself to speak for every NBA fan on the planet because you are the expert of all experts, "we" may feel differently in June. Spoiler alert: I won't. If the Cavs don't make the NBA Finals, I'm still picking LeBron. I'm sure "we" will find out my opinion is wrong though, because overreacting to something that just happened is a specialty of Bill's.

Question No. 3: If you’re explaining your MVP pick to someone who has a favorite player in the race — a player whom you didn’t pick — will he at least say something like, “Yeah, I don’t like it, but I see how you arrived at that choice”?

Oh for fuck's sake. This isn't even really a question. My head might explode so I hope you see the issue I have with this question. How can a question be fool-proof if it is so overly-reliant on the opinion of another person? Riddle me this Simmons!

Applies only if you’re discussing the MVP race with a Cleveland fan who counters, “Um, we were so dreadful that we won three of the last four lotteries, and then LeBron showed up and helped us overhaul our team, and suddenly we’re -230 favorites to win the East, and LeBron has looked like LEBRON for the past three months, and since we’ve already collectively agreed that he’s the best basketball player since MJ and one of the best seven or eight players ever, um, why isn’t he the MVP again?

Bill should be kicked in the groin by a horse for writing "LeBron has looked like LEBRON..." Do Bill's readers realize just how awful he is at writing, arguing a point and just generally putting together a coherent, logical thought? His writing is that of a high school kid, but is it that he's so funny and in touch with today's youth and the struggle they go through that they don't care?

Important: The Bulls went 203-43 during the three regular seasons from 1996 through 1998, then 45-13 in the three postseasons (winning all three titles). They never lost three games in a row and played only one Game 7, even though they played 304 games in 31 months. JORDAN PLAYED IN 304 OF THOSE 304 GAMES.

Important: I don't know why this is important.

And during the second of those three seasons, even though we’d already decided that MJ was the greatest basketball player ever,

Who the fuck is "we" Bill? YOU? YOU decided that Michael Jordan was the greatest player ever? Even if it is true for me personally, it annoys me Bill truly believes because he's just written in 1997 "we" decided Michael Jordan was the greatest basketball player ever that is is true. He should be kicked in the groin by two horses and one of the horses needs to be wearing spikes.

a majority of media members said to themselves, I think Karl Malone was slightly more valuable this season. It’s probably the dumbest thing that ever happened. Anyway, Jordan’s numbers never slipped during that stretch.

Oh, they didn't? And again, read that last sentence aloud and hear how dumb the emphasis on "slipped" sounds in the context of the sentence. Anyway, Jordan's numbers didn't slip. Not at all.

They dipped a little, but that’s it.

So his numbers did slip? See Bill, stating Jordan's numbers didn't "slip" and then using another word that means "slip" in place of "dip" only goes to show that you are making things up as you go along. There is no difference in "dip" and "slip." It's the same thing and attempting to differentiate them is simply a desperate way of making it seem like Jordan's numbers didn't decline just slightly when they did.

LeBron in ’15: 25.3 ppg, 6.0 rpg, 7.4 apg, 49-35-71%, 25.9 PER, .199 WS/48
 
LeBron ’08-14: 28.0 ppg, 7.6 rpg, 7.1 apg, 52-35-76%, 30.1 PER, .283 WS/48

Now that’s a dip.

It's the same things as a "slip." These things I end up arguing about when covering a Bill Simmons article makes me question my sanity.

Question No. 4: Ten years from now, who will be the first player from that season who pops into my head?

Oh for motherfucking fuckityfuckeverlastinglightforallthatisholyfuckityfuckfuck. The last "fool-proof" question depends, yet again, entirely on the opinion that a person holds? This is not fool-proof, this is just an opinion. A regular, boring opinion. It's not a way to find out who the real MVP is (which we all know is Kevin Durant's mom), but this question is just another in a long line of bullshit lists, questions, corollaries, etc that Bill spent all of 10 minutes concocting. These lists, questions, corollaries, etc all end up essentially just being a way to back up the opinion Bill holds by extrapolating out a series of opinions that Bill holds to reach his ultimate opinion. It's always, "My opinion isn't wrong because here is more of my opinion that proves my original opinion correct." The game is rigged to reach the conclusion Bill wants it to reach.

But around 2007, I remember praising Nash for being the only “driver” who could have handled the race car that was the Seven Seconds or Less Suns; they were like a special Ferrari built for his exact qualities. You could say the same about Curry and 2015’s Porsche Warriors.

Okay Bill, let's play this game. If I were a Hawks fan, what if Jeff Teague is the player from this season who pops into my head? Does that mean Jeff Teague is the NBA MVP or does it just mean I'm a Hawks fan and that is the team I identify with most? Nothing can be fool-proof if it relies entirely on a person's opinion. Four opinion-based questions are even less fool-proof when based on four separate opinions. Please stop writing for Grantland.

Last Curry point: I grew up with my father telling me, You missed out on Maravich. Every weekend, they showed one nationally televised college game and we used to pray it would be Maravich. There will never be another Maravich. I always felt cheated that I never caught Pistol Pete in his prime; by the time he landed on the Celtics in 1980, he was pretty much washed up. Fast-forward 35 years: Isn’t Curry really Pistol Pete reincarnated as a more efficient, more unselfish model?

Yes, he is Bill. Steph Curry is reincarnated as a more talented Pete Maravich. You nailed it.

Over everything else, Stephen Curry performed.

Read it aloud. It sounds stupid.

This was a virtuoso performance that included staggeringly good individual efficiency and once-a-decade team success. When I think about the 2014-15 regular season, I will remember Curry and the Warriors first … and then I’ll remember everyone else. He’s my MVP.

But Bill, you said these four questions would figure out who the MVP was and you worked on these questions for four years (again, I feel like I'm Will Ferrell's Alex Trebek where there is so much stupidity being thrown at me I can't even focus on piece of that stupidity...Bill worked on these four questions for FOUR YEARS?...It would have taken me possibly an hour to come up with these rules). After four years this is all you got? These four questions figure out who you think is the MVP, so as I said, they are basically just a way to reinforce your own opinion. I think of LeBron James when I think of this NBA season. Let's pretend. So does that make him the MVP? That's what I remember most, so he's the first guy I would choose in a pick up game and if you take him off the Cavs we've seen what happens, plus it's never bad to choose LeBron and it's hard to disagree with LeBron as a choice. So this means he's MVP according to Bill's "fool-proof" four questions. Then how come Bill's MVP was Steph Curry?

Q: You once wrote that every MVP trophy’s size should depend on “the quality of the MVP race” and the “transcendence of the season itself.” How large should 2015’s trophy be?

—Josh, Grand Rapids, MI

Bill had separate weights for each MVP season and the heavier the trophy then the closer and more exciting the race was...or something like that. It obviously doesn't matter because it's another example of Bill just making things up and mistaking it for creativity.

Well, 2015 was an undeniably memorable race (along with 1987, 1990 and 1993, one of the four best of the past 30 years) … and Steph Curry is a future Hall of Famer (if he stays healthy) … and Curry definitely gutted out that award (we don’t even know if he won). So I’m awarding 25-pound status for the 2015 trophy.

(Bengoodfella makes a wanking motion with his hand)

The rest of my 2015 awards ballot, since we’re here: Andrew Wiggins for rookie (over Noel and Mirotic); Lou Williams for sixth man (over Isaiah Thomas); Steve Kerr for coach (over Budz and Pop);

Here is where I am a little confused. Steve Kerr is Coach of the Year because he took a team that was already a playoff team (got 6th seed over the last two seasons) and has the MVP on the roster over the Hawks, who were also a playoff team previously, but added no real impact players in the offseason and have almost zero stars on the team. The Hawks went from an 8-seed to the 1-seed in a matter of one season without adding real impact players, meanwhile Steve Kerr had the MVP (according to Bill) on his team.

Which guy did the better coaching job? The Warriors won 51 and 47 games over the last two seasons, while the Hawks won 44 and 38 games over the last two seasons. Both teams got a 1-seed and the Warriors went from 51 to 67 wins while the Hawks went from 38 to 60 wins. Which coach did the better coaching job again? Bill's buddy Steve Kerr of course.

Q: Don’t you think Byron Scott could play a police commissioner in a TNT drama? He definitely has the stache for it.
 
—James Houston, Redondo Beach

Uh-oh, one of Bill's readers has an original idea. We all know what this means. Bill has to shit on it and think of a much funnier, more clever idea to be the most clever guy in the room.

BS: I think it’s more fun to watch him play Unfrozen Caveman NBA Coach. I don’t believe in your pace-and-space offenses or spreading the floor so players can attack the basket. I see someone taking a 3-pointer and say to myself, “Why wouldn’t he just take two more dribbles and fire off a 20-footer?” I’m just a caveman! I was frozen during the 1988 Finals and recently thawed out to help turn the Lakers into a perennial lottery team! 

Yep, not really that funny. But hey, it's important to know that Bill heard a reader's funny idea and managed to again be the most clever guy in the room. It's about Bill's ego.

Q: How many more hours of motionless staring does Derek Fisher need to record during games before we can start calling him NBA Jim Caldwell?
 
—Ross, Santa Barbara

An idea that Bill wishes he had thought of writing down. That means he'll have to acknowledge this joke and then change the subject quickly so that everyone thinks Bill is the smartest, most clever guy in the room. Bill has jokes!

BS: Um, zero! We’re here! I always wanted an NBA Jim Caldwell. It’s too bad that Wittman doesn’t have an NFL equivalent; you can’t run the Clogged Toilet offense in football. We’ll have to wait for an NFL coach who spends every first and second down running the ball into the middle of the line, then every third down throwing it 25 yards downfield. Maybe this will be Jim Tomsula’s new offense for the 49ers. I mean, would you rule out anything incompetent with the 49ers at this point?

Bill is that guy who always turns one person's joke or idea into a dick-measuring contest where he feels like he can't stop talking until everyone has acknowledged HIS joke or idea is the best one yet. Bill has to be considered the best and therefore receive the most attention. It's shocking to know he's an only child when he certainly feeds the stereotype.

Q: Putting aside the once and future king (Jim Dolan), which team owner do you think is currently despised by the greatest percentage of the fans of their team? Right now I’d go with a toss up between Jed York and Jimmy Buss — they both feature similar combinations of ran great coaches out of town/running team solely due to nepotism/entitlement/general desire to be treated like a big boy by employees, media and fans without ever having earned it. Thoughts?
 
—James F., San Francisco, CA

BS: But in Jimmy Buss’s case, it actually is impossible — he couldn’t run a Jack in the Box, much less the Lakers. Still, everyone knows he’s getting pushed out by his sister soon. And also, he’s just been more hopeless and sad and overmatched than anything. I live in Los Angeles

You do, Bill? You live in Los Angeles? Why haven't you mentioned this little fact before in your columns? This is brand new information.

(By the way, I love how Bill's initials are "B.S." It's just very apt)

and don’t know any Lakers fan who actually hates Jimmy Buss. He’s the closest we’ll ever come in real life to Fredo running the Corleones. I feel bad even writing this paragraph.

And if Bill doesn't know any Lakers fans who like Jimmy Buss then obviously there are no Lakers fans who like Jimmy Buss. After all, how could the people that Bill knows personally NOT be a sample size that reflects the opinion of everyone?

Then again, nobody has a lower fan approval rating than Washington’s Daniel Snyder, who inspired me to write a December 2014 column based on the premise, If you’re a D.C. football fan, would you be OK if Snyder moved your team … as long as you got another NFL team three years later? When D.C. sports guru Dan Steinberg tossed that question to his readers, more than 80 percent of them responded “YES!!!!!” Now that’s a disapproval rating! Nobody is topping Daniel Snyder right now. Sorry, Jimmy Dolan haters.

But if zero Lakers fans like Jimmy Buss then that is a 100% disapproval rating. It's hard to beat that. Unless everyone Bill knows personally doesn't reflect the opinion of Lakers fans everywhere, which is an impossibility.

Q: Simple NBA lottery fix — what if any team that picks 1-thru-3 isn’t eligible for those picks the following year? So in 2015: the Cavs, Bucks and Sixers would be ineligible.
—Jordan D., Portsmouth, NH

BS: So everyone gets the same amount of lottery balls like always, but if Philly wins a top-three pick, they just slide into the no. 4 spot and that’s that? Fine by me.

Wait, Bill acknowledged a reader's idea wasn't bad AND didn't try to top that idea? I'm overcome with positive emotion.  

I’d also create a “no NBA team can win the first pick twice in a five-year span” rule. 

Oh. I guess Bill didn't top the idea, he just added to it. The positive emotion still somewhat continues.

Q: If Boogie pushes his way out of Sacramento this summer, which team is the favorite to get him? Probably not my Hornets I am guessing.

—Thomas, Ballantyne, NC

BS: You guessed right.

Because the favorites to get Cousins are the favorites that Bill will decide are the favorites.

I came up with three Boogie Summer Trade medalists without including the Celtics and their armada of future first-rounders.

Amazingly, Bill manages to include the Celtics in this discussion by not including the Celtics in this discussion. Everything NBA-related revolves around the Celtics, even when it doesn't.

THE BUCKS (Bronze) — What about Giannis, Zaza Pachulia and Milwaukee’s no. 17 pick to Sacramento for Boogie?

Stop it. A week ago Bill was comparing Giannis to Tracy McGrady. Now this.

And if I’m the Bucks, deep down, I know Giannis might be kinda sorta maybe slightly expendable with Jabari Parker returning next season.

I will admit Bill knows more about the NBA than I do, at least in general. But Jabari Parker is not anywhere close to the same thing as Giannis. Parker is a scorer who can play small forward and power forward in a pinch, while Giannis can guard seven positions on the court and can blend in well with pretty much any lineup the Bucks put out there. There is no such thing as another player duplicating what Giannis does, much less Jabari Parker being the guy doing the duplicating.

(My verdict: I don’t think Milwaukee should put Giannis on the table. It’s just fun to discuss.)

Kidding, not kidding!

THE KNICKS (Silver) — Let’s say they win a top-two pick, even if the odds dipped a little after Derek Fisher’s boys beat Atlanta on an unusually devastating night even for the always-devastated Knicks fans. Would you flip the rights to Karl-Anthony Towns or Jahlil Okafor for Cousins? And what would be more fun than Boogie in New York? Anything?

Why on Earth would the Knicks do this?

(My verdict: I’d do it if I were Sacramento … but I wouldn’t do it if I were the Knicks. Instead, I’d draft Towns or Okafor and spend Boogie’s money on a free agent.)

By the way, Bill is giving his verdict on what he thinks about trade ideas that he himself has thought of. This is like the first cousin to Bill using evidence he creates based on his opinion to prove his own opinion correct. So the first two trades ideas that Bill thinks about are both not going to work because Bill thinks his own ideas are bad. Thanks for killing space, Bill. 

THE MAGIC (Gold) — Your clear favorites. In July, the Magic could whip out a Nikola Vucevic/top-five 2015 pick package and maybe even throw in their future Lakers pick just to show off...And Orlando could build around their electric Elfrid Payton–Victor Oladipo backcourt, Boogie, Aaron Gordon and Tobias Harris (if they re-sign him), plus cap space galore.

Or the Magic could just keep Vucevic and the top-five pick and build around Payton-Oladipo-Vucevic-Winslow/Russell/Cauley-Stein-Gordon and Tobias Harris. Can you imagine Aaron Gordon and Cauley-Stein on the same team? They may set a record for "Most physical talent without any offensive game at all between two teammates." (How's that for a Bill Simmons-esque category?) Both Gordon and Cauley-Stein are great basketball players on paper, but their offensive games need a lot of help AND they would be on the same team? That would be fun to watch.

(My verdict: yes for Orlando, no for Sacramento unless Boogie unequivocally says, “GET ME OUT OF HERE.”)

Cousins is great, but I would almost keep the two high picks the Magic have and see how they shake out rather than trade them for Cousins.

Q: You said on a recent NBA podcast that the Thunder should have held out Durant longer, and that you can’t always trust the player’s judgement in this matter. I think you’re right. Look how Pop handled Kawhi’s wrist injury. Kawhi said his injury wasn’t that serious; Pop shot that down immediately. Even if Kawhi missed almost five weeks, look at the end result. The lesson, as always, is: Do things like the Spurs do them.
 
—Felix

BS: Should we be worried that Westbrook and Durant had six combined surgeries for two injuries? Who is the head of OKC’s medical staff, Dr. Dre?

The 90's called and they think this joke is hilarious. Couldn't there be a better punchline than "Dr. Dre" to this joke? How about an actual doctor who is incompetent or a television doctor who is incompetent? I mean, "Dr. Dre" as the punchline? That's some half-ass writing.

Q: What NBA starting Five would make for the best “5 guys who have to live in a Jersey Shore apartment” together? I first thought Cleveland, but the more I think about it I think The Clippers would be the best.

—Jonathan, North Hollywood

BS: Great call. 

TWO IDEAS! BILL HASN'T TRIED TO TOP TWO OF HIS READER'S IDEAS! IT'S A MIRAC---

That’s not your winner, though.

Sadness accrues. It wasn't meant to be.

But here’s your NBA/Jersey Shore winner: the Phoenix Suns. You know, the team I described earlier this season as, “If you put all 30 NBA teams in the same nightclub, the Suns would be the ones that kept getting kicked out for reasons like ‘We didn’t like the way Blake Griffin was looking at us’ and ‘Who does Draymond Green think he is????’” You’re not topping Alex Len, P.J. Tucker and Markieff Morris living in the same Jersey Shore house, especially when Marcus Morris keeps sleeping on the sofa because he refuses to be left out of the show. It’s just not happening.

Haha! Bill's idea is a better idea than yours!

Can’t this just be a show? What’s stopping us?

Because these players probably don't want to be on a reality television show? Because nobody would watch it? I could go on, but I care not to. I'm sure Bill can relate to simply not giving a shit anymore.

Q: What (somewhat realistic) NBA Finals match-up do you think the NBA fears the most? Portland vs. Atlanta? And do you think Atlanta is getting any calls when it plays Chicago or Cleveland or will it be Kings-Lakers, Game 6, for the entire series?
 
 —Luke, Lee’s Summit, MO

BS: We know this much: From a “Who the F are these guys?” standpoint, the NBA should worry only about Atlanta crashing the Finals. In the past 35 years, the only teams seeded lower than no. 3 that made the Finals were the 1981 Rockets (no. 6), 1995 Rockets (no. 6), 1999 Knicks (no. 8 in a lockout season), 2006 Mavs (no. 4) and 2010 Celtics (no. 4). That’s five times in 35 years! You have an 86 percent chance of seeing two of the following 2015 Finals opponents: Golden State, Houston or the Clippers, and Atlanta, Cleveland or Chicago.

The NBA. The professional sports league that everyone who writes "There needs to be a salary cap in MLB" and "MLB is dying because only certain teams have a chance of winning the World Series at the beginning of the year" columns seem to forget about as an example of a league where only certain teams really do start the year off as having a chance to win the NBA Finals.

Let’s rip through the pluses and minuses of the Hawks making the 2015 Finals.

Hey, it beats Bill shitting on ideas from his readers. 

Pluses: Hawks-Warriors would feature the most diverse crowds, by far, in NBA Finals history … this is important: IT’S REALLY FUN TO WATCH THE HAWKS PLAY BASKETBALL BECAUSE THEY PLAY BEAUTIFULLY TOGETHER … there’s a Tree of Pop scenario if it’s Hawks-Warriors or Hawks-Spurs … oh, and Atlanta pro sports fans have rooted for exactly one championship team since 1958 (the ’95 Braves during the shortened post-strike season when everyone hated baseball).

Yes, EVERYONE hated baseball that season so this championship doesn't really count. It took the Yankees to really make the world love baseball again.

Minuses: I hate typing this because I love watching them, but the ’15 Hawks would unequivocally be our most anonymous Finals team since the ’76 Suns …

"Our" most anonymous Finals team. Because it's an "us" thing who don't know who the '15 Hawks are. By the way, if Bill hates typing this then why did he do it and thereby give credence to this idea?

Atlanta is America’s strangest big city because it doesn’t have a discernible downtown, which makes it a quagmire for “big sporting event purposes” (there’s no epicenter and it’s a traffic disaster)

This is important as it pertains to why it would be bad for the Hawks to make the NBA Finals. I know all the fans that watch on television would be deeply worried about the traffic situation in Atlanta.

if ABC got stuck with San Antonio–Atlanta, they’d have to save the Finals ratings by replacing Jeff Van Gundy, Mark Jackson and Mike Breen with Shonda Rhimes, Kerry Washington and Viola Davis …

Why would ABC do this? Because there are a lot of black people in Atlanta so the only way fans of the team would watch is if ABC replaced a mostly white announcing crew with a black announcing crew you racist asshole?

(I just like calling Bill racist in an absurd fashion...that's all)

Add everything up and there’s some undeniable 1999 Pacers/2001 Bucks/2002 Kings potential here for the 2015 Hawks. The good news: Officiating is better than it was during that 1999-2003 WWE era, and there’s more internal accountability for poor performance, as well as YouTube and GIFs and Vines lingering over everything (and a score of Internet detectives ready to pounce). The bad news: The way Cleveland is playing now, I can’t imagine them blowing Round 3 to an overachieving team that has only one defender to throw at LeBron. It’s just too far-fetched.

Yeah, but Bill, the Hawks have ubuntu and really believe in each other. Haven't you seen how they seem to enjoy playing with each other on the court and are constantly giving each other high-fives? The Hawks players do all this and from my understanding upon reading your columns is this type of team always succeeds because the players believe in each other. 

Q: Who’s winning the title? Who are we betting on in Round 1? Stop watching re-runs of The OC and text me back.
 
—Cousin Sal, Los Angeles

BS: I am making seven gambling recommendations, and only seven …

1. Cleveland to Win the East (-230)
 
Just parlay that number with Floyd to beat Manny (-210) and thank me after Memorial Day.

Yes, because Bill is historically so good at gambling. I'm sure everyone will be thanking him.

You could have maybe talked me into the Hawks if they were running on all cylinders and I had two drinks in me, but after the NYPD took out Thabo Sefolosha for reasons that remain ludicrously unclear, I don’t see how Atlanta beats Cleveland four times.

So after the Hawks lost a guy who played 18 minutes per game? Okay, then. It's not like Sefolosha could guard LeBron or anything like that.

3. Amount of Time Bill Simmons Watches the Hawks-Nets Series (52.5 Minutes)

Take the under. I can’t believe Deron Williams and Joe Johnson crashed the 2015 playoffs; I thought The Walking Dead already had its last episode. And why isn’t this entire series showing exclusively on NBA TV? What’s the point of having NBA TV if not for this series?

Bill just wrote this:

this is important: IT’S REALLY FUN TO WATCH THE HAWKS PLAY BASKETBALL BECAUSE THEY PLAY BEAUTIFULLY TOGETHER 

I hate typing this because I love watching them,

Bill likes watching the Hawks, except not really enough to watch them play a team he doesn't like watching play.

4. Cavs in Five (-120)

Here’s the smart bet. President Stevens isn’t getting swept. Baby Zeke isn’t getting swept. Jae Crowder and Marcus Smart and Avery Bradley aren’t getting swept. There will be one game in this series — in Cleveland, in Boston, doesn’t matter — when the Cavs are sleepwalking and the Celtics just care more. You watch.

Read it aloud again. The word "care" emphasized sounds silly to me.

Hey, Isaiah and Jae, can you measure this Cleveland basket for me?

A "Hoosiers" reference. It's so unlike Bill to make a "Hoosiers" reference.

Houston-Dallas has a chance to be one clunky, ugly, ridiculous, way-more-forgettable-than-you-think series. (I hope not.)

Thanks to Bill for telling "us" how forgettable "we" will find the Houston-Dallas series to be. I wasn't sure how forgettable I thought it would be.

7. Spurs in Six (+250) AND Spurs in Seven (+600)

This Spurs-Clips series is fundamentally overqualified for Round 1. That’s what makes it so great. I can’t imagine this being a dud. Too improbable.

I'm not even sure what the hell this means. This statement seems like an example of Bill giving a label to the series for the sake of something. I'm not even sure why. Apparently there are underqualified Round 1 series as well.

And second, Game 7 would happen on Saturday night, May 2, West Coast time … which would likely put the game head-to-head against Manny-Floyd in one of the all-time TV channel-flipping conundrums in the history of TV channel-flipping conundrums.

It is a channel-flipping conundrum unless a person might realize that it's not 2008, so Manny-Floyd isn't really going to be the boxing match that the headline "Manny-Floyd" makes it seem like it will be. So yep, Game 7 would probably win for me. As Bill would say, "Manny-Floyd" is underqualified for the amount of hype it will receive.

It’s destiny. It’s meant to be the Greatest Sports Night In Recent History. 

The Greatest Sports Night in Recent History, even though it hasn't happened yet to deserve this hypothetical moniker. 

So imagine having the Spurs +600 that night. Sign me up. Enjoy the playoffs, everybody.

Congrats on achieving another mailbag, Bill. The readers who worship you are an embarrassment to humanity.

7 comments MMQB Review: The Mania and Joy of Overpaying in Free Agency Edition

We still have open spots in the fantasy baseball league and if anyone wants to join then send me an email to bengoodfella@yahoo.com and I will send you an invite. So, onto David Steele being unfair.
 
Peter King showed the first rendering of the non-existent, possibly existent football stadium that would be built in St. Louis for whichever team would like to play there in last week's MMQB. He also advocated for Josh McCown as a $4.75 million player/coach and seems to be under the impression that McCown can still successfully start NFL football games. This week Peter talks about which teams are overpaying in free agency this offseason, free agents who will be bargains, his visit to Iceland (I'm sure there wasn't as much ice as Peter expected), and thinks J.K. Simmons is just like Bill Parcells. There's a comparison you don't hear very often. Peter is a little obsessed with Parcells from covering him for "Newsday" so I guess it makes sense in that aspect.

The headlines this morning, on the eve of the explosive, money-burning-holes-in-NFL-pockets 2015 free market:

Otherwise known as the 2015 free agency period where teams will sign the players they are trying to get rid of three years from now. It's an exciting time of free agent signings, followed by a sad time remembering your team still owes Derek Newton $2.5 million and he doesn't play on the team anymore.

THE DEVIN McCOURTY SIGNING MAY HAVE GIVEN AWAY THE PATRIOTS’ PLAN WITH DARRELLE REVIS. Can the Patriots afford to employ the game’s second-highest-paid safety (McCourty got $9.5 annually, according to Ian Rapoport) and the highest-paid cornerback if they re-sign Revis in the neighborhood of $15 million a year? Not likely, but you never know with New England.

NFL teams can pretty much do whatever they want, so the Patriots could re-sign Revis for $15 million per year, but the only question is how this affects their cap in the future. So maybe the Patriots have a plan for this that doesn't involve Tom Brady taking a pay cut.

In agreeing to terms with the best defensive lineman in free agency in the past 20 years, Ndamukong Suh, the Dolphins get the game’s best interior pocket-collapser—which they believe is the best strategy for facing Tom Brady. More about that on Page 2.

Because having Suh worked out so well in helping the Lions lose 34-9 to the Patriots just this past season.

If wideout Jeremy Maclin signs with Kansas City on Tuesday, which appears likely (according to Chris Mortensen), that means in the span of 12 months the Eagles coach will have gotten rid of the three biggest offensive weapons on the team: Maclin, DeSean Jackson and LeSean McCoy. Imagine if Kelly uses Nick Foles in a gigantic package to move up from the 20th spot in the first round April 30 to pick Marcus Mariota. (Hmmmm. Trading up for Mariota. Where have I heard that before?)

Where has Peter heard this before? How about in tons of mock drafts and whispers of speculation before he posted that mock draft? I like how Peter is trying to take credit for the Mariota to the Eagles trade in his mock draft, like there hasn't been speculation that Chip Kelly would trade up for Mariota since before the 2014 NFL season even began. No Peter, this was an original idea that you thought of. Kudos for the original thought 500 other sportswriters had.

Wide receiver Torrey Smith, the former Raven, likely headed to San Francisco for $9 million a year … Ditto tight end Julius Thomas from Denver to Jacksonville, for about the same money 

Should Julius Thomas regret leaving the Broncos and Peyton Manning before signing the contract or will he just defer these feelings until after he signs a contract to catch passes from Blake Bortles? Apparently getting one more contract worth a lot of money isn't something that concerns Thomas. His best chance to get that one more contract worth a lot of money is to stay with the Broncos and Peyton Manning. If I'm Thomas, I sign a two year deal to keep playing with Manning and then take a chance on becoming a free agent at the age of 28.

The Raiders, with $59 million in cap room, begging any warm free-agency body to take some of it 

I can't imagine why this wouldn't be a good strategy. Too much salary cap room is a bad thing if you ask me. All that money to burn and so many players to overpay so that money gets burnt.

The Patriots wouldn’t actually pay Darrelle Revis his $20 million option-year compensation, would they? I can’t see it.

Peter seems very concerned about what the Patriots will be doing with Darrelle Revis. It hasn't gotten to the point where it got a few years ago when Nnamdi Asomugha was a free agent and Peter called him the most valuable free agent on the market since Reggie White, but it could get to that point if Peter's giddiness ever becomes slightly more unbridled.

The Jets re-signed linebacker David Harris, and dealt a fifth-round pick for 31-year-old wideout Brandon Marshall, and are in play for free-agent quarterback Brian Hoyer. Not good enough, unless you’re competing with Tennessee and Jacksonville for 27th place in the NFL. The Jets enter free agency with at least $48 million to spend, and an owner fascinated with a Revis reunion. “The Jets can’t not be trying to make that happen,” said a source with knowledge of the team’s inner workings.

As I said, too much salary cap room can be a bad thing. All of a sudden the Jets are in the same position they were in with Darrelle Revis three years ago, except they pay him this time, then they start handing out cash to David Harris and Brian Hoyer. They aren't bad players, but when the Jets have money to spend they aren't going to start being cheap with the contracts they hand out.

As one opposing coach said Sunday, “Revis would be the obvious play for them, but at what cost? The hard part for the Jets is they’ve become an organization that has to overpay.” That’s what happens when you go four straight years without a winning season.

Yes Peter, but a team goes four straight years without a winning season by becoming a team that overpays for free agents. Please don't be blind to the reality of the NFL because it's more fun to watch the Jets spend money. Teams that haven't had winning seasons don't have to overspend for free agents.

The prevailing wisdom has been that New England would cut Revis and the two sides would find a common ground for him to return. That’s certainly possible, but Revis has been a mercenary during his career (and who can blame a player for wanting to max out his value?), and if the Jets offer, say, four years and $60 million, mostly guaranteed, that’d be a hard deal for New England to compete with. 

I like Darrelle Revis, but didn't paying for Eric Decker seem like a good idea to the Jets at the time? Not that Revis isn't worth the money possibly. Whatever, free agency vexes me many times over.

Revis has the one thing Johnson so desperately needs for his adrift-at-sea franchise. He’d bring legitimacy back to the team. Johnson could hold him up as an example of how the tide is turning and the talent is returning. Plus, Revis loves the lights and the pressure. It’d be a great marriage.

It was a great marriage. Then Revis held out every other year and the Jets traded him. What makes them think if he starts performing at a high level that he won't want another new contract? I love Revis as a player, but the dude is never happy with the amount of money he is making.

Tuesday, 4:01 p.m.: The first signing will be announced, certainly to be accompanied by words to this effect from the signee: “I left money on the table elsewhere.”

That elsewhere may end up being Oakland. That's how they will give Greg Hardy and DeMarco Murray $150 million combined over the next six years. But hey, Peter will like these moves because they bring legitimacy to the organization and overpaying is how they break their string of non-winning seasons. Right? That's how it usually works in the early days of free agency? Teams spend money and then immediately shoot themselves right into the Super Bowl.

1. Suh will be the highest-paid defensive player ever, handily. His $19 million average (six years, $114 million, per Mortensen) beats J.J. Watt’s $16.7 million average (six years, $100 million). Silly, because Watt’s the best defensive player, hands down, in football. But Watt wasn’t a free agent, and he didn’t have the leverage Suh had as a free man in a year with no other front-seven player even close to his impact.

Well, Watt could have eventually become a free agent. Just like an unselfish, hard-working guy like J.J. Watt would do though, he took his measly $100 million and continued to dance with the team that brought him. It's just like J.J. Watt to sacrifice so much for his team. 

Watt is now underpaid compared to Suh, but I like how Peter is acting like Watt didn't get $100 million from the Texans, like Watt signed for half of what Suh eventually got. Watt is still filthy rich, make no mistake about it. 

Against strong edge rushers, Brady feels the rush and steps up in the pocket and makes things happen. Against strong up-the-middle rushers, Brady has to roam to either side to keep the play going, and he’d rather not do that. With Cameron Wake on the outside and Suh now rushing from inside, Brady and the Patriots have a new headache in the division.  

While I do agree that having Suh and Wake together is great, again, the Lions had Suh with other quality pass rushers this year to throw at Brady. The Seahawks had a great pass rush in this past Super Bowl and neither the Seahawks or Lions managed to beat the Patriots this past season. It's a lot of money to give to a player like Suh. I'm cheap. 

2. The Packers keep wideout Randall Cobb off the free market with a four-year, $40 million deal. Sensible move by Cobb, knowing he could catch 400 balls over the next four years from Aaron Rodgers, if both stay healthy. Certainly he could have made more in Oakland or Jacksonville, and if that’s what you want to do—max out your income while you’re in your prime—that’s fine. But Cobb has a chance to be part of the best passing game in football, now, for at least the first eight years of his career. Let’s say he could have made $48 million over four in Oakland. If maximizing his money is what he wants, it’s understandable. Personally, I’d rather make $40 million and contend for a title every year than make $2 million a year more and be in a place where you have no idea if you’ll ever win.

It seems that Peter King and I agree. It's time to have a new opinion. Randall Cobb is smart. He knows he will be 28-29 years old when his contract runs out, so he has a chance to get another contract (are you listening Julius Thomas?). So by playing with Aaron Rodgers he has a chance to cash in twice during his career, as opposed to hoping David Carr or Blake Bortles turns out to be a good quarterback. Accepting $40 million to play with Aaron Rodgers and leaving options open for a second big contract in four years really shouldn't be a difficult decision.

3. The Eagles did what you should never do with a decent player on a championship team: vastly overpay him. Cornerback Byron Maxwell agreed to a six-year, $63 million deal (a $10.5 million average). I get it, and free agency is good for the players, so good for Maxwell. But in paying Maxwell—the 45th-rated cornerback in the league last season by Pro Football Focus—so much, the team and fans will expect him to be a shutdown corner, which he most decidedly is not. He’s a physical, tall, competitive corner, but not a great one. The Eagles will end up being disappointed, the same way Dallas was disappointed in Brandon Carr. I recall the words of the late Giants GM George Young: No player ever plays better because you pay him more money.

But Peter, you just hinted that the Jets needed to pay players in order to become relevant. Teams have to overpay for players when they can't win games, but overpaying these players isn't the key to winning more games. Darrelle Revis is a much better player than Byron Maxwell, but what if the Eagles are signing Maxwell to give their fans an indication there is still talent coming to Philadelphia? It's alright for the Jets to do this, but the Eagles can't?

Finding gems in free agency is every bit as important as—and given the financial savings, perhaps more important than—connecting on blockbuster deals.

It's more important to find gems in the free agency market than it is to make blockbuster deals. Peter shouldn't let the fact he gets fun headlines out of blockbuster signings affect his opinion. Finding gems on the free agent market is how a team succeeds, not through the blockbuster deals they make. Blockbuster deals can absolutely pay off, but good teams make smart deals with less expensive free agents. It doesn't surprise me that Peter favors headlines as much as smart decision-making.

“It’s a beautiful day for baseball. Let’s play two.”
—Former Niners coach Jim Harbaugh, conjuring up the late Ernie Banks at Oakland A’s training camp on Saturday. He was invited to speak to the team by manager Bob Melvin.

He's not an NFL head coach anymore. Can there just be no more mentions of Jim Harbaugh in MMQB from now on? This quote is boring and really brings nothing new to the column. It's not interesting simply because Jim Harbaugh said it. There has to be a better quote somewhere.

“How much more evidence do we need that the running back position is completely devalued? A healthy LeSean McCoy, one year removed from being the league’s leading rusher, was traded straight-up for a middle linebacker coming off knee surgery. With the degree to which a running back’s job is split up these days, no one really cares about having a top talent at the position in the NFL. Teams would rather spend that money elsewhere. One of these days the general public will come to accept this.”
—An astute Greg Bedard of The MMQB, in the wake of the McCoy-for-Kiko Alonso trade, in his Friday column.

I'm sorry, did the general public make the deal for LeSean McCoy? I seem to think the Bills front office made this trade, so I'm not sure why Bedard is lecturing the general public about the value of running backs. I think the general public knows that running backs are being devalued, so maybe save the lecture for the general public and lecture those teams who are paying these running backs. I think the deal works for both the Eagles and the Bills. Rex Ryan wanted a great, reliable running game and he has one now. Chip Kelly thinks his running backs are interchangeable and he just improved his team's defense. 

Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Notes of the Week

Iceland seems like a really cool place—no pun intended.

Get it? Ice is cold.

And the 320,000 people who live there are pretty cool too—based on those I met on airplanes last week. Let me explain.

If you must explain why 320,000 people are all pretty cool, then go for it.

Many of you who follow this column will recall that nearly a year ago, my brother Ken died in England. My wife and I spent four days last week in England with my sister-in-law and the family, and to save a couple of bucks plus have a fun experience, we traveled on Icelandair, the national airline of the island nation near the Arctic Circle.

Oh, so Icelandair is related to the country "Iceland." Thanks for clearing that up. I was confused as to whether Icelandair was just a airline that specialized in really cold airplanes.

We had a fairly quick connection, 45 minutes, on the way over, and so we had to hustle off the plane to make the connection. One problem: I’d fallen asleep after finishing the LeSean McCoy-to-Buffalo column top for my Wednesday column with my cell phone in my lap, and so when we landed, my cell phone had disappeared. “You have to find it!” said one of the flight attendants, on her knees, looking for it under the seats. “The cell phone, it is your life!”

In reality it was Peter who said this, not the flight attendant and his exclamations probably went more like this.

(Peter King) "You have to find it. That cell phone is my life. Close the door, don't let anyone out! I SAID CLOSE THE FUCKING DOOR BECAUSE I'M ABOUT TO SPEAK! (everyone looks at Peter) I lost my phone. I'm important, so which one of your middle class, potentially non-American assholes took my phone? Just cough it up and I won't call you out in my weekly football column I write. No one is leaving this plane until my cell phone is found."

(Flight attendant) "Sir, we have to open the door. We can't keep everyone holed up on this flight."

(Peter King) "You have to open the door AND open your mouth when you aren't being talked to, don't you? DON'T YOU! (throws cold coffee that he refused to drink because it didn't have enough creamer in it into the flight attendant's face)"

(Flight attendant wiping her face off) "Sir, your phone is in the pocket of your shirt. We have to open the plane door."

(Peter King pulling his phone out of his shirt pocket) "Silly me! I have to catch a connecting flight, so move out of my way (starts pushing people down to get off the plane). Why are there so many people on this flight? (Peter's bag is hitting people in the face as he tries to get off the plane and then turns around as he is about to exit the plane) Lovely flight by the way. You are all pretty cool people---no pun intended."

After a few minutes of looking, two of the flight attendants said we’d better go, because we’d miss our plane, and I quickly figured, painfully, that the 787 phone numbers in the memory could be replaced (I need to save them daily, not semi-monthly),

Because Peter is important and has many friends with leather bound books he has to save his contacts daily. His house smells of rich mahogany and he knows many important people. He can't emphasize this enough. 

Dejected, I walked to the gate for Heathrow. The London flight was leaving in 20 minutes. I hate replacing cell phones. Monstrous pain. We were second in line for the connection when one of the flight attendants rushed up and said, “We found it! So happy we found you!”
Thanks, Icelandair. I’ll be back.

All people are judged by Peter on how much they are capable of helping him out or doing things that benefit him. If they can help him, they are good people. He only has time for useful people in his life. I write this because many of Peter's stories about people who are really nice revolve around these nice people doing something nice for him.

Skip this section if you don’t care, but for those who wonder what Iceland is like, I was outside for about three minutes on Saturday. Three minutes in March, anywhere, is an absurd period of time to judge any place,

Repeat after me: This is how we know that Peter will now make a comment where he tries to judge the place. Immediately after saying he can't or shouldn't judge something, Peter usually judges that something.

but here was my snapshot: The sleet pelted my face sideways, the wind whipped at 30 mph minimum, and the darkened sky look menacing. An hour later, as we taxied to leave, the sun was out, and it was setting. I loved it. A totally different world.

Fortunately, Peter found his cell phone or he would have described Iceland as the Hell-world that time should have forgotten.

Monday office pool suggestion:  "Who will the Raiders grossly overpay for?"
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) March 8, 2015

Yeah, but they would just be overpaying in order to draw talent to the team to show that players are interested in making as much money as possible playing in Oakland. Plus, this is how teams that have had so many losing seasons react, by overpaying for players in free agency. It's a vicious circle.

Ten Things I Think I Think

1. I think I’m not in the Chip Kelly’s-an-idiot camp, the same way I wasn’t in the Jimmy Johnson’s-an-idiot camp 25 years ago.

I don't think Chip Kelly is an idiot, but he certainly is getting rid of a lot of great offensive players. It's hard to call him an idiot until he actually fails for a season or two. Otherwise, it just feels like hot takes based on conventional wisdom.

3. I think it’s stunning to me that eight challengers will go to Hawaii next weekend to run against De Smith for the executive director post of the NFL Players Association. Eight foes had to be nominated by at least three player reps, which says everything you need to know about the current level of satisfaction or lack thereof with Smith’s performance. I’ll just say this: I think it’s wrong-headed to say Smith made a bad deal with the 2011 CBA. Maybe it was a bad deal, making a pact for a decade. But the gains in off-field lives for players are always minimized when players discuss the fruits of the new labor deal, and Smith’s group did a tremendous job in giving players more of an off-season and in making practices in training camp and during the season significantly less taxing. I’m not advocating for Smith.

Well, you sort of are advocating for De Smith. Not that it's a huge deal, but you are doing a little advocating. The NFL has completely non-guaranteed contracts, which I am sure is something that irritates athletes in the most physically demanding and dangerous sport just a little bit.

Notice how Peter says he thinks it's wrong-headed to say Smith made a bad deal with the 2011 CBA, then says, "Maybe it was a bad deal." So Peter is being wrong-headed in his own belief that the CBA was a bad deal. Yes, the CBA did help the players make gains off-the-field for the players, but it seems the players themselves don't appreciate these gains so why should anyone else care about this part of the fruits of the labor deal?

I’m simply saying the last deal isn’t a bad one for players—which is a platform each one of the candidates will try to espouse next weekend at the player rep meeting. 

And of course, we all know Peter wants his agent (Marvin Demoff, in case you haven't read my harping about it) to go out and get a new contract that he can proudly brag is "not a bad one" for Peter. I'm guessing Peter would probably expect a little bit more out of his agent, just like the players expect more from Smith. But since it's not Peter who has to live under the CBA, "not a bad deal" is perfectly fine with him.

6. I think it will be fashionable around Philadelphia to believe that a 32-year-old running back is a poor substitute for LeSean McCoy. But Frank Gore, in my opinion, will be a superb signing because:

But don't think Peter is going to bat for Frank Gore. Because he's not, but here are all the great things about Frank Gore: 

(I've noticed that Peter tends to worry about going to bat for a player/coach/NFL-affiliated person in a situation where it doesn't matter, yet there are other times where it matters that he doesn't give a shit if he's going to bat for a player/coach/NFL affiliated person. Like, when he tries to help Alex Mack find an offer sheet that brings him more money and will pull him away from the Cleveland Browns. That seemed pretty shady to me, but Peter didn't care if he seemed like was advocating for Mack.)

a. Gore is a north-south physical runner, more of what Chip Kelly likes in a back.
b. Gore, in his past four years, at 28, 29, 30 and 31, missed zero games playing this bruising style.
c. Gore is consistent to a fault. He has rushed for between 1,106 yards and 1,214 yards per season in the past four years. In the past eight years, he’s averaged between 4.1 and 4.9 yards per carry.

Yeah, but Frank Gore is boring and LeSean McCoy is exciting. So it's better to have an exciting player than a boring player. Trading McCoy for Gore obviously means Chip Kelly has no idea what he's doing. (Cue Stephen A. Smith's hot take)

7. I think by Thursday, everyone will be very familiar with free-agent cornerback Buster Skrine. He’s the Cleveland corner, a middle-class player at a vital position who won’t cost what a premier player costs. He’s also the type of player—maybe the fifth or sixth cornerback in the pool—who will make more than he should.

So if a team signed Skrine would it be a good signing or a bad signing? He's not expensive, but he'll be overpaid. He plays a vital position but a team shouldn't invest in him to play that position? Peter doesn't have to take a stand on Skrine's value, but he's all over the map here when talking about Skrine. If the nickel corner position is so important and Skrine won't be paid like a premier player, then couldn't that mean Skrine won't be overpaid, it's just players at that position are valued highly?

8. I think the two players incumbent teams are undervaluing are Bryan Bulaga and Julius Thomas.

I think Julius Thomas is a player who is being overvalued. I also think (and here's a situation where Peter is advocating without worrying about whether he is doing it), that Peter is advocating a bit for Peyton Manning to get Julius Thomas back. Thomas is a great receiving tight end. He's not a great blocker and how many tight ends has Peyton Manning helped to look great? Jacob Tamme looks like a serviceable tight end with Manning throwing him the football.

I am surprised Green Bay GM Ted Thompson apparently believes $7 million a year (or so) is too much for Bulaga. You can be sure Bulaga’s agent, Tom Condon, will end up with a higher offer than $7 million a year for Bulaga, the best tackle in free-agency in a weak candidate pool. I get Thompson’s skepticism, after Bulaga has missed half the Green Bay games over the past three years.

Yes, Ted Thompson is undervaluing Bulaga by not wanting to invest in a player who can't stay healthy. Why wouldn't Thompson value a good offensive tackle who can't stay healthy in a weak market by paying him like he's a great tackle who plays 16 games a year?

But he’ll be 26 on opening day, and I’d think a contract with significant incentives could hit the target for Bulaga.

Because Bulaga would probably rather accept a contract where he has to earn significant incentives while turning down an offer from another team that will guarantee him the money he would have to earn from the Packers. What kind of sense does this make?

I also understand Broncos boss John Elway being wary of Thomas because he misses time with injuries, but that is Peyton Manning’s security blanket right there. Virgil Green had better be good—and Elway will need to strike gold with a mid-round tight end in the draft.

I feel like every offensive player is described as Manning's security blanket. Julius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders are security blankets, while Wes Welker used to be. I know Peter wants his buddy Peyton to be loaded at every offensive position, so I can understand why Peter is nervous for Peyton.

10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:

a. The time away allowed me to finish a really good book: “Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite,” by Suki Kim (Crown). I love books about hidden lives and secret societies, and the 2011 view into North Korea, by a journalist embedded as a teacher/missionary, is painful and vivid and wonderfully real. Suki Kim is a hero for risking her life and writing it. I plan to have a further review when I write about books for my annual Fathers Day book review column in early June, but if you have a curiosity about a world you simply cannot know, I’d get it.

So during the three month period between now and Father's Day, a span of time so long that you could go purchase the book and read it several times, Peter will be able to get a review of this book together. So just wait until June and Peter will tell you more about the book...you know, or just go purchase the book right now and have it read with a few months to spare.

"I saw a really great movie the other night. I'll give you my review of the movie next year when it comes out on Blu-Ray."

d. And so I saw a couple of good movies while on my time away.

Peter will reveal these good movies in three months during his Father's Day column.

e. “Whiplash.” Wow. What a job by Miles Teller. Never heard of him before this movie.

I can't believe Peter hasn't seen "Divergent," "The Spectacular Now" or "That Awkward Moment" and doesn't recognize Teller's name from the new "Fantastic Four" reboot. What a shock to me.

f. J.K. Simmons reminds me of Bill Parcells. He really does.

Of course he does. When I was watching the old "Spiderman" movies I was always thinking, "Is that Bill Parcells playing the part of J. Jonah Jameson or are my eyes, ears and every other sense that can differentiate between two humans fooling me?"

The music teacher in “Whiplash” is an abusive type. And so many of you out there will recognize someone you have known in Simmons—which is why he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

This reminds me of Simmons' work in "Juno" when I kept mistaking him for Bill Parcells. I kept waiting for him to get in the face of Juno and tell her to just abort the baby, rub some dirt on it, and GET BACK ON THE FIELD where he can get more credit for the job he does because he works for NFL teams that have a higher profile.

g. “Birdman.” Wow. Michael Keaton needs to win awards, multiple, for his portrayal of a fading actor trying to remake his life on the stage—while trying to make up for being an absentee dad to his daughter, Emma Stone (who is wonderful as a disaffected stoner).

No pun intended here?

I am not a big fan of cinematography,

PETER THINKS CINEMATOGRAPHY IS A VITAL POSITION BUT EVERYONE HOLDS THAT POSITION ON A MOVIE SET IS OVERPAID, BUT LET HIM NOW TALK FONDLY ABOUT THE CINEMATOGRAPHY HE HATES SO MUCH!

but the way the camera follows Keaton through the theater to the streets of Broadway, and Edward Norton through the theater, is just brilliant.

Not Meryl Streep or Philip Seymour Hoffman brilliant, but more Lake Bell in that one movie Peter saw her in brilliant.

h. Beernerdness: If you have a chance to try Einstok Icelandic White Ale, do it. It’s a classic white ale, the kind with coriander and spices you’d pay $3 for a bottle of in America, and you do not have to pay $3 for many beers in the store in America.

Next time I'm in Iceland, I'll buy it. But only if I can find my phone.

Adieu Haiku

Free Agency’s here!  
False hope. Dan Snyder. Haynesworth.
Big winners draft well.

And yet, even though Peter thinks the big winners draft well more than half of this MMQB was about free agency and he has his THE MMQB employees working hard on stories about the blockbuster free agent signings. Weird how what makes teams big winners differs from the exciting stories of free agency that the media prefers to cover.