Bill Plaschke is not happy with the Philadelphia 76ers and their feeble attempts at putting an NBA-quality team on the court. In fact, he thinks the only thing the Sixers succeed at is not succeeding and this offends his sensibilities. He thinks it is disgraceful that the Sixers lose games to get a high draft pick. Of course, Bill didn't think it was disgraceful when he claimed the Lakers "deserved" a higher draft position than 7th in the 2014 NBA Draft. Bill doesn't see why the Sixers drafted Joel Embiid, though he had no issue with the Lakers drafting Embiid, and was in fact upset the Lakers didn't get the chance to get the big man from Kansas. Plaschke is tired of the Sixers tanking, and much more importantly, he is now writing actual paragraphs instead of one sentence paragraphs.
The most disgraceful team in the NBA is on the verge of a milestone,
And congratulations to the Knicks and James Dolan for continuing to sell Knicks fans on supporting the team when the Knicks organization has consistently shown they don't necessarily deserve it.
A collection of mostly playground talent that was specifically built to
lose games — at the expense of competitive integrity and their longtime
fans — is actually not losing a game.
My feelings about the Sixers is that I feel very bad for their fans. The team has taken a long-term rebuilding approach that essentially tears the team down only to build it back up. I'm not sure I could be that patient if I were a Sixers fan. But still, the intent of building a strong core is taking shape. Young players are getting playing time, but the team still lacks that superstar player (in my opinion). That's been the biggest issue for the Sixers and that's why they continue to rebuild. There does seem to be a plan. Unfortunately, part of the plan right now is building around two guys taking 30 shots per game who can't even hit 43% of their shots and relying on players better off being on the bench to start, but they have their own and the Heat's Top 10 protected pick in the 2015 NBA Draft. They will have their pick of big men to choose from in the draft, which means they can trade Embiid or Noel, or even trade their draft pick for an established star if they chose to do that. Either way, they are accumulating assets. It may not work or it might work.
Rather than pretend they aren't rebuilding, the Sixers are gathering and evaluating talent. There are obvious risks, like young players who are developing big habits (which I think is happening to a few Sixers players) and a losing environment being nurtured. That's where a good head coach comes in to prevent this from happening. We'll see. It's a long-term plan, but I think it doesn't lack integrity. What lacks integrity more? Admitting that your team isn't going to be competitive, or blowing smoke up the fans' asses about the competitiveness of the team while making short-term moves that keep this illusion up while sacrificing long-term competitiveness? There are NBA teams misleading their fans at the expense of the team's long-term health, no doubt. Doesn't that lack some sense of integrity? At least Sixers fans know what they are getting. I'm not necessarily a fan of tanking, but I think it sure beats pretending to field a competitive team and keeping a team mired in mediocrity because management is unable to face the truth.
When the night's mess mercifully ends, the Philadelphia 76ers have
missed 50 shots, committed 18 turnovers, yet achieved their first
victory in 18 games this season with an 85-77 decision over the
Minnesota Timberwolves.
"The Sixers have done it!" cries Zumoff.
Who says cheaters never win?
Who said the Sixers are cheaters? How is losing basketball games intentionally cheating? Oh, so trying to get a high draft pick is cheating? Then what is whining about a team not getting a high enough draft pick considered? From Plaschke's whiny post-NBA lottery article:
There should be a rule against giving another No. 1 overall pick to a
team that spent last year's No. 1 overall pick on somebody who averaged
two baskets per game. Does even Anthony Bennett remember Anthony
Bennett?
The Lakers deserved better. They at least deserved to pick where they had finished.
They should have been rewarded for their injuries, their incompetence,
their dysfunction, and the fact that they somehow talked Mike D'Antoni
into leaving town.
Heck, if the league was smart, it would have helped the Lakers move into
the top three. Considering a new rumored NBA scheme surfaces about
every month, why couldn't one have popped up now?
The Sixers lack integrity when they try to get a high draft pick, while if the Lakers are awarded a high draft pick then it's merely for the sake of the NBA's own good.
They have the scrawny appearance of a junior varsity team. They play with the wildness of a pickup team.
They stumble into an offense that usually devolves into a game of one-on-one and often ends with a wild brick off the backboard.
When Plaschke wrote this column, the Sixers were 29th in field goal percentage, while the Lakers were shooting the lights out in 23rd place in field goal percentage. As far as the offense stumbling into a game of one-on-one, the Sixers and the Lakers were tied for 21st in the NBA in assists per game. Not that Bill Plaschke has never taken the opportunity to bash the Lakers, but he's basing a lack of integrity from the Sixers on issues that the Lakers themselves face.
If they're not gunning it, they are kicking it out of bounds or throwing
it into the stands, after which they cruise back on defense and watch
the other guys rush in for uncontested layups.
The Lakers were 30th in the NBA in opponents' points per game and the Sixers were 26th. The Lakers were also 30th in opponents' points per shot, while the Sixers were 28th. The Lakers were 29th in opponents' field goal percentage, while the Sixers were 24th.
My point is that while Bill Plaschke is correct the Sixers are not winning games or playing well, he's not mentioning the Lakers are putting a team on the court built for now and they aren't exactly playing well either.
"They play that bad and we still lose?" Corey Brewer said. "We have
to look at ourselves, man. It's tough. We can't lose that game, period."
The team that needs to look in the mirror is the 76ers, who are making a mockery of the NBA and its draft lottery,
Of course it's not a mockery for the Lakers to be hugely successful over a long period of time, have a down year, and then Bill Plaschke throw a fit that they weren't allowed to make a mockery of the NBA lottery during their one down year.
openly sacrificing an entire season while gambling they will be rewarded with high draft picks and future stars.
Again, not to create a strawman argument, but isn't openly sacrificing a season for high draft picks with a long-term plan better than tricking fans by spending money on players who can't help the team win in the short-term or the long-term?
It's what the Lakers could have done, but the notion of losing
intentionally went against the ideals that have defined their
championship legacy.
This from the sportswriter who wishes the Lakers had gotten a higher draft pick in the last NBA Draft lottery. I laugh at the idea the Lakers hold the moral high ground due to a "championship legacy" considering they are paying Carlos Boozer, Jeremy Lin, Wayne Ellington, and Steve Nash a combined $23.9 million this year. Jordan Hill is playing well, so I won't criticize them for the $9 million that he is making this year.
I'm afraid that Bill Plaschke is getting "defining their championship legacy" with "not being gutsy enough to fully commit to a rebuilding plan and wanting to fool their fans into believing they are fielding a competitive team." The Lakers are on the hook for $47 million next year as well, but no, it's the championship legacy that is keeping them from tanking and not a fear of actually committing to a rebuilding job. They'll just find some free agents to sign and everything will be fine. Right? THAT WILL HAPPEN, RIGHT?
The 76ers apparently have no such ideals, no such respect for their legacy, and thus have descended into madness.
Eh, since Bill made the direct comparison...is it not respecting their legacy for the Sixers to field a bad team that will get a high draft pick in an effort to hit the "reboot" button on the franchise? Or is it recognition if they spent money extending players like Thaddeus Young then it would just be spending money in an effort to create the illusion of winning times being dead ahead? The Sixers plan may fail, but they also have $43.9 million committed to salaries over the next three years. I personally believe madness is overpaying a franchise icon (like Kobe) and then pretending they are going to field a competitive team around him just to avoid the appearance the team is rebuilding.
One night they lost to Toronto by 32 points. A couple of nights later,
they lost to Dallas by 53 points — a game the Mavericks would have won
had they not scored in the second half. The rest of the league quickly
got the message and most teams have stopped taking them seriously.
It's pretty bad. I won't deny that.
"It's a team you feel like you're not supposed to lose to, no offense to them," the Mavericks' Chandler Parsons told reporters.
When is the last time you heard a professional athlete talk about an
opposing team in such open, matter-of-fact dismissive terms? It's as if
the rest of the NBA has decided, if the 76ers organization doesn't
respect itself, why should anyone else?
Possibly, but who really cares what the rest of the NBA thinks? The rest of the NBA doesn't give a shit if the Sixers are a competitive team in five years or not. So what the rest of the NBA thinks is irrelevant if the Sixers believe in their plan. Plus, other NBA teams should be thrilled the Sixers aren't very good because it means it's easier for them to win more games.
"I have a tremendous amount of respect for the fact that they never once
quit on themselves," their relentlessly positive coach, Brett Brown,
said afterward.
Brett Brown has to be relentlessly positive. It sort of comes with the territory when coaching a team that has lost as many games as the Sixers have.
He's right. Even though last season's rookie of the year Michael
Carter-Williams, former first-round pick Nerlens Noel and second-rounder
KJ McDaniels are their only potential impact players, the team still
plays hard. And Brown, a Gregg Popovich disciple, is considered a rising
star.
It is the 76ers front office — managing owner Josh Harris, Chief
Executive Scott O'Neil and General Manager Sam Hinkie — which has
shamelessly given up.
Now I'm confused. Hinkie has put together a team of three potential impact players and a rising star coach, but he's given up? I won't argue that these three guys have put a great product on the court, yet Hinkie seems to be finding some sort of talent in the draft doesn't he?
The team was awful last season, losing a record-tying 26 consecutive
games while finishing with just 19 wins. But then management decided to
sink even lower, deplete even further, lose even more.
Which ruins the Sixers integrity because they are not claiming to be putting together a playoff team, while nothing can ruin the integrity of the NBA teams pretending to win while knowing they won't be putting a quality product on the court. Crappy teams like Charlotte, Minnesota, New York, and the Lakers who aren't putting a quality product on the court have integrity obviously. James Dolan drips integrity.
With the third pick of last spring's draft, they chose Kansas center
Joel Embiid even though they knew he might not play this season because
of foot problems.
Is that the same Joel Embiid that Bill Plaschke was bemoaning couldn't play for the Lakers? It seems to be:
Joel Embiid, Jabari Parker, Andrew Wiggins, and Dante Exum are guys who
could have immediately made the sort of impact that would make the
Lakers fun again.
None of them is expected to be around at No. 7, which is a location
currently occupied on draft boards by guys like Julius Randle, Aaron
Gordon and Marcus Smart, none of whom will immediately make a
well-coiffed courtside head spin.
So it's foolish for the Sixers to have drafted Embiid at #3, but Plaschke is upset the Lakers didn't get a good chance to draft Embiid in that spot? Funny how Plaschke's opinion changes depending on what he is looking to prove.
Oh, and the Lakers drafted Julius Randle after he reportedly foot surgery. Unfortunately, Randle then broke his right leg in the first game of the season. I wonder where Bill's outrage at the Lakers drafting an injured player is? He thinks the Sixers shouldn't have drafted Embiid because he was injured, so I wonder if the same goes for the Lakers drafting Randle? Bill is the authority on integrity, so I would like to hear his take on this.
Their other first-round pick was Daro Saric, a Croatian player who had already signed a three-year contract to play in Turkey.
Saric is 20 years old. He also won the Euroleague MVP for November. Saric is planning on coming to the United States to play in two seasons, so it isn't like he has to spend all three years in Turkey. The Sixers aren't the first team to draft an overseas player high in the draft, then wait on him to come to the United States. What's the benefit of Saric playing in the United States now?
You know how teams are criticized for being under the salary cap ceiling? The 76ers are $20 million under the salary cap floor, with a payroll of around $38 million. That's about as much as the Clippers pay Chris Paul and Blake Griffin.
You know Bill, I think you are proving the point behind the Sixers long-term plan. If they don't have $38 million wrapped up in two players then that means they have payroll flexibility. Would Plaschke think the Sixers have more integrity if they had won 1 game and had $38 million spent on two players? Would that make him feel better about the Sixers intentions of winning basketball games?
"If they win 15 games they will have overachieved to the highest level," Detroit Coach Stan Van Gundy said.
The Pistons had won two more games than the Sixers when Bill wrote this column.
On game nights, one longtime worker at the train station near Wells
Fargo Arena has fists full of tickets handed to him by angry fans who
ask him to give them away. The 76ers attendance is second-worst in the
league.
Obviously losing games isn't going to draw a huge crowd to Sixers games. You know what does draw huge crowds? Winning basketball games, which is the end goal for Sam Hinkie. He's going about it in a slow and deliberate way, which apparently makes Bill Plaschke question the 76ers' integrity.
And the scorn is rising even from longtime Philly stalwarts such as
Larry Brown, who led the 76ers to their last NBA Finals appearance
against the Lakers in 2001.
"I hate what's going on in Philly,"
Brown, who coaches Southern Methodist University, told the Philadelphia
Inquirer earlier this season. "It makes me sick to my stomach."
During an ensuing interview on Philadelphia's SportsRadio 94WIP radio, O'Neil ripped Brown for not winning at SMU,
Intentionally tanking is not a very well-regarded strategy. I don't particularly like it, but I really, really am not sure increasing payroll and providing the illusion of winning is the direction the Sixers should go.
then explained his team's strategy with, "These building programs, they take a little time … the plan is the plan is the plan."
The
76ers did not respond to interview requests for this story, but surely
even they understand that this plan is not guaranteed.
Of course 76ers understand this plan is not guaranteed. No plan is ever guaranteed. What a stupid comment. Surely every team in the NBA understands their respective plan to field a competitive team isn't guaranteed. Or does Plaschke's Lakers think building around Nick Young, Kobe Bryant, Ed Davis, Julius Randle and Carlos Boozer is their best long-term plan? I doubt it.
The worst team in basketball has only a 25% chance of getting the first
pick in the draft. Since the lottery system began in 1985, only four
times has a team with the worst record received the first pick. So do
the 76ers have to be this bad?
Oh, ok. It would show more integrity if the Sixers planned to be bad, but not too bad to where they lose too many games. I'd love to know the threshold for which Plaschke thinks the Sixers should aim in order to win enough games to keep their integrity intact, while also making sure they have a good shot at a high draft pick. Because again, giving the illusion of winning is what shows the most integrity.
Kenneth Shropshire, a Los Angeles Dorsey High graduate who is a
sports business professor at University of Pennsylvania's Wharton school
of business, says the plan is so unique, it's difficult to judge.
"Those
guys are pretty sophisticated, smart guys, turnaround guys, and you
want to think they stepped back and really thought of this," he said.
"But I've never heard of anybody directly attempting a strategy like
this before."
Because most sports franchises don't have the balls and patience to do this. I wouldn't necessarily rebuild a team in the way the Sixers are doing, but that certainly doesn't mean it is a bad strategy. I don't think some of the strategies other NBA teams are using are great strategies either. The Sixers are taking reducing payroll and building around young players to an extreme, that's for sure.
Shropshire quietly sighed, a sound heard frequently around the 76ers
these days. "Whatever it is, it's still gonna take forever … unless
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is in that next draft," he said.
There's no Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but there is a poor man's Tim Duncan, another great shot blocker who played at Kentucky, an excellent rebounding PF/C, a poor man's Kawhi Leonard, and a natural point guard with good size.
There is a Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in a draft about once a decade, so I wouldn't expect there to be one in the 2015 NBA Draft. I doubt the Sixers are expecting to grab a Hall of Famer out of the draft come June.
Zumoff, the television broadcaster, offered his own explanation of the team's strategy, and why fans are buying it.
"They've seen the ham and egg approach, you patch and fill and make a
trade, and you end up with another No. 15 draft pick," he said. "They
get the fact that you have to tear it down to studs and start over in
order to grow a team like a San Antonio or Oklahoma City."
Yes, and that's part of the issue. If the Sixers aren't going to be very good, they think they should just be very, very not good. Here are some of the players taken by teams in front of the Sixers over the past few years:
2012: Bradley Beal, Anthony Davis, Andre Drummond and Damian Lillard. The 76ers drafted 15th.
2011: Kyrie Irving, Kemba Walker, Klay Thompson, Kawhi Leonard. The 76ers drafted 16th.
2010: John Wall. The 76ers drafted 2nd (they blew this draft).
2009: Russell Westbrook, Kevin Love, Brook Lopez. The 76ers drafted 16th.
My point is they know they have a shot at drafting elite talent if they don't win games. If they pretend they want to win games in a weak Eastern Conference they may fuck around and accidentally win too many games. They will have their integrity, but also a pick between 10-20 in the first round. The Sixers have gone to great lengths to ensure this doesn't happen.
The NBA is growing increasingly pale watching this remodel, but a league
which had the power to keep Chris Paul from joining the Lakers claims
it can do nothing to make the 76ers try harder. Its answer is to change
the lottery system and give equal first-pick chances to the league's
four worst teams.
That's fine if the NBA wants lottery reform. The Sixers would still have a good chance of getting the first pick in the draft. The Jazz were the team that lost the 4th most games in the NBA last year and they won 25 games. It's not like they were fielding an excellent team or anything.
That would be a huge and deserved loss for the Philadelphia 76ers. But that's OK.
Yes, that would be fine. The Sixers are currently playing within the rules and it doesn't show a lack of integrity that they aren't choosing to give the illusion of fielding a good team by signing a few expensive players and tricking their fans long enough to give them hope.
Losing has become their legacy, their corporate culture. And they're certainly used to it.
Strong words coming from a sportswriters who writes about an NBA team that had won five games when he posted this column. I don't think anybody really likes tanking, but I find the method by which the Sixers are rebuilding to have more integrity than how the Knicks have an $88 million payroll to justify the four victories they had when Bill wrote this column. The Knicks aren't rebuilding, so maybe they are off the hook in Plaschke's mind, because they have the integrity to just put a shitty product on the court and watch the fans pay for that shitty product. At least the Sixers have enough honesty to rebuild and make it known they are rebuilding.
Showing posts with label los angeles lakers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label los angeles lakers. Show all posts
Monday, December 15, 2014
Thursday, July 24, 2014
8 comments Bill Simmons Has a Friend Who Didn't Want Carmelo Anthony on the Lakers Team, So Obviously Most Lakers Fans Felt That Way
I wasn't going to originally cover Bill Simmons' column about Carmelo Anthony. I do try to limit the amount I write about Bill and I had just written another post written by him. Plus, I didn't take the time to read the Anthony article. It just seemed like another "deep thought" column about an NBA player that Bill seems to be trying to do more and more of lately. It was suggested on Twitter that I read it, so I did, and here we are. It's the typical Bill Simmons columns where he takes an opinion held by one person, extrapolates it to mean the opinion of others and then adds a little bit of his opinion disguised as a fact in order to prove his opinion correct. Few writers are as good as Bill Simmons in using his opinion to prove his own opinion as correct.
This wasn’t one of our happier years at the “You Can Absolutely Win a Title If Carmelo Anthony Is Your Best Player” Fan Club headquarters.
I didn't even know Bill was a member of this fan club. I can't recall him ever stating he was a member of this fan club either. Oh, and this column is titled "No Escape from New York." Get it? There was a movie called "Escape from New York."
Our man missed the 2014 playoffs in the rancid Eastern Conference, then received a rude comeuppance from his new Knicks boss, Phil Jackson, who lobbied him publicly to stick around at a discount price. The Bulls couldn’t carve out enough cap space for him. The Lakers couldn’t offer a good enough supporting cast. The Rockets never gained momentum, for whatever reason. Carmelo ended up re-signing for $122 million for five years, pretending that was the plan all along … even though it wasn’t.
Yeah, tough year. Carmelo had to walk away with $24.4 million per year and got to stay in one of the largest NBA markets. Fan club members should probably like that.
You know what really shocked me? Hearing Knicks fans and Lakers fans wonder whether it was a smart idea to splurge on Carmelo at all. Where are you REALLY going if he’s your best player?, they kept asking.
What this translates to mean is, "I know a guy who is a Lakers fan and didn't want Carmelo to sign with the Lakers." Because we all know the opinion of Bill's friends are indicative of the larger population as well. I'm sure there are plenty of Lakers fans who didn't want the team to sign Carmelo, but to pretend the opinion of Bill's friends is representative of Lakers fans everywhere is silly.
Take my friend Lewis, a lifelong Southern California guy, one of those complicated superfans who’s nutty enough to grow a beard for the entire NHL playoffs, only he’s rational enough to freak out over Kobe’s cap-crippling two-year extension, but he’s also irrational enough to still believe the Lakers could eventually sign Kevin Love AND Kevin Durant. You can always count on him for a rationally irrational reaction, if that makes sense.
Very little of this stuff ever makes sense. But I'm sure Lewis is the perfect representation to base an entire premise around and then write an entire column based entirely on this premise. After all, beats working.
When news broke two weekends ago that the Lakers had become serious Carmelo contenders, I couldn’t wait for Lewis’s reaction.
And I can't wait to hear about Lewis's reaction. I hope Bill provides it word-for-word in text form so I get the full experience of Lewis's reaction. Also, it's obvious Lewis isn't famous because otherwise Bill would use his full name so that his readers knows he is friends with famous people. Jimmy Kimmel isn't "Jimmy," Adam Carolla isn't "Adam," and the examples could go on. As a general rule, Bill uses full names when it is someone the reader knows as a celebrity.
Instead, here’s the email exchange we had.
Me: Are u officially in Carmelo mode? Lewis: God no. Hope he goes to the Knicks.
HOW INSIGHTFUL! LAKERS FANS AS A WHOLE DON'T WANT CARMELO ANTHONY! QUICK, GET TO THE KEYBOARD AND WRITE AN ENTIRE COLUMN, BUT FIRST TRANSCRIBE THE ENTIRE EMAIL EXCHANGE.
Me: You don’t mean that. Lewis: It’s a bandaid on a broken arm. It locks them up with no flexibility for two years until Kobe goes.
He didn’t want Carmelo Anthony??? On the Lakers???
Putting more question marks at the end of a sentence isn't going to make it suddenly less true or even true when extrapolated to show how Lakers fans feel about Carmelo Anthony as a whole.
I surfed a few Lakers blogs and message boards and found similar ambivalence. Some fans wanted him, others didn’t understand the point.
The two most accurate opinions in order to get valid, well-reasoned opinions on a subject can always be found in two places.
1. The opinion of a friend.
2. The opinion expressed on message boards.
What could go wrong with making an assumption based on the comments from these two sources?
Many felt like the rationally irrational Lewis — they wanted the Lakers to land a top-five lottery pick (if it’s lower than that, it goes to Phoenix), wipe Nash’s expiring contract off their cap, then make a run at the Kevins (Love in 2015, Durant in 2016). That’s a smart plan, except (a) they could easily stink and STILL lose that 2015 lottery pick, (b) Love will probably get traded this season (and might like his new team), (c) nobody knows what Durant wants to do, and (d) nobody knows if the post–Dr. Buss Lakers are still a destination franchise.
I know if the post-Dr. Buss Lakers are still a destination franchise. They are. They are located in California, still have a rich history, have celebrities who go to the games, and will have Kobe (who isn't the same, but he still holds weight) on the roster for the next two years. I have to believe that it's Bill's distaste for the Lakers that causes him to doubt they are still a destination franchise.
And it’s not like the Lakers are loaded with assets; they have Julius Randle, the promise of future cap space, the allure of Los Angeles and that’s about it.
I mean, if a guy wants to come to Los Angeles that's about all he needs. There is space to sign other players and he can live in Los Angeles.
They owe Kobe $23.5 million this season and $25 million next season — nearly 40 percent of their cap — without even knowing if he can play at a high level anymore.
Then when the cap goes up in two years Kobe is gone and the Lakers have a ton of room to make moves. For now, they have a guy who is insanely competitive and draws eyes to the team. And no, I'm not talking about Swaggy P, but Kobe.
Knowing that, how could any Lakers fan not want one of the best scoring forwards in NBA history?
I don't think there are a lot of Lakers fans who wouldn't want one of the best scoring forwards in NBA history on the team. I think your friend Lewis didn't want him on the team.
Why weren’t Knicks fans freaking out that they might lose their franchise player for nothing? Why were so many Bulls fans (and I know three of them) saying things like “I’d love to get Melo, but I hate the thought of giving up Taj [Gibson] for him”?
Bill knows three Bulls fans. THREE! I'm not sure he's ever thought that perhaps his friends are stupid and irrational. That could never be true though, could it?
How did Carmelo Anthony, only 30 years old and still in his prime, become the NBA’s most underappreciated and misunderstood player?
Because the media has beaten the "Carmelo Anthony is a great player, but isn't a winner who can lead a team to the NBA title narrative" and many fans can start to think the same way due to the constant onslaught of this narrative. I'm probably slightly guilty of it too. I would like for Anthony to play for the Celtics though. Not sure I would mind that.
Again, the idea that Bill's friends may be irrational and hold a minority opinion simply doesn't occur to him. It couldn't be true. Bill is very smart and so therefore his friends are smart because they are associated with him.
Now comes the part where Bill starts handing out opinions like they are facts and then treats his opinion as fact. He tends to do this often.
The problems start here: Carmelo Anthony is definitely better than your typical All-Star, but he’s not quite a superstar. You know what that makes him? An almost-but-not-quite-superstar.
Oh, okay. I didn't realize this was an official thing. It's always fun how Bill's hand out opinions as facts and then uses those facts to support his argument. It's very stereotypical only-childish of him.
He’s not Leo DiCaprio or Will Smith — he can’t open a movie by himself. He’s more like Seth Rogen or Channing Tatum — he can open the right movie by himself. There’s a big difference.
The only difference is that Will Smith does completely different movies from Seth Rogen. This is an annoying comparison. It only clouds the issue and tries to cover for the fact Bill is throwing an opinion out there and tries to make it seem like it's a fact. Some people do consider Carmelo Anthony to be a superstar.
Here’s something I wrote on July 8, 2010, the day that LeBron took his talents to South Beach.
Sorry, Portland fans — I made a mistake not telling you to take a deep breath before you read that paragraph.
Carmelo Anthony does sell tickets, generate interest locally and nationally, has taken an average supporting cast to 45-50 wins (as Bill will later prove in this column, so how he doesn't understand Carmelo meets this definition is ridiculous), and hasn't had a chance to be in the Finals because the other pieces haven't been in place. What's dumb is Bill will, again, prove in this very article that Anthony hasn't had the supporting cast to be in the Finals. So he has no chance of being a superstar according to Bill's criteria until his supporting cast improves. Carmelo has taken steps this offseason to not put himself in a better situation with better teammates. More importantly, this fourth criteria means a player can't be labeled a superstar based on a factor that is somewhat beyond his control. I don't know if that should reflect negatively on the player or not.
But exactly four years later, those levels look like this.
Superstars: LeBron, Durant.
Almost-But-Not-Quite-Superstars: Blake Griffin, Dwight Howard, Anthony Davis, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Love, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, Paul George.
Again, this is an opinion based on criteria that Bill Simmons has thrown together. Bill is using his opinion (that there is a set criteria a player has to achieve to be named a superstar) and written this opinion in one of his columns as proof that his opinion of Carmelo Anthony as not a superstar is true. Am I the only that sees the insanity of this? Can't Bill see it?
"Oh, no Carmelo Anthony isn't a superstar because I created this criteria stating he isn't a superstar based on subjective measures which were opinion-based. So taking my opinion-created criteria and then matching it up with my current opinion that Carmelo Anthony isn't a superstar, you can see that I am right in believing Carmelo Anthony isn't a superstar. Also, nevermind if criteria #4 means no player who hasn't appeared in the NBA Finals can be a superstar and it's not based on anything the player has or has not done in order to be considered a superstar."
A few semi-stunned notes about that revised list.
You created the list based on your own criteria. How can you be stunned at the results, you ass monkey? HOW? It's your opinion!
"My own opinion, which I have no control over, shocks me!"
First, two true superstars is the NBA’s lowest number since 1979, the season before Bird and Magic showed up.
I give up. I'm not going to argue this shit. Bill is discussing this list like it's not a product of his ego-driven opinion and is instead the results of a 10 year study based on facts.
Second, Anthony Davis is our only superstar in waiting right now … well, unless you feel like bending the rules and counting Joel Embiid If He Stays Healthy or my illegitimate Australian son, Ben Simmons (a frighteningly gifted high schooler who looks like Benji Wilson 2.0).
Kevin Love is 25, Paul George is 24. It's not like they are old. Also, way for Bill to plug a "30 for 30" while trying to drop knowledge about high school basketball players he's only seen YouTube clips of.
Our 30 for 30 about Benji is streaming on Netflix.
Of course it is, Bill. Your column is one big YouTube link and advertisement for other Grantland content.
Third, we’re in the middle of an under-30 talent boom that’s as loaded as any run since the early ’90s, and yet we dipped from 11 superstars and almost-but-not-quite-superstars in 2010 to 10 of those guys in 2014. Six dropped out and five jumped in, not including Rose, who briefly careered into the superstar group in 2011 and 2012.
Bill is apparently going to keep talking about this list as if it holds anything other than the results of four criteria he created purely through the use of his opinion. It takes a special kind of ego to believe your opinion is a fact and then base a defense of another opinion based on your previous opinion.
And fourth, Carmelo’s 2014 level was a tougher call than everyone else’s combined. After all, he’s made one conference finals and zero Finals. He’s never won more than 54 regular-season games or made an All-NBA first team, although he did finish third in 2013’s MVP voting (no small feat).
Yes, he did meet every arbitrary criteria on the list, except for the criteria required which he has only a limited amount of control over. That criteria is the pieces falling together on a Finals team with that player as the best on that Finals team. Outside of choosing a team with a great supporting cast already in place (which Anthony did seem to have the option of doing), he doesn't have a ton of control over his supporting cast once he chooses a team.
Most damning, Carmelo has lost nearly twice as many playoff games as he has won: 23 wins, 44 losses. You can’t even use the whole “Look, Carmelo can drag any mediocre team to 44 wins and the playoffs!” argument anymore — not after last season.
The Knicks weren't mediocre last year. They were worse than that. Raymond Felton was the starting point guard and J.R. Smith was the second-best player on the team. I'm not a big Carmelo Anthony fan, but he dragged them to 37 wins. Take Anthony off that roster and they are contending for the #1 overall pick.
So what’s left? Can’t we downgrade him to All-Star and be done with it?
I don't know, Bill. It's your fucking list so do what you want. Me personally, I'm going to assume most fans of the Bulls, Lakers and Knicks wanted Carmelo Anthony to play for their team and feel good knowing this is probably true in the majority. After all, what if I have four friends that agree with my point of view?
For me, it keeps coming back to one question: Can you win the NBA championship if Carmelo Anthony is your best player?
The short answer: Yes.
You can.
Bill Simmons' opinion: You can win an NBA title with Carmelo Anthony as the best player on the team.
Bill Simmons' opinion: Carmelo Anthony isn't a superstar because he hasn't made an NBA Finals as the best player on that team.
So Anthony is a superstar once forces outside of his complete control come together. Bill thinks he's a superstar, but the criteria Bill created which he has no control over doesn't necessarily agree with Anthony being a superstar. In conclusion, I have a headache.
If you believe Carmelo can lead a championship team, you’re leaning heavily on that 2011 Mavs playbook — you’d need all the elements we just covered, and you’d need Carmelo to unleash a damned good Dirk impression.
Only one problem: Dirk was better than Carmelo is.
Oh no. What ever shall be done?
Dirk is one of the 20 best basketball players of all time by any calculation.
Absolutely not true. Here are some facts I just created to prove my opinion is correct. The criteria to be one of the 20 best basketball players of all-time are as follows:
1. Have won at least one NBA title.
2. Has either played for the Lakers, Heat or Celtics.
3. Is from the United States.
4. Thinks that English Muffins are the wimpy version of a bagel.
5. That is all.
So you can see that Dirk isn't even close to being one of the best basketball players of all-time because he fails on two criteria and I don't know what Dirk thinks of English Muffins, but I do know he is from Germany, so there's a good chance he doesn't appreciate bagels to the extent he should. As you can see, Dirk isn't one of the 20 best basketball players based on the set of facts I just created.
He won an MVP and a Finals MVP. He made four first-team All-NBA’s and five second-team All-NBA’s. He won 50-plus games for 11 straight years, topped 60 wins three times, made two Finals, beat LeBron and Wade in the Finals, and won a Game 7 in San Antonio during Duncan’s prime.
And we all know, "Having won a Game 7 in San Antonio during Duncan's prime" is the MOST IMPORTANT cherry-picked criteria of all. Not even LeBron James has done this. Michael Jordan didn't do it. Magic Johnson didn't do it.
Amazing but true: Dirk never played with a Hall of Famer in that Hall of Famer’s prime.
See, now this is a fact. See how that works, Bill? It's fine to base an opinion off this fact, because the fact isn't an opinion, but has concrete proof behind it. There is a basketball Hall of Fame and Dirk hasn't played with a Hall of Famer while in his prime. Baby steps...
Bill starts listing Dirk's statistics as he is prone to do in order to kill space. Dirk is great, I'll leave it at that.
That’s why I dislike comparing Carmelo and Dirk. But I keep coming back to these two playoff lines:
2011 Dirk (21 games): 27.7 ppg, 8.1 rpg, 2.5 apg, 49-46-94%, 8.9 FTA, 25.2 PER
2009 Melo (16 games): 27.2 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 4.1 apg, 45-36-83%, 9.0 FTA, 24.3 PER
Bill dislikes comparing Carmelo to Dirk, but he doesn't hate it enough to base his opinion that Carmelo can be the best player on an NBA title team on a direct comparison to Dirk's 2011 Mavs. Then Bill directly compares Carmelo and Dirk's playoff statistics to each other. But yeah, he dislikes that comparison.
The 2009 Nuggets were Carmelo’s best team; they fell to Kobe’s Lakers in Round 3 with a poor man’s version of the 2011 Mavs. George Karl wasn’t Carlisle. Nene and Kenyon Martin couldn’t protect the rim like Chandler. They didn’t have a perimeter defender anywhere close to Marion’s caliber. They couldn’t shoot 3s nearly as well (only 31 percent for that Lakers series). They relied way too heavily on J.R. Smith, who imploded against Kobe and got outscored 204 points to 76 points.
This is the same J.R. Smith who was the second-best player on the 2014 Knicks by the way.
Again, in all caps … THAT’S THE MOST TALENTED PROFESSIONAL BASKETBALL TEAM THAT CARMELO ANTHONY EVER PLAYED ON.
The second-best team? You might remember them self-destructing just 14 months ago — it was the 2013 Knicks squad that won 54 games in a lousy conference with Melo, a past-his-peak Chandler, J.R. Smith, Ray Felton, a washed-up K-Mart, Iman Shumpert, Chris Copeland, Pablo Prigioni, a hobbled Amar’e Stoudemire and the immortal Mike Woodson coaching.
Again, in all caps … THAT’S THE SECOND-MOST TALENTED PROFESSIONAL BASKETBALL TEAM THAT CARMELO ANTHONY EVER PLAYED ON.
Now take that team, add another year to Chandler, add Andrei Bargnani, add another 15 pounds to Felton, and take away Chris Copeland. That was the 2014 Knicks.
So could Carmelo morph into 2011 Dirk if you gave him the right situation? We don’t know because he’s never been in the right situation.
Which is why it is silly to announce Carmelo isn't a superstar based on criteria where he could only be a superstar by being in the right situation.
As a last gasp, they used the Lakers as negotiating leverage (you better sign-and-trade Melo to Chicago or you’ll lose him for nothing!), only Jackson smartly sniffed it out. That left Carmelo with three choices:
Choice No. 1: Grab $122 million over five years from New York, play with another inferior team, miss the Finals for his 12th straight season, and pin the rest of his prime — which he’s never getting back, by the way — on Jackson’s promise that “We’ll Have Gobs of Cap Space in the Summer of 2015!!!”
This, along with more first round draft picks, is the promise the Celtics have made to the entire fanbase while attempting to trade the only player on the team who could be considered a star. I feel this requires mentioning.
Choice No. 3: Sign a four-year deal in Chicago for less money (starting around $14-15 million), become the crunch-time guy for an absolutely loaded Bulls team, and answer every question anyone ever asked about him.
At the same time, I wanted to know once and for all. I wanted to know how good Carmelo Anthony is. Because, right now, I believe the following things:
1. He’s one of the best natural scorers I’ve ever seen.
2. He’s one of the NBA’s eight or nine best players and has been for some time.
3. He could win you a title on his version of the 2011 Mavs.
Again, those are just opinions.
So far this entire column, including the decision that Carmelo is not a superstar and the idea that Lakers fans didn't want to sign Carmelo, are opinions as well. They are proven correct mostly using more opinions.
But what am I about to present to you? All facts.
1. His best team ever was the 2009 Nuggets. (Covered above.)
2. His best teammates ever: Chauncey Billups (post-Detroit version), Allen Iverson (post-Philly version), Andre Miller, Marcus Camby, Amar’e Stoudemire (post-Phoenix version, right as his knees were going), Tyson Chandler (post-Dallas version), Kenyon Martin (post-Nets version), Nene (never an All-Star — not once) and the one and only J.R. Smith.
I'm not entirely sure Bill understands what an "opinion" is. I feel like Bill believes an opinion is a belief based on a future outcome and not a belief based on a prior outcome. While I can't argue necessarily with #1 and #2 above, they are both most certainly very close to be an opinion. Inarguable opinions, but opinions nonetheless.
4. He had only four teammates make an All-Star Game: Iverson (2007, 2008), Billups (2009, 2010), Amar’e (2011) and Chandler (2013).
That wasn't even the good All-Star version of those players either. Yuck.
5. He had five head coaches in 11 years: Jeff Bzdelik (never coached again),
Well, he was the head coach for the Wake Forest men's basketball team, but it's true he never did coach again. Bzdelik was the head coach, but mostly just managed the constant wave of transfers out of the Wake Forest program during his tenure.
Meanwhile, Dirk had three coaches in 15 years: Don Nelson (Hall of Famer), Avery Johnson (made a Finals and also won 67 games in a season) and Rick Carlisle (future Hall of Famer).
Wait, is this true? Rick Carlisle is a future Hall of Famer? I think he's a great coach, but a future Hall of Famer?
7. He suffered bad luck two different times — when an already loaded Pistons team unbelievably picked Darko over him in 2003, and when his agent didn’t follow LeBron’s and Wade’s lead by putting a three-year out into Melo’s first contract extension (with Denver). In the summer of 2010, Melo could have stolen Bosh’s spot in Miami or jumped to the up-and-coming Bulls, only he couldn’t get out of his deal for another year. Those were his two best chances to find a true contender. 0-for-2.
But alternatively, when he had the chance to take less money this past offseason and join the Bulls, a team that was a true contender, he chose to take the money in New York. Carmelo had a chance to find a true contender and his choice was get more money in New York with the Knicks. Bill can't lose sight of this.
9. Carmelo is averaging 25.3 points for his entire career. Only 13 players averaged at least 25 points, and only 10 have a higher average than Melo: Jordan (30.1), Wilt (30.1), LeBron (27.5), Durant (27.4), Elgin (27.4), West (27.0), Iverson (26.7), Pettit (26.4), Oscar (25.7) and Kobe (25.5). Yes, that’s a list with six Hall of Famers and four future Hall of Famers.
And most of these guys can be considered superstars too, which leads me to the dead horse I won't beat. Carmelo may not be a superstar, but he's got a lot going for him statistically that could lead a person in that direction. What he doesn't do is meet Bill's subjective criteria to be considered a superstar.
Then Bill compares Carmelo favorably to Dominique Wilkins, Paul Pierce, Adrian Dantley, and Bernard King. This, naturally, leads to a brief discussion of the Boston Celtics because Bernard King played well against the Celtics. This impresses Bill to no end.
Bernard doubled as the most frightening non-Jordan scorer I’ve ever seen in my life — he took the 1984 Celts to a Game 7 by himself, for God’s sake. My team threw Kevin McHale (the NBA’s best defender at the time) and Cedric Maxwell at him, with Bird helping and Robert Parish protecting the rim, and it just didn’t matter.
There is the brief discussion. This column wouldn't be complete without a small Celtics remembrance from the 1980's.
Carmelo? He’s 92 percent as frightening as 1984 Playoff Bernard was.
Not 91% or 93%, but 92% as frightening as 1984 Playoff Bernard was. These are very specific statistics based on whatever number comes out of Bill's brain at the time. You want facts? There's your facts.
14. You realize that Carmelo is better right now than he’s ever been, right?
• Years 1-2: 20.9 ppg, 5.9 rpg, 43-30-79%, 17.2 PER, 35.7 mpg, 28.8 usage, .094 WS/48
• Years 3-9: 25.9 ppg, 6.5 rpg, 46-33-81%, 21.4 PER, 36.3 mpg, 32.0 usage, .140 WS/48
• Years 10-11: 28.0 ppg, 7.5 rpg, 45-39-84%, 24.6 PER, 37.9 mpg, 33.9 usage, .177 WS/48
As his offensive workload has increased, he’s figured out how to become even MORE efficient by expanding his shooting range to 25 feet … only he’s never stopped getting to the free throw line, either.
But again, don't consider him a superstar. He couldn't even take the Knicks to the playoffs this year. You like how Bill talks out of both sides of his mouth a little here? He says Carmelo is great and goes to great lengths to prove it, but he also makes sure he has a mention in this column that maybe Carmelo should be moved down into the All-Star ranking of Bill's arbitrary rankings.
So what’s left? Can’t we downgrade him to All-Star and be done with it? Isn’t 11 years enough time to know — to truly, unequivocally know — whether it’s with television shows, music groups, girlfriends, quarterbacks or basketball players?
So Bill is sort of covered no matter how Carmelo's career pans outs. He has said perhaps Carmelo should be downgraded to All-Star level and then goes on and on about how great of a player Carmelo still is. All bases are covered.
And you know what else? Carmelo never received enough credit for playing efficiently as a hybrid small forward/stretch 4, especially last season,
This from the guy who asks the open-ended question of whether Carmelo isn't even an almost-but-not-quite superstar, but instead is just an All-Star.
Everyone bitched about his “ball-stopping” — something of which he’s definitely been guilty, from time to time, over the past few years — but when your coach is in a basketball coma and your entire offense has degenerated into “throw the ball to Melo and he’ll have to create a shot,” what do you expect? Every opponent went into every Knicks game saying, “As long as we don’t let Carmelo kill us, we’re winning tonight.” And he still threw up 28 a night and played the most efficient basketball of his career.
As I am prone to doing when reaching near the end of a Bill Simmons column, I have to ask, what was the point of this column? It's shockingly rambling, even for a Bill Simmons column, it doesn't appear to prove anything other than Carmelo Anthony is better than "we" think, and the basic premise (that Carmelo's potential will never be achieved because he chose to go back to New York rather than take a pay cut and go to Chicago) is only mentioned and never actually stated explicitly by Bill. So this column is rather indicative of Bill's worst rambling qualities.
If you think of him like a Hall of Fame wide receiver — say, Larry Fitzgerald — Carmelo’s career makes more sense.
No, it doesn't. It makes more sense to simply state Carmelo never reached his potential because he never played on a team that allowed him to achieve his potential, rather than start using an overcomplicated analogy that says this same thing, only with more work involved to reach the conclusion.
Fitz tossed up monster stats with Kurt Warner throwing to him. Once the likes of John Skelton and Kevin Kolb started passing through his life, he wasn’t throwing up monster stats anymore. But nobody ever stopped believing Fitz was great.
Fitzgerald had 954 yards with Carson Palmer throwing him the football last year. Does Fitzgerald require a Hall of Fame quarterback to reach his potential or something?
We made excuses for him that weren’t even excuses.
"We" didn't make any excuses for Fitzgerald. Stop using "we" to indicate what "you" believe.
Why didn’t we ever feel sorry for Carmelo? It’s simple — he placed himself in this situation.
Oh, so that's why "we" didn't feel bad for Carmelo. I was wondering why "we" didn't feel bad for him. In this case, I didn't feel bad for Carmelo because he could have left this summer and chose not to. That's a lot of money to give up though and Phil Jackson isn't a tough guy to put some faith in.
There’s a good chance he will play his entire career, then retire, without ever finding the right team. Unless the Knicks miraculously strike oil next summer, his own version of the 2011 Mavericks can’t happen.
Another reference to that 2011 Mavericks team led by Dirk, the same reference and comparison that Bill dislikes so much and has made so often.
There was an alternate universe here — Chicago, for less money, for a chance to become Olympic Melo for nine months per year. He would have been flanked by Joakim Noah, Derrick Rose, Jimmy Butler, Doug McDermott, Nikola Mirotic, Kirk Hinrich and a top-five coach (Tom Thibodeau). He would have found his 2011 Mavs.
The comparison to Dirk again...by the way, that Bulls team is better than the 2011 Mavericks. This is especially true if Derrick Rose comes back healthy.
Thirty years from now, long after he has retired and hopefully spent his more than $300 million nest egg wisely, Carmelo will be sitting on the porch of one of his nine houses, nursing a drink, staring out at an ocean and thinking about the unknown. Should he have picked Chicago? How much money is enough money? What’s the price of peace? What would it have been worth to know — to really, truly know? Was he good enough? Could he have gotten there? Did he have it in him?
Or he will be sitting there thinking about all of the money he made playing basketball professionally and that's nice to have? He can also look at his Olympic Gold medals and know he won an NCAA Championship for Jim Boeheim as well. There are some things he can hang his hat on outside of deep thoughts about the price of peace.
Instead, he’ll have to settle for people like me: the ones maintaining that he WAS good enough, only it’s an opinion and not a fact.
Right. Much of this column was based on an opinion (like how many superstars are in the NBA) that Bill masquerades as facts.
In A Bronx Tale, Sonny famously tells Calogero that “the saddest thing in life is wasted talent.” Well, what happens if you didn’t waste your talent, but it kind of got wasted anyway?
But Anthony did waste his talent according to Bill. Twice Anthony had the chance to join a contending team with a stronger roster and both times he set it up to where he didn't up choosing this path. So Anthony did waste his talent in a way, and Bill even states that in this column. Anyway, speaking of wasted talent, this is the end of another Bill Simmons rambling column.
This wasn’t one of our happier years at the “You Can Absolutely Win a Title If Carmelo Anthony Is Your Best Player” Fan Club headquarters.
I didn't even know Bill was a member of this fan club. I can't recall him ever stating he was a member of this fan club either. Oh, and this column is titled "No Escape from New York." Get it? There was a movie called "Escape from New York."
Our man missed the 2014 playoffs in the rancid Eastern Conference, then received a rude comeuppance from his new Knicks boss, Phil Jackson, who lobbied him publicly to stick around at a discount price. The Bulls couldn’t carve out enough cap space for him. The Lakers couldn’t offer a good enough supporting cast. The Rockets never gained momentum, for whatever reason. Carmelo ended up re-signing for $122 million for five years, pretending that was the plan all along … even though it wasn’t.
Yeah, tough year. Carmelo had to walk away with $24.4 million per year and got to stay in one of the largest NBA markets. Fan club members should probably like that.
You know what really shocked me? Hearing Knicks fans and Lakers fans wonder whether it was a smart idea to splurge on Carmelo at all. Where are you REALLY going if he’s your best player?, they kept asking.
What this translates to mean is, "I know a guy who is a Lakers fan and didn't want Carmelo to sign with the Lakers." Because we all know the opinion of Bill's friends are indicative of the larger population as well. I'm sure there are plenty of Lakers fans who didn't want the team to sign Carmelo, but to pretend the opinion of Bill's friends is representative of Lakers fans everywhere is silly.
Take my friend Lewis, a lifelong Southern California guy, one of those complicated superfans who’s nutty enough to grow a beard for the entire NHL playoffs, only he’s rational enough to freak out over Kobe’s cap-crippling two-year extension, but he’s also irrational enough to still believe the Lakers could eventually sign Kevin Love AND Kevin Durant. You can always count on him for a rationally irrational reaction, if that makes sense.
Very little of this stuff ever makes sense. But I'm sure Lewis is the perfect representation to base an entire premise around and then write an entire column based entirely on this premise. After all, beats working.
When news broke two weekends ago that the Lakers had become serious Carmelo contenders, I couldn’t wait for Lewis’s reaction.
And I can't wait to hear about Lewis's reaction. I hope Bill provides it word-for-word in text form so I get the full experience of Lewis's reaction. Also, it's obvious Lewis isn't famous because otherwise Bill would use his full name so that his readers knows he is friends with famous people. Jimmy Kimmel isn't "Jimmy," Adam Carolla isn't "Adam," and the examples could go on. As a general rule, Bill uses full names when it is someone the reader knows as a celebrity.
Instead, here’s the email exchange we had.
Me: Are u officially in Carmelo mode? Lewis: God no. Hope he goes to the Knicks.
HOW INSIGHTFUL! LAKERS FANS AS A WHOLE DON'T WANT CARMELO ANTHONY! QUICK, GET TO THE KEYBOARD AND WRITE AN ENTIRE COLUMN, BUT FIRST TRANSCRIBE THE ENTIRE EMAIL EXCHANGE.
Me: You don’t mean that. Lewis: It’s a bandaid on a broken arm. It locks them up with no flexibility for two years until Kobe goes.
He didn’t want Carmelo Anthony??? On the Lakers???
Putting more question marks at the end of a sentence isn't going to make it suddenly less true or even true when extrapolated to show how Lakers fans feel about Carmelo Anthony as a whole.
I surfed a few Lakers blogs and message boards and found similar ambivalence. Some fans wanted him, others didn’t understand the point.
The two most accurate opinions in order to get valid, well-reasoned opinions on a subject can always be found in two places.
1. The opinion of a friend.
2. The opinion expressed on message boards.
What could go wrong with making an assumption based on the comments from these two sources?
Many felt like the rationally irrational Lewis — they wanted the Lakers to land a top-five lottery pick (if it’s lower than that, it goes to Phoenix), wipe Nash’s expiring contract off their cap, then make a run at the Kevins (Love in 2015, Durant in 2016). That’s a smart plan, except (a) they could easily stink and STILL lose that 2015 lottery pick, (b) Love will probably get traded this season (and might like his new team), (c) nobody knows what Durant wants to do, and (d) nobody knows if the post–Dr. Buss Lakers are still a destination franchise.
I know if the post-Dr. Buss Lakers are still a destination franchise. They are. They are located in California, still have a rich history, have celebrities who go to the games, and will have Kobe (who isn't the same, but he still holds weight) on the roster for the next two years. I have to believe that it's Bill's distaste for the Lakers that causes him to doubt they are still a destination franchise.
And it’s not like the Lakers are loaded with assets; they have Julius Randle, the promise of future cap space, the allure of Los Angeles and that’s about it.
I mean, if a guy wants to come to Los Angeles that's about all he needs. There is space to sign other players and he can live in Los Angeles.
They owe Kobe $23.5 million this season and $25 million next season — nearly 40 percent of their cap — without even knowing if he can play at a high level anymore.
Then when the cap goes up in two years Kobe is gone and the Lakers have a ton of room to make moves. For now, they have a guy who is insanely competitive and draws eyes to the team. And no, I'm not talking about Swaggy P, but Kobe.
Knowing that, how could any Lakers fan not want one of the best scoring forwards in NBA history?
I don't think there are a lot of Lakers fans who wouldn't want one of the best scoring forwards in NBA history on the team. I think your friend Lewis didn't want him on the team.
Why weren’t Knicks fans freaking out that they might lose their franchise player for nothing? Why were so many Bulls fans (and I know three of them) saying things like “I’d love to get Melo, but I hate the thought of giving up Taj [Gibson] for him”?
Bill knows three Bulls fans. THREE! I'm not sure he's ever thought that perhaps his friends are stupid and irrational. That could never be true though, could it?
How did Carmelo Anthony, only 30 years old and still in his prime, become the NBA’s most underappreciated and misunderstood player?
Because the media has beaten the "Carmelo Anthony is a great player, but isn't a winner who can lead a team to the NBA title narrative" and many fans can start to think the same way due to the constant onslaught of this narrative. I'm probably slightly guilty of it too. I would like for Anthony to play for the Celtics though. Not sure I would mind that.
Again, the idea that Bill's friends may be irrational and hold a minority opinion simply doesn't occur to him. It couldn't be true. Bill is very smart and so therefore his friends are smart because they are associated with him.
Now comes the part where Bill starts handing out opinions like they are facts and then treats his opinion as fact. He tends to do this often.
The problems start here: Carmelo Anthony is definitely better than your typical All-Star, but he’s not quite a superstar. You know what that makes him? An almost-but-not-quite-superstar.
Oh, okay. I didn't realize this was an official thing. It's always fun how Bill's hand out opinions as facts and then uses those facts to support his argument. It's very stereotypical only-childish of him.
He’s not Leo DiCaprio or Will Smith — he can’t open a movie by himself. He’s more like Seth Rogen or Channing Tatum — he can open the right movie by himself. There’s a big difference.
The only difference is that Will Smith does completely different movies from Seth Rogen. This is an annoying comparison. It only clouds the issue and tries to cover for the fact Bill is throwing an opinion out there and tries to make it seem like it's a fact. Some people do consider Carmelo Anthony to be a superstar.
Here’s something I wrote on July 8, 2010, the day that LeBron took his talents to South Beach.
I need my NBA superstar to sell tickets,
generate interest locally and nationally, single-handedly guarantee an
average supporting cast 45-50 wins, and potentially be the best player
on a Finals team if the other pieces are in place, which means only
LeBron, Wade, Howard, Durant and Kobe qualify. There’s a level just a
shade below (the Almost-But-Not-Quite-Superstar) with Steve Nash, Dirk
Nowitzki, Carmelo Anthony, Brandon Roy, Chris Paul and Deron Williams.
(Note: I think Derrick Rose gets there next season.) Then you have elite
guys like Bosh, Pau Gasol and Amar’e Stoudemire who need good teammates
to help them thrive … and if they don’t have them, you’re heading to
the lottery. You know what we call these people? All-Stars.
Sorry, Portland fans — I made a mistake not telling you to take a deep breath before you read that paragraph.
Carmelo Anthony does sell tickets, generate interest locally and nationally, has taken an average supporting cast to 45-50 wins (as Bill will later prove in this column, so how he doesn't understand Carmelo meets this definition is ridiculous), and hasn't had a chance to be in the Finals because the other pieces haven't been in place. What's dumb is Bill will, again, prove in this very article that Anthony hasn't had the supporting cast to be in the Finals. So he has no chance of being a superstar according to Bill's criteria until his supporting cast improves. Carmelo has taken steps this offseason to not put himself in a better situation with better teammates. More importantly, this fourth criteria means a player can't be labeled a superstar based on a factor that is somewhat beyond his control. I don't know if that should reflect negatively on the player or not.
But exactly four years later, those levels look like this.
Superstars: LeBron, Durant.
Almost-But-Not-Quite-Superstars: Blake Griffin, Dwight Howard, Anthony Davis, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Love, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, Paul George.
Again, this is an opinion based on criteria that Bill Simmons has thrown together. Bill is using his opinion (that there is a set criteria a player has to achieve to be named a superstar) and written this opinion in one of his columns as proof that his opinion of Carmelo Anthony as not a superstar is true. Am I the only that sees the insanity of this? Can't Bill see it?
"Oh, no Carmelo Anthony isn't a superstar because I created this criteria stating he isn't a superstar based on subjective measures which were opinion-based. So taking my opinion-created criteria and then matching it up with my current opinion that Carmelo Anthony isn't a superstar, you can see that I am right in believing Carmelo Anthony isn't a superstar. Also, nevermind if criteria #4 means no player who hasn't appeared in the NBA Finals can be a superstar and it's not based on anything the player has or has not done in order to be considered a superstar."
A few semi-stunned notes about that revised list.
You created the list based on your own criteria. How can you be stunned at the results, you ass monkey? HOW? It's your opinion!
"My own opinion, which I have no control over, shocks me!"
First, two true superstars is the NBA’s lowest number since 1979, the season before Bird and Magic showed up.
I give up. I'm not going to argue this shit. Bill is discussing this list like it's not a product of his ego-driven opinion and is instead the results of a 10 year study based on facts.
Second, Anthony Davis is our only superstar in waiting right now … well, unless you feel like bending the rules and counting Joel Embiid If He Stays Healthy or my illegitimate Australian son, Ben Simmons (a frighteningly gifted high schooler who looks like Benji Wilson 2.0).
Kevin Love is 25, Paul George is 24. It's not like they are old. Also, way for Bill to plug a "30 for 30" while trying to drop knowledge about high school basketball players he's only seen YouTube clips of.
Our 30 for 30 about Benji is streaming on Netflix.
Of course it is, Bill. Your column is one big YouTube link and advertisement for other Grantland content.
Third, we’re in the middle of an under-30 talent boom that’s as loaded as any run since the early ’90s, and yet we dipped from 11 superstars and almost-but-not-quite-superstars in 2010 to 10 of those guys in 2014. Six dropped out and five jumped in, not including Rose, who briefly careered into the superstar group in 2011 and 2012.
Bill is apparently going to keep talking about this list as if it holds anything other than the results of four criteria he created purely through the use of his opinion. It takes a special kind of ego to believe your opinion is a fact and then base a defense of another opinion based on your previous opinion.
And fourth, Carmelo’s 2014 level was a tougher call than everyone else’s combined. After all, he’s made one conference finals and zero Finals. He’s never won more than 54 regular-season games or made an All-NBA first team, although he did finish third in 2013’s MVP voting (no small feat).
Yes, he did meet every arbitrary criteria on the list, except for the criteria required which he has only a limited amount of control over. That criteria is the pieces falling together on a Finals team with that player as the best on that Finals team. Outside of choosing a team with a great supporting cast already in place (which Anthony did seem to have the option of doing), he doesn't have a ton of control over his supporting cast once he chooses a team.
Most damning, Carmelo has lost nearly twice as many playoff games as he has won: 23 wins, 44 losses. You can’t even use the whole “Look, Carmelo can drag any mediocre team to 44 wins and the playoffs!” argument anymore — not after last season.
The Knicks weren't mediocre last year. They were worse than that. Raymond Felton was the starting point guard and J.R. Smith was the second-best player on the team. I'm not a big Carmelo Anthony fan, but he dragged them to 37 wins. Take Anthony off that roster and they are contending for the #1 overall pick.
So what’s left? Can’t we downgrade him to All-Star and be done with it?
I don't know, Bill. It's your fucking list so do what you want. Me personally, I'm going to assume most fans of the Bulls, Lakers and Knicks wanted Carmelo Anthony to play for their team and feel good knowing this is probably true in the majority. After all, what if I have four friends that agree with my point of view?
For me, it keeps coming back to one question: Can you win the NBA championship if Carmelo Anthony is your best player?
The short answer: Yes.
You can.
Bill Simmons' opinion: You can win an NBA title with Carmelo Anthony as the best player on the team.
Bill Simmons' opinion: Carmelo Anthony isn't a superstar because he hasn't made an NBA Finals as the best player on that team.
So Anthony is a superstar once forces outside of his complete control come together. Bill thinks he's a superstar, but the criteria Bill created which he has no control over doesn't necessarily agree with Anthony being a superstar. In conclusion, I have a headache.
If you believe Carmelo can lead a championship team, you’re leaning heavily on that 2011 Mavs playbook — you’d need all the elements we just covered, and you’d need Carmelo to unleash a damned good Dirk impression.
Only one problem: Dirk was better than Carmelo is.
Oh no. What ever shall be done?
Dirk is one of the 20 best basketball players of all time by any calculation.
Absolutely not true. Here are some facts I just created to prove my opinion is correct. The criteria to be one of the 20 best basketball players of all-time are as follows:
1. Have won at least one NBA title.
2. Has either played for the Lakers, Heat or Celtics.
3. Is from the United States.
4. Thinks that English Muffins are the wimpy version of a bagel.
5. That is all.
So you can see that Dirk isn't even close to being one of the best basketball players of all-time because he fails on two criteria and I don't know what Dirk thinks of English Muffins, but I do know he is from Germany, so there's a good chance he doesn't appreciate bagels to the extent he should. As you can see, Dirk isn't one of the 20 best basketball players based on the set of facts I just created.
He won an MVP and a Finals MVP. He made four first-team All-NBA’s and five second-team All-NBA’s. He won 50-plus games for 11 straight years, topped 60 wins three times, made two Finals, beat LeBron and Wade in the Finals, and won a Game 7 in San Antonio during Duncan’s prime.
And we all know, "Having won a Game 7 in San Antonio during Duncan's prime" is the MOST IMPORTANT cherry-picked criteria of all. Not even LeBron James has done this. Michael Jordan didn't do it. Magic Johnson didn't do it.
Amazing but true: Dirk never played with a Hall of Famer in that Hall of Famer’s prime.
See, now this is a fact. See how that works, Bill? It's fine to base an opinion off this fact, because the fact isn't an opinion, but has concrete proof behind it. There is a basketball Hall of Fame and Dirk hasn't played with a Hall of Famer while in his prime. Baby steps...
Bill starts listing Dirk's statistics as he is prone to do in order to kill space. Dirk is great, I'll leave it at that.
That’s why I dislike comparing Carmelo and Dirk. But I keep coming back to these two playoff lines:
2011 Dirk (21 games): 27.7 ppg, 8.1 rpg, 2.5 apg, 49-46-94%, 8.9 FTA, 25.2 PER
2009 Melo (16 games): 27.2 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 4.1 apg, 45-36-83%, 9.0 FTA, 24.3 PER
Bill dislikes comparing Carmelo to Dirk, but he doesn't hate it enough to base his opinion that Carmelo can be the best player on an NBA title team on a direct comparison to Dirk's 2011 Mavs. Then Bill directly compares Carmelo and Dirk's playoff statistics to each other. But yeah, he dislikes that comparison.
The 2009 Nuggets were Carmelo’s best team; they fell to Kobe’s Lakers in Round 3 with a poor man’s version of the 2011 Mavs. George Karl wasn’t Carlisle. Nene and Kenyon Martin couldn’t protect the rim like Chandler. They didn’t have a perimeter defender anywhere close to Marion’s caliber. They couldn’t shoot 3s nearly as well (only 31 percent for that Lakers series). They relied way too heavily on J.R. Smith, who imploded against Kobe and got outscored 204 points to 76 points.
This is the same J.R. Smith who was the second-best player on the 2014 Knicks by the way.
Again, in all caps … THAT’S THE MOST TALENTED PROFESSIONAL BASKETBALL TEAM THAT CARMELO ANTHONY EVER PLAYED ON.
The second-best team? You might remember them self-destructing just 14 months ago — it was the 2013 Knicks squad that won 54 games in a lousy conference with Melo, a past-his-peak Chandler, J.R. Smith, Ray Felton, a washed-up K-Mart, Iman Shumpert, Chris Copeland, Pablo Prigioni, a hobbled Amar’e Stoudemire and the immortal Mike Woodson coaching.
Again, in all caps … THAT’S THE SECOND-MOST TALENTED PROFESSIONAL BASKETBALL TEAM THAT CARMELO ANTHONY EVER PLAYED ON.
Now take that team, add another year to Chandler, add Andrei Bargnani, add another 15 pounds to Felton, and take away Chris Copeland. That was the 2014 Knicks.
So could Carmelo morph into 2011 Dirk if you gave him the right situation? We don’t know because he’s never been in the right situation.
Which is why it is silly to announce Carmelo isn't a superstar based on criteria where he could only be a superstar by being in the right situation.
As a last gasp, they used the Lakers as negotiating leverage (you better sign-and-trade Melo to Chicago or you’ll lose him for nothing!), only Jackson smartly sniffed it out. That left Carmelo with three choices:
Choice No. 1: Grab $122 million over five years from New York, play with another inferior team, miss the Finals for his 12th straight season, and pin the rest of his prime — which he’s never getting back, by the way — on Jackson’s promise that “We’ll Have Gobs of Cap Space in the Summer of 2015!!!”
This, along with more first round draft picks, is the promise the Celtics have made to the entire fanbase while attempting to trade the only player on the team who could be considered a star. I feel this requires mentioning.
Choice No. 3: Sign a four-year deal in Chicago for less money (starting around $14-15 million), become the crunch-time guy for an absolutely loaded Bulls team, and answer every question anyone ever asked about him.
At the same time, I wanted to know once and for all. I wanted to know how good Carmelo Anthony is. Because, right now, I believe the following things:
1. He’s one of the best natural scorers I’ve ever seen.
2. He’s one of the NBA’s eight or nine best players and has been for some time.
3. He could win you a title on his version of the 2011 Mavs.
Again, those are just opinions.
So far this entire column, including the decision that Carmelo is not a superstar and the idea that Lakers fans didn't want to sign Carmelo, are opinions as well. They are proven correct mostly using more opinions.
But what am I about to present to you? All facts.
1. His best team ever was the 2009 Nuggets. (Covered above.)
2. His best teammates ever: Chauncey Billups (post-Detroit version), Allen Iverson (post-Philly version), Andre Miller, Marcus Camby, Amar’e Stoudemire (post-Phoenix version, right as his knees were going), Tyson Chandler (post-Dallas version), Kenyon Martin (post-Nets version), Nene (never an All-Star — not once) and the one and only J.R. Smith.
I'm not entirely sure Bill understands what an "opinion" is. I feel like Bill believes an opinion is a belief based on a future outcome and not a belief based on a prior outcome. While I can't argue necessarily with #1 and #2 above, they are both most certainly very close to be an opinion. Inarguable opinions, but opinions nonetheless.
4. He had only four teammates make an All-Star Game: Iverson (2007, 2008), Billups (2009, 2010), Amar’e (2011) and Chandler (2013).
That wasn't even the good All-Star version of those players either. Yuck.
5. He had five head coaches in 11 years: Jeff Bzdelik (never coached again),
Well, he was the head coach for the Wake Forest men's basketball team, but it's true he never did coach again. Bzdelik was the head coach, but mostly just managed the constant wave of transfers out of the Wake Forest program during his tenure.
Meanwhile, Dirk had three coaches in 15 years: Don Nelson (Hall of Famer), Avery Johnson (made a Finals and also won 67 games in a season) and Rick Carlisle (future Hall of Famer).
Wait, is this true? Rick Carlisle is a future Hall of Famer? I think he's a great coach, but a future Hall of Famer?
7. He suffered bad luck two different times — when an already loaded Pistons team unbelievably picked Darko over him in 2003, and when his agent didn’t follow LeBron’s and Wade’s lead by putting a three-year out into Melo’s first contract extension (with Denver). In the summer of 2010, Melo could have stolen Bosh’s spot in Miami or jumped to the up-and-coming Bulls, only he couldn’t get out of his deal for another year. Those were his two best chances to find a true contender. 0-for-2.
But alternatively, when he had the chance to take less money this past offseason and join the Bulls, a team that was a true contender, he chose to take the money in New York. Carmelo had a chance to find a true contender and his choice was get more money in New York with the Knicks. Bill can't lose sight of this.
9. Carmelo is averaging 25.3 points for his entire career. Only 13 players averaged at least 25 points, and only 10 have a higher average than Melo: Jordan (30.1), Wilt (30.1), LeBron (27.5), Durant (27.4), Elgin (27.4), West (27.0), Iverson (26.7), Pettit (26.4), Oscar (25.7) and Kobe (25.5). Yes, that’s a list with six Hall of Famers and four future Hall of Famers.
And most of these guys can be considered superstars too, which leads me to the dead horse I won't beat. Carmelo may not be a superstar, but he's got a lot going for him statistically that could lead a person in that direction. What he doesn't do is meet Bill's subjective criteria to be considered a superstar.
Then Bill compares Carmelo favorably to Dominique Wilkins, Paul Pierce, Adrian Dantley, and Bernard King. This, naturally, leads to a brief discussion of the Boston Celtics because Bernard King played well against the Celtics. This impresses Bill to no end.
Bernard doubled as the most frightening non-Jordan scorer I’ve ever seen in my life — he took the 1984 Celts to a Game 7 by himself, for God’s sake. My team threw Kevin McHale (the NBA’s best defender at the time) and Cedric Maxwell at him, with Bird helping and Robert Parish protecting the rim, and it just didn’t matter.
There is the brief discussion. This column wouldn't be complete without a small Celtics remembrance from the 1980's.
Carmelo? He’s 92 percent as frightening as 1984 Playoff Bernard was.
Not 91% or 93%, but 92% as frightening as 1984 Playoff Bernard was. These are very specific statistics based on whatever number comes out of Bill's brain at the time. You want facts? There's your facts.
14. You realize that Carmelo is better right now than he’s ever been, right?
• Years 1-2: 20.9 ppg, 5.9 rpg, 43-30-79%, 17.2 PER, 35.7 mpg, 28.8 usage, .094 WS/48
• Years 3-9: 25.9 ppg, 6.5 rpg, 46-33-81%, 21.4 PER, 36.3 mpg, 32.0 usage, .140 WS/48
• Years 10-11: 28.0 ppg, 7.5 rpg, 45-39-84%, 24.6 PER, 37.9 mpg, 33.9 usage, .177 WS/48
As his offensive workload has increased, he’s figured out how to become even MORE efficient by expanding his shooting range to 25 feet … only he’s never stopped getting to the free throw line, either.
But again, don't consider him a superstar. He couldn't even take the Knicks to the playoffs this year. You like how Bill talks out of both sides of his mouth a little here? He says Carmelo is great and goes to great lengths to prove it, but he also makes sure he has a mention in this column that maybe Carmelo should be moved down into the All-Star ranking of Bill's arbitrary rankings.
So what’s left? Can’t we downgrade him to All-Star and be done with it? Isn’t 11 years enough time to know — to truly, unequivocally know — whether it’s with television shows, music groups, girlfriends, quarterbacks or basketball players?
So Bill is sort of covered no matter how Carmelo's career pans outs. He has said perhaps Carmelo should be downgraded to All-Star level and then goes on and on about how great of a player Carmelo still is. All bases are covered.
And you know what else? Carmelo never received enough credit for playing efficiently as a hybrid small forward/stretch 4, especially last season,
This from the guy who asks the open-ended question of whether Carmelo isn't even an almost-but-not-quite superstar, but instead is just an All-Star.
Everyone bitched about his “ball-stopping” — something of which he’s definitely been guilty, from time to time, over the past few years — but when your coach is in a basketball coma and your entire offense has degenerated into “throw the ball to Melo and he’ll have to create a shot,” what do you expect? Every opponent went into every Knicks game saying, “As long as we don’t let Carmelo kill us, we’re winning tonight.” And he still threw up 28 a night and played the most efficient basketball of his career.
As I am prone to doing when reaching near the end of a Bill Simmons column, I have to ask, what was the point of this column? It's shockingly rambling, even for a Bill Simmons column, it doesn't appear to prove anything other than Carmelo Anthony is better than "we" think, and the basic premise (that Carmelo's potential will never be achieved because he chose to go back to New York rather than take a pay cut and go to Chicago) is only mentioned and never actually stated explicitly by Bill. So this column is rather indicative of Bill's worst rambling qualities.
If you think of him like a Hall of Fame wide receiver — say, Larry Fitzgerald — Carmelo’s career makes more sense.
No, it doesn't. It makes more sense to simply state Carmelo never reached his potential because he never played on a team that allowed him to achieve his potential, rather than start using an overcomplicated analogy that says this same thing, only with more work involved to reach the conclusion.
Fitz tossed up monster stats with Kurt Warner throwing to him. Once the likes of John Skelton and Kevin Kolb started passing through his life, he wasn’t throwing up monster stats anymore. But nobody ever stopped believing Fitz was great.
Fitzgerald had 954 yards with Carson Palmer throwing him the football last year. Does Fitzgerald require a Hall of Fame quarterback to reach his potential or something?
We made excuses for him that weren’t even excuses.
"We" didn't make any excuses for Fitzgerald. Stop using "we" to indicate what "you" believe.
Why didn’t we ever feel sorry for Carmelo? It’s simple — he placed himself in this situation.
Oh, so that's why "we" didn't feel bad for Carmelo. I was wondering why "we" didn't feel bad for him. In this case, I didn't feel bad for Carmelo because he could have left this summer and chose not to. That's a lot of money to give up though and Phil Jackson isn't a tough guy to put some faith in.
There’s a good chance he will play his entire career, then retire, without ever finding the right team. Unless the Knicks miraculously strike oil next summer, his own version of the 2011 Mavericks can’t happen.
Another reference to that 2011 Mavericks team led by Dirk, the same reference and comparison that Bill dislikes so much and has made so often.
There was an alternate universe here — Chicago, for less money, for a chance to become Olympic Melo for nine months per year. He would have been flanked by Joakim Noah, Derrick Rose, Jimmy Butler, Doug McDermott, Nikola Mirotic, Kirk Hinrich and a top-five coach (Tom Thibodeau). He would have found his 2011 Mavs.
The comparison to Dirk again...by the way, that Bulls team is better than the 2011 Mavericks. This is especially true if Derrick Rose comes back healthy.
Thirty years from now, long after he has retired and hopefully spent his more than $300 million nest egg wisely, Carmelo will be sitting on the porch of one of his nine houses, nursing a drink, staring out at an ocean and thinking about the unknown. Should he have picked Chicago? How much money is enough money? What’s the price of peace? What would it have been worth to know — to really, truly know? Was he good enough? Could he have gotten there? Did he have it in him?
Or he will be sitting there thinking about all of the money he made playing basketball professionally and that's nice to have? He can also look at his Olympic Gold medals and know he won an NCAA Championship for Jim Boeheim as well. There are some things he can hang his hat on outside of deep thoughts about the price of peace.
Instead, he’ll have to settle for people like me: the ones maintaining that he WAS good enough, only it’s an opinion and not a fact.
Right. Much of this column was based on an opinion (like how many superstars are in the NBA) that Bill masquerades as facts.
In A Bronx Tale, Sonny famously tells Calogero that “the saddest thing in life is wasted talent.” Well, what happens if you didn’t waste your talent, but it kind of got wasted anyway?
But Anthony did waste his talent according to Bill. Twice Anthony had the chance to join a contending team with a stronger roster and both times he set it up to where he didn't up choosing this path. So Anthony did waste his talent in a way, and Bill even states that in this column. Anyway, speaking of wasted talent, this is the end of another Bill Simmons rambling column.
Monday, June 16, 2014
2 comments The NBA Lottery Results Make Bill Plaschke a Sad Little Man
The NBA lottery results are in and the Los Angeles Lakers did not get the #1 overall draft pick, which was apparently completely expected in the mind of Bill Plaschke. Bill is frustrated, sad, insolent, indolent, lactose intolerant and regretful over the season the Lakers had that wasn't even rewarded with a top-3 draft pick. Those assholes in Cleveland got the #1 overall pick and they totally didn't deserve it like the Lakers deserved the #1 overall pick...or at least a top-3 pick. See, it's better for the NBA if the Lakers are good and that's why Bill is so angry and has become a sad little man. What's good for the Lakers is good for the NBA! If the Lakers win, the NBA wins. Can't the NBA see this? It's good for the NBA that one (multiple officials if you ask me) rigged Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals in favor of the Lakers. It's good for the NBA when superstars come to Los Angeles to play for the Lakers (but not the Clippers of course). It's so...well, this is just unbearable for Bill and he writes about his feelings on the subject in an article featuring his signature one sentence paragraphs.
The best and most appropriate reaction to the Lakers' luck Tuesday came from the Jerry Buss and Chick Hearn dolls sitting on James Worthy's desk.
Next paragraph!
Shaking, shaking, shaking their heads.
Whew, that was an exhausting sentence to write! Next paragraph!
EVEN THE BOBBLEHEAD DOLLS KNEW THE DRAFT LOTTERY WAS RIGGED AGAINST THE LAKERS BY NOT BEING RIGGED IN FAVOR OF THE LAKERS!
For their final act of the 2013-14 season, the Lakers tanked the lottery. More than a month after their final game, the Lakers managed one more loss.
The Lakers dropped one spot from #6 to #7. Let's keep it in perspective. The reason the Lakers were in the lottery is they have several injured, fairly expensive players who are in the mid-30's. The Lakers acquired a guy like Nash and combined with him Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol in the hopes it would lead to a championship. The Lakers team stayed pretty injured this year and I don't feel bad for them. Of course Lakers fans aren't used to a bad season, so the whining from sportswriters about the situation begins.
The team with the sixth-worst record in the NBA will somehow draft seventh
Not "somehow," but the Cavaliers moved into the lottery which meant other teams like the Lakers got pushed back in the lottery. There's no "somehow" involved. The Lakers falling back one pick (and let's be honest, it's not like the #6 spot is just a much, much better spot to be in) had a clear cause for why it occurred.
after those pingpong balls paddled the Lakers all over Times Square during a lottery drawing that felt like a contrived episode of "Survivor."
I'm not sure Bill understands how "Survivor" works. When I watched the show 12 years ago competitors voted each other off the island. Other NBA teams didn't vote for the Lakers to move back one pick, though if NBA teams could vote for other NBA teams to move back the Lakers would probably be a prime candidate to move back as far as possible. The Lakers would potentially be voted to move back into the second round.
The final three teams were represented by a tall NBA legend from Philadelphia, a young woman from Milwaukee in a treacherously short dress,
Okay perv, her dress wasn't that short. I'm won't post a picture here but Mallory Edens' picture was all over the Internet the day after the lottery. Her dress wasn't that short and I'm happy to see Bill Plaschke has Gregg Easterbrook Disease and takes time to check out 18 year old girls and comment on their attire. Not at all slightly creepy.
and a nerdy dude from Cleveland with a 1.7% chance of winning. Of course, the nerdy dude won.
(Bill Plaschke) "Nerds are taking over the world! This has to end! What a bunch of losers."
(Bill then goes to the local YMCA swimming pool to check out the high school girls in their bathing suits)
For the third time in four years, the Cavaliers will have the top pick, their general manager, David Griffin, clapping in glee while Julius Erving rolled his eyes in disgust and Mallory Edens — a Bucks co-owner's daughter and the newest Internet sensation — simply blushed.
Because a team that lost 26 games in a row or the team that just gave a huge contract extension to Larry Sanders, those are the teams that really deserve the #1 overall pick. Few teams who have a serious shot at the #1 overall pick "deserve" that pick. They have all probably made a few bad moves to get them where they are.
The Cavaliers didn't deserve it.
The Lakers didn't deserve the #1 overall pick simply because they had one bad season. If the #1 overall pick went to the team that "deserved" it because they ran their team well it would (a) ruin the point of the NBA draft lottery or (b) go to the Spurs/Thunder/Pacers/Heat/Grizzlies. I don't know about Bill but I'm not sure I'd like to see Joel Embiid added to the roster of the Heat or Spurs. I know it would be fun to see Andrew Wiggins and Kevin Durant play together, but that sort of ruins the point of the NBA draft lottery.
There should be a rule against giving another No. 1 overall pick to a team that spent last year's No. 1 overall pick on somebody who averaged two baskets per game. Does even Anthony Bennett remember Anthony Bennett?
Bennett had injuries last year and he was coming off one year of college. I think it's a bit early to give up on him.
The Lakers deserved better. They at least deserved to pick where they had finished.
The Lakers don't deserve anything. In fact, if we are going to start talking about what teams "deserve" then the Celtics and Lakers don't even deserve a top-10 draft pick. The Celtics traded away their best players in an effort not to tank necessarily, but knew it would result in them just not being very good, while the Lakers had one bad season because they built the team around a 35-year old shooting guard coming off a major foot injury (and gave him a $48.5 million extension) and a 39-year old point guard who has had bad back issues (though he was injured this year due to leg issues) for going on almost a decade now. If there is karma in the world, then the Lakers would have gotten pushed back out of the lottery, as would the Celtics. So don't tell me what the Lakers "deserve" after struggling for one season.
They should have been rewarded for their injuries, their incompetence, their dysfunction, and the fact that they somehow talked Mike D'Antoni into leaving town.
I don't know if this is sarcasm or not. It's hard to tell. But no, the Lakers should not have been rewarded for all of these things.
Heck, if the league was smart, it would have helped the Lakers move into the top three. Considering a new rumored NBA scheme surfaces about every month, why couldn't one have popped up now?
Again, I don't know if this is sarcasm or not. This does seem like the type of inane crap that Bill Plaschke would write in an effort to make it seem like the Lakers are more important than other NBA teams or the NBA needs the Lakers to be successful in order to thrive.
Couldn't they have drugged up a couple of pingpong balls? Maybe shuffled a few cards on the way to the podium?
Maybe the NBA did drug up a couple of ping-pong balls or shuffle the cards to give the #1 overall pick to the Cleveland Cavaliers. I guess Bill didn't think about that, because why else would a team other than the Lakers be favored by the NBA?
The league was happy to block a trade that kept Chris Paul from the Lakers — couldn't it have finally paid for David Stern's misstep and evened things up?
While I agree David Stern was an asshole, and well, his typical self by blocking this trade, the NBA doesn't have to "even things up" by giving the Lakers the #1 overall pick or a top-3 pick. That's not how it works. If the whining is this bad after one year where the Lakers don't make the playoffs, I can't imagine how bad it would be if the Lakers didn't make the playoffs for 2-3 years in a row.
The NBA needs the Lakers now like it needed the Knicks back then.
No, it doesn't. The NBA needs to let the lottery play out however the ping-pong balls fly and not worry about whether a franchise like the Knicks, Lakers or Celtics are successful in a given season or not. The Lakers are not the center of the universe and they weren't wronged because they got the #7 pick and not the #6 pick. I know the Lakers "earned" the #6 pick by being terrible this season and Bill believes they should rightfully be given this pick, but sometimes the ping-pong balls don't fall a team's way. I know it's rare that something doesn't fall the Lakers way, but it does happen. Somehow I think the team will survive and still excel in the near future.
The NBA needs the Lakers' glamour and drama. The NBA needs Kobe Bryant, in his final run, to be relevant again.
Bill needs to write paragraphs that are longer than two sentences.
Saddled with the turmoils of dueling owners and an aging superstar, the Lakers desperately need a reason to believe in themselves next season.
Oh no! After failing to make the playoffs for the fifth time since the 1957-1958 season (think about that) the Lakers don't believe in themselves anymore! What a tragedy of epic proportions! Why wouldn't the NBA give the Lakers a reason to believe when they are so down on their luck of late? Sadder events have never transpired before.
One of the first three draft picks would have made that happen. The seventh pick does not.
This is pure bullshit. Kobe Bryant was drafted 13th overall, Nash was drafted 15th overall, and there are other instances of teams finding great players outside of the first three draft picks. It's not the NBA's job to make the Lakers believe in themselves, but if the Lakers do a good job of scouting they can possibly find a great player with the #7 pick.
Joel Embiid, Jabari Parker, Andrew Wiggins, and Dante Exum are guys who could have immediately made the sort of impact that would make the Lakers fun again.
I would guess Bill Plaschke knows very little about these players, but Exum and Embiid may not make the immediate impact that Plaschke is wanting to see. Players that will be available potentially at the #7 spot like Marcus Smart, Gary Harris, Noah Vonleh, or Julius Randle could have an immediate impact on the Lakers team equal to what Embiid or Exum could provide. In terms of long-term impact Plaschke has a point, but he's talking in the short-term.
None of them is expected to be around at No. 7, which is a location currently occupied on draft boards by guys like Julius Randle, Aaron Gordon and Marcus Smart, none of whom will immediately make a well-coiffed courtside head spin.
Clearly Bill Plaschke has never seen Aaron Gordon play. In fact, I would say of all the players in this NBA Draft Aaron Gordon is the most likely to make a person's head spin with his athleticism and some of the dunks he can pull off. I guess I have to remember Bill is coming from a place of ignorance and is simply mindlessly bitching because the Lakers didn't get their way.
Heck, the Lakers could have even traded one of the top three picks to Minnesota for Kevin Love, assuming the Timberwolves realize they need to get something for him now before he walks next summer.
Oh, so Bill doesn't really want to draft a player who makes an immediate impact, but he wants the Lakers to shortcut the rebuilding effort and use other NBA teams as their farm system as they have done in the past? It's not about drafting and developing good players, but about using draft picks to trade for players who have already developed into good NBA players.
But there's no way anybody like Kevin Love is traded for something like a seventh pick.
Well, not in the position the Lakers are in. If the Lakers had any type of assets on their roster they could package with the #7 pick then a deal could possibly get done, but the reason the Lakers don't have assets to trade on their roster is the same reason they struggled this year and the same reason they don't "deserve" a top-3 draft pick. They are in win-now mode and sometimes that can backfire when injuries occur. A team that went for it all by paying 2-3 players large salaries doesn't necessarily "deserve" a top-3 draft pick because the plan didn't work for one season.
If they were convinced they could acquire a cornerstone player, they would have probably searched for a young and potentially cornerstone coach who could grow with the new star.
See what you have done, NBA! Now you have messed up the Lakers coaching search by not rigging the lottery in the Lakers favor. They were totally going to search for a young head coach rather than a head coach with previous coaching experience, you know, like they have never really done over the last 20 years.
But now, one wonders if they won't just grab a calm veteran like George Karl to steer them through the final years of Bryant before pushing reset again to accommodate whoever will lead them into the next era.
That would be terrible if the Lakers had to hire a coach with a 59.9% career winning percentage. However would the Lakers recover from making such a disastrous hire? Where's Mike Brown when you need him?
Granted, the Lakers had only a 6.3% chance of winning the lottery, and a 31% chance of dropping into the seventh spot, so Tuesday's fall — precipitated by Cleveland's leap — wasn't that unexpected.
But the fall was totally unfair and just proof the NBA rigs the lottery in favor of teams like the Cavaliers when they should be rigging the lottery in favor of unloved NBA teams like the Celtics or Lakers.
But, still, one could dream, and the Lakers sent their last No. 1 overall pick, Worthy, to New York with bobbleheads of past Lakers greats — Buss and Chick— in pursuit of that dream.
It was over 30 years ago that the Lakers had the #1 overall pick. Granted, this has more to do with the Lakers winning eight NBA Titles and missed the playoffs only three times since 1982, but it was a dream of Bill Plaschke's that the Lakers could struggle for one year and then be granted a top-3 pick to immediately revitalize the team. Alas, life is just not fair and the Lakers only have the #7 pick.
Big Game James was big-time crushed, beginning with the pre-lottery interviews, when ESPN's Heather Cox pointedly asked Worthy — and only Worthy — how it felt to watch his team stink all season.
"It was difficult … we had a plethora of injuries … we could never catch up," said Worthy.
What a struggle! I'm sure the plethora of injuries caused Worthy to cry into his over-sized goggles and wonder why life just couldn't be more fair and those teams that deserve a top-3 pick aren't granted one?
They finished sixth. They will pick seventh. The chase continues.
The 2014-2015 season is obviously over before it even began. Sadness accrues. Bill Plaschke may not be able to carry on, though I'm sure he'll have plenty of energy to write 15-20 columns during the next NBA season bashing the Lakers.
The best and most appropriate reaction to the Lakers' luck Tuesday came from the Jerry Buss and Chick Hearn dolls sitting on James Worthy's desk.
Next paragraph!
Shaking, shaking, shaking their heads.
Whew, that was an exhausting sentence to write! Next paragraph!
EVEN THE BOBBLEHEAD DOLLS KNEW THE DRAFT LOTTERY WAS RIGGED AGAINST THE LAKERS BY NOT BEING RIGGED IN FAVOR OF THE LAKERS!
For their final act of the 2013-14 season, the Lakers tanked the lottery. More than a month after their final game, the Lakers managed one more loss.
The Lakers dropped one spot from #6 to #7. Let's keep it in perspective. The reason the Lakers were in the lottery is they have several injured, fairly expensive players who are in the mid-30's. The Lakers acquired a guy like Nash and combined with him Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol in the hopes it would lead to a championship. The Lakers team stayed pretty injured this year and I don't feel bad for them. Of course Lakers fans aren't used to a bad season, so the whining from sportswriters about the situation begins.
The team with the sixth-worst record in the NBA will somehow draft seventh
Not "somehow," but the Cavaliers moved into the lottery which meant other teams like the Lakers got pushed back in the lottery. There's no "somehow" involved. The Lakers falling back one pick (and let's be honest, it's not like the #6 spot is just a much, much better spot to be in) had a clear cause for why it occurred.
after those pingpong balls paddled the Lakers all over Times Square during a lottery drawing that felt like a contrived episode of "Survivor."
I'm not sure Bill understands how "Survivor" works. When I watched the show 12 years ago competitors voted each other off the island. Other NBA teams didn't vote for the Lakers to move back one pick, though if NBA teams could vote for other NBA teams to move back the Lakers would probably be a prime candidate to move back as far as possible. The Lakers would potentially be voted to move back into the second round.
The final three teams were represented by a tall NBA legend from Philadelphia, a young woman from Milwaukee in a treacherously short dress,
Okay perv, her dress wasn't that short. I'm won't post a picture here but Mallory Edens' picture was all over the Internet the day after the lottery. Her dress wasn't that short and I'm happy to see Bill Plaschke has Gregg Easterbrook Disease and takes time to check out 18 year old girls and comment on their attire. Not at all slightly creepy.
and a nerdy dude from Cleveland with a 1.7% chance of winning. Of course, the nerdy dude won.
(Bill Plaschke) "Nerds are taking over the world! This has to end! What a bunch of losers."
(Bill then goes to the local YMCA swimming pool to check out the high school girls in their bathing suits)
For the third time in four years, the Cavaliers will have the top pick, their general manager, David Griffin, clapping in glee while Julius Erving rolled his eyes in disgust and Mallory Edens — a Bucks co-owner's daughter and the newest Internet sensation — simply blushed.
Because a team that lost 26 games in a row or the team that just gave a huge contract extension to Larry Sanders, those are the teams that really deserve the #1 overall pick. Few teams who have a serious shot at the #1 overall pick "deserve" that pick. They have all probably made a few bad moves to get them where they are.
The Cavaliers didn't deserve it.
The Lakers didn't deserve the #1 overall pick simply because they had one bad season. If the #1 overall pick went to the team that "deserved" it because they ran their team well it would (a) ruin the point of the NBA draft lottery or (b) go to the Spurs/Thunder/Pacers/Heat/Grizzlies. I don't know about Bill but I'm not sure I'd like to see Joel Embiid added to the roster of the Heat or Spurs. I know it would be fun to see Andrew Wiggins and Kevin Durant play together, but that sort of ruins the point of the NBA draft lottery.
There should be a rule against giving another No. 1 overall pick to a team that spent last year's No. 1 overall pick on somebody who averaged two baskets per game. Does even Anthony Bennett remember Anthony Bennett?
Bennett had injuries last year and he was coming off one year of college. I think it's a bit early to give up on him.
The Lakers deserved better. They at least deserved to pick where they had finished.
The Lakers don't deserve anything. In fact, if we are going to start talking about what teams "deserve" then the Celtics and Lakers don't even deserve a top-10 draft pick. The Celtics traded away their best players in an effort not to tank necessarily, but knew it would result in them just not being very good, while the Lakers had one bad season because they built the team around a 35-year old shooting guard coming off a major foot injury (and gave him a $48.5 million extension) and a 39-year old point guard who has had bad back issues (though he was injured this year due to leg issues) for going on almost a decade now. If there is karma in the world, then the Lakers would have gotten pushed back out of the lottery, as would the Celtics. So don't tell me what the Lakers "deserve" after struggling for one season.
They should have been rewarded for their injuries, their incompetence, their dysfunction, and the fact that they somehow talked Mike D'Antoni into leaving town.
I don't know if this is sarcasm or not. It's hard to tell. But no, the Lakers should not have been rewarded for all of these things.
Heck, if the league was smart, it would have helped the Lakers move into the top three. Considering a new rumored NBA scheme surfaces about every month, why couldn't one have popped up now?
Again, I don't know if this is sarcasm or not. This does seem like the type of inane crap that Bill Plaschke would write in an effort to make it seem like the Lakers are more important than other NBA teams or the NBA needs the Lakers to be successful in order to thrive.
Couldn't they have drugged up a couple of pingpong balls? Maybe shuffled a few cards on the way to the podium?
Maybe the NBA did drug up a couple of ping-pong balls or shuffle the cards to give the #1 overall pick to the Cleveland Cavaliers. I guess Bill didn't think about that, because why else would a team other than the Lakers be favored by the NBA?
The league was happy to block a trade that kept Chris Paul from the Lakers — couldn't it have finally paid for David Stern's misstep and evened things up?
While I agree David Stern was an asshole, and well, his typical self by blocking this trade, the NBA doesn't have to "even things up" by giving the Lakers the #1 overall pick or a top-3 pick. That's not how it works. If the whining is this bad after one year where the Lakers don't make the playoffs, I can't imagine how bad it would be if the Lakers didn't make the playoffs for 2-3 years in a row.
The NBA needs the Lakers now like it needed the Knicks back then.
No, it doesn't. The NBA needs to let the lottery play out however the ping-pong balls fly and not worry about whether a franchise like the Knicks, Lakers or Celtics are successful in a given season or not. The Lakers are not the center of the universe and they weren't wronged because they got the #7 pick and not the #6 pick. I know the Lakers "earned" the #6 pick by being terrible this season and Bill believes they should rightfully be given this pick, but sometimes the ping-pong balls don't fall a team's way. I know it's rare that something doesn't fall the Lakers way, but it does happen. Somehow I think the team will survive and still excel in the near future.
The NBA needs the Lakers' glamour and drama. The NBA needs Kobe Bryant, in his final run, to be relevant again.
Bill needs to write paragraphs that are longer than two sentences.
Saddled with the turmoils of dueling owners and an aging superstar, the Lakers desperately need a reason to believe in themselves next season.
Oh no! After failing to make the playoffs for the fifth time since the 1957-1958 season (think about that) the Lakers don't believe in themselves anymore! What a tragedy of epic proportions! Why wouldn't the NBA give the Lakers a reason to believe when they are so down on their luck of late? Sadder events have never transpired before.
One of the first three draft picks would have made that happen. The seventh pick does not.
This is pure bullshit. Kobe Bryant was drafted 13th overall, Nash was drafted 15th overall, and there are other instances of teams finding great players outside of the first three draft picks. It's not the NBA's job to make the Lakers believe in themselves, but if the Lakers do a good job of scouting they can possibly find a great player with the #7 pick.
Joel Embiid, Jabari Parker, Andrew Wiggins, and Dante Exum are guys who could have immediately made the sort of impact that would make the Lakers fun again.
I would guess Bill Plaschke knows very little about these players, but Exum and Embiid may not make the immediate impact that Plaschke is wanting to see. Players that will be available potentially at the #7 spot like Marcus Smart, Gary Harris, Noah Vonleh, or Julius Randle could have an immediate impact on the Lakers team equal to what Embiid or Exum could provide. In terms of long-term impact Plaschke has a point, but he's talking in the short-term.
None of them is expected to be around at No. 7, which is a location currently occupied on draft boards by guys like Julius Randle, Aaron Gordon and Marcus Smart, none of whom will immediately make a well-coiffed courtside head spin.
Clearly Bill Plaschke has never seen Aaron Gordon play. In fact, I would say of all the players in this NBA Draft Aaron Gordon is the most likely to make a person's head spin with his athleticism and some of the dunks he can pull off. I guess I have to remember Bill is coming from a place of ignorance and is simply mindlessly bitching because the Lakers didn't get their way.
Heck, the Lakers could have even traded one of the top three picks to Minnesota for Kevin Love, assuming the Timberwolves realize they need to get something for him now before he walks next summer.
Oh, so Bill doesn't really want to draft a player who makes an immediate impact, but he wants the Lakers to shortcut the rebuilding effort and use other NBA teams as their farm system as they have done in the past? It's not about drafting and developing good players, but about using draft picks to trade for players who have already developed into good NBA players.
But there's no way anybody like Kevin Love is traded for something like a seventh pick.
Well, not in the position the Lakers are in. If the Lakers had any type of assets on their roster they could package with the #7 pick then a deal could possibly get done, but the reason the Lakers don't have assets to trade on their roster is the same reason they struggled this year and the same reason they don't "deserve" a top-3 draft pick. They are in win-now mode and sometimes that can backfire when injuries occur. A team that went for it all by paying 2-3 players large salaries doesn't necessarily "deserve" a top-3 draft pick because the plan didn't work for one season.
If they were convinced they could acquire a cornerstone player, they would have probably searched for a young and potentially cornerstone coach who could grow with the new star.
See what you have done, NBA! Now you have messed up the Lakers coaching search by not rigging the lottery in the Lakers favor. They were totally going to search for a young head coach rather than a head coach with previous coaching experience, you know, like they have never really done over the last 20 years.
But now, one wonders if they won't just grab a calm veteran like George Karl to steer them through the final years of Bryant before pushing reset again to accommodate whoever will lead them into the next era.
That would be terrible if the Lakers had to hire a coach with a 59.9% career winning percentage. However would the Lakers recover from making such a disastrous hire? Where's Mike Brown when you need him?
Granted, the Lakers had only a 6.3% chance of winning the lottery, and a 31% chance of dropping into the seventh spot, so Tuesday's fall — precipitated by Cleveland's leap — wasn't that unexpected.
But the fall was totally unfair and just proof the NBA rigs the lottery in favor of teams like the Cavaliers when they should be rigging the lottery in favor of unloved NBA teams like the Celtics or Lakers.
But, still, one could dream, and the Lakers sent their last No. 1 overall pick, Worthy, to New York with bobbleheads of past Lakers greats — Buss and Chick— in pursuit of that dream.
It was over 30 years ago that the Lakers had the #1 overall pick. Granted, this has more to do with the Lakers winning eight NBA Titles and missed the playoffs only three times since 1982, but it was a dream of Bill Plaschke's that the Lakers could struggle for one year and then be granted a top-3 pick to immediately revitalize the team. Alas, life is just not fair and the Lakers only have the #7 pick.
Big Game James was big-time crushed, beginning with the pre-lottery interviews, when ESPN's Heather Cox pointedly asked Worthy — and only Worthy — how it felt to watch his team stink all season.
"It was difficult … we had a plethora of injuries … we could never catch up," said Worthy.
What a struggle! I'm sure the plethora of injuries caused Worthy to cry into his over-sized goggles and wonder why life just couldn't be more fair and those teams that deserve a top-3 pick aren't granted one?
They finished sixth. They will pick seventh. The chase continues.
The 2014-2015 season is obviously over before it even began. Sadness accrues. Bill Plaschke may not be able to carry on, though I'm sure he'll have plenty of energy to write 15-20 columns during the next NBA season bashing the Lakers.
Monday, February 24, 2014
4 comments Bill Simmons Writes about Steve Nash's Comeback Attempt, But Has to Make it Just a Little Bit About Himself Out of Habit
Bill Simmons and Grantland has done a pretty good series about Steve Nash and his attempts to come back from injury to play again in the NBA for the Lakers. The video is very well done and it's not hard to find yourself cheering for Nash to come back and be productive. Bill Simmons provides an introduction to the video in written form, and rather than give a brief introduction and let the video speak for itself, Bill writes 2600 words and just has to make it a little bit about himself. I'm not sure Bill understands how to write a column or even an introduction to a video without making it just a little bit about himself. He's under the impression everything is about him anyway. So watch the video, it's good, here's the overly-long introduction, which isn't so good.
2014: $9,300,500
2015: $9,701,000
Steve Nash wears no. 10 for the Lakers, but it’s really 9.3. Next season, that turns into 9.7. Those are the numbers Lakers fans see. They see a walking cap figure.
You already know what I'm going to write here. Bill is speaking for Lakers fans, they only see Nash as a commodity because fans are only capable of viewing athletes in that way, blah, blah, blah...don't try to think you speak for the fans. Bill isn't going to stop doing this of course.
You can’t blame them for feeling that way.
I don't know if Lakers fans see it exactly this way, Nash as a walking cap figure, but they could see him as a guy who is expensive and isn't playing right now, yet a player who provides a lot of value if/when he makes it back to be productive.
Adam Silver once told me his league had evolved into a 10-month sport: from preseason (October) all the way through free agency and summer league (end of July).
This is your reminder that Bill Simmons has talked to Adam Silver before.
It’s a nonstop frenzy of mock drafts, calculated leaks, fake trades, unsubstantiated rumors, misleading tweets and hopeful executives knocking on front doors at 12:01 a.m., with everything feeding off the collective sophistication of the fans.
Not that Bill is off topic or anything right now, but Steve Nash's attempted comeback has very little to do with the sophistication of the fans or how long the NBA season really lasts. But again, Bill has talked to Adam Silver. This is important to know.
Believe me, we didn’t always inhale summer that way.
Yes I know, I wasn't born just a few years ago and have memory recall that goes back further than the year 2000. For some reason, Bill feels the need to educate his readers on what the NBA used to be like, as if his readers are mouth-breathing morons who aren't capable of understanding the sophistication of the game without him spoon-feeding it to his readers. It's ironic, given that Bill calls the fans collectively sophisticated yet seems to want his readers to "believe me" the game wasn't always a nonstop frenzy. The collective sophistication of the fans must stop when it comes to remembering what the NBA was like 10-15 years ago.
Right after ESPN.com hired me in 2001, I wrote a column handing out Boogie Nights quotes as “awards” for the NBA’s best and worst offseason signings. I didn’t have a feel for ESPN’s readers yet.
Will this piece go over people’s heads? Is there too much salary stuff in here? Do people care? Is this too nerdy? How many readers actually give a crap?
Thirteen years later, that piece reads as if I deliberately dumbed it down.
So to summarize Steve Nash's attempted comeback attempt so far:
1. The NBA is a 10-month sport now, because Adam Silver told Bill this.
2. Bill wants us to know it wasn't always that way.
3. Here is a link to a column that Bill wrote and here are Bill's thoughts at the time about the column.
4. Bill didn't think his fans were that smart and dumbed the article down.
It certainly appears so far that Steve Nash's comeback attempt is mostly about Bill Simmons and his thoughts 13 years ago about the NBA. I'm surprised Nash even got camera time in the accompanying video.
I don’t remember cap figures mattering for me until 1994, when I came to the horrifying realization that I understood the cap better than my beloved Celtics did.
"I, I, I, me, me, me. Let's talk about my favorite NBA team and how I'm smarter than they were in 1994. Me, me, me, I, I, I."
As if Bill Simmons couldn't write an introduction to a Steve Nash comeback video, that's right it's not even supposed to be an entire column but an introduction to a video about an NBA player's comeback attempt, without talking about the Boston Celtics. There's absolutely no reason for Bill to talk about one of his old columns, there's absolutely no reason to talk about the Celtics, and there is no absolutely no reason to talk about whether Bill was smarter than the Celtics front office in 1994. Yet, Bill can't write anything without either (a) making it about him in some way or (b) shoehorning in a brief discussion about his favorite teams. The world revolves around Bill and his past/present thoughts. Look no further than this introduction accompanying a video about a non-Celtics player comeback efforts to see this as a true.
That summer, we were already saddled with Sherman Douglas’s never-ending contract,
"We" huh? I didn't realize Bill played for the Celtics team in 1994.
(Checks Celtics 1994-1995 roster and doesn't see Bill on the roster)
Xavier McDaniel’s expiring toilet-clogger and two more years of the late Reggie Lewis’s expensive salary.
Again, if you can find the correlation between Steve Nash preparing a comeback attempt and the cap situation of the 1994 Celtics then you are a better person than me. You also probably are a big, big Bill Simmons fan.
Why did Reggie stay on Boston’s cap after he tragically passed away in 1993? Two words: David Stern. One of many reasons I didn’t write a “Farewell, David” column.
You screwed over the Celtics, David Stern! Bill Simmons never forgets and this is one more reason Celtics fans are just so tortured and downtrodden. The team isn't on pace to make the NBA Playoffs this year. Has an NBA team never not made the playoffs in such tortured fashion? If Bill wrote columns still then he would write 10,000 words about how the Celtics 13-14 season is the most tortured season of any non-playoff team ever.
That didn’t stop our bumbling general manager, M.L. Carr, from splurging close to $40 million on Dee Brown, Pervis Ellison and an aging Dominique Wilkins. Suddenly 80 percent of our cap was earmarked for two washed-up stars, a fat point guard, a guard without a position, a center who never played and someone who wasn’t alive. We had no way to improve — no real assets, no future stars, nothing. We were trapped under .500 for years.
I can't imagine how Bill survived this period. Most likely he just did what he has done with the Bruins and Red Sox when those two teams haven't been very good. He made an excuse about how he's a "widow" and then stated he didn't like these teams because "they weren't very fun to watch." What this really means is "I only pay attention to my favorite teams if they are winning games."
To nobody’s surprise, the ’95 Celtics lost 47 games before getting bounced by Orlando in Round 1.
I'm sorry, Round 1 of what? Round 1 of the NBA Non-Playoff Teams Playoffs? That's right, the season that Bill is complaining about the Celtics made the playoffs in a weak Eastern Conference. So there were six teams in the Eastern Conference who were worse than the Celtics. Granted, the Celtics were bad for a period of time after this season, but the season Bill is complaining about the Celtics made the playoffs.
I stopped for gas, bought a Sunday Globe and flipped to the sports section. Unbelievably, improbably, incredibly, Wilkins was reportedly ditching Boston to play in Greece. And I’m in the middle of nowhere, holding a gasoline nozzle with one hand and the newspaper with the other, and I’m yelling, “YES! YES! YES!!!!! CAP SPACE!!!!!”
This is a true story. I believe it. Hey, remember when this introduction was about Steve Nash's retirement? Well, it's not really. This introduction to a video about Steve Nash is really about Bill Simmons' need to bitch about a Celtics team from 20 years ago. Not that Bill makes everything about him, because he would never do that.
Just a few weeks later, M.L. squandered that miracle by gift-wrapping Dana Barros $20.8 million over six stupefying years. Overpaying a 5-foot-9 point guard when we already had Douglas, Brown AND David Wesley?
M.L. eventually solved that glut by dealing Fat Sherm for Todd Day, a.k.a. The Least Likable Celtic of All Time. Not even one of M.L.’s five worst moves.
So Bill has bitched that Sherman Douglas was on the Celtics team and now he is bitching that Douglas got traded. Also, Todd Day was better than Sherman Douglas, no matter whether Bill found him likable or not. Likable doesn't have anything to do with it. But hey...Steve Nash...retirement...anyone?
And what about M.L. naming himself coach as well? Since the Internet hadn’t taken shape yet, I couldn’t vent about Bizarro Red Auerbach to anyone other than my father and my friends. I didn’t have a column or a podcast, I didn’t have a message board … shit, I didn’t have email. I wanted to climb Mount Washington, Balboa-style, stand at the top and scream, “M.L. CARR IS RUINING MY TEAM!!!!”
Bill was tortured that he didn't even have a forum to tell everyone how tortured he was. This is the worst thing that can happen. Bill was tortured by not being able to convey how tortured he had become.
So that’s when I started caring about cap figures.
I routinely criticize Bill for not just being able to say something. He has to describe how he feels rather than just stating the feeling he has. Bill tends to do this a lot when he shoehorns in a pop culture reference to state how something made him feel rather than just saying how he felt. The previous paragraphs are a cousin to this trend. Rather than just stating, "I paid attention to the salary cap during the 1994-1995 season when the Celtics made dumb moves and M.L. Carr screwed up the team's cap by signing Dana Barros," Bill has to go into an overly-long story and bring the focus back onto him and what he wanted to say. Bill Simmons doesn't know how to not make something about him.
I look at Gerald Wallace and think, $30.3 million through 2016. Knicks fans look at Amar’e Stoudemire and think, Off the cap summer after next. Phoenix fans see Emeka Okafor and think, $14.5 million, expiring, what can we get for him? Pistons fans look at Josh Smith and think, I have 54 million more reasons to handcuff Joe Dumars to a radiator in my basement.
And Lakers fans look at Steve Nash and think, 9.3 this year, 9.7 next year.
Actually, when comparing Nash's cap figure to Okafor, Wallace Stoudemire, and Josh Smith it doesn't seem as intimidating. Nash is owed $19 million over the next two seasons and if he is able to come back healthy then he could be worth this money. I can't read the minds of an entire fan base, so I'm sure because Bill sees Gerald Wallace as nothing but a cap figure then Lakers fans see Steve Nash as only a cap figure. After all, Bill speaks for fans everywhere.
It’s no different from how I thought of ’Nique at that Vermont gas station — when I didn’t care about his 25,389 career points or his dunking-in-traffic legacy. I only cared that ’Nique was in the way. And that’s how Lakers fans feel about Nash.
This might be true, but it's always dangerous to assume that your thoughts are the same thoughts shared by others. Somehow Bill has gotten away with doing this for almost 15 years now.
It’s a cruel finish for such a wonderful player. I never saw Cousy and Oscar, obviously. I only caught the tail end of Frazier and the second (and inferior) incarnation of Tiny. I caught everything Magic and everything Isiah; they’re 1-2 on the “Best Point Guards I Ever Watched” list.
"I, I, I, me, me, me."
Nash peaked on those “Seven Seconds or Less” Suns teams, when Phoenix built him a high-powered Formula One racing car — with Stoudemire, Shawn Marion and a rotating cast of 3-point bombers as the engine, and Mike D’Antoni as the lead mechanic — knowing that Nash and Nash alone could steer such a complicated vehicle.
Halfway through the column and finally there is a discussion about Steve Nash. We should feel lucky Bill mentioned Nash at all in his introduction to a video about Steve Nash. We could have gotten a season-by-season breakdown of the Celtics cap figures instead.
Maybe they never won a title, but Chris Connelly nailed it when he called them “critically acclaimed.” Not the worst legacy in the world.
Yet much like saying a player "Was the least likable" this ultimately means nothing. The Suns didn't even make an NBA Finals. They were fun to watch, which I'm pretty sure isn't Steve Nash's ultimate career goal that he wants to achieve.
When he battled nerve damage in his back last November, rumors stupidly swirled that Nash might retire. You know, because it’s so easy to walk away from 10 million bucks.
Bill knows Steve Nash, as he will make quite clear in the next paragraph so he probably really does know better than I do, but Nash has interests outside of basketball and he seems to be a very well-rounded individual. I can see him not playing again if his nerve damage was too much to handle and he wanted to focus on his other life aspirations. It's not easy to walk away from $10 million but Steve Nash isn't your typical athlete either.
Steve Nash? I thought he’d already arrived. I thought he was there. And then, one night … my phone rang.
It was him.
Oh, the drama!
Bill even tries to make Steve Nash's comeback attempt phone call about him in just a little way. And no, Bill still won't get to the point and has to relate his relationship with Steve Nash over the years before he gets to the point he discusses the first part of the Grantland "The Finish Line" video documentary.
I have known Steve Nash for nearly five years.
(Stands up and gives Bill an ovation while Bill jerks off to the sight of himself in the mirror)
We met by phone during the summer of 2009, when Nash needed a copilot for a potential book project. Teaming up for a modern-day version of Life on the Run or The Game absolutely intrigued me, especially after chatting with Nash and finding out how perceptive he was. For instance, Nash didn’t just play with Stoudemire.
I always love Bill's use of italics. It really emphasizes what he's trying to say.
This was a whole other level of thinking. I was doing backflips. This could have been, potentially, one of the great sports books.
Not that Bill has an ego or anything, but he could have helped write one of the great sports books.
Steve Nash would be allowing us behind the curtain.
Plus, Bill was writing the book, which automatically means it would be better than any other book that had ever been written.
Over the course of a few phone calls and emails, Nash smartly realized he could never publish the book he wanted to write. Not while he was still playing, anyway. He couldn’t be candid about teammates and coaches as he was leading them. Impossible.
Deep down, I knew this — that’s why I urged him to scribble out some thoughts while being as frank as possible. I promised I would never show anyone those emails. (And I won’t.)
What a good friend Bill is. The fact Bill needs to tell us he won't show anyone those emails tells me two things. (1) Bill really, really wants to show someone those emails so he can show the world how Steve Nash opened up to him and (2) he could just delete them and Nash would never have to worry about Bill showing someone these emails, but Bill is holding out to still write this book with Nash and that's why he has kept the emails he would never show anyone.
Nash became involved with one of my big projects, 30 for 30, codirecting our film about Canadian hero Terry Fox. We spent a night at Sundance eating dinner with an oversize group;
"Me, me, me, I, I, I, myself, myself, myself."
I realize Bill is giving his perspective on Steve Nash, but Bill has a unique way of making this introduction about him and his feelings as it pertains to Steve Nash. This is an introduction to a series of videos about Steve Nash's comeback, not the history of how Bill Simmons came to know Steve Nash. Yet, that's what the reader has gotten so far.
After Nash’s Fox film received universally positive reviews, we remained in touch and recorded a few podcasts, crossing paths by accident a couple more times. His move to Los Angeles opened the door for a belated collaboration. Well, for about three seconds. Almost immediately, Nash’s first Lakers season degenerated into a full-fledged soap opera — Starring Dwight! And Kobe! And Jimmy! And Phil! And Mike Brown as Mike! — right as Nash’s divorce trial became weekly TMZ fodder. I never felt right about following up.
A solid year passed. My phone rang one night.
Nash???
Now Bill is 75% through this introduction and he finally gets to the part where he explains why Steve Nash has agreed to do these series of videos for Grantland. We have had to suffer through the history of Bill's friendship with Steve Nash, the 1994-1995 Celtics salary cap situation, and Bill telling us how Lakers fans feel about Steve Nash's cap figure.
Did he have anything left … or did he just WANT to have something left? And how could he tell the difference?
He wouldn’t know for sure unless he killed himself to come back. And that’s what he had been doing, Steve Nash said. For weeks and weeks. He figured he could play quality basketball once a week. But in the NBA, you need to do that three or four times a week. That’s the subtle difference between being productive and being a scrub.
This is what the brief introduction to the first part of the video should have been, not Bill's feelings about the NBA's salary cap.
Now, imagine you’re me.
I'd rather not. It would cause me to hate myself.
You’re sitting home on some random night watching hoops when the phone rings. It’s one of the five or six best point guards who ever lived, a two-time MVP, one of the most entertaining players of the past 40 years. He’s talking candidly, telling you about his myriad problems, vowing that he isn’t done yet.
That makes you feel very special about yourself, doesn't it? And after all, aren't these series of videos chronicling Nash's comeback attempt about Bill and how it feels to talk to Steve Nash about his feelings?
Halfway through the phone call, I started to comprehend the stakes. We finally had a chance to pull off that Life on the Run/The Game idea, only in video form, and in real time. You read those books, as great as they are, while already knowing the ending. This time around, the ending would write itself. We could root for Nash as it happened.
It's a great idea with a self-involved introduction.
I took the other side, believing the Lakers would be foolish to use the stretch. Wasn’t Nash more valuable as an expiring deal, both as a potential trade piece and a 2015 cap hold before free-agent studs like Kevin Love become available? Then again, the Lakers have done a variety of silly things lately. Who knows? Nash and I batted around the various scenarios like we were Wilbon and Kornheiser. Only later did I realize how surreal it was to discuss Cap Figure Nash with Real Person Nash.
Bill and Steve are like super-besties now. And yet again, while in the middle of telling us how this video series came together Bill has to put the focus back on him and how it felt to be talking to Steve Nash. That's really what this introduction is about. It's about how Bill Simmons feels while talking to Steve Nash...well, and the 1994-1995 Celtics salary cap situation of course.
Regardless, I couldn’t believe how much I was pulling for him last week. Cap Figure Nash had morphed into Real Person Nash — the guy trying to save his career, his contract, his family and his inordinately special gift. I didn’t see 9.3 and 9.7 anymore. I saw only no. 10.
But Lakers fans still only saw 9.3 and 9.7. Bill is smarter than you and can read minds, so he knows this for sure.
Whether Lakers fans follow suit remains to be seen. The day of that Minnesota game, a buddy of mine who loves the Lakers stopped by Grantland’s office. He knew nothing about our Nash project.
By the way, this buddy of Bill's is not famous. It's easy to know this because if this buddy were famous then Bill would have name-dropped exactly who this famous buddy was.
As I started describing it, he hissed, “Oh God, I hope it’s a project convincing him to retire.” We showed him a rough cut. Within 10 minutes, he was begrudgingly admitting, “Now I’m rooting for him to come back.”
It's a really good video and it should be able to speak for itself without Bill Simmons making the video about him or leading up to the video by using 2600 words to tell us about his feelings when he talks to Steve Nash and how the Celtics giving Dana Barros a six year contract made him feel.
Welcome to The Finish Line.
The finish line would have gotten here a lot faster if Bill wasn't so enamored with himself that he had to make Steve Nash's comeback video about him.
2014: $9,300,500
2015: $9,701,000
Steve Nash wears no. 10 for the Lakers, but it’s really 9.3. Next season, that turns into 9.7. Those are the numbers Lakers fans see. They see a walking cap figure.
You already know what I'm going to write here. Bill is speaking for Lakers fans, they only see Nash as a commodity because fans are only capable of viewing athletes in that way, blah, blah, blah...don't try to think you speak for the fans. Bill isn't going to stop doing this of course.
You can’t blame them for feeling that way.
I don't know if Lakers fans see it exactly this way, Nash as a walking cap figure, but they could see him as a guy who is expensive and isn't playing right now, yet a player who provides a lot of value if/when he makes it back to be productive.
Adam Silver once told me his league had evolved into a 10-month sport: from preseason (October) all the way through free agency and summer league (end of July).
This is your reminder that Bill Simmons has talked to Adam Silver before.
It’s a nonstop frenzy of mock drafts, calculated leaks, fake trades, unsubstantiated rumors, misleading tweets and hopeful executives knocking on front doors at 12:01 a.m., with everything feeding off the collective sophistication of the fans.
Not that Bill is off topic or anything right now, but Steve Nash's attempted comeback has very little to do with the sophistication of the fans or how long the NBA season really lasts. But again, Bill has talked to Adam Silver. This is important to know.
Believe me, we didn’t always inhale summer that way.
Yes I know, I wasn't born just a few years ago and have memory recall that goes back further than the year 2000. For some reason, Bill feels the need to educate his readers on what the NBA used to be like, as if his readers are mouth-breathing morons who aren't capable of understanding the sophistication of the game without him spoon-feeding it to his readers. It's ironic, given that Bill calls the fans collectively sophisticated yet seems to want his readers to "believe me" the game wasn't always a nonstop frenzy. The collective sophistication of the fans must stop when it comes to remembering what the NBA was like 10-15 years ago.
Right after ESPN.com hired me in 2001, I wrote a column handing out Boogie Nights quotes as “awards” for the NBA’s best and worst offseason signings. I didn’t have a feel for ESPN’s readers yet.
Will this piece go over people’s heads? Is there too much salary stuff in here? Do people care? Is this too nerdy? How many readers actually give a crap?
Thirteen years later, that piece reads as if I deliberately dumbed it down.
So to summarize Steve Nash's attempted comeback attempt so far:
1. The NBA is a 10-month sport now, because Adam Silver told Bill this.
2. Bill wants us to know it wasn't always that way.
3. Here is a link to a column that Bill wrote and here are Bill's thoughts at the time about the column.
4. Bill didn't think his fans were that smart and dumbed the article down.
It certainly appears so far that Steve Nash's comeback attempt is mostly about Bill Simmons and his thoughts 13 years ago about the NBA. I'm surprised Nash even got camera time in the accompanying video.
I don’t remember cap figures mattering for me until 1994, when I came to the horrifying realization that I understood the cap better than my beloved Celtics did.
"I, I, I, me, me, me. Let's talk about my favorite NBA team and how I'm smarter than they were in 1994. Me, me, me, I, I, I."
As if Bill Simmons couldn't write an introduction to a Steve Nash comeback video, that's right it's not even supposed to be an entire column but an introduction to a video about an NBA player's comeback attempt, without talking about the Boston Celtics. There's absolutely no reason for Bill to talk about one of his old columns, there's absolutely no reason to talk about the Celtics, and there is no absolutely no reason to talk about whether Bill was smarter than the Celtics front office in 1994. Yet, Bill can't write anything without either (a) making it about him in some way or (b) shoehorning in a brief discussion about his favorite teams. The world revolves around Bill and his past/present thoughts. Look no further than this introduction accompanying a video about a non-Celtics player comeback efforts to see this as a true.
That summer, we were already saddled with Sherman Douglas’s never-ending contract,
"We" huh? I didn't realize Bill played for the Celtics team in 1994.
(Checks Celtics 1994-1995 roster and doesn't see Bill on the roster)
Xavier McDaniel’s expiring toilet-clogger and two more years of the late Reggie Lewis’s expensive salary.
Again, if you can find the correlation between Steve Nash preparing a comeback attempt and the cap situation of the 1994 Celtics then you are a better person than me. You also probably are a big, big Bill Simmons fan.
Why did Reggie stay on Boston’s cap after he tragically passed away in 1993? Two words: David Stern. One of many reasons I didn’t write a “Farewell, David” column.
You screwed over the Celtics, David Stern! Bill Simmons never forgets and this is one more reason Celtics fans are just so tortured and downtrodden. The team isn't on pace to make the NBA Playoffs this year. Has an NBA team never not made the playoffs in such tortured fashion? If Bill wrote columns still then he would write 10,000 words about how the Celtics 13-14 season is the most tortured season of any non-playoff team ever.
That didn’t stop our bumbling general manager, M.L. Carr, from splurging close to $40 million on Dee Brown, Pervis Ellison and an aging Dominique Wilkins. Suddenly 80 percent of our cap was earmarked for two washed-up stars, a fat point guard, a guard without a position, a center who never played and someone who wasn’t alive. We had no way to improve — no real assets, no future stars, nothing. We were trapped under .500 for years.
I can't imagine how Bill survived this period. Most likely he just did what he has done with the Bruins and Red Sox when those two teams haven't been very good. He made an excuse about how he's a "widow" and then stated he didn't like these teams because "they weren't very fun to watch." What this really means is "I only pay attention to my favorite teams if they are winning games."
To nobody’s surprise, the ’95 Celtics lost 47 games before getting bounced by Orlando in Round 1.
I'm sorry, Round 1 of what? Round 1 of the NBA Non-Playoff Teams Playoffs? That's right, the season that Bill is complaining about the Celtics made the playoffs in a weak Eastern Conference. So there were six teams in the Eastern Conference who were worse than the Celtics. Granted, the Celtics were bad for a period of time after this season, but the season Bill is complaining about the Celtics made the playoffs.
I stopped for gas, bought a Sunday Globe and flipped to the sports section. Unbelievably, improbably, incredibly, Wilkins was reportedly ditching Boston to play in Greece. And I’m in the middle of nowhere, holding a gasoline nozzle with one hand and the newspaper with the other, and I’m yelling, “YES! YES! YES!!!!! CAP SPACE!!!!!”
This is a true story. I believe it. Hey, remember when this introduction was about Steve Nash's retirement? Well, it's not really. This introduction to a video about Steve Nash is really about Bill Simmons' need to bitch about a Celtics team from 20 years ago. Not that Bill makes everything about him, because he would never do that.
Just a few weeks later, M.L. squandered that miracle by gift-wrapping Dana Barros $20.8 million over six stupefying years. Overpaying a 5-foot-9 point guard when we already had Douglas, Brown AND David Wesley?
M.L. eventually solved that glut by dealing Fat Sherm for Todd Day, a.k.a. The Least Likable Celtic of All Time. Not even one of M.L.’s five worst moves.
So Bill has bitched that Sherman Douglas was on the Celtics team and now he is bitching that Douglas got traded. Also, Todd Day was better than Sherman Douglas, no matter whether Bill found him likable or not. Likable doesn't have anything to do with it. But hey...Steve Nash...retirement...anyone?
And what about M.L. naming himself coach as well? Since the Internet hadn’t taken shape yet, I couldn’t vent about Bizarro Red Auerbach to anyone other than my father and my friends. I didn’t have a column or a podcast, I didn’t have a message board … shit, I didn’t have email. I wanted to climb Mount Washington, Balboa-style, stand at the top and scream, “M.L. CARR IS RUINING MY TEAM!!!!”
Bill was tortured that he didn't even have a forum to tell everyone how tortured he was. This is the worst thing that can happen. Bill was tortured by not being able to convey how tortured he had become.
So that’s when I started caring about cap figures.
I routinely criticize Bill for not just being able to say something. He has to describe how he feels rather than just stating the feeling he has. Bill tends to do this a lot when he shoehorns in a pop culture reference to state how something made him feel rather than just saying how he felt. The previous paragraphs are a cousin to this trend. Rather than just stating, "I paid attention to the salary cap during the 1994-1995 season when the Celtics made dumb moves and M.L. Carr screwed up the team's cap by signing Dana Barros," Bill has to go into an overly-long story and bring the focus back onto him and what he wanted to say. Bill Simmons doesn't know how to not make something about him.
I look at Gerald Wallace and think, $30.3 million through 2016. Knicks fans look at Amar’e Stoudemire and think, Off the cap summer after next. Phoenix fans see Emeka Okafor and think, $14.5 million, expiring, what can we get for him? Pistons fans look at Josh Smith and think, I have 54 million more reasons to handcuff Joe Dumars to a radiator in my basement.
And Lakers fans look at Steve Nash and think, 9.3 this year, 9.7 next year.
Actually, when comparing Nash's cap figure to Okafor, Wallace Stoudemire, and Josh Smith it doesn't seem as intimidating. Nash is owed $19 million over the next two seasons and if he is able to come back healthy then he could be worth this money. I can't read the minds of an entire fan base, so I'm sure because Bill sees Gerald Wallace as nothing but a cap figure then Lakers fans see Steve Nash as only a cap figure. After all, Bill speaks for fans everywhere.
It’s no different from how I thought of ’Nique at that Vermont gas station — when I didn’t care about his 25,389 career points or his dunking-in-traffic legacy. I only cared that ’Nique was in the way. And that’s how Lakers fans feel about Nash.
This might be true, but it's always dangerous to assume that your thoughts are the same thoughts shared by others. Somehow Bill has gotten away with doing this for almost 15 years now.
It’s a cruel finish for such a wonderful player. I never saw Cousy and Oscar, obviously. I only caught the tail end of Frazier and the second (and inferior) incarnation of Tiny. I caught everything Magic and everything Isiah; they’re 1-2 on the “Best Point Guards I Ever Watched” list.
"I, I, I, me, me, me."
Nash peaked on those “Seven Seconds or Less” Suns teams, when Phoenix built him a high-powered Formula One racing car — with Stoudemire, Shawn Marion and a rotating cast of 3-point bombers as the engine, and Mike D’Antoni as the lead mechanic — knowing that Nash and Nash alone could steer such a complicated vehicle.
Halfway through the column and finally there is a discussion about Steve Nash. We should feel lucky Bill mentioned Nash at all in his introduction to a video about Steve Nash. We could have gotten a season-by-season breakdown of the Celtics cap figures instead.
Maybe they never won a title, but Chris Connelly nailed it when he called them “critically acclaimed.” Not the worst legacy in the world.
Yet much like saying a player "Was the least likable" this ultimately means nothing. The Suns didn't even make an NBA Finals. They were fun to watch, which I'm pretty sure isn't Steve Nash's ultimate career goal that he wants to achieve.
When he battled nerve damage in his back last November, rumors stupidly swirled that Nash might retire. You know, because it’s so easy to walk away from 10 million bucks.
Bill knows Steve Nash, as he will make quite clear in the next paragraph so he probably really does know better than I do, but Nash has interests outside of basketball and he seems to be a very well-rounded individual. I can see him not playing again if his nerve damage was too much to handle and he wanted to focus on his other life aspirations. It's not easy to walk away from $10 million but Steve Nash isn't your typical athlete either.
Steve Nash? I thought he’d already arrived. I thought he was there. And then, one night … my phone rang.
It was him.
Oh, the drama!
Bill even tries to make Steve Nash's comeback attempt phone call about him in just a little way. And no, Bill still won't get to the point and has to relate his relationship with Steve Nash over the years before he gets to the point he discusses the first part of the Grantland "The Finish Line" video documentary.
I have known Steve Nash for nearly five years.
(Stands up and gives Bill an ovation while Bill jerks off to the sight of himself in the mirror)
We met by phone during the summer of 2009, when Nash needed a copilot for a potential book project. Teaming up for a modern-day version of Life on the Run or The Game absolutely intrigued me, especially after chatting with Nash and finding out how perceptive he was. For instance, Nash didn’t just play with Stoudemire.
I always love Bill's use of italics. It really emphasizes what he's trying to say.
This was a whole other level of thinking. I was doing backflips. This could have been, potentially, one of the great sports books.
Not that Bill has an ego or anything, but he could have helped write one of the great sports books.
Steve Nash would be allowing us behind the curtain.
Plus, Bill was writing the book, which automatically means it would be better than any other book that had ever been written.
Over the course of a few phone calls and emails, Nash smartly realized he could never publish the book he wanted to write. Not while he was still playing, anyway. He couldn’t be candid about teammates and coaches as he was leading them. Impossible.
Deep down, I knew this — that’s why I urged him to scribble out some thoughts while being as frank as possible. I promised I would never show anyone those emails. (And I won’t.)
What a good friend Bill is. The fact Bill needs to tell us he won't show anyone those emails tells me two things. (1) Bill really, really wants to show someone those emails so he can show the world how Steve Nash opened up to him and (2) he could just delete them and Nash would never have to worry about Bill showing someone these emails, but Bill is holding out to still write this book with Nash and that's why he has kept the emails he would never show anyone.
Nash became involved with one of my big projects, 30 for 30, codirecting our film about Canadian hero Terry Fox. We spent a night at Sundance eating dinner with an oversize group;
"Me, me, me, I, I, I, myself, myself, myself."
I realize Bill is giving his perspective on Steve Nash, but Bill has a unique way of making this introduction about him and his feelings as it pertains to Steve Nash. This is an introduction to a series of videos about Steve Nash's comeback, not the history of how Bill Simmons came to know Steve Nash. Yet, that's what the reader has gotten so far.
After Nash’s Fox film received universally positive reviews, we remained in touch and recorded a few podcasts, crossing paths by accident a couple more times. His move to Los Angeles opened the door for a belated collaboration. Well, for about three seconds. Almost immediately, Nash’s first Lakers season degenerated into a full-fledged soap opera — Starring Dwight! And Kobe! And Jimmy! And Phil! And Mike Brown as Mike! — right as Nash’s divorce trial became weekly TMZ fodder. I never felt right about following up.
A solid year passed. My phone rang one night.
Nash???
Now Bill is 75% through this introduction and he finally gets to the part where he explains why Steve Nash has agreed to do these series of videos for Grantland. We have had to suffer through the history of Bill's friendship with Steve Nash, the 1994-1995 Celtics salary cap situation, and Bill telling us how Lakers fans feel about Steve Nash's cap figure.
Did he have anything left … or did he just WANT to have something left? And how could he tell the difference?
He wouldn’t know for sure unless he killed himself to come back. And that’s what he had been doing, Steve Nash said. For weeks and weeks. He figured he could play quality basketball once a week. But in the NBA, you need to do that three or four times a week. That’s the subtle difference between being productive and being a scrub.
This is what the brief introduction to the first part of the video should have been, not Bill's feelings about the NBA's salary cap.
Now, imagine you’re me.
I'd rather not. It would cause me to hate myself.
You’re sitting home on some random night watching hoops when the phone rings. It’s one of the five or six best point guards who ever lived, a two-time MVP, one of the most entertaining players of the past 40 years. He’s talking candidly, telling you about his myriad problems, vowing that he isn’t done yet.
That makes you feel very special about yourself, doesn't it? And after all, aren't these series of videos chronicling Nash's comeback attempt about Bill and how it feels to talk to Steve Nash about his feelings?
Halfway through the phone call, I started to comprehend the stakes. We finally had a chance to pull off that Life on the Run/The Game idea, only in video form, and in real time. You read those books, as great as they are, while already knowing the ending. This time around, the ending would write itself. We could root for Nash as it happened.
It's a great idea with a self-involved introduction.
I took the other side, believing the Lakers would be foolish to use the stretch. Wasn’t Nash more valuable as an expiring deal, both as a potential trade piece and a 2015 cap hold before free-agent studs like Kevin Love become available? Then again, the Lakers have done a variety of silly things lately. Who knows? Nash and I batted around the various scenarios like we were Wilbon and Kornheiser. Only later did I realize how surreal it was to discuss Cap Figure Nash with Real Person Nash.
Bill and Steve are like super-besties now. And yet again, while in the middle of telling us how this video series came together Bill has to put the focus back on him and how it felt to be talking to Steve Nash. That's really what this introduction is about. It's about how Bill Simmons feels while talking to Steve Nash...well, and the 1994-1995 Celtics salary cap situation of course.
Regardless, I couldn’t believe how much I was pulling for him last week. Cap Figure Nash had morphed into Real Person Nash — the guy trying to save his career, his contract, his family and his inordinately special gift. I didn’t see 9.3 and 9.7 anymore. I saw only no. 10.
But Lakers fans still only saw 9.3 and 9.7. Bill is smarter than you and can read minds, so he knows this for sure.
Whether Lakers fans follow suit remains to be seen. The day of that Minnesota game, a buddy of mine who loves the Lakers stopped by Grantland’s office. He knew nothing about our Nash project.
By the way, this buddy of Bill's is not famous. It's easy to know this because if this buddy were famous then Bill would have name-dropped exactly who this famous buddy was.
As I started describing it, he hissed, “Oh God, I hope it’s a project convincing him to retire.” We showed him a rough cut. Within 10 minutes, he was begrudgingly admitting, “Now I’m rooting for him to come back.”
It's a really good video and it should be able to speak for itself without Bill Simmons making the video about him or leading up to the video by using 2600 words to tell us about his feelings when he talks to Steve Nash and how the Celtics giving Dana Barros a six year contract made him feel.
Welcome to The Finish Line.
The finish line would have gotten here a lot faster if Bill wasn't so enamored with himself that he had to make Steve Nash's comeback video about him.
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