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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"This team has a curse on them!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and “PLAYOFFS! PLAYOFFS! PLAYOFFS!” rhetoric,

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

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

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

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

I ask you … would you boo?

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

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

5 comments Bill Plaschke Lectures the Philadelphia 76ers About Their Lack of Integrity

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. 

5 comments Buzz Bissinger Does a Bizarre Second-Hand Story In-Depth Profile of Nick Foles; Wants Foles to Be Less Boring Apparently

Philadelphia Magazine commissioned Buzz Bissinger to do an in-depth profile on Nick Foles. It turns out Buzz did this in-depth profile about Foles, his childhood and his experiences in the NFL without talking to Foles' parents nor Nick Foles himself. I'm not exactly sure how this works, but it seems hard to do an in-depth profile without access to three major players that can give the story depth. Obviously an in-depth profile can be done without access to the subject, but without access to the subject's immediate family and rely entirely on those who knew Foles in high school? Not college, high school. Sort of seems like this was a project better left uncompleted. Who better to give Nick Foles' story depth than he and his family? Still, Buzz pushed on and continued the story. Why did Buzz Bissinger write this story? "Friday Night Lights" of course. "Friday Night Lights" is a book based in Texas and Nick Foles is from Texas. Buzz is like that one-hit wonder band that goes up on stage in a club and talks about the one hit they had and how it opened so many doors, despite the fact the band is onstage in a club playing to 200 people at the current time. Anyway, here are my favorite parts of this in-depth profile of Nick Foles...an in-depth profile written without the whole "depth" thing that seems so crucial. Bissinger pays in kind and tries to provide as little depth in his analysis of Foles as a person and football player.

In a school of remarkable achievement and affluence, Nick Foles perfectly fit the Westlake socioeconomic profile and was its BMOC. He was the quarterback of its football team, the Chaparrals, on their way to the Texas state championship game in the highest 5-A classification. He was equally gifted in basketball; he’d started as a freshman. His girlfriend, Lauren Farmer, was a standout cheerleader and homecoming queen.

By the way, most of this profile could be summed up by simply having Buzz Bissinger write, "Nick Foles isn't like most other quarterbacks in the NFL who grew up as the star of his football team. He's not flashy, doesn't enjoy the spotlight and comes off as boring."

If Buzz did this then it would sum up about 1000 words into just one sentence. Also, a lot of this reads as, "This one guy who played football in high school with Foles said..."

But Foles pawed around the edges. The only middle he was interested in was a football huddle, 

(groans in pain at this last half-sentence)

and even there, he led by the example of his toughness and arm, which gave receivers chest bruises.

Apparently the chest pads in Texas are really shitty.

The truth was, Nick Foles was something of a nerd, a guy who hung around with a small posse of mostly non-football nerds — eggheads, kids who would go on to careers in finance and private equity and engineering.

I find it interesting that someone who goes into engineering, private equity and finance would be called a "nerd" by Buzz. So does Buzz consider a nerd to be someone who doesn't play sports? Otherwise, a person can go into finance and not really be a nerd. It's clear Buzz doesn't know too many people in these professions or he would realize these aren't careers for eggheads or non-football nerds.

“Dude, come on, you’re the quarterback, go out and have some fun,” high-school teammate Matt Nader pleaded with him, fruitlessly.

I feel like quotes from high school teammates that Foles probably can't remember too well at this point really gives this story little depth. These aren't quotes from Foles' teammates who played with him in college, but played with him in high school. People change from high school to their mid-20's. Not that this should stop Buzz from just assuming Foles is the exact same now as he was in high school of course. This article has to be written, potential accuracy be damned. Buzz needs the cash.

He was the kid you wanted dating your daughter, because he would have her home at 9:30 after you said 10. He was socially awkward, with a naive and goofy sense of humor. He dressed as if he had never seen clothes before. His hair was oddly styled in an ersatz pageboy, curling below his ears like a drainage ditch and covering his forehead in uneven wisps, thin grime on a windshield. His face was a cup of Napoleon Dynamite and a tablespoon of golly-gee-willikers and a teaspoon of Gomer Pyle.

He was boring. Rinse, repeat a few times in this column. You get the point that Buzz keeps repeating.

He tried at school, and even took Latin.

What a nerd! Foles seems like such a nerd to Buzz that he's surprised Foles didn't try to have a career outside of sports like all the other nerds did.

During his senior spring-break trip to Mexico, while most everyone else spent the afternoon recovering from drinking, he jogged, because there was nothing for him to recover from. He threw a football around with a kid from the Austin area. When Nick asked the kid to name his favorite player, he said, “Nick Foles!” But the kid didn’t recognize that he was having a catch with the actual Nick Foles. And Nick Foles was too reticent to tell him.

One more time...this is early in this in-depth profile and Buzz is already restating what he's already said, just using a different example. It's that kind of article. Foles can be boring and non-flashy. We get it. It's not a character flaw.

But he is still quiet. He still leads by example. He still plays video games. He still wears the hair suit of humility. He still pathologically refuses to do anything that draws attention to him. It’s admirable. Actually, it’s boring. It’s unrealistic and annoying now, self-subsumption as a form of conceit.

And of course Buzz knows this expert analysis of Foles as a person from the zero hours he spent with him in writing this story. But hey, a few guys Foles knew in high school and wanted to have their names in print agreed, so it must be true, right?

I asked Nick Foles for an interview for this story. My request was rejected. According to his agent, Justin Schulman, Foles doesn’t want to do anything at this point that highlights his success and not the team collectively. Uh, it’s a little late for that, son, given that you’re the hottest-rising quarterback in the NFL. You are the attention draw.

Yeah, Nick Foles. You have no right to pick and choose which interviews you are going to do. You are a star and are up for public consumption no matter whether you like it or not. Along with that, you have to do every single interview or else the author of that interview will take offense and do a hack-job based on second-hand sources who knew you almost a decade ago. Hey, you are the one that caused this mess by existing, so don't blame Buzz.

I was asked to do the story because of the enormous common bond that Foles and I share: Texas high-school football.

Yes, this enormous bond is based on the fact Buzz wrote a book one time about high school football in Texas, a book which came out LONG before Foles played football in Texas. If that's an enormous bond then I have an enormous bond with Jason Schmidt because one time I saw him in a mall in Atlanta. We were both shopping there.

He’s defined by it, and I memorialized it in the book Friday Night Lights. The request for his time went from a couple of days to a couple of hours anywhere in the country. This story isn’t about wrenching sensitive secrets. It’s obvious and legitimate.

This story is about being able to call Foles "boring" without actually spending time with Foles. After all, Buzz can write an article where a bunch of people who used to know Foles call him boring and the author calls Foles boring too despite never having spent time with him. It's lazy in a "I need to write this article and I'll be damned if anything will stop me, such as the information I have about the subject may not be entirely accurate" way.

Is he capable of leading the Eagles to the Super Bowl one day? Was the 2013 season aberrant? How will he handle the pressure? Fans need to try to figure out what ticks inside him to remotely know any of the answers.

This profile was crucial to the Eagles winning the Super Bowl this year. Congratulations Nick Foles, you have just cost your team the Super Bowl by not being interviewed by Buzz Bissinger. Your insistence on focusing on the team has now cost your team. Your fans don't understand you, so that means you can't win a Super Bowl.

Instead, what has emerged is a one-dimensional choirboy caricature reflective of a player and a team and a league terrified of individuality.

Seems fair. If a three-dimensional profile isn't possible, just print a one-dimensional profile. I mean, Buzz needs the money and Philadelphia Magazine wouldn't mind the publicity. It's not Buzz's fault this profile is one-dimensional, he was forced to write it rather than realize it is unfair to write a one-dimensional profile and not make cash as a result. Money over Foles.

Foles is selling himself, and being sold by the born-again Eagles, as the anti-DeSean: contrite, non-charismatic, cautious, churchgoing, Caucasian. The perfect poster boy for Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and commissioner Roger Goodell’s vision of a new NFL theme park where players have no discernible personality and the Twitter account is laced with Glories to God.

If true, this is horrific. Athletes who are quiet and don't try to draw attention to themselves? It's the end of sports.

I don’t believe this is all there is to Nick Foles. I definitely don’t believe it after spending extensive time in Austin talking to teammates and coaches and parents in the roots of Texas and high-school football that so define him.

Buzz spent EXTENSIVE time in Austin talking to people who don't really know Foles all that well now. He could have spent 10 years in Austin and if he didn't talk to Foles or Foles' family then he's only getting second-hand information about Foles by only speaking with Foles' high school teammates.

TO KNOW NICK FOLES, you go back to the base.

Or you could interview him in order to know him. If that's not possible, then you don't really know Nick Foles.

Which means going to the community that encompasses Westlake High School. Its predominant zip code, 78746, is an Austin equivalent of Beverly Hills, 90210. Its population of some 27,000 is small and homogeneous and oppressively white...The median house value in 2011, $610,800, is roughly five times the Texas average. The median family income of $167,295 is almost three times the state norm. There are 82 families who own five or more vehicles, and 1,251 who live in homes with five or more bedrooms.

Buzz spent extensive time on Wikipedia finding these statistics.

Foles didn’t have a single black teammate when he played his senior season in 2006.

Nick Foles is racist like Riley Cooper! No wonder Cooper had such a great 2013 season, he had a fellow racist throwing him the football.

This says nothing about his or anyone else’s racial attitudes. It does say that Foles grew up in a bubble of entitlement and shockingly narrow social experience.

I guess it would be too much for Buzz to acknowledge Foles doesn't have a bubble of entitlement. That's not part of this profile. It's too neutral-y to fit into what Buzz has written.

A large number of students at Westlake are the sons and daughters of lawyers and doctors and high-tech capitalists and private equity managers and business executives.

It's a city of nerds.

No one will ever say that Nick Foles is snotty. But he is obviously white, 

Very observant of you, Buzz! Maybe you didn't need to actually interview Nick Foles to see what makes him tick. You obviously have insights into him like this one.

His high-school teammate Matt Nader tells me that the best way to assess the rising fortunes of the Foles family was by observing the improvements made to their house over the years.

Matt Nader also said, "You are going to use my name in this profile, right?"

Currently assessed at $1.5 million, it was hardly a rancher when the Foles family bought it in the late ’90s. But over the years, the basement was finished and a new garage was put in, according to Travis County appraisal records. Then came the uncovered deck and a first-floor porch almost the entire length of the house.

Buzz also spent extensive time at the Register of Deeds and the permits office researching this information. No matter what you think about Nick Foles, Buzz Bissinger has uncovered the secret of the Foles family increasing the value of their house, which was to constantly improve the curb appeal of it. Investigative reporting at it's best. So when did the Foles family plant new flowers in their garden? I wonder how this reflected their socio-economic standing through the years? Was it a two-car or three-car garage and did the family have a riding mower? HOW OFTEN WAS THE MOWER'S BLADE SHARPENED?

It was Larry, better than any coach or recruiter or pro scout, who knew how good Nick could be if he was pushed. So Larry pushed, perhaps because his whole life has been about pushing. He was the kind of parent who tried to make not only every practice at Westlake High, but also every junior-high practice.

It seems Buzz spent some time at the "Bill Simmons School of Unnecessary Italics."

Raised in Petal, Mississippi, Larry Foles had nothing growing up. He told hiladelphia Daily News Eagles beat reporter Les Bowen (Larry Foles and his wife, Melissa, also declined to be interviewed for this story) that his parents split when he was 13, prompting him to drop out of high school and move to Oregon in the early ’60s to work manual labor for 90 cents an hour. He returned to Mississippi and became the general manger of a Shoney’s.

Is the Hiladelphia Daily News a cheap knock-off of the Philadelphia Daily News? Apparently Buzz was so busy researching land records and interviewing that a friend of Foles' father he didn't have time to write a "P." There's only so much extensive work Buzz can do. Something has to suffer.

When Nick signed a letter of intent with Arizona State University before his senior season, it was Larry who made initial contact with the school, as opposed to the other way around. When Nick decommitted from Arizona State and went to Michigan State University in 2007, Larry got an apartment in East Lansing. When Nick was deciding whether to leave Michigan State after a year, it was Larry who became his spokesman.

In an age where "family friends" and "advisors" help a college athlete make decisions, it's not so bad that Larry Foles helped make decisions for his son is it?

Hager did manage to corrupt Foles just a bit, late in their senior year: Foles conducted an ultimately losing battle with cognac and vermouth and ended up facedown on the carpet, mumbling incoherently to his girlfriend on his cellphone.

It seems doubtful it has happened since.
 
Which is a shame.

I would have absolutely no idea why this is a shame. Nick Foles chooses not to drink. It's his decision. Whether he drinks or not has no bearing on his ability as a quarterback. Fail by Bissinger.

THE GREATEST ATHLETES all have arrogance; no matter how thick the playbook of humility, it still seeps through

Really? Tim Duncan. Derek Jeter. Tony Gwynn. I can go on.

You can see it and you can feel it. Except with Foles.

This is a lie, right? Buzz didn't see or feel it with Foles, mostly because he didn't interview him at all for this profile.

Michael Vick is a great guy. It was an extraordinary team effort. The offensive line deserves all the credit.
 
Give it a little bit of a rest, kid.

Yeah, stop being unselfish so Buzz has a more interesting article to write. It's your obligation as an NFL star to give Buzz something interesting to write about.

But there’s still an aura of softness about him, no fire. Maybe it’s the hee-haw face. Maybe it’s the stream of selfless platitudes about others. Maybe it’s that at 25, he’s still very much a boy among men with the Eagles, with no interest in the extracurricular world of clubbing.

There's something wrong with Nick Foles because he doesn't meet Buzz Bissinger's idea of what a great quarterback should be. The problem with Foles is he can't meet Buzz's expectations. Based on Buzz's extensive research, this is a problem with Foles and not with Buzz himself.

Or maybe it’s the reality that if he fails in football, he has the likely cushion of going into an enormously successful family business. It’s the intangible hunger factor that appears to be missing.

From earlier in this article:

His son has inherited his relentless work ethic; during June and July, when Westlake players work out on their own, it isn’t unusual for them to hit the weight room. Teammates watched agape as Nick Foles toiled in an hours-long regimen of throwing and running in the lugubrious Texas heat.

Nobody can deny Nick Foles’s toughness, at six-foot-five and 240 pounds. He played the last 12 games of his senior year at Westlake High with a torn labrum in his throwing shoulder without telling anyone or complaining about the pain.

Yeah Buzz, about that...

I'm sure Foles has worked his whole life as a quarterback not caring whether he actually made it or not to the NFL, because there's always the option of going into a different business. I'm sure that's a logical conclusion to be made here.

Teammates remember him being hurt a lot of the time. “What’s the deal with Foles?” was the sentiment of wide receiver Staton Jobe. “Is he going to be injured his whole career?”

Well yeah, because he's soft.

Foles broke the career passing-yardage record at Westlake held by Drew Brees, throwing for 5,658 yards. But he wasn’t a hot recruit. The rap was that he was too slow, a system quarterback in a school that has produced nine quarterbacks who have gone on to play that position in college football since 1992 — at best, he was a backup.

So it absolutely makes sense that Arizona State recruited him and then he ended up at Michigan State. Who has ever heard of those schools?

Duke made an offer, which back then was slightly better than being chosen last in a pickup game. Texas El Paso sought him out, which was the Gulag. The major Texas schools weren’t interested.

What an embarrassment to only have two D-1 schools interested in you. Who would want to play at a D-1 school? Interesting how these two schools were the only ones interested in Foles, except he ended up at Arizona State magically.

Signing with Arizona State became a mess when the coach who wanted him, Dirk Koetter, was fired and replaced by Dennis Erickson, who in turn was so impressed by Foles that he went out and recruited another quarterback.

I love how Buzz writes, "...he wasn't a hot recruit" and then it's like, "Well, after he ended up at Arizona State..." I am under the impression Arizona State is a pretty good school for football.

Also, college coaches recruit multiple quarterbacks in one recruiting class all the time. This isn't college basketball where a player can be recruited over in his own class. It's completely conceivable that Dennis Erickson loved Foles, but he wanted to recruit another quarterback for that class. This happens very, very frequently.

After walking away from Arizona State, Foles signed late in the recruiting season with Michigan State. He got into the first game of the season in 2007, and that was all.

Foles continued his trend over loserdom by appearing in a game as a freshmen, which obviously happens all the time.

He was competing with Kirk Cousins (a redshirt) and Brian Hoyer, both future pros.

Using Bissinger logic, the fact Michigan State signed Foles meant they didn't think highly of Kirk Cousins. I think you can see how stupid this logic is.

Foles transferred to Arizona. He battled with Matt Scott for the starting job and lost it, until Scott played poorly and Foles got his chance. The team went to two consecutive bowl games under Foles, in 2009 and 2010. His senior year was a team disaster. He put up great numbers, throwing for 4,334 yards and 28 touchdowns. But Arizona won only four games.

Mostly due to Foles' lack of toughness and the fact he always had the fallback of working for his dad...obviously.

The newest rap was that Foles had played in a gimmicky offense with few sophisticated reads. But he was named to the Senior Bowl and, in his typical pattern, was so lackluster in practices that several draft experts showered praise instead on Brandon Weeden.

This is the same Brandon Weeden that was drafted in the first round. I feel like this deserves a mention since Buzz seems to indicate draft experts showering praise on Weeden was unusual or indicative of Foles being terrible.

Foles then played, with the best performance of any quarterback, and was thought to be a possible first-round pick. Then he made the single worst mistake of his career. He entered the NFL combine.

Among quarterbacks entering the draft in 2012, Robert Griffin III ran the 40-yard dash in 4.41, Russell Wilson in 4.55, Andrew Luck in 4.67 and Ryan Tannehill in 4.62. Foles’s time was 5.14 seconds — the worst of the quarterbacks who entered. Pro Football Weekly called him a “lumbering pocket passer” who gets “panicked in the pocket” and said he “is consistently off the mark” and “is not an inspiring field general,” on a par with former fifth-round pick John Skelton of the Arizona Cardinals.

This analysis of Foles also mentioned he may need time to adjust to the NFL game, which turned out to be true. This of course doesn't help push the narrative Buzz wants pushed so it gets left out.

Foles still doesn’t inspire full faith among fans. He shouldn’t. One-year wonders in professional sports form an endless chain. He was unknown last year, and the unknown is often a player’s best asset until it becomes known.

Of course on the flip side of this, Buzz criticized Foles not giving his time for an interview by stating,

Uh, it’s a little late for that, son, given that you’re the hottest-rising quarterback in the NFL. You are the attention draw.

So Buzz seems to be confused as to whether Foles is an unknown and should be doubted or he is the hottest rising quarterback in the NFL. I guess it can be both, but it's interesting how Foles becomes a potential one year wonder when Buzz isn't arguing about Foles' obligation to do this interview.

When Chip Kelly talks about Foles as the franchise quarterback, it always feels like he’s lying, because he’s both good at it and a smug wiseass.

I don't think Kelly should be worshiped in some circles like he is, but I think this is a bit judgmental.

Foles isn’t a pressure quarterback. He lost the state championship in high school, lost both of his bowl games, and looked confused in the second half of the loss to the New Orleans Saints in last year’s playoffs.

And of course it's all Foles' fault his team lost these games. 

In 17 pro starts, he’s thrown only one game-winning touchdown pass in the fourth quarter or overtime. (Compare that to Andrew Luck, who threw six in his first two seasons.) Sometimes he just flings it up there in the hope that someone is around to catch it, although without DeSean Jackson, that’s become far less likely. The Eagles also played a weak schedule last year.

Along with the in-depth profile of Foles, we get this in-depth analysis of Foles from Buzz. I wonder how many times Foles has had the opportunity to throw a game-winning touchdown pass in the NFL? Not that his ability to throw a game-winning touchdown pass should matter in a dick-measuring contest completely reliant on opportunities to throw a game-winning touchdown pass of course.

A&M scored early in the game to take a 7-0 lead. Westlake came back with a 16-play drive that consumed roughly seven minutes. As Paul Nader and Barbara Bergin — he a nephrologist, she an orthopedic surgeon — 

Both nerds in the mind of Buzz Bissinger.

Foles and Nader came off the field. Nader went to the bench with the other offensive linemen. Offensive line coach Steve Ramsey came over to critique what had gone right and what had gone wrong during the drive. An ice towel was placed on the back of Nader’s neck. He suddenly fell and landed on his back with his cleats still propped up on the bench. It was so bizarre that Hager thought he was joking and told him to get the fuck up.

Larry and Melissa Foles were there. They watched, like their son. A whisper shuddered through the sidelines that Matt Nader was dead.
By some miracle, Westlake carried an automated external defibrillator to games. There was no state requirement at the time to have it on the field; it had been given as a gift. It had never been used — another piece of equipment lugged around by the trainers. But it was charged and ready to go.

There came a pulse.

He came to consciousness. An hour later at the hospital, there was nothing wrong with Nader. He was fully alert. It all seemed so freakish and unreal. Except that he would never play another down of football. He had gone through ventricular fibrillation, a condition in which the heart stops pumping blood. While there was no certainty it would happen again, the risk was too great.

I'm really glad Matt Nader is okay, but this story doesn't serve a purpose other than to reinforce what was already known about Nick Foles. He's a nice guy and treats others kindly. This is the sort of story that gets told to Buzz Bissinger through his interview process and he knows he needs it somewhere in the story, so he shoehorns it in wherever possible as tangentially related to Nick Foles.

So maybe Nick Foles doesn’t have the edge of Peyton Manning. Or the come-from-behind fearlessness of Tom Brady. Or the gravitas of Drew Brees. Or the feet of Russell Wilson, or Colin Kaepernick, or …

He carries with him the fragility embedded into everything. The dividing line you never know. 

And again, Buzz knows this by interviewing people who used to know Foles well in high school and not by actually having spent time with Foles. I know these sorts of profiles happen all the time, but in a situation where the author is imparting characteristics onto his subject he finds to be true, it usually helps to actually interview the subject as confirmation these characteristics are indeed true.

But unless he stops being chickenshit and goes into the middle, he will never guide the Eagles to the place that only tantalizes us.

Russell Wilson
Joe Flacco
Eli Manning
Brad Johnson
Peyton Manning
Mark Rypien
Trent Dilfer

I can go on, these are a short list of boring quarterbacks who won a Super Bowl. These are quarterbacks who won a Super Bowl without being flashy or trying to gain the spotlight from his teammates. It's not an all-inclusive list. Basically, I have no fucking idea what Buzz Bissinger is talking about.

We are tired, Nick. We are already dependent on you. So man up to be the man.

So as soon as Foles puts himself before the team then the Eagles can win a Super Bowl? Unfortunately history has shown this assertion to be incorrect.

Sidle up to a bar on the road and order a slug of single malt, not a double shot of milk. It’s okay to address LeSean McCoy as “Shady” instead of “Sir Shady.” Don’t ever publicly say again that your favorite movie is The Lion King.

If there were a list of "Non-relevant items as to whether Nick Foles will ever win a Super Bowl" these three items would lead the list.

Acolytes get to heaven. Strut gets you to the Super Bowl.

As seen by the list above, this is absolutely untrue. Strut doesn't get you to the Super Bowl. Playing the quarterback position well does get you to the Super Bowl and Nick Foles played the quarterback position well last year. Maybe next time when ascribing personal characteristics to a subject during an in-depth profile it would help to talk to that subject or his parents. You know, it seems less bullshitty and a little bit more like any negative comments aren't only made out of frustration the subject wouldn't grant you an interview. 

4 comments Bill Simmons' "Fuck It, I Give Up on Writing Original Material So Here's a Mailbag" Volume 2; Getting Edumencated on How NBA Teams Can Tank

In Bill's last mailbag he came to the shocking conclusion that the Celtics are the perfect place for Kevin Love to end up. Who ever saw that coming? This week Bill gives the steps to tanking perfection and answers more email from his readers, who have become increasingly desperate to get their questions answered by Bill in a mailbag. Getting a question answered in the mailbag is one of the highest honors that a Simmonsite can receive, sort of the Congressional Medal of Honor for lemming, mindless fans of Bill. Let's have Bill teach us the correct steps to tanking, since there are only 10 steps and Bill is the only one who knows them.

The best part is that Facebook comments are allowed on Bill's mailbags! So if he cared and didn't mind having his fragile ego hurt then he could read the comments and see that he isn't universally loved. Also, there is only one question in this mailbag. That's it.

Editor’s note: Every Wednesday from now until the final day of the regular season (April 16), I am cranking out an all-NBA mailbag for the Triangle with a 5,000-word limit. As always, these are actual emails from actual readers. We’re tackling only one this week.

I'm going to get the obvious joke out the way now. Bill does a mailbag with only one question in it. It seems like may be an expert on how to tank after all. Just hilarious.

Maybe this mailbag will be the one that allows him to have the guts to stop writing columns like he so desperately seems to want to do.

Also, does Bill edit his own columns? The editor's note talks in the first person, so that's what has me a little confused.

Q: What are the odds that the Sixers finish their season on a 36-game losing streak? They’re at 15 already with 21 games to go. They put two actual NBA players on the floor each night, and things are so bad that I just thought about whether or not Byron Mullens is an actual NBA player. Is there a chance for L36?
— Jack, Philly

This is the question that required an entire mailbag to answer. It's from Jack (a common name) from Philly (a large city...also notice how many of Bill's "real" readers come from "Philly" as opposed to "Philadelphia." I just find this a little weird), so we know this is a real person and all.

SG: The short answer … YES!

The long answer...the rest of this freaking column. Apparently this is such a riveting question it requires a 5000 word answer.

You know how Lance Armstrong was the greatest cheater ever? 

I don't think Bill ever digresses. I think his writing is just one big digression.

How he blended his commendable charity work with state-of-the-art science and relentless lying to pull an ongoing Jedi mind trick on the American public?

He never failed a drug test that says he used PED's, but otherwise I'm not sure parts of the American public were fooled.

The 2013-14 Sixers have a chance to go down as the greatest NBA self-sabotagers ever. They haven’t been tanking games as much as obliterating any chance of winning them.

Nearly everyone understands the Sixers are tanking though, so how is this anything like Lance Armstrong fooling the American public? The Sixers aren't fooling anyone.

And they’re doing it because the NBA gives every team the same loophole …

If you want to throw away a season, depress your fans and disgrace the league for a 25 percent chance at the no. 1 pick and a 100 percent chance at a top-four pick … knock yourself out!

All four of the major sports give their teams this loophole. MLB, NHL, NFL, and the NBA. The only difference is the NBA has a lottery that doesn't guarantee the worst team in the NBA the first pick in the draft. So as far as comparisons go, the NBA gives teams a smaller loophole than any other major sport because the team with the worst record is only guaranteed at top-four pick and not the #1 pick in the draft. The NBA does less to give teams an incentive to tank than the other three major sports.

they’ve done everything short of signing Kevin Hart and Allen Iverson’s mom to 10-day contracts. And those moves might be coming next week. Would anything shock you? Look at the self-sabotage blueprint that Philly’s new owners and GM Sam Hinkie have followed.

Two pop culture references, with one of those references being dated. This doesn't shock me coming from Bill. Also, I'm still not understanding the comparison to Lance Armstrong since it is obvious the Sixers are tanking and it wasn't obvious to the American public Lance Armstrong was doping.

Step 1: Trade your best player for future assets if you don’t feel like he can be the best player on a championship team.

And that was a GREAT trade: Jrue Holiday for 2013’s no. 6 pick (Nerlens Noel) and New Orleans’s top-five protected first-rounder in 2014.

So the key to tanking is making a great trade that takes advantage of an overvalued player? Isn't this the key to putting together a good team and not just the key to tanking?

they improved their own 2014 lottery chances by turning 82 games of Holiday into zero games of the already-injured Noel. A crucial part of self-sabotage: maiming yourself in the short term. You don’t want to sorta suck or kinda suck in the NBA. You want to suck all kinds of suck.

Bill feels like he needs to tell us the best way to tank is to put yourself in a situation to lose as many games as possible. Apparently he doesn't think this is obvious to everyone already. It wouldn't be tanking if a team was trying to improve the team in the short-term would it? This seems obvious to me.

I love Rajon Rondo, but if the Celtics got a Holiday-like offer for him, I’d be packing his bags and his leather Connect Four case for him.

So I think Bill would agree this was a good trade overall and not just a good trade for tanking purposes. Of course, Bill has to shoehorn this trade into his discussion of tanking because he needs as many steps as possible on how to tank so he can make it seem more complicated than it really is. I think the key to being a great NBA team is to make great trades and if any GM has the chance to trade one of his players in a lopsided trade in his advantage then he should do it, right? I'm not sure why making great trades is part of tanking perfection, but should be a part of being a good GM.

Step 2: Don’t sign anyone who can help you, even if it means dipping under the salary-cap floor and going down as the cheapest NBA team ever.

Because Bill is out of column ideas and desperately needs to kill space he is going to rephrase "Try to lose as many games as possible by putting the worst players with the shortest contracts on the court as much as possible" quite a few times in this column.

What’s the point of signing veterans like Jarrett Jack, Carl Landry, and Shaun Livingston in July just because you have the extra money?...Screw that! Fill your bench with unproven young guys, failed draft picks and fringe bodies who make you say things like, “Wait, wasn’t that the dude on Jimmer’s BYU team who got suspended for getting laid?” and, “Is that the same Jarvis Varnado who was on Miami, or is this another Jarvis Varnado?”

Again, try to put the worst team on the court as possible. There's only so many times it can be said, but Bill isn't afraid of trying anyway. So far, the first two steps have been painfully obvious steps a team would need to take in order to suck in the short-term.

Step 3: Don’t get discouraged if you win early.

Philly started out 5-4 for two reasons: Michael Carter-Williams was better than everyone expected, and its three holdovers (Thad Young, Evan Turner and Spencer Hawes) clicked in a surprisingly entertaining way.

Yes, Michael Carter-Williams was better than EVERYONE expected. Bill didn't expect Carter-Williams to be this good, so obviously no one else thought Carter-Williams would be good. I thought Carter-Williams could "conceivably be great," if he shot the ball better and didn't turn it over. The talent was there, along with great height for a point guard.

The Sixers handled it perfectly — never celebrating, never improving their roster and allowing Young-Turner-Hawes to be thrown in every conceivable trade rumor without ever saying, “We kinda like what we have here … change of plans!”

Because the Sixers had already decided they were tanking and weren't going to turn their plan around. Basically, Bill is giving the Sixers credit for planning to tank and not changing their plan. Also, wasn't it just last week that Bill sort of insinuated Sam Hinkle is helping to keep his job by undergoing a long rebuilding plan? It seems like Bill wants it both ways kind of. He wants to say the Sixers have a great tanking plan (assuming the plan works) and he wants to say Hinkle was just buying himself time by dedicating the team to a long rebuilding plan (if the plan doesn't work).

By January, Carter-Williams was developing poor habits and learning to lose. Young was asking for a trade. And Hawes was mailing in games and carrying himself like the star of a hostage video. Well played, Philly.

Yes, well played. Because if there is one thing the Sixers want it is their rookie point guard developing bad habits and learning to lose.

Step 4: If you can’t get fair value for your trade assets, trade them anyway.

Before the deadline, Philly gave away Turner, Hawes and Lavoy Allen for three second-round picks, two expiring contracts they immediately bought out (Danny Granger and Earl Clark) and the immortal Henry Sims. People get carried away with second-round picks because they’re cost-effective assets if you nail them, but recent history says you have about a 10 percent chance of landing a rotation player from picks 31 to 40. 

Yes, but the second round goes past pick #40. So there is a 10% chance of landing a rotation player from 31 to 40, but what about the rest of the picks in the second round?

(Since 2009, only Draymond Green, Kyle Singler, Chandler Parsons, Lance Stephenson, DeJuan Blair and MAYBE Nate Wolters came through.) After that, you’d have a better chance of hearing someone say the words, “I think what James Dolan is doing is really smart … ” By stockpiling second-rounders (five in all), Philly gave itself a puncher’s chance of landing someone who, someday, might be 80 percent as good as Spencer Hawes.

The second round does go past pick #40 and since 2009 the following players have been selected past pick #41 in the second round.

Chase Budinger
Patrick Beverly
Jodie Meeks
Marcus Thornton
Danny Green
Lavoy Allen
Isaiah Thomas
Mike Scott

Notice one other thing about Green, Singler, Parsons, Wolters and some of these successful second round picks is they stayed in college for four years. So perhaps a team has a good chance of finding a contributors in the rotation by focusing on four year seniors? This, of course, isn't a hard-and-fast rule but just a suggestion.

Congratulations! But that’s a self-sabotage staple — you’re not throwing games, just making it impossible to win.

This is otherwise known as "tanking" and Bill will continue to rephrase, "Lose as many games as possible" in a way that makes it seem like he isn't repeating himself.

Step 5: If you can affect the playoff race just to be dicks, even better.

Philly gift-wrapped Turner and Allen for Larry Legend for 10 cents on the dollar. Then, the Sixers bought out Granger to save $500K over keeping his sign-and-trade rights and hoping one of the league’s most respected veterans affected Carter-Williams in a positive way. Granger signed with the Clippers, meaning Philly potentially improved two of the league’s five best teams. 

I'm not sure affecting the playoff race just to be dicks was part of the Sixers plan. They needed a team to take Evan Turner off their hands while getting back a player they hoped would only play one year for them and then go his own way (Granger). Then Granger didn't want to play for the Sixers so they bought him out and had no absolutely no control over which team he signed with. So the Sixers just took advantage of the Pacers willing to take on Turner and give back Granger, then bought out Granger with no regard to which team he might end up playing for.

Totally fine. The NBA enables this behavior — there’s no trade committee, no “spirit of the league” rule, nothing. So, why not?

Well, there is a "spirit of the league" rule when David Stern decides he doesn't want Chris Paul getting traded to the Lakers, but that's just a part of Stern's legacy. The "spirit of the league" rule only applies to trades made teams the NBA has controlling interest over and when Stern doesn't like what the GM of that team has chosen to do with his players. Totally fine. And Tim Donaghy was the only NBA official fixing games, so just believe it. Nothing to see here. Move on.

Step 6: Trade for Byron Mullens.

The man knows what he’s doing. Nice guy? Absolutely. Could he be your 12th man? Sure! But if you’re riding him for big minutes, you’re riding a center who doesn’t protect the rim, rebound, defend or draw a double-team. You’re riding a sabermetic eyesore. You’re riding a 3-point specialist who can’t actually make 3-pointers.

The awfulness of Mullens aside, he does shoot about 35% from three-point range on the season. So for a seven-footer that's not too terrible.

Even with the Clips pushing to dump Mullens to open up a roster spot, Philly still traded a second-round pick to get him. He ended up fetching one fewer second-round pick than Spencer Hawes did! Has there ever been a better self-sabotage move? It was like the 1987 Lakers landing Mychal Thompson, only the exact opposite.

I'm shocked they still traded a second round pick to get him. This is absolutely unbelievable. My mind is completely blown. Like really blown.

Here’s an interesting blueprint dilemma for Philly — only Carter-Williams can cost them a couple of losses (by playing too well), but the Sixers want MCW to win Rookie of the Year so that SOMETHING good comes out of this season.

My God, what a dilemma. Fortunately, the rest of the players on the Sixers roster aren't good at all, so the odds of Carter-Williams winning games by himself are not high. Dilemma fixed, thankfully.

The case for not shelving Williams with a bogus injury: He feeds into the self-sabotage as long as he’s forcing too many plays and cheating for steals over actually playing defense. Have you watched him lately? Yikes. That’s what happens when you enable an impressionable kid and allow him to chase the Rookie of the Year award over trying to win games. 

It's not Carter-Williams' fault he is cheating for steals over actually playing defense. He went to Syracuse simply so he wouldn't have to play a real defense and could sit back and hold his hands up in a zone, using his length to bother the offensive players. Carter-Williams isn't used to having to work on defense and actually play defense in a man-to-man situation. If he wanted to work on defense he wouldn't have gone to Syracuse.

Step 8: Give tons of minutes to young players who aren’t ready for them, and come up with as many doomed/goofy/ridiculous lineups as possible.

Whatever. If the Celtics landed Kevin Durant in 2007, do you think Boston fans would care seven years later that we played Allan Ray too much, or that Young Gerald Green had the green light to shoot from any spot on the floor, or that we played two and three point guards together at the same time?

A little revisionist history here. I think it was Greg Oden that teams were more excited to land originally in the 2007 draft, but I think it's fun to pretend it was Kevin Durant that teams were excited to acquire with the first pick in the draft. Durant eventually snuck up a bit on Oden, but mostly NBA teams were excited about Oden. Except the Celtics of course, because they are smarter than every other NBA team.

Again, we repeatedly played Delonte West, Rajon Rondo and Sebastian Telfair together at the same time.

Oh, "we." I didn't realize Bill played for the 2007 Celtics team. That is something that I did not know. 

Within a few months, we had KG and Ray Allen and nobody cared. Sixers fans won’t care in six months, either. Assuming there are still Sixers fans. 

I forgot "we" had them. Good point, Bill. I guess Bill was released off the Celtics roster fairly quickly during the 2007 season, because I don't remember him being on the roster. Also, the Sixers are rebuilding, which is different from being impatient and trading for two Hall of Famers because your fan base may not want to deal with a rebuilding situation. The Celtics didn't have the patience to rebuild.

Step 10: Weigh the benefits of self-sabotage against the long-term damage to your most valuable asset.

Isn't it a little funny that a fan of the Celtics, which is a team that hasn't ever really gone through a long rebuilding period with an actual plan to rebuild, is handing out the ten steps on how to tank? The Celtics have never had a long-term plan of being bad over multiple seasons to get better draft picks until this season, the 1997 season and possibly the 2007 season. Other than that, they mostly have been in "compete now" mode over the last...well, as long as I can remember.

The Sixers are only one loss behind, with no plans of ever winning again. But they shouldn’t ruin Carter-Williams to do it. In 1997, I watched M.L. Carr irrevocably alter Antoine Walker’s career with that same “Rookie of the Year on a Crap Team” carrot. As the Celtics threw away their last two months for Duncan ping-pong balls, they had Antoine playing out of position at center, hogging the ball, chasing his own numbers and learning horrendous habits.

Celtics, Celtics, Celtics, Celtics, Celtics...apparently they are the only example of a team that has tanked during a season in order to get a good draft pick. I would dare Bill to write a column about the NBA and not mention the Celtics. He can't do it, partially because he only does mailbags and doesn't write columns, but also because he's still the Boston Sports Guy. It's all he knows.

Trust me: Antoine was only 20 years old, and he NEVER recovered from those two months. He learned all the wrong things. All of them.

Oh yeah, I trust you. When have you ever lied or tried to deceive your audience by believing you could read minds?

Well, the same thing is happening to Carter-Williams right now. He might be special, he might never get there … who knows? He’s a fantastic athlete with size, and someone who quickly adapted to the speed of the NBA game and belonged from day one. Could he have the career that we always wanted Shaun Livingston to have — just a slew of 22-9-12’s on a series of entertaining teams?

"We" always did want Shaun Livingston to have that kind of career. I would have preferred Livingston have that kind of career after spending at least one year at Duke of course (he had committed there), that's what "we" wanted.

But he’s also a genuinely dreadful outside shooter (see Kirk Goldsberry’s shot chart below)

As I said back in June, he's gotta learn to shoot to be an outstanding player. The benefits of watching college basketball and not simply watching the NCAA Tournament and claiming to be an expert on college basketball players is immense.

he’s a little older than you think (at 22, he’s actually five months older than Kyrie Irving).

Don't tell me how old I think he is. I know exactly how old Michael Carter-Williams is. Not everyone ignores college basketball or lacks the knowledge that Bill thinks they lack because he lacks that knowledge. Shockingly (to Bill Simmons), there are people who know as much about basketball as Bill Simmons does.

They’re better off punting on Rookie of the Year, coming up with a bogus injury and keeping him away from the team’s festering stink. There are no good lessons from intentionally getting your asses kicked every night.

And of course because Carter-Williams is a robot, and not a human being, who doesn't care about his future earning value he will gladly sit out games with a fake injury in order to cost himself the Rookie of the Year award and perhaps get a reputation as slightly injury-prone. Why wouldn't Carter-Williams sabotage his future for the good of the Sixers team?

Please remember that Bill Simmons wants to be an NBA GM and has passively-aggressively attempted to land two NBA jobs over the last decade (Minnesota and Milwaukee). Can you imagine him as a GM going to his team's best player and telling that player to pretend to have an injury and sit out the rest of the season? I can't imagine how this would hurt this player's relationship with the team if the GM basically says, "We are trying to lose games, so be a sport and don't play the rest of the season and hurt your individual value for the good of the team."

We have too many teams (that’s never changing), a season that’s too long (that could easily be fixed) and far too much incentive for non-contenders to intentionally fail (that can DEFINITELY be fixed).

Again, I would argue the incentive to fail in the three other major sports is stronger because the NBA is the only major sport that has a lottery system which doesn't guarantee the worst team the first pick in the draft. Of course, in the NBA only five players play so one certain player can dramatically turn a team's fortunes around. I guess that's the flip side, but the NBA gives teams less incentive to tank by instituting the lottery system.

We also don’t have any penalties in place — not even something as simple as, “If you lose 90 percent of your games for any 35-game stretch during a season, your season-ticket holders receive a 30 percent discount for the following season.”

Oh, so the NBA would tell teams how much they have to charge for games. I can't imagine what's wrong with a heavy-handed approach like this, as nice as this sounds on paper.

Would we see as much self-sabotage if the owners’ wallets were involved? Somehow I doubt it.

Right, but good luck getting the owner's representative, the commissioner Adam Silver, to recommend measures that takes money out of his constituents' pockets. Not going to happen. Welcome to the real world, Bill where money matters.

Two weeks ago, I wondered about the best way for an NBA general manager to make sure he stays employed for four to five years. “The answer: Blow everything up, bottom out, build around young players/cap space/lottery picks, make a bunch of first-round picks, and sell the ‘illusion of hope’ to your fans. I’d like to see people in other professions try this.”

As a San Francisco reader named Aziz pointed out, I inadvertently “described the private equity business model. Take over a bloated company, load it up with debt, dump assets, cut research & development, and basically guarantee the company can’t do anything innovative for a decade. Once the debt is paid off, you have a company with nice free cash flow (‘cap space’).

What Bill means by "inadvertently" is "I had no idea the private equity business model worked like this, but I won't acknowledge that because I have to be the smartest most clever person in the room at all times and admitting I don't know something isn't going to ever happen, so I will think of a bullshit excuse like I inadvertently described a business model rather than admitting I didn't know this was the private equity business model."

Many NBA teams are now owned by private equity or venture capital investors, including some of our most unapologetic tankers.” One of them? Philly’s Josh Harris. Hmmmmmm. Could there be a correlation? And why would the NBA want any correlation?

Because if the end result is a really good team in Philadelphia then this model will have ended up working well.

The dirty secret of Stern’s last 18 months was that, as much as the 30 owners respected him, they also believed it was time for him to leave. And somehow, the smartest guy in the room was the last guy who realized it.

Who would have thought this would happen and has it ever happened before? Has a powerful person stayed past his prime and no one had the guts to notify him that he had stayed past his prime because they had respect for the job he had done. I'll say, "no," this is the first time this has ever happened.

It didn’t just win the last collective bargaining agreement; it destroyed the players and checkmated a fractured union. Do you realize that Brian McCann signed for more guaranteed money this winter than LeBron’s last contract?

Yes, I think many people are familiar with the comparisons of MLB salaries as compared to the salaries of players in other sports. In McCann's defense, he does stand up for traditional baseball values like not slow-trotting a home run, which is super-important to a sport that has a death-grip on it's past while refusing to allow the future to breathe.

His owners want to hear a little less about “growing the sport abroad” and a little more about “building the sport domestically.” Other than the way he treated people and carried himself, that was their single biggest issue with Stern.

Other than his heavy-handed approach to nearly everything and the fact he probably covered up a huge officiating scandal with the popular "lone gunman, not a conspiracy" argument, while waving his hand telling anyone who questioned him on this that "These aren't the droids you are looking for," and also finding a way to lose all of the momentum that the Bird/Magic/Jordan era gained during the late 1990's and early 2000's of course. So yeah, I think maybe the owners could have bigger issues with Stern than how he grew the game abroad...if they chose to of course. I personally believe David Stern grew the game abroad because he had no clue how to build the sport domestically.

Can you tell I'm not a big David Stern fan?

And that’s why this tanking bullshit matters. When 36 percent of your league is willfully throwing away the last five weeks of an 82-game season, you’re doing something wrong.

Remember when this column was about tanking? This is how Bill is ever-so-tenuously tying in tanking with David Stern. It's like Bill had enough for half a column about tanking and half a column about David Stern, so he just threw the two topics together with a mailbag question from a person named "Jack" who lives in a large city.

Stern stuck his head in the sand. He pretended self-sabotage wasn’t a recurring danger, just like he pretended the broken officiating system was fine … and the always-disappointing All-Star Saturday was fine … and the annoying 2-3-2 Finals format was fine … and the stunning lack of minority league executives at every CBA bargaining table was fine … and the embarrassing Chris Paul trade veto was fine … and The Decision was fine … and the Maloofs destroying basketball in Sacramento to the point that the fans had to revolt was fine … and Clay Bennett extorting Seattle for a new arena and ultimately hijacking the team was fine … and the league owning the New Orleans franchise as it landed the no. 1 overall pick was fine … and starting off Silver’s commissioner transition by hovering over him for an extra eight months was fine.

I completely agree with Bill. I'm not sure I see the tie-in with tanking, but I agree. Though notice that Bill Simmons didn't take these pointed of shots at David Stern while he was the NBA Commissioner. That's not coincidence. This is fairly typical of Bill to take shots at someone after they can't hurt him (because, let's be honest, if Bill had been this critical of Stern in a public forum while he was commissioner then he's just a little bit afraid Stern would derail his career momentum on the ABC/ESPN NBA pregame show...just a little bit concerned) or takes shots at a person and then backs down once he meets that person. Look no further than Bill bashing Isiah Thomas for years in print and then meeting Thomas in Vegas where Gus Johnson played peacekeeper between the two as they reconciled their differences (i.e. Bill backed down).

I would be a little afraid of Stern too if I were Bill, but it's no coincidence Bill goes a little harder on Stern once he isn't the NBA Commissioner anymore.

This isn’t tanking. Nobody is throwing games. They’re just shitting on them. And they’re doing it because it’s the smartest thing to do. Don’t pretend this is fine. It’s not.

I think it's completely fine. I don't like it and tanking is a good way to alienate your fans, but if the Sixers think this is the best way to turn their team around then that's their decision as an organization. NBA teams still have to draft well for tanking to work, so if the fans can wait it out and the team drafts well, then it could all work out in the end.

So this mailbag had one question. Next week, will the mailbag feature half a question before Bill interrupts the question and just talks about the Celtics for 5000 words? Stay tuned...