In Bill Simmons’s most recent mailbag, a reader asks a question about former Redskins and Texans GM Charley Casserly…

Q: I’m taking Sports Leadership taught by Charley Casserly at Georgetown next fall. What percentage of the class is going to be on “How to draft a defensive end from N.C. State even when a running back from USC is available”?
– Rawiri, Washington

SG: Hold on, hold on, hold on … Charley Casserly is teaching at Georgetown??? This is the last straw! What’s next — Trevor Ariza’s agent and Lamar Odom’s agent teaching a class in sports law? For years, I’ve been waiting for some college or university to approach me about teaching a class called “Sports Column Writing 101,” “How to be Lazy and Succeed” or “Weaving Pop Culture and Sports to Your Own Literary Detriment.” Did I get one offer? Did UCLA ever say, “Let’s give Simmons a class, I bet 30 kids will be dumb enough to sign up?” Noooooooooooooo! But failed GM Charley Casserly gets to teach kids at Georgetown, the school I wanted to attend that brutally rejected me in 1988? This makes me want to skin sheep in front of a PETA rally. I’m so bitter right now.

Why is Simmons hating on Casserly? He doesn’t offer any evidence, so I guess that this is all about the Mario Williams-over-Reggie Bush pick in 2006. Only that pick has turned out pretty well for the Texans. Williams was a Pro Bowler last year and Bush has missed 10 games in his first three seasons.

In fact, after a semi-disastrous start in Houston in 2002 (David Carr, Jabar Gaffney and Fred Weary), Casserly rebounded in 2003-2006 by drafting five future Pro Bowlers (Williams, Andre Johnson, Jerome Mathis, DeMeco Ryans and Owen Daniels). Ryans was named Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2006. The Texans went 2-14 in the 2005 season, and Casserly was run out of town resigned after the 2006 Draft. But the team has improved since then, posting a respectable 22-26 record in the three years since his departure. Much of the credit for this leap is given to the aforementioned players that Casserly drafted.

Prior to joining the Texans, Casserly was the GM for the Washington Redskins, where he won Executive of the Year honors in 1999 after fleecing the Saints for all their picks in the draft (as well as a future first and third) while still landing the guy he wanted — Champ Bailey.

While Casserly did have his share of clunkers (Heath Shuler must be mentioned), the guy had his share of good picks as well. Again, I don’t know what Simmons’s beef is here, but if it’s the whole Williams/Bush thing, then he should check his facts — Casserly has been vindicated.

Read the first four parts of Correcting Bill Simmons.

…when I read a Bill Simmons mailbag.

Anyway, there was a really funny moment Thursday that could have only happened at a Lakers game. Near the end of a third-quarter timeout, the camera caught Val Kilmer and three of his chins on the JumboTron, punctuating the moment by playing “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins. You know, a “Top Gun” homage. He took a second or two to get the joke, then unleashed one of those “Very funny, you got me, just know that I’m on a lot of meds right now” smiles. And this would have been enjoyable on its own, but they cut to someone else in the stands. …

That’s right. …

Tom Cruise!

He caught on a little quicker and did the Tom Cruise Over-Laugh. And this would have been great on its own, but the Lakers pushed it to another level: They went split-screen with Kilmer and Cruise with “Danger Zone” still blasting. As far as I was concerned, this was the most emotional reunion in Lakers history. Cruise kept laughing; Kilmer looked mildly perturbed. (After all, he’s an actor, dammit! That was 23 years ago! He’s made a lot of movies since then!) At this point, I was praying they’d cut to Anthony Edwards in Section 312 but he wasn’t there.

Ha! Great one about Anthony Edwards sitting in the upper level.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, when the Bucks had a GM opening, Bill Simmons started a campaign to fill the position. Fortunately, the Bucks hired John Hammond.

Fast forward a year, and Simmons is campaigning for the open Minnesota GM job, punctuated by this beauty in his so-called “epic” conversation with author Malcom Gladwell (the guy who thinks all underdogs should utilize the full-court press).

NBA teams rarely, if ever, think outside the box, and that’s one of at least 50 reasons why I could succeed as a GM.

This started out as a semi-joke, but I think over the course of the last year, Simmons’ ego, along with a few thousand emails of support from his readers, have convinced himself that he’s actually qualified to run an NBA franchise.

Look around the league and you’ll find that NBA general managers are usually former players, had front-office experience prior to getting the keys to a franchise, have advanced degrees in business and have an deep understanding of the salary cap and of how the fiscal side of the NBA works. Bill’s greatest strength is his ability to compare an athlete to a character to some random movie from the ’80s. What’s he going to do — sit Kevin Love down and tell him that his game reminds him of Chubby from “Teen Wolf”? How does this get the T-Wolves to the playoffs?

To me, the big question is whether or not Simmons keeps this up. Is he going to campaign for every open general manager position until he gets one (or more likely, dies of old age)? Or is there a certain point when all this I-can-run-an-NBA-team talk becomes so sad that he eventually just gives it up?

There’s no doubt about it — Simmons is an entertaining sportswriter, maybe the best in the stream-of-consciousness/pop-culture business. But he needs a reality check, and there’s no way to give it to him.

In Bill Simmons’ latest mailbag, he responds to a number of different reader questions. Most of his answers are fine, but a few are puzzling…

There should be a section on eBay that allows the auctioning of enticing future bets. For instance, a few weeks before the NBA season, I placed $300 on 15-to-1 odds that Cleveland would win the 2009 NBA title. Those odds have dropped to 2-to-1. Not that I would (after all, Cleveland is going to win the 2009 NBA title), but shouldn’t I have the option to sell that $300 ticket on eBay? What if someone bid $1,200 on it (which would be a smart move because, again, Cleveland is going to win the NBA title) and I was guaranteed a $900 return on my investment? Should I take the money? This would be a fun Web site, you have to admit. And if eBay can’t do it, then why couldn’t the casinos themselves build a Web site that allows people to sell future tickets and get a second cut on the action? It all makes too much sense.

Yeah…okay…this already exists — it’s called a “long-term market” and my favorite online sportsbook WSEX.com, has had them for at least five years now. Go to the site, hit “Pro Basketball” on the left, hit “Pro Championship” under “Long-Term Markets” on the main screen — there’s a long-term market where gamblers can buy and sell wagers on who will win the NBA championship. They have 1-pays (where only a share in the winner is worth something) and 4-pays (where shares in the winner, runner-up, and third and fourth place teams are worth something). You can buy and sell these shares throughout the year.

How does a guy that calls himself “The Sports Guy” not know about this? Didn’t he hit up any of his colleagues/friends at ESPN in all the time that he has pondered this eBay idea of his?

As of right…..now…..I’m not going to refer to Bill Simmons as “The Sports Guy” any longer. As far as I’m concerned, he has lost the right to have that nickname.

And then there’s this doozy…

Read the rest of this entry »

“The Sports Guy” is killing me. He’s at it again, harping on players that take too many three pointers even though they aren’t accurate from behind the stripe. I’ve already gone through this once, about a year ago, after Simmons slammed Tracy McGrady from shooting too many threes. Now, in his otherwise fine “Dumbleavy” diary/column, Bill’s targets are Baron Davis, Zach Randolph and…gulp…LeBron James.

7:35: LeBron bricks a 3-pointer that leads to Thornton’s fast-break dunk. Clips by 17, timeout Cavs. Let the record show that (A) LeBron is a 32.5 percent career 3-point shooter, (B) he went 0-for-6 in this particular game and (C) he should be fined every time he takes one.

6:54: Speaking of guys who should never shoot a 3, it’s Baron Davis! He just bricked one. If he told you that he’s a 32.3 percent career 3-point shooter and averaging 29.5 percent this season, then I told you that he takes five per game, would you believe me? You probably wouldn’t, right?

4:35: Randolph (aka Z-Bo) sinks an open 3 that he never should have taken because he’s a career 28.9 long-distance shooter. Maybe we should make it like a driver’s license — if you dip under 35 percent through 250 career attempts, you’re suspended from shooting 3s for a year?

Coaches live with guys shooting in the low 30’s from long range because…well…the shots are worth an extra point. It’s (almost) that simple.

LeBron is shooting 33.1% from long range on the season. He’s shooting 53.6% from two-point range. For argument’s sake, let’s say that for 100 straight possessions, LeBron launches a three every time down the court. If his numbers bear out, he’s going to make 33 of them, scoring 99 points. That’s 0.99 points per possession. Now, let’s say he shoots a two-pointer for 100 straight possessions. He’s going to make 54 of them, so he’ll score 108 points on 100 possessions, or 1.08 points per possession.

Read the rest of this entry »

One thing that struck me about Bill Simmons’ trade value column was his unabashed hatred for Michael Beasley’s game. He made three separate references to the rookie:

Jason Thompson: I mocked him on draft day and he shoved it in my face like a cream pie. Top-notch energy guy, good defender, lots to like. You know, if Michael Beasley wasn’t such a colossal disappointment and semi-fraud, the 2008 draft could have ranked among the best ever (and certainly superior to the more ballyhooed ‘07 class).

Colossal disappointment? Semi-fraud? Ouch.

Jeff Green: Great teammate, tough as nails, gives a crap, does whatever you need. He’s the anti-Beasley.

So Simmons is saying that Beasley is not a good teammate, isn’t tough, doesn’t give a crap and won’t do whatever you need? Ouch.

You have to love a country where Love’s best rookie card (Upper Deck’s ‘09 SPX set, the signed autographed jersey card) goes for one-eighth the money of Beasley’s card … and yet, Miami could offer Beasley for Love right now and Minnesota would make a face and hang up. Whatever.

Ouch.

All right, so how is Beasley faring this season? Here are his numbers:

ESPN.com’s “Sports Guy� Bill Simmons writes that Manny Ramirez is vastly underrated.

…Forget the sheer entertainment value that comes from following Manny on a daily basis. Just look at the stats. He’s three quality seasons away—90 HRs, 300 RBIs, 550 hits and a .900 OPS—from becoming the greatest righthanded hitter ever. Add those to his career numbers, and he’s sitting in the top 10 in career OPS and slugging, the top three in RBIs, the top seven in homers and closing in on 3,000 hits. And no one who saw him in all his Ruthian glory with the Dodgers last summer or reach base 24 of 36 times in October can honestly say he’s washed up. Say he tanked it in Boston, but only after you concede that he played 22 of 24 games for them in July and had the best offensive month of anyone on a team he was allegedly quitting on.

Whatever. The guy was created to hit baseballs. Even at 36, he can perform this task at an abnormally high level, make any decent team good and any good team great. And yet nobody wants him after his messy divorce with Boston—a divorce that, by the way, the Red Sox cannot escape without blame. Manny gave them seven quality years and two titles, and they yanked him around in Year 8. No, he didn’t handle it well; I’m not sure I would have handled it well either.

So he’s spent the winter sitting on the open market like a sofa on Craigslist. The Angels, who need him more than anyone, claim they’re fine with Juan Rivera. Really? Juan Rivera? That’s what you’re telling your fans? I don’t get it.

All I can tell you is this: Manny is immensely fun to watch day in and day out. He’s a monster offensive force, a historic one, even. And he is exceedingly, incredibly available. He will draw fans to any ballpark, and nobody is interested. You can say it’s because he’s a cancer; I say it’s because he’s unequivocally underrated. He will soon find a team and prove one of us right.

And it’s going to be me.

To me, underrated means that a player is better than what is perceived of him by the general public. (The general public being fans and the media.)

Therefore, Manny isn’t underrated. Everyone knows he’s one of the best hitters baseball has ever seen and everyone knows that his offensive numbers are phenomenal. If people only focused on his goofy behavior and his bad defense, then I would say that he’s underrated. But they don’t. The majority of the public always rushes to say that Manny is an offensive juggernaut.

Simmons is reaching here and what’s funny is that he’s setting himself up for a future column. He knows a determined Manny will produce next season no matter where he ends up and when he does, Simmons can say, “See! I told you this guy was underrated!�

No, he’s always been that good. Everyone knows that.

Regular readers might be familiar with my occasional posts — “Correcting Bill Simmons” and “Correcting Rick Reilly” — where I try to help out my better-paid, less-informed counterparts by pointing out when/where they’re wrong. This time, I’m going to tackle ESPN The Mag as a whole. I know I’m going to hear some guy at the sports bar regurgitate this “analysis” as his own opinion and I won’t have the wherewithal to call him on it.

Let’s start with everyone’s favorite blowhard — and I doubt he’d take that as an insult given his commentary stylings — Stephen A. Smith. In his “Up Front” column, he criticizes Oscar De La Hoya for not knowing when to give it up.

Help, someone! Pretty Please!

It would be really nice if someone could muster some plausible explanation as to why a fighter like Oscar De La Hoya, beyond his prime for quite a while before the Manny Pacquiao bout, still chose to step into the ring and get his brains beat out. The mismatch was so obvious that Oscar’s wife, Millie, was screaming for him to quit before he had the common sense to do it himself.

It’s really easy to knock De La Hoya after the match is over when it’s clear that he shouldn’t have fought the fight. But one quick look at the pre-fight odds (-165 Hoya / +135 Pacquiao) reveals that this fight fooled a LOT of people, not just the Golden Boy. According to the betting public, De La Hoya was the clear favorite in the fight, so why would Oscar think that he was about to step into a beatdown? The betting public clearly doesn’t know everything, but it’s a pretty good gauge of public opinion and if the public is fooled, why would De La Hoya — who has an ego of a big-time fighter — know any better?

If Smith writes this column before the fight, I’d give him props. But this is classic kick-’em-while-they’re-down writing.

Let’s move on to Mike & Mike (Golic & Greenberg) who answer “The Big Question” — if the best players in college sports don’t make any noise in the pros, what’s their legacy?

Regular readers might be familiar with my ongoing series, Correcting Bill Simmons. Now that I’m forcibly exposed to Rick Reilly’s back page column in ESPN The Mag, it’s time to start a new series with Reilly as the star.

This week, he wrote a somewhat touching piece about how Jay Cutler’s dealings with Type 1 diabetes has affected children all over the country. Reilly isn’t bad at the heart-warming stuff, but when he tries to be funny, he just comes off as stiff. Take this paragraph:

Shy and mop-haired, he led the league in shrugs. He looked like he had terminal influenza. The bags under his eyes had bags. And yet he’d sleep 10 hours at night and three more after practice. He lost 35 pounds in the 2007 season alone. He couldn’t concentrate. He was starting to look like the biggest bust since Lindsay Lohan. And that’s when he found out he had diabetes. Or rather, it had him.

All right, there are two problems here. The first is the statement that Cutler was a bust when he hit the league. I don’t know if Reilly is talking about Cutler’s first or second season, but he played pretty well even prior to getting diagnosed with diabetes. In 2006, he played in five games and threw for an average of 200 yards, 1.8 TD and 1.0 INT. In 2007, he played in all 16 games and finished with 3497 yards, 20 TD and 14 INT. What about these numbers says “bust”?

When I found out that a pre-diagnosed Cutler was still able to be a decent fantasy QB despite losing 35 pounds and much of his strength, I put him at the top of my sleeper QB list heading into 2008. Needless to say, that has paid off.

Then there’s the comparison to Lindsay Lohan.

He was starting to look like the biggest bust since Lindsay Lohan.

What does this mean? Is he saying that Lohan was a bust in that she was destined for big things but has since fallen from grace? Or is he saying that she has big knockers? If it’s the former, I don’t know how relevant it is to refer to actors as “busts.” They weren’t drafted in the first round and they weren’t given big contracts before playing in the big leagues. If it’s the latter – which is far less likely considering Reilly’s typically PG-rated fare – I could think of a dozen well-endowed starlets that would make for a better joke. (There’s Pamela Anderson, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Penelope Cruz, Salma Hayak, Jennifer Tilly, Catherine Bell, just to name a few.)

Then there’s this attempt at humor, referencing Cutler’s regular blood tests, which require him to prick his fingers over and over…

What Cutler wants to be is a normal QB, but he never will be. From now on, he’ll have more holes than a Jessica Simpson movie.

Really? More holes than a Jessica Simpson movie? Reilly can’t find another “actress” to kick around. Simpson hasn’t been in a major motion picture in two years (2006’s “Employee of the Month”), which I haven’t seen. She was in “Dukes of Hazzard” in 2005, but I don’t really remember it being filled with plot holes. (It was just a bad, bad movie.)

Maybe Reilly should take a shot at Kate Hudson, who has been in no fewer than six horrid romantic comedies in the last five years. I’m thinking of “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” “Alex & Emma,” “Raising Helen,” “You, Me & Dupree,” “Fool’s Gold” and “My Best Friend’s Girl.” If you’re a big-wig Hollywood studio exec and you’re about to greenlight a bad rom-com, Kate Hudson should be on speed dial.

This is just a case of Rick Reilly trying to be Bill Simmons. He thinks that if he shoehorns some pop culture reference in as a joke that it will make his stuff seem fresh and funny. But it just makes him look tired.

He should stick to the sappy, sentimental stuff. The world only has one Bill Simmons, and that’s plenty.

Welcome to the second part of my infinite-part series, Correcting Bill Simmons. To find out why I started this series, feel free to read the first part. Simply stated – Bill Simmons is an entertaining writer, but sometimes he goes off the reservation and says something absurd.

This week, in his Ramblings column, he defends his Patriots over the whole Spygate fiasco.

If you have a national column in which you’re excoriating a sports team for cheating even though it already paid a severe penalty for what it did, and you’re hinting more revelations are coming down the road, and then it’s proven you were barking up the wrong tree … you need to admit defeat and quit blowing the situation out of proportion. No, really.

What gets me is that he thinks that the Patriots “already paid a severe penalty” for what they did. This is why Boston fans annoy me. Let’s see, the Patriots were caught videotaping the Jets sideline in a game last season and Matt Walsh produced more videotapes from 2000-2003, so it’s pretty clear to anyone that’s objective about the situation that the team has been videotaping their opponents’ sidelines during Bill Belichick’s entire run. And the “severe penalty” is losing a single first round pick and paying a fine? Is he serious?

If you took a poll of all NFL fans, I think the overwhelming majority would say that the Pats got off with a slap on the wrist. Their “punishment” was a joke considering that they knowingly broke the rules by stealing signals for at least seven years. If this were the Giants, Boston fans would be foaming at the mouth, bitching and complaining that the penalty wasn’t stiff enough.

Bill, take the Patriot Glasses off for a minute and look at this situation objectively.