The Cavs visited the Clippers recently, and Bill Simmons was in attendance. Here’s what he thinks of LeBron up close.

To say the least. He’s the most charismatic athlete of his generation, only you wouldn’t fully know it until you studied him in person. Command of the room. He might dunk in the layup lines. He might try to make a one-handed half-court shot. He might call for an alley-oop and soar above his incredulous teammates just for the hell of it. Simply saying “bursting with energy” wouldn’t do him justice. It’s like watching a super-coordinated, mutant 4-year-old dealing with a severe sugar rush.

I’m gonna go block Delonte’s shot from behind! HAH! He didn’t see me coming! Wait, I’m in the mood for an alley-oop. I need me some oop. Mo, throw me an oop. Ah, yes … it’s in the air … I’m jumping … DUNK! What now? I want to try a one-handed shot from the corner. Jamario, come play with me. Hold on, I just saw Baron Davis! Hey Baron! What up, dog! Watch this, I’m gonna make a half-court shot with my eyes closed … DAMN! Just missed it. You know what I really feel like doing? Jumping on Shaq’s back. Look out, Big Fella, eeeeeeeeeeee-yah!!!!!!!

Jordan saved his legs before games, using that time to stretch, practice specific shots and butter up referees. LeBron can’t pace himself. Even when he walks from Point A to Point B, there’s no loping or strolling. He prances. He hops up and down. And if all these people are staring at him anyway, why not rile them up with a couple ridiculous dunks?

On the chances of him leaving Cleveland at the end of the season…

Again, there is no better teammate. And after watching this point get hammered home for three hours, it suddenly seemed far-fetched that LeBron James would willingly walk away from his guys — and his fans, and his city, and his legacy in Cleveland — just to play for someone else.

But he might.

Yes, he might. It’s one thing to be jovial in warmups of a regular season game, but when the Cavs got bounced from the playoffs last season, LeBron was not jovial. If the Cavs fail to make the Finals again, this will be his mood when he makes the decision about where to play next season.

The good news for Cleveland fans is that the two biggest threats to a Finals appearance — Orlando and Boston — don’t look like they’re ready to compete, at least right now. Kevin Garnett is still dealing with a sore knee and Orlando is working out the kinks after adding several new players to the mix.

Simmons underlined another point that I’ve made over and over for the last few years.

His ceiling as a top-10 all-timer remains up for debate. Right now, he doesn’t want it as badly as Jordan did or Kobe does. There’s more than a hint of Shaqitis with him, a feeling that LeBron wants to win but isn’t obsessed with winning. And you have to be both. Just look at what happened last summer: Kobe distinguished himself by perfecting the footwork for a startlingly effective low-post game; LeBron distinguished himself by promoting a documentary and a book. Does he want this or not? His unwillingness to play with his back to the basket, at this point of his career, with his obvious size advantage, is the only blemish on an otherwise impeccable résumé … but it’s a legitimate blemish.

(Note: On Saturday night in crunch time, the Clippers defended him with Baron Davis, knowing LeBron didn’t have the low-post chops to make them pay. He should have been embarrassed afterward. Only he knows if he was.)

I made this point to a buddy last night — every summer, Jordan came back with something new: a killer turnaround jumper, an accurate three-point shot, whatever. LeBron’s game hasn’t developed in this way. He’s better than he was in his rookie year because he understands the game now and has full control of his immense physical talent. But when I watch him play, I’m never thinking, “Wow, he’s really been working on his game.”

LeBron needs to develop some post moves. He’d destroy most small forwards on the block and if teams started to cover him with a power forward, he could pull a reverse pivot and blow by the guy. He wouldn’t have to play down there exclusively, it would just be another weapon in his arsenal. Imagine LeBron on the court with three other shooters and Anderson Varejao ready to crash the boards (or dive to the rim if his man leaves to double LeBron). With LeBron’s vision and court awareness he’d be devastating on the block. Devastating.

To celebrate his fantasy football league’s 20th anniversary and the 40th birthday of a buddy, Bill Simmons and a group of friends hit Vegas. As usual, he has a number of funny anecdotes, but this was my favorite from Part 1.

7:45: We will refer to it in 2039 as “The Sneeze.”

Here’s what happened: I stood up at the end of a shoe right as Grady’s cigarette smoke nailed me in the nose and mouth, causing me to abruptly sneeze. Unfortunately, my mouth had water in it, which ended up ejaculating (and really, that’s the right verb) all over our unfriendly female dealer’s hands and arms. In the history of my life, I don’t think I have ever bummed anyone out more. It’s a new record. I could have attacked her with a bat Juan Marichal-style and she would have been happier. She took an exaggerated step back, frowned, grabbed a napkin and wiped the sneeze juice off her hands with a record amount of disdain … and then, to make it more awkward, refused to accept my sincere/mortified apology, which made me friends laugh even harder, which made her hate us even more, which in turn made us dislike her again because she’d been killing us for an hour, which suddenly made me feel happy that I accidentally sneezed all over her.

“We will be talking about that sneeze 30 years from now,” Russ says, wiping the tears from his eyes.

The dealer glares at him. She’s in Eff You Mode. If you know anything about blackjack, you know this ain’t ending well.

Here’s my favorite blurb from Part 2. Bill and his friends are at their fantasy draft, and were given a suite at Ceasar’s by the CEO of a fledgling fantasy football company.

12:20: The doorbell rings. It’s CEO Eric! He’s accompanied by two scantily clad Pizza Girls, five pizzas and a case of Bud Light. I’m not kidding — this almost caused a riot. One girl is dressed like a cheerleader; the other is wearing Tom Brady’s jersey and underwear (only if both had been shrunk to one-fourth the size). Later, CEO Eric described our reaction as “2-year-olds at a birthday party as Barney walks in.” By the way, we’re old.

12:40: Pizza, beer and awkward conversation with the girls is highlighted by a hungover Grady (wearing Tevas) struggling to keep things moving by asking the girl in the Brady jersey, “So, where are you based out of?” My favorite moment of the weekend so far. Slayed me. I want to see this scene re-enacted online with Zach Galifianakis playing Grady. In Tevas.

“So, where are you based out of?” Classic.

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.

Bill Simmons previews the Finals by taking fake questions from well-known people. Here’s a sample:

Q: Let’s say I pull this off and we win a title. Does that push me past Oscar and Jerry and make me the third-greatest guard ever?
– K. Bryant, Los Angeles

SG: Yes. Absolutely. No question. Just know that your title window is closing because of your odometer — more than 1,100 games in 13 seasons and 203 games (not including the 2009 Finals) over the last 19 months alone — and a group of contenders that will be better next season with Garnett and Ginobili back, Portland and Chicago possibly making a leap, and Cleveland undoubtedly getting LeBron more help. You will never have a better chance at another ring than you do this month. And if you get it, your place in history is secure.

Let’s say you don’t get it. Let’s say Orlando continues to ride the “Nobody believed in us!!!!” wave and topples your Lakers for its first title. Let’s say the matchup troubles from the regular season (both Orlando wins) translate to the postseason just like they did in the Cleveland-Orlando series. That would mean the following things:

A. You never won a title when you were the best guy on your own team. An indisputable fact.

B. You lost not one, not two, but THREE Finals in which you were the best player on a favored team heading into the series: 2004 (versus Detroit), 2008 (versus Boston) and 2009 (versus Orlando). You played poorly by your standards in 2004 (23-4-3, 38 percent FG, 17 percent 3-point FG) and 2009 (26-5-5, 40.5 percent FG, 32 percent 3-point FG, 4.7 TOs); in deciding games those years, your team lost by 13 points and 39 points. If history repeats itself in 2009, you won’t be able to recover historically. You’ll be the guy who needed to ride Shaq’s coattails to win a title, and that’s that.

Honestly, this is one of the reasons I love basketball so much. Kevin Garnett’s career was altered by the 2008 Finals in a good way. Karl Malone’s career was altered in the 1997 and 1998 Finals in a bad way. Walt Frazier’s career was altered in the 1970 Finals in a good way. Clyde Drexler’s career was altered by the 1992 Finals in a bad way. You can come up with 25 superstars like that. A “fork in the road” moment, if you will. For Kobe, we’re here. Officially.

That pretty much sums up Kobe’s situation, though I’m not sure that a Finals loss would send him into a tailspin that he couldn’t recover from. The Lakers will be good again next year.

…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.

Wouldn’t that make more sense than gutting the franchise like a fish (which they will), saddling [Chris] Paul with a terrible team and eventually pushing him to demand a trade? I can’t see any scenario in which Chris Paul is a happy New Orleans Hornet in two years. Which means he’ll find a better team. Sorry, N’Awlins. Over.

Not over. Chris Paul is signed through the 2012 season. The Hornets need to find a way to unload Peja Stojakovic’s contract, and it probably won’t happen until he’s in the final year of his deal in 2010-2011. They can either add a star-level player who has two or three more years on his deal (and his team wants Peja’s expiring contract instead) or they can wait until Stojakovic is off the books and reload. In the summer of 2011, David West will be 30, so he should still have three good years left.

It’s funny. Peja’s contract got the Hornets into this mess, but if New Orleans had continued to develop Julian Wright instead of signing James Posey for $6 million per season, they wouldn’t be a luxury tax team, and they wouldn’t be looking to give Tyson Chandler away.

A few readers e-mailed me after Barkley commented that Melo was the best “pure” scorer in the NBA (wondering what that meant), and my answer is this: It means Melo gets his points easier than anyone else does. There are six ways to score in a basketball game: Make 3-pointers, post up, beat guys off the dribble, score in transition, score in traffic and get to the line.

He forgot the offensive glass. And this guy thinks he’s qualified to be an NBA GM?

Maybe this will be part of my pitch to take over the Clippers: “If an outsider could turn Fiat around, an outsider could turn the Clippers around!”

Great. I want the Clippers to fire Dunleavy as much as the next guy, but not if it means 3,000 words from Simmons about why he should take over as GM.

The one fascinating thing about “Kobe Doin’ Work” was Kobe’s contrived interactions with his teammates; it’s like he was taking us for fools. Watch this, I’m going to talk Italian to Sasha Vujacic. And what’s funny was that his teammates all had a “Wait a second, he never talks to me!” look on their face as soon as he walked away. It was a massive miscalculation of the average NBA fan’s IQ, and digging even further, a blown chance to show people that he’s a ruthless competitor who demands the best from everyone around him.

I couldn’t agree more.

The difference in quality between pre-DUI Chuck [Barkley] and post-DUI Chuck has been jarring. In a good way. He even looks lively during TNT’s integrated commercial spots when he’s trying to seem excited about “X-Men.” And he was singing the praises of Orlando and Denver well before it became chic to do so. We’ve come a long way since the days when he was praising Dallas and Detroit for the Kidd/Iverson trades.

This made me think of that Charles Barkley T-Mobile video game commercial…

I love the skin tight black bodysuits. Classic.

Here’s a bonus one with Dwight Howard…

“I’m gonna try something fancy. Watch this.”

When discussing why Robert Horry is on a list of the players with the top overall winning percentages, Simmons made this comment…

Robert Horry’s career is going to be studied for months by John Hollinger’s perplexed great-great-great-great-grandchildren in the 2100s, and ultimately they’re going to throw their hands up, shake their heads and move on to a topic that actually makes sense.

It’s not that complicated. Horry was a solid role player who (a) could fit in anywhere (b) didn’t think he was better than he was (and never demanded an outrageous contract) and (c) was always in the right place at the right time. He played with the three greatest big men of recent memory in their primes: ’92-’96 Hakeem Olajuwon (2 titles, 1 MVP), ’96-’03 Shaq (3 titles, 1 MVP) and ’03-’08 Tim Duncan (2 titles). A career 34% three-point shooter, Horry had the innate ability to hit shots in the clutch, and had plenty of opportunity with all of the double-teams that Olajuwon, Shaq and Duncan demanded over the years. Plus, he was a good defender, so he was always on the court in crunch time. Like I said — right place, right time.

That’s it.

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.