For the last few years, Bill Simmons has been promoting himself as a GM prospect, claiming that his expertise in basketball (which he apparently developed by being a Clippers season ticket holder) and his willingness to take chances would make him a terrific GM. He started campaigning to be the Milwaukee Bucks’ next GM in a recent column and since then “dozens of emails” have “poured in” from fans in Wisconsin supporting his candidacy.
Maybe I won them over by describing their plight as “a cross between indifference and hell,” or by pointing out that “You couldn’t do worse!” Maybe they were inspired by my Obama-like rhetoric (“Vote Simmons in 2008! Yes We Can!”) or because I like Milwaukee and have always wanted to live there. These poor Bucks fans were like castaways drawing an SOS in the sand: In their beaten-down minds, a sports columnist who fancies himself the “Picasso of the ESPN.com Trade Machine” was their most appealing alternative in years.
Running an NBA team comes down to two things: patience and common sense. For instance, you can’t destroy your cap space by overpaying role players. That’s exactly what the Bucks did, spending more than $100 million on Bobby Simmons, Charlie Bell and Dan Gadzuric. And you can’t build for the present and the future at the same time. The Bucks did that, too, when they drafted Yi Jianlian last summer. Trying to juggle two agendas at once—contending and rebuilding—is, more than anything else, why the team is floundering now.
I lead the league in patience and common sense. I watch as much hoops as anyone. I won’t get suckered by tremendous upside potential, bad character guys, contract runs, lethargic big men or anyone with the same sour puss that Bunk had when McNulty started to rig the homeless murders on The Wire. I care about chemistry and body language as much as talent; you’d never see me roll the dice with the likes of Zach Randolph or Vince Carter, and you’d never see me overpay the likes of Mo Williams just because he was putting up big fantasy numbers on a bad team.
I am, on the other hand, partial to rookies who played for winning programs, produced in college or do one thing exceedingly well (say, rebounding or long-range shooting). I wouldn’t care if a prospect looked great in a workout; isn’t a 30-game college season the only workout anyone needs to see? I wouldn’t care if someone was two inches too short or 15 pounds too heavy, just that he was good. Kevin Love isn’t even a lottery lock these days, but so what if he can’t run or jump? He’s a surreal cross between Wes Unseld and Bill Laimbeer. Why pass on him for some project who looks good posting up a chair?
As for my other credentials, in 2005 I wrote that the Bucks should take Chris Paul instead of Andrew Bogut. In 2006, I won the NBA Cares Celebrity Fantasy League. In 2007, my preseason prediction (San Antonio over Cleveland in the Finals) came to pass. This year, I mastered the Trade Machine to the degree that it sent me an automated e-mail begging, “Leave me alone, I’m worn out.”
This may or may not have started out as a joke, but it seems to me that Simmons really thinks that writing a column for ESPN and being a fan of the NBA qualifies him to run a team. Or at least he’s starting to believe those emails.
Let me throw my hat into the ring. I’m actually from Wisconsin (Pewaukee, to be exact), played four years of college ball for Bo Ryan (the current Wisconsin coach) at UW-Platteville, started on his team that went undefeated to win the 1995 D3 National Championship, and was an Academic All-American my senior year. I also hold a degree in engineering (so I should be able to figure out the salary cap). Maybe I can’t compare Charlie Villanueva to a character on “The Wire” as quickly as Simmons can, but I’m more qualified to run a NBA team than he is.
