Tag: Bill Simmons (Page 16 of 16)

      Correcting Bill Simmons, Part 2

      May 23, 2008 /

      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.

      Fantasy Football, NFL, NFL Draft, Super Bowl

      Correcting Bill Simmons, Part 1

      April 18, 2008 /

      Bill Simmons, also known as “The Sports Guy,” writes a column for ESPN. He regularly blends his wide interest in sports with pop-culture references, and on the whole, I enjoy reading his stuff.

      But every once in a while, he goes off the reservation and says something absurd – like his whole campaign to become the Milwaukee Bucks’ new GM. It might have started out as a joke, but as he was reading that fifth or sixth email from a Bucks fan that supported his campaign, I think he actually started to think that he was qualified for the job.

      It was at that point that reality stood in the way of his fantasy world. A world where you could get a job running a NBA franchise just by writing a NBA column and owning Clippers season tickets. Simmons seems to know a lot about basketball, but every once in a while he’ll say something that tells me that he’s never played the game at a competitive level.

      For example, in the second part of his recent MVP column, he talks about T-Mac:

      Speaking of T-Mac, here’s my No. 1 NBA pet peeve this season: When a lousy long-range shooter has no qualms about jacking up 3-pointers every game. For instance, T-Mac shot 34, 33, 31, 33 and 30 percent on 3s the past five seasons, but that didn’t stop him from jacking up 4.5 per game this season. Really, T-Mac? If you can’t shoot 3s, why shoot them?

      Granted, McGrady had his worst season shooting the ball from long range since the 1999-2000 season when he made just 28% of his threes. But that doesn’t make it a good idea to stop shooting them completely. First, there’s the extra point to consider. Shooting 28% from three-point land is the same as shooting 42% from inside the arc. McGrady shot just 46% from two-point range this season, so it’s not like the discrepancy is so big that it’s a no-brainer for him to completely shelve the long ball.

      Besides, McGrady is a career 34% three-point shooter. Not great, but that translates to 51% from two-point range. I doubt T-Mac headed into the season knowing that his accuracy was going to take a dive and consciously decided to keep jacking threes. In fact, his 4.5 three-point attempts were his fewest since the ’01-02 season when he shot 3.7. Throw in the fact that McGrady took 0.3 fewer threes a game after the All-Star break and I’d say that he managed his shots pretty well.

      Lastly – and this is the thing that really bugs me about Simmons’ comments – the three-point shot is so important to an offensive player with T-Mac’s physical ability. McGrady is quick, but not super-quick, so he needs the threat of the long ball to force his defender to close out aggressively, or else there won’t be any room to drive. If he reduces his three-point attempts even further, his defender will know that he can close on him with caution, looking for the drive. This will make McGrady’s penetration less effective.

      This isn’t to say that every player who is chucking up threes is doing the right thing. Taking the ball inside is generally the better idea, because the shots are easier to make and there’s a much better chance of getting to the line. But for a guy like McGrady, who relies on deception and position more than quickness to get to the hole, the threat of the long ball is crucial.

      Fantasy Basketball, NBA

      More on the Cavs trade

      February 24, 2008 /

      As a Cavs fan, I love the trade, just because it finally rids them of Larry Hughes. Hughes is a good guy but he was a disaster on this team. Bill Simmons agrees, as he now claims the Cavs should be the favorites in the East:

      As for the other big trade this week, kudos to Danny Ferry for somehow getting four of the best five players in an 11-player trade. That has to be some sort of record, right? I already made the case for Wally Szczerbiak and Delonte West helping the Cavs in my Trade Machine piece Wednesday (scroll down to trade 4A), but the Chicago guys pushed the deal over the top for me. First, Drew Gooden needed to go — he was too inconsistent and too much of a bonehead, and we neared the point when a fed-up LeBron might punch him in the face during a game about three months ago — and Joe Smith gives the Cavs steadier minutes and reliable production with those minutes. (Maybe Smith’s ceiling isn’t as high as Gooden’s from game to game, but when you have LeBron you need consistency from the rest of the guys more than anything else.) Second, the fact Ferry was able to trade an overpaid guard who actually drove a frustrated Cavs fan to create a site called www.heylarryhughespleasestoptakingsomanybadshots.com and update it every day … I mean, even if you got back a dead body for Larry Hughes, it would have been a moral victory.

      Instead, the Cavs got back the Artist Formerly Known As Ben Wallace, someone who stopped being an elite rebounder and shot-blocker about three years ago, but someone with playoff experience and the ability to defend bigger guys like KG, Shaq or Duncan. He certainly makes more sense for the 2008 Cavs than Larry Hughes did. Anyway, I thought the Cavs could win the East before this trade, simply because none of the Eastern teams have someone who can match baskets with LeBron in a close game. Now? They’re the favorites. Look, I love the Celtics, I watch them every game, it has been the most enjoyable season in 15 years. … But a playoff series almost always comes down to one question as long as both sides are relatively equal:

      Which team has the best guy?

      Well, LeBron is better than anyone else in the East. So if you were beating Cleveland this spring, it was happening because your supporting cast was significantly better than LeBron’s supporting cast. That’s why this trade was so dangerous for Boston and Detroit; it shortened the sizable gap between guys 2 through 12 on Cleveland and guys 2 through 12 on Boston and Detroit. Now LeBron has four shooters who have shot 40-plus from 3-point range at least once in their career (Wally, Delonte, Boobie Gibson and Sasha Pavlovic), three seasoned rebounders (Wallace, Smith and Anderson Varejao), a scoring center (Zydrunas Ilgauskas) and, best of all, no Larry Hughes screwing up everything. LeBron is in a much better place than he was last year, and what’s even more frightening is that he has been playing out of his mind since last April. I know the Celtics are 41-11, and I know the Pistons have been there a million times … but still, how could you bet against LeBron in the East when he’s playing like this?

      Bullz-Eye Sports Channel, NBA

      Bill Simmons – feel his pain

      February 4, 2008 /

      As a Cleveland fan, I know exactly what it’s like to suffer heartbreaking losses. Until recently, Boston fans had their share as well.

      ESPN’s Bill Simmons is a well-known Boston fan, and he does a great job capturing the agony and bewilderment that one feels after these kinds of losses. Of course, he focuses on Eli’s big play on the last drive, which reminded me of many of John Elway’s heroics against the Browns.

      With that said, I never thought the Patriots would lose. I thought they’d be tested, I thought the game would be great … but lose??? You could point out 10 different instances when the Pats blew a chance to make a monster play or put the game away, and you could point out all the different times the Giants caught a break or had a ball bounce their way, but really, everything you need to know about Super Bowl XLII happened on the Miracle Play To Be Named Later — you know, the third down on the do-or-die drive when Eli Manning ripped himself away from the entire Patriots defensive line (THEY HAD HIS JERSEY!!!!!!) and threw a pass that hung in the air forever like one of those sports movie passes, and even though David Tyree and Rodney Harrison had an equal chance of getting it, Tyree jumped a little bit higher, hauled in the football, trapped it against his helmet and somehow held on while Harrison was doing everything but performing a figure-four leg lock on him.

      Here’s another great paragraph from his column.

      Speaking of Brady, if the Patriots had finished 19-0, I planned to start my column with a scene from the Patriots’ postgame party. Through some mutual friends, I had arranged to hang out with Brady’s crew for what promised to be a laid-back celebration in somebody’s hotel room, probably no more than 15-20 people since Brady’s circle is surprisingly and refreshingly small. Because it was a rare chance to catch Brady in an unguarded moment — and an important moment at that — I spent most of Friday and Saturday thinking about that first paragraph and all the different ways it could start. I kept seeing Brady sitting in a chair with his right ankle encased in ice, quietly sipping a bottle of champagne with a satisfied smile on his face, and Gisele would be there, and everyone would be recapping 19-0 and remembering the incredible season. I liked the thought of a famous person celebrating a historic night in such a totally normal and relatable way. And that’s what it will remain. A thought and only a thought. It never happened.

      Bullz-Eye Sports Channel, NFL, Super Bowl

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