I'm kinda fascinated by the first 20 minutes of Simmons' latest podcast, in which he discusses the state of the NBA and whether or not the players will - and should - resume the season after all in light of the latest behind-the-scenes maneuvering. I say that for two reasons:
1) Simmons compared the current political landscape to the situation after MLK was assassinated in 1968, the day before the NBA Conference Finals were scheduled to (and eventually did) take place, and said that while he thinks the season will resume after everyone talks through the issues for at least a few more days, he'd be totally fine if the players stood up for what they believe and decided to opt out for political reasons. I'm really curious about a) whether this would have been his take two weeks ago, before his calamitous podcast with Russillo; b) how much his opinions have shifted in the wake of the last several weeks, both in the world and in his world; and c) the extent to which he maybe feels like this now *has* to be his take, as an apologia for what he was party to before.
(For the record, I think his take is a perfectly reasonable one for anyone in his position to have. But if you look at the Port Cellar, the tendency has been to bash Kyrie for leading a political charge he shouldn't be leading...and given Simmons' opinions about Kyrie, I suspect he'd love to be on that corner as well but feels like he can't be, given everything else that's going on.)
2) Russillo was absolutely nowhere to be seen at the start of the podcast - he comes in for the 2007 Redraftables segment and moves straight into that, with no input asked for or delivered on the political side of the equation. I wonder if Russillo asked to not be put in a position to talk about politics (at least for a while), and/or if Simmons has put Russillo into the political penalty box for a while. Their conversations tend to be the best when they are free-flowing and occasionally touch on mature subjects, to borrow a phrase, but I feel like it might be a while before they can be as freely flowing as either or both of them might like.