The Bill Simmons Thread
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Seems like Part 2 of the pod is messed up. As part of the expansion draft for two new NBA teams, they start in on who's available with Memphis, then cover most of the western conference. No eastern conference teams mentioned. Like an hour of the show went missing.
They said at the outset that they specifically did not want to go through every team's availability, but I hadn't noticed that they only wound up covering the West initially.
Simmons said at the end that he's going back on vacation for 2 weeks. Recording what I assume will be NFL over-unders on 8/20.
So in the expansion draft they drafted Hauser from the Celtics. I'm not sure that Hauser should have been unprotected. In my estimate, there's 7 easy keepers:
Tatum
Brown
Porzingas
Horford
Brogdon
White
Time Lord
That leaves 1 spot to keep from the following:
Hauser
Kornet
Pritchard
Banton
Brissett
Davison
Scrubb
Blake Griffin (is he still under contract?)
Jordan Walsh is protected as a drafted rookie per their rules
I think Hauser is the 8th keeper. His shooting for me keeps him on the team, and you can never have too many wings.
Tatum
Brown
Porzingas
Horford
Brogdon
White
Time Lord
That leaves 1 spot to keep from the following:
Hauser
Kornet
Pritchard
Banton
Brissett
Davison
Scrubb
Blake Griffin (is he still under contract?)
Jordan Walsh is protected as a drafted rookie per their rules
I think Hauser is the 8th keeper. His shooting for me keeps him on the team, and you can never have too many wings.
The expansion draft was so half assed because they didn’t agree to who was available beforehand. Simmons was constantly naming protected rookies throughout the entire podcast. I did laugh my ass off when Rusillo was incredulous at Simmons picks of Alvarado and Tillman. I half expected Rusillo to ask Simmons if he even watched basketball.
I didn't really understand Rusillo's fixation on Kira Lewis...Alvarado is clearly imo a better player than Lewis, even if Lewis is a bit younger.
I think they just approached it completely differently. Simmons looked for players with absolutely no upside, while Russilllo preferred players who weren't as good right now but could have the potential to get better.
I understand Russillo's line of thinking better. Simmons at one point was like "Xavier Tillman, Ben Simmons, Kenrich Williams, Alvarado... this is a good team!" about a roster that could possibly win, IDK, 25 games? Russillo's team would win like 5 games less but at least have some upside.
I guess I just don't see the obvious upside in Kira Lewis. He also kept talking about EJ Liddell, who has never played in an NBA game.
Yeah, I don't either, I think it's just - first round pick, has good athletic traits, has been injured, can he regain some of the things that made him the 13th pick overall.
Billy taking his son was inspired. I think I could listen to Bill talk to Sal, Klosterman, Ryen, or House about anything. I can’t tell you how little I would care about an NBA expansion team draft yet I listened to that show.
I half expected Russillo to call David Kahn to demand Simmons apologize to him for making fun of him for decades.
I hope anytime Simmons brings up that he could be an NBA GM someone mentions this podcast to him.
He'd be Isiah Thomas level at the job.
Simmons University would have been too on the nose? I like walking by the Simmons field when going to/from Sox games and Brookline.
From the description of the latest podcast: "Malcolm Gladwell on how to fix youth sports." That is the hardest of hard passes for me.
Edit - listening to the Matthew Berry interview. Simmons is playacting a hypothetical DeShaun Watson draft auction and actually counts from 1-7 out loud. This is the kind of stuff Francesa used to do when he started losing his fastball.
Also not sure he needed to put on the "blaccent" when depicting Frank Thomas hawking his boner pills, for numerous reasons.
Edit - listening to the Matthew Berry interview. Simmons is playacting a hypothetical DeShaun Watson draft auction and actually counts from 1-7 out loud. This is the kind of stuff Francesa used to do when he started losing his fastball.
Also not sure he needed to put on the "blaccent" when depicting Frank Thomas hawking his boner pills, for numerous reasons.
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In the middle of a long discussion about how terrible it is that wealthy people “redshirt” their kids in school (ie hold a kid back or delay entrance so they can be the oldest and most mature student on their grade) Bill mentions as if it’s totally different that he did a PG year that was valuable for him. Never change SG!
I think the similarities outweigh the differences-Bills choice to get an extra year is great and other peoples choices to grt an extra year is not. Personally I don’t give a shit, take the time or not, I trust people to make the right decisions for their families.
As a factual matter I think very few people indeed repeat eighth grade to excel at sports and this is some whining based on a it really thing. Delayed entrance to school, repeating a grade k-2, yeah that’s common.
EDIT: Bill's stated reason for why redshirt years is bad was why would you want to delay starting going into the real world for a year (not the much better argument you make, it's idiotic to make little Sebastian repeat geometry so he can be a slighly better soccer player at harvard-westlake)--and that delay is exactly what a pg year accomplishes.
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I stopped listening to Bill's podcast a while ago because he's become a hot take moron. But I really like the Ringer's fantasy show and the guys were on Bill's podcast.
So I listened and Simmons has gotten worse. He is so dumb, incurious, and his depth of knowledge is a puddle. He's also really mean, for no reason.
Phew, giving up on Bill's pod was a gift.
So I listened and Simmons has gotten worse. He is so dumb, incurious, and his depth of knowledge is a puddle. He's also really mean, for no reason.
Phew, giving up on Bill's pod was a gift.
Yeah it's not so crazy, like the old thing about people who like howard stern listening to him an hour a day and people who hate him listening 2 hours a day. He's a boston focussed sports and pop culture guy the same age as many of us sharing exactly our interests who was literally one of us on this board-and by the way a shitty poster who left in a huff after getting annihilated for dumb takes. Listening to him, discussing his stuff, ragging on him a little is kind of fun.
I once heard podcaster John Hodgeman talk about the relationships between podcasters and their audience. Basically when we listen to podcasts it's usually a one-on-one experience, even if we're doing other things like commuting to work or working out or doing house work or making a dull day at the job more interesting. In other words, it's a much different experience if you go to the movies or go to a concert or go to a ball game or even watch TV, all of these experiences are more communal and they appeal to a wide variety of people. Listening to a podcast is so much more personal due to how you listen to it and how it's mostly tailored to exactly what you like.
That's why live shows are usually such a shitshow and the main reason why people usually have really big feelings about why they like or why they don't like their favorite podcasts. Add that fact that most people here "grew up" with Simmons and have strong opinions on when he sold out, stopped trying, etc.; it's no surprise that the "relationship" with is a bit more, I don't know, intense.
In fairness, most of the insane posts in the T&R thread come from Fred himself, or one of his burner accounts.It still doesn't come close to the T&R thread
I largely don't listen to the BS podcast because I've lost interest in the NBA, and that's what he talks about most of the time. No grudge from me, it's just not a league I care to invest time in.
Bill is still a delight on The Rewatchables.
This triggered a thought: I first started reading Boston Sports Guy when I was 22. I'm 50. Even though I had a few years there where I didn't listen to his podcasts very much, I wonder if there's anyone whose content I've consumed more than Bill's over my lifetime in terms of total hours.
It's an impossible question to answer, and I'm probably overestimating how long it took me to read some of his columns, but the fact that it could even possibly be Bill is pretty wild/scary.
He’s a fun hang, man. It’s a life well lived. He’s up there for me. Since his show is mostly topical I don’t relisten to his stuff so Norm is in the lead for me. If Klosterman had more content, he would be up there. I relisten to a lot of his appearances on other podcasts.
Since I relisten so much, I have noticed, I often forget quite a lot. I try to guess the answer from memory and sometimes it’s not there.
The Rewatchables is great for relistens.
If Klosterman had a podcast, I'd absolutely listen to it. I wonder why he doesn't, practically everyone else does (which may be the exact reason).
He has spoken about it. He doesn’t like doing it. He doesn’t mind being a guest. He dabbled with “Music Exists”. Seems like he is a guy that likes the solitude of writing. I think he has gotten a look at massive fame from his writing profile days and it does not seem to be anything he is interested in chasing.
I think Klosterman is best in limited doses. "Music Exists" is what confirmed that for me. After a few episodes I couldn't stop thinking: "I get it Chuck, you're CLEVER.". I couldn't bear hearing him weekly, or more.
Yeah, I get the same feeling from him too. Plus, he probably figures he's about ten years too late on this--like you said, he's already made his fame writing.
You know what? I can also see that too. He's not Gladwell for me (who I find insufferable), but sometimes he does inch over into that territory.
Gladwell on Bill's show was mildly interesting in his wackadoodle way. He gets grating in the sense that he suggests some crazy ideas and then explains with incredible confidence that it is the obvious solution for a problem. "Everyone should take a standardized test on their birthday, why aren't we doing this???"
He fully cannot stop equating everything to the NBA. It felt like he brought up the league every couple of sentences when talking to Mike Lombardi. A part of me feels like this is just him trolling Cousin Sal.
It's to the point that Lombardi himself was trying to find NBA analogs for football things to try to explain them to Bill.
It's really hard to make Lombardi not entertaining but Bill was pushing it
On a bright note, Sal is back!!
These 2 are the best and it’s not really close. Time Machine 1980s and they have a drive time show would probably 10x my life.
Yeah, Guess the Lines, Over/Unders etc has basically been sponsored content for a while now but the pod this week was way over the top. They must have name dropped “FanDuel” 100 times. It is moving from pure entertainment listening to clear shilling (and mostly for the worst sucker bets).
Just want to tuck this away because I think it's insane and I'll forget where he said this if I don't write it down. Simmons's pre-season picks:
AFC
1 Pittsburgh (12-5)
2 KC (12-5)
3 Miami (11-6)
4 Tenn
5 Cincy (11-6)
6 Cleveland
7 Patriots (9-8)
NFC
1 Philly
2 SF
3 NO
4 GB
5 Dallas
6 Seattle (9-8)
7 NYG (9-8)
AFC
1 Pittsburgh (12-5)
2 KC (12-5)
3 Miami (11-6)
4 Tenn
5 Cincy (11-6)
6 Cleveland
7 Patriots (9-8)
NFC
1 Philly
2 SF
3 NO
4 GB
5 Dallas
6 Seattle (9-8)
7 NYG (9-8)
You know, over time I'm loving the Sisphyean (or Lucy and the football nature) of Sal and Bill trudging out their predictions every year full of confidence that _this_ year, unlike all the others, they have correctly identified the team that is unexpectedly great and the team that is unexpectedly bad and that they've figured out when in the season to bet overs and when unders and whether home field is an advantage this year or not and that yes, the Steelers are going to be good on defense because they always are and they should have known that the Giants were going to be good last year because obviously Daboll was going to be the most successful rookie head coach.
And then by week 3 randomness has destroyed it all. Every single year.
I enjoy the Sal pods (for nostalgia and because Sal is entertaining while fully admitting that he doesn’t know everything and that a lot of gambling is random) but holy shit does Bill know nothing about football.
Between this and naming Rodgers his “fantasy make or break” player after bragging about doing weeks of research, it’s almost like BS is doing some sort of parody
It really was. I'm really curious how their Sunday morning shows go. I could see them being super-entertaining if they put in significant prep work.
Austin Rivers is delusional and bitter thinking his NBA career got derailed by bad luck despite him being an elite scorer. Bill should have pushed back at some point.