The Bill Simmons Thread
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How long before LA Bill completes the heel turn and becomes a Laker's fan? For years he has been trying to find a hedge against the Celtics. For a while it was the Clippers which being a Red Sox fan in New York makes some sense. I go to Mets games, and would go to Pedro games. However he has kind of let up on that (weird year to let go) but I think he was trying OKC or Orlando on for size.
I don't think Bill really enjoys the Jays and I don't think the team gives him the time of day. To be fair, I don't think the Celtics in general give that much to the National Media outside of being on JJ Reddick's podcast (which is a sore spot for Bill). I do think Bill knows some people with Lakers who have no problem rubbing elbows with him. It leads to him being on social media extoling the brilliance of letting people know they gave LeBron an out to GSW as some sort of 3d Chess move.
I think the Lakers could work for Bill. Tons of history and tons of insane wishcasting that sometimes even gets forced into reality.
I don't think Bill really enjoys the Jays and I don't think the team gives him the time of day. To be fair, I don't think the Celtics in general give that much to the National Media outside of being on JJ Reddick's podcast (which is a sore spot for Bill). I do think Bill knows some people with Lakers who have no problem rubbing elbows with him. It leads to him being on social media extoling the brilliance of letting people know they gave LeBron an out to GSW as some sort of 3d Chess move.
I think the Lakers could work for Bill. Tons of history and tons of insane wishcasting that sometimes even gets forced into reality.
Normally I'd be a "pox on both their houses", as I'm not a fan of McAfee's "bro-iness" and I have little tolerance for Bill's thin-skinned-ness. But to the degree this is about Bill going after Pat for the Kimmel comments on the episode of his show with Rodgers, I'm with Bill. You don't joke about someone being a pedophile in this day and age when any stray rumor can become a fact in some people's minds.
I love that pettiness from Bill. Awesome. I also chuckled this week when he said after the Super Bowl that there was no definition for a dynasty but then rattled off what qualifies as if he’s the arbiter and that Chiefs weren’t one, but they were setting up to be a “mini-dynasty”, whatever that means.
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I don't think he'll ever outwardly root for the Lakers. However, I couldn't help but notice over the past few months that he is VERY into the Lakers, moves they could make, what LBJ is going to do, etc. I think being in LA for so long is leading him to take more interest in the Lakers, even if he's not a "fan" of theirs.
He knows that Lakers = clicks. He's never heel-turning on that issue but he's more than happy to milk them for content.
He'll also refuse to pay his workers a decent wage.
View: https://twitter.com/WGAEast/status/1757540503627686287
More than 30 full-time @RingerUnion members were paid LESS than interns last summer. Unacceptable. Fair contract for the Ringer Union NOW!
I kind of agree with you except for one thing, Bill LOVES Tatum. He doesn't have him rated as highly as some posters here but whenever he actually has to talk about him, it's clear he thinks the world of him. I think he's just hedging on Tatum so he doesn't look like a huge homer
Agree with a lot of what you say. But, they are not really “his” workers at this point. Spotify 100% owns the Ringer, and is a publicly traded company with $48 billion market cap.
He sold out long ago, it’s a tough business…
It’s been my experience that media company interns have received decent hourly wages in recent years, largely because they need to be compensated for the company to retain their IP.
My hunch is that it’s not that interns are well paid. It’s that there are some low level jobs at the Ringer who’s hourly rate for 40 hours/week is a little less than an interns hourly rate for 8/hours a week (or whatever it is).
Does the union only represent full time writers?
Both when I interned for media companies, and when I was new to the biz as a FTE, interns didn’t make a dime. Somewhere along the way the legal departments of these companies must have realized they were at risk (perhaps it was state regulations as well, I don’t know for sure).
But for the past decade or more, any intern I’ve had on my team has received a pretty solid hourly wage. And Legal has always told me it’s because that way the company can own their work.
In some areas, interns are hourly and time and a half for overtime whereas new hires are salary. Salary ends up being less when there is a lot of work/overtime
If I recall, he recently not so jokingly threatened to evict his own children if either became a Laker fan during one of his pods with Sal.
Now KOC on the other hand, that motherfucker is a pure Laker fan Judas that swallowed the LA Kool Aid.
Plus interns of course don’t get benefits. So total comp for the full-time folks is still going to be higher even on a rate basis. But it’s a good sound bite by the union.
KOC has unfortunately turned into someone I actively avoid now, at least in podcast form. He seemed like someone who spent a bit too long trying to appear unbiased when talking about the Celtics, and just fell all the way into the deep end. Or maybe he's just unhappy that Boston traded Smart.If I recall, he recently not so jokingly threatened to evict his own children if either became a Laker fan during one of his pods with Sal.
Now KOC on the other hand, that motherfucker is a pure Laker fan Judas that swallowed the LA Kool Aid.
Theres a difference between them though.If I recall, he recently not so jokingly threatened to evict his own children if either became a Laker fan during one of his pods with Sal.
Now KOC on the other hand, that motherfucker is a pure Laker fan Judas that swallowed the LA Kool Aid.
KOC is trying to be an actual reporter so he can’t come out and straight up root for the Celtics. Bill isn’t trying to be a reporter so he can just continue to be a fan.,
(TBH, I don’t particularly like KOC anymore, just pointing out that he and bill have different responsibilities)
Bill isn’t going to become a Laker fan but he has become incredibly negative about this iteration of the Celtics, to the point where it seems very hot take-y.
I mean on the trade deadline pod he was talking about how it’s impossible to trust any team in the East because of the Celtics recent struggles…while they still have far and away the best record in the NBA.
I mean on the trade deadline pod he was talking about how it’s impossible to trust any team in the East because of the Celtics recent struggles…while they still have far and away the best record in the NBA.
He pretty strongly went out of his way to distance himself from Marcus during Smart's DPOY run for the same reason you mentioned. Russillo does something similar, but he's comfortable enough in his career that it's less apparent.
I still enjoy KOC's stuff, but he's all-in on every bad Laker fan take you could imagine.
KOC’s mentioned before that reporting on the league has killed his individual Celtics fandom. I’ve heard that before from people who work in sports. They cheer for people and relationships more than individuals.
I think this is mostly correct, but Spotify had a massive layoff impacting 17% of their workforce in December. Seemingly no one at the Ringer was impacted. It would be reasonable to say Bill has some level of autonomy there.
Even if he isn't a Laker fan, he is surrounded by Laker fans. The hoop insta/twitterverse is flooded with pro-Laker and anti-Celtics PR. Remember when we were hearing about how Kyle Kuzma was a better player than Jayson Tatum. That was being put out for at least a year after that draft. They pump up their players and tear down others, especially Celtics. I would think that it's almost impossible to be immersed in that environment like he is and not internalize some of that nonsense.
Not trying to bring politics into this, but Tara Palmeri was a rough listen earlier this week. What a colossal step down for the Ringer from the Keeping it 1600 guys.
Yes, I listened for five minutes and just said "forget it." Dialogue that would have gotten them laughed out of a V&N thread.
The Keeping it 1600 guys are Pod Save America, right? I haven't listened to Tara, but those are tough shoes to fill in any event.
Yeah that was…not good. She had zero sense of history. If Bill asked her a question that wasn’t discussed on cable news in the last 4 years she had no idea.
Yes, but I thought the notion about youth culture being separate from adult culture being the anomaly, not the norm was fun. I always enjoy Chuck.
Bill thinks Bob Kraft and John Henry should switch teams because they’re both disastrous owners now. Oh, and he’s still down on the Celtics. Yeah.
I’m the frog in the slowly boiling pot. I still listen to pretty much every episode. The only ones I regularly enjoy are the Cousin Sal and Ryen Russillo episodes at this point. It’s me. Hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.
He said that while she's undoubtedly the most popular artist in the world right now, she doesn't necessarily have a song that will outlive her to the point that future generations can sing along but might know nothing else about the artist. Think: Sweet Caroline, Bad to the Bone, Don't Stop Believing, Seven Nation Army, etc.
It doesn't make or break them as an artist, and sometimes those songs reveal themselves later, but I'm not sure which of her songs will have universal appeal in 40 years.
I see. Good point re: revealing itself. It is essentially unknowable and smacks of "old man doesn't like music that is popular amongst young women," bias.
If I had to bet, I would say she already has one, though. I am pretty sure "Shake It Off" still has quite a bit of cultural cache amongst the millennial and younger set, i.e., the people who in 40 years will be listening to "oldies" in their retirement home rocking chairs.
Shake It Off is a big omission on my part (especially since I saw "Sing" 75 times), but he said it more as that she didn't have one YET. He said, if she ever had a ki, she'd very likely write a lullaby or song about motherhood that would become timeless. I don't think there was anything negative in his commentary about her music, although Chuck might be more in the "accepting her total dominance" than a Swiftie. And he even said that Thin Lizzy has one of those timeless songs, so it wasn't intended as a measure of success, just that some songs get there and others don't.
Honest question: is Sweet Caroline due largely to Fenway? And when did the ba-ba-bahs get added? Did that pre-date Fenway?
Yeah this. This song is an earworm made for Tik Tok and will probably survive whatever other social media is around 40 years from now. Not her best performance, much like I think The White Stripes had all sorts of material better than Seven Nation Army, but as someone comes out of the bunker from a nuclear holocaust decades from now they'll be humming Shake it Off.
It's a big omission on his part and he is getting paid for his analysis.
I feel like SC stayed in the public consciousness because of the Sox using it, but that might just be because I dislike it. It's hard to say being in Boston though. No idea what kind of airtime or cache it has outside the region.
I assume he gets some dosh for his appearances, could be wrong. Maybe he gets paid in exposure.
I don't think I could tell you a single Taylor Swift song off the top of my head that has come out over the last ten years, or since Shake it Off. I don't listen to pop music really though, and I'm sure I'd recognize some of her bigger songs over that timespan if I heard them, but I couldn't tell you their names. As big as Swift is, and you can point to her concert revenue and social media influence and all that stuff, it's hard for me to believe she is bigger than Michael Jackson, as Klosterman said, simply because pop music isn't nearly as ubiquitous as it once was.
I don't listen all the time but I have listened to some of the recent ones and heard his Celtics talk...
The 180 he did on this latest pod between Tatum and Brown was really something. I guess this is the issue with the format of doing so many podcasts per week, you're bound to have "hot takez" and flip flops
Counterpoint: We're a far more culturally fractured society now than we were when MJ was the biggest thing in the world. Had Swift existed in the 80s-era monoculture, I'm guessing she'd have been even bigger than she is in the present day.
Simmons completely fell off my podcast-listening radar after football season. Rich Eisen posts each hour of his show every day as separate podcasts, and I don't think a day goes by when he doesn't have at least one good guest. I find him a much more interesting listen for my commute home than Simmons.
I also am a little ashamed to admit that as much as I enjoy hoops, I don't have that much interest in listening to February-March NBA analysis. When the playoff races start up in earnest, maybe I'll be interested enough to listen to Simmons again, though I suspect The Mismatch or Russillo's show will be a better listen at that point.