Bill Simmons's stupid book [basketball talk]

[not that clay]

This is old but was new to me:

http://deadspin.com/5403430/you-are-not-the-cosmos-a-review-of-bill-simmons-book-of-basketball

I had only made it 100 pages in before I gave up.

[Pidgeon]

It can't be any worse than the writing on that site.

[Gilly]

I read it all a few months ago on a Kindle skipping the footnotes. I love comparing players and different eras and The Big Book had a ton of that. But, the guy is kind of a jerk and he writes openly about his Boston bias. I've never read Bill Simmons much before so maybe that's why I was able to get through the whole thing. Once you get past the first couple of chapters and he gets "most" of his Celtic pride out of the way, it turns out to be ok. I've heard some of the stats and facts are wrong... I don't know if that was corrected in the new edition.

[Stupornaut]

Simmons is one of those dudes who seems to know his stuff, but his attempts to be personable/relatable/casual annoy the crap out of me -- anyone who thinks Vegas is the greatest destination in the world, never shuts up about The Karate Kid, and casually brings up porno culture* is the kind of person I want to spend as little time as possible reading. He is the living embodiment of a beer commercial character. I'd recommend the FreeDarko books instead.

*see also: Deadspin, non-Leitch division. Drew Magary is The Worst.

[Pregnant Pause]

He could be a pretty good writer if he stuck to basketball and didn't try for the whole perpetual frat guy lifestyle writer schtick.  Then again ESPN probably backs the money truck up to his garage.

It's hard to imagine a book about the NBA could be a slog, but The Book of Basketball was just endless. 

[scratchbomb]

Emma Span just did a great post about The Sports Guy's rampant misogyny. Gross for a fratboy, even worse for a 40-year-old married father of two:

http://www.bronxbanterblog.com/2010/12/17/the-book-of-basketball-and-staggering-casual-sexism/

My biggest problem with him (other than see above) is that he's in such a rut. If you've read one of his columns, you've read them all. And his Average Joe Fan schtick comes off as disingenuous when it's sprinkled with references to hanging out with super amazing famous people.

That being said, his 30 for 30 series is pretty great. I have yet to see a bad episode.

[not that clay]

It can't be any worse than the writing on that site.

True. I just followed a link from somewhere else. The article was by Charlie Pierce (and yeah, that's the Wait Wait guy).

[jbissell]

Emma Span just did a great post about The Sports Guy's rampant misogyny.

Yeah, that was a great article. I'd always wondered how his female readership could tolerate that side of his writing.

That being said, his 30 for 30 series is pretty great. I have yet to see a bad episode.

I agree, though I haven't watched a lot of the ones from this fall that seemed to be considered the weaker ones. The Red Sox one was certainly inessential. It's definitely the best thing ESPN has done in a long time.

I second stupornaut's praise of the new FD book. I'm only about a quarter through but it's been a great read so far.

[roubaix]

Bill can be very funny when interviewed.  I don't read his stuff though.

[senorcorazon]

All I can say is that 50 pages in to the new FreeDarko book I feel like I've learned more (and been more entertained) than with 150 pages of the Simmons book. It's like someone thought about, wrote, edited, and THEN published a book with amazing illustrations instead of printing out every possible tangent. 

[jbissell]

Those illustrations are awesome. The Jordan one is my personal favorite but Barkley as parade balloon is pretty killer too.

[TwoSheds]

For what it's worth, in the latest installment of Simmons' podcast (at around the 40 minute mark), his buddy Kevin Wildes and he came up with a wacky movie pitch that veered kind of close to Tom, Jon and Patton's classic "Rambocky" call. Simmons even names the pitched movie "Rambocky" at the 45 minute mark.

[nec13]

Emma Span just did a great post about The Sports Guy's rampant misogyny. Gross for a fratboy, even worse for a 40-year-old married father of two:

http://www.bronxbanterblog.com/2010/12/17/the-book-of-basketball-and-staggering-casual-sexism/

My biggest problem with him (other than see above) is that he's in such a rut. If you've read one of his columns, you've read them all. And his Average Joe Fan schtick comes off as disingenuous when it's sprinkled with references to hanging out with super amazing famous people.

That being said, his 30 for 30 series is pretty great. I have yet to see a bad episode.

Simmons is hit or miss for me. Some of his written work is excellent and some of it is not-so-excellent. To be honest, I actually enjoy his podcast a lot more than his columns. And I agree with scratch that his spuriousness is off putting.

On the other hand, we do have him to thank for 30 for 30, a series which might be one of the two or best three things going on TV right now. Plus, as I said, he does a good job with The B.S. Report. So I guess he's not all that bad.

[Greggulator]

I went to college with Kevin Wildes. I didn't know him so well but I got into a feud with him in the school newspaper. He had this god awful column that was ripe with references taken from other places. I worked at the college library and he wrote a column about my friend who was this stoner grad student guy who sat at the front and checked ID's of students. Wildes didn't have his ID and my friend didn't let him in and this became the subject of a column where he made fun of library workers.

I wrote a response which made point of the fact that he was a dumb rich kid from Connecticut who didn't have to have a work study job and accused him of having a yacht. He made some kind of retort writing like he was Judge Smails from Caddyshack, which was about the 400th time he quoted the movie in his column.