While Jason Cohen alerts us to Bill Simmons re-upping with ESPN (with some sort of TV gig in the offing —- there might be work for Jason Priestly coming up after all), Sports On My Mind’s dwil finds something unsavory about Simmons’ noted distaste for the USC-bound O.J. Mayo compared to the ‘net journalist’s boner for Kevin Love.
If it bothers Simmons so much that Mayo is a showboat, that so many high school players are showboats, then why does he first not challenge his company™s television arm to put an end to showing NCAA dunk contests and high school basketball games on the air before he frames an argument in black and white?
You know Bill, if you wanted to write about how great you think Kevin Love is, you could have accomplished that with out performing a drive-by disparaging of O. J. Mayo on your way back to Boston. And while you were writing out your abject hate for Mayo, did you ever stop to think why you and so many of your peers dislike this young man who most of you have never met? Did you ever stop to think that if Mayo was a young, white entrepreneur who eschewed a basketball scholarship to pursue his burgeoning business, you™d praise him to no end?
œIf Love were black, this would be a much easier topic to discuss. But he™s white. So even though there™s a natural inclination to embrace Love™s game and disparage Mayo™s game ” you know, assuming you give a crap about basketball and care about where it™s headed as a sport “”
There™s a natural inclination to embrace Love™s game ” if you give a crap about basketball???
Does this mean Mayo, as a point guard, can™t dribble with both hands, make the correct pass to the post, shoot with both hands, make the correct choice when leading a 3-on-2 fast break? Aren™t all those things part of being a fundamentally sound basketball player?
You know, I just posted an Earl Monroe video to my site because he was the old school player I saw on film (well, converted to VHS). œBlack Jesus as he was called could do everything a fundamentally-sound guard is supposed to do; but he also played with flair.
I wonder Bill, did Earl Monroe ruin basketball? Is Earl Monroe a punk, too?
Love, love, love your description of Simmons as “The Sports Putz.” Let’s get this out in the mainstream. Then again, no one in the mainstream knows who this spineless creep is.
Is it alarming that a 19-year-old kid throwing himself a halfcourt alley-oop in the final minute of a 40-point win, dunking it, tossing the ball into the stands and getting thrown out of his final high school game, then soaking in a standing ovation could be considered a beautiful moment by some people? Probably not. That’s just our culture now. Rappers sing songs with their own names as the chorus. Wannabe celebrities intentionally leak sex tapes to make themselves famous. Rich teenagers make fools of themselves on “My Super Sweet 16” and don’t even get that they’re the joke.
What’s wrong, Bill? Pop culture got you down? Could the increasingly vapid (and vast) American reality have anything to do with you glorifying it every other paragraph?
“The Sports Putz” —- that’s classic. Fits the creep Simmons like a ribbed condom.
let it be noted that “ombudsman” and “Franky G.” are one and the same. Thanks. We get the idea.