Has it occured to anyone that Bill is basically saying "I was a dork, but now I'm famous w/ money."

I mean these are home photos, not random shots w/ him in the backround.

Wow Simmons ripping into Shaq today on PTI.

Paraphrasing: 'Shaq was one of those guys that could've gotten a 4.0 in college, he got a 3.3 instead, partied and had fun. He could've been one of the top 5 players in NBA history, instead he's just in the top 15. And he's fine with it. I'll remember him trying hard for one season." Damn.

While Simmons is still bitter about Shaq ballooning while injured/not rehabbing this season, it's not the first time he's made this point.

It's also the truth.

Simmons completely wrong about something

shocking

he's not really completely wrong about that. though he's still a clear top 10 player, maybe top 5 depending on your criteria, but simmons holds older generation players in higher regard.

Shaq clearly left a fair amount on the table by not always taking his conditioning as seriously as he could have. Out of shape Shaq was still dominant, but it isn't out of line to suggest he could have been even scarier if he was in shape his whole career.

yeah i think just about everyone(including shaq himself) acknowledges he could've been even better if he had tunnel-vision of being nba goat. him saying things like "i did it my way", "if only i'd have listened to my pops about my FT shooting, i'd be at 30k" is another way of saying that imo.

I really enjoyed Simmons' Grantland intro piece.

I find most of his recent stuff (and him in general) to be generally insufferable, but he toned down the ego and didn't get all syrupy in this one.

kinda hard to disagree with the sentiment but i don't think it matters. if you could have a career/life like that without killing yourself with absolute devotion 24/7 to basketball, while it's probably insulting to ppl who worked harder with less results or to purists who think they're for some reason owed his 100% fullest potential, who gives a ****? yea, if shaq had kobe's work ethic it's very possible he could have been the greatest (easily most dominant) player in nba history. as it is he has 4 rings, was one of the most dominant, made a couple hundred million, and seemed to have fun almost every step of the way being some kind of pop culture icon. good for him

i have not read this yet, but the title alone is amazing ammo for the haters :

Three-Man Weave
By Chuck Klosterman
The single greatest sporting event Chuck Klosterman ever witnessed? An obscure junior college basketball game 23 years ago.

I dont get the point of his site. Can't they just write on espn?

No because he used the "f" world. OMG, the horror!

Why does an internet article need footnotes?

Because Infinite Jest came out 15 years ago.

yeah I'm guessing he was allowed one f-bomb so he used it in a place where it didn't really make sense, but whatever, you gotta use it

why do people call it an "f-bomb"? sounds so stupid

Hatersss

I've liked the launch stuff so far (minus jacobys reality draft feature)

Don't understand why they had to have a countdown to a site opening with four articles. I assume it will get better but kind of feels like a barren desert at the moment.

The Klosterman article was good, but I know the dude can write, I've read his books.

Reality Show Draft = Simmons definitely reads SE y'all!

because the actual word is censored on here

diddy,

there's now 3 more articles up inc one on lebron

i doubt they'll keep up this amount of content.. but if they do i can see a large drop in productivity at work for me

I quite like the ESPN.com-Page-2-finally-done-right.

Even if only because it loads 40x faster than any of ESPN's other bloated pages.

On the baseball guy: the only parts that interested me, was the stuff he left out. (dykstra's view on baseball, and what made francona angry) Following the al east? yawn.

Like both the Grantland intro and the Lebron piece.

Was Simmons mailing it in waiting for the new site? I hope so. Love Simmons when he's good.