I miss the days he used to rant about how bringing H.O.R.S.E. back would change the All-Star game forever.

sportsguy33 Bill Simmons
...I'd have the same concerns for NHL/NFL/MLB players? Athletes are trained/conditioned to play sports, not save their sports economically.
6 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

sportsguy33 Bill Simmons
Could anyone else who twists my "limited intellectual capital" comment around from yesterday's column please note that...
6 minutes ago

Students are trained to think rigidly, not critically.

American citizens are trained to prioritize entertainment, not to think critically.

And so on. Aren't generalizations without evidence fun?

Nevermind that I can give more evidence towards those two statements than Bill can wrt the lockout. Has he been in the meetings? I've been in scholastic institutions and around students; I've been in America and around American citizens. I can point to numerous studies to back up my point.

But that doesn't mean that if I publicized those two quotes, verbatim, I wouldn't be ridiculed. As I should be.

Bill's simply an idiot. If he really wants to counter the haters he'd write a column extrapolating his point, showing his work. Show some balls. It's your website; you can do whatever you want.

Thoroughly enjoying the ticket master guy podcast.

wait - wait - wait - you missed a very important twist

Less games would increase ticket demand for the remaining games. It would never get approved though because then player salaries would have to be scaled back. Also 75 would still be too many for a lot of losing teams, it'd have to be more like 60.

how could you even have a 75 game season? who gets the extra home games?

Every team plays a neutral site game in Seattle, ldo

It would also be a pickup game where each team assigns a captain and "drafts" a teammate, plus picks one guy in the audience for a 3 on 3 match. Players call their own fouls. Who would they pick? How would Kobe react to a foul being called on him? All I know is - I'll be watching. And so will you. You can't tell me you wouldn't. You just...can't. And yet, Stern and Hunter (who I have on good authority are morons, according to a source who I can't reveal but I will assure you is a very important person who has me on speed dial like Tom Cruise in Jerry McGuire) would never even CONSIDER such an idea. Do you see how easily this revenue thing could be solved?

He wants to contract Milwaukee and Minnesota after wanting to be the GM for Milwaukee and Minnesota.

bring back the simmons gimmick!

you mess with the Bill, you get the horns!

Simmons really has become almost unbearable. The only thing that keeps me from giving up on him completely is that he provides a forum for Chuck Klosterman to write semi-regularly about completely random topics.

LOL.

Are we making money writing posts? No.

Bill Simmons is writing to the the sports niche that allows him to make money.

It looks like petty jealousness when someone else writes (for money) criticizing Simmons because he didn't like what he read.

I mean it's fine to say "I disagreed w/ Simmons article." and provide a link to that article if the reader wants to read it. But to make an entire column about it and go over it line by line is just pathetic.

Call it what it is. He read the article, thought "I can't believe Simmons makes $500,000 a year for the crap." and decided to criticize it so he could generate more hits of his own article.

How is it more pathetic to craft a well-constructed argument and article than it is to just say you didn't like something? Thinking things through is pathetic? I'm baffled that you hold the idea that getting paid to do something somehow makes criticism for doing it badly invalid.

right, whenever a writer criticizes someone/something that's popular, it's just jealousy. do you realize how idiotic that is?

Simmons didn't become popular because of his superior knowledge of the NBA, yet he acts as though he's smarter than everyone in the NBA and seems to genuinely believe that his asinine ideas would improve the league. I'm glad someone took the time to call him on his horse****. maybe some casual NBA fans who assumed Simmons knows what he's talking about read Ziller's article and realized how dumb Simmons was.

So basically, Matt Williams, your position is that our society shouldn't have critics? People shouldn't get to paid to criticize movies/TV shows/plays/writers, because it's just petty jealousy?

yeah, I guess its ok if some random guy with a blog rips Simmons, but when a professional writer who has expert knowledge of the topic Simmons is writing about does it, it becomes jealousy

Simmons responded to the 'lack intellectual capital' outrage in his NFL picks column, and I kind of agree with him.

His basic point: If you're going to be solving the fundamental economic issues the NBA is having trouble with, or creating a new successful economic model for the NBA, those solutions aren't coming from the players side. It's coming from the owner's side, and maybe Billy Hunter. The successful club of billionaires who have law degrees, MBAs, etc; who are successful inventors and businessmen; and who have experience making big picture deals and have already found success creating new economic models in other areas. So yeah, in that sense the players absolutely lack the intellectual capital to change the system. Is Kobe going to be the one to finally figure out how to properly monetize the internet?

discuss.

I don't see why the players would be incapable of developing a reasonable plan. A lot of them are smart and motivated guys, maybe mix in some expert advice from accountants, lawyers, etc. It isn't merely a technocratic dilemma that whatever MBA owner will solve through his intellect (of course he's brilliant -- he's rich and has a couple degrees, durr)

I think his explanation made his comment seem even worse, lol.

Ie. he asks: "If they're so financially savvy, why do they need agents to negotiate their deals?"

The need for agents has absolutely nothing to do w/being "financially savvy". They need agents for the same reason the smartest people need lawyers, accountants, etc: it's not what they (the players) do.

(I hope this made sense.)

I don't think they're capable. The majority of them don't have a college degree (i think this is right? not sure) and certainly a very low percentage have business degrees. The majority of them are TERRIBLE with money, and a awfully high percentage of them will go broke within a few years after they stop playing despite having earned millions. Almost 100% have never had a real career-type-job other than basketball or sponsor/advertising stuff. I wouldn't trust an average NBA player to come up with an economic model for how to run a business. Would you?

And the players throughout this process generally have to speak with one voice at the negotiating table. Even if we can find a handful of awesomely intelligent players, they're going to be massively outnumbered by the dumb players.

Basically, despite his maybe-questionable choice of words, I don't see how it's at all controversial to state this idea: "The best solutions for building new economic models for the business of the NBA are going to come from the successful billionaire businessmen and not the demonstratably terrible with money players."