Tribe Fans Need to Know Lefty Weisman: Reliving Yesteryear
March 16, 2015Browns sign Randy Starks, Tramon Williams
March 16, 2015When we last left Grantland’s Editor in Chief Bill Simmons, he was driving the Kyrie Irving Irrational Hate bus, attempting to pick up guests who would believe his biased and otherwise incredulous beliefs surrounding the Cleveland Cavaliers point guard. Something about a scoring mentality. Something about not making teammates better. Something about his contract extension. All of Simmons’ thoughts—which at one point included a potential trade for Phoenix’s Eric Bledsoe, a player who has all of the above traits but with better defense—synthesized down into the long-time scribe leaving Irving outside of his top 25 in terms of trade value.
Naturally, Cleveland fans went nuts and used this as a reason to discredit any and all other thoughts. It didn’t help that Simmons hated the Irving pick in 2011 and has raked the city over the coals each time its won the NBA Lottery.
Thankfully, for the writer and perhaps the enraged fans, Simmons not only ran a mea culpa, he did so over several thousand words in listing Irving at No. 10 on this year’s written version of the trade value column.
I couldn’t shake the fear that I had screwed up. I spent the next two weeks watching Cleveland more closely, ultimately bumping Kyrie’s ranking before Part 2 of the written column was posted on February 25. LeBron’s miraculous return to form (thanks to two weeks of R&R in Miami) had overshadowed a more compelling subplot: Finally, we saw all the ways Kyrie could affect a winning team. Ridiculous first step. Excellent shooting. Semi-freakociousness on fast breaks. A world-class ability to finish in traffic from any and every angle. It’s all there. When you project him as a Wealthy Man’s Tony Parker, Kyrie’s basketball ceiling makes more sense: He’s a ridiculously efficient scorer who needs another creator (or a fluidly brilliant offensive system) to get everyone else involved.
Semi-freakociousness. Nice. But go on…
Could LeBron be that creator for him? No question. It’s already happening. Even if Kyrie will never have the Conley Clock in his head (see Part 2), it doesn’t matter if he’s playing with the right guys. I was dead wrong about Kyrie’s potential. But hey — at least I got to the right place with it. Just took awhile.
As if watching Irving dominate was not enough, Bill received some help.
When Jalen Rose and I taped The Grantland Basketball Hour with Kobe last month, we were killing time during one of the commercial breaks and I asked Kobe if he had any “new” favorite players. … Kobe fancies himself as that guy for the NBA alpha dog/badass/overcompetitive mf’er corner. Knows it when he sees it. Even brags about being able to see it. He sniffed it out early with Westbrook (his favorite current star) in 2012 and — to my surprise — he’s sniffing it with Kyrie now and said as much. He loves Kyrie. So that was a game changer for me. When Chef Kobe blessed Chef Kyrie, I knew it was time to wipe my Kyrie Opinion Hard Drive and start over.
Talk about an about face. The entire column is worth the time, even if it does come equipped with some self-indulgent tangets that reference all of the individuals he gets to spend time with on a daily basis. What Cavs fans should truly embrace is the fact that a perceived Cleveland basher (which I maintain is downright silly) has not only admitted he was wrong on one of the city’s most talented players, he ended his piece by listing him 10th overall and saying that it may not be high enough.
Irving is just 22 (he turns 23 this month) and has scored 90 points over his last two contests. He’s blossoming before our eyes and doing it in the most jaw-dropping of ways. This is shaping up to be one hell of a spring—and it appears that Bill Simmons is on our side as we watch it all unfold.
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This is how I read the Simmons piece-
Sports Guy (TM) who doesn’t know sports: Kyrie is bad!
Athlete who does know sports: Nope. Kyrie is good.
Sports Guy (TM) who doesn’t know sports: Kyrie is good! Be my friend!
Simmons is still clownshoes.
Simmons always writes beautifully, whether you like the substance or not. I thought his distinction between the way players view players and writers/fans view players is fascinating.
Yes, Simmons can be precious, and obnoxious in his Celtic homerism – his current kick house hunting for Kevin Love in Back Bay can make you spew. But even when he’s wrong and obnoxious he’s the best and most interesting mind out there in sports writing. The fact that he is so talented in his writing and speaking, and in his editing of Grantland, and even producing the fine 30 for 30 videos, shows what a once in a generation talent he is. I pretty much ignore his snide Cleveland remarks, because if you’ve ever lived on the east coast you’re used to this type: the one who just knows that his city is superior to anything in the provincial parts of the country, the guy who plays off our insecure overreactions by teasing us more and enjoying it when we go even more ballistic.
What’s crazy is that we’ve been saying that Kyrie “is blossoming before our eyes” for the past the seasons! Dude just keeps getting better.
Also, of course he bumped him up in February, that’s when all the freshest stuff comes out.
“The fact that he is so talented in his writing and speaking, and in his editing of Grantland, and even producing the fine 30 for 30 videos, shows what a once in a generation talent he is.”
This times eleventy million. I’ve always found it interesting that those who attempted to emulate Simmons did so through weird pop culture references rather that realizing those have always been secondary to his consistent display talent and ability. Guys a forward-thinking visionary.
Yeah, as deadspin noted, this piece wasn’t about Irving, but about Simmons need to tell everyone that he gets to talk to athletes.
“he’s the best and most interesting mind out there in sports writing”
Guffaw. The best part about any Simmons piece is when he talks to someone who actually knows what they’re talking about him and has to correct him. He’s a mediocre writer, and a terrible speaker. He hired some actual talent at Grantland – but, along with the 30 for 30s, that has a helluva lot to do with ESPN’s endless pockets. He was as much a producer on the 30 for 30s as that terrible baseball in India movie – he gets ESPN to slap his name on it because he likes to have his name slapped on things, and overgrown frat boys will buy anything with his name on it.
A mediocre writer? You lost me, man, on everything, once you wrote that.
He can spin a decent sentence every once in a while, though its longer and longer between each one nowadays. But I’m not sure there’s a sportswriter out there more interested in peddling his own half-baked and poorly thought out ideas as bulletproof analysis. And even when he does take some time to figure out how to not be completely incompetent in the field he’s discussing, its riddled with the same 80s movie analogies and misogynistic tones time and time again.
He’s good at speaking on the level his readers are looking for, but sports talk radio is just as good at that.
He’s entirely too sensitive on social media (#TeamBlocked), but I have always enjoyed Simmons style. I could very easily see him as one of us here in the commentariat, growing up on bad teams (though we could only dream of having a team with Celts-like success to help numb the pain of bad football and baseball), dreaming of championships, the love of pop culture and ability to draw references to a myriad of things, the “theories”…he just strikes me, even now, as a largely normal guy. His teams have had success, he’s had personal success, so yes, he’s changed a bit (at least in his public persona–I don’t know the guy personally). But who among us wouldn’t? At least he’s remained loyal to those who knew him “back then”, and he tries to involve them (sometimes forcing it, but still) while he evolves in his career. He’s not on the list for cerebral or deep writing, but I don’t think he tries to be very often. He does what he does well. And I’m confident if I were in his position and Cleveland teams were experiencing the success his preferred teams have, I’d manage to come off as quite the homer myself at times.
sounds like you read deaspin – pretty much exactly what they said last week
he’s to sportswriting what the movie “Crash” was to views on race relations. He pretends to be the be-all end-all point of view, allowing for you to feel OK that people on the other side aren’t so bad after all.
He’s horrible.