Sim Bit Double Play!

I'm starting to warm to the idea of doing these two at a time, especially when they're short. There's so goddamn many of them that I can easily afford to; and I've given up on numbering them, because it's a stupid gag.

1) Footnote, p494 - "[Kevin Garnett] keeps in shape by running on the beaches of Malibu every summer. The sheer comedy of a seven-foot black guy sprinting along the sands of the whitest, most uptight place on the planet can't be calculated. Some of his neighbors probably hadn't seen a black person in twenty years."

Is Malibu really more white and uptight than, say, any dry county in Utah? Moreso than Amish Country? How about, I don't know, Boston?

Leaving aside the white part, how about all of North Korea? I also doubt that people in Malibu haven't seen a black person in twenty years. I would happily take that bet.


2) From page 225 – “Given the racial climate of the fifties and the general resistance to the influx of black players, how could anyone have expected a fair vote when 85-90 percent of the players were white?”

which leads to...

Page 240 – In an MVP vote Simmons called “Fishy and Ultimately Not Okay”, Bill characterizes the selection of Bob Pettit this way: “…help me figure a coherent explanation for Pettit nearly tripling Russell in the ’59 voting that doesn’t involve a white hood.”

Wow. I guess the players put away their white hoods in 1958 when Russell won MVP and again in 1960 when Chamberlain won. And consider the implication: whites will never be fair to non-white players. So in another “Fishy and Ultimately Not Okay” vote (Bob McAdoo, 1975), when the players were presumably majority African-American, is it Bill’s opinion that black players were being racially biased against Rick Barry?

The more you look at Bill Simmons and the things he writes, the more you get the idea that you should just turn off your brain in order to read him. Malcolm Gladwell's books are supposed to be really good and thought-provoking; because he is friends with Bill Simmons, I declare Gladwell's work stupid by association and will not read any of his books. Take THAT, Gladwell!

Oh, I was supposed to do blurbs in this post. Sorry. That post is still coming.

Sim Bit #19: Bill Simmons, Condescending Prick, vol. 1

This Sim Bit may be even more insignificant than usual, but it just pissed me off enough that I couldn't let it pass without comment. From page 51, referring to the 2007-08 Celtics:

"Bench guys pulled for starters like they were the whitest, dorkiest tenth-graders..."

Ha ha ha, we white people are so dorky and stupid!

"...[Kevin Garnett] placed third in the MVP balloting because of subpar-for-him numbers;"

Or maybe Kobe finished ahead of KG because he didn't have Paul Pierce and Ray Allen playing alongside him. Yes, he did have Pau Gasol for half a season, but even if he's better than either Pierce or Allen, he's not better than both of them. Who ran the point for the Lakers? It wasn't a passing/defensive ace/future All-Star, that's for sure. And maybe Chris Paul finished ahead because he was the best player in basketball in 2008. The award is for the most valuable player, not "A" valuable player who plays for the best team. Of course, team success does (and should) play a role in the award, but Kobe and CP3 played for pretty good teams themselves.

"...meanwhile, the Celtics jumped from the worst record in 2007 to the best record in 2008."

Because Kevin Garnett, and only Kevin Garnett, joined the Celtics.

Here are your top eight in minutes played for the 2008 Celtics:

Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, Rajon Rondo, Kendrick Perkins, James Posey, Eddie House, Tony Allen

And the top eight for the 2007 Celtics:

Al Jefferson, Ryan Gomes, Delonte West, Rajon Rondo, Gerald Green, Paul Pierce, Sebastian Telfair, Kendrick Perkins

The names in red bold appeared on both Celtics teams.

"Where's the statistic for that? (Shit, I forgot: it's called wins)"

Take that, stat nerds! But Bill isn't done with you yet:

"But that's what makes basketball so great: You have to watch the games. You have to pay attention. You cannot get seduced by numbers and stats." (emphasis his)

What a colossal prick. I am Bill Simmons. I see things others do not see. I understand basketball as the legends do. I am...The Hoops Whisperer.

"...I couldn't help noticing LeBron's '09 Cavaliers developing Ubuntu-like chemistry..."

Players enjoying playing for a winning team apparently only began in 2007.

I don't know for a fact that there will be more instances of Condescending Prick-behavior elsewhere in the book, but it seems like a safe bet.