This whole article is one huge reverse jinx on the 2012-2013 Heat!!!!
Bill has thoughts about LeBron and the Finals. Guess how insightful and worthwhile those thoughts are.
You know what saddens me?
You realized you've been using the same tired style and jokes for like 15 years now?
The funniest clip on YouTube is no longer funny.
Klosterman thinks what makes funny Youtube videos funny is that they are secretly super underratedly unfunny. Also, I'm pretty sure videos of Denny Green encouraging reporters to "crown they ass" will always be funny, so there's no need to say there's been a change in power at the top of the funniest Youtube video rankings, which do not exist.
Yep, you can finally rest in peace, "The Heat Welcome Party" video. Thanks for giving us two sterling years atop the Internet comedy rankings.
I love when Bill tries to flaunt his comedy chops. HEY I FOUND A YOUTUBE VIDEO THAT IS AMUSING YOU KIDS WOULD LOVE THIS. Bill is your aunt, forwarding you lolcats and clips from Leno's "Jaywalking" segments. While certainly somewhat amusing in its own way, I'm pretty sure the Heat welcome video has never been one of the 1,000 funniest Youtube videos out there at any time.
We're replacing you with a bullpen by committee of old reliables like "I Like Turtles," "Charlie Bit Me," the "It's Still Real to Me, Dammit" guy, Journey's immortal "Separate Ways" video, and even the "I Like Turtles" techno remix.
Like I said. Wow, the I like turtles kid? Even Daniel Tosh got over that two or three years ago.
Let's hope you don't resurface as something else — something scarier, something more ominous, something on the level of Namath guaranteeing Super Bowl III or Ali promising to defeat Liston.
Seeing as how at least one of James, Wade and Bosh will be moving on within 4 years, I have a hard time believing they'll actually win twelve championships of whatever they promised. I suppose you can say they're as good a bet to win in 2013 as anyone else, but they're not going to get better in the offseason (even if they get the player Bill might call "the corpse of Ray Allen") and I'm sure the Bulls and Pacers (among others) will find a way to improve.
See, the ceiling of "The Heat Welcome Party" slowly changed during the last two games of the 2012 Finals. It's no longer about hubris or a suffocating lack of self-awareness.
What's that you just said, sportswriter who displays hubris and a suffocating lack of self-awareness on a weekly basis? THE IRONING IS DELICIOUS
It might be more of an omen, a warning, a little like the Game of Thrones characters seeing a red comet streak across the sky and saying, Uh-oh, dragons are coming.
Yes! It's exactly like that brutally shoehorned pop culture reference! It's also like the Client List, I think!
I mention this only because, like every other non-Miami fan who attended the last two home games, I left that arena muttering to myself, "Shit … he finally figured it out."
Or maybe he finally had the right supporting cast, or simply got the shots to fall which hadn't been falling. This is lazy sportswriting at its finest. A team didn't win or lose because they won or lost, it won or lost because of [fill in the blank with something about hustle, character, playing the game the right way, "figuring it out" or some other such tardery].
We remember NBA stars three different ways:
AND EXACTLY THREE WAYS ONLY. HERE IS THE COMPREHENSIVE LIST, COURTESY OF THE SMARTEST GUY IN THE ROOM.
by the entirety of their career, their career's highest peak,
AND WHICH MAD MEN CHARACTER THEY ARE MOST SIMILAR TO.
and the duration of that peak. Something like 25 players had genuinely great careers, but only seven played at the all-around level that LeBron achieved these past few weeks. Jordan, Russell, Kareem, Magic and Bird kept their peaks going. Wilt got bored. Walton got injured. Now we're here again.
I've been thinking recently about why Bill has this compulsive need to constantly make lists and put things in order. I think I have my answer: he's a fucking idiot who knows very little about sports, and this is his way of putting up a facade that says "hey check it out my head totally isn't in my ass right now."
LeBron spent the last nine years juggling various identities — a little Jordan, a little Magic, a little ABA Doc, a little Pippen — never revealing that HE knew what he wanted to be.
That's such complete and utter nonsense I can barely stand to read it. What a fresh, steaming pile of elephant shit. LeBron is a fucking basketball player. He goes out on a the court and (cue up Tedy Bruschi and Trent Dilfer) plays basketball. Making it more complicated than that, into some kind of identity crisis mind game LeBron is somehow playing with the public, is goddamn fucking ridiculous.
Even his position was amorphous. Was he a power forward? A small forward? An oversize point guard? What the hell was he? By the end of the 2012 Finals, we had our answer: He's LeBron James.
You know what, it was an insult to Bruschi and Dilfer to put Simmons on their level. Sorry fellas. Go back to your macho posturing and super serious camera staredowns.
First of a kind. A power point guard who can create his own shot from the perimeter and the low post, a devastating passer who can't be double-teamed, a superior athlete who attacks the rim whenever he wants, an unfathomably durable workhorse on both ends, someone who can defend all five positions (yes, five) at an elite level.
All that is probably true. Unfortunately, it loses all its impact when it comes after some complete gobbledygook about how LeBron has been hiding his identity from us or something.
Over everything else, he fully married his physical gifts with his basketball I.Q. and morphed into something of a basketball monster.
Again, he didn't morph or change into anything in the middle of the playoffs. This is the player he has been for the past several years. He just played better in the playoffs than he has before. Applying post hoc "OH THE TIPPING POINT WAS REACHED" analysis to the situation is the action of a blithering idiot.
Remember all those times when we wondered, Why doesn't LeBron just take it to the rack — it seems like he could score whenever he wants? Yup, pretty much. A good example of LeBron's physical dominance this spring: Late in Game 4, when LeBron started limping and finally toppled to the floor, everyone in the arena had the same reaction. Wait, LeBron can get hurt? LeBron feels pain? It was like seeing Michael Myers keel over. When he was carried off, the crowd audibly gasped in disbelief. They're carrying him off? They're carrying LeBron off?
As opposed when Paul Pierce gets carried off, and the Boston fans say I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY HURT OW-UH PAWL! HOW DAY-UH THEY! while everyone with a brain says Jesus Buttfucking Christ, we all know he'll be back next TV timeout, how does this guy not have a more widely acknowledged reputation as a gigantic drama queen?
So yeah, everything starts with that remarkable body.
Now he sounds like the creepy baseball scouts from Moneyball, except that in basketball, your level of physical fitness is actually really important.
In Game 4, Miami planted him on the low post and LeBron went Larry Bird 2.0 on us. (For the record, there was never supposed to be a Larry Bird 2.0. We discontinued that model in 1992 and assumed it would never be seen again, much less in an even more devastating form. So … yeah.)
LEGEND WAS OW-UH POINT FOHWAHD AND I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT SOME BLACK GUY COULD DO THE SAME STUFF HE DID! MUCH LESS WITHOUT THE LEAGUE'S SMAHHHHHHTEST FANS WILLING HIM TO VICTORY!
That's all I've got for now. Seriously, fuck this guy.
Klosterman thinks what makes funny Youtube videos funny is that they are secretly super underratedly unfunny. Also, I'm pretty sure videos of Denny Green encouraging reporters to "crown they ass" will always be funny, so there's no need to say there's been a change in power at the top of the funniest Youtube video rankings, which do not exist.
Yep, you can finally rest in peace, "The Heat Welcome Party" video. Thanks for giving us two sterling years atop the Internet comedy rankings.
I love when Bill tries to flaunt his comedy chops. HEY I FOUND A YOUTUBE VIDEO THAT IS AMUSING YOU KIDS WOULD LOVE THIS. Bill is your aunt, forwarding you lolcats and clips from Leno's "Jaywalking" segments. While certainly somewhat amusing in its own way, I'm pretty sure the Heat welcome video has never been one of the 1,000 funniest Youtube videos out there at any time.
We're replacing you with a bullpen by committee of old reliables like "I Like Turtles," "Charlie Bit Me," the "It's Still Real to Me, Dammit" guy, Journey's immortal "Separate Ways" video, and even the "I Like Turtles" techno remix.
Like I said. Wow, the I like turtles kid? Even Daniel Tosh got over that two or three years ago.
Let's hope you don't resurface as something else — something scarier, something more ominous, something on the level of Namath guaranteeing Super Bowl III or Ali promising to defeat Liston.
Seeing as how at least one of James, Wade and Bosh will be moving on within 4 years, I have a hard time believing they'll actually win twelve championships of whatever they promised. I suppose you can say they're as good a bet to win in 2013 as anyone else, but they're not going to get better in the offseason (even if they get the player Bill might call "the corpse of Ray Allen") and I'm sure the Bulls and Pacers (among others) will find a way to improve.
See, the ceiling of "The Heat Welcome Party" slowly changed during the last two games of the 2012 Finals. It's no longer about hubris or a suffocating lack of self-awareness.
What's that you just said, sportswriter who displays hubris and a suffocating lack of self-awareness on a weekly basis? THE IRONING IS DELICIOUS
It might be more of an omen, a warning, a little like the Game of Thrones characters seeing a red comet streak across the sky and saying, Uh-oh, dragons are coming.
Yes! It's exactly like that brutally shoehorned pop culture reference! It's also like the Client List, I think!
I mention this only because, like every other non-Miami fan who attended the last two home games, I left that arena muttering to myself, "Shit … he finally figured it out."
Or maybe he finally had the right supporting cast, or simply got the shots to fall which hadn't been falling. This is lazy sportswriting at its finest. A team didn't win or lose because they won or lost, it won or lost because of [fill in the blank with something about hustle, character, playing the game the right way, "figuring it out" or some other such tardery].
We remember NBA stars three different ways:
AND EXACTLY THREE WAYS ONLY. HERE IS THE COMPREHENSIVE LIST, COURTESY OF THE SMARTEST GUY IN THE ROOM.
by the entirety of their career, their career's highest peak,
AND WHICH MAD MEN CHARACTER THEY ARE MOST SIMILAR TO.
and the duration of that peak. Something like 25 players had genuinely great careers, but only seven played at the all-around level that LeBron achieved these past few weeks. Jordan, Russell, Kareem, Magic and Bird kept their peaks going. Wilt got bored. Walton got injured. Now we're here again.
I've been thinking recently about why Bill has this compulsive need to constantly make lists and put things in order. I think I have my answer: he's a fucking idiot who knows very little about sports, and this is his way of putting up a facade that says "hey check it out my head totally isn't in my ass right now."
LeBron spent the last nine years juggling various identities — a little Jordan, a little Magic, a little ABA Doc, a little Pippen — never revealing that HE knew what he wanted to be.
That's such complete and utter nonsense I can barely stand to read it. What a fresh, steaming pile of elephant shit. LeBron is a fucking basketball player. He goes out on a the court and (cue up Tedy Bruschi and Trent Dilfer) plays basketball. Making it more complicated than that, into some kind of identity crisis mind game LeBron is somehow playing with the public, is goddamn fucking ridiculous.
Even his position was amorphous. Was he a power forward? A small forward? An oversize point guard? What the hell was he? By the end of the 2012 Finals, we had our answer: He's LeBron James.
You know what, it was an insult to Bruschi and Dilfer to put Simmons on their level. Sorry fellas. Go back to your macho posturing and super serious camera staredowns.
First of a kind. A power point guard who can create his own shot from the perimeter and the low post, a devastating passer who can't be double-teamed, a superior athlete who attacks the rim whenever he wants, an unfathomably durable workhorse on both ends, someone who can defend all five positions (yes, five) at an elite level.
All that is probably true. Unfortunately, it loses all its impact when it comes after some complete gobbledygook about how LeBron has been hiding his identity from us or something.
Over everything else, he fully married his physical gifts with his basketball I.Q. and morphed into something of a basketball monster.
Again, he didn't morph or change into anything in the middle of the playoffs. This is the player he has been for the past several years. He just played better in the playoffs than he has before. Applying post hoc "OH THE TIPPING POINT WAS REACHED" analysis to the situation is the action of a blithering idiot.
Remember all those times when we wondered, Why doesn't LeBron just take it to the rack — it seems like he could score whenever he wants? Yup, pretty much. A good example of LeBron's physical dominance this spring: Late in Game 4, when LeBron started limping and finally toppled to the floor, everyone in the arena had the same reaction. Wait, LeBron can get hurt? LeBron feels pain? It was like seeing Michael Myers keel over. When he was carried off, the crowd audibly gasped in disbelief. They're carrying him off? They're carrying LeBron off?
As opposed when Paul Pierce gets carried off, and the Boston fans say I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY HURT OW-UH PAWL! HOW DAY-UH THEY! while everyone with a brain says Jesus Buttfucking Christ, we all know he'll be back next TV timeout, how does this guy not have a more widely acknowledged reputation as a gigantic drama queen?
So yeah, everything starts with that remarkable body.
Now he sounds like the creepy baseball scouts from Moneyball, except that in basketball, your level of physical fitness is actually really important.
In Game 4, Miami planted him on the low post and LeBron went Larry Bird 2.0 on us. (For the record, there was never supposed to be a Larry Bird 2.0. We discontinued that model in 1992 and assumed it would never be seen again, much less in an even more devastating form. So … yeah.)
LEGEND WAS OW-UH POINT FOHWAHD AND I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT SOME BLACK GUY COULD DO THE SAME STUFF HE DID! MUCH LESS WITHOUT THE LEAGUE'S SMAHHHHHHTEST FANS WILLING HIM TO VICTORY!
That's all I've got for now. Seriously, fuck this guy.
5 comments:
Can we put Mark Cuban and Bill Simmons in the same room so he can annihilate him like he did to Skip Bayless on "First Take"?
When has Lebron ever not been the guy who can do everything really well? Even as a rookie he put up 20.9/5.5/5.9. Since then, he's been there every year, averaging 27-31 points, 6 or 6.5 boards and 7 or 8 assists. Anyone who watched the NBA for the last decade knew who and what Lebron was. Even people who didn't watch it - like me - knew.
Does it strike anyone else as weird that the biggest criticism of Lebron as a player is that he is too meek and unselfish? Aren't these generally considered good things among the chattering classes? Or does that not apply to basketball?
I'm saddened you didn't keep going and mention how it was finally the mighty Boston Celtics that caused him to go off, as if he had never done anything in the playoffs, as if the Celtics were some dragon he had never slain when...
A: the Heat throttled Boston last year in the playoffs
B: LeBron was unquestionably the best player in the Eastern Conference playoffs in 2007, 2009, and 2011, while he was damned good in a 7-game loss to Boston in 2008 and
C: He had already shown his "big game chops" or "clutch gene" or whatever other bullshit Bayless was spreading about LBJ in the series before against Indiana (seriously, watch Game 4--particularly the second half--and see how he "shrank from the moment").
Don't worry Slade, I'm on it. Time is a little sparse these days.
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