Maybe I need to turn this blog into a Twitter feed
It sucks. I mean to post more often than I do. But often, when I'm about to, I start to think "Well that's not really enough for a post. I need something better if I'm going to put in all the effort it takes to log into Blogger and stuff." Which is so dumb. There is no rule about the appropriate length for a post, and in fact, some of the best posts in the history of this blog have been very short. But somehow I hit a strange mental block when I want to do a short post. So, maybe I should switch to @FireJayMariotti and throw in the towel on this blogging game. Probably not going to happen though. Sounds like a lot of work to get that whole deal set up and stuff. (Also, a quick search shows that @FireJayMariotti is available. If any of you sign up for it after reading this and then try to sell it to me, I will send you a strongly worded email informing you that that was not a nice thing to do.)
Anyways, here are some of the half-baked ideas and quick thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head recently.
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Earlier tonight I was watching Heat-Thunder on TNT. Reggie Miller is pretty decent in his role as Kenny Albert's broadcast partner, although he certainly talks himself into a corner from time to time. Tonight he ended up here:
The league has a huge group of very talented small forwards right now. Of course you've got LeBron and Durant. And then Paul George belongs in that group, I think. (Pause) And then there's DeMar DeRozan... (trails off)
Easy there, Reggie. Next time get all the way through your thought before you start speaking it. George is a fantastic player, but like everyone else in the NBA, he's two steps below LeBron and one below Durant. And then maybe end your list there, because while DeRozan is having a nice breakout year and is a perfectly decent player, he's significantly worse than George at 1) defense, 2) rebounding, 3) distributing and 4) shooting 3s.
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Pierre McGuire is a useless sideline reporter/sometimes color commentator/penis with a microphone who takes much more away from a hockey broadcast than he adds to it. But I have to tip my hat to him for his performance during today's Canada/U.S. women's gold medal game. The number of times he made sure to interrupt Doc Emrick's skillful play-by-play call to inform us that a trip or cross check administered by an American girl to a now-crumpled Canadian girl was completely clean warmed my patriotic little heart. If there's ever a time to be an obnoxious homer, it's when a gold medal is on the line and your country's team is playing a country whose fans are raging cunts at all times. The eventual result of the game made my stomach churn and ruined my day, but hats off to Pierre (non-sarcastically) for contributing to broadcast for once in his career. May the U.S. men beat Canada by 15 tomorrow.
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Spotted earlier today among the front page headlines on ESPN, now relegated to the NFL page:
Older, wiser T.O. says he can still play at 40
Hopefully older, wiser sports fans will soon realize ESPN is a bottomless abyss full of nightmares and cat shit and decide to get their news and analysis elsewhere. I know that I contribute to their pageviews by going there to find shit to blog about, but I swear, I don't pass through for any other purpose anymore. If I'm not looking for a Simmons/Easterbrook/Reilly/Keri article to dump on, I'm not going there. I encourage you to do/not do the same. Fuck ESPN with a rake.
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Finally, earlier this week, Simmons (fresh off of winning yet another Nobel Prize in economics) put out his annual article about the worst contracts in the NBA. I'd like to do a full breakdown later, but for now, two brief highlights. Here's the opening paragraph:
In December, I gave my kids $20 for a toy store trip and they picked out $90 worth of stuff. They had no concept of money. They didn’t know if our house cost $2,000 or $2 billion. So I started making them pay for small things — Starbucks, Jamba Juice, pizza, whatever — hoping they’d slowly understand the concept of worth. I think it’s working. When we attended Monday-night Raw in L.A. last week, I gave them a $100 salary cap on whatever they wanted. They spent
RIVETING. If you want to engage a group of strangers, be sure to start with a story about your kids. Instant entertainment. Good job, Bill. Also, fuck you for giving your grade school-aged kids a $100 allowance for one night. A night they're already spending at an awesome event. I'm not going to attack the guy's kids because the irreverence expressed on this blog does have SOME boundaries, but let's just say I question whether that is a good parenting decision.
Finally, the dunk contest has gotten extremely stale. Bill, use your wondrous powers of genius to save it, please.
My quick fix for 2015: Remodel it into a “Dunk of the Year” contest. Twelve contestants, 12 dunks, America votes on the winner. Your 12 contestants: nine NBA players, two D-leaguers, one street baller. Name it the “Bud Light 12-Pack Contest.” Oh, and if they want to raise the rim to 12 feet or higher for their one dunk, they can do that, too. Anything goes. I’d like to meet the one person who wouldn’t watch this.
So before, it was a dunk contest, but now it'll be a dunk contest. Brilliant. WHO SAYS NO?????
Bill Simmons is a horse's ass.
