Counterpoint: Bill Simmons is an unprofessional dumbass who doesn't belong on TV

As promised last week, this is a post in which I directly address a Bill supporter's praise of Bill.  Is this article fruit that hangs as low as Bill's own work hangs?  Of course.  Chris Chase writes "For the Win," (I know...) a blog on USA Today's site (I know, I know...), which upon its launch was publicized as follows:

For The Win wants to take a BuzzFeed-style viral media approach to sports media. The new site, which will compete with rivals like Deadspin, will focus on finding “shareable” content that will be appealing even to people who don’t follow sports.

I KNOW.  I KNOW.  It's not like this is a graduate thesis that can only be ripped apart with careful and incisive analysis.  But the point is this: there really are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of assholes out there who think this stuff about Bill.  This guy is at least good enough at expressing such thoughts to get a job with a major media outlet (even if that outlet is America's foremost source of charts, infographs, and other news fit for consumption in the breakfast room of a Best Western).  To Chris Chase, I say this: your opinion about Bill Simmons is most definitely not FTW.  More like FTL lololol GOT HIM.

Bill Simmons is the best thing about ESPN's NBA Draft broadcast
By: Chris Chase

Judging by chatter on Twitter, this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but here goes: Bill Simmons was the best thing about ESPN’s NBA draft coverage on Thursday night. 

Obviously at this point I have no way of tracking what was said about Bill the night of the draft.  There may have been a lot of negative tweeting about him, but I'd be surprised if more than 25% of all fans serious enough about the NBA to watch the draft dislike him.  It's more of a vocal minority thing.  Or so I'd suppose.  I cannot validate this with anything but anecdotes and vague estimates of the number of people I know who like Bill as compared to the number I know who hate him.  What do you want me to do, put work into this blog?  Get fucking real.

The whole team was great, 

Sort of.

but particularly Simmons, 

No.

whose NBA fanboy routine plays best during the league’s annual selection show.

His NBA fanboy routine, which is really a Celtics and himself fanboy routine, never plays well.  He's awful.  Compare him to his closest analogue, Sir Charlies.  (Not that they're exactly the same, but they have the same roles on their respective NBA shows: deep "real talk" color commentary.)  Now it's tough for anyone to stack up next to Barkley, who is a national treasure, but just look at their respective levels of professionalism.  Barkley is occasionally cutting and dark with his commentary, but when he is it's always well-supported with analysis that's not just self-promotion and snarky rhetorical questions.  Meanwhile, he never 1) cheerleads for teams he played for or likes or 2) says ridiculous bullshit like whine "DO I GET TO TALK NOW????" when he's not the center of attention or drag his feuds out into the spotlight which then affects whatever broadcast he's on.  Bill Simmons doesn't belong on TV any more than I do, and my voice is nearly as annoying as his.

Simmons style, which is hit-or-miss on NBA pre-game and post-game coverage, 

Simmons style, which is hit-or-miss on NBA pre-game and post-game coverage for some reason

Fixed that for you.

is perfectly suited for the draft. He gives a fresh perspective. 

Examples?  He's not ignorant about basketball.  He's also not in any way intelligent or interesting.  He doesn't have some kind of smart eye for talent (Jeff Van Gundy), or for X's and O's (Hubie Brown).  He's just a guy who likes the sport and thinks he's always right.  He should join Wilbon and Kornheiser on PTI and make it a triumvirate of insufferable know-it-all dipshits.  Of course, we know what Wilbon thinks about BLOGGERS who write BLOGS.  But you get my point.

He’s passionate. 

Sure.  That doesn't make for especially good TV, though.

He loves the NBA and it comes across on the telecast, which is harder than it sounds. 

I don't need my commentators to love the sports they're talking about.  I just need them to not be bored, by which I mean I need them to not sound like Joe Buck.  Past that "love for the game" threshold, intelligence and insight are about a million times more important than passion.

And, above all, he’s able to convey the importance of picking players for the future while still acknowledging that it’s mostly a crapshoot.

Yeah, that's such a crazy, abstract concept.  Most fans have no idea that that's how the draft works.  Good thing future Bucks GM and Official Vertical Integration Machine of ESPN/ABC/Disney Bill Simmons is here to explain it to us.  Jesus Christ.  That sentence might as well say "I really like Bill Simmons, so let me pat him on the back for knowing what the draft is and how professional sports generally work."

Other than some new bells and whistles, draft coverage hasn’t changed much in 20 years. The first round goes something like this: pick, analysis of the pick, highlight reel, interview (if the player is there), more discussion, commercial, preview of upcoming pick, repeat 32 times. Simmons brings something new. He gives real opinions that don’t feel sanitized for mass consumption.

Yeah, Bill's great at #realtalk.  Remember all that wacky, subversive, off-the-wall analysis he provided in his most notable analytical moment so far?  Who could forget #strongtaeks like "WHOA!" and "I need medical attention!"

One moment summed up all of that. When the Boston Celtics, Simmons’ favorite team, drafted James Young, the cameras caught him doing this.

What a punchable face.  I mean, he's always got a punchable face, but that's an excellent screen cap.  That's his face at its MOST punchable.  Quite a sight.  Also, I'm glad fist pumping now counts as a "real opinion[]" that "[doesn't] feel sanitized for mass consumption."  WATCH OUT AMERICA.  HERE COMES THE JOHNNY ROTTEN OF BASKETBALL ANALYSIS.

A certain segment of the Internet hated it. They called Simmons a biased homer without any professionalism. 

And they were completely right!

Okay, let’s say that’s true. 

It is.

So what?

It makes for shitty TV.  Every fan serious enough about the NBA to watch the draft has a favorite team.  Everyone will have an opinion about what their favorite team did during the draft.  Who gives a flying cunt about this guy's opinion about his team?  How is it any different than what House-O, who was sitting next to you at the bar, had to say about what just happened?  Just because this guy was born on third base, and then caught lightning in a bottle at the onset of the sports blogosphere, it's supposed to be entertaining to see him being excited for his team while wearing a suit and sitting with actual professional sports analysts?  Go fuck yourself.

Give me an actual opinion from someone with a known bias rather than phony opinions from someone with a hidden bias. 

What hidden biases do most commentators have?  The fuck are you talking about?  This is not politics, where you have to be very careful to understand the backgrounds/motivations of the talking heads on TV.  This is sports.  I promise you, Jalen Rose and Doug Collins are not coloring their analysis with carefully chosen positive or negative buzzwords for guys that were drafted by teams they like/dislike.  It's not hard to remain unbiased as a sports commentator.  Sports are fun.  Maybe Jalen hates the Bulls for the way they traded him to Toronto.  You think that's going to affect what he says about a guy the Bulls drafted?  Again, go fuck yourself.

There are conflicts of interest often in sports broadcasting, not just on ESPN. You think Jon Gruden doesn’t pull punches on Monday Night Football so as not to insult a team he might be criticizing? 

You fucking IDIOT.  Have you ever watched a Gruden MNF broadcast?  GRUDEN ADORES EVERY SINGLE PLAYER AND TEAM IN THE LEAGUE!  He won't shut the fuck up about how great everyone is.  He can make Blaine Gabbert sound like Joe Montana.  And this isn't some secret, hidden talent that Gruden spent years honing.  It comes naturally to him, because he's not a dipshit.  Bill IS a dipshit.  That's the whole problem here.  Jesus Christ.  Of ALL the examples you could have chosen to try to prop up your shitty argument that commentators have biases that cause them to "pull punches" or whatever, none of which would be good examples because basically no national commentator does that, you chose the worst possible one.

Or that recently retired players are easier on former teammates because they’re buddies? 

First of all, that doesn't apply during the draft.  Second of all, when it does apply (like if the ESPN Sunday Countdown crew is discussing the Ravens with Ray Lewis on the set or something), nearly always the other analysts will go out of their way to make the situation as unawkward as possible by not forcing the recently retired guy to give an opinion, or by prefacing whatever he's about to say with "Now I know you have some friends on the team."  And even after all that happens, you know what?  Often, the player will give a pretty reasonable and insightful opinion (as much as you can have insightful opinions on telecasts like NFL pregame shows, which is not at all) on the team/player in question.  It's just not that hard to do.  Bill Simmons is not a shining beacon of objectivity in a sea of bullshit.  TV sports analysis is actually pretty much a sea of bullshit, but Simmons isn't just a part of it.  He makes it worse by not even managing to act like an adult on set.  Fuck him and fuck his fans.

Simmons made his career partially built on his ability to be a fan whose passion was relatable.

That was pretty novel in 1998.  It's not novel anymore, and he's gone from a self-deprecating "aw shucks, Boston sports break my heart all the time" guy to a pompous, self-obsessed twat.  Let's stop giving him credit for the original Boston Sports Guy shit he wrote during the Clinton administration.

Simmons loving Larry Bird hardly measures up to that. 

Actually, I'm glad you brought up that point to undermine your own point, because you know what?  Simmons and his love for Bird absolutely DO measure up to the idea (again, not applicable during the NBA draft) that maybe sometimes Bill Cowher goes easy on the Steelers or whatever.

This is sports. People are supposed to be biased homers. As long as you wear that opinion proudly, who’s it harming? 

Here's a better question: who's it helping?  Who's enjoying it, other than unoriginal waterheads who think Simmons is fantastic?

Wouldn’t you rather hear that diehard Celtics fan Bill Simmons like the James Young pick rather than the usual bland analysis about how James Young could possibly fit into Brad Stevens’ system? 

Not at all!  Not even a little bit!

That fist pump told you more about the Young pick than any commentary could. 

Holy shit.

It doesn’t mean Simmons is right, but at least we know where he actually stands and can form our own opinion based on that. 

No we can't.  No we fucking can't.  We can't form shit based on that, unless for some reason we're dumb enough to think Bill has a better grasp on NBA prospects than actual analysts like Chad Ford.  Who gives a bloody, runny shit about what Bill Simmons thinks?  Again, I mean, other than his fanboys.

Sometimes that may lead to arguments with Doc Rivers, like on last year’s telecast. Again, isn’t that more interesting than the alternative?

That was better than if Simmons gladhanded Rivers, I suppose, but read the Bleacher Report article I linked above--the way Simmons beat up on Rivers for years, and more or less baited him with a series of tweets prior to the draft, was pathetic.  It was more car-crash-can't-look-away interesting than oh-cool-something-real-and-fun interesting.

There are problems, of course. His rants can quickly devolve into whininess, he interrupts way too much and you always get the sense he doesn’t know as much about the college players as he lets on. 

Haha, no way, don't be silly!  You sound like someone who has maybe actually paid attention to stuff Bill has been saying throughout his career and have thus reached the inevitable conclusion that he shouldn't be paid for his opinions or analysis, much less be paid to talk about them on TV.

The last part isn’t his fault. 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Simmons was paying attention to the NBA from October to June. That’s his job. 

Yeah!  Who has time to, like, KNOW stuff about college basketball when they're busy doing a few hours of TV and a couple podcasts a week?  HE'S NOT SUPERMAN, PEOPLE!!! WHAT DO YOU WANT OUT OF HIM???  Well, for one, I'd rather he didn't just make shit up.  But I suppose that's asking a lot from the guy who has successfully completed over 1,000 WHO SAYS NO? trades on the ESPN Trade Machine (TM)(Patent pending).

Even if he locked himself in a room and watched game tape for the 11 days in between the end of the NBA Finals and the start of the NBA draft, he wouldn’t know nearly enough about the draftees. 

Actually, that's not true.  If he did that for 11 days straight, he'd definitely know enough about them to not sound like a diptard on TV.  HOWEVA: there is a prerequisite to that hypothetical coming to pass.  In order for any of this to happen, he'd have to be capable of gleaning knowledge about players by watching tape, something I'm 100% sure he is not able to do.  So this is all ifs and buts and candies and nuts.

But that’s why Jay Bilas is on the set.

Jay Bilas is on the set to know things.  Bill is on the set to pump his fist for the Celtics and pretend to know things.  I wonder which one of them has a higher salary?

Speaking of Bilas, he’s part of a team that helps Simmons thrive. 

I'm so, so, so sorry Jay.  Years and years of hard work, pounding pavement, attending hundreds of NCAA games--all so you could one day serve as Bill's caddy.  Holy dog balls, that's depressing.

You can’t have a bunch of me-first guys on the floor, 

You really shouldn't have ANY me-first guys on the floor.  This is why Shaq doesn't quite fit with Ernie, Kenny and Charles.  Shaq still needs that attention.  The other three don't (nor does Chris Webber for that matter).

so it helps that the always-underrated Rece Davis is there to keep Simmons in check. 

I like Rece Davis.  This blog is often so virulently negative that I felt like throwing that it, with no caveats.  Rece Davis is damn good at his job.  There, I said it.

Bilas is great too; he shows you can combine perspective, a sense of humor and keen knowledge of players. 

Three things Simmons doesn't have!

Jalen Rose is the weak link on the panel. He’s still trying to find his schtick, but he has a good rapport with Simmons and doesn’t immediately make you want to change the channel like half of ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown crew.

NFL Sunday Countdown is terrible.  Rose is pretty OK.  Simmons is terrible.

Richard Deistch of Sports Illustrated says the NBA Countdown team is in flux for next year. Here’s hoping Simmons stays around and continues to breathe some life into a format that desperately needs it.

I'd rather watch the WNBA draft than watch another NBA draft with Simmons on the set.  He sucks.  In conclusion, Chris Chase is a dummy.

Fortunately, Bill's NBA draft lottery pity party ended exactly the way it should have

For your reference, he's the actual pick order for next month's draft.  The number in parentheses indicates the number of picks a team moved up or down, relative to where they should have ended up if the lottery went exactly according to script (i.e. without any surprises).

1. Cleveland (+8)
2. Milwaukee (-1)
3. Philadelphia (-1)
4. Orlando (-1)
5. Utah (-1)
6. Boston (-1)
7. Lakers (-1)
8. Sacramento (-1)
9. Charlotte (from Detroit because the pick fell outside the top 8)
10. Philadelphia (from New Orleans because the pick fell outside the top 5)
11. Denver
12. Orlando (from New York via Denver)
13. Minnesota
14. Phoenix

So as you can see, it went almost entirely according to plan, except that Cleveland vaulted up into the top spot, pushing everyone between there and the #9 spot they were supposed to occupy down a spot.  This include's Bill Celtics.  And as I've alluded to in several posts for the past month, Bill was really, really, REALLY excited about this lottery.  The Celtics did everything right--which is to say they did their absolute best to properly tank--they traded Garnett and Pierce (and Rivers), didn't rush Rondo back from his injury, and generally didn't field a team you would ever expect to do well.

But they also tried hard with what they had!  They left it all on the court every night!  No one denies this!  Bill emphasized this every time he started talking about how Andrew Wiggins or Jabari Parker would be playing for the Celtics next year; if your team is tanking but they aren't doing it "the right way" (of course you'll read much, much more about this below) then they don't deserve to reap the benefits of said tanking.  But arbiter of all things basketball, and totally unbiased C's SUPAHFAN Bill said they had followed all the rules.  So after four or five months of tweets and mentioning this subject offhand in every one of his basketball columns, the lottery was upon us.  Which led to this article about which teams had the best karma, i.e. "deserved" to do well in the lottery.  Sit back and enjoy the schadenfreude.

Joel Embiid is going to be the first pick of the 2014 draft. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

This is a very good indicator that Joel Embiid will not be the first pick of the 2014 draft.

These teams are full of it. We’re worried about his back, we’re hearing it’s bad … Hold on, I’m actually going to stand under the bull as he craps on me.

Would you?  Maybe just stay down there for a while, then.

It’s Smokescreen Central right now.

YOU CAN'T FOOL BILL!  HE'S TOO SMART FOR YOUR TACTICS, DUMB NBA GMS!  YOU MIGHT FOOL EACH OTHER, BUT YOU'LL NEVER FOOL A CERTIFIED GENIUS WHO ONCE INTERVIEWED BILL RUSSELL!  I just Googled "2014 NBA mock draft" and checked out the first ten results.  Of course this is highly unscientific; but people who take the draft seriously enough to run a site that climbs to the top of the Google rankings heap (www.draftexpress.com and www.nbadraft.net were two of those ten results--they both seem to be run by NBA superfanboys) have at least as much knowledge as Bill and probably more.  Embiid went 1st in three of the ten drafts I looked at.  Wiggins went first in the other seven; no one had Parker going first.  Two of them had Parker going second and Embiid going third.  So, the safe money is on Wiggins, for now.  You heard it here last.

And enough with the Oden parallels; unless Embiid’s pre-draft MRI reveals a career-threatening back issue (doubtful), NOBODY is passing on a franchise center who could easily be described as “The 7-Foot Serge Ibaka.”

BUT DOES HE WALK FUNNY????

Stop it.

One of Bill's most obnoxious recurring bits.  It makes him sound like a sorority girl.

He’s going first.

I doubt it.

We’re officially calling tonight’s lottery “Bleed for Embiid.”

HAHA BECAUSE STUFF THAT RHYMES IS FUNNY

With that stuff out of the way, let’s focus on the percentages that really matter — the 2014 Lottery Karma Rankings! It’s not about what the Ping-Pong balls say, it’s about what the Karma Gods say.

Which is to say, it's about how Bill feels about these teams, based on his high scientific method of being a mental 19 year old who likes the NBA a lot and sometimes watches college basketball if it's February or March.

Do your boys REALLY deserve to win the lottery? Did they handle their business the right way last season? Did they embarrass themselves with a tanking fiasco? Did they make a shady trade that inadvertently affected the playoff race? Did they do anything that made you say, “They just took a poop on their fans”?

Another horrendous recurring bit he does.  It's Reilly-esque.

Have they been so inept for so many years that their ineptitude just shouldn’t be rewarded anymore? Did they make any aggressively stupid decisions like paying Josh Smith and Brandon Jennings $78 million combined without hiring them a strong coach, or gift-wrapping a $48.5 million extension to an injured and possibly washed-up Kobe Bryant without making sure he could still play basketball three times a week?

Yeah, you wouldn't want them crapping all over their fans by signing good players or keeping hometown heroes around!

Are they owned by someone you’d describe as “an incompetent legacy kid who’d be working in a grocery store if his dad weren’t rich” or even “possibly concussed, he should seriously get his head checked out”?

Yeah!  All those things definitely are important and worth writing a column about!  Also, not that you care, but spoiler, he's going to put the Nuggets in the top three of this list.  Let me assure that "an incompetent legacy kid who'd be working in a grocery store if his dad weren't rich" is a bit of a harsh overstatement when it comes to Nuggets owner Josh Kroenke (who doesn't technically own the team yet but has been de facto owner for four years and will be titled owner soon), but isn't exactly far from the truth either.

And on the flip side, are they doing everything the right way? Do they have a real plan? Did they make an honest attempt to make the playoffs? Could you describe them as “exceedingly well run” and/or “just a solid, solid organization”?

Die.  Die die die.

Did they make one or more trades that could be described as “genuinely smart” or even “stunning in its vision and scope”? Are they a franchise that makes you say, “If Embiid/Wiggins/Jabari ends up there, they’ll take care of that guy”?

DIE.

Have they had bad lottery luck in the past? Are they due for a lottery break? Should the Karma Gods be saying, “We feel bad, we gotta hook those guys up”?

Look, bitch all you want about Cleveland getting three top picks in four years (and he's about to, or about to bitch about the idea), but they absolutely deserved Kyrie Irving, last year's draft was so bad that their victory there barely matters, and you can't say much of anything has gone right for them in the last thirty years other than winning the 2003 lottery.  But why bother expecting Bill to be logical or consistent.  That's not how you become a vertical integration machine, people.

Without further ado, the 2014 Bleed For Embiid Lottery Karma Rankings …
No Karma Whatsoever

13. Cleveland Cavaliers
I can’t decide what makes them more ineligible for karma — would you go with “two no. 1 overall picks and two other top-four picks just in the past three years, but they batted 25 percent,”

Yeah!  If you win the lottery in a terrible draft, and take one of the ten mostly worthless players available in said lottery instead of one of the four maybe average-ish players, that makes you bad, somehow!  FACK YOU!

or would you go with “rehired the same shaky coach they already fired, gave him a five-year deal, then fired him again after Year 1”?

That was a bad decision.  That team could really use a marquee player to help erase that bad decision.

When Obama appoints me the Czar of Sports, I’m making this rule: “No NBA team can win the lottery two times in a 10-year span.”  Much less three.

Totally reasonable.  Winning the lottery should reset your karma meter to negative billion jillion, not to mention how much you poop crap all over your fans if you make a crappy poop selection with that pick.

It’s too bad Brick Tamland isn’t a real person,

Not it's not.

because the Cavs definitely would have hired him as their coach/GM.

No.  He's obviously mentally disabled.  No nine-figure enterprise would put him in charge of operations.  That's just a silly thing to say.  Personally, putting aside the fact that my team didn't win the lottery, I couldn't be much happier that Cleveland did win it.  As I described a few posts ago, Bill's reaction on live TV ten minutes after the announcement was so delicious.  Oh wait, I bet it's on Youtube!  It is!  Enjoy, everyone.

12. Minnesota Timberwolves
Just for screwing up Kevin Love’s contract and letting him leave after three years (instead of locking him down for five), they’re out. Also not helping: Did you know this is ‘Sota’s 10th straight lottery? Ten straight??? From 2006 through 2011, the Timberwolves had SEVEN picks ranging between no. 2 and no. 7. They’re the real-life equivalent of your college buddy who had three kids way too early in life and now uses your fantasy football draft as an excuse to get bombed because he got out of the house for four hours.

That's a nonsensical and unfunny analogy.  Also, they've been bad for a long time--that seems like as good a reason as any for them to finally catch a break or two.  Also also, remember at the beginning of the season when Rubio was gelling nicely with Love and Bill couldn't go two fucking paragraphs without calling them a "watch them whenever they're on TV" team?  What happened, Bill?  What happened?  Did the wind change directions on you again?

11. Sacramento Kings
Headed for their eighth straight lottery and their sixth straight top-seven pick (unless someone leapfrogs them).

Naturally, someone did.

I’m an NBA Republican — I don’t think we should use the lottery, year after year, to keep propping up incompetent teams.

Always a good way to charm your readership: use some ham-fisted and unnecessary political comparisons.

It’s a broken system. We need a “Make eight straight lotteries and you’re ineligible from getting a top-three pick” rule.

Sports are definitely more fun (and inspire more fans to pay attention) when teams that are bad are forced to stay bad forever, amirite?

Also, I still haven’t forgiven Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé from trying to steal my Entertaining As Hell Tournament idea. Let’s hope he’s not the Carlos Mencia of NBA owners.

Bill, don't try to take pot shots at Carlos Mencia.  Somehow, you're not creative or funny enough to pull that off.

10. Philadelphia 76ers
Put it this way: I wrote an entire column about them last March called “10 Steps to Tanking Perfection.”

Put it this way: I wanted to link you to one of my old columns.

The Karma Gods can’t reward anyone who lost 26 straight, much less anyone who turned Michael Carter-Williams into a stat-chasing, brick-laying, award-pursuing mess who learned that it’s OK to lose as long as you throw up an 18-7-7.

NAWT A GOOD ROOKIE OF THE YE-AHH CHOICE!  NAWT LEGITIMATE!  OLADIPO'S TEAM WAS BETTAH, THAT MAKES HIM THE OBVIOUS CHOICE!  STAWP, JUST STAWP!

Even if you can’t blame Philly for taking advantage of a broken system, that doesn’t mean the Lottery Karma Gods can’t scream at them in their Soup Nazi voice, “NO KARMA FOR YOU!”

That's a Seinfeld reference!  High five!

9. Orlando Magic
Come on, they already won the lottery three times! And three good ones, too: Shaq, C-Webb and Dwight. I think we’re good, Orlando.

Yeah!  You won the lottery twice in the 90s and again ten years ago!

Just for fun, here’s your lifetime NBA Lottery Winner Scoreboard: Cavaliers (4); Clippers (3); Magic (3); Bucks (2); Bulls (2); Hornets (2); Nets (2); Spurs (2); Wizards (2); 76ers (1); Blazers (1); Kings (1); Knicks (1); Raptors (1); Rockets (1); Warriors (1).

Not pictured: the Nuggets, who have only ever picked at the spot they were supposed to pick or lower; they've never moved up, and never won the top pick despite having the best odds three different times.  They were supposed to get Larry Johnson in 1991 (although they got Mutombo instead, so whatever), and then in 2003 they were tied for having the best chance at LeBron.  Grumble grumble grumble.  Smallest violin for Larry B.

But here’s the craziest and most fascinating NBA lottery fact ever in the history of crazy and fascinating lottery facts: Through 29 NBA lotteries dating back to 1985, only one franchise ever won the NBA title with its own no. 1 overall pick. The team? San Antonio with David Robinson (two titles) and Tim Duncan (four titles, two with Robinson). How is that possible?

Why are you incredulous about this?  The answers are all pretty fucking obvious.  Because the dynastic nature of the NBA makes winning an NBA title extremely fucking difficult, with only eight teams (Heat, Mavericks, Lakers, Spurs, Pistons, Bulls, Rockets, Celtics) winning every title since 1983.  Because rookie contracts don't last that long, and many really awesome players have switched teams early in their careers.  Also, the Magic made the finals with Shaq; the Sixers made the finals with Iverson; the Nets made the finals with Kenyon Martin; the Cavs made the finals with LeBron; and the Magic made the finals with Dwight Howard.  It's also not hard to imagine the Clippers winning one with Blake Griffin sometime in the next few years.  So it's not like it's totally unattainable.

A Cereal Bowl of Karma Points

8. New Orleans Pelicans
Sorry, they totally botched the Chris Paul trade (and gave him to Donald Sterling, no less!), netted about 23 cents on the dollar for him,

Not included among Bill's asinine "does your team deserve it" factors: Did they get boxed into a corner by a superstar, do their best to acquire good assets for him, but ultimately not get much back?  Because I think that has happened to pretty much every team at some point.  Because running a basketball team under the NBA's CBA is pretty difficult.

then were summarily rewarded by the league totally rigging winning the Anthony Davis Lottery.

No.

He’s only the NBA’s third-best asset right now and the logical answer to the question, “Who’s winning the MVP trophy after LeBron and Durant are done passing it back and forth?” I think we’re good from a karma standpoint, New Orleans. Throwing a couple karma slabs your way only because I love the Brow.

How magnanimous!

7. L.A. Lakers
You gotta respect the year-to-year greatness of this franchise. Since 1958, they missed the playoffs only five times. They won only 27 games last year; that’s somehow their lowest total since 1958. They’ve never won the lottery; since 1982, they’ve never picked higher than 10th. They won 11 of the last 42 titles and appeared in 26 of the last 55 Finals. Since Elgin Baylor joined the Lakers in 1958, they’ve trotted out at least one historically great superstar in 49 of the past 56 seasons.

HOW IN THE WORLD HAS ONLY ONE LOTTERY-WINNING TEAM EVER WON A CHAMPIONSHIP WITH A GUY THEY DRAFTED????

And they’ve produced at least 3.5 million annoying fans (easily a league record).

FACK YOU!

On the other hand … they’re due to suck for a few years. Right? Why should THEY get the no-sucking-ever exemption?

Because their owner will spend well into luxury tax territory every year?  Because they are always a prime destination for every Dwight Howard/Pau Gasol/other star who is looking to get out of their current situation?  More importantly though, if the Lakers' success lands them at #7 on this list, surely the Celtics, who have even more titles (and I believe more Finals appearances; I'm not looking it up because I'm trying to finish this quickly) and have trotted out just as many all-time greats as the Lakers, belong at #6, right?  Right?

We’ll see if the Karma Gods think Lakers fans should suffer for a few years or not.

They'll be fine.

(By the way, if the Lakers win the lottery tonight, it will be one of the funniest Internet moments of all time and — since I’ll be appearing on live TV on ESPN — I’m just about guaranteed to get fired for what I’ll say afterward. I don’t know if this means the Lakers should get more or fewer karma points.)

It doesn't mean either of those things, because karma points are a construct of your tiny brain and do not exist anywhere else.

6. Utah Jazz
Door A: Hire a competent coach, then re-sign Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap (two really good players).

Door B: Let Jefferson and Millsap go; trade for $20 million in Golden State’s expirings and pick up two G-State first-rounders in 2014 and 2017 that almost definitely won’t be in the lottery; then keep Ty Corbin as your coach just to make sure your team sucks enough for 2014 lottery purposes.

My verdict: I don’t think the Lottery Karma Gods loved how this played out.

ALSO, THEY WENT TO TWO FINALS FIFTEEN YEARS AGO--SHOULDN'T THEY BE MADE TO SUFFAH FO-AH A WHILE?  THEY'VE HAD ENOUGH SUCCESS FO-AH NOW.

A Salad Bowl of Karma Points

5. Milwaukee Bucks
Let’s be honest — the Karma Gods already threw them a solid with the whole “instead of losing your team to a superior offer from Seattle, we miraculously found two billionaire hedge fund guys who want to keep the Bucks in Milwaukee even if we’re not totally sure that Milwaukee loves professional basketball” thing.

That is not karma.  That is "owning a sports team is a great investment right now, and those guys stepped up to buy the Bucks under the condition that they not move the team, because Herb Kohl and the NBA didn't want to deal with the ensuing mess."

But unlike Philly, this franchise actually tried to compete — they spent money on midlevel free agents like O.J. Mayo, Gary Neal and Zaza Pachulia, overpaid Larry Sanders and made a sincere run at 40 wins and a first-round playoff sweep. Did that sincere run make any sense whatsoever? No!!!!!!!!!!!!! Absolutely not!!!! But at least they tried … right?

So don't take a crap on your fans.  But also don't try to get better.  And whatever you do, don't be a historically great and successful team, because that disqualifies you from getting any special magic karma points.

(Also, Viva La Greek Freak.)

You like a guy who plays for this team.  Nice to know.  America's most popular sports columnist is on the case.

(Also, this is the other “Funniest Twitter-Related Outcome” for the no. 1 pick. You know, considering they just sold the team and all … and considering we just watched the same thing happen with New Orleans two years ago.)

What?  Who the fuck cares?  Also, in a funny twist, the Bucks DID end up being a big deal on Twitter the night of the draft, because one of their owners, who I can only guess has never talked to an 18 to 45 year old American male, had his cute 18 year old daughter serve as the Bucks' lottery representative on TV.  Naturally, Barstool, Deadspin, and the rest of the internet was on the case and prepared to tackle this story.  HEY GUYZ LOOK IT'S A GURL

4. Detroit Pistons
Do you penalize them for the never-ending slew of head-scratching trades and signings, all the coaches they hired and fired, and all the money they tossed away? Or do you say, “It’s time for a fresh start for DEEEEEEE-troit basssssssketball 

They're poorly run and have made some horrendous free agent signings the past few years... but... they have a memorable (if annoying) cheer that they yell in their arena!  To the top third of the rankings with you, poorly run team that is somehow different than the other poorly run teams at the bottom of this pointless, shitty list!

with Andre Drummond, Stan Van Gundy and a top-three lottery pick, followed by the down-low hiring of V. Stiviano to secretly bait Josh Smith and Brandon Jennings into saying something terrible into a tape recorder so they can void both of their contracts”?

HAHA SHE WAS THE LADY WHO TAPED DONALD STERLING!  THAT'S A CULTURAL REFERENCE!

(You know what? I’m going with the latter. The NBA is more fun when the Pistons are good. 

Sucks to be you, Timberwolves and Kings.  The league is no fun at all when you're good.  What Bill really means here is that he has fond memories of the Celtics teams of his younger days (as well as the 2008 Celtics) winning playoff series against Detroit, which is what puts those other poorly run teams out in the cold.

They cleaned house, they’re moving forward, they made a very smart hiring with SVG, and now they deserve a break, dammit. Also, Jalen Rose would start throwing $100 bills into Indiana’s crowd tonight if his Pistons won the lottery.)

Jalen Rose is kind of funny and kind of likable.  Too bad he seems to be developing a friendship with Bill.  Hopefully he's just putting on a show while the cameras are rolling, and quietly hates Bill as much as the rest of us.

3. Denver Nuggets
Turned a high-functioning, 57-win team into a dysfunctional, 36-win team mostly through organizational incompetence. So why stick them this high? Because there’s a remote chance they could win the lottery with New York’s Ping-Pong balls (thanks to the Carmelo trade from years ago). Who has worse karma than the Knicks? Isn’t this destiny? For one night, the Nuggets get to bask in the bizarro glow of James Dolan’s basketball karma. Even if they have a 0.8 percent chance of winning, once you factor in Dolan, that jumps to 25 percent easy. I have a weird feeling about this one.

As I bitched before, the Nuggets have never, ever, EVER moved up in the lottery.  This lottery did not deviate from that trend.

2. Boston Celtics
You gotta admit, 

I have to admit nothing, other than the fact that I really, really, really enjoyed watching you watch the Celtics end up with the sixth pick.

they sold as high as possible on Pierce and Garnett (three unprotected no. 1s from Brooklyn in 2014, 2016 and 2018 plus a pick swap in 2017) 

I have totally dumped on this line of thinking before, and I will do it again.  While I do think that's good value in terms of what you could expect to get for old Pierce and older Garnett, those picks probably aren't going to amount to jack shit.  This year's is going to be #17.  The Nets are certainly old and rickety and could conceivably fall apart by 2016, but I think there's a much better chance they're still a playoff team then.  2018 is too far out to predict.

and Doc Rivers (an unprotected no. 1 in 2015 that has a puncher’s chance of becoming a gem if the Sterlings fight to keep the Clippers and every Clipper decides, “I am suing to play for a different team”). 

If "puncher's chance" means a 1% chance, then no, not it does not.  If "puncher's chance" means a 0.00001% chance, yeah, I'll agree with that.

You can’t execute an impromptu rebuilding plan better than that.

OW-UH C'S TANK BETTAH THAN EVERYONE!  NO ONE DENIES THIS!  THE LAKAHS HAVE TOO MUCH GOOD HISTORY TO GET ANY DRAFT KAHHHHMAHHH!

Also helping from a karma standpoint: As a lifelong Celtics fan, I’ve suffered through three tanking seasons (1997, 2007 and 2014) … 

You fucking asshole.  Go jump in front of a bus, you self-obsessed dope.  I HAVE SUFFAHED THREE TIMES IN THE LAST SEVENTEEN FACKIN' YEARS.  ME ME ME ME.  Your teams have won like twenty championships in the last decade.  I hope your power goes out the next time you're enjoying something on TV.

and of those three teams, this was the only tanker that actually made me proud. They competed just about every night for Brad Stevens, blowing close game after close game because they didn’t have a crunch-time guy. It was the perfect tanking season, actually. I never felt like I had to take one of those 40-minute showers to get the stink off me. Throw in the way they handled Doc’s return, Pierce’s return and KG’s return and it’s hard to say the Celtics didn’t accrue some legitimate karma here. Then again, I’m a humongous homer.

That last sentence does not mitigate the 2,500 words of pure whale shit that came before it.

1. Phoenix Suns

There's no need to show his analysis.  I'll just leave you with the fart-tinged stench of that Celtics paragraph.  Just ponder that, if you want to get pissed on a sunny, beautiful late spring Friday: a Boston Celtics fan is pretty convinced that, at least in part because this bad team played harder (anecdotally, of course) than the other two bad Celtics teams from the past seventeen fucking years (keep your chins up, Timberwolves fans--It'll be your year one of these decades), they deserved to get Embiid or Wiggins or Parker.  Let that roll around in your head for a while as you think about all the fun stuff you're going to do this weekend.  If you're like me, it'll give you just enough anger and cynicism to get back to Monday. 

Bill fixes the Lakers, tests my patience (part 4)

When we last left Wolf Pope Simmons, he was again negotiating a brilliant trade against himself, one which would leave the Bulls (as pointed out by commenter ivn) in a position where they would be playing Mike Dunleavy Jr. during crunch time.  THE TRADE MACHINE SAYS IT WILL WORK!  THEREFORE IT WOULD WORK!  What's next?

5. Don't amnesty Metta World Peace unless you absolutely have to.

Oops.  The fact that the Lakers did this in real life is a sign that they intend to compete next year, which 1) makes plenty of sense, for the 150 reasons I've already given in this series and 2) kind of disappoints me, because it would be really fun to see them go into full-fledged rebuilding mode without doing any of the things Simmons insists they should do.  Imagine the self-aggrandizing things he would Tweet about how dumb they were being!  Pure entertainment.  Would really warm my cold, black heart.

I hate losing Metta when he's the Kendrick Perkins of small forwards. 

Apparently all cross-positional references have to involve current or former Celtics.  Who is currently the Tony Allen of centers?  (Easy: JaVale McGee.)  Who is the Rajon Rondo of power forwards?  Your answers in the comments.

Ideally, we'd need him playing 35 minutes a game, missing 60 percent of his shots, throwing passes into the third row, getting dumb technicals, and letting faster small forwards blow by him for six solid months. 

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out how crucial MWP was in the 6FOR24!!111111 game: 20 points, including a huge 3 to put the Lakers up 6 with a minute to play.

He's a big part of Riggin' for Wiggins. So if the Bulls won't flip Deng and Hinrich for Gasol, 

But you said it best yourself: they'd HAVE to say yes!

you make the Cleveland deal, save $30 million in luxury tax and keep Metta around.

As both commenter Adam and I have already pointed out, why would the Cavs give away a 1st round pick in a loaded draft to "upgrade" from Gasol to Varejao?  If Varejao stays healthy, he's a marginally worse player than Gasol and the Cavs make the playoffs.  If Varejao gets hurt, the Cavs go to the lottery.

6. Since you're sucking anyway, bring back as many popular former Lakers as possible.

Although it is obviously not meant to be taken seriously, this is one of the stupidest things I have ever read and Simmons should be punched in the kidneys for having typed it out.

I'm convinced that the Lakers bugged my house because, ever since I started working on this column on Monday, they signed Jordan Farmar (someone Lakers fans irrationally loved because he's a UCLA guy) and they're courting Sasha Vujacic (another guy the Lakers have irrationally loved, while the rest of America irrationally hated him). 

The "irrationally [loved/hated/whatever] thing he rolls out all the time is a nice little variant on Klosterman's SECRETLY UNDEROVERUNDERPROPERLYRATED twatfuckery.  It's also a nice little SUPER SMART BASKETBALL NERD angle: listen, non-Lakers fans, I know you think Sasha Vujacic is a whiny little piece of shit who flops every chance he gets, but your hatred of him is SO IRRATIONAL.

I'd go further than that — I'd also bring back beloved veterans Derek Fisher

Speaking of guys who whine and flop a lot

and Luke Walton 

I hate it when people say shit like this, but I'm going to anyways.  Did you know Luke Walton is 33?  Holy shit, I feel old.

for the veteran's minimum, then keep my 15th roster spot open and spend the season signing old Lakers favorites (Robert Horry, Rick Fox, Michael Cooper, Sam Perkins, etc.) to a series of 10-day contracts.

Again, punches to the kidneys.

Important note: Lakers fans would LOVE this. Shit, they'd even enjoy 10 days of Slava Medvedenko. As long as Kwame Brown and Smush Parker aren't involved in 10-day roulette, we're good.

Lakers fans, why did you IRRATIONALLY hate Kwame Brown so much?

7. Tell Jack Nicholson to stay away for the entire season.

We don't want Jack sitting there and enduring a willfully bad Lakers team. It might kill him. 

Check out the totally subtle starfuckerism.  "Let me tell you about Jack!  Jack and I, we go way back.  I know how much the Lakers mean to him, that's how close we are."  You know what, I deleted the rest of this section, because it was too depressing to make fun of.  Suffice it to say, he managed to make a Weekend at Bernie's "joke" and more importantly, post the picture of Justin Bieber with the Stanley Cup you've already seen on 25 different blogs.  ZOMG celebs!!!!

8. Keep Mike D'Antoni for the entire year.

When I was going over my tentative "Save the Lakers" plan last night with my friend Lewis (a Lakers nut who's onboard with everything you just read),

A fellow BASKETBALL NERD who understands subtle things that could make or break a team, like signing LeBron and drafting Andrew Wiggins.

I jokingly asked him, "OK, what would you do with D'Antoni?"

Trade him to the Magic for their 2014 first rounder (top three protected--they're not just going to give it away!).  WHOOOOOO SAYYYYS NOOOOOO

"Are you kidding?" Lewis yelped. "YOU KEEP HIM! YOU KEEP HIM THE WHOLE SEASON! WE WANT THE WORST COACH POSSIBLE!!!!! WHY WOULD YOU EVER FIRE D'ANTONI!"

Like I said, clearly Lewis is someone who is in the rarefied air as Bill in terms of sophisticated basketball knowledge.

(Ladies and gentlemen, the Mike D'Antoni era!)

Jokes in that format were pretty fresh in 1997.

We wrap things up next post, including the line:

You know who they SHOULD be emulating, actually? [_____].

You get three guesses as to what goes in the blank, and the first two don't count.

Bill fixes the Lakers, tests my patience (part 2)

Remember, everyone.  It is a FACT: that things are really bleak for the FACT: Lakers.

Right now, these Lakers have three, and only three, inherent advantages. 

Haven't seen this trope in a while: the I KNOW THE EXACT NUMBER OF THINGS THAT FALL WITHIN THIS ILL-DEFINED AND ENTIRELY SUBJECTIVE CATEGORY.  When Bill does this, it's like he's trying to emulate Bleacher Report, only he's not as clever as they are.  Wow, that's sad.

First, they have a terrific owner. Jimmy Buss has proven over the last year that … oh, wait a second, he's been an atrocity! 

NEEDS A VP OF COMMON SENSE!  

I totally forgot! Last week, an L.A. reader named Jake B. even compared him to Tommy Boy, 

An idea so boring and unclever I can't believe Simmons didn't steal it and pass it off as his own!

followed by me being unable to figure out if that was a bigger insult to Jimmy Buss or to Tommy Boy. (The answer: Tommy Boy. At least he eventually turned Callahan Auto Parts around.) 

In that movie!

If anyone needs my hypothetical help, it's Tommy Boy Buss.

Sick burn.  Buss, you are like a beloved character from a sort of popular movie that came out 20 years ago.

OK, so they have two 

AND ONLY TWO

inherent advantages. First, the Lakers have only one contract on their books for the 2014-15 season: Steve Nash for $9.7 million. They might be $50 million under the cap next summer — perfect timing for an all-you-can-eat buffet of free-agent stars headlined by LeBron, 

This sentence should stop here, because it's perfectly obvious to everyone why (a) the Lakers would want LeBron, (b) why LeBron could conceivably want to play for the Lakers, and (c) LeBron + free agency = unpredictability.  But no, it won't, because Bill is a basketball NERD.  As in, guy who knows everything about the NBA, not that it's a big deal or anything.

who's only (a) the best player since Michael Jordan, (b) someone who wants to be a "global icon," and (c) someone with an established track record of treating free agency like he's organizing a bank heist with his buddies.

Insight: shared.  Readers: nodding silently.

Second, the Lakers have a six-decade history of luring available basketball stars (ranging from all-timers like Wilt, Kareem and Shaq to in-demand-at-the-time free agents like Sam Perkins, Steve Nash and Mitch Kupchak) and keeping their stars nearly 100 percent of the time, with two notable exceptions: a celibate A.C. Green and a decidedly uncelibate Dwight Howard. Famous basketball players gravitate to the Lakers because of their storied history, and because Los Angeles remains the easiest American city for any wealthy celebrity to live in.

Wealthy celebrities, like successful TV writer Bill Simmons!  Here's a paragraph full of worthless bullshit to back up his questionable position on this very uninteresting topic.

See, people rarely bother celebrities in Los Angeles. 

I doubt it.

They can eat dinner or hit a nightclub without half the room staring at them like they're aliens. 

I doubt it. 

They can live on the ocean, or they can live in some souped-up mansion in Bel Air or the Hollywood Hills. 

The equivalent of this can be done in many cities, including Miami.

The weather is consistently fantastic. 

Same for Miami.

The women are relentlessly beautiful. 

Same for Miami.

Celebrities in L.A. can be around other celebrities all the time, and if there's one thing celebrities love, it's being around other celebrities. 

Same for Miami.

If they want to dabble in music or movies or any other ego-fueled creative project, or meet just about any heavy hitter business dude on the planet, they have those options here. 

Perhaps these opportunities are more limited in Miami, but I'm sure they still exist.  Also, take away the beach living and add a crappy winter, and New York is in play too.  New York might be better than LA in a lot of these categories.

If they want to fly to Vegas, it's 50 minutes away. 

There are casinos fucking everywhere these days.  I know that Atlantic City or awful bumfuck central Florida aren't as EPIC as VEGAS BABY is for EPIC BACHELOR PARTIES WITH YOUR BROS, but still.

If they want to fly to Cabo, that's just over two hours away. 

What?  Who picks a place to live because it's close to Cabo?

It's the ultimate American city for famous people.

You're a vapid piece of cat shit.

As recently as three years ago, had you told any fan of the other 29 teams, "In 2014, the Lakers will have $50 million in cap space during a loaded summer for free agents," their reaction would have been, "We're all screwed." 

Because the idea of the Lakers having no players under contract is terrifying to other teams, somehow?  And boy, remember how he was just lecturing us as to what we learned about from the way the 2010 free agent market played out?  I don't know what the rest of you learned, but given that LeBron spurned the Knicks and Bulls, both of whom were the focus of most of the attention leading up to The Decision, all I learned is that no team should ever count on signing any given free agent.

But when they're being run by someone who can successfully be compared to Tommy Boy? That's a different story.

No way LeBron theoretically signs there now!

Making matters worse, the Lakers lost their L.A. basketball monopoly. Lately, the lowly Clippers — a team 

that Bill Simmons pretended to follow, then renounced because they didn't win enough for him, then decided to follow again because they landed Chris Paul and started winning again,

that threw away the last three decades despite having the same inherent advantages as the Lakers — finally kinda sorta maybe figured out what they were doing. They've been spending money in the most anti–Donald Sterling ways possible, building around the league's most expensive coach (Doc Rivers), 

Bill: Doc, you quit on the Celtics!

Doc: Bill's a fucking idiot who knows nothing about anything.

You know, I hate the Celtics and don't care for the Clippers, but this Doc character, he seems cool to me.

a $107 million point guard (Chris Paul), a $95 million, high-flying power forward (Blake Griffin) 

The Donald Sterling way to spend money on players is to just not do it.  I don't think there's anything "bizzarro Sterling" about paying a PG and (overpaying) a PF.

and a slew of quality role players. It's almost like the Lakers and Clippers switched bodies. And actually, we can't rule this out.

Haha, we sure can!  

So if we ever needed a "Save the Lakers" plan, it's right now. Here's how Wolf Pope Simmons would hypothetically save the Lakers in 10 hypothetical steps.

TEN AND ONLY TEN

1. Don't be afraid to suck all kinds of suck for one season.

Tips for writing for Jimmy Kimmel's show, by Bill Simmons.

Hey, Jimmy? 

Baby!  Boobie!  Let's get together and make a picture!

You already have everyone's 2013-14 season ticket money! They're helpless. They're stuck at your Thanksgiving table of basketball hell 

Worst metaphor ever.

for six solid months — just keep force-feeding oily turkey 

Oh man, totally makes sense!

and runny cranberry sauce down their throats. 

Don't write while hungry is the lesson, I guess.

Why? Because you don't want to be the West Coast Bucks, and because one of the greatest NBA drafts in 30 years is coming.

Take it from a guy who interviewed like 10 draft prospects in advance of this year's draft, and failed to interview the guy who went 1st overall!

Two facts about the 2014 draft. First, if you were ranking the Can't-Miss NBA Prospects of the 21st Century, Kansas freshman Andrew Wiggins would rank behind LeBron, but would probably land right on that second tier with Durant, Oden and Carmelo. 

I'm picking nits, but let's not put Wiggins on their level just yet, not until he has a successful freshman year like they all did (minus the fact that Oden walked like an old man, obviously).

He's T-Mac 2.0 by all accounts. Seriously, check him out. There's a reason the Tankapalooza committee (I'm the chairman) is thinking about changing the name of Tankapalooza 2014 to Riggin' for Wiggins.

So clever!  Also a great idea, what with the worst team in the NBA getting a 25% shot at winning the lottery.

Second, it's the rare NBA draft that's deep AND top-heavy. On Tuesday's B.S. Report, ESPN draft guru and former The O.C. star Chad Ford pointed out that, in 2013, he broke the draft down by tiers — with Tier 1 being "potential franchise players," Tier 2 being "potential All-Stars," Tier 3 being "potential starters," and so on — and there wasn't a single 2013 draft prospect in Tier 1 or Tier 2. In 2014? Right now, we have eight guys in those top two tiers, and that's without factoring in the possibility of one or two more breakout stars. There's also a chance that Kentucky power forward Julius Randle might turn "Wiggins vs. Randle" into a "Durant vs. Oden"–type debate, and that Duke's Jabari Parker might be looming as a Carmelo-like sleeper.

Carmelo was not a sleeper.  He won a national championship after being a McDonald's All-American.  He would have been #1 in, like, any other draft in the 2000s.  But yeah, I don't have too much snark here.  That draft actually does sound pretty awesome.

If there was ever a season for hopeless or semi-hopeless NBA teams to throw away like a half-eaten banana, it's this one. Going 42-40 makes no sense. Why not take your lumps, Jimmy? Your fan base is more sophisticated than anyone realizes. 

SECRETLY UNDERRATEDLY OVERSOPHISTICATED.  Only a basketball NERD would realize this.

They've had four generations of success. They're even savvy enough to realize that it wasn't the worst thing in the world that a wishy-washy, oversensitive, possibly breaking-down-and-maybe-even-past-his-prime Dwight fled for Texas. They get it. 

From earlier in this same article, covered in my last post:

And they need to sell the illusion of hope to their fans,

What an asshole.

They'd be fine with throwing away ONE season. Just not two.

ONE AND ONLY ONE SEASON

2. Clear every dollar off your 2014-15 cap. Get to zero, or close.

OFFER LEBRON A 15 YEAR $600 MILLION CONTRACT WHO SAYS NO????

The goal: replicating what Pat Riley achieved four seasons ago, when he talked Dwyane Wade into playing with expiring contracts just so Miami could become a free-agent player in the summer of 2010 (with South Beach as the carrot).

When I did that "Hey anonymous commenter, shut your fucking mouth" research about the Heat's level of success a few weeks ago, I was surprised to see how good they were in 2009-2010.  I remember it being a story that they were playing with a bunch of expiring contract guys to clear cap space for the summer of LeBron, but wow.  They still won 47 games, even with Michael Beasley and Quentin Richardson combining for 58 minutes per game.  That Spoelstra is kind of good.  (I think I might have said otherwise in the past.  I take it back.)

Whether that was a calculated risk or a nefarious plan hatched during the summer of 2008 — you know, when LeBron, Wade and Bosh played on Team USA and befriended team ball boy Nick Arison (son of Miami owner Micky Arison), 

Yes, if we are to assume that such a plan really did exist, then CLEARLY it was the ball boy who caused it, and not, you know, those dudes getting together and saying "Hey we should play together and win championships while paying no state income tax, that would be fun."

then won Olympic gold in China, followed by two years of whispers that those three players had made a pact to play together, and then it actually happened while David Stern and Adam Silver twiddled their thumbs and repeatedly yelled "Nothing to see here!" at each other — we'll never know the real truth. 

THE DECISION WAS AN INSIDE JOB, WATCH THESE POORLY PRODUCED VIDEOS ON MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL, THEY WILL SHOW YOU THE TRUTH

But look how that gamble played out. Three Finals trips, two titles … and we're still going.

On paper, the 2013-14 Lakers could take the 2009-10 Heat's game plan to another level by jettisoning every contract while also landing a top-five lottery pick. But they have to worsen this year's roster. Which means ...

You're going to have to wait to find out.  Oops, hold on, that means a couple of you who are curious might actually go to Grantland to read the column.  We don't want that.  Let me spoil it for you: he says they should trade Nash to Toronto WHO SAYS NO????

More later. 

Bill's trade value column gave me herpes, part 2

A shout out to the Anonymous commenter from last post who mentioned the epidemic of "[X] SENT ME HERE" YouTube comments.  Holy balls those are annoying.  People who leave those should be sealed inside barrels and thrown over Niagara Falls.

GROUP C: "Only If They Asked to Leave"

13. Tim Duncan
The one perpetual flaw with the Trade Value concept: 

The one?

San Antonio would never trade Duncan … but it also wouldn't make any sense for, say, Portland to trade LaMarcus Aldridge for him. 

If the Spurs lose to the Warriors and the Blazers make that offer, I think the Spurs might take it.  How many Knicks fans thought Ewing would never be traded?  How many Rockets fans thought Olajuwon would never be traded?  The Spurs might want to shake things up and try to extend their window while Parker is still relatively young.  Before last year they hadn't been to the conference finals since 2008.  They've been awesome with this core for a long time, for sure, but 37 year old Duncan for 27 year old Aldridge sounds doable to me if there's no title this June.  (Of course the Blazers would never do this.)

We're splitting the difference and sticking Duncan here. I still have Duncan ranked ahead of Kobe as the greatest player of their generation,

No bias there.

if only because everyone forgets just how difficult Kobe was from 2002 through 2007

Ooh, he was so "difficult."  Chris W pointed out a bunch of racially loaded language Bill used in describing Serge Ibaka ("a freak athlete with a little 'dark alley' in him" ... "a starter on the 'Guys Who Make You Look Over Your Shoulder At All Times' All-Stars").  If I were more of a race-baiter I'd say this Kobe comment is more of the same.  Not sure if Bill meant to walk down that road, but I will happily point out that generally, to the media, when a black player is an asshole it's because he's an asshole but when a white player is an asshole it's because he wants to win too much.  Except for me (spoiler alert, I'm white) when I played basketball and baseball growing up.  I was an asshole then because I was mad about not being good, and because I was an asshole.

(an easy-to-forget story line that gets revived in Phil Jackson's insightful memoir, Eleven Rings).

Jackson's ability to deal with huge egos is well documented, and also really funny given his own continent-sized ego.

Even if I've sung Duncan's praises a kajillion times, most notably in this 2007 column 

Link: removed.  Thanks, Blogger.

and in my basketball book, please remember the following things:

• He's the greatest power forward of all time. He's also one of the greatest teammates ever. That's why the Spurs never would have discussed trading him, not even internally after about 20 drinks, at any point since 1997.

I maintain that it wouldn't be that shocking to see them trade him for someone as good as Aldridge this offseason, if they lose to the Warriors.  Just because I know you care, this Nuggets fan is rooting for the meteor in that series.

• He won four titles, two when he was the only All-Star. He's been the best player on every title team.

Howard Bryant reminds you that Thurman Munson was NOT the leader of or best player on the '77 and '78 Yankees WS-winning teams, because that would diminish Jeter's legacy by 0.0000000001%.

• Kareem won the Finals MVP award in 1971 and 1985. I always thought that was incredible. Fourteen years apart? Well, Duncan has a chance to do it this spring — even if he hasn't exactly seized control of the Warriors series so far. He won the 1999 Finals MVP, but a 2013 Finals MVP would complete "The Kareem." And if it happens, I can promise you one thing — in 2038, he won't be belly-flopping into a pool on a reality-TV show.

Take that, guy who is still famous and on TV at age 66!  I know Diving With The Stars or whatever it's called is a corny show, but should Kareem be embarrassed about being on it?  He's a world class athlete, he probably loved learning a new sport.

Last note: I don't think San Antonio will get past this suddenly petrifying Warriors team unless Duncan kicks it up a notch and becomes the best player in the series. The Spurs can't win with 20-and-10 Duncan; they need 27-and-15 Duncan. After all these years, does Tim Duncan have one last old-school throwback playoff performance lurking inside him? 

Like I said, go meteor.

12. Dirk Nowitzki
One of my favorite NBA lists …

Dolph Schayes
Hal Greer
John Havlicek
Kobe Bryant
Tim Duncan
Paul Pierce
Dirk Nowitzki

That's the 15-Year Club — the only seven NBA players who spent their entire careers with the same franchise, played at least 15 seasons AND won at least one title.

Why isn't Hakeem on that list?  He'll never be traded!

You don't just stumble onto that list — all seven are Hall of Famers, with 21 rings among them. Think about what the list means: excellence, durability, longevity, loyalty, championships … it's your best-case scenario for a basketball career, basically.

Thank you for spoon-feeding that to us.

And you need a little luck along the way. I don't know how Schayes and Greer played that long with all the bad sneakers, bad food, bad medical care, scary travel, second-hand smoke and everything else that should have stopped them back then. Havlicek had a Secretariat-size heart 

Isn't that usually an extremely dangerous condition?  Good for him for overcoming it.

and superhuman stamina. Duncan nearly signed with Orlando. 

And then they ended up with T-Mac that offseason instead, and would end up unloading his contract in exchange for Stevie Franchise as he was in the middle of his meltdown.  Roll the laugh track.

Kobe's Lakers career nearly fell apart twice. 

HE WAS SO UPPITY

Pierce was nearly traded 935 times. Dirk lucked out with a wealthy owner who always spent enough money to compete (so he never had to pull a KG), as well as one sizable break: During the summer of '04, Dallas was the consensus favorite in the Shaq Sweepstakes when Kobe forced the Lakers to trade Shaq the Lakers decided to trade Shaq, only Mark Cuban (astutely, as it turned out) made Dirk untouchable.  At the time, that decision was a much bigger deal than anyone remembers now. 

ONLY A BASKETBALL VP OF COMMON BASKETBALL SENSE LIKE ME REMEMBERS CORRECTLY.

A rejuvenated, pissed-off Shaq guaranteed you one title, maybe even two. 

Good thing the Mavs stumbled into that title as the fifth or sixth best team in the league seven seasons down the line, or that decision would have been really fucking dumb.

We all knew it. (As it turned out, Miami won in 2006, and probably would have won the previous year had Dwyane Wade not gotten injured.) When the Lakers could only get Lamar Odom, Caron Butler and Brian Grant's contract for him, I ended up creating the Vengeance Scale to figure out exactly where Angry Shaq ranked among the most vengeful people ever, ultimately assigning him an 8.7 

Who or what else is he going to place on this dumb scale as a reference point?  I hope you guessed "long-dead actor."

(just behind Charles Bronson in every Death Wishmovie).

Sports = movies!

And yeah, I ridiculed the Mavericks for keeping Dirk over dealing him for Shaq, too, even calling Dirk "the German Bob McAdoo" (not a compliment). I never thought you could build a championship team around Dirk's offense. 

And as it turns out, you almost couldn't.

A lot of people felt that way. Looking back, resisting that enticing Shaq trade was probably Cuban's third-greatest NBA moment, 

Passing up winning titles with Shaq?  In the sense that it vindicated his decision to stick with a career Maverick, I suppose it was pretty great in hindsight as of July 2011.  Prior to that, he probably considered it one of his dumbest moments.  Bill is probably just fawning over Cuban for turning down the trade because a Dirk/Kobe Lakers team would have won 5+ titles in the last decade.

trailing the time he stared down David Stern after Game 5 of the 2006 Finals, and, of course, this picture.

I almost always delete Bill's embedded videos/pictures.  But not that one.  Pretty fantastic.

What happens with Dirk going forward? 

HOW WILL WE LOOK BACK ON THIS MOMENT IN TEN YEARS?

Kobe, Pierce and Dirk have one thing in common: They don't have to chase a title like Karl Malone did. Dirk controls his own destiny; if he wants to retire in Dallas, Cuban would be delighted. Kobe probably controls his own destiny, even if there's increasing buzz (no, really) that the Lakers would amnesty him if it guaranteed them Chris Paul and Dwight Howard. 

Bill was probably one of those people who, back in 2004, was like KOBE TO THE CLIPPERS.  IT'S A DONE DEAL.

11. Blake Griffin
After winning three NCAA titles at UCLA, Sidney Wicks became memorable as an NBA player for four reasons: Portland drafted him no. 2 overall, then Wicks slowly morphed into the first we-used-to-love-him-now-we-hate-him Blazer (the first of many); along with Curtis Rowe and John Y. Brown, he's widely credited in Boston for briefly murdering Celtic Pride and nearly causing Red Auerbach to jump to the Knicks; 

HOW DAY-UH HE ONLY AVERAGE 15 AND 10 FO-AH A TEAM THAT DIDN'T WIN A TITLE!  RUINING CELTIC PRIDE IS HIS GREATEST CRIME!  HE IS NAWT LIKE HAVLICEK OR BIRD OR COUSY OR MCHALE!  BOOOOOO!  I've said this recently, but I'll say it again: Boston fans react to spurnings, real (Ray Allen) or perceived (Wicks) like 15 year old girls react to being dumped.

and he had his butt famously kicked by Calvin Murphy, a legendary NBA fight because Wicks was ONE FOOT TALLER than him. 

NAWT SOUTHIE TOUGH!

I left this reason out: My mom thought Wicks was incredibly handsome and gushed that he looked like a black Omar Sharif. That I remember this all these years later tells you exactly how frightened I was that my least-favorite Celtic might become my stepfather someday. 

I'm not touching that one.

But here's why Sidney Wicks stands out for NBA/history reasons …

He averaged 24.5 points as a rookie, then saw his scoring average drop every year for the next nine years until he retired. Do you realize how hard that is? You have to willingly become 7 percent worse every year for your entire career — it's like intentional atrophy. 

I'm sure it was 100% a conscious decision on his part.  He absolutely did it on purpose.

I don't know whether he's the Dave Stapleton of basketball, or Dave Stapleton was the Sidney Wicks of baseball. But that brings us to Blake Griffin … 24 years old, marketable, likable, wildly entertaining, one of the best five forwards in basketball, and one of the best in-game dunkers who ever lived. Should we be concerned by this Wicksian career arc?

Year 1: DNP (knee surgery)
Year 2: 22.5 PPG, 12.1 RPG, 3.8 APG, 51% FG, 64% FT, 16.8 FGA, 8.5 FTA, 1.3 stocks, 21.9 PER
Year 3: 20.7 PPG, 10.9 RPG, 3.2 APG, 55% FG, 52% FT, 15.5 FGA, 7.1 FTA, 1.5 stocks, 23.4 PER
Year 4: 18.0 PPG, 8.3 RPG, 3.7 APG, 54% FG, 66% FT, 13.4 FGA, 5.3 FTA, 1.8 stocks, 22.4 PER

Yeeeeesh. What happened to his rebounding? (Great question.) 

Conveniently omitted from those stat lines:  minutes per game.  Year 2: 38.0; Year 3: 36.2; Year 4: 32.5.

Why isn't he getting to the line as much? (No clear answer.) 

Conveniently omitted from those stat lines:  minutes per game.

Is he shooting more jumpers? (Quick look at HoopData says … nope.) 

Probably not, considering his FG% is holding steady.  Also, conveniently omitted from those stat lines:  minutes per game.

Did he lose shots to Chris Paul and Jamal Crawford these past two years? (Probably.) 

Yes.

And should we be worried that bigger power forwards can bully him down low, the way his archnemesis Z-Bo did in Round 1? (In all caps: YES.) 

Z-Bo is really, really good.  Griffin's defense kind of sucks, but I'm not sure how much we're supposed to "worry about it."  He's really good.  He's not perfect.

What about Kirk Goldsberry breaking down Blake's offensive game by saying, "He's obviously great near the basket, but he's below-average everywhere else"? (A big fat YES.)

MY GOD LOOK AT HIS POINTS PER GAME, THEY'RE DOWN 20% SINCE 2010-2011.  IT'S ALMOST LIKE HIS MINUTES PER GAME AND FIELD GOAL ATTEMPTS PER GAME HAVE DECLINED A ROUGHLY EQUIVALENT AMOUNT SINCE THEN.

On the flip side — that's what we love about the guy. I have probably watched him in person 55 times at this point; he's the most fearless basketball player I've ever seen. 

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

You watch Blake Griffin the same way parents watch their 9-month-old child crawling around a house that hasn't been childproofed; you never feel safe, not for a second. Nobody wants anything to happen to Blake. That feeling lingers over the air in every Clippers game, especially because it's the Clippers, the most jinxed franchise in sports (see my 2009 "Curse of the Sacred Buffalo").

We went over this last post.

Stripping aside all the fanboy stuff, 

Something Bill excels at.

you're getting an 18-8 every night from someone who plays one end of the floor and treats every game like he's an X Games contestant. That's not a superstar. That's a star. Big difference.

I agree-why is he #11 on this list?  Why is he ahead of Kevin Love, Chris Bosh and Al Horford?  Because DUNKZ?

We always judged Blake on his preposterous potential — well, what happens if he already reached it?

I think he probably has, other than getting a little better at hitting midrange jumpers.  He's still very good, and I don't want to talk out of both sides of my mouth and defend Griffin while also tearing him down, but that's the position Bill and his inability to be anything but hyperbolic (EVERYTHING IS EITHER SEVERELY OVERRATED OR SEVERELY UNDERRATED OR ON THE WAY TO BEING ONE OR THE OTHER) have put me in.

His outside shot hasn't improved in three years; opponents beg him to shoot it (especially in the playoffs). He can't affect games defensively with his athleticism like, say, Shawn Kemp in the mid-'90s. He isn't a good enough rebounder right now. He isn't big enough to be your small-ball 5, and he's not strong enough to handle bigger power forwards like Duncan and Z-Bo. He thrives in up-and-down, ABA-type games, but as soon as those games slow down (especially late), so does his effectiveness. And he's a never-ending injury risk because he plays so recklessly.

Which is the biggest knock on Love (not the recklessness, but the fragility), and in my moderately informed opinion Love is a better player.  But I guess Griffin goes this high because of.... again, DUNKZ?  Wait, no, just figured it out.  It's because Bill is a Clippers STH, and sees Griffin in person all the time.  Since we're talking about a non-Celtic, I almost forgot about how staggeringly bad bill is at objectivity for a second there.

And look, we're edging into the top 10 here. We're putting up the Superstar Rope in front of the Trade Value nightclub right now. Blake Griffin isn't good enough yet. You could rank him higher because he's the most popular Clipper ever, 

Watch out, Danny Manning!

someone who earns his max contract from a popularity/interest/star power standpoint. And you could rank him lower because he's just not that valuable yet, and because his icy relationship with Chris Paul — if any coach who's even remotely competent the next coach can't heal it — 

Second typo that could have been fixed by rudimentary editing in this segment (I deleted the other one, in the Duncan section).  STET AWL CHANGES.  STET AWL CHANGES.

is straying into "Him or Me" territory. We're getting there (as covered in Part 2 of last Friday's column). So we're splitting the difference and sticking him here.

Chris Paul is a crybaby, a serial flopper and a shithead.  I hope the Lakers sign him and re-sign Howard.  Watching those two fall short of impossibly high expectations every season through 2018 would be a delight.

Why Bother Knowing Anything When You Can Just Make Stuff Up?

I don't have the energy to fully critique the already-commented-upon Bill Simmons/Chad Ford draft debate piece from ESPN. I can't really spare the time needed to properly address how bonkers it is to declare yourself the winner of an argument about the relative merits of two 19 year old NBA players when one of them hasn't even played a minute in the league. I also just don't think I can squeeze in any analysis about how miserable Bill Simmons is at writing jokes, or being consistent about what qualities he thinks make for a good player. (Chad actually covers that second topic for me pretty well, actually.) No, I won't be doing any of those things. And since the comments section on a Simmons piece usually doesn't really include a ton of discussion about the article at hand, I figure it's not a big deal if I make this post mildly short and sweet. I think I'll just focus on one thing: made up non-facts about teams/players that Bill seems to want us to believe are true.

Re: Derrick Rose

I loved Derrick Rose at first sight. He's a great and selfless teammate; he's a franchise point guard entering a league in which point guards have become inordinately valuable; he's got a great name (never underestimate the value of a great name); he was the best player on an extremely successful college team; and in short, after watching him a few times, I would have bet my life on him making multiple All-Star appearances (barring injury).

One of these things is very unlike the others. I like how's it stuck right there in the middle of all that relevant information. I think I will go ahead and underestimate the power of a great name, thank you very much. (Is "Derrick Rose" even that great, as names go?) Also, keep in mind that Rose was born on October 4th. Never underestimate the power of someone born on October 4th.

Re: What it takes

As the Celtics just proved, you can win a championship with two elite players and 10 role players as long as (a) everyone busts their butts on defense, (b) everyone gets along, and (c) you have at least two guys who can get into the paint and create shots for everyone else.

First of all, Bill, don't forget (as you yourself pointed out numerous times before and throughout the playoffs!) that you need a magical, uberinformed, never bandwagony, always ready to take the team to another level kind of crowd if you want to win it all. Also, assuming Pierce and Garnett were the elite players, are we now relegating Ray Allen to "role player" status? In reality, the Celtics just proved you can win a championship as long as (a) you have three elite or near-elite players, which is obviously really easy to do in today's NBA, (b) a couple other elite defenders/rebounders, (c) everyone busts their butt on defense, (d) you get to spend the first three rounds of the playoffs limping through a pathetically shitty conference, and (e) when the finals roll around you match up perfectly with your opponent who managed to make it out of a vastly superior conference that contained at least three other teams that would have absolutely fed you your shit in the finals (PHX, SAN, UTH, yes, that's right, UTH).

Re: The Oden vs. Durant Debate (Like I said in the intro, I'm not covering the crux of it, because anyone with a brain can see how asinine Bill is being. This is more of a subpoint.)

I thought he (Durant) had a chance to become a truly dominant offensive player; I thought Oden was too nice of a guy; and I thought Oden was headed for a career of health problems.

That's right, Greg Oden, you hear that? You're too nice to win. Sorry. Good luck playing in the NBA with all that niceness you're carrying. Wait... what's that? There are many great nice players, and many awful mean players? Poppycock.

If Kevin Pritchard called Sam Presti right now and said, "Hey, we'll give you Oden for Durant," Presti would either hang up or ask him, "What else are you throwing in the deal?"

Sure, because Oden is rehabbing from a major surgery. On the other hand, if the Blazers had called the Sonics the day after the draft, and said "Hey, we'll give you Oden for Durant," before Presti could say anything, Pritchard would shout "SIKE" and then hang up.

Do you really think Oden -- the guy who's coming off microfracture surgery and wrist surgery in consecutive years, the guy who has one leg that's an inch and a half shorter than the other, the guy who walks like a 50-year-old man -- has more value in the NBA than the 2008 rookie of the year?

Watch out for that old man walk. It's derailed many a career. Like Dan Bobertson. Who? Exactly.

Re: The plight of Kevin Durant, and Bill's amazing ability to know what entire fan bases are thinking

The fact that the Sonics' fans fell in love with him when they were specifically trying NOT to get attached to him tells me everything I need to know.

Yeah, I read all about how Sonics fans were specifically trying to not get attached to Durant. Articles upon articles, with polling information and quotes. Plenty of them. What a big, accurate story that was. You know what else is 100% verifiably true? No one in New York likes Alex Rodriguez. No one. They were all hoping he'd leave after he opted out of his contract.

Re: Michael Beasley

He doesn't seem to have any leadership qualities whatsoever.

This is based on Bill watching the Wildcats' two games during the NCAA tournament last March, seeing him not carry them to the Final Four, and also noting that he doesn't give everyone on the team a high five after every time out.

Re: Beasley vs. Durant

Beasley has a chance to become a dominant offensive player, someone who could notch a 25-10 every game and get drafted in the first rounds of fantasy drafts for eight to 10 years. Durant has a chance to become one of the greatest offensive players in the history of basketball. Huge difference.

Bill can discern this subtle difference based on the relative need of the Celtics to land marquee players during the draft in which the player is going to be selected. If the Celtics have a good chance at landing a very high pick and taking the player, it's a foregone conclusion that the player will forever change the way we think about basketball. If the Celtics are coming off a championship and aren't anywhere near the lottery, the player will forever be a one dimensional team killer who is on his way out of the league by age 30.

Re: Kevin Love

He'll like Minnesota;

(pause) Where the fuck did that come from?

You know what you're getting with Love: intelligence, rebounding, superior passing, smart team defense, 3-point shooting...

He shot 35% from behind the college arc, which is mediocre and probably won't translate to a good NBA 3, and furthermore he only made less than one 3 per game in college. (He was 29 for 82 for the season.) If an NBA team drafted Love and counted on him to provide them with some production from beyond the arc, that would be incredibly stupid. Of course, that imaginary misinformed team probably could have avoided that mistake by hiring a VP of common sense. I hear Bill is available.

Re: Russell Westbrook

In New York, the pressure would be too much -- between Mike D., the Knicks fans and the media, not to mention Stephon Marbury undermining him, everything about that scenario worries me.

1) Clearly Bill knows Russell and therefore knows that he's a guy who just can't handle pressure, especially from the notoriously mean spirited Mike D'Antoni.
2) Since Russell didn't play basketball for a big time college program that attracts a lot of media scrutiny and criticism, we don't have any way to judge how he would handle a similar situation in the NBA.

Re: Blaming it on the rain

There isn't a more jinxed franchise in sports than the L.A. Clippers. There really isn't.

Yeah, I mean, they've sustained a whole one notable injury (Shaun Livingston, whose magical spaghetti knee prompted this comment) in the last twenty years while consistently making horrific personnel and coaching decisions. If that's not jinxed, I don't know what is.

Re: Darrell Arthur

...and if you remember, Arthur made an absolutely mammoth hoop when KU was down five in the final minute of regulation against Memphis. So if you're going glass-half-full, you could argue that he brought something to the table in a do-or-die moment.

Darrell Arthur: the David Eckstein of the Big 12. (Actually, no sarcasm, he probably won't end up being as good at pro basketball as Eckstein is at pro baseball. Which is saying something.)

Re: Did the Shaq trade hurt or help the Suns' playoff chances?

So you're telling me that Shawn Marion -- an enigmatic head case who was legitimately happy to leave Steve Nash and the top team in the Western Conference so he could play with Ricky Davis and Mark Blount on the worst team in the league -- now would have swung the 2008 playoffs?

I'll just steal Chad's response, verbatim: Yeah, I'm saying that. Marion can play. Shaq can't.

Re: Roy Hibbert

He's the most undervalued guy in a draft in which nearly everyone is properly valued.

Hibbert is going to have a very short and useless NBA career, in my opinion. I say this based on watching him play my Big East school several times, and noting that he wasn't anywhere close to an offensive threat in college. But my disagreement with Bill about his viability in the league isn't the real problem:

Also, I can never turn down a guy named "Roy." Have you ever met a Roy who wasn't absolutely fantastic?

Fuck. Not again. And I'd like to add that I used to have a neighbor named Roy growing up who was a mean old guy who never bought any of the stuff I was selling for school fundraisers. I would count him as decidedly unfantastic.

Re: Really simple trades that only don't happen because all NBA GMs are pussies

By the way, tell me who doesn't make this trade: Outlaw, Channing Frye, the rights to Fernandez, the No. 13 and $3 million for Conley, Brian Cardinal and No. 5. Just curious.

You're a lost cause.

This Guy Named Erik Used to Write For FireJay

But he got sick of doing so after like two posts. I can't really blame him; he has a sweet job in the sports entertainment industry which requires a lot of writing so this probably just felt like more work to him. (I won't disclose who his employer is because he probably wouldn't want to risk being made fun of or fired from that job if his name were tied to this shitty blog. But let's just say it's with a branch of either the NBA, MLB, or NFL, and if you watch a lot of sports, there's a decent chance you've seen something on TV that he helped produce. ) Anyways, he sometimes sends me tips for stuff to put on the site, which is a nice way for him to contribute without the pressure of actually being listed as a contributor. Below is one such tip. All commentary from this point on is his.

So I find a link on SI.com for the top five NBA draft busts of all time. Like any straight, red-blooded, American male, I love busts. I scan to see where Sam Bowie is on the list. He isn't. But who is?

3. Kedrick Brown: The Celts selected this JuCo star 11th in the 2001 Draft, much higher than most experts had him projected (at least, those who had heard of him). He most recently played in the NBA's D-League.

Who else might the Celtics have reasonably drafted in that slot? Maybe Richard Jefferson (13) or Zach Randolph (19) [Tony Parker (28) never could have realistically been on anyone radar at that stage of the draft]. So Kedrick Brown is one of the biggest busts in draft history because he
didn't match the ceilings of a poor man's Scottie Pippen and an obese man's Otis Thorpe? Or the "floors" of Vlad Radmonovic, Troy Murphy, Steven Hunter, and Kirk Haston? Based on the outcome of the careers of players taken after him, Brown should've been anywhere from a fringe rotation player to a third banana. So, yes, by tumbling to the D-league, he must be the third biggest bust of all time.

Lang Whitaker is the executive editor of SLAM magazine and writes daily at SLAMonline.com

Lang Whitaker is the executive editor of SLAM magazine, which comes with a free headband if you sign up for a one-year subscription. He probably knows more than me.

Gene Wojceichowski- Still Full of Drivel

Even when he picks a very defensible angle on a topic he still comes out sounding like a dummy.

This is that special time of the year when the nation's best freshman basketball players appear in front of the TV cameras, say that deep in their hearts they'll always be a Bruin-Wildcat-Trojan-Tiger-blah, blah, blah, and then announce their decision to leave school for "the next level."

I like how that's in quotes. As if it's worth questioning whether or not the NBA is the next level above the NCAA.

That's what UCLA's Kevin Love said: "I'm in the right spot to take my game to the next level."

That's what Kansas State's Michael Beasley said: "It's time for me to take my game to the next level."

That's what Memphis' Derrick Rose sort of said: "… I feel that it is the right time for me to take this step."

That's what Arizona's Jerryd Bayless sort of said: "It's the right time to move on."

That's what they all say: Love, Beasley, Rose, Bayless, USC's O.J. Mayo, Indiana's Eric Gordon, maybe even Beasley's K-State freshman teammate, Bill Walker. The basketball Class of 2011 just became the One and Dones.

Well, ten or so of them, anyways. The other several hundred are remaining in school, well aware that they don't have the necessary talent to compete in the NBA.

First of all, if the NCAA and the NBA really want to improve our lives, they'll outlaw the use of "the next level."

Because the NBA is really "the previous level?" Because it would be better for kids to come up with a different, untrue reason for leaving school? Sure, it's a cliche, but it's one that has enough truth to it to not bug even someone as critical as myself.

While we're at it, no athlete is allowed to say, "It's not about the money," because, dude, we know it's about the money.

Sometimes. In many cases because the athlete in question grew up with almost no money at all, and has a family they want to provide for. This cliche is worthy of being complained about when it's said by a pro athlete choosing $50 million over $30 million, but I don't see any problem when it's a college athlete choosing $15 million over $0 million.

And on a more general note, no airline pilot is allowed to say, "Well, folks, we're just waiting on some paperwork and then we'll be on our way." There is no paperwork. You're stalling. Just go ahead and tell us the flight's been delayed 40 minutes.

OK, Peter King. Thanks for the Annoying Travel Note of the Week. Tell us about how nice the concierge at the Best Western in Saskatoon was while you're at it.

Anyway, technically speaking, the "next level" for these guys is the National Basketball Developmental League. The next level after that is the NBA.

Oh, yeah, I bet you'll be seeing all of those guys you just mentioned suiting up in the D-League come this fall. No doubt about it. I'd be shocked if Gordon cracks an NBA roster before 2010. What, you think Kevin Durant just came straight out of college and started contributing for the Sonics? Poppycock.

The NBA isn't kidding when it says its league is where Amazing Happens. Amazing because the NBA forces the very best high school players to wait until they're 19 (or one year removed from their high school graduation) before they can declare for the NBA draft.

That's not amazing. It's a (kind of) well intentioned rule. If that's amazing, lots of stuff is amazing. I won't even make a list. OK, maybe just one example- cardboard boxes.

That's the only reason why Love spent a season at Westwood, Mayo at L.A., Beasley at Manhattan, Rose at Memphis, Gordon at Bloomington. What a deal. The NBA gets a free minor league system, and the college programs rent a star player for nothing more than the price of room, tuition and books.

Whether it's working out this way or not, the NBA is merely trying to improve the overall talent level in the league and prevent guys like Lenny Cooke and Taj McDavid from ruining their careers before they have a chance to get off the ground. It's not really exploitation from that angle. The NCAA is a different story, but it's not like they made the rule. They've been exploiting athletes for years, but this doesn't do much to change that. It just means they get to exploit some super-talented athletes that otherwise would have never passed through their system.

And, as usual, the player is used as a commodity. He becomes -- what's the term? -- "product."

Agreed, but I don't think the NBA sees them that way. The NCAA does, but still- not their policy, not their fault. The one-and-done rule has nothing to do with them.

USC coach Tim Floyd didn't attend Mayo's farewell news conference. But he did issue a statement thanking Mayo, who wore NBA logo socks in his final game, for "everything O.J. did for all of us the year he was with us."

What Mayo did was increase average attendance at USC's Galen Center from 5,798 a year ago to 9,647. Cha-ching.

I'm sure Floyd sees Mayo as nothing else. Just an ATM in sneakers.

Anyway, Floyd will soon welcome USC signee DeMar DeRozan, "… probably the best NBA prospect on the West Coast and maybe in the country," Floyd told the Los Angeles Times. In other words, another one and done.

Whom Floyd hopes will help him win, but only because Floyd wants more money. His motives are entirely financially motivated and have nothing to do with putting the best team possible on the floor except inasmuch as it helps him get a new contract.

Meanwhile, K-State coach Frank Martin told reporters at Beasley's recent news conference that "Mike has put our brand out there again, let people know Kansas State basketball is back, and he's put us on national television."

Branding. Television exposure. Revitalized K-State hoops. That's super.

Now then, what exactly did Kansas State do for Beasley?

What exactly does any school do for a student athlete who doesn't graduate? What's the difference between being a superstar like Beasley and leaving after a year with no diploma, or being one of the hundreds of role players every year (particularly among the ranks of men's basketball) who finish out their eligibility and have to leave school without earning a diploma? Gene has correctly identified the problem- unfortunately, he's still working on figuring out the fact that the NBA's age policy has nothing to do with it.

Sorry, but I'm not seeing the upside for the players here. Everybody conveniently benefits from this mandatory, one-year sentence except the actual freshmen. K-State gets its precious brand and TV games. USC gets its attendance spike. UCLA gets to the Final Four. Memphis does too, and coach John Calipari gets a new contract.

As for NBA teams, their scouts get a whole year to evaluate the freshman talent against college, not high school players. And here's the best part: The NCAA provides the talent free of charge!

Just like they always have! And yes, the NBA does want to give teams an extra year to evaluate talent. They're protecting their league from unnecessary dilution, and protecting unprepared players from themselves. For a year anyways. It's not much, but it's something.

In return, the players are deprived of the opportunity to go directly from high school to the NBA, even if their games are ready or near-ready.

That's the idea, yes, because many players in the past have proven to be horribly poor judges as to how ready or near-ready their games were. If they're really that good, that draft pick and those dollars will be waiting for them just a short year down the line.

They also risk injury. IU's Gordon and his left wrist can tell you all about it.

Take out an insurance policy. If they're really that good, they can afford to pay it because they'll be making big money 12 months later. This isn't that complicated.

Did I mention how academic integrity takes it in the shorts?

I'm getting very frustrated at this piece, because I know I'm not being funny or saying anything new. But really, Gene? Seriously? A buttsex joke? Academic integrity has been "taking it in the shorts" from the NCAA for decades now.

These freshman stars are only required to attend at least one semester's worth of school. Once the season is finished and they declare for the pros, anything goes. They can phone it in, skip classes or quit altogether.

Of course, the downside to that is something called the Academic Progress Rating. If a program's APR is too low, the NCAA can take away future scholarships. So if, say, Mayo, decides to quit going to classes this spring semester, USC pays the price.

OK, good. So you realize that. While it's an imperfect system, it's still a system. The NCAA has a long ways to go but they're at least trying to look like they're coming close to making an effort.

The entire arrangement needs a bar of soap and a shower. Worse yet, there's talk of the NBA possibly adding another year to the draft ban. Dumb. The NBA ought to get out of the minimum age requirement business.

After all, amazing happened when the Cleveland Cavaliers drafted an 18-year-old King James, and when the Charlotte Hornets drafted a 17-year-old Kobe Bryant.

Sure, let's let the exceptions dictate the rules. Have fun pretending like there aren't dozens of high-school-to-the-NBA failures for every Kobe or LeBron. I'll be here in the real world, realizing that some promising careers might have been saved had the kids been forced to go to school and grow up a little bit before entering the league.

And the NCAA ought to get out of the enabling business. Being at school isn't the same thing as being in school. Rationalize it any way you want, but one and done is mercenary sports, nothing more.

OK Gene, I'm going to stop you right there. This is it, we're done. The NBA's fucking age rule has essentially nothing to do with the massive academic problems faced by the NCAA in revenue sports.

And no, Jermaine O'Neal, it also has nothing to do with racism. Go back to being injured and cashing enormous paychecks.

I'm sure some people out there will disagree with me or want to point out something stupid I said. I'm not around during the day to check comments and defend myself, so feel free to carry out the blogopages equivalent of suckerpunching me or kneeing me in the balls. It's fine, I won't notice. My favorite baseball team has now lost four straight games which they were leading in the 8th inning. The world of sports can't get much worse for me right now. Life is just so damn tough.