Bill's NBA offseason tardfuckery, part 2 (of 2)

Only two parts to this little series of posts.  I'm sure you're very disappointed.

Before we get to Part 2, I want to make five more points about one of my favorite movies ever.

If Farina doesn't die last month, I promise you couldn't get Bill to give a remotely accurate description of the plot of Midnight Run today.  Bill is like an eight year old, whose favorite anything is the whatever-it-is from that category he has most recently seen/heard/experienced.  I suppose that shouldn't come as a surprise, given that his favorite Boston team is the one that has most recently won a title (unless the Clippers make a deep playoff run this year, in which case, get ready for his article about how it's OK to have two favorite teams and how his Celtics fandom is "in a holding pattern right now, like the planes in Die Hard 2; I'VE GOT CLIPPER FEVER AND THE ONLY PRESCRIPTION IS MORE COWBELL!!!!!!!").

1. I can't remember another comedy using F-bombs better than Midnight Run. The F-bomb is practically its own character in the movie, getting dropped nearly once a minute (119 times in 126 minutes). 

Not that I would expect him to, you know, do research or anything, but a fourteen second Google search/review of top result reveals that there are dozens of comedies well ahead of Midnight Run in this category, including several everyone has seen, like The Big Lebowski.

A good way to judge the effectiveness of those F-bombs: 

We don't need to judge the "effectiveness" of them.  That is an idiot's faux-analytical exercise.

How much does the movie suffer when it's being bleeped to smithereens on TBS or USA?

All movies suffer when that happens.  It sounds bad when there are cuts in the audio.

In Midnight Run's case … a lot. You almost feel like it's being mutilated.

But American History X?  Pretty much the same movie!

If you made an F-Bomb Movie Mount Rushmore, Midnight Run probably gets the no. 4 spot behind Scarface, Goodfellas and Reservoir Dogs.

This is one of those double wrong situations--it's fucking dumb to even discuss this, and additionally, if we WERE to discuss it, any F-Bomb Movie Mount Rushmore that omits Casino is null and void.

2. Since 1996, I've been to Vegas probably 25 or 30 times.

We all care!  We care so much!  Tell us your stories, we're begging you!

And there wasn't a single time when I walked through McCarran Airport that I didn't want to scream at the top of my lungs, "SERRANO'S GOT THE DISKS! SERRANO'S GOT THE DISKS!"

You're a simpleton.  You should be fed to wild animals.

5. When you consider (a) how shameless Hollywood is, 

WATCH OUT!  HOLLYWOOD INSIDER #STRONGTAKES, COMING DOWN THE PIPELINE!

(b) how few good ideas Hollywood has,

RYAN REYNOLDS IS NAWT A MOVIE STAR!

(c) how terrific De Niro and Grodin were together, and

Only time ever or since that two accomplished actors did a good job with their roles as snappy characters in an action comedy.

(d) the movie's second (and more enduring) wave of popularity once it started making the rounds on cable, 

You have no idea what you're talking about.

it's surprising that Universal didn't rope De Niro and Grodin into doing a sequel. 

WHO THE FUCK CARES

How easy would that have been? Serrano gets out of jail, blows up Jack's coffee shop and vows revenge on the Duke, followed by the Duke and Jack teaming up to get rid of him? Come on.

WHO

SAYS

NO

?????????

"What's that for?"
"A little inside joke between me and Alonzo."

To Zach Lowe, whose quest to call the Pelicans the "Pellies" ranked among the most goofy-entertaining moments in Grantland history. My prediction: I see their nickname unfolding much like that of Golden State, who assumed a variety of nickname forms over these past few decades (Warriors, Dubs, G-State and GSW). We'll see "Pels" (spoken and print), "NOLA" (spoken, print and Twitter) and "'Cans" (print and Twitter), with announcers calling them "New Orleans," "the Pelicans" or "the Pels." I don't see "Pellies" happening. Sounds too much like a failed Major Indoor Soccer League franchise from the mid-'80s. 

It sure doesn't!  I kind of feel bad for Lowe, who is a great analyst and pretty good writer (much like Grantland's Bill Barnwell).  He has a sweet job, but he has to interact regularly with Simmons.  That would be like someone who is actually good at this sportswriting line-by-line takedown gig being added to the FireJay staff, but also having to interact regularly with me in order to get their work published.

"How much is the coffee?"
"53 cents."
"How much is the tea?"
"53 cents."
"I'll have the tea."

To the lowly Bobcats, who smartly grabbed the vacated Hornets nickname so they could ride a wave of 1990s nostalgia momentum.  Look, it's not often you get to write the words "Bobcats," "smartly" and "momentum" in the same sentence. Let's remember this moment.

As for the coffee/tea exchange, that's one of my favorite Grodin moments and Reason No. 79 why he should have snared a Best Supporting Oscar nomination

Sweet Mary mother of Jesus, please shut the fuck up about this.

Re: the way the Dwight Howard deal ended up turning out pretty damn well for Orlando:

Jared is right, that was an outright pillaging! At the time, I criticized the Magic for not getting Andrew Bynum and made multiple jokes about then-new Orlando GM Rob Hennigan being overmatched. You know what? I'm giving myself a quote.

I AM SELF-DEPRECATING!  I HAVE SELF AWARENESS!  EVEN THE VP OF CAWMAWN SENSE MAKES AN OOPSIE OCCASIONALLY!

"What should be of paramount importance to you right now is not the phone calls, it's the fact that you're gonna spend 10 years for impersonating a federal agent."
"Ten years for impersonating a fed, huh?"
"Ten years."
"How comes no one's after you?"

To me, for doing such a mediocre impersonation of a wannabe NBA GM in this column. I wouldn't have done any better than most of these failed guys. Well, except for David Kahn. I would have done better than him. 

You know full well he's still convinced that he could negotiate circles around almost any GM in the league.

Anyway, combine Orlando's Howard haul with its Harris-Redick hijacking and Hennigan could start putting "Sam Presti 2.0" on his business cards. Let's hope he doesn't trade Oladipo for 20 cents on the dollar in four years. (Sorry, I had to.)

HEY EVERYONE, JUST A REMINDER IN CASE YOU FORGOT, I STILL UNDERSTAND THAT THE THUNDER DIDN'T GET A GOOD RETURN FOR HARDEN

"You can't steal a truck!"
"You were stealing a plane!"

The riskiest part of the movie goes to this summer's riskiest team: The Warriors, who sacrificed two first-rounders to shed enough cap space for Andre Iguodala (signed to a very fair four-year, $48 million deal). I judge every contender's move by this question: Are you adding someone who could have played big minutes in the pressure cooker that I attended in Miami during Game 6 and Game 7 of the Finals?

The gratuitous insertion of the fact that he was at games 6 and 7 is so pathetic as to not need any further mockery.  Slowly, he is becoming Peter King (Or is PK becoming Bill, now that he just got his own quasi-Grantlandian-ish site? Either way, America loses).

Why didn't Cleveland pick Victor Oladipo first, trade the no. 19 pick for Thomas Robinson (as he was being fire-saled by Houston),

Yeah!  Why didn't they make that trade that who fucking knows if the other team would have accepted?

take Isaiah Canaan 31st (a potential impact bench guard for one-tenth the price of Jack), 

Isaiah, I don't hate you or anything, but I hope you flop miserably and are out of the league next summer.  Just because Bill said this.

then either make a run at Pau Gasol (for Anderson Varejao's expiring contract plus a future pick) 

Again, how could they not have made that deal that the Lakers definitely would have accepted for sure?

or Nikola Pekovic (with a monster free-agent offer)?

How dare they not come to the same conclusion Bill did regarding Pekovic's value?

OR, why not pick Oladipo, sign Paul Millsap (available at a discount for whatever reason), 

And obviously, we know for a fact that Millsap would have taken a deal in Cleveland, it's indisputable!

nab Robin Lopez from New Orleans (when they were fire-saling him, no less), 

It's so obvious!

then keep your remaining cap space for a February deadline trade? I thought Cleveland's summer was mystifying.

This is the most popular and influential sportswriter (or should I say "sports"writer LOL) in America: the guy who writes like a caller to a local sports talk radio show, proposing outlandish trades and excoriating the local team's management for not making them.  HEY THANKS STEVE FIRST TIME LONG TIME. I JUST GOTTA SAY, WHY HAVEN'T THE SOX SWAPPED ELLSBURY AND A PROSPECT FOR MIKE TROUT YET?  DON'T THEY EVEN CARE ABOUT WINNING?

Also, KG and Pierce will be significantly better off on the Tim Duncan Minutes Plan (27-28 a night), and don't sleep on Pierce in a contract year and Eff You Mode. 

Is "Eff You Mode" the stupidest/funniest recurring bit he's ever come up with?  It's got to be high on the list, especially after the number of times during the 2007 NFL season that he used it to describe the (eventual) 18-1 Patriots.  Your suggestions for other great Billisms in the comments, please.

Here's what we know: The Bobcats can build around three polished/competitive/used-to-winning college stars (Kemba Walker, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Cody Zeller, their latest no. 1 pick, which I actually liked),

Pretty much every pundit out there fell somewhere between "I don't hate this selection I guess" and "ugh, that was dumb, Alex Len and Nerlins Noel were still on the board" with regards to Zeller.  Of course Bill liked the pick though, probably for the same reason he chose his winner of that online dunk contest that got publicized on Deadspin last week.

"Ninety-three bottles of beer … on … the … wall."

Look, I may or may not have been wasting inordinate amounts of time this summer on ESPN's Trade Machine making up fake Rondo trades. With Detroit out, one other Rondo suitor makes sense: the Kings. They're rebooting around a new arena, a new owner whom everyone loves (Vivek Ranadivé), a rejuvenated Boogie Cousins (at least that's the hope), and the chance to play an entire season without a Maloof involved. What about Rondo, Wallace's $30.3 million basketball cadaver and Jordan Crawford's expiring for Ben McLemore, the John Salmons–Patrick Patterson expirings, Greivis Vasquez, Jimmer Fredette and an unprotected no. 1 pick in 2014? (Thinking.)

How about an expensive guy who depends on his quickness and is coming off ACL surgery, one of the worst contracts in the NBA, and a mediocre asset for a bunch of decent assets?  WHO SAYS NO?

"How much is here?"
"Neighborhood of 300 thousand."
"That's a, a very respectable neighborhood."

And here's a very unrespectable neighborhood: 

RAWKSBURY!

Ladies and gents, introducing our eight finalists for Riggin' for Wiggins! My preseason odds for each team.

Lakers (+700): For these odds to drop, we only need a sentence that starts, "Kobe Bryant suffered a major setback today … " Plus, wouldn't it be just like the Lakers to land Wiggins and LeBron in the same summer? I'm moving back to Boston if this happens.

Can you just move to Mongolia right now instead?

Boston (+500): If Rondo returns sooner than later, I'm worried they'll be better than everyone thinks. Especially if Brad Stevens does Brad Stevens things:

IF RONDO DOES RONDO THINGS AND STEVENS DOES STEVENS THINGS AND THE LEGENDARY BEANTOWN FANS DO LEGENDARY BEANTOWN FAN THINGS, THEN, BY GOD, SOME OTHER STUFF JUST MIGHT HAPPEN!

Remember, he took Butler to within a fingernail-of-a-half-court-shot 

What is that?

of winning the NCAA title. Name me anyone on that team other than Gordon Hayward. You can't. 

If you mean name someone good enough to play in the NBA, there's Shelvin Mack (who I thought of off the top of my head).  If you mean good enough to play pro basketball, there's Andrew Smith and Matt Howard (neither of whom I could name off the top off my head, although I did think of Howard's face, since he looks so much like Andy Samberg and was really good during those two Butler tournament runs).  OOPS WAIT SORRY FORGOT, I CAN'T.

If Rondo comes back for Opening Night, there's a good chance I'm talking myself into 45 wins.

Please please please please please let the Celtics finish 9th in the East this year.  Do you know how NAWT FAY-UH that would be?

Charlotte (+200): You can never count MJ's boys out of anything that involves the words "incompetence," "bottoming out," "tanking" or "flagrantly failing with the small chance of being rewarded for it." 

I like how contrary that last part (about how there's only a small chance of being rewarded with the number one pick no matter how badly a team fails) runs to almost the entire premise of his recent 8,000 word "How I'd save the Lakers GOOD THING THEIR MANAGEMENT ISN'T READING THIS COLUMN THAT'S THE ONLY REASON I'M OK WITH PUTTING THIS AWESOME RECIPE FOR SUCCESS OUT IN THE OPEN" article.  Part of his plan for the Lakers was "clear cap space for LeBron," but the rest of it was "you gotta suck to get Wiggins!"  Suddenly he is now aware of the fact that expecting to win the draft lottery is a fool's game?

Phoenix (+150): Alex Len coming off a serious stress fracture? Goran Dragic and Eric Bledsoe butting heads in the same backcourt? The Morris twins? The immortal Michael Beasley? Kendall Marshall's quest to become the worst top-13 pick since Joe Alexander and Jonny Flynn?

Every year the Big East bombs during March Madness, but it becomes easier to see why when you realize how overhyped some of its best players tend to be.

Robert Sarver doing cheap-ass Sarver things? 

LIKE NOT HIRING BRAD STEVENS TO DO BRAD STEVENS THINGS???

Is there a roster you'd want less right now than Phoenix's roster?

WHO SAYS YES?

"You're OK, Jack. I think under different circumstances, you and I probably still would have hated each other! We probably could have been friends."
"In the next life."
"Yeah, the next life."

My single favorite moment in Midnight Run goes to Pierce, one of the six best Celtics ever and someone who deserved to retire in Boston if that's what he wanted to do. Which, by the way, he wanted to do.

Things never said by an athlete nearing the end of his career who just got traded from the team that drafted him long ago: "So glad I'm out of there!"  I'm sure it has been a lie on at least some occasion or another.

But Boston wanted to buy a Riggin' for Wiggins ticket, so they crippled this year's team by dealing Pierce and KG for three unprotected first-round picks (2014, 2016, 2018), along with the right to swap first-rounders with Brooklyn in 2017. 

As discussed in a previous post, I think it's unlikely these picks amount to much.

If anything happens to Brooklyn during the middle of this decade — a real possibility considering Brook Lopez's injury history, as well as a 32-year-old Deron Williams and a 34-year-old Joe Johnson making $46 million combined during the 2015-16 season — this deal could become the "Gail Goodrich to New Orleans for two future no. 1 picks" trade for this generation. 

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

There's fanboyism and rose-tinted glasses, and then there's trying to draw a parallel between 1) acquiring a few first round picks from a team with a super rich/competitive owner who has a good roster now and most likely intends to compete every season as long as he owns the team and 2) a decades-old trade that involved the eventual draft rights to Magic Johnson.

Still, watching Pierce (and, to a lesser degree, KG) play for another franchise is going to be brutal. 

NAWT FAY-UH!

And I don't know what the right answer is here. I really don't. The Celtics allowed Bird, McHale and Parish to age gracefully together once upon a time, followed by eight solid years of misery … and I have to say, I'd sign up for that again. I loved those 1991, 1992 and 1993 teams because of the late Reggie Lewis, but also because we kept the Big Three — because we didn't trade them, and only because they were f-ing Celtics and you don't trade your guys like that.

The last part is about as close as you're going to get to the platonic ideal of self-important Boston fan retardery.  The cute insinuation that the fans were in some way responsible for the actions of the front office ("WE didn't trade them"), the idea that players on Boston's teams are inherently superior to other players around the league ("they were FACKIN' CELTICS"), the part that sounds like something a tough-talking drunk guy at the bar (who in fact went to an elite prep school and has never thrown a punch in his life) making up rules for other people to live by ("you don't fackin' trade OW-UH Celtics like dat!").  It's wondrous.

Danny Ainge went the other way, just as he always hinted he would because of his experience watching the Big Three grow old. I get it. I understand it. Down the road, I'm sure I will appreciate it. But right now? It hurts like hell. Paul Pierce was our dude. 

OW-UH BASKETBALL FRED LYNN!

We spent 15 seasons with him in all, and as I wrote after Game 6 of the 2008 Finals, "We watched that guy grow up.

No, you didn't.

We watched him become a man.

That's just off.  That's unsettling.

We believed in him, we gave up on him, and we believed in him again." 

What?  Please, it's fucking sports.  Cut the melodrama.

Some things are bigger than sports.

Yes.  Someone who plays sports getting traded is not one of them.

I think that's why Cuban kept Dirk — because they won together in 2011, and because he couldn't bear the thought of the Best Maverick Ever playing for another team. It might not be the smartest move, but it's certainly more relatable. Human, even.

BEEP BOOP BOOP BOOP BEEP ROBOT BILL IS LEARNING HUMAN EMOTIONS

Watching no. 34 play for the Nets will never feel right, and I will never feel good about it. Alas. See you in the next life, Paul.

What the fuck are you talking about?  Jesus Christ.  What an idiot.

Bill's NBA offseason tardfuckery, part 1

To the commenter from last post asking me if I saw the Deadspin thing with the dunk contest participant responding to Bill, why yes, of course I did.  All that needs to be said is that if anyone is surprised by Bill 1) not knowing the name of a common hairstyle worn predominantly by black people and 2) picking the very unremarkable and only white entrant as the winner of a dunk contest, they shouldn't be.  Anyways, come along with Bill on a memorable revisiting of one of the 250 greatest comedies of the 1980s.  Just wait until you see which Midnight Run lines he associates with which NBA offseason storylines!  You'll find yourself laughing out loud while also (nodding)!

"Marvin! Marvin! Look out!"

One of the movie's best running jokes (Jack Walsh repeatedly tricking a rival bounty hunter into turning around so Jack can sucker punch him) goes to the Thunder, who keep allowing their title chances to get sucker punched because of their irrational love of Kendrick Perkins. 

OH MY GOD IT'S PERFECT.  GUY GETTING PUNCHED = TEAM WITH QUESTIONABLE ROSTER MANAGEMENT SKILLS.  HOW DOES THIS MAN SO SEAMLESSLY WEAVE SPORTS AND POP CULTURE TOGETHER?  HE'S A MAGICIAN

Have you ever impulsively bought a piece of furniture you didn't really need — like a coffee table or something — 

No?

and within three weeks, you begrudgingly realize that it doesn't fit in with everything else in the house?

No?

And that you blew it? And should stick that dumb purchase in the garage, where it belongs? But you get all stubborn about it, so that coffee table lingers in your house for an extra three years before you finally suck it up and do something about it?

"Hey, do you ever do that thing where you spend a bunch of money on a beautiful but useless thing, but then end up holding onto the thing when you should just chop it up and use it for firewood in your beautiful fireplace in your beautiful Brentwood mansion?  Happens to me all the time."  Christ, what a fucking asshole.

(That's why I still find it bizarre that they didn't shoehorn Perkins's deal into that Harden trade. And, hey, here's an idea if you're worried about money — don't move from the 14th-biggest TV market to the 45th-biggest TV market.)

Look, I hate the Thunder and I'm sure Clay Bennett is a gaping asshole.  But that was kind of the point when he bought the team, no?  It wasn't "I'm buying this NBA team, and also, hey, maybe a move to OKC would be nice," it was "I'm buying this team so I can move them to OKC."  So that last sentence is kind of worthless in the context of this paragraph.  One of these years Bill will stop bringing up the Harden trade/Perkins contract, and the world will be a better place for it.  It's like the interplay between those two decisions and the effect they had on the Thunder is the only mildly nuanced thing he's ever figured out in his entire life, so he has to jam the fact that he knows how it all worked down our throats every fucking column.

(By the way, I don't know why the guy who plays Marvin didn't become, at the very least, the star of a funny sitcom, and I don't know if he's That Guy Who Played Marvin Dorfler or That Guy Who Played Billy Rosewood's Partner.

Earlier in this same column (from my last post), Kid Show Business enlightens us:  Some people never find the right part, and there's more luck involved than you'd think.

Four paragraphs later:  I CAN'T BELIEVE THINGS DIDN'T WORK OUT FOR THAT ONE GUY WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH THAT

"I'm gonna tell ya something. I want this guy taken out, and I want him taken out fast. You and that other dummy better start getting more personally involved in your work, or I'm gonna stab you through the heart with a f----ing pencil."

To Larry Legend again — 

He already spent a whole paragraph (not copied/pasted here) crediting Bird for every win in Pacers franchise history, writing War and Peace and the invention of the airplane.  But sure, how about some more reminders that Bird used to play for Bill's favorite team?

he quickly dumped every recent Indy move he didn't make (D.J. Augustin, Gerald Green, Miles Plumlee), and he didn't even have to stab GM Kevin Pritchard with a f---ing pencil. Much respect to Larry's Pacers 

That's what their uniforms should say next year!

for assembling a legitimate contender despite (a) the crippling aftereffects of the Artest melee, 

Holy Jesus on a pogo stick, are you fucking serious?  THAT HAPPENED ALMOST NINE YEARS AGO.  The day after the suspensions for that incident were handed down, if you told a Pacers fan "Don't worry, you'll have a good team again by 2012 or so, they'd say to you "I sure as fuck hope so."  Crimny, why don't you just credit him for overcoming the difficulties associated with the ABA/NBA merger while you're at it?

(b) everyone in Indiana turning on the team and professional basketball in general, 

Again, this happened in 2005.

(c) being a small-market team that could never pay the tax under any circumstances, 

That's like 24 out of the 30 teams in the league.  GOOD JOB LARRY, WAY TO WORK WITHIN THE SAME CONFINES AS PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE ELSE

and (d) never picking higher than 10th. Degree of difficulty there: 9.89 out of 10. Now if he can only convince Paul George to switch to no. 13 so we can call him PG-13. Come on. How hard is this?

We have covered that last part already.  It wasn't funny three months ago, and it's not funny now.

"Can I at least have some French fries?"
"I said no, pecker breath, now shut up."

One of my favorite throwaway exchanges goes to my favorite throwaway revelation of the summer: George telling Slam Magazine about the time Larry Legend showed up for a Pacers practice, "picked a ball up that had rolled over," then "rolled up his sleeves and made about 15 in a row and just walked out like nothing just happened," adding, "We were speechless. We didn't know whether to keep shooting or just to end practice. It was sweet, man." The Legend!

There are people that think Bill Simmons is a great sportswriter.  If you know any of them, push them under the next steamroller you see.

"SERRANO'S GOT THE DISKS! SERRANO'S GOT THE DISKS! SERRANO'S GOT THE DISKS!!!"

The flimsiest plan in the movie (Jack Walsh somehow talking the FBI into trying that crazy airport plan to catch Serrano, then pulling it off) goes to David Stern's flimsiest plan, which could be summarized like this …

1. Allow the Sonics to move to Oklahoma City (and ruin basketball in Seattle).
2. Don't allow the Kings to move to Seattle (so we don't ruin basketball in Sacramento).
3. Keep Seattle open as an ongoing threat to every other NBA team that doesn't get an arena deal done.

Again, like Clay Bennett is a huge piece of shit, David Stern is also a huge piece of shit.  But let's give him a sliver of a benefit of a doubt and think that, hey, gee, maybe Stern worked overtime to keep the Kings in Sacramento because he learned from his mistake with Seattle.  Maybe he didn't want to be the guy that "killed" basketball in two cities.  It's pretty lame to see a guy not repeat his past actions, actions for which he was excoriated, and then say "You're a flip-flopper!"

In other words, Stern turned Seattle's NBA situation into Los Angeles's NFL situation — a lucrative potential market that helps the league more if nobody ever actually moves there. 

Keep that tinfoil hat fastened securely to your head.

Seattle owner-in-limbo Chris Hansen was willing to badly overpay for the Kings and didn't get them. You would think the league would jump at this and say, "Wow, we gotta get this guy a team! What about Milwaukee or Charlotte?" Nope. And he's not getting an expansion team, because the other 30 teams would never give up an extra fraction of their TV rights — 

If they gave one up for the Bobcats, they're capable of being convinced to give another.

what do they care if Seattle has a basketball team or not? This situation sucks. I hate it. The Seattle SuperSonics should exist.

AND SHOULD HIRE A VP OF CAWMAWN SENSE!!!

As for De Niro, his iconic roles will always be Raging Bull, The Godfather: Part II, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and Heat in some order; Midnight Run slips through the cracks because it's a comedy. Just name me another actor who could have pulled off everything that went into Jack Walsh, a beaten-down, sarcastic, cranky, charismatic, volatile, chain-smoking, has-been Chicago cop who always makes you feel like there's a heart beating behind every F-bomb and every menacing threat. He's a hard guy to like and you end up loving him.

Hollywood Bill strikes again!  Can I think of another actor who could have pulled that off?  Well, I don't know.  I might DIE trying to think of one, that's a pretty HARD question.  Not even BRUCE Banner climbing the WILLIS Tower would have enough strength to think that deeply.

I apologize for using that very trite device to reveal my snarky answer.

Finally, here's his attempt to squash his beef with Doc Rivers.  A beef that can be summed up by Bill saying "I KNOW YOU BETTER THAN YOU KNOW YOURSELF, FAMOUS PERSON" and Doc saying "Whoever Bill Simmons is, someone shut him up before I shut him up myself."

The day after we exchanged barbs during the NBA draft, Doc and I talked for 45 minutes on the phone and agreed to disagree on how the Boston thing ended. He truly believes the Celtics didn't want him to come back or pay him all that money as they were rebuilding. I don't buy it, as I told him — I thought that they didn't want to pay him that money once they believed he didn't want to be there. Also, I told him that I thought he didn't want to rebuild for a third time, and that the thought of coaching a contender and starting fresh in Los Angeles — where he gets to pick his own players, no less — was overwhelmingly enticing for him. He actually agreed with that. He just doesn't think he quit on the Celtics — he thinks the situation ran its course. So it's a he-said, he-said thing. 

No, you fucking dolt--it's a "he lived it, he is only pretending to know anything about it" thing.  What a clueless dickface.  

Bill fixes the Lakers, tests my patience (part 5 of 5)

As the whole world of sports loses its damn mind over PEDS IN BASEBALL ZOMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN, blissfully ignoring the fact that at least half the NFL is on horse steroids, I lurch towards the end of this pathetic Simmons article so as to free up the rest of the week to laugh at idiotic articles about how Fish Fillet-Rod should be thrown in jail for life.  Simmons wrote a new godfrigginawful article as well, so I'll get around to that eventually too.  Eventually.  We're right in the long, slow lazy days of summer here at FireJay, when I post just as infrequently as I do during any other time of the year.

9. Delay Kobe's return for as long as possible.

I'm not gonna lie — this is the shakiest part of my rehab plan. 

Such self-awareness!  This is like someone telling you their plan to rob Fort Knox, and then admitting that the part where their escape depends on the use of a magic teleporter that hasn't yet been invented is pretty shaky.

Too many people have said publicly that (a) Kobe can't return in less than 10 months from that torn Achilles, and (b) even if he DOES come back, he'll never be the same. He's one of the 10 most competitive people alive. He's not going down like this. He's just not.

I like how over the years Bill has been forced to admit that Kobe is actually good at basketball.  He even begrudgingly says things like "He's very competitive" and "I suppose he's a top 50 all time player" and "If I played him one on one, he'd beat me like 11-4."

I'd believe anything about Kobe's summer rehab process. He's sleeping in a hyperbaric healing chamber underneath a pile of broken deer antlers? 

HE'S TOTALLY ON STEROIDS HE WENT TO GERMANY LOLOLOL 6 FOR 24

Absolutely. He's on a beach right now running wind sprints against Carl Weathers? Sure. He figured out a way to steal hemoglobin from his daughters, then have that hemoglobin injected right into his healing Achilles, but this procedure is only legal in Austria so he's been flying there twice a week? You can't rule it out.

Seems like a good time to remind MLB sample collectors across the country that my promise to donate $1,000 to the Red Cross if Jeter fails a steroid test by October is still on the table.

Kobe cares about two things right now: Ring No. 6, and Kareem's record. In that order. 

More very reluctant praise: "I SUPPOSE it's possible that he puts his team's accomplishments ahead of his selfish desire to hold an important individual record.  MAYBE."

We could talk him into playing for a historically lousy Lakers team for one season if Ring No. 6 (and maybe LeBron) was the carrot dangling on the other end. But giving up a chance at Kareem's record? That's a tougher ask. 

What the fuck?  "A sixth ring is the most important goal to him, ahead of breaking the scoring record.  He just might be persuaded to not rush back if staying out helped ensure that he gets that ring.  However, asking him to sit out and miss all those games is going to be very hard, because it's going to be really tough to convince him that a shot at the sixth ring is more important than the scoring title."

Our all-time scoring leaders right now …

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: 38,387 points
Karl Malone: 36,928 points
Michael Jordan: 32,292 points
Kobe Bryant: 31,617 points

Fun trivia: who is number 5 on that list?  Trick question, there is no fifth all time leading scorer in NBA history, that spot in the record books is forever reserved for Len Bias.  NEVER FORGET

So he's 6,770 points away. To put that in perspective, he scored 2,133 points in 78 games last season before his Achilles ripped. This is doable … you know, assuming he recovers from that devastating leg injury. I bet we see him sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Noted.

Please stop having conversations with yourself, negotiating trades against yourself and writing fake mailbag letters to yourself.

10. When Kobe comes back, allow him to hog the ball to alarming degrees.

NOT THAT THAT WILL BE DIFFICULT, HE'S THE MOST SELFISH SELFER TO EVER SELF, WHAT WITH HIS CAREER 4.8 APG.

Wait until he's fully healed. And when he comes back (to what you're hoping will be a 0-12 team), here's what you tell him …

Kobe, remember your ball-hogging binge in 2006 when you averaged 27.2 field goal attempts and 10.2 free throws a game because we didn't have anything else? Now we REALLY don't have anything else. We just gutted our team. Other than watching Bieber lapse in and out of consciousness in Jack's seat, Sasha and Jordan high-fiving, and Big Shot Rob cramming himself into a Lakers jersey, your scoring binges will be the only thing that keeps this godforsaken season even remotely interesting. Go for the scoring title. Play 70 games to qualify for the scoring title, then try to average 37 a game. Only Wilt and MJ have ever done it. More importantly, that's about 2,200 points in the bank. You'll pass MJ and move within 4,600 of Kareem. Shoot every time. We don't care.

You know what?  I don't have any snark for that.  If the Lakers actually did trade Gasol and Nash, Kobe would probably demand a trade of his own.  But if they refused to give it to him and he eventually backed down and agreed to play out the season, you could tell him that and that's probably exactly what he'd do.  It actually makes sense.  And hopefully he would fail miserably and embarrass himself on a regular basis throughout the season, because let's face it, as much as I like the idea of Kobe pissing off Bill, fuck Kobe Bryant, he's an asshole.

You know what the best part of that plan is? Kobe's quest to score 40 every night will inadvertently become one of the more entertaining subplots of the 2013-14 season. 

You obviously don't know what "inadvertently" means.  You also obviously don't have a brain, if you think "Kobe trying to score 40 every night" is something that would be an under-the-radar story.  ESPN would flip its shit, they'd buy broadcast rights to every single Lakers game from Time Warner or whoever has them now.

I'd flip over to every Lakers game just to see how many points he had. So would you.

WHOA HE'S TOTALLY RIGHT, HE KNOWS ME BETTER THAN I KNOW MYSELF, I SHOULD WRITE HIM A MAILBAG EMAIL AND TELL HIM THAT

And after the regular season ended and Kobe won another scoring title, Lakers fans could spend May and June rooting against Miami, sweating out the lottery and watching DraftExpress YouTube clips. Of course, they'd still be hoping that Jimmy Buss hired the right coach, made the right lottery pick, lured LeBron, kept Kobe and spent $60 million in cap space in the best possible way … while deep down fearing that this moment might be coming.

[Tommy Boy clip goes here, because it's hilarious to compare sports executives from 2013 with movie characters from 1995]

Removing all the hypotheticals, what will the Lakers ACTUALLY do? Nothing I just laid out — that's why I didn't mind laying it out.

THE VP OF CAWMAWN SENSE HAS SPOKEN!  IF THE LAKAHS DON'T WANT TO ENACT MY PLAN OF RIDICULOUS BULLSHIT, THAT'S THEY-AH MISTAKE!

See, you need a strong owner or a front-office voice to execute a long-term plan — like what Miami had with Pat Riley and Micky Arison four years ago. These Lakers don't have that voice. Kobe will convince them to compete next season because he's nearing the end of his career, and he wants to shove it in Dwight Howard's face, and he probably believes that he and Pau can still battle anyone on any given night. That's what makes him Kobe. And that's why I didn't mind trying to "save" the Lakers. I know they won't do the right thing.

Oh Jesus Lord in heaven, he's still talking about it like this is a real plan that could actually be used by a real life NBA team.

You know who they SHOULD be emulating, actually? 

I teased this more than a week ago, so no apology needed if you forgot, but what do you think he's going to say?

...

...

...

...

My beloved Celtics. 

Yeah, I didn't need to put in those line breaks.  You already knew what was coming.  And may they never win another game so long as they exist.  May their fans all catch hepatitis.

In the span of five weeks, Boston mortally wounded next year's team by dealing Garnett and Pierce (improving their Riggin' for Wiggins chances); 

Any time you have the chance to get 25% odds of drafting a guy who might be the next LeBron or might be the next Kwame Brown, you have to take it.

turned the roster over to Brad Stevens (the perfect guy for a rebuild); 

After losing one of the best coaches in the NBA, just turn your team over to a young NCAA coach, then plan the parade route.

stockpiled nine first-rounders over the next five years (along with the right to swap first-rounders with Brooklyn in 2017); 

Next year they have the Hawks' (maybe near the end of the lottery) and Nets' (somewhere in the 20s) picks.  In 2015 they have the Clippers' pick (somewhere in the 20s).  In 2016 and 2018 they again have the Nets' pick (the Nets might actually suck by then, so yeah, they could have a shot at a kid who is currently a sophomore in high school).  GET EXCITED, C'S FANS.

and set themselves up to flagrantly stink (with the inevitable Rondo trade being the final piece). 

Rondo is a piece of shit--whatever he could do that would give the Celtics the least return on him, I hope he does it.

That's a team that knows who it is, and where it is, and where it needs to be.

OW-UH TEAM'S HALF-ASSED PLAN TO BE GOOD IN 2017 IS BETTAH THAN YO-AH TEAM'S HALF-ASSED PLAN TO BE GOOD IN 2017!

Can you say the same about the Lakers? My gut feeling is no … and that in April, we'll be watching Kobe and Pau fighting for a no. 8 seed. Just know that this sounds great to me.

What an asshole.  I'll start on his latest some time over the weekend.

Bill fixes the Lakers, tests my patience (part 1)

Stand back, folks.  Genius at work.

I know a Celtics fan should never try to help the Lakers. 

/record scratch

Yes, I hope you are already annoyed, as I was when I first clicked here and saw this opening sentence.  What's that, Bill?  You're going to fix the Lakers?  You benevolent soul!  How nice of you to bestow your mountains of wisdom upon your readers, but more importantly, upon the front office of the Lakers, who undoubtedly were waiting with bated breath for this column to appear and save their offseason.  If Bill wasn't full of himself, he'd be full of nothing at all.

I know I should bite my tongue. 

No!  Don't refuse to help, Batman!  Gotham NEEDS you!

I know I should hope Jimmy Buss keeps ruining his family's team, I know I should be hoping that they'll kowtow to Kobe and make the Lakers juuuuuuuust decent enough to be irrelevant, and that a decade of Blowtime 

lol pwn3d

would be my best possible outcome here.

Jesus, he even turns the success or failure of a sports team with tens of millions of both fans and haters into his own little me-fest.  Bill, tell us, what's YOUR best outcome for George Zimmerman trial?  What's YOUR best outcome for the 2014 midterm elections?  Your readers are dying to know.

But here's the problem …

As you already know, the problem is that he's such a fucking genius that he can't possibly hide his talents under a bushel basket.

I love making fake NBA trades, figuring out blueprints for franchises and determining the fastest, most efficient ways to save them. 

I AM THE VP OF CAWMAWN SENSE!  THE MAGIC WILL RUE THE DAY THEY PASSED ON EMEKA OKAFOR TO DRAFT DWIGHT HOWARD!  

That's just who I am. I'm a weirdo. 

#humblebrag

I have a folder of iPad bookmarks called "NBA Nerd" that features links for the ESPN.com Trade Machine, HoopsHype's NBA salary page, ShamSports's NBA salary page, Basketball-Reference.com, Hoopdata.com, PER leaders, and the NBA Transactions Archive. 

Gosh, guys, I'm such a NERD, aren't I?  What with the way I know everything about the NBA, and how it works, and how to make every team better?  What a NERDY thing to do, right?  

/Bill watches Twitter feed, patiently waiting for validating Tweets telling him he is awesome and not a nerd to roll in

I'm like a cross between the Wolf, Olivia Pope and Jerry West. 

OK, I admit I had to look up who Olivia Pope is.  It's great that Bill can reference "Scandal" (undoubtedly one of the top 150 shows on TV right now), but what the fuck do public relations and image management have to do with any of this?

Or I like to think that I am. Again, I'm a weirdo. 

I'm a nerd, but not a NERDY nerd!  Right, guys?

I genuinely enjoy hypothetically fixing broken NBA franchises. Even ones I can't stand. So after Dwight Howard completed The Indecision 

Sweet joke, I like the idea of contrasting the excitement surrounding LeBron's choice with the relative calm surrounding Howard's, except that it took Howard no longer than it took LeBron to decide, so the joke makes zero fucking sense.

and fled Kobe's clutches for the sanctity of barbecue, luxurious strip joints, no state taxes, lower expectations and low-key media pressure Houston, 

LOL!  Another home run of a fake struck text joke!  The 2% of writers who are good at these must be annoyed with fuckups like Bill who butcher them all the time.

I found myself clicking on the Lakers' salary page just out of curiosity … but then my wheels started turning … and one thing led to another … and suddenly I found myself helping the Lakers. 

LISTEN TO ME TALK ABOUT MY CREATIVE PROCESS!  YOU ARE CURIOUS ABOUT IT!

I couldn't resist. Within a few minutes, I was inadvertently hatching a plan that even Rachel Phelps would consider shameless.

My guess is he writes his columns without the specifics of any of the references filled in (just the general ideas), then just has a team of unfunny writers complete them like a mad-lib.  This one: "scheming villain from an 80s comedy."

In the NBA, you want to be either really good or really bad. You never want to land between those two "reallys" for long. You don't want to be squeezed into the no. 8 seed or keep finishing 12th or 13th in every lottery. Basically, you don't want to be the Milwaukee Bucks. (Cut to every Bucks fan nodding vigorously.) If you can't compete for the title, why not bottom out in the most flagrantly offensive way possible?

This "you don't want to be mediocre, you want to be good or shitty" thing is one of his frequently mentioned ideas that I actually agree with.  Thought I'd point that out since most of the ideas about how sports works that he mentions all the time are complete monkey shit.  Of course, all that means is that he probably stole this one from someone else.

Of course, that's something the Lakers have never, ever done. They picked first in the 1979 and 1982 drafts (Magic and Worthy) by fleecing laughingstock franchises of their draft picks — not by being the laughingstock franchise. They miraculously turned Vlade Divac, three cartons of Marlboro Reds and a pound of phlegm into a raw high schooler named Kobe Bryant. 

Given the success rate for guys drafted out of high school, I think it's a better idea to look at that trade as "something that could have gone either way, and happened to work out really well" rather than "DRAFT DAY TRADE OF THE CENTURY."  I mean, 12 teams passed on Kobe.  One of them took Todd Fuller.  It's not like he was an earlier version of LeBron going into the draft.  Now, let's be fair--the intended meaning of the word "miraculously" up there is actually ambiguous.  He could mean what I've suggested here, that he thinks it was miraculous that the Hornets took that deal, or he could mean that it was a miraculous turn of fortune that that high schooler picked 13th overall happened to become one of the 20 best players in NBA history.  Here's the thing: this blog is not in the business of giving Bill the benefit of the doubt.

They landed Shaq, Kareem, Wilt and Dwight for a variety of reasons, the biggest being that (a) they're the f-ing Lakers, 

IT'S NAWT FAY-UH! says the guy whose team once won a title by landing KG and Ray Allen in exchange for Al Jefferson, spare parts and two picks in a mediocre draft.

and (b) celebrities love Los Angeles (we'll get to this). 

Says shameless starfucker Bill Simmons.

Since they moved to Southern California in 1960, they've won 63.3 percent of their games, appeared in 25 Finals, missed the playoffs just four times, and never won fewer than 30 games. They haven't picked higher than 10th with their own pick since 1975, when they selected Dave Meyers second and promptly traded him in a megadeal for Kareem. No professional sports franchise has been this consistently good for this long: not the Yankees, not the Canadiens, not the Steelers, not anybody.

I don't know, I think the Canadiens' stretch from the early 40s through the early 90s where they missed the playoffs two times, won twenty Cups and lost in the finals seven other times comes pretty close.

But desperate times call for desperate measures. Their best player is hitting Year 18 and rehabbing from the worst sports injury an older player can have. 

Nice bit of invented medical knowledge there, impressing many of the mouth breathers who read him regularly I'm sure.  HEY GUYS AN ACHILLES TEAR IS DEFINITELY WORSE FOR OLDER PLAYERS THAN AN ACL TEAR OR A BROKEN SPINE, SPORTS GUY SAID SO

Their second-best player just ditched them. 

Look, Earl Clark didn't "ditch them," OK?  Free agency is a part of the business.

Their third-best player becomes a free agent in 12 months. 

Shocking to see the guy driving the "Gasol for Lakers MVP" bandwagon admit that he wasn't better than Howard last season.  I'm sure that if you taunted him about it a little, you could get him to write 4,000 words on how Gasol and Nash were the only Lakers "who really played like they had a little Daniel-san in them" last season.

Their fourth-best player turns 40 this season. They can't improve one of the league's worst supporting casts because they're patently terrified of being a repeat offender in the luxury tax. 

The NBA's luxury tax is so punitive, even the Lakers won't pay it.  MLB's is so punitive, even the Yankees won't pay it.  Finally, the owners have found a way to stop salary growth and keep more of that yummy delicious revenue in the team bank account.

Their coach is realistically two years away from taking over the Minnesota Lynx or the Pepperdine Waves. And they need to sell the illusion of hope to their fans, which means they need to save as much cap space as possible for LeBron, which means they can't add ANY contracts that expire after next summer.

Look, I hate Lakers fans with all my soul, but I don't really think you need to sell "the illusion of hope" to them.  It's not like they're downtrodden and ready to give up on their team at any minute.  They're spoiled twatballs who have seen their team win five titles in the last fifteen years.  If a good deal came along this offseason that helped them improve their team for the next three or four years, but cost them a shot at signing LeBron next summer, I think they'd get over it in about a day.

Fact: This year's Lakers team will be undeniably worse than last year's Lakers team … a team that didn't make the playoffs until Game 82.

Fact that only a genius could figure out: 154 games combined from Howard and Kobe is way better than ~50 games combined from Howard and Kobe.

Fact: This is bleak. Really, really bleak.

Fact: Using this device to drive home your points makes you a total asshat and a shitty writer.

Fact: I have had enough of this shit for the night.