NBA Monday: Is There More to the Cuban Blogger Ban? & Bill Simmons is Kobe Bryant?

It's a scattered news and notes column today. By the way, can someone tell me why the NCAA's are better than...high school boys basketball state tournaments? I'm disturbed that I enjoyed the boys high school basketball tournaments on TV more than the NCAA tournament this year. No awkward TV time-outs, no all-knowing or overbearing announcers, and a focus on letting the game tell the story. How refreshing! And the game is much more "pure" at the high school game than at the college level. I'm just curious to hear if anyone out there actually prefers high school basketball to other levels. (Important NBA games are still #1 to watch for me, but high school may be #2 now, followed by college men's #3, WNBA #4, and pick-up #5).



Because this post is so mediocre, I'm filling it with random Gary Payton candid shots. Of course, let me pay appropriate homage to the masters of inserting intriguing photos in NBA articles--Free Darko. I believe what I'm doing is different, and hope they agree, but I want to respect and acknowledge innovators who were first with related ideas.

Cuban Blogger Ban
I found myself wondering today why Cuban had banned bloggers from the locker room. Surely there had to be more to the story than what I had learned so far? After all, Cuban himself is a blogger; so how could he ban bloggers and decrease coverage of his team? The link points to a call for a blog ban on Cuban by Jordi Scrubbings.



I listened to Cuban chat with Bob Costas on Saturday. He all but admitted that the "lack of space" reason was an excuse, and that he is not sure what blogger criteria to set to sort through blogger applications for locker room access. He also made a few comments about blogging having been around for 12 years in one form or another and how it was really no big deal anymore. Quite honestly, I have to agree with him on this; what, you've never heard of Geocities? Live Journal? Even those elementary AIM profile pages? Software has made it easier to publish, and broadband Internet speeds have allowed us to embed videos, but those are about the only real changes I see, except that the mainstream reader is more aware of blogs.



However, turns out that DallasBasketball.com is warning that there is more to this story than you think. Before I get into the details, how many views do you think DallasBasketball.com got in February? 50,000? 500,000? No, the total is 3,300,000! I used to read this site often because SLAM online would link to them. Anyway, they are claiming the following:

"And finally – yes, you heard this here first, too: There is something more to the story of the DMNews-blogger being banned from the Mavs locker room. And while the paper has turned itself into a martyr here, when the truth emerges, it will be interesting to see if the real story is covered with the same intensity as the first-blush story."

I wish I could hyperlink to the story, but I was unable to find a permalink for the story. Just search "blog" on their page, it's around 3/19 or so. Dallas Basketball has been a reputable site for a while. I'd suggest keeping an open mind on the blogger ban for a few more days and seeing what further news does come out of this story. They give a clue as to why the blogger(s) got banned on their page, but I'll let you find it.



And please do visit DallasBasketball.com! I dislike it if a blogger rips much of their post material from another site and then gives very little attribution in the post itself. I'm only posting this because I think not enough sports bloggers have read that info on their site (it was only one of several footnotes, so it may have been ignored).



Bill Simmons is Kobe Bryant
I recently realized that one of the reasons we judge Bill Simmons so harshly is how alone he is at ESPN.com. (That and he keeps trying to write about other topics than basketball...please Bill, that's your best sport! His columns improved as soon as the Patriots and Red Sox were done, am I not right?) Look at who used to write for Page 2--literary legends like Hunter Thompson and David Halberstam, or unique, already-respected voices like Ralph Wiley. When they died, they really were not replaced, and ESPN decided to go with numbers over quality. ESPN didn't even replace Dan Shanoff, to some extent. So no wonder we judge Bill more harshly now--he has no protection in the line-up over there. But it's Bill's fault too, in some ways; he's willing to be the big fish in the ESPN pond instead of one of several fish at, say, Yahoo!. Here's how I came to that conclusion.



Listen to the Bill Simmons podcast with Ric Bucher if you haven't already done so, especially around the 19:00 mark. Ric Bucher makes an analogy asking Bill what he would do if he had been Kobe Bryant. Ric essentially says the following: What if you signed a contract with ESPN with originally good writers around you, but then ESPN stuck you with low-quality writers and told you "you're our cash cow, deal with it, but we won't let you go" and you couldn't leave while watching Yahoo! get all these good writers? Bill laughed awkwardly and admitted this hits close to home.

This isn't my blog column, but imagine for a moment how sports blog history changes if ESPN would have fully funded Page 2 and Page 3 in 2005-2008 the way they did at the start. Would Deadspin and The Big Lead ever have gotten a foothold in sports blogging?

Bill Simmons Week: Who's the Next Bill Simmons?

Wait, let me first gargle with Draino for the similarity of that title to AJ Daulerio's work on Deadspin. It's not like I needed my taste buds anyway. I was wondering the other day, are there any sports bloggers who, like Simmons, could come off the Internet bench and immediately gain a large following at ESPN? I put together a top 3 list.
1. The Cavalier from Yaysports.com ESPN loves cartoons and multimedia in general, and The Cavalier's humor is PG, so it would be a great fit. Plus, The Cavalier's essays are pretty funny, too. I could see this working, as long as they didn't force The Cavalier to hit a certain word count.
2. Matt Ufford from The Prelude. Yes, I picked that particular site on purpose. Although some of the humor on WL and KSK would be banned at ESPN, I've been quite impressed with the football column he has on AOL's Fanhouse. I think he could balance the funny and serious nicely.
3. NOIS Sports Blog. Oh, I know, you're already telling me he'd be too controversial because of the race issue. But why should he just limit his gifts to race topics? I'd love to see a serious-sounding editorial about whether Romo's dating of hot women makes him less able to properly throw a football, or claiming that George Mitchell's report is biased against baseball players.
What's your list? By the way, Bill Simmons Week dies a terrible death today; let's not talk about my sense of timing in programming this against Christmas, ok? Check back tomorrow for a video interview.

Bill Simmons Week: Yup, this is our Bill Simmons!

For years, I wondered why Bill Simmons' writing can switch from bad to good and back again so quickly. Then I realized that the same trend repeats itself year after year. Here's your Bill Simmons Popularity Scale; does it look right to you? Click to enlarge.

Bill Simmons Week: I Come Not to Bury Bill Simmons

As part of Bill Simmons Week, I decided to solicit posts on Bill Simmons from some of my favorite bloggers. Extra P. writes at the Extrapolater, CAAZone, and Storming the Floor, among other sites. His post is below, and it is fantastic. If you would also like to contribute to Bill Simmons Week, let me know via e-mail, and if it's good I'll put it up.

I come not to bury Bill Simmons, nor to praise him, but more to stand over his lifeless body with a puzzled expression on my face. To me, pissing and moaning about Simmons is pointless. He’s become the ultimate cautionary tale to those of us who might hope to derive some monetary success from blogging – he has collapsed under his own weight.
Hear me out. The reason we all feel so angry and irritated with Bill is because we loved him so much when he first rose to prominence. For one thing, did you see how I called him “Bill”? That’s because for a long time, he really seemed like one of those guys you knew personally. And if you didn’t know him, you knew a guy just like him, so he had that everyman appeal. When he told a story about being at a poker table in Vegas and seeing Michael Jordan and Charles Oakley walk in, it felt like he was thrilled, just as any one of us would be.
But somewhere in there, Bill started to get invited to actually sit at the table with his idols, and that’s when the trouble started (for us – I’m sure he’s having a wonderful time). The stories turned from “Can you believe Bill actually met Mike Tyson?” to “So here I was, sitting in the VIP section, and the President of Nike invited me to play Madden with Tiger Woods.” See what we lost there? We can no longer imagine what it would be like to be in Bill’s shoes – he’s part of the in-crowd and we’re not.
The second thing that went wrong is so ironic I can barely stand it. Bill, who snarks endlessly about the way his beloved Saturday Night Live has gone downhill, began repeating bits for cheap laughs. Live-blogs and lists and such were very entertaining when they were few and far-between, but once readers started clamoring for those bits, they started showing up so often that they became stale. The whole time Bill’s fan club was calling for him to write more often, I was shouting (to myself) that he should write less – the anticipation was sweeter than the delivery, and it gave him time to come up with something truly worth spurting out 3,234 words about.
The final thing that made Bill (and a whole raft of other people) completely unbearable was the resurgence of the Boston sports scene. It was interesting to read about a guy who was wishing and begging for his favorite teams to win just one championship between them. But since I started reading Simmons, the Patriots have won three super bowls, the formerly woebegone Red Sox have won two World Series, and the Celtics have assembled an all-star team in hopes of adding to the dynasty. Thank goodness the Bruins still suck, because if I had to read a self-congratulatory hockey column, I think I’d throw up in my own mouth. Basically, Bill Simmons has become an insufferable bass-bowl since everything started going his way.
The last piece of Bill’s that I really enjoyed was his pilgrimage to the Frozen Tundra of Lambeau Field. That was the last time I felt that awe of athletics seep into the florid prose of Sports Guy’s World. And that’s what I miss. For a few years there, Bill represented my generation – we quoted the same movies, remembered the same sporting moments, and were willing to root for our lousy teams even if they never won a championship. Bill’s first book was the beginning of the end, because he started to take himself seriously.
I don’t think it had to be that way. I don’t think everything is ruined by success, and I don’t put much stock in the term “sellout”. But Bill Simmons has turned away from what made him unique because the greater part of society wants him to function as a pop-culture jukebox, spitting out those old familiar hits. He’s willing to do that, and it’s made him famous and presumably wealthy. And in the end, who am I to complain about that? I have simply done what others who value originality (and some form of editorial coherence) have done – I’ve stopped reading his columns. I imagine somewhere, Bill is laughing at all of us, and doesn’t really care that he’s “jumped the shark.”

Bill Simmons Week: The Sports Gal

Although you didn't know it, it's Bill Simmons Week on Moderately Cerebral Bias. Read Bill's ESPN stuff here and his Wiki is quite detailed as well. I first started reading about sports on the 'Net due to a USA Today article about Page 2 being launched on ESPN.com. So I've been reading Bill Simmons from the beginning of his ESPN tenure. I thought him an interesting topic just because he's still the favorite sports writer of many a teen and 20-something guy. So how does he do it? Is he still any good? Or is it just the competition is so bad? We'll explore those questions and others at some point in the week.

Before diving into the good stuff, I wanted to start by defending the Sports Gal, Bill Simmons' wife. A few weeks ago, Bill Simmons had a column in which he wrote a letter to his 13-year-old self. Among the lines in that letter was "Don't get married until you're 45." For some reason, that line angered me. I'm sure The Sports Gal was a world-class grouch while carrying around those extra pounds during her pregnancy, but really, not get married until you're 45? Harsh, isn't it? Perhaps all you male models who read my blog are nodding your heads in agreement because you have your pick of the opposite gender, but I personally don't agree with that line at all.

Anyway, the Sports Gal's only bad trait that I've noticed from her writing is her whining, especially about various celebrities that make her feel less attractive or about Bill's sports addiction. But really, how hard is this to handle? So you goes to a party with lots of attractive women there, and your date starts feeling inadequate. All a man has to do is be a little more affectionate and complementary toward his companion. A hand squeeze here, a "You look so good tonight" there, and everything is fine. (Not so good idea; pretending that you didn't notice that bimbo or that you didn't really think she was hot. She's not stupid.) And come on, Bill whines a lot too. The two are perfectly matched in their whiningness; it's like the Napa Valley for whine, heh.

The good parts? She's a runner, she's really funny (according to her ESPN columns, love the acerbic sarcasm), and she's better at picking sports winners than Bill. Not a bad start. Also, I looked up some pics, and she looks exactly like what I'd expect. I probably shouldn't be posting this, and you all better be nice in the comment section, but if you scroll down, you can see a picture of her with Bill:

















Kind of plain, but...HA! Just messing, that's actually Will Leitch of deadspin.com with Bill Simmons. But honestly, she's an attractive woman in her 30's who will still be reasonably attractive in another decade. In other words, exactly what you'd expect Simmons would go for if he were signing a long-term deal. Come on, Bill, from your whining one would think you had married Tara Reid and it had all been downhill since. You had your chance to be Mr. Single ESPN Guy before you married her. If that life was so good, you'd still be Mr. Single ESPN Guy. Buck up and admit that you have it pretty good for a married man, ok?

Oh, and by the way, while searching for Sports Gal, I came across Let's Go to Smokes, which also expressed his affection for the Sports Gal. It's a decent blog from what I read, go check it out. I also came across a guide for male sports fans on how to get their own sports gal that's worth a look.

Media Mayhem: Simmons, Banks, Leitch, Reilly

Lots of stories going around about sports writers lately, so I decided to do a rare post about sports writers.

I am ready to start a Paypal fund to collect enough money so Bill Simmons can move back to Boston. Not being in Boston anymore, he isn't surrounded by Boston folk. Thus, he gets his Boston fan talk fix by writing about it to us. His writing is more about his fond memories of Boston than anything else. If he would go back to Boston, I believe he would become a little more well-rounded in his columns. But let's be honest about Simmons' writing. Bill Simmons gets worse and worse as the year goes on, hitting bottom around January, until he can write about the NBA again. He's a great NBA writer, and only an average NFL writer. That's forgiveable; it's very hard to be good at writing on all leagues. But it still is hard to read him this time of year.

Don Banks may be my favorite NFL sports writer (Michael Silver also would be in the discussion). But I couldn't believe this line in his column about Boston sports fandom:

I've lived other places -- the Tampa Bay area, the Twin Cities, and the Baltimore-Washington area -- and nowhere matches the year-round intensity and passion for sports and its local pro teams that Boston exhibits.

What?! That means nothing; of course Boston is more fanatical about sports than those cities. How well do the Tampa Bay Devil Rays or other Florida baseball/football teams draw? The Twins were nearly contracted by MLB, and Minneapolis may be one of the few places in the country where intellectual and artistic events are revered just as much as sports events by the average citizen. And Baltimore-Washington folk are too busy getting their politics on to pay faithful attention to all of their sports teams. I understand the point Don is trying to make (he recently moved to Boston and thus compares it with past cities), but those cities are poor sports towns, period. Not a good comparison.

Bloggers have been quick to praise Shanoff's idea that Leitch take over the back page of SI. Look at the Ballhype votes and links. However, look deeper at the comment section of Shanoff's post here. None of Dan's readers like the idea! And neither do I. Leitch is very talented, but I don't know if his style works for the last page of a magazine. What Will does best is write provocatively to inspire comments and thoughts. I could see him doing an excellent job with the first page of SI. But the last page? You don't stretch folks there. Instead, you tickle their egos and massage their biases so they buy your magazine again. Some time later I'll talk about how a magazine should be laid out.

Rick Reilly is not going to be the same at ESPN. Cosellout made some good points in his Reilly article. Reilly isn't the ex-high-school jock; he's the ex-nerd who married the head cheerleader, built an impressive resume at SI...and now both of those aspects are gone. SI was the perfect place for Reilly with its witty and laid-back style. ESPN is the opposite of Reilly, with its ex-frat boy feel at times. While Reilly may aspire to that style, I don't see that in him. It'll be interesting to see how his style may or may not change due to the location change.