Lets get it on! If you are an avid reader of ESPN.com, by now you know who Bill Simmons is. Simmons, who cut his teeth writing for Digital City Boston, is the irreverant, yet affable, keynote scribe for ESPN’s Page 2 and is otherwise known simply as “The Sports Guy.”
Asking sports fans who Isiah Thomas is would be like asking an alcoholic if he’s ever done a shot. But for the strangely ignorant, he’s the diminutive point guard who forged a Hall of Fame career with the Detroit Pistons in the 80s, winning back to back championships with the famed Bad Boys of basketball. He also likes to kiss his opponents before games. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
He’s gone on to be a coach and front office man, but if you compared his success on the court with his success off the court, you’d come up with pretty much the same results as if you matched up Angelina Jolie and Janet Reno. In other words, the later is a car wreck to look at.
VS.
In a radio interview on NewYork’s WFAN, Steven A. Smith (the Farrakhan of pomposity and racial lobbying in sports media) had a panel of guests on to honor Martin Luther King’s birthday that included Jim Brown, Oscar Robertson and Zeke Thomas. Smith brought up the subject of how African-American front office people are viewed in the eyes of the unforgiving media. After a confusing, elongated diatribe that should be posted in essay form under the title, “Quitcherbitchen,” Thomas called Simmons out on the carpet with this nugget:
“And I’m gonna tell you, if I see this guy Bill Simmons, oh it’s gonna be a problem with me and him.”
The line came after an exchange with Smith about what would happen if someone essentially challenged your character in the middle of the street.
Simmons has whipped on Thomas ever since Isiah’s career off the court began, but lets face it, Zeke has deserved every bit of it. He’s been a complete failure as a coach and GM, and the current state of the New York Knicks is awful, and they don’t have a first round draft pick again until 2008. But none of that really matters much. Despite being as adept in his GM job as the average blind person would be at reading sign language, Thomas buries himself further by proving that he can’t take media scrutiny, and the last time I checked, the Big Apple is the last place you want thin skin.
On Simmons side, he wrote about the piece on the 17th and then followed it up with the transcript of the radio appearance, but before he printed the transcript, he made a point of finding everything he’s ever written that complimented Thomas, essentially backing down from the accurate, allbeit comically insulting criticisms he’s rendered over the years. As a journalist, you should not have to apologize for opinions that are based on fact. If you are not offering up conjecture or libel, then you shouldn’t have to hide behind the words you write.
With the theme of the show being Dr. King, it’s as if Thomas were calling Simmons out for being a racist, for attacking him with malice because of his color. I’ve read Bill Simmons for years, and there isn’t a writer on the net who is a bigger NBA junkie than him. How can you be a racist if you are a die hard fan of that ridiculous product? Just because the majority (slight, but majority) of NBA players are uneducated or foreign and they offer up enough ammunition to take out North Korea in making fun of them, that doesn’t make you a racist. Thomas needs to look in the mirror, and do the math, both with his salary cap, and the bottom line.
Or, he could meet Bill Simmons on the street and open up a can of broken teeth. Right now, Simmons would have more people getting his back, even in New York, and he’s a Sox fan.