I’ve just now started listening to a few of your podcasts, simply because I’ve been following Kelly Dwyer since he was back with NBAtalk.com — would you mind repeating the names of those other columnists you think are on his level here in the comment section?

One was that Simmons is a shameless huckster unconcerned with his credibility, and specifically that if his baseball book was coming out now he wouldn’t be talking about baseball’s sagging (literally) fan base. I didn’t know about Simmons when that book came out, and I haven’t read it because I have zero interest in baseball, but it seems that what we have here is an empirical statement from Simmons, (after all, there are people measuring the demographics of Baseball’s TV audience) and an ad hominem response from Levy (Simmons would lie about that). That said, Simmons has been making this point long before his book came out, and from my admittedly limited knowledge of his first book, it’s not about the wonderfulness and intricacies of Baseball as much as the experience of being a Red Sox fan vis-à-vis “the curse” and its annihilation. The very title “Now I Can Die in Peace” implies that now that the curse has been lifted there’s a little less juice to be had in Red Sox fandom.

Another bit of apparent defensiveness on the part of Levy is that Simmons is wrong because baseball is currently popular. This misses Simmons’s point completely, which is not that baseball isn’t popular now, but that it’s popular with old people and as they die off they won’t be replaced. To add to this, older people tend to have more money and can better afford to go to games, so I would think that TV ratings are a better indicator of popularity.

Also, on the point about specific baseball teams being more popular in specific cities, it seems to me that baseball fans care about their teams whereas the average NBA fan cares not only about their team, but also what’s going on in the league. This doesn’t necessarily make the NBA more popular in the aggregate, but it just seems to me that there’s more enthusiasm about basketball as a sport as opposed to the tribalism of rooting for the home team in baseball. I’ve never heard anybody get excited because Pujols was playing on TBS that night, but with the NBA, casual fans want to see LeBron, Kobe etc. and more established fans want to see how Durant is progressing or how Shaq is fitting in. Maybe I’m just in the fishtank, but this fishtank is New York and I don’t need to explain the disparity in the fortunes of the Yankees and Knicks right now. Despite this, Yankee enthusiasm hasn’t spilled over into interest in the league in general, which, may have to do with the salary cap wrecking competitiveness, but I suspect is more due to the lugubrious pace of the sport itself. It’s like watching an old movie where all of the cuts from one shot to the next feel a beat slow.

Another point that Levy made was that Simmons shouldn’t make NFL picks if he wants to be taken seriously about basketball. I think this is utterly stupid, because I’ve never known Simmons to claim to be a “basketball columnist” to the exclusion of anything else and I don’t see how it really subtracts from his ability to write on basketball anyway given that he’s got no “day job,” can watch sports ad nauseum and Football’s generally just one day a week. Plus, he makes no claim to be an authority on football, just a fan–note that he won’t argue with Mike Lombardi or Aaron Schatz the way he does with Ric Bucher and Mark Stein–and doesn’t really write about football aside from the picks, which seemingly have more to do with his proclivity for gambling than NFL expertise. Personally, I can’t stand all of the time that he devotes to reality TV shows, but I just skip that stuff and if anything it makes me more excited about his basketball columns & podcasts.

On Simmons more generally, I’ve read/heard/watched quite a number of responses and I’m constantly surprised by how nobody mentions that the book is, in my humble opinion, really funny. Everyone slams him for his unseriousness, but I think that this is what makes Simmons good. I wouldn’t call him a great writer, but I think mainstream sports coverage is crushingly anodyne and I think it’s great that he can write a bestseller that reads like a friend of mine and I are talking hoops. I burst out laughing every time I crack The Book of Basketball open, (especially when it seems inappropriate, like riding the subway at rush hour and everybody else is stressed out and looks at you like you’re deranged and you try to hold it in and that just makes it funnier; I love that. On the subject of deranged people on the subway I was reading TBoB merrily on a packed A train yesterday and two women spilled out onto the platform at 42nd street and started clawing at each other. I don’t know what to make of that except to say that I think that it would be nice if there were clear guidelines about what to do when you see people fighting in public. I felt like I should break it up but there were thirty people closer to them than I was, but nobody seemed to be doing anything… all very confusing. The train pulled away before I could tell what the outcome was, seemingly without running anyone over that might have been tossed into the tracks.

Anyhow, this has gone on obscenely long (Holy Shit!!) and I’m afraid I might break your website when I hit “submit” but I had to get it out regardless of whether anyone has the patience or interest to read it. I would just add that you may be surprised to know that it was the Disciples of Clyde that introduced me to Simmons last year. I had just read Michael Lewis’s Battier/Stats piece in the Times Magazine then you guys, (whom I’d just found through iTunes) mentioned it alongside Hollinger’s appearance on the B.S. Report, so I looked into it and that’s how I found Bill Simmons.

Thanks guys, (I’d add a “Go Knicks” but it just feels pathetic)

Greg

College Basketball sucks.
College basketball should pay its players.
Ball movement is good.
The white media does a poor job covering black athletes.
The Memphis Grizzlies would make a good sitcom.
Bill Simmons is NOT evil.

I am still in high school and as such still need positive male role models. That’s why I’m not going to college to specifically avoid any relation to college basketball. Thank you ken and dan for the guidance.

FreeDarko was mentioned in The Book of Basketball, by the way. Not sure if you were aware of that.

I’ve never been a big fan of the the Sports Guy or ESPN.com, but it’s a worthy statement to stick up for them if you feel that is the right thing to do.