Bill Simmons Leaving ESPN

[Professor Emeritus]

What? You must not have read all the Ricky Rubio is going to be the best point guard every posts he wrote every other month. Or how he goes out of his way to praise Kelly Olynyk (beyond him being a Celtics fan). There are just so many examples. Do your research.

Dang, I decided to do my research, you lying fool. From "ESPN Sports Guy Bill Simmons (Finally) Wrong About Basketball"

Exhibit A in David Kahn's follies: the drafting of Spanish star Ricky Rubio, a choice Simmons dismembered every which way from Super Bowl Sunday on his podcast with Kahn.

It was all happening for Ricky Rubio in this game, thereby dispelling Bill Simmons' contention that Rubio has no game and Kahn has no team. Rubio is averaging nearly 9 points and 6-plus assists in 27 minutes per game. And he has Kevin Love (a monstrous 25 points and 15 rebounds per game) and rookie Derrick Williams (7 points and 4 rebounds), two big men who can drill the three at will. Rubio can clearly make everyone around him better, the sine qua non for a point guard, even in the shoot-firts NBA.

Even so, it's way early to predict stardom. Sorry, Bill. It kills me to say this but Ricky Rubio's got game and maybe David Kahn has a clue.

So your entire argument for Simmons being racist is that he Stans Ricky Rubio...and there's someone writing a column about how unfair it is that Simmons rips apart Rubio. Take an L.

 

[Tony D'Amato]

Vice Sports would be a great place for Simmons to land.

That would have to be a partnership of some kind. Bill is too big to be an employee ova there


Bill Simmons>>>>>>>>>>>>>Fidel Goodell

 

[Tony D'Amato]

I don't know how'll he'll fare outside of the 'four letter network' cause he doesn't have the voice or on camera presence imo.. but I liked that he was an NBA first kind of guy which is always good in my book. I don't know if ESPN will keep his pro- NBA mantra going when he leaves. Knowing espn they'll start up another NFL show to replace the NBA coverage

Have u seen the programming on FS 1? He's better than a lot of people on tv.

 

[IrateMastermind]

Breh, Simmons may wind up doing well, but you KNOW ESPN will be OK because there's only so much they can do to get you to stop watching it. He could join FS1 tomorrow and y'all will just be too busy whining about Jon Barry's takes or someone like that on ESPN. Loyal to the brand.

I'm already not watching outside of the actual game. First take fell off, pti isn't as interesting as it used to be. Sportscenter is, meh. I don't care about social issues on espn. Save it for abc news

Nobody said they would stop watching espn. I'm probably not going to the website if grantland falls off. That's all I do on Espn

 

[Lakers Offseason]

The only worthwhile shyt on ESPN besides games was 30 for 30, which Simmons created.

Other than that, all those ESPN shows are worthless. Just a bunch of dudes screaming at each other to entertain small minded folks

 

[Mr. Brown]

I hope he can take Grantland with him. And if not, I hope it won't become without him

 

[Optimus Prime]

After reading all these different articles about this I think Bill might have overplayed his hand a little. I know he wanted out but where is he going to get the same exposure that he had with ESPN? Maybe he doesn't want it anymore. The sports entertainment landscape is littered with former ESPN employees who thought they could get bigger by leaving ESPN but ultimately failed. I think Dan Patrick might be the only one who really succeeded but he's an OG and it takes real talent to host a daily 3 hour radio show. Grantland is a great site but apparently it makes no real money and ESPN realized that it seems. Bill wanted 6 million dollars for what exactly? He writes a column every couple of weeks, does 2 hours of podcasting a week and executive produces 30 for 30. I could see if the Grantland Basketball Hour came on daily or atleast a couple of times a week but he only does that maybe once a month and nobody watches it. 30 for 30 can live without Bill i think because they got a bunch of producers. It won a a Emmy the other day and atleast 20 people who worked for it are going to get Emmy's including Bomani, so i think they got a good enough team to keep that going. If he still wants to be able to trash Roger Goodell, he can't go to FOX or NBC because they got the same relationship with the NFL as ESPN does. If he goes to VICE, he will have free reign i guess but he won't have the same access to the NBA/NFL that he enjoyed with ESPN...

 

[gho3st]

*wrong thread

 

[Professor Emeritus]

After reading all these different articles about this I think Bill might have overplayed his hand a little. I know he wanted out but where is he going to get the same exposure that he had with ESPN? Maybe he doesn't want it anymore. The sports entertainment landscape is littered with former ESPN employees who thought they could get bigger by leaving ESPN but ultimately failed. I think Dan Patrick might be the only one who really succeeded but he's an OG and it takes real talent to host a daily 3 hour radio show. Grantland is a great site but apparently it makes no real money and ESPN realized that it seems. Bill wanted 6 million dollars for what exactly? He writes a column every couple of weeks, does 2 hours of podcasting a week and executive produces 30 for 30. I could see if the Grantland Basketball Hour came on daily or atleast a couple of times a week but he only does that maybe once a month and nobody watches it. 30 for 30 can live without Bill i think because they got a bunch of producers. It won a a Emmy the other day and atleast 20 people who worked for it are going to get Emmy's including Bomani, so i think they got a good enough team to keep that going. If he still wants to be able to trash Roger Goodell, he can't go to FOX or NBC because they got the same relationship with the NFL as ESPN does. If he goes to VICE, he will have free reign i guess but he won't have the same access to the NBA/NFL that he enjoyed with ESPN...

Uh, you read all the articles? Where do you get that Simmons "overplayed his hand" by "asking for $6 million"? Did you miss the parts where Simmons never asked for $6 million, and didn't even know he was gone until he found out on Twitter?

Believing whatever ESPN tells you about what went down.

 

[Zach Lowe]

I admire Simmons for wanting to be his own man and stand on his own 2...but business wise it is a bad look...

ESPN could outright crush him if they wanted to...

Depending on how much control they have over Grantland they could just absorb every great writer on that site into ESPN...

Bill has sort of gotten washed up and does way more of the gossip conspiracy stuff instead of real sports coverage now...

I remember he spent weeks trying to talk to Zach Lowe about Lebron juicing and Zach being like "yeah I'm not talking about that at all"

Grantland is continuing under ESPN without Simmons according to ESPN's president

 

[Optimus Prime]

Uh, you read all the articles? Where do you get that Simmons "overplayed his hand" by "asking for $6 million"? Did you miss the parts where Simmons never asked for $6 million, and didn't even know he was gone until he found out on Twitter?

Believing whatever ESPN tells you about what went down.

Well you are believing ESPN also if you think he found out on twitter because thats where those rumors are coming from

 

[yoyoyo1]

should've seen this coming after the odd career retrospective podcast he did last month

And President John Skipper has mentioned this to more than a few people: Hey, we’ve got Skip Bayless and Colin Cowherd contract talks ahead, if we set the bar around $6 million, what do we pay those guys?

somehow he doesn't realize the start of the big backlash coming against these talking head sports guys

 

[Osmosis]

He's my favorite sports writer and Grantland is my favorite website besides the Coli. Sucks that he won't be able to take Jalen, Jacoby, and Lowe with him. The content he's been able to create the past four years has easily been the best thing about ESPN. I really question how anyone could hate him, no matter how much you disagree with him or dislike how much of a homer he is.

 

[Osmosis]

I swear this life is like a Helium balloon or something




He's the single worst basketball analyst that has ever been given a platform






He needs ESPN. You can never outgrow the machine which has a monopoly on the industry

How can someone consistently have the WOAT opinions?

 

[Lucky_Lefty]

I'm trying to figure out why everyone believes his criticism of Goodell got him canned. Have you all been listening to any ESPN RADIO, podcasts, TV shows, or read any articles the past 18-24 months? They have all been attacking him in some form or fashion. Vigorously at that. This just a case of this little whiny voice bytch overestimating his worth or knowing he could get what he thought he was worth just to get away from that network. at folks thinking Goodell got him fired