Bill Simmons' new site

Somebody's been watching too many episodes of "Silicon Valley."

 

The Andre the Giant documentary, the first one Simmons has been involved in with HBO, is a go. No broadcast date announced, however.

Andre The Giant set for big upcoming documentary on HBO

 

I assume he's joking, but with Simmons you can never really tell because he is that petty.



Keri did the same column for SI last year, and Simmons didn't say anything (and he gave Simmons credit for the idea this year as he always does). The Big Lead theorized that Simmons or The Ringer's baseball guy was planning something similar and got "scooped" by Keri.

 

That's a joke only if OOP is Simmons' joke writer.

 

So Simmons thinks he exclusively owns the concept of "trade value" in sports writing?

Does this mean we're also barred from Karate Kid references?

 

Eh, go ahead and use "Ching Chong Man" /Breslin

 

Either that's a really poorly worded joke or is this is the moment when Simmons finally announces to the world his realization that the wave has crested and has started to roll back.

 

I think if he was joking, he would have come out by now and said "I can't believe people took that seriously" or Keri would have tweeted out that Simmons was only joking.

 

Adjusting my position slightly here. Having now seen the Keri piece, I'll just say Simmons has a point--that is an utterly shameless rip off of those annual NBA trade value columns Simmons used to do. For crissakes, Keri could've at least structured it differently. The sport's changed, the jokes are gone, but all else is the same.

 

Then maybe Bill shouldn't have recommended that Jonah used the format at Grantland -- ya know, the place that no longer exists bc Simmons had a hissy fit and lost everyone their jobs. I wouldn't want to ever use a format so closely associated with another writer, but Simmons doesn't own the rights to it. Besides, going at a stand-up guy like Jonah Keri seems like a fool's errand. He doesn't need to steal ideas from anyone, and he gave Simmons props, so Bill should have let it alone.

 

If he means that, good gawd.

 

I, for one, applaud Simmons - but only if it means whoever first did the Mount Rushmore of (Team X) can prevent every team-specific site and sports talk radio show from doing them.