Is Simmons going too far?

It's obviously no secret that Bill Simmons was born and bred in Boston. And this isn't intended to pile on the fact that he's a huge homer, but in his recent column (another running diary), he links to his Twitter feed, where he will post anti-Magic chants during Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals. The idea is to get the Celtic faithful to partake in said chants.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/100519&sportCat=nba

His most recent tweet says "Now accepting ideas for Dwight Howard & Vince Carter chants for Game 3. We already have Rashard Lewis covered."

This seems like it's not only crossing the line, but stomping on the line and then mocking it. Forget staying impartial, that's long gone. But this just reeks of immaturity — something you'd find at a junior varsity baseball game ... definitely not on ESPN.com.

Is this simply to be expected, or a new low for Simmons/ESPN?

 

I'll admit it's a bit extreme even for Simmons, but his job was always to be a fan/columnist. As in, a fan, then a columnist.

 

Bill is not a journalist. He is something different. If his many fans wish to brand themselves as immature morons by participating in this project, Godspeed to them. Bill, while a talented writer, is a real bush leaguer in almost all other aspects.

 

He did this last series and it got national attention when Celts fans chanted "New York Knicks" at LeBron.

 

I have no problem with this whatsoever. Despite working for ESPN, Simmons has never masqueraded as a journalist.

 

Yeah, I'm surprised that you're surprised by this

 

If you come to terms with this Bill will get on your nerves less and less. Back in the day I was furious he would never write about NCAA FB, but now I realize Maisel and Forde are so much better than him it doesn't matter. Just find something else to read if he bugs you.

 

Par for the course, but my only problem is that with Simmons hitting it big with this kind of stuff only makes many readers expect this kind of writing from journalists trying to be objective and do their job right.

 

Yeah, I was puzzled by the "staying impartial" portion of MWSG's post.

 

No matter how much slack you cut Simmons, though, stuff like this certainly tars the rest of the network.

 

Readers believe journalists should root, root, root for the home team.

They were expecting what Simmons is doing long before Simmons was doing it.