Really, Reilly?

I don't disagree that there were some decent anecdotes, and yes, the guy with the tattoos was priceless. But it could have been much, much better with this sort of access. I think briefly and vagely pretty much sums up the whole thing.

 

The childishness of this thread is nauseating. That's a good column. It's a breezy, fun, entertaining read, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Hey, you want to hammer Rick for not having the fastball he once did? Fine. But enough of the bashing every word the man puts on paper. He can still write very good columns, and this was one of them. 99 percent of this column was the fact that he got in the car in the first place. The rest wrote itself. I enjoyed every word.

 

Don't know what's childish about disliking that column. I will agree that we tend to bash certain people on here too much, but I didn't start the thread. I read the column and didn't like it. Reilly is one of the best sports writers on the planet, and that column did not come close to reflecting that. Sure, there were some decent lines, but we expect more. Maybe that's not fair, but a lot of us who grew up reading him are just disappointed.

 

Completely agree. Instead of the usual generalities ("Joe Blow has a great work ethic." "Joe Blow has a million demands on his time.") Reilly gives us a detailed, specific look at a day in the life of a superstar. It's a good, breezy column with some nice little nuggets of information. Reilly is definitely not what he once was, but this seems like a case of people bashing him just out of habit.

And this is patently false.

 

I don't hate the column.

I hate the fact that there are people on earth that really live like Kobe Bryant does. And all for playing a fucking game. I'm really beginning to hate sports.

 

Ahhhhh, another Reilly thread. I'm sure I've started one in the past, so I won't bash on that, however....

I enjoyed it. Maybe that's because I'm a lifelong Lakers fan, but I thought it was good.

It's not my favorite column ever, not my least favorite, either, but there are certain people who will hate anything Reilly writes, no matter what. And that's just sad.

 

Awesome, guys.

Just to clarify, I'm not a Reilly hater. I don't really read enough of anything by any one writer in particular to be classified as a hater (or a lover) of that person's work in general. I just happened to not like this column, and I feel it's deserving of my mockery.

Most of it is because I don't give a shit what Kobe Bryant does on a game day. Give me a lesser name, a role player who isn't going to drop in little tidbits about chartering a helicopter to see their kid's soccer game. Someone who doesn't need armed escorts to get from Point A to Point B. Someone who doesn't need the escort to carry his ice around for him because the ice at the hotel isn't too plebian for his tastes. Someone who might actually do something of substance on a game day, allowing you to at least try to seriously justify the whole "has already put in a full day's work" angle.

And when you're writing it, I don't care what kind of coffee you're drinking. The bit about spilling the coffee would have been absolutely fine if he had ended the sentence with "at the very moment I was about to take a sip." But he didn't do that, and what he did do, I felt, deserved to be mocked. Does Reilly often meander into Peter King territory like he did here? I don't pay enough attention to him to know. I do know that if King were to drop in a reference to his "delicious venti mochachino" while writing a column about riding around with Brett Favre, he'd be soundly (and properly) ridiculed. I don't care how brilliant some people might think Reilly is - he's no sacred cow as far as I'm concerned.

 

I liked the column.

I think there are those who might try to imagine what Bryant's life must be like, but to see it spelled out like that, the way things can be, and how it has in some was become normal for him is interesting to me. I sometimes hear commentators who live an existence much closer to the one I or most on this board do say, 'how can someone live like that, in that kind of a bubble'. Well, this is apparently one guy who kind of has a handle on it, what he can and can't do, and how to grease the wheels to make sure he gets to live relatively normally.

I would criticize the subhead, I don't think it fits the column and as a result sets it up improperly, at least the way I'm reading it.

But as we all know, Reilly probably isn't writing his own subheads, so I'm not going to rail on him for that.

 

People need to get this straight right from the beginning. John Rocker was shooting for light-hearted and breezy when he got in the car with Jeff Pearlman one fateful day.

 

Yeah, it's possible that he made it up because it sounds more humorous. Also possible he was just trying to be as specific as possible, as any writer should.

 

I actually read it, which is more than I can say about most the stuff on ESPN.