Simmons nails one: Good column on Elgin Baylor

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/081008

Maybe my judgment is skewed by my shock that he gave an inch to a Lakers guy, but this column, while a tad overlong, is solid work by Simmons.

 

I agree. Baylor's joke of a tenure as Clippers GM has obscured how great (and significant) he was as a player. You could say a lot of the same things about Isiah Thomas, though it's clear Thomas wasn't/isn't as well-liked around the league as Baylor.

 

Have to admit that is a dam fine column and a nice tribute to Baylor.

 

I was just about to post that this was a very good column by Simmons. He is knowledgeable and passionate about the NBA and when he doesn't dip into his repertoire of cliches, he is a talented writer. I don't care for the NBA, but when Simmons writes about it, I'll generally read it.

 

Never thought I'd see "Simmons" with "nails one" and "good column" in the same phrase on this board.

But it is good and I don't mind the length. Good anecdotes, history and opinion.

 

I liked it as well, though he did manage to slip a "Back To The Future" reference in there.

 

Agreed, a nice tribute.

Anyone else notice an ever-widening gap between Simmons' NBA columns and his stuff on everything else? The NBA's always been what he does best, but now it's the only area where he's still got the fastball. The pop-culture hipster act has grown pathetically stale, his Boston-centric pieces have become utterly unreadable, but he still consistently does the NBA damn well.

 

I made sure to email that column to my dad. Baylor was his hero while dad grew up on a farm in Minnesota.

During the offseason, the Lakers would do some barnstorming throughout the state - which many baseball players did as well of course. The year before Elgin joined the Lakers, they played against a group of southwest Minnesota "all-stars" - no, really - in a town of 1,000. The one memory my dad has from watching that game is seeing Hot Rod Hundley coming out of the locker room at halftime with a cigarette in his mouth, and then stomping it out on the hallway floor before taking the court.

Anyway, Elgin was my dad's main man, and he wrote a letter to the Lakers and Baylor his rookie season. He got an autographed message in return, and that picture was his most prized possession for a long time. Actually, it still might be.

 

Yep. I think it is the stuff he knows the best and cares the most about. My guess is that the mailbags and other detritus of his swirling vortex of cliched suckitude gets better page clicks, so his editors still want him to write it. They would be better off letting him write all NBA all the time during the season.

 

Simmons has always written very good NBA columns. Nothing else he does comes close.

 

Very good column by Simmons. Interesting thing about Baylor. His father named him Elgin because when he found out that his wife gave birth, he looked at his watch to see what time it was. The watch was an Elgin.

 

That's one of the all-time great phrases ever written here.