Really, Reilly?

[DirtyDeeds]

So, what exactly did we learn? That he works out, goes to a shootaround, gets hounded by fans and naps in a free hotel room? Whoop-dee-do. I've read plenty of good stuff from Reilly over the years, and this ain't it. Kobe Kommute? Really?

 

[zeke12]

I'm just bummed that he cut the scene where he blew Kobe in the car.

You spill coffee in Kobe's car, you gots to pay for that.

Rule of the road.

 

[sirvaliantbrown]

So, what exactly did we learn? That he works out, goes to a shootaround, gets hounded by fans and naps in a free hotel room? Whoop-dee-do. I've read plenty of good stuff from Reilly over the years, and this ain't it. Kobe Kommute? Really?

We learned that he works out at 3:30 a.m. That he sometimes charters helicopters to make relatively short commutes. We've always heard people rave in generalities about Kobe's work ethic and workout regimen, but here we learned a revealing new detail about what that regimen entails. (Suicide pec-slapping pushups with Tim Grover? Late in the season? Damn.) We got to hear him talk, albeit briefly and vaguely, about his struggles with his wife. That he reads Tom Friedman! (This does not interest you in the slightest? That Kobe reads, or claims to read, Tom Friedman? Even if it makes you dislike him more, it's a non-sequitur to ponder.) That his freaking ice jug gets its own car. The man-with-identical-tattoos story is priceless.

And...several other things.

"Kobe Kommute" is horrible. But the piece was a nice little peek into the dude's existence.

 

[Honesty Kills]

If it took you this long to finally be disappointed in Rick Reilly....... then you got a much longer ride out of him than a lot of us did....

You shouldn't be sad, you should be happy.

He's been doing this for years now, to the point that SI felt he was "fat that needed trimming" because he was no longer willing to do anything other than this type of writing.

 

[DirtyDeeds]

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.

 

[DCaraviello]

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.

 

[DirtyDeeds]

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.

 

[broadway joe]

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.

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.

He's been doing this for years now, to the point that SI felt he was "fat that needed trimming" because he was no longer willing to do anything other than this type of writing.

And this is patently false.

 

[CM Punk]

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 ****ing game. I'm really beginning to hate sports.

 

[JackReacher]

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.

 

[Double J]

I'm just bummed that he cut the scene where he blew Kobe in the car.

You spill coffee in Kobe's car, you gots to pay for that.

Awesome, guys. :D

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 **** 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.

 

[GB-Hack]

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.

 

[cranberry]

**** are you guys tough.
For what it was, that piece was excellent. Reilly wasn't trying to go in-depth. He wasn't trying for Gary Smith. He was trying to be light-hearted and easy, and he nailed it.

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.

 

[playthrough]

Is it possible he could have made up the "venti mochachino"? Maybe it was just a cup of Acme black from his hotel sink but, as a literary device, it's more useful to lament your spilled venti mochachino than Acme black. Just wondering.

 

[broadway joe]

Is it possible he could have made up the "venti mochachino"? Maybe it was just a cup of Acme black from his hotel sink but, as a literary device, it's more useful to lament your spilled venti mochachino than Acme black. Just wondering.

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.

 

[mustangj17]

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

 

[Lester Bangs]

Is it possible he could have made up the "venti mochachino"? Maybe it was just a cup of Acme black from his hotel sink but, as a literary device, it's more useful to lament your spilled venti mochachino than Acme black. Just wondering.

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.

You should be as specific as possible about what kind of beverage you are drinking? I'd call that valuable characters pissed away on a throwaway line that only served to make him look as into himself as was the guy who was driving the car.

This column is what Reilly does; read him or don't. But that line was either narcissism in its purest form or just plain poor writing. It's not humorous and if Reilly thinks it is he's not "lost something off his fastball," but is due for journalistic Tommy John.

I no longer enjoy Reilly's stuff and that's OK. Lots of people do. As a journalist you can still read it and know what he's trying to do and this column is fine on that level. But that line sucks.

 

[Moderator1]

Could the coffee thing have been a shot at, say, another writer? Just wondering.

 

[SoCalDude]

I wonder, given the access he got, if there were restrictions on the questions.
Like: "Kobe, maybe if you didn't do so many 'suicide pushups' on game day, you could shoot better than 46.7 percent, which is below the team's overall percentage of 47.4."
Or: "You said you don't have nannies, how come the previous housekeeper is suing you for abuse and other issues?"
Just wondering .....

 

[JackReacher]

Could the coffee thing have been a shot at, say, another writer? Just wondering.

Is there history there, or is this the first shot?