[Bill Simmons] Nothing Has Altered the NBA Like Mike D'Antoni

read this a few days back when I was surprised to see that Bill Simmons wrote about something other than NE sports, ending his streak of like months to years of practically straight Boston. I used to enjoy reading his stuff, but its become virtually unbearable ever since Boston teams have started to win again. If I wanted to know what was going on there all the time, I would read the Globe.

 

As a NE Sports fan I cannot stand Bill Simmons' writing. I hate lazy Family Guy style humor, how macho he tries to be (not shutting up about getting drunk in Vegas even with a wife and kids), and how he takes no responsibility for the fact that he's wrong a lot. He maintains ridiculous views on certain aspects of basketball (though this is by far the sport he's most knowledgeable) and yet is wont to call everyone else idiots.

In this article, though, he says the obvious, something other commentators have been pointing out since roughly 2005. Everyone's stats on D'Antoni's teams are padded for obvious reasons, and the Suns teams were overhyped. It was ridiculous that after the 04-05 season Phoenix bagged the trophies of:

Executive of the Year
Coach of the Year
Most Valuable Player
&c.

I--and many on the forum back then--asked at the time, Is this team really this good? Only something like the 72-win Bulls deserved recognition like that. And if the Suns are this good, is it Colangelo's doing? D'Antoni's? Nash's? If it's the work of all three, then is it possible that each individual is overrated?

 

good post OP.

ps - Boris has been excellent in Charlotte.

 

I agree with pretty much the whole article.

 

Joe Johnson has been balling as well.

 

"Not for everyone—yes, I'm pointing at you, Jerome James and Eddy Curry—but for some."

haha

 

A Mike D'Antoni team will never win a NBA title. He's arrogant and too stubborn to realize that defense plays a role in NBA basketball, a pretty big one at that.

 

I think Don Nelson's nellie ball was more influential. Hell, even Mike had followed that type of play.

 

He is dead wrong about Boris, but I agree with everything else I think....

 

if mike dantoni's system was so flawed, then the suns now should be more succesful in terms of games won and playoff games won, since their shift to focus more on defense, which in his article is proven to be whats best for all teams.

since at best theyre now equal in playoffs success with dantoni's teams, then all simmons is doing is putting down dantoni for overachieving with his players. for making his players average more stats, his teams more wins in the regular season and fans interest increased in his suns team.

 

I understand what you're saying, but at the same time I don't think the article rips Mike D'Antoni. Rather, it says that commentators over-hyped his players and teams to a point unprecedented in recent memory, and that D'Antoni's system was the cause.

As far as this Sun's team goes, they're not as good for a variety of reasons, but to say that their failings vindicates D'Antoni is a little unfair. They have a magazine rack of chemistry issues, in part because Mike coddled his players to the point where they're unwilling to make individual sacrifices towards winning.

 

borris and joe are good all around players that would be good in any system. Their success outside of phoenix is more a testament to their skills. I always thought diaw should have gotten more playing time.

 

So, some players' skill sets thrive in some style of game and not others? Tell us something we don't know yet.

 

This FTW. Simmons is a lazy hack who needs at least a heavy-handed editor.

I also hate how he references his buddies in those Vegas and related stories. So boring.

Mentioning his father and conversations with father = good idea. Everything else is pretty bad.

 

Okay, I vowed to stop criticizing him but the second vegas reference had to be responded to with this. he tries to be so cool but if you actually hear him he has a very wimpy voice, which I don't care about since he's a writer right? Well it didn't bug me untill he put himself in an espn program about las vegas. anyone remember when espn had the show about the football team, they also had one for a season or two about some professional poker players in Las Vegas. It was called Tilt. He made a cameo as a pro poker player in one of those espn tournaments. I almost threw up in my mouth

He's talented but the stichk has gotten old. The first columns I read of his were about "The Galleryfurniture.com bow" LOL, and the Atlanta Gold Cup Club trial and they were brilliant. But when he got into the whole "i'm a cool guy who hangs in vegas mode" it was all downhill.

 

^ Yup.

What bothers me also aside from the hackneyed pop culture references schtick which has worn out its welcome is the lack of accountability or logic in his little bits of real analysis - he'll make all sorts of predictions and judgments and etc....but when they are wrong or shallow or obviously not impartial, he tends to just hide behind the "voice of the fan" gimmick. Sorry after doing this as a job for 5-10 years you're no longer just a fan.

Case in point - just skimming the article above - he doesn't mention a fairly relevant fact, that Paul Westhead ran the same run & gun style of quick shot offense in Denver back in the early 90's, and that a lot of scoring records fell because of it (Scott Skiles setting the single-game record for assists comes to mind). It's not critical to mention this in his article, but it's a pretty relevant fact, and it tends to support his argument if properly spun. Most real columnists/journalists would be embarrassed for forgetting to include that fact (and yeah it was 18 years ago, but Simmons lives in teh 80's so he has no excuse).

 

A lot of players have left Phoenix and continued to be good. My friend and I were having this exact opposite conversation the other day. Quentin Richardson is still good, he's just stuck in a bad situation now. Joe Johnson is even better than he was in Phoenix, and role players like Tim Thomas, Diaw, and Barbosa have continued to thrive in the absence of D'Antoni. If anyone has fallen off since they parted ways with D'Antoni (Marion and Nash), then it's more likely than not due to old age and deteriorating athleticism than it is coaching.

And on the whole aspect of basketball depending on your situation, he's COMPLETELY wrong. The #1 circumstantial sport would have to be football. In basketball and baseball you prove your worth whether you're on a good or bad team. In football, the players in skill positions (QB, RB, WR) are worth squat without a line. Remember how Denver in their good run was just picking RB's off of the 6th round or later and plugging them right in with great success? Remember how Priest Holmes went down, and then Larry Johnson did even better and we thought he was good? Yeah that's right, thank your offensive line chumps. Bill Simmons is the master of two things: hyperbole, and getting predictions wrong.

 

I agree that Simmons is a talented individual, but right now he is ensconced in a comfortable position where he can say the same thing over and over again, and make the same pop culture references. This is esp. true of his football articles.

He doesn't have to be a good or interesting sportswriter anymore.

The article of the OP, I think, is a good example. It's a lot of fluff and seems insightful, yet even if on target isn't very substantive.

A lot of people thought Nash was a poor MVP choice.
A lot of people thought the Suns' philosophy, as well as the arrogance coming from their players, front office and coach, were open invitations to doom in the post-season.
Suns fans, at least the more insightful of them, thought W'ahntoni was arrogant and unwilling to consider emphasizing defense--to the point of turning down Tom Thibodeaux as an assistant coach because he didn't "need" him.

In short, he's arrogating to himself other people's opinions and claiming he's the only one who's seen the Suns weaknesses all along. He's being so overdramatic because he claimed that Nash was a horrible signing at the time, and is trying to justify being soooooo wrong.

 

The worst article of 2008:

http://www.knickerblogger.net/?p=1234

And I completely agree.

Simmons is re-defining lazy. There's no excuse for someone like him to be as out of touch as he is.