Sir, I respectfully disagree
Sunday, June 24, 2007
I'm a little nervous. I've been blogging for all of two weeks, and now I want to call out a much more tenured blog. Is there some sort of protocol to follow? Should I just head to the Heights of Weehawken (which has got some great oxymoranic style going on, by the way) now and get it over with?If anything, I want to pick on lazy Pedro Cerrano, who's down in Cuba with Jobu and Michael Moore. But now I'm wading into it--albeit, in a polite way--with a heavy hitter like the Realests.
And I know The Realests. I like The Realests. Although he/they aren't friends of ours...and now probably won't be anytime soon.
It's this latest post--Sports Guy's Biggest Draft Blunders--that's got me riled. Kudos for looking...but really, what's the point?
Quoth the Realests:
But after repeatedly stating that Kevin Durant should be the No. 1 overall pick instead of Greg Oden, we can't help but call [Bill Simmons/the Sports Guy] out on some recent draft blunders he's made as an NBA columnist.The post goes on to lift previous entries by Simmons where he 1) Loves the Adam Morrison pick; 2) Mocks Utah for taking Deron Williams over Chris Paul; 3) Is excited that Joe Forte fell to the Celtics at #21; 4) Calls Orlando dumb for taking Dwight Howard over Emeka Okafor; and 5) In the worst blunder, compares Yao Ming over Jay Williams to Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan, etc.
Let's just say he wouldn't make a much better GM than Danny Ainge based on his draft diaries from year's past.
Ok.
There are some iffy calls--but there's exactly one idiotic one, and that's bashing Yao in favor of J-Will. Simmons is right that Deron Williams is a worse player than Chris Paul; everyone got Morrison wrong; Emeka was the "safe bet" after a few years of bad high school selections (Kwame Brown, anyone?); and messing up at #21 isn't a huge mistake.
So even if the Realests are onto something (more on this in a sec), they make a pretty weak case for it. As others noted in response to the post, if that's the worst he's done in all his years blogging the draft (again, see below), Simmons must have a pretty good track record.
But there's a bigger bone to pick with the Realests: Selectively going through a guy's huge archive of stories to make him look bad. With Simmons, who was putting out 5,000 words three times a week for 10 years and writes volumes on the draft, it's not hard to find something. It took me all of 20 seconds. Keeping in mind the Hollinger rating system--where a PER of 15.00 is considered "average NBA player"--I looked at his 2005 draft blog, where he calls Francisco Garcia and Luther Head the year's two best picks. Err...they were OK, I guess, given that they were late-round selections. But neither can hold a candle to David Lee or Monta Ellis, who were picked even later in the draft and have way outperformed expectations.
However, looking quickly at Simmons' NBA Draft posts, you get the sense that he hits a lot more than he misses. Some say he just spouts the conventional wisdom, but he disagrees with a lot of the "draft experts" and is usually proven right over time. I'll come back later and use his 2004 NBA Draft write-up as an example.
Labels: Have I lost any cool points, NBA Draft, When did Bill Simmons become the dorky kid in the cafeteria
posted by Doctor Dribbles @ 14:26,
1 Comments:
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At June 26, 2007 at 1:46 PM,
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glad you're taking them on, how easy to take 4-5 examples and say that's it. Plus they look like douchebags
