News Bulletin: Richie Allen is no longer the only superstar athlete we can call a dick!
I consider myself to be a contemporary of ESPN’s Bill Simmons – an infinitely less successful contemporary, but if they ever start profiling passionate writers, who stop every ten sentences to make a joke about Beverly Hills 90210 or Kelly Leak of the Bad News Bears like they were the new "Beat Generation", I figure that I at least merit a footnote.
Bill just wrote a 700 page treatise on basketball. Ingeniously, he’s called it The Book of Basketball.
In my opinion, it’s a pretty brilliant piece of work. Essentially, it’s the hoops equivalent of The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract littered with penis jokes and other tomfoolery.
What older print journalists hate about this new “blog journalism” or whatever you want to call it, was best expressed by sportswriter Buzz Bissinger’s exasperated, grand mal seizure while discussing the Internet site Deadspin on HBO’s Costas Now.
I’m guessing this aside from Simmons would give most writers from Bissenger’s era permanent night sweats.
“Baseball player Curt Flood gets credit for standing up to the Man and paving the way for a new era of sports contracts, only (Rick) Barry did the same two years earlier. So why doesn’t he get the credit? Because Rick Barry was a dick. I keep telling you!”
Yes Buzz, thanks to “blog journalism” you can apparently now come right out and call Rick Barry a dick in a book published by a major corporation!
Can I picture the venerable Jim Murray, late great columnist of the Los Angeles Times, stooping to lower his craft by calling O.J. Simpson a dick back in the 1970s? No, but I’d bet my life that he probably said it on numerous occasions. I’m not saying that printing it would have saved Ron and Nicole’s lives, but exactly how much can you trust a media that convinced the entire world that O.J. Simpson was football’s answer to Mr. Rogers.
How many journalists came out after the Simpson killings and admitted that everyone on the inside always knew that O.J. was – er basically, always a prick? Those are the guys with the ethics I should trust?
Simmons writes like a quality stand-up comedian, a literate one with an opinion like Bill Hicks or Doug Stanhope. How many millions of words have been written about Richard Nixon over the past 60 years? How many were as bullshit-free and concise as Lenny Bruce and George Carlin? If you went to see George Carlin sometime in the early ‘70’s, he at some juncture said, “Isn’t Richard Nixon a dick?” and he was instantly someone you could trust. I dare you to find me a biography of Richard Nixon that fully encompasses his character better than that five word phrase.
Article comments
1 - Matthew T. Sussman
Why this book instead of God Save The Fan? This one may be better -- although personally I respect Simmons the way many people respect the Beatles, because everyone else did -- but Will Leitch's book came first, and it's about all sports, not just basketball.
2 - brad laidman
good pick - the simmons book is just amazing to me 700 pages filled with nonsense footnotes - an assumption that people know half the stuff that he is talking about without wasting time to fill them in - it's a great book that I don't think would have had a prayer of being published 10 years ago
3 - coaching basketball team
Bill Simmons' The Book of Basketball Blog Journalism is a classic example. It is a must read for the basketball lovers.The author have extensive knowledge in the techniques of the game. a must read for the newbies.