The soul of some white folk

There are a lot of reasons to hate Bill Simmons.

Maybe you're a NY'er and hate all things Beantown.
Maybe you find his predicitions and analysis a bit light.
Maybe you're jealous that Bill gets an ESPN.com soapbox & you don't, even though you think you could do it better.
Maybe you think you & your merry crew of friends are more lunatic than Bill and his.
Maybe you can't stomach another pop culture metaphor.
Maybe you think he sold his soul to Hollywood.
Maybe you hate that Bill hates bloggers...

Whatever.

... Of course, maybe you just can't stomach Bill's repeated inability to write responsibly, sensitively, & reflexively on race and sports.

& that is what everyone is talking about these days ... Bill hates OJ Mayo ... but, not simply that, what OJ Mayo represents. &, well, even it's not clear to Bill, it's clear to others what the color of that representation is.

Bloggers have taken care of Bill's critique of what OJ Mayo represents ... who that young man is (allegedly). So what I want to spend some time with is Simmons' complaint about the Boston Celtics.

Here's what The *cough* Boston Sports Guy wrote about his Boston Celtics. (I'm including stopmikelupica.com's response to that quote.)

"For instance, the Celtics... during their 18-game losing streak, nobody ever got kicked out of a game, knocked someone into a basket support, threw a frustrated punch ... hell, even the coach didn't get kicked out of a game. There was a passive, pathetic, indifferent response to everything that was happening."

Um, weren't you the same writer that called out Isiah and the Knicks earlier this season when they got into a fight with the Nuggets after a hard foul in which they knocked someone into a basket support? The Sports Hypocrisy Guy?

"Because the final score never really mattered for most of those games..."

We can ignore the fact that The Boston Sports Guy, one of the last NBA fans, according to the man himself, is on record as saying this about his Boston Celtics.

After the Celtics inexplicably rolled off a four-game win streak and fell two games behind Memphis for pole position in the Durant/Oden Sweepstakes, I thought about flying back to Boston to kidnap Al Jefferson and stick Paul Pierce with a mononucleosis-infected needle.

Yes, he has been rooting for the Celtics to lose.

Clearly, Simmons' hypocrisy runs deeper than his critique of fighting Knicks and passive Celts. More than that, though, is, in my (and my brother's) opinion, Simmons' misuse of the Celtics struggles to support an argument against a certain type of NBA player.

Yes, the Celts lost eighteen in a row. This came without Paul Pierce, whose contribution to that team is, to put it mildly, significant. Playing without Pierce, then without Wally, then without Tony Allen, the Celtics, yup, lost eighteen in a row. Twelve of those loses, though, were by less than ten points. And of those twelve, five came by five points or less.

I know that these numbers aren't all that impressive. A franchise-worst losing streak is a franchise worst-losing streak no matter the final score. But I watched a lot of that losing streak. While Celtics fans, including Simmons, actively rooted for the team to lose, keeping losing, & win some better player (Oden or Durant), the players the Celtics put on the floor llooked (at least to me) to play hard, passionate, though frequently ineffective basketball.

During that losing streak, "Big" Al Jefferson came into his own. &, if we can believe a recent FSN New England interview with Big Al, the man is now playing with an Arenas-sized chip on his shoulder. Apparently, too many mediamouths wrote Big Al off & now he's. (See point #15, the Darius Miles All-Star Team, Bill. Notice the mind-boggling inclusion of Bobby J, age 33 at the time... in "a list of young players every year that everyone PROJECTS to be better than they actually are.") Meanwhile, young, streaky, and gifted Gerald Green, put up twenty-points a few times and was on his way to wowing a national audience in the NBA dunk contest.

Yup, the Celtics' season has been disappointing. And maybe I view this team through some green-tinted glasses. But, according to me, Simmons' analysis of his Boston Celtic's losing streak, a losing streak he rooted for, is a bit twisted.

peace love gap
johnny hatchett