Christian Laettner and 31 Other Guys

The overly pretentious Bill Simmons website, grantland.com, is running a bracket-style tournament to pick the most hated college basketball player of the past 30 years. The players are broken up into 4 regions: 80s, 90s, 00s and Duke.



I agree that Duke should have its own region, having 8 hated guys (and another 8 who could have made it) is the ultimate compliment.
That's why I'm glad to see Syracuse is one of the few schools with 3 players in the bracket, Derrick Coleman, Sherman Douglas and Eric Devendorf. I wouldn't have thought people hated Sherman Douglas that much.
A lot of these players don't even seem that hateable to me. I loved Marcus Camby, Allen Iverson and Larry Johnson.
I would pick Reggie Miller from the 80s bracket (can't separate his NBA days), Eric Montross from the 90s and Adam Morrison for the 2000s (he'll never live down the crying).
And though I know, and everyone else including the people at grantland who came up with the idea knows Christian Laettner is going to win (lose?), I would still pick Shane Battier. I hate that prick, especially because of the undue attention he gets.
I remember a game Dick Vitale was broadcasting when his play-by-play partner said Shane Battier would be joining them. Vitale's response ("Shane Battier! We're going to talk to Shane Battier?!") is an enduring signal of my hatred for that alien-headed jerk.

Brilliant Opportunity the Knicks Missed

Note: I got this idea from a letter to Bill Simmons but since The Concierge says its possible to get a patent for an existing product, I'm running with it.

Earlier this season, on November 6th, while the Knicks still had Jerome James they hosted LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Knicks should have paid Jerome James during the offseason to change his uniform number from #31 to #23.

On that date they should have held Jerome James replica jersey night.

Imagine it, 19,763 fans in #23 Knicks jerseys with James on the back.

That would have been the greatest recruiting tool possible and there isn't a damn thing the NBA could do about it, though I'm sure the Cavs would have filed a tampering complaint.

The fact that the Knicks spent three years preparing for this and didn't think of that really upsets me.

I Just Can't Quit Bill Simmons

When Bill Simmons was first hired by ESPN, he was awesome. He thought, talked and acted exactly like us and he wrote the way we would write if we had an ESPN column.
Somewhere though, he lost his way, he became just like every other douchebag writer and sports personality, being overly critical, never backing his opinions up with facts and in Simmons's case, beating every joke into the ground. Did you know Isiah Thomas was a bad general manager?

And even worse, his mailbags which were once the highlight of his writing just became full of letters from Simmons wannabes hitting on the same themes (every GM sucks, stupid things ruin movies and moustaches rule). But like I said, I can't quit Simmons so I did read his latest mailbag and found a couple things that made my laugh and remember why I used to read him so religiously before he started writing books, feuding with ESPN and posting once a month.

First he said Red and Andy from Shawshank Redemption had the best bro-mance in history. So true. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand.

And then there was this gem, even though the heavy lifting was done by the letter-writer here, it's still hysterical:

Q: Can you think of the sports equivalent of the spouses of buddies whose Facebook friend-request you accepted who constantly update their status on the topic of taking care of their kids? Like "Jenn is watching her little ones nap" and "Sarah is playing 'Bob the Builder' with her kids! Yay!" As a 28-year-old unmarried man, it's not that I don't appreciate females or motherhood, it's just that I don't care. For the same reason that I don't update my status with "Kully just put on jock itch cream."
-- Kully, Guangzhou, China

SG: Wouldn't the sports equivalent be like ending up with an undesirable throw-in for an NBA trade (aka Marcus Banks)? The more interesting angle for me is how Twitter and Facebook reflect where our writing is going thanks to the Internet. In 15 years, writing went from "reflecting on what happened and putting together some coherent thoughts" to "reflecting on what happened as quickly as possible" to "reflecting on what's happening as it's happening" to "here are my half-baked thoughts about absolutely anything and I'm not even going to attempt to entertain you," or as I like to call it, Twitter/Facebook Syndrome. Do my friends REALLY CARE if I send out an update, "Bill is flying on an airplane finishing a mailbag right now?" (Which is true, by the way.) I just don't think they would. I certainly wouldn't. That's why I refuse to use Twitter.

As for Facebook, I don't mind getting status updates and snapshots of what my friends' lives are like -- even if "Bob the Builder" is prominently involved -- as long as they aren't posting 10 times a day or writing something uncomfortable about their spouse/boyfriend like "(Girl's name) is … trying to remember the last time she looked at her husband without wanting to punch him in the face" or "(Girl's name) is … just going to keep eating, it's not like I have sex anymore." Keep me out of your personal business, please. Other than that, the comedy of status updates can be off the charts. Like my college classmate who sends out status updates so overwhelmingly mundane and weird that my buddies and I forward them to each other, then add fake responses like, "(Guy's name) … snapped and killed a drifter tonight" and "(Guy's name) … would hang myself if the ceilings in my apartment weren't too short." It kills us. We can't get enough of it. We have been doing it for four solid months. And really, that's what Facebook is all about -- looking at photos of your friend's kids or any reunion or party, making fun of people you never liked and searching for old hook-ups and deciding whether you regret the hook-up or not. That's really it. All in all, I like Facebook.

Poor Loser

ESPN.com writer Bill Simmons, an outspoken Patriots fan, wrote this in his Super Bowl wrap-up column:

Much like the Patriots, I choked heading into the weekend: Somehow, I forgot to pack my good-luck Wes Welker jersey and headed to Sunday's game without any Pats gear. Originally intent on buying a Pats hat at the game, once I saw all the jerseys in the stands and in my section, I made the executive decision to fine myself $85 dollars (the price of a white No. 81 Moss jersey at one of those merchandise booths). You can currently find that jersey sitting at the bottom of the garbage can in my hotel room. I might take it home and burn it. I haven't decided yet.


His decision was to put the jersey on eBay. To attempt to thwart prank bidders Simmons said the winning bidder should make a donation in the amount of the top bid to the Jimmy Fund and when the winner shows Simmons the online receipt from the Jimmy Fund, he'll send the jersey. The auction still has another week and the bidding is already above $900, leading me to believe there are some fradulent bids in there.