Bill Simmons Excerpt

[Winnipeg_Spur]

For the most part, it sucks to be a sports fan. It's a one-way street. Tickets cost too much. Jerseys cost too much. Executives and owners screw up our teams. Players let us down again and again. Just this week, the top sports stories were the shocking revelations from the Bonds/steroids scandal, the NFL labor agreement, and Kirby Puckett's untimely death (as well as the obligatory number of "Just remember, he was a bad guy after he played!" stories). It's a culture where bottomfeeders like Jose Canseco never seem to go away, where entire TV shows are built around sportswriters screaming at one another, where an abject failure of a human being like Bill Romanowski can crack the New York Times Bestseller list. Everything is out of whack. Even in the NBA, an egocentric gunner like Kobe Bryant receives 10 times as much attention as the great Tim Duncan, who's currently limping around on one leg because that's what champions do. I don't know what's happened to sports. I really don't.
Link (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060310)

[coopdogg3]

Yeah, I read that this morning. I tend to like Simmons' stuff, since his Celtics aren't contenders he tends to be fairly unbiased with his NBA excerpts. I appreciated the fact that a national sports reporter recognized the tough work Duncan is doing this year and is giving Duncan his due. Always good to see props given where it belongs, sometimes the guy just slugging it out and sucking it up deserves more attention over an 81-point meaningless game that will have no bearing on the NBA Championship.

[DDS4]

Duncan as a subject is too hard for the media.

It's easy to fill up tv time and newspaper with egos and controversy. Hence, the casual sports fan gets forcefed all this crap.

[Rummpd]

Simmons is great his classic recent column on the bad GM meeting was a classic with McHale and Thomas fighting it out over how bad a trade they could make etc.