Silvio Doesn't Like Your Fur Coat

At some point along the way, the premise of every Bill Simmons basketball column became as tedious as his jokes, his puerile sensibilities, and his enormous self-regard: Bill must save us from our own shortcomings. When he first wrote for ESPN almost a decade ago, he was far less taken with himself and still amenable to the notion that he did not have everything figured out. Best of all, he wrote with a perspective as an outsider, and that made his ideas about basketball fresh and his vantage point shared by millions. Simmons was a passionate basketball fan who appeared guided by the overriding desire to speak with, and for, other everyday fans.

Over time, that has changed, to everyone's detriment, and to the point that he is all but insufferable. Simmons now writes with the tone of a self-important celebrity. The writer who proudly insisted that remaining on the periphery enabled his unique product now loves to let his audience know when he speaks with NBA insiders. The proverbial Guys Who Know Things. Or even Daryl Morey, whom most of us know as the general manager of the Rockets but whom Simmons counts as a his "friend Daryl." In a gross way, it is fitting, because more than anything else, he is obsessed with celebrities. A worship of the rich and famous has become as much a hallmark of his work as his insistence on being one of a dozen remaining NBA fans used to be. Both obnoxious, the former perhaps explains why he reveres Jimmy Kimmel and wastes time interviewing people like Seth Meyers. Who cares that neither is funny; they're on television! It also helps to explain why he'd proudly cite glorified gossip columnist and kindred spirit Andrew Ross Sorkin as a muse. [/drool]

He now walks among his heroes. Simmons is undeniably a celebrity, a powerful man in media supported by one of its greatest leviathans, ESPN. His work has suffered as he has become that which he has always most coveted, however. (Regarding this transformation as unintentionally Greek would elevate Simmons and confer upon him undue gravity, but obtaining success at the expense of the very things for which he has been rewarded is a classical theme.) His basketball writing, once spirited and gorgeously obsessive, is instead pedantic and bloated these days. He now combines professed basketball omniscience, pomposity, and his bully pulpit--regardless of actual authority--to peddle well-worn ideas. He buries his ever more scarce insights under an avalanche of bad jokes, not-that-clever cultural references, and basketball thinking that is bandied about day and night on the internets by a fairly loud chorus of writers. It's as though while writing his Book of Basketball--no doubt the process that has come to represent his personal Rubicon--Simmons convinced himself of his own preeminence.

This week's trade column tells the sad Simmons story. Over 7,000 words, he manages to effectively repackage the narratives, ideas, and arguments that any NBA fan could access throughout Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday as the NBA trade deadline came and went. Only, he does it while handing out grades, referring to Morey as his friend in an attempt to provide context for how disappointed he is that Houston acquired Hasheem Thabeet, and effecting the usual Simmons tone as the man whose burden is to set records straight. To be fair, Simmons is a victim of circumstance to some degree. Twitter, blogging, and other social media have made so much more information so much more readily available that a person so inclined can now find for himself nearly any basketball content he wants. Further, while it would be very Bill Simmons of Bill Simmons to decide he would grade not only NBA trades, but also NBA fans and their reaction to NBA trades, perhaps the column's conceit was an ESPN editor's idea. Lord knows, they grade everything else, on a seemingly daily basis.

All the same, to be so tone deaf, whether on his own volition or while working to appease a boss, is the saddest irony that inheres to what Bill Simmons has become. (And I use the word "irony" intentionally, with its sixth definition in mind. Simmons, ever the wordsmith, made a big to do about how wrongly everyone uses that word in modern language. You may recall the column--it was the one in which he described free-throw shooting as "porous." He really sees things that the rest of us don't!) A man who forever insisted on "getting it" when others didn't--general managers, athletes, fans, owners, porn stars, reality television contestants--now misses the mark regularly. Obsequious when in the bright lights of Hollywood or, even better, the company of his own shadow, Simmons used the trade synopsis to congratulate himself and scold more than a few of us while sharing ideas that anyone who follows Tom Ziller, Adrian Wojnarowski, and a handful of others on Twitter had either offered or assimilated long before the trade grades.

A Knicks fan, I found the Carmelo section notably obnoxious and all too perfect. Simmons gave the Carmelo trade an A-minus, which I disagree with but can understand within the circumscribed parameters which Simmons erected around his first three paragraphs. He also acknowledged the Knick fan angst which attends any decision that James Dolan and Isiah Thomas make in tandem. The section concluded, though, with an F-minus-minus handed out to "People Who Don't Realize That Carmelo Is a Legitimate Superstar." Bill's reasons?

1) "Advanced metrics" people (don't tell Nate Silver) got too bogged down in statistical analysis of what Carmelo can't do and underestimated what he can, which is score as well as anyone and rebound well for his position.

2) Carmelo is 26 years old, which I assume Simmons thinks is proof that Carmelo will get better, but which could be flipped around to note that Anthony has advanced past the first round of the playoffs only once in what is already seven attempts.

3) Carmelo and Amare Stoudemire are two of the ten players who started in the All-Star Game. You know, the starting lineup which fans elect and to which they added all-but-retired Yao Ming this year? That must be definitive proof that Carmelo is a star, right?

4) Other players respect Carmelo, and that means something. This is starting to seem like a Peter King column.

5) Carmelo could be "ignited" by the glitz and scale of New York.

6) You can't win a title with Amare and Carmelo, but you can with those two and one of Chris Paul, Deron Williams, or Dwight Howard. This is the reason that put me over the edge. Meant as a Q.E.D of sorts--"Thank you, and please drive through" is the way Simmons ends this argument that he's decided he's won--it presupposes that the Knicks will bide time until next season or the summer of 2012 and then strike. It completely neglects that by the summer of 2012, the Knicks will be paying Anthony and Stoudemire $40m; that already, New York would barely be able to afford another max-deal player; that the next collective bargaining agreement will almost certainly implement a lower cap figure, and may very well also contain more stringent cap rules and a more restrictive player-movement system; and that earlier in the Anthony section, alone--to say nothing of the rest of the column--Simmons acknowledges how radically the coming, more owner friendly CBA influenced this year's trades.

A person simply cannot assess the Anthony deal, or any other, in a context void of CBA consideration. It seems foolish, ill-informed, and even dishonest in the name of advancing an argument. Knick fans upset about Carmelo are upset because even if the players traded were worth Anthony, tethering the Knicks to him may not have been. Under the next CBA, the Knicks likely will not be able to afford a third star were the star to make what he could now. Obviously, a market correction is coming, and someone like Paul will command fewer dollars. But to assume that the next cap will accommodate Amare's contract, Anthony's contract, a third star's contract, and then nine more NBA salaries is something of a leap, unless one assumes that rank-and-file players are prepared to earn 80 and 90 percent less than they do now.

For someone like Simmons, who gleefully advances conspiracy theories and burns through column inches on pet theories that he concocts on the phone with his friends, to omit that kind of CBA logic while insisting on his perspective as the authoritative one was the latest episode in his steady decline. Really, that's what this entire post is about. As astounding as the arrogance that permeates his writing is the soaking, underwhelming content. That's the problem with celebrity culture in America: we anoint heroes, ask little of them, and continue to celebrate them even when they've no longer earned it. No one knows that better than Bill Simmons.