jdw Posted January 4, 2014 Report Share Posted January 4, 2014 As for Simmons, as long as you remember he's an NBA expert whose allowed to write about other sports, he's all right. His NBA stuff is obviously fantastic, but anything else I'm just there for the jokes and references. Hard to say that he's an NBA guy. He's written as much about MLB (Red Sox and other stuff) and the NFL (Patriots and loads of other stuff) as the NBA. To a degree he's been able to get away with stuff in writing about the NBA that he hasn't been able to with MLB and the NFL: (i) it was less advanced in quality high end statistical thinking, and (ii) far more superstar dominated on most key levels than the other two. It's far easier to read his stuff on MLB (such as the Red Sox book) and find stuff where he's just plain wrong / off base / ignorant because sabermetrics and other forms of thinking deeper about baseball has been around for about a quarter century by that point. He also with the basketball book brought the "history" of the game to a younger, newer generation. Admittedly a lot of it was glossed over, because even with 800 pages (or how many ever hundred it is), that's an impossible task given what all the book was trying to do. But at least he also laid out the other books folks could read to pick up on stuff like the ABA or the early days of the NBA, etc. It makes him come across as more of an NBA "expert" than most because he knows who Cliff Hagan is. I think in the end he is what his moniker says: a Sports Fan. The NBA is one where he's been able to give the impression of staying ahead of the curve and having "depth", while with the other two he's clearly behind the curve and just winging it as a "fan" who thinks he has insight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cross Face Chicken Wing Posted January 4, 2014 Report Share Posted January 4, 2014 I like steak. If I go to a restaurant and choose to order a steak instead of chicken, seafood or something else, and the steak tastes like shit, I'm not going to order steak from that restaurant again. I sure as hell won't order steak just because it's on the menu and I like steak, or I want to bitch about how bad it tastes. That's a really great analogy. Except shit in your mouth isn't exactly like spending a couple of minutes reading an article. One is no big deal... with the other is shit in your mouth. I also read Grantland. I'm also a wrestling fan. I read Shoemaker's stuff when he started there and thought it was terrible. Of course when I go to Grantland and see his pieces pop up I am NOT going to click on them solely because I like wrestling and read Grantland. Shoemaker isn't any good. Why waste my time? There's plenty of good wrestling writing/analysis out there to waste time on the bad stuff. A couple of minutes to read an article. That's nothing. I watched every episode of Sopranos, and I think the series went to hell at some point in the 3rd season. I spent two hours watching Oliver Stone's Savages, and that is far worse of a movie than Shoemaker's writing. We all watch and read and participate in a lot of stuff that's bad / mediocre / boring / subpar. 2-3 minutes on a Shoemaker piece is nothing. Good lord... I watched Ohio State play tonight, and I tend to spend the entire college football season watching 8-12 hours of games each Saturday while actively trying to avoid Big 10 games unless it's an upset special of a team Lacy and I hate. Which is what tonight's game was all about... and it was still painful to watch OSU. 2-3 minutes a week on Shoemaker is that much of a life altering chore to you that you think not only you should skip it, but that the rest of us should as well to avoid becoming Snuka and killing our girlfriends? Does torturing ourselves with bad wrestling writing/analysis have something to do with bad wrestling being enjoyable? Sometimes I enjoy watching bad wrestling, then coming on here and cracking wise about it. Perhaps others get the same joy out of mocking bad wrestling writing/analysis. To each their own. Tourture? I had a five hour flight delay this Wednesday, spending it sitting in those shitty airport seats that are meant for 30 minutes tops for your rear and back. Then 5+ hours on the plain, reminding myself why I haven't flown AA in a decade with their shitty, squshed chairs. Then an hour drive home past midnight on a day when I woke up at 7am ET / 4am PT, trying to stay awake and not look like a drunk for the Chippers to pull over. Then crawling into bed with a massively sore back, a muscle pull in the right arm and hoping the crib will heat up quickly since I'd set the thermo low while out of town... and trying to doze off... A couple of minutes of Shoemaker isn't torture. A couple minutes a week catching up on what nonsense the likely most read wrestling writer in the country is tossing up is pretty easy. And this is a deep-thinking board. If you think otherwise, you're overthinking. I think most of us hear have read deep thinking, scholarly stuff either in our college days or in our professional days, or both. This is just a place where folks are shooting the shit. At time people put some thought into it, and we hash stuff out back and forth. But you're wildly overthinking things if you believe anything on the site is remotely at the level of deep thinking of say what I was re-reading before going on vacation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roman_Revolution If the place was at that level of writing and deep thinking, there would be no posters as it would bore the shit out of everyone. And that comes from someone who finds Syme's work rather interesting even if it's a chore (and well nigh torture!) to get through. Well, I just read your entire reply so I guess I do have time to read shitty mindless drivel. Maybe I will give Shoemaker another shot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted January 5, 2014 Report Share Posted January 5, 2014 See... that was easy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Schneider Posted January 5, 2014 Report Share Posted January 5, 2014 I love Johnathan Abrams Basketball profiles. Some of the best sports writing around Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WingedEagle Posted January 5, 2014 Report Share Posted January 5, 2014 Concur, Abrams puts together the kind of extended, quality profiles you used to get from SI. One could easily read Shoemaker's stuff in a couple minutes. I just haven't seen any reason to give it even that much time. There's enough quality out there to pass on what doesn't meet the grade. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted January 14, 2014 Report Share Posted January 14, 2014 Looks like Grantland got a redesign. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timbo Slice Posted January 15, 2014 Report Share Posted January 15, 2014 It's buggy and the layout is weird. I think the best part about the original design was that the features were all there on the front page. Now they're trying to differentiate the subjects. I'm wondering what 538 is going to look like. Good chance this is a template test for Nate to work off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted March 7, 2014 Report Share Posted March 7, 2014 Some examples of decent quality at Grantland. Beyond some of the folks we've mentioned before: Ben Lindbergh on Baseball GM stability: http://grantland.com/features/mlb-duracell-general-managers-billy-beane-brian-cashman It's not off the charts, but a reasonably short piece that actually makes you wish there was a longer say 20K in depth piece going deeper into each of the "factors". Mark Harris had a six-part piece on predicting the Oscar winners, which can be found under his pieces: http://grantland.com/contributors/mark-harris Oscars are done, and things went largely "chalk" so it might not be an interesting series now. But for what's a kind of throwaway annual concept he did a good job of explaining why certain movies were likely to win, which ones could pull the upset if the favorite didn't get it (like Her in Original Screenplay), etc. Could any number of folks have written the series? Perhaps, and lots do every year. But for someone whose read this stuff for 30 years in papers and mags, I thought Harris' were the most readable that I've seen in a long time. Some guys we've talked about in the past... I don't hate Barnwell's stuff, but it doesn't blow me away like say Lowe. He gives off too much of a "feel" like fitting into Simmons and Grantland vibe/style. The contrast would be Lowe having his own almost laconic voice that hits the facts and while also getting across the things he really digs without going all wank-off on it. That said, I thought this was pretty good out of Barnwell: http://grantland.com/features/the-curious-case-of-jim-harbaugh At looking at it again, I see that he avoided footnotes. Anyway, with the Harbaugh story you're going to get all sorts of wild speculation. I think Bill did a good job of looking at it from a variety of differing directions, organizing it, and presenting it in a clear fashion. Low on snark and cracking jobs, solid enough of analysis. Given how more stuff leaks out on Harbaugh and San Fran, there certainly is something odd going on. Simmons on NBA Tanking: http://grantland.com/the-triangle/nba-bag-volume-2-10-steps-to-tanking-perfection His Steps 1-10 have a lot of joke-o-snark-o-rama. One can like it, or not like it... but it is a pretty reasonable walk through of how various teams tank in the NBA, and how Philly is mastering it. He also ends with thoughts on whether it's good for the league, punts Stern for turning a blind eye to it, and pretty much calls out Silver for doing something about it. It's basically "Good Simmons-toh" - he's not in the piece aiming too high, he's having some fun as he goes along without it all being total bullshit ("Bad Simmons-ta"), the "fun" is there to make the points being made go down easier, and in the process of it you might get him going off on the jag that more thought needs to be given. Anyway... it's to me an example of while it's easy and common to completly toss him on the Woodpile that he can actually still crank out some decent pieces. Some are lighter pieces like this that have beneath the lightness some topics that he thinks need more thought. Some, like the piece he did on Juice in the NBA last year, shake off the jokes and hit on something that most folks aren't talking about, and probably something some don't want him talking about given his position. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Minds_Eys Posted March 7, 2014 Report Share Posted March 7, 2014 http://grantland.com/features/welcome-to-the-wwe-network/ Simmons and Shoemaker discuss the Network. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Childs Posted March 7, 2014 Report Share Posted March 7, 2014 I find it exceedingly odd that Simmons believes Money in the Bank to be a larger PPV than the Rumble, an assertion he's made several times now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Childs Posted March 7, 2014 Report Share Posted March 7, 2014 Also, this big laugh line: "For Shoemaker only — you wrote a gigantic wrestling book and know more about the history of this business than just about anyone." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cox Posted March 7, 2014 Report Share Posted March 7, 2014 More importantly, you’ll find more Owen Hart matches than you can count. I just clicked on a random one — it’s Owen and the British Bulldog vs. Doug Furnas and Philip Lafon from In Your House 13 in ’97. Furnas and Lafon are two French wrestlers who made the WWF because they were looking for any spark they could find back then. Yes, David Shoemaker, the guy who knows more about the history of wrestling than just about anyone, bringing up noted French wrestler Doug Furnas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FedEx227 Posted March 7, 2014 Report Share Posted March 7, 2014 Bix retweeting everyone correcting him is pretty spectacular. Yet, he got to write a book on wrestling. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flyonthewall2983 Posted March 7, 2014 Report Share Posted March 7, 2014 What's Bix's Twitter? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FedEx227 Posted March 7, 2014 Report Share Posted March 7, 2014 What's Bix's Twitter? http://twitter.com/davidbix Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted March 8, 2014 Report Share Posted March 8, 2014 So who is the PWO twitter? Will or Loss? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bix Posted March 8, 2014 Report Share Posted March 8, 2014 So who is the PWO twitter? Will or Loss? Loss. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted March 8, 2014 Report Share Posted March 8, 2014 Anyway... on the article... I was expecting worse. It would have been nice if they talked about the Netflix-Comcast deal. Other than that, it was largely a fanish piece out of them rather than a quality business piece. It does get across that the WWE Network at its current price is a pretty strong value, and that it has the potential to provide a staggering amount of content. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eduardo Posted March 8, 2014 Report Share Posted March 8, 2014 Bix is doing an awesome takedown of the recent Grantland article on his twitter right now. Y'all should check it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tigerpride Posted March 8, 2014 Report Share Posted March 8, 2014 Batista HHH had one great match. I hated the other two Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tigerpride Posted March 8, 2014 Report Share Posted March 8, 2014 themaskedman01 [at] gmail [dot] com is his email I once found a mistake in a Simmons column and sent out a few emails. It was never corrected. I guess you need to out a transsexual that kills herself to get any sort of response. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted March 10, 2014 Report Share Posted March 10, 2014 It's pro wrestling, so they don't care. They "corrected" the stuff Trip said about Wade, but in a half ass bullshit way that wasn't even much of a correction. I also doubt the Masked Man really cares that much. He's off in a Scott Keith type of alternative reality. My guess is that if Lowe has an piece with a number of errors that he would be willing to listen, would correct it, and if it were serious enough he'd write a second piece revisiting it. I haven't dealt with Barnwell as much as a number of people here, nor read much of his sports writing before he got to Grantland... so I don't know how he would deal with correcting stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jmare007 Posted March 10, 2014 Report Share Posted March 10, 2014 It's pro wrestling, so they don't care. They "corrected" the stuff Trip said about Wade, but in a half ass bullshit way that wasn't even much of a correction. I also doubt the Masked Man really cares that much. He's off in a Scott Keith type of alternative reality. I agree. It's a shame really. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bierschwale Posted March 28, 2014 Report Share Posted March 28, 2014 Simmons: Check out McQueen’s Mustang zooming through the streets of San Francisco, and keep in mind, this scene was basically Julius Erving trying to dunk from the foul line, or Jimmy Snuka climbing to the top of the steel case to leap on Bob Backlund. A) Great copy-editing on "steel case". He couldn't have taken ten seconds to Google that it was Muraco? And he didn't already remember that it was Muraco? Why even bother making the reference? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricky Jackson Posted March 28, 2014 Report Share Posted March 28, 2014 Snuka first did the cage leap in a match with Backlund at MSG (he missed), over a year before Snuka-Muraco. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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