Bill Simmons’ lost story actually really good

May 15th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

Since yesterday afternoon, everyone has been all a’twitter about Bill Simmons’ ESPN status, and his new blog, and what that means to the state of the industry, and oh man this so cool Bill Simmons is a blogger now! Wooooo! It’s just like what he used to do, except it wasn’t called a “blog!” And it used to be a lot harder to publish! There were like, HTML tags and stuff! Woooo! This is so exciting.

The only insightful thing to come out of this so far is that Simmons has a big enough brand — or perceives himself to have a big enough brand — that he can openly piss off the ESPN overlords and not really worry too much about it. That’s kind of cool.

OK, two insightful things: the story Simmons posted on his Blogspot is actually incredibly good:

Twenty minutes from tipoff at the Shelburne Center, spectators are already being turned away for the first round of the City Championships. The crowd is composed of three types of people: Fans, reporters, coaches and that’s it. The reporters are mostly white; you can pick them out by their pens and notepads. The coaches are also mostly white, clad in either jogging suits or three-piece suits. Everyone else is black. Everyone.

I learned how to pick out coaches at Southie’s home games. Southie’s entire gym might be 1/100th bigger than the circumference of the court. There are no stands, no room for cheerleaders (Southie doesn’t have them, anyway) and barely enough room between the baselines and walls for two team benches and a scorer’s table. Spectators stand against the walls and surround the court like sardines. Students arrive first for home games and find the best spots; coaches cram together by the door, wearing jogging suits or sweaters with their team’s emblem. After games they slide up to their target - on Southie, either Roberts, Lewis, or DePina - and pull the “shake-hands/wrap-the-arm-around-the-player/ask-about-life” move. Following a few minutes of stilted conversation, they head into Loughnane’s office for a few more minutes of posturing, stuff like “We think this would be a great situation for Clif,” or, “If Roger can get the 900, we’re all set.”

Yes, all of the paragraphs are that long, and yes, it’s pretty rough around the edges, but Simmons has, as he puts it in his intro, his “heart in the right place.” Give all 15,000 words a read, if your attention span isn’t utterly shredded by video games and blogs and Adderall and what was I talking about again?

Ooh! Tumblr!