The Most Important Writer You Might Not Know Anything About
Books, Featured, Sports — By Jordan Green on November 16, 2009 at 12:00 am
Here’s last week’s New York Times bestsellers list. It’s a standard list, for the most part. There’s the Freakonomics guy. There’s two from Malcolm Gladwell. Ted Kennedy is battling it out with Glenn Beck. There’s John Krakauer and Augusten Burroughs and Chuck Klosterman. There are real life heroes, like Sully Sullenberger and Hulk Hogan1. There’s sportswriter-turned-treacle-spewer Mitch Albom. There’s also a book about Queen Elizabeth and another about a forest fire in 1910.
Most incongruous of all, though, is the book at the top of that list. The number one bestselling book in the country right now is The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy, a 736-page book about the history of basketball.
Bill Simmons writes columns for ESPN. He writes about sports, litters his columns with pop culture references. If you have more than a passing interest in sports, you know Bill Simmons, and you probably read almost every column he writes. If you couldn’t give two blinks about sports, you’re probably scratching your head right now, and you probably have no idea who The Sports Guy is, and if you don’t frequent ESPN.com, you can’t be blamed for not knowing his name.
If you don’t know him, though, you’ve been ignoring what may be the most influential writer in America today.
That may seem like hyperbole, but I’m not so sure. If they had one of those blog tag clouds for conversations, it’s very likely my communication with Dan Gibson would have “Bill Simmons” appearing larger than the names “Jesus”, “Bono”, and “Sarah Palin” combined. I’m not proud of it, but those are the odds. I don’t want to speak for others, but I’d be shocked if Simmons didn’t rank as one of the top five influences for a number of Burnside contributors, myself included2. I was reading The Sports Guy’s columns heavily when I first decided I wanted to write for a living. While he’s certainly not the only culprit, I’d posit Bill Simmons helped shaped how we write and read online, both the good and the bad.
And there is some bad. As Will Leitch’s outstanding essay on The Sports Guy points out, Bill Simmons is not without faults. Where his Boston homerdom was once charming and plucky, six major Boston-area sports championships since 2002 have turned his ongoing “excuse me while I remember Bill Buckner and slam my head on my desk” joke insufferable. The Sports Guy cares little for word economy3, and refers to Melrose Place and The Karate Kid far too much. He also claimed Almost Famous was the defining film of the ’00s4 and the only good movie about a fictional rock band. (To which Deadspin’s Drew Magary kindly pointed out, “If you’re talking about rock and roll movies and you can’t remember to cite Spinal Tap, you never deserve to have a valid opinion about movies ever again.”)
It’s also difficult to accept the Regular Joe Sports Fan when Simmons watches NFL at Jimmy Kimmel’s house, hangs out with Matt Damon, and casually mentions a poolside tête-á-tête in Las Vegas with Isiah Thomas and excitable play-by-play man Gus Johnson.5 Maybe I’m just mad he picked the Blazers to fall out of the playoffs this season.
As Leitch pointed out, though, you can’t fault the man for his achievements. He’s a tireless worker who, like every truly great writer, taps into a collective conscience and voices the thoughts of every unabashed sports fan/pop culture nerd. Bill Simmons made it fun and cool to be a sports fan again. When he actively campaigns to become the GM of a pro basketball team, or declares the New Orleans Hornets and Utah Jazz should switch mascot names6, there’s a faint twinge of, “Hey, this might actually happen, and I would love sports even more if it did.” When notoriously-myopic ESPN let Simmons do his thing this past year, the result was the spectacular 30 for 30 series, and Simmons has used his newfound soapbox to cry out for a very novel concept: giving an artist leeway to do what he or she likes.
Anyway, on to the book. For a 736-page tome, The Book of Basketball is a blast to read, and easily refutes the Chicken Little claim that internet writing is destroying our attention spans. While Simmons’ view of the NBA has a decidedly Boston bent (of Simmons’ top 96 players in the history of the game, 22 played in Celtic green), his infectious love of NBA history pops off every page. The Sports Guy is a polarizing figure, and when readers focus on his foibles, you get reviews like this, but you have to be doing something right to draw that level of ire.
Despite the cultural impact of the Sports Guy’s writing, I’m struggling to find a reason why our less sports-enthused readers should check him out. Simmons writing is male-centric, populistic, and has no spiritual bent I’m aware of. I can’t imagine someone like, say, Diane Nienhuis enjoying his mailbag columns. If you’re not currently a Bill Simmons fan, I’m not saying you should be.
But he is out there, and whether you know him or not, if you read on the internet, you’re experiencing the Sports Guy’s Ripple Effect, which, in Sports Guy lingo, means you’re wearing the “Who is Bill Simmons? Face” right now.
- Incidentally, when Sully went back to flying recently, one passenger on his first flight said he felt like he was on the safest flight in the country. Really? I mean, nothing against Sully, who was a complete stud on that water landing, but I think I’d still prefer a pilot who, you know, hadn’t crashed a giant passenger plane. ↩
- Besides myself, I’d guess Dan Gibson, Jonathan Adams, Dylan Peterson, Bryan Allain, and Chad Gibbs. ↩
- High word counts and tangential writing isn’t bad in the hands of skilled wordsmiths like Simmons or David Foster Wallace, but the Sports Guy’s success has spawned countless imitators who think their every vague thought is interesting enough to publish ↩
- How a film about the ’70s could be the defining movie of an entirely different millennium is beyond me. Almost Famous is a good movie, sure, but there’s absolutely no way it’s the best movie of the decade. ↩
- The existential dilemma of being Bill Simmons was brilliantly pointed out by Chuck Klosterman on Simmons’ podcast last summer. ↩
- The latter is a suggestion so obvious that it’s almost painful it hasn’t happened yet, particularly considering Utah is the Beehive State. ↩
13 Comments
I’d buy my husband a copy but unfortunately he’s too busy coaching right now to read it.
His stories about trips to Las Vegas have made me laugh so hard I couldn’t breathe. No one else can finesse a pop culture reference like Simmons. Though I could could do without the run-on sentences sometimes, he’s the only living writer I’ve read that successfully makes wordiness a style. Well, one that I like, anyway.
Great subject, great piece. But you still have to change diapers.
@Steve and Karen:
I look at the timestamp on those comments and think, “I love these two so much.”
And yes, I do have to change diapers, Steve. I have no idea how you did this with any number larger than one. I would’ve hanged myself.
I love reading Simmons. His Boston-centric content drives me nuts sometimes, but he’s a very entertaining read. I won’t be buying the book, because I’m not a basketball fan, but I have read the excerpts on the ESPN.com site, and those snippets were gold, too.
Do you remember the column last year where he described the death of his dog? Very well done.
PS:
Deadspin is wrong: Spinal Tap is way overrated.
Since his football team’s genius coach blew the game last night, I look forward to the way Simmons will dissect it.
Aside: I tried listening to Simmons’ podcasts, and he needs to stick to writing.
Oh, james…
1) There is no way “Spinal Tap” is underrated unless someone calls it the greatest comedy of all-time.
2) I actually love the podcasts, purely dependent on who the guest is. If it’s Jack-O or one of his buddies, I pass. If it’s Klosterman, or Bill Hader, or Patton Oswalt, it’s on.
I guess since I got bored the first 20 minutes and didn’t actually finish watching Spinal Tap, I can’t say it’s good or bad or overrated. I’ll concede that. I’m thinking I must have been sleepy that time I tried to watch it. So i may give it another chance someday. But as far as the part I did watch, i don’t understand the hype.
I’m actually listening to the Sports Guy’s podcast at this very moment. I have a love/hate relationship with Simmons. I love what he has done for sports writing. The fact that people feel free to write about sports as fans, instead of Serious, Unbiased Journalists who enjoy the games like I enjoy lectures on systematic theology.
However, his schtick is getting old. He doesn’t know basketball (or baseball) nearly as well as he thinks he does, simply because one person can’t be an expert on so many different sports. This causes him to make significant factual errors and wildly inaccurate predictions. Then next season (or game) he is still predicting and acting like anyone who disagrees with him is an idiot.
I haven’t read The Book of Basketball yet, but I will when I return to the US. Not so much for his insights regarding my favorite sport as for the entertainment value that he does consistently provide.
totally agree with all of this, and while simmons’ stuff can get a little old after a while, i’d been waiting for something like that leitch defense because, even if he deserves the criticism sometimes, the entire sports blogosphere pretty much owes its existence to simmons. plus leitch is just a good writer.
and jordan, i think i’ve gotta agree with drew in his latest mailbag. syndicating his columns here would probably be a bad idea.
Nice catch, Josh. Though I’m probably the only person on earth who uses the words “Christian webmagazine”.
My question for Drew actually had to do with using the waiver wire as a weapon on fantasy football, but I have considered asking him if we could edit some of his pieces for Burnside…his piece on Pixar gave me the idea. I think Drew, like the Sports Guy, is outstanding at tapping into collective conscience. When he’s not writing about poop, that is. Actually, even then…
http://deadspin.com/5313572/dear-pixar-stop-making-me-cry-like-a-bitch
Jordan, although that deadspin thing was fun to read, it was wrong. Up was greatness, and a large reason was the very thing he railed against: the entire marriage, through infertility and death, without a word of dialog. What this guy sees as manipulative button-pushing, I see as genius story-telling.
Well, to Drew’s defense, I have a feeling he really did enjoy it…his writing character is sort of curmudgeonly.
I just saw “Up” the other day and was absolutely blown away. I don’t think I’ve seen a movie that good, animation or no, in almost a decade. Maybe “No Country” or “There Will Be Blood”. Just a spectacular story.
Good to know we agree on something
I have said (and blogged) that Up is the best movie I have seen this year, and I have seen plenty. Thing is, it works as a kid’s movie just fine, but is also a great date movie for married folks.