See Bill, here's the pulse. And this is your finger, far away from the pulse, jammed straight up your ass.
A good thing to remember about Simmons, and he’s smart for doing it honestly because everyone has memento level memory these days, is he takes the stance of being on the side of whatever happened that week while putting everyone else on the other side of that argument. Whatever the subject. It’s pretty smart in the age of content imo.
The Fisburne-Jackson story is amazing. QT’s got quite a few good stories randomly dropped in this one.
Shocking that management doesn’t want their staffs input on a $200m deal these people are fucking delusional
was pleasantly surprised that after shouting "Fake news!" about the crappy NBA ratings to Klosterman however many months ago, Bill has finally come around on the problems facing the league, feel like him and Ryen pretty much nailed the main reasons
They basically said that fans are tired of watching a bunch of teams chuck up 3s all season. Compared it to the old Joe Flacco offense where he just threw it up and hoped for pass interference.
LeBron - very polarizing to say the least, history of collusion AD - forced his way out of a small market, colluded with LeBron Kawhi - POS with shady family, quit on the Spurs, colluded with PG PG - POS, forced his way out of a small market, ended up on another small market and pledged his loyalty only to collude with another player and bail Harden - singlehandedly ruining the way basketball is played Westbrook - overly surly demeanor with the media Durant - shameless ring chaser, incredibly thin skinned Kyrie - flat earther, team chemistry ruiner Embiid - stupid Twitter antics and trash talker that doesn't back it up Trae Young - incredibly annoying TMB fanbase as much as NBA die-hards like to pretend it's okay to just root for players instead of teams, I think deep down people want to root for franchises and when superstars bounce around to 3 or 4 teams now it diminishes everything. Nobody in the NFL media is speculating on where Lamar Jackson or Patrick Mahomes will be playing in a few seasons, it's basically unfathomable to think they'll ever be in a different uniform barring major injury. Meanwhile we already have Giannis speculation and unfortunately if you're a Bucks fan, can you really brush it off easily given what we've seen from the sport?
the aesthetics argument seems derived from the Arnovitz points which I actually agree with more than the rest
and to add to that another think I believe arnovitz has mentioned is that it’s also that every team is playing the exact same way.
probably my favorite fix i've heard is don't angle the 3pt line to wrap all the way to the corner creating a short shot and just let the arc go out of bounds naturally breaks the kind of solving of NBA offense coaches have done
Kirk Goldsberry already solved everything (in his book with excerpts published last year) and his ideas are genius: https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/26633540/the-nba-obsessed-3s-let-fix-thing 1. Custom lines (like baseball) 2. Move the line so players shoot 33% 3. Fix the corner 3 4. Allow goaltending on 3s I personally think by doing just #3, basketball would still be homogeneous.
I don't think fans would stomach custom lines Fixing the corner 3 and moving the overall line back I could see. Goaltending is dumb.
I think goldsberry has really interesting ideas, the goal tending one I just can’t get behind though.
If you went like 12 foot rim i would be ok with the goal tending rule. And i don't think 12 foot rim is a good idea
Their more valid argument they eventually came to is that the rockets (not a great watch for the hayterds), the pels (hurt Zion), and the Warriors are in in like 50% of all national televised games.
This is true but ratings have trended down the last couple of years, not just this year. I do think those have impacted this year for sure though.
I love the NBA, but it is hard to get excited about watching a regular season game when there’s a reasonable expectation that a star player on either team could potentially be sitting out. If we were discussing radical proposals, I’d be for contracting 4-6 teams and shortening the schedule 15’ish games (or whatever the amount would get you to bet neutral revenue after contraction). I also like the idea of in season tournaments as well but would like to see a tangible benefit from them, increase lottery odds or give a team outside of the lottery some ping pong balls if they win the tournament, or offer additional cap space, or something like they would be kind of cool.
I think even with all of the fixes that have been discussed it wouldn’t cause any people i know who are ambivalent about the nba now to turn into fans.
I don't disagree with the idea of an in-season tournament, but if I'm a current player why would I give a shit about my team getting increased lottery ping pong balls?
You don’t, hopefully you care about opportunities at increased revenue and tv money that it could potentially generate though.
i'm not fully versed on what ringer union people were demanding but i think they should be getting health insurance. having said that, i think their "demands" here are a bit out of line. are they really expecting simmons or any of the ringer leadership to comment on the rumor of a sale? i don't even think they can. even their statement is illogical. "It’s been five days since news broke that Spotify may purchase The Ringer." it's not breaking news if something may happen. anyways, no GK. i truly hope ringer writers get a good deal out of everything because i enjoy reading good pieces (and wish ringer was more written-word focused... miss mailbags and longforms like grantland). but i don't think it's inappropriate for simmons and co. to not say anything here.
For real read about co determination and it's positive impact around the globe. Workers should be involved.
They probably entered into an NDA so the bloggers will have to wait a little while. I can’t imagine any company ever who was discussing a $200m buyout with people making $50k a year it sounds like the podcast network is worth hundreds of millions and the blog is worth $0
And if the bloggers and editors who make the company negative money all vote no buyout then Simmons is supposed to forfeit $100 million?
I feel very behind on this story, or is it pretty much what meets the eye? - ringer staff formed a union last year (or the year before) - twitter announcement Spotify may purchase the ringer—turns out this hasn’t been discussed with ringer union So now people are shitting on Bill and the other founders for not consulting the union.
Yep pretty much to anyone with half a brain it was obvious that the union would end up with the podcasts forming their own company or being bought out and all of the writers and editors being unemployed
Ok gotcha. Yeah I didn’t give any thought to the ringer union stuff. I guess I find it interesting if not unsurprising that the podcasts are worth so much more. It’s easier to consume audio content compared to written articles, and the ringer doesn’t exactly have award winning journalists.
I wonder whether there’s a wall between the podcasts and blog in terms of the writers getting paid for the sale of the podcasts? I guess I’d be sort of surprised if all the writers that came on got no equity at all, since the THe Ringer is ostensibly a startup.
I would be stunned if any of the bloggers have any equity. I think he brought like 4-6 people from grant land who helped him and they surely do
I have no clue how many ringer employees there are, but my experience and assumption is most early employees get equity. Then again, I don’t know anyone who went to a media startup as a blogger.
I think all the RingerUnion people should walk out. No idea how they will survive without them.... This is so naive: