Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [385]
Walsh e-mailed me pretty early on. First of all, this is terrible because I love Walsh, but I kept the book away from him as long as I could. And he kept asking to see it and I’d say, “It’s not ready yet. It’s not ready yet.” And then I handed it in and then I e-mailed him and said, “All right, the book’s ready.” But they had already started the process so he couldn’t do anything to it. I know he’s Catholic and he was very concerned about the F-bomb and stuff like that. And he did talk me into taking out some of the F-bombs and a couple other small things. I had a nice Chris Berman joke, which—God forbid he’s ever discussed. But I had a lot of other stuff in there. I made fun of Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith and Nancy Lieberman and all the announcers and all that. It’s all in good fun. It’s really hard to write a definitive book about basketball without mentioning ESPN, since we’ve been involved with the NBA for thirty years. Not busting the balls of some of our people—like I was doing with CBS and TNT—would have been unfair.
MALCOLM GLADWELL, Author:
I’ve been reading Simmons for years, and then he mentioned me once, so I e-mailed him to thank him. He suggested we do a podcast together, but I don’t even own an iPod. I’ve never listened to a podcast in my life. I didn’t want to do something that I had no familiarity with, and I don’t think I’m as good speaking spontaneously as I am when I can think about things and then write, so I just thought it played to my strengths better to do the column. And it was so much fun, because I rarely get the chance to write about sports even though I’m a massive sports fan. Bill is the perfect foil. He’s an infinite source of funny things, cool observations, and he’s indefatigable too; he could write forever. So you could bounce things off him forever. It was an incredibly fun writing exercise.
The attention-to-work ratio for those columns I did with Bill was astonishing. I can’t tell you the number of people who have come up to me and said, “I love that thing you did with Simmons.” I’ve never since done a public appearance where some portion of the audience didn’t mention those columns. It’s absolutely astonishing feedback. I honestly don’t believe anyone has a following like Bill Simmons has. He has attracted this insanely loyal fan base. It’s not just that he has a zillion readers, because there are lots of writers with a zillion readers; it’s that they are so unbelievably involved and engaged and dialed in to what he’s doing.
BILL SIMMONS:
I need to figure out a way that I can operate in my own sphere and not deal with Bristol as much. Nothing against Bristol, but I do worry that it becomes a little cultish after a while. You go there and there’s ESPN everywhere. At the cafeteria, there’s Mike and Mike getting a sandwich and there’s Matthew Berry and, hey, there’s Mark Schlereth. It’s really hard to think out of the box when you’re trapped in that box the whole time. I think that’s one of the reasons PTI succeeds—it’s in Washington, it’s out of the box, they leave it alone. I am not afraid to leave. If it happens, I will kill myself trying to haunt them somewhere else.
ADAM SCHEFTER, Reporter:
I’ll tell you a true story that speaks to how different a day and age we’re living in right now. I remember back in Denver, where Trevor Price was a Pro Bowl defensive lineman, and he didn’t show up for training camp that year. There was a team meeting at 7:00, and I got to work at 8:00 and he still wasn’t there. I made some calls, worked the story, and filed it with