The Vertical is no Grantland, but neither is Grantland anymore — and if we Stick to Sports, The Ringer isn’t really anything, in my view. The way I’d see it is, when’s the last time you had a sports conversation driven by Simmons’ work? Maybe it’s just my circle, but for me, the answer is “when I had a debate in the…

At this point, the vast majority of the Bill Simmons in my life comes from Deadspin bitching about Bill Simmons. He’s fallen off the map since Grantland.

“They’ll give you stuff on the government, like geoengineering chemtrails and everything else.

Among the many problems with replay, in every sport (except tennis, where replay is magic CGI insta-science), is that even if it really does take only 2 minutes to complete, that’s about 1:45 longer than the modern attention span will bear.  

Yeahhh that’s a hell of a red flag there.

Somehow, both the final score and that Tyus dunk undersold the real story. The lead was 42 at one point in the third quarter, and the dunk was a huge “fuck you” to LeBron after LeBron sent an early breakaway Tyus layup to hell with a chasedown block.

Not to mention the coaches. As a Timberwolves fan, I’m amazed Thibs doesn’t get told to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up every game. It’s absurd. I wouldn’t mind the league really tightening up who can approach officials (captains and coaches? coaches only?) and when (during timeouts and at the ends of quarters,…

That center-justified text is more damning than any reporting ever could be.

I sometimes wonder what LOST might have been if it had arrived a decade later in the prestige era of tight seasons and finite runs. So many of its issues stemmed from a need to meander its way to an indefinite number of 20-plus episode seasons, rather than driving inexorably toward something badass.

The invisible hand of the free market only applies if there aren’t uppity black people to blame.

As opposed to Doug Collins, Del Harris and Rudy Tomjonavich, who relied on the same three guys to win nada.

Phil was a terrible executive and he may or may not be full of shit. His teams also won 11 titles in 20 years and 70 percent of the games he coached. He was objectively the most successful coach of the modern…

Listen here, Minnesota paid handsomely for that product placement.

Like I said, there are exceptions. Wardcliff is weird and special. The Colony is special. Those just feel like the exception, not the rule. Maybe it’s also that at this point, there aren’t that many of them.

This! They’re boring! Exotics should be some combination of weird (Universal Remote), unique (Icebreaker) and overpowered (Gjally). They should *feel* exotic. Right now, with a few exceptions, they feel bland as heck, and I’m rarely torn on what to equip.

This, this, this. Coaches are so rigid and dumb, it melts my brain. One of Belichick’s greatest strengths is that he reinvents shit on the fly year-to-year, and sometimes week-to-week. We’ve got two good tight ends? That’s the offense. We’ve got four versions of LeGarette Blount and six 5-5 wideouts? That’s the…

I just found the potential of the Infinite Forest to be so much better than its execution. It’s supposed to be a massive simulation of every possible reality. It can be anything you want it to be — any crazy environment, any enemy type, any insane mechanics, any mission you’ve already played with some weird-ass…

But he’s so dangerous and powerful! They said so all those times, often with a Very Serious Inflection.

“He was the most powerful and craziest motherfucker ever. So powerful and crazy we had to expel him from the Vanguard.”

This was *very* vanilla D1 in terms of the depth and writing of the story, down to the good old fallback <Cryptic Adjective> <Flora Noun> construction of the macguffin.

Good luck being impolite enough to say that to our faces.