Bill Simmons: NBA GM

Bill Simmons is a popular sports writer for ESPN. He is one of the most widely-read sports writers out there today. He is coming out with a new 700-page NBA book that he spent the last couple years to write. For those not familiar with his work, his columns are known to be really long and wordy. He makes popular and obscure pop-culture references in his writing, i.e. Chuck Klosterman.

Simmons has recently campaigned to become the new general manager of the Minnesota Timberwolves. He did not get the position, but stands by his statement that he would be good for an NBA team. Just by hiring a guy like himself, the team could garner attention and become a national news story. The public relations and attendance boost that the team would obtain by him would be worth the risk.

Here are some things that would happen if a team took a chance and hired Bill Simmons, “The Sports Guy,” as their general manager:

• He will try to assume all the possible expiring contracts as possible. He will start Year 2 of his contract with a payroll of 1 million dollars. He will eventually get a vote for the Basketball Hall of Fame, in which he will write-in a vote for “Raef LaFrentz’s expiring contract.”
• He will sign Marko Jaric to a contract in hopes to spending many hours interviewing him. He wants to find out how a guy like Marko Jaric can get a girl like Adriana Lima. He hopes to write a 700-page book that will sell millions of copies to virgins across the world.
• Bill Simmons will demand that the home games that he plays against the Oklahoma City Thunder, must be played in Seattle. He will lose this battle and his team must forfeit one or two games a season, depending on which conference his team plays in.
• His team will be the first NBA team with advertisements on their jerseys. Subway will place a logo on the jersey of his team.  He takes the “Subway Fresh Take Hotline” advertising way too far. He demands that chicken teriyaki foot-longs must be available on the sideline and given away like Gatorade.
• The program for each game is 200-pages long and each contains a Mailbag segment in which he compares each player to an 80’s movie icon. A few players will be upset with Simmons when he compares players to “Molly Ringwald” and “Duckie.”
• He will force his coach to play the movie “Teen Wolf” after every loss. He hopes that they will learn a few of Michael J. Fox’s defensive skills. He also hires a team of scouts to scour the country in hopes of finding a wolf-man hybrid.
• Simmons will hire T.J. Lavin as an assistant coach. Lavin, the host of “Real World/Road Rules Challenge,” is a BMX athlete and does not have a great basketball mind. His duties will just be to tell the players that “They killed it out there.” Simmons hopes this will boost the morale of the team.
• He will attempt to convince Patrick Ewing to come out of retirement and sign with his team. Simmons will hope that the “Ewing Effect” will help his team. The “Ewing Effect” is when a long-term player, with no championships,  gets injured and the media writes the team off as a non-contender. The team will then play inspired ball and play better.  Patrick Ewing will personally seek a restraining order against Simmons.  He will focus on trying to sign Reggie Miller or Tracy McGrady to fill that role.
• During the NBA Draft, his team’s war room consists of Jack-O, House, Cousin Sal, and Jacoby. They have already made their minds up on who they are going to pick, so they turn the room into a screening room in which they watch old “Real World” episodes. They invite C.T. from “Real World: Paris,” but he trashes the room and they lose their deposit.  In case if you’re wondering who his first pick will be, it will be a player from Holy Cross. He hopes that if the college has a first round pick, it will boost recruiting for the school.
• Simmons will move to Memphis, TN in order to streamline contact between him and Memphis Grizzlies’ GM, Chris Wallace. Wallace famously traded away Pau Gasol for a 1980 Toyota Tercel and Gasol’s brother, Marc, in 2007. Simmons believes that moving there will help him land Rudy Gay for a bag of magical beans.

• When his team faces the Clippers, he will give his fans a refund. You can’t charge if your team isn’t actually playing a real NBA team.  This infuriates Mike Dunleavy, so he drives his 1930 Studebaker to Simmons’s house. He invites Simmons to a “speakeasy” so they can discuss their differences “on the level.” Simmons will reject the invitation and Dunleavy will send a telegraph to the local press in disgust.

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