sloppy and stupid: Bill Simmons needs an editor

Far be it from me to suggest that ESPN front-dude Bill Simmons is far beyond driven the vagaries of the editorial process, but his latest cut-&-paste from his Twitter feed, supplemented with occasional bits that by now must just be Word macros

Uh-oh, I think I just exploded the Blazers Edge message board.

is even more error-ridden & unreadable than usual. Sure, it's not quite as bad as his 10,000 words on middle-aged dudes riding low in Vegas, but it's a rough, rough read.

The lede is his patented semi-controversial move that fails for me b/c it's just plain too easy to shrug and say "no, not really".

We'll remember this as The Best NBA Regular Season Ever.

But, then, maybe 150 words later, he's already given up on his hook (because it was stupid?):

It feels like one of those seasons like 2007 when there just wasn't a most valuable player, so we had to talk ourselves into someone. ... I hate those seasons.

And then we're back to standard-issue recycling and lazy, lazy writing choices.

a USSR-like villain in the MoHeatos

I am, apparently, the only person who finds Rocky IV references played out.

Why not open his arena for Miami playoff games and have "Miami Hate" Viewing parties?

Sure, why not? Why not start capitalizing Viewing?

they evolved into a semi-juggernaut

Semi-juggernaut. Possibly Peter King is ghosting Simmons now? Anyway a semi-juggernaut is what you use to assault a quasi-ziggurat.

and the other owner said, "Screw the money, trade me your best player for a second-round pick, we'd have this exchange:

Is there a reason there's no closing quote here? I had to read this twice to parse it and believe me, I don't want to read Simmons columns twice.

Owner: What do you mean? You have to have someone good."

Well, at least there's no opening quote here. Guess it all evens out.

Simmons is underrated as a stylist.

But it's basketball: a sport in which five guys have to mesh the right way (a process that often defies statistics), and also, they have to collectively give a crap about the sport and each other.

Yup. It's official: starting a sentence with a conjunction; introducing a dependent clause with a colon; then introducing a new independent clause with another conjunction, which contains a pronominal reference to something in the dependent clause--Bill Simmons is either parodying Peter King or being ghostwritten by the man. And I concluded that before reading the couple hundred words about fantasy baseball--Bill Simmons on the NBA: where fantasy baseball happens.

They need to expand the NBA Awards Process beyond MVP, Rookie of the Year, etc. and hand out additional awards.

"They" need to expand the ESPN copy editing Process. Christ. I would have been fired from my entry-level copywriting gig if I turned in copy like this.

The Mokeski: Given annually to the league's best white American player.

You know...if I had to name an NBA award after a great white American player...from the 80s...I might not go straight for Mokeski. None of the other award names are jokes--Erving for most exciting player, Petrovic for best Euro--so why go for a punchline on one and only one of these? Christ, it's not even that good a punchline.

Some end-of-sentence punctuation choices by your man, Bill Simmons:

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!!!

Underrated as a stylist.

And my favorite bit of rhetoric ever:

We're headed towards a lockout because NBA "character actors" should be paid like what they are -- character actors -- and because the dopey owners need to be saved from themselves.

Yes, billionaires must be saved from themselves. Good point.

In Hollywood, you don't pay "character actors" like Mike Miller or Travis Outlaw $30-35 million to appear in your next five movies. Why? Because it's bad business!!!

Right. Hollywood: where good business practices reign o'er all. Why is this guy still working?

--Fat, annoyed

(I don't have the energy to figure out the capitalization after a colon inconsistency in this column. Here's just one inconsistency, for the record.)

I have an idea to save the Warriors: You know how his Knicks experience exposed Mike D'Antoni as the Mike Martz of the NFL?
Anyway, I stand by my stance when the 'Melo trade happened: you always trade coins for paper in the NBA.