Mike's Blog

“Grantland,” Bill Simmons’ sports and pop culture website, doesn’t add much that other sports websites provide, and in fact it’s pretentious and unnecessary. Simmons, the Sports Guy of ESPN’s Page 2, is a good sports writer and funny, but way too Boston-centric and when he strays too much into pop culture the site loses its appeal. The writing on the site is nothing special, just a collection of random articles. The plain, white background looks boring. The site gets promoted endlessly on ESPN and that time must be incredibly expensive.  The promos, again, show how hip the site is trying to be. I doubt if Grantland Rice was trying to be cool. He let his writing speak for itself.

I don’t have much reason to read this website, but when I did stumble across an article, it was pretty bad.  I’m not even sure what this article about Chris Mullin was trying to say, but these were my comments on it after it came out:

“This article is ridiculous. You compare Mullin to Nash and J.J. Barea because they are both white. they have nothing in common. The league is so much more athletic now? You make it sound like Mullin played in the 1950s.  The league is not more athletic now than it was in the 80s and 90s, and Mullin would be just as good now as he was then, and possibly better. In the 80s, mostly tall, frail guys controlled the paint? In the 80s, Ewing, Robinson, and Olajuwon came into the league. Centers were much better back then. You cite Andrew Bynum as a shot-blocking brick wall?  Unbelievable.  There are fewer good jump shooters today, which would make Mullin more valuable.  You say his decline at the end of his career was because the game changed! Could it have changed that much in 15 years?  The level of play now is worse than it was in the 80s and 90s. And right next to your article was one on espn.com by Hubie Brown, saying that Artis Gilmore, who played in the NBA in the 80s, was the 2nd strongest center ever. And if Mullin was so unathletic, what about Run TMC? It wasn’t Run TM.”