If I had to make a rough estimate, I would say that about 98 percent of all aspiring writers consider themselves experts in those two subjects. Hell, both those topics are in the flag of this blog.
Every writer tries to blend both of them and Bill Simmons has been the best at that, being the biggest attraction at ESPN.com for the past decade.
Wednesday, Simmons began his quest for a utopian website blending sports and pop culture with Grantland.com.
I have been an avid reader of Simmons for years, loving his style which so many unknowingly (including myself) and knowingly have tried to copy and failed miserably at.
I am not ready to neither call this the greatest thing since the internet itself nor condemn it as an abortion worse than “Two Girls, One Cup.” It has only been one day.
The site features what I love and what drives me up the wall about Simmons.
He had a great piece aboutLeBron James and the disappearing act he seems to pull when things get really tough.
The piece is passionate, well thought out, well researched and comes from a place of knowledge of the game, even though the footnotes seem to be included just so he can have footnotes, apparently. Nobody can doubt that Bill Simmons is one of the most passionate and knowledgeable basketball fans out there.
Then there is this, the piecethat introduces Grantland that…really fails to introduce Grantland. It fails to mention why he needed to start this site, other than it’s the next phase in his career. It is what I really have come to dislike about Simmons.
He says he wants to showcase up and coming writers? Is that it? Is that really worth all the hype or is it just the ability to swear if he wants to and to be able to say that he’s out from under ESPN’s “banner,” even though ESPN owns the site and picked a name for the site that Simmons has admitted he doesn’t really like.
The main theme of the piece is how Jimmy Kimmell felt leading up to the launch of “Jimmy Kimmell Live” and how that they were setting out to be a different kind of late-night talk show. While the theme correlates obviously with how Simmons hopes to be different with Grantland, it mostly comes off as another “look at all the famous people I hang out with” piece that have peppered his columns since he moved to Los Angeles in 2002 (noting that he was on a party bus with Kimmell the weekend of his premiere show, with “only Jimmy’s inner circle invited.”)
The biggest piece of advice any professional writer will give is to just be yourself and Simmons needs to heed that. What I fear most is that Simmons feels he needs to move on from his style of writing really funny columns and turn into an essayist. Simmons is a tremendous columnist and hopefully will not forget that and leave the essays to Chuck Klosterman.
Speaking of Klosterman and the rest of Grantland, I feel the rest of the pieces were a hit. As a huge Klosterman fan and somebody who had the privilege of interviewing him once, his piece on a junior college basketball game in North Dakota in 1988 is why Grantland excites me.
Klosterman tells a marvelous story about how a basketball team from a small junior college in North Dakota won a game that it finished with only three players on the court. Klosterman tells the story so the reader can see it play out as he describes and makes you feel as if you now have first-hand knowledge of the game, even as he jokingly questions if he actually saw the game and players from the game fail to remember most details that do not involve their own stat line.
Those are the types of piece that excite me about Grantland, including a really enjoyable piece abouthow HBO likes to recycle supporting actors in their original series' by Andy Greenwald. Pieces that won’t be the same "feel good" rehash from the Rick Reily’s of the world.
While the jury is still out, day one at Grantland was a good day at the office for all those involved.
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