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Grantland

  • j_crazy
    Anyone read it? I've been checking it out with regularity and I gotta say, I like it.

    Today they are breaking down the best highlight videos from the NBA draft and it's glorious.

    heres my favorite line so far:

    2:33- That's a Jan Vesely assist: charge up the lane, cross over the Estonian in the way, pass the ball off to your inferior teammate, let him miss the lay-up, and then throw that shit down for him. That's the ultimate teammate — set up your teammate and then pick him up when he fails.



    also, the enitre breakdown of Jimmer's video is amazing:

    This video was created and uploaded by someone who calls himself nuk3you. (I suppose nuk3you could be a she, but I don't think anyone, including the he/she grammar police, wants that to be true. So, for the purposes of this discussion, let's just refer to this nuk3you as a male.) A little internet research reveals that nuk3you also goes by the name "Li'l Ochocinco." I don't know what any of this means, but I did figure out that this nuk3you has made a ridiculous number of YouTube videos. Each one uses the same shadowed Impact font, a hip-hop song recorded between 1999 and 2008 and a lot of quick cut-scenes.

    A man so prolific deserves to be reviewed. So, without further ado, our review of nuk3you's Jimmer video.

    0:01- NUK3YOU!!!

    Good branding. Especially good use of the red wavy background that looks cooler when you're stoned. Playing to his core audience.

    0:04- As a sad piano tinkles its sad tune, Jimmer walks down the tunnel from the light into the darkness. It's a little predictable, but the scene has been set: Jimmer has to walk through hell, vanquish the demons of the NBA and spread his awesome seed before he gets to head back up to heaven with Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

    0:15-0:18- Weird pervy shot of Jimmer studying, listening to music, and going to class. Clearly taken on a cell phone. WTF? I thought he was walking down into hell? Why does it suddenly feel like pregnant Bristol Palin is about to show up naked and serve Jimmer with papers?

    0:31- OH SHIT, 8 MILE!!! JIMMENEM!!!

    0:52- "His palms are sweaty," means that B. Rabbit is nervous, not that he's hustling and therefore sweating. I don't think this quite works.

    0:56- interesting timing of "vomit on his sweater" and footage of Jimmer going crashing right into an old woman's undercarriage. I agree. That's pretty vomitus for Jimmer. He only pulls top-shelf.

    1:02- "Drop Bombs" goes by without a 40-foot jumper? I mean, yeah, it's obvious, but sometimes you gotta throw your audience a bone. That's what Fast 5 was all about.

    1:08- That might have been the slowest cross-over dribble in YouTube history.

    1:11- WHAT'S UP TAERNARI. That's my dude right there.

    2:06- MAKE ME KING! Beast roar. Slow-motion cut sequence. Good work, nuk3you.

    2:19- Missed opportunity with "These hos are all on him." We should be watching Jimmer deny coitus to hundreds of coeds. Politely, of course. But firmly.

    2:26-3:26- This is like when you had your old Super 8 camcorder and it had four effects and your sister had ADD so whenever she shot a video, she would flip manically through the settings. Which was a problem because you couldn't watch the stupid video of your cousin's high school graduation without having an epileptic seizure because the screen kept flipping from normal to black-and-white to sepia to pixilated and then back to normal.

    3:37- Maybe it's just me, but when Eminem goes, "There's no Mekhi Phifer," it would've been nice for nuk3you to cut to a still of Mekhi Phifer. Just a suggestion.

    The rest of the video is all the same. Lots of slow cross-overs and 3-pointers.

    5:10- Jimmer calls that look the "Slip-n-Slide." But what is he trying to tell us with it?
  • Iliketurtles
    Yeah I love it. Bill Simmons is awesome. And the other writers are pretty good too.
  • ptown_trojans_1
    The piece on the Stanley Cup the last week or so was great:
    http://espn.go.com/espn/grantland/story/_/id/6658200/view/full/lord-stanley-grail
  • jordo212000
    I always read the Simmons stuff, and it's good to see him writing more frequently. I think he has had more columns in the past 2 weeks than he had over the entire last 6 months.

    If I was in college still I would probably love Grantland, but I just dont have time to read it as much as I would like. From what I have seen it is solid. Also like the fact that it isn't PC
  • Heretic
    Yeah, it's great to see Simmons motivated and writing a lot more.

    From the draft diary:
    The Valanciunas highlights were pretty uninspiring (semicontested layups and tip-ins), but his interview made up for it: Mark Jones asked him why he thought his game was like Chris Bosh's game, then Valanciunas stammered, "I don't know … I have … not so strong body." High comedy. Poor Bosh can't even make it through a draft that doesn't involve him getting insulted.
    Fraschilla on Biyombo: "The problem … he cannot score. You cannot run any plays for him." Big laugh from the room on that one. Don't pass him the ball! Don't even think about it! NO! NO PASS TO BIYOMBO! Later, Fraschilla adds, "High risk, high reward … but he is an unbelievable athlete for a guy who's allegedly 18 years old." Even Fran can't resist bringing up the age rumor. I think Fran just made history: In the span of a minute, he raved about a prospect and destroyed him at the same time.
    Spike on the pick: "I believe in Donnie Walsh, so that's his pick, we're gonna go with it, we have no choice." Only the Knicks can make their fans sound like hostages.
    With Chicago picking at no. 28, Stu jokes to the other guys, "There's no chance that the Bulls use that pick and select a certain NBA owner that owns a team in Charlotte, right?" For whatever reason, that's greeted with dead silence. Then Stu says, "That, that can't happen?" More silence. And then, "We don't think Michael Jordan can come back?" More silence. It's like everyone just wants to go home.
  • jordo212000
    The funny thing is, as I was watching the draft I was able to pick out most of what simmons was going to write about
  • like_that
    I used to read Simmons all the time, now I typically just stick to his mail bag columns.
  • jordo212000
    like_that;813547 wrote:I used to read Simmons all the time, now I typically just stick to his mail bag columns.

    That means you probably don't read him any more. Mailbags are few and far between these days

    Love Simmons but the quality of his columns/writing has gone down considerably over the past year.
  • like_that
    jordo212000;813554 wrote:That means you probably don't read him any more. Mailbags are few and far between these days

    Love Simmons but the quality of his columns/writing has gone down considerably over the past year.

    That's exactly what it means. I will read a column here and there but it's not as entertaining as it used to be.

    I remember when he was known as the Boston sports guy. His columns at that time were something new and not what most readers were accustomed to.
  • 2kool4skool
    It's extremely hit and miss. Half of it is either hilarious/fascinating, the other half is pretentious. They seem to have an idea that sports writers are the most interesting people, and should be the focus of a given article.

    Simmons has definitely gone down hill recently, I think a big part of that is just aging. At some point, it's no longer funny for a middle aged father of two with tens of millions of dollars to write from the young fan's/outsider/rebel perspective, which is mostly what his early writing was. He still hits a home run occasionally though.

    Klosterman, as usual, is bringing it. Hopefully they get a weekly Klosterman/Simmons debate podcast going. Those BS reports were always entertaining, even though you could tell Chuck was holding himself back to keep on Simmons' level at times.