I mean this is when Bill gets to his most Colin Cowherd-iast. Dude loves to pick a dumb hill to die on and ride it out.

He will correct himself in like week 3 and act like no one could have seen the Heat being a top 6 team, like that is some fucking insane take.

Yea I think he was trying to save face for bill.

“Like you’re obviously not that much of an idiot and are just trying to reverse jinx them” sort of way

I mean every Celtics fan has Heat trauma at this point

Simmons is obviously a famous homer but we underrate to what extent.

If this exact same roster was on the Celtics he would never be asking who’s defending. He’d be strictly talking about how this would be a top 3 D in the league

Either that or he’s genuinely an idiot. Even casually following the sport would let you know the heat would at minimum be good defensively

Bill hates the heat because they have given the Celtics a ton of trouble in the post season

Spo making solid defensive five with past rosters and with giannis playing free safety his defense is questionable. Maybe im high on the Heat because Giannis was tier1 with Luka, Jokic and Shai but played for the Bucks the last 3 seasons, last year only before injury but getting 30 at 60%fg is nuts, but i see them getting home court if they dont load manage too much.

He talked plenty about the offense. The perimeter D is a legit question mark too.

Bill has a thing for wing defenders, he is a little stuck in the 90’s and 2000’s where a team needed a guys to guard prolific iso wing scorers.

I actually don’t think he is wrong here though.  They are going to struggle with wing defense a little more than people realize

It will be good at the beginning while Giannis gives a shit and tries to impress a new city and franchise, but once he goes back to being average they will have a hard time guarding any second side action or quality wings.

They had the second highest PPG, but that’s about it. In every other offensive rating metric, they were middle of the pack

I don’t think people are questioning if they have good offensive talent, it’s more the fit with Giannis. Do they have enough shooting the space the floor?

who can reliably iso and create their own 3 point shot if the Heat need a 3 to win or tie a game

i will say our approach to these types of games have usually been to set up a play to get the shot we need. frankly we lost a lot of situations like this when jimmy would iso to try to get those shot

i do wanna point out that bam has multiple self created gamewinners for wat its worth lol

For shooting, it seems like they expect Bam to keep increasing his 3pt volume. He went from never taking more than 15 3pa in a season for his first six seasons to taking 42 in ‘24, 221 in ‘25, to 400 attempts last season.

They’ll probably mix and match Klay Thompson, Tim Hardaway Jr, and Bobby Portis into their rotation depending on who’s hot and who’s cold. But Bam is the one guy they can’t afford to take out for too long. Whether he can become a consistent 3pt threat is going to be the real question they need an answer for.

Lowe is for analysis and Bill is for entertainment. #DrakeMaybe

He’s good at sounding like he knows what he’s talking about but it’s very surface level analysis. His guests mostly fill in the blanks.

This has been true for years. I still listen bc he can be entertaining, plus as much as he sucks at analysis it does seem like he watches as many games as he can so its not like his takes are coming in completely blind.

Man you haven’t heard the stupid shit my uncle says

Bill is no Lowe but he’s not uncle tier

He’s great when he’s talking about NBA history but current day you can tell he only watches certain teams

This applies doubly to his football takes which come straight out of his nether regions.

Late to the convo, but since I don’t see it: the thing Simmons actually does well, imo, is he has just a fucking lot of knowledge of the history of the league and good recall for it. Not many people will make a comp to like “Oh, well that did work in the 70s for the Bullets chip”, but he will. I feel like whenever I’ve tuned into his pods I haven’t gotten as much out of them as some others, but every now and then he’d have a cool gem like that. The place he served best with his knowledge was the book of basketball imo, I didn’t agree with everything he was saying but you’d get a lot more insight about stuff than a cursory look on basketball-reference would get you

If people are disappointed that Bill isn’t giving insightful analysis, using analytics, or speaking in X’s and O’s then that’s on them at this point.

Simmons criticism is tiring. He’s been around for decades now, we all know who he is. Still the best at what he does for NBA

But that’s what is sad, Bill used to have really goods take, it’s half the reason we are all here. Now it is completely through a Celtics lens way more so. But hey I guess we grow up and don’t have as much time.

The irony of Simmons hate is most redditors offer about the same level of analysis.

i’m sad young people didn’t get to read him before. his Page 2 articles were peak sports journalism. then you’d always known he isn’t an insights guy

Agreed. I enjoy probably around 40% of what Simmons says, chalk another 30% up to bias or hyperbole (notice how he shoehorns Tatum into the conversation), and the last 30% is just bullshit that would irk me if I let it.

He’s just your uncle after all few drinks who you would sometimes enjoy shooting the shit with. By most accounts he’s a smart dude who certainly knows the history of the sport. By the remaining accounts he’s just kind of saying shit.

He’s the classic uncle or dad’s friend etc that knows the entire 1975 roster of his favorite team by heart but judges everything off vibes about “grit” or “wanting it”

Classic name lister behavior.

Yes that very thing is his brand. He initially gained fame by being different from other sports journalists in that he was very much biased and opinionated in his blogs. His podcasts are supposed to sound like talking sports with your uncle

Entertaining if you are young. I stopped listening to this guy in my 20s. He is biased and surrounds himself with yes men.

He has had decades long beef with the Heat, starting with The Decision

i mean boston and miami are pretty heated rivals so that would be my guess but it doesn’t excuse him being a moron about it

He’s been a heat hater for a long time lol. Which he has admitted to many times. No one should take anything he says about them seriously. He is also just trying to cope since Celts didnt get Giannis and the heat did.

Simons has long been a Miami hater

You sound just as dumb as him talking about Tatum like he’s not a consensus top 10 player

Tatum is not unguardable anymore (if he ever was). He’s probably far from any East team’s first concern. Bill throws his name out like he’s prime Lebron or Kobe lol.

Knicks, Pistons, Celtics, Cavs, 76ers, Raptors

Which of these teams is Miami overtaking?

https://youtu.be/u1lAJrtguHQ?is=NCtObT8HFhiFj1Kk

lmfao 🤣

Clearly is a pretty hot take…

If we are placing odds on I don’t know if I’d go over a 60% chance they’re 6th or higher and I think that’s a measured take without seeing this team play a game.

I think if you love Giannis it’s clearly, if you’re closer to neutral there’s enough on paper to argue it’s not a given. That said if you’re measured about the Pacers you’re not asserting them into a top 6 team based on the changing tide of the offseason. There’s a lot of variables and a lot of people fighting for those top 6 that are all damn well good enough to make it a dog fight from 4-8 in the East. Cavs, Celtics, Pacers, Raptors, Magic, Pistons, 76ers, Knicks and Heat are all likely fighting for the top 6 - it’ll come down to availability and I’m not confident they’ll gut it out with Giannis missing usually 19-20 games. My gut is Cavs drop Magic drop but if Giannis misses 20, I don’t see the team winning more than 5-7 games so they need to be locked in from game 1 to buffer that

Heat can easily drop out of the top 6. Teams are gonna pack the paint against them and they lack shooting and ball handling.

Matchup problems for the Heat that are deeper and will likely have more wins.

Knicks

Cavs,

Pistons,

Very good East teams that are more complete and could beat them in the standings with injury luck

Raptors,

Philly,

Pacers

Celtics

Shit, If the Magic figure out how to play offense, those Florida matchups are gonna be a blood bath.

Looking at the rosters I’m tempted to take the field. Eric Spolstra has his work cut out for him.

He spent the past like 5 years talking about how he’s afraid of the zombie Heat. So if anything I would say he’s given them more credit than most over recent history.

Fuck it I’m a Celtics glazer and I give teams credit where it’s due. Heat don’t have Jimmy anymore so I’m chillin. They have really good defensive personnel.

Who’s guarding Derrick White?/s

Spacing, shooting, and creation on offense in general lol. If Spo has this team operating at a top 10 offense, he’s the GOAT.

He’s anti anything Heat, Sixers, and Lakers related

Would be no issue, he’d just be writing Could Jesus Christ Defend Jayson Tatum?

You should see his NFL takes. They’re absolutely horrible

And they have Spo coaching them. Not Glenn…

You scored a lot of PPG due to playing by far the highest pace in the league, but were only 13th in offensive rating. The thing about scoring in the 90s may not be true, but it suffers from the same shortcoming of thinking in terms of PPG rather than offensive rating.

Tatum. He’ll guard both at the same time. Achilles surgery is crazy these days.

Tatum obviously.

Paul George, sometimes.

Tatum and Mitchell Robinson will be a decent duo for that. These teams will each match up fairly well defensively

Nobody. He always rails them. It takes an all time random Al Horford game for the Celtics to limit Giannis at all.

Tatum, pg, Queta, Robinson, hugo. Celtics defense about to be top 3 in the league

Pritchard probably not going to have a good time considering Davion will be guarding him

“Objectively true”

I hope this is a parody of that tweet ds Elon for “speaking street”

It is Bill Simmons. It always comes back to the Celtics.

r/whoosh

I’m sure you guys said the exact same thing about the 76ers.

Ehh, he was probably one of our most consistent guys last year throughout. Ya kinda know what you’re getting. But he’s still good enough a defender.

And Tatum tore his achilles. So it’s about even

Which makes him a fuckin loser*

He hired Zach at grantland originally before he got absorbed into espn. Life comes full circle.

Bill isn’t with ESPN anymore and is one of their biggest haters now.

Do you think he’s not also making money?

Bill and the Ringer have votes for end of season awards, “harmless idiot” isn’t a good justification.

This is one of the worst takes I have seen.

90% of players doing media roles can’t properly formulate an opinion to save their lives, and would never get a gig if not for the attention their name brings as a player.

U guys employ kawhi lmao

Yea, like who’s gonna coach that Heat team