Bill Simmons smites Scoop about the head...

Re: Please quit posting in this thread! Thank you.

Why should this thread be locked? This is a very solid healthy discussion. No one is calling anyone names. There is a lot to be learned here by everyone.

We have 2 new friends in Big Chee and Mav Rick that seem like good guys that want to have spirited ( not to be confused with spnited debate). We found a new site in SOHH that has some very good sports discussions.

What's not to like other than the newbies have not offered to buy a round yet in the time honored tradition of SportsJournalists.com

 

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My premise doesn't fly?

Someone on sohh made a "whos gonna get popped in Vegas this weekend" thread.

How hard was it to find a catalyst last weekend to pull out the baby mommas spending their tax refund musings?

Let's be real here. That garbage was pre-planned, and whatever type of violence that was to take place was going to be over embellished on his part in order to get off those hateful remarks.

 

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Boom thinks this is a healthy discussion.

He also eats at Taco Bells in New York City.

So take that for what it is worth.

 

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It's a simple equation. No violence at ASW means Whitlock's column isn't written. And, from what I've heard from actual Las Vegans, Whitlock, Simmons, Reilly and the others downplayed the violence more than they embellished it.

BTW, I do find it interesting that people were predicting who'd get shot in Vegas. The fact that sort of violence is expected is an even sadder commentary on the situation than anything Whitlock has written.

 

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Violence at Vegas is an anamoly?

Is that what you're saying?

Guess what, it isn't.

Secondly, do you think Whitlock interviewed any of the women there to find out if they're a single mother spending their recent tax refund for their trip there?

That to me sounds hatred embedded in him prior to that weekend.

 

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Well, aren't we lucky to have you to read the man's mind for us.

Then again, I can't say I have any great love for any of these columns. My point was that Scoop's column was a rambling, name-dropping waste of space and at least Whitlock had something to say in his AOL piece.

 

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The amount of violence was an anamoly. The number of restaurant and casino employees who were harrassed was an anamoly.

You are shooting yourself in the foot by saying Whitlock flew into McCarron Airport with that column half-written. If you really believe that, do you think Bill Simmons had his comments about the lawlessness pre-planned? Did TrueHoop.com conspire with both Simmons and Whitlock write his observations beforehand as well?

 

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Oh, I see it now! It's all a nefarious plot! Whitlock is Lex Luthor, but with darker skin and a larger stomach!

 

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Alma - You always bring an interesting and thought provoking perspective to these conversations.

As far as the FBI statistics go, how far off could they be? I doubt that it is more than 10%. Either way a small percentage of the population is responsible for a large share of the murders and violent crime that happens in the U.S. I don't think anyone can refute that.

The million dollar question is why? This is where we all have a stake in finding a solution. You don't hear politicians talking about it much because it's the 3rd rail.It needs to be discussed more.

To bring it back to this discussion, given the stats I find it hard to believe that anyone would want to glorify gansta rappers and chastise those that choose not to.

 

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Simmons' retort to Scoop's column:

I hate writing a rebuttal to another writer's column. I hate it. These days on the Internet, people spend far too much time writing about other writers instead of just writing about sports. Pretty soon, there will be Web sites devoted to writers writing about writers who write about other writers. We're not headed in the right direction.

At the same time, I couldn't let Scoop Jackson's "Vegas wasn't that bad" column just fade away without disputing two crucial pieces of his argument:

Piece No. 1: Scoop's assertion that "only" 403 people were arrested during NBA All-Star Weekend, a number apparently obtained from Deputy Lt. E. Sterr Bunny of the Las Vegas Police Department. I don't think it's very smart to base the premise of a column around a leap of faith that Vegas police reported every single crime, mugging, brawl, assault, theft and indiscretion from that weekend (even the ones for which the perpetrators weren't caught). Besides, how many arrests can you have when there weren't enough cops in the first place? Almost all of the police were concentrated between Mandalay Bay and MGM, with everyone walking the other half of the Strip (from Bellagio to the Wynn) apparently expected to fend for themselves.

As Cavs beat writer Brian Windhorst pointed out this week, there was a lawlessness and lack of decency along the Strip almost defied description. (Hell, even some of the players were scared -- check out the comments from Tracy McGrady and Rafer Alston in the Houston Chronicle.) Did those 403 "reported" arrests cover everyone who robbed cab drivers, menaced tourists in unpatrolled parking garages, pawed women's breasts, started fights in cab lines, skipped out on restaurant bills and everything else? In my opinion, no. Everything I witnessed and wrote about last week was backed up by scores of other writers and media people.

Seriously, does anyone believe Vegas would accurately report arrest figures when the city was using that weekend as an audition for an NBA franchise? Since when did Vegas become a bastion of integrity? It's Vegas! That's why we love the place -- because it's NOT a bastion of integrity, remember? I'm trusting the eyewitness accounts of people who were there -- friends, friends of friends, readers and other writers -- over a dubious arrest figure from a woefully unprepared city.

Piece No. 2: Scoop's insinuation that certain media members were intimidated by the blackness of the event and ended up stereotyping hip-hop culture with phrases like "The Hip-Hop Woodstock" (I wrote that one) and "The Black KKK" (Jason Whitlock wrote that one and, by the way, he's black). I found this interesting because Scoop wrote in his original All-Star column that (A) somebody joked at one of his dinners that their casino was "South Central," and (B) Vegas was a "four-day Freaknic [sic]."

Hmmmm ...

The "South Central" reference needs no further explanation, although it was a terrible Glenn Plummer movie and that probably needs to be mentioned. "Freaknik" was started by African-American college students in Atlanta in the early '80s; they had a noble dream of turning Freaknik into an annual party weekend, almost like a Black Mardi Gras. And for a few years, they actually pulled it off. By the mid-'90s, the event became so overcrowded and dangerous that Atlanta cops legitimately couldn't police the crush of people, leading to negative press and a groundswell to disband the event that didn't fully take hold until a brutal rape in '99. That was the final straw for Freaknik.

Needless to say, comparing All-Star Weekend to Freaknik isn't the most flattering comparison. Scoop still made that connection Feb. 20. Eight days later, here's how Scoop started his Feb. 28 column:

As the reports continue to flow from the activities during NBA All-Star Weekend, the rage begins to build.

Hip-Hop Woodstock. The Black KKK. Weekend leaves NBA with a black eye.

What? Seriously? For real?

As difficult as it is not to turn this generalization of the entire hip-hop culture into an issue of race, let's be honest, it is about nothing else.

The generalization of the entire hip-hop culture? Wait, wasn't this the same guy who compared All-Star Weekend to a four-day Freaknik? No wonder he ended his column with a "pot calling the kettle black" reference ... perhaps it was a Freudian slip.

 

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Continued:

Here's the sad thing: There was a good follow-up column that needed to be written about Vegas. The NBA was unfairly blamed for the general craziness of the weekend, with the Pacman Jones incident getting the most play ... like it was the NBA's fault that an NFL star caused the biggest riot of the weekend. The NBA didn't screw up; Vegas screwed up. The city failed to stack the Strip and the surrounding parts of the city with enough cops and security guards, and they made the mistake of hoping everyone would act appropriately.

For any other weekend, that was a reasonably sound game plan. For a weekend in which the NBA All-Star Game was the THIRD biggest event behind Chinese New Year and the Fashion Convention? Not a good idea. If you owned a car and resided within driving distance of Vegas, you needed only to find a space in a garage and you were good to go for the weekend, even if you didn't have a place to sleep. Contrary to public belief, New Orleans won't be as chaotic an All-Star destination because the city will flood downtown with cops -- no way the Big Easy makes the same mistake as Vegas did -- and because out-of-towners won't be able to cruise into the city and park downtown without any trouble. Over everything else, that's where Vegas screwed up.

So who gets blamed? Naturally, the NBA. The league's fundamental issue has remained the same for four decades: It's a league of mostly black players marketing itself to a mostly white audience and a mostly white media. That delicate balance was the premise of David Halberstam's watershed sports book "The Breaks of the Game," which was published 25 years ago, back when MJ was playing for Carolina and Michael Jackson was on his second nose. Nothing has really changed. Just look at the way Iverson's credentials were belittled when Philly shopped him last December, or the comically skewed reaction to a Nuggets-Knicks brawl that wasn't one-tenth as violent as the Senators-Sabres brawl last week. Certain media members will always delight in sticking it to the NBA, with the underlying theme being, "Sorry, I just can't identify with those black guys."

I wish Scoop had tackled this subject, asking why some media members gleefully used All-Star Weekend as their latest excuse to crush the league. Instead, he played the race card, based his premise on a dubious statistic and came off misguided. Once upon a time, the late Ralph Wiley repeatedly proved an African-American sports columnist could write intelligently about racial issues without using his skin color as a crutch. After Ralph passed away three years ago, Scoop Jackson vowed to carry Ralph's torch on Page 2.

I just wish he'd brought that torch to Vegas.

 

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So he didn't just write a rebuttal to another writer's column, he wrote a rebuttal to another writer's rebuttal to another writer's column.

Correct me if I'm wrong--it happens--but that rebuttal/rebuttal/column doesn't add one thing to the debate, other than to show he wanted on the pile.