Acclaimed sports journalist Bill Simmons thinks the NBA is in bad shape.
The media personality watched his beloved Boston Celtics secure their 18th championship last month.
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But despite his love for the sport, Simmons believes the NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement and lack of vision have made the NFL a better product.
“The playoffs weren’t good,” he said in the opening of the last episode of Bill Simmons Podcast.
“We had a lot of injuries and I think people were more unhappy than happy about that.
“And I love basketball more, and I thought, ‘I’m ready for football. I’m ready to launch myself. I’m ready for Week 1 of the NFL.’
“Football is more fun, it’s a smarter sport right now than basketball.”
Simmons, 54, has been around long enough to know his comments will stir the pot a bit.
After all, this year we’ve already seen former basketball star Austin Rivers spark a frenzied debate about where NBA players could compete more in the NFL than in the opposite scenario.
And fans quickly disagreed with Simmons’ opinion.
“The NFL is becoming a light league that penalizes tackling. It will soon be impossible to watch,” commented one fan.
“Actually, I disagree. The NFL product is horrible,” added another.
“NFL season 17 games and the play-off system win 3 games in the Superbowl. You can’t compare the 82 game long NBA season and the longer playoffs,” argued a third.
Some fans thought Simmons’ statement was correct.
“This is not a new development. It’s been this way for a long time. The NBA regular season product is absolutely atrocious,” one said.
“This is extremely obvious,” suggested another answer.
Simmons says NBA brass sought competitive balance at the expense of on-court supply.
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“Ultimately, the league should care about good basketball,” he added.
“Basically what they’ve done with this whole system is they’re so desperate to create parity and not have that bottom half of teams that suck that they’re penalizing the teams that are smart.
“What the league should really want if they actually care about this shit, which I’m not sure they do.
“If they cared about the overall health of the league, the schedule wouldn’t be 82 games, we wouldn’t be in this situation where it’s a roulette wheel every summer with guys jumping around and 15 dissatisfied teams and 20 stars and stars. who are unhappy.
“One of the things we must fix is the continuity piece, and reward franchises for continuity, for correctly calling up players, for keeping the cores together.
“That should be what the league wants.”
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This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
