BSG Newsletter (6/28)

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BSG Newsletter, June 18, 2001

The first half of this newsletter is about the NBA Draft; the second half
is about my future and the future of the BSG site.

**THE DRAFT**

My annual "NBA Draft Diary" was posted late this morning on ESPN.com.
Here's the link if you missed it:

http://espn.go.com/page2/s/simmons/010628.html

Bizarre twist to the diary last night: Right after the Cavaliers picked
Diop at #8, just as my father and I were getting fired up for either
Rodney White or Joe Johnson, my Dad's entire street lost power. Swear to
God. It was the most agonizing ten minutes of all-time - fortunately I had
my cell phone and got a hold of my buddy Gus at work to hear the Joe
Johnson pick. The power came back on right when they picked Kedrick Brown
at #11, then it disappeared again when the Rockets were picking at #13...
and we had no power again for 20 more minutes through pick #17. Can you
believe that? One of the worst things that ever happened. I'm still in
shock. You couldn't make something like that up.

As for the Celtics draft, nobody listened to me all spring and all summer
when I kept telling people that they wanted to upgrade the wing spots --
I'll say it for the 10,000 time, you can't become a playoff team when you
have 2-guards and small forwards shooting 40% and missing open jumpers.
They loved Joe Johnson from the get-go because he has size and can handle
the ball, plus he has three-point range and some athletic ability. He's a
little raw, but he should eventually make an impact for them in 2-3 years
as the 3rd piece in that Pierce/Walker trioka. They're going to load him
with responsibility this year and let him learn on the job.

Forte was a steal for them at #21 - it's the perfect team for him because
he can play the point guard spot, but he won't have to worry about running
the team because the offense runs through Walker and Pierce. Basically
he'll be spotting up on one of the wings, shooting open jumpers and
guarding the opposing point guard. It doesn't matter how tall he is if
he's doing that. Remember, the guy averaged almost 21 a game in the ACC
last season. I think he'll help them immediately.

The other pick (Kedrick Brown) was a classic "roll the dice" pick. He's
like a more physical JR Rider from Rider's UNLV days - three-point range,
jumps through the roof and tons of swagger. We've never really had an
athlete like him before -- even Dee Brown couldn't jump like this kid. He
could own the Fleet Center potentially. Of course, nobody knows if they
have a deal with Portland or not... from what I'm hearing, the Celts plan
on keeping him and they made that agreement to keep him from working out
with other teams (they were worried his stock would rise, a la Shawn
Marion in '99). It's also inaccurate that they haven't seen him that much
-- Chris Wallace is tight with Brown's JUCO coach and he's been following
him for two years. Also, Brown's JUCO stats weren't as impressive as you
would think because his team was always blowing opponents out and he
rarely played in second halves. Hey, who knows? He definitely has tons of
UPPPPPPPPPPside. Buy your summer league tickets now because everyone
around the team is already predicting big things for him. You should start
buying your "Kedrick Brown will win the 2002 Slam Dunk Championship" stock
right now.

Some other quick notes from the draft: Sadly, Bryant Stith and Adrian
Griffin won't be back (not enough room at the 2/3 spots for them) ... the
C's had no interest in Diop and were rooting for him to go in the Top Nine
(to push everyone down a notch) ...  the C's had Twan and Pierce in the
War Room last night (smart move - made them feel a part of things) ... I
think they would have taken Johnson over Rodney White or Eddie Griffin,
but they had Battier rated higher ... they were hoping either Tony Parker
or Forte would be there at #21 and did a collective backflip when they
were both sitting there ... when they interviewed all the prospects over
the past few weeks, the two most polished guys were Forte and Brendan
Haywood (apparently the UNC guys are the most polished every year) ...
Walker is apparently in the best shape of his life ... the C's could have
the most exciting summer league team of all-time - all the draft picks
will be there, as well as (allegedly) Moiso, Palacio and Battie.

PS: I'll have more thoughts on the draft on Monday the 2nd, when I'm
appearing on Mike Giardi's 11:00pm "Sports LateNight" show on NECN.

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

**ME**

You may have noticed the tagline at the bottom of today's ESPN column that
mentioned how I would be writing "three columns a week" for ESPN.com
starting in mid-July. Yup... it's true. I'm going to ESPN. I'm going to be
posting three columns a week for "Page Two" and writing 5-6 features a
year for ESPN Magazine - basically my dream job.

The schedule for columns might change down the road, but right now it
looks like this: my columns will probably run on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and
Fridays. Tuesdays will be a "Ramblings"-related column (random thoughts,
running diaries, lists, etc. - a different theme every week). Wednesdays
will be devoted to a Boston column once every other week, with an NBA
column and a mailbag column running on the other alternate week (that was
key for me because I wanted to keep the Boston connection). And Friday's
column will be a general "Ranting and Raving" column. At least that's the
plan.

Just so you know, I wasn't sure WHAT was happening with me until last
week. Since I announced that I was thinking of wrapping up the BSG site
back in mid-May, I was mulling over a variety of things and investigating
what it would take to make the BSG site work on a larger scale, either as
a pay site for a larger media site or as an upscale indie site. The bottom
line was that it would have been an obscene amount of work to launch
something on my own -- creating/designing the site, finding advertising,
etc. - and spinning off on my own just made me nervous, especially in the
current dot-com climate. I knew I didn't want to stay at Digital City --
they never really stepped up to the plate until it was far too late, so
they were X-ed just out of principle. It was almost as if they believed I
didn't have any other options besides Digital City. Whatever.

Up until three weeks ago, I had two viable options: 1) take the summer
off, write a book and post my weekly ESPN column, or 2) move the BSG site
to a more visible place (I don't want to say where, but it was a good
place - you would have been shocked) and make it a pay site. And that was
the X-factor of this whole thing -- did I feel comfortable making the BSG
site a pay site? It was only going to be $16 a year, and there were a
number of variables built in that made it an appealing move for me... but
the thought of making you all pay for my material just made me nervous. As
I've mentioned many times, I think the Internet is headed to a "pay for
all content" future, but I wasn't sure I wanted to be the test case.
Personally, I'm not sure I would pay to read ANYBODY, much less me.
Anyway, I wasn't 100% on the whole thing.

One thing was for sure... since I knew I was eventually leaving, my heart
wasn't in doing the BSG site for Digital City anymore -- and I was burned
out, anyway -- so I decided I would pack it in on the week of June 10th,
even though I didn't have any idea what would happen next. I did know that
I would probably lamd somewhere because interest was suprisingly brisk.
Who woulda thunk?

Three things worried me about the future of the BSG site:

--1. I wasn't sure how much further I could take the BSG gig. I had
already written about every possible Boston topic - you name it, I've
written about it - and I had posted so much material over the years that I
was inadvertently and unknowingly starting to repeat the same jokes. I
worried about getting stale.

--2. The pay thing. It raises expectations, and like it or not, I already
felt like the BSG site had peaked. It was the kind of site that worked
best when there were only 6,000-7,000 daily readers -- I could sift
through the links and e-mails and incorporate the readers into the site as
much as possible -- but once the audience ballooned, the e-mail overload
became too much and the overall quality of the site started to suffer.
What if that kept happening and you guys were paying for it?

--3. I had stopped becoming a normal person. As I mentioned last month,
normal people don't spend 12 consecutive hours inside in front of a
computer. I needed a job that allowed me to write my columns, make some
money and lead a normal life.

So right as I was battling all of this, ESPN caught wind that I was
thinking of leaving and made a late push to bring me aboard. I'm not sure
what pushed them over the edge, but I have a feeling it was the Clemens
column, which was well-received by everyone. The whole thing happened
incredibly fast - within 24 hours, I had gone from exchanging "What are
you doing next?" emails with my Page Two bosses to talking on the
telephone with John Walsh (the Don Corleone of ESPN). Talk about a
whirlwind of events. Four things were really important for me:

--1. I wanted to stay in Boston.

--2. I wanted to write for the Magazine.

--3. I wanted to write three columns a week, not four, because I wanted to
spend time on each columns (the quality over quantity thing).

--4. I knew I had to tone things down a notch for ESPN (it's very similar
to someone moving from a 12:30am talk show to an 11:30pm talk show), but I
wanted to make sure that the boundaries were reasonable. And as I hashed
them out with Team Walsh, the boundaries WERE reasonable. If anything,
it's more of a challenge for me because I have to be biting without being
quite as blunt. And I think I can pull it off.

Anyway, we agreed on all four of those things... and that was that.

My thinking is this: I can always go back to writing Boston-based columns
or writing for a smaller website, but the chance to join a place like ESPN
doesn't come around too often (that sounded like a Pitino statement,
didn't it?). As you know, ESPN offers a number of opportunities beyond
print journalism, but the thing that really appealed to me was that I
would be working with smart, creative people who would be promoting me,
editing me, pushing me in the right directions and helping me get better.
It's the perfect situation for me at this point in my life. So be happy
for me. 

As for the name of my column... we're calling it "Sports Guy" and dropping
the "Boston," for obvious reasons.

As for the BSG site, well... none of this would have happened without
everyone spreading the word for me, so I hope you all feel like a part of
this and that you have a small stake in everything that happens in my
career from this point on. Just cut me some slack over the next few months
while I get acclimated to writing for the masses instead of a specific
group of sophisticated fans. But yeah, I won't enjoy this as much as I
enjoyed the heyday of the BSG site - nothing can top the feeling of
starting something from scratch and watching it slowly take off. Hopefully
the ESPN gig will provide a similar rush on a larger scale.

As for my new e-mail address... I'm not sure what's happening on that
front. Given that ESPN.com has three million unique users a day, it would
be a nightmare to stick an e-mail address under every column, so I'll
probably remain undercover for the time being. At some point we'll create
an e-mail address for people to send in questions to "Ask Sports Guy" --
it won't be as fun as the old way of doing things, but it's better than
nothing. For now I'm going to remain in touch through this newsletter,
which will get sent out every two weeks or so (hopefully I can fill it
with some fun stories and some interesting info).

As for my visibility on ESPN.com... just check Page Two if you miss a few
days and want to check my latest columns. Every one of my columns will be
promoted on ESPN's main page when they go up, so look for them. I'm trying
to get them to create a site for me that will just have links to all my
columns, but that's still in the works. If they could come up with a
ghostly picture of me to match that Gammons photo, as an added bonus, I'd
be ecstatic.

Other than that, I'm not sure what else to say. My first column for ESPN
runs on the week of July 23rd... in the mean time, I'm taking a few weeks
off, working on a book and growing some sort of creepy, Ethan Hawke-esque
facial hair to offend my friends and family. Thanks for everything and
thanks for reading... you'll see me next on ESPN unless I check in with
another newsletter before then. 

Have a great summer.

--The Artist Formerly Known as the BSG


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