Bill Simmons fires back at Mike Golic

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@BillSimmons What Mike and Mike did today was absolute garbage. I would say I lost respect for that show, but I never had it.

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@BillSimmons For an ESPN Radio show to pull an interview out of context from another ESPN Radio show, then play the moral authority card, is disgusting.

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@BillSimmons Have the balls to call me to discuss it on the show. Don't pull it out of context just because you need fodder for a segment. Pathetic.

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Mike and Mike played a snippet of the segment in which Simmons said it reminded him “a tiny bit” of when the Angels signed Albert Pujols, who was suddenly not nearly as formidable as he was in St. Louis.

“I think it’s one of the most ridiculous statements I’ve heard four games into a season in my life in any sport,” said Mike Golic. “That’s what I’ll say about Bill Simmons. So, you know, he grabbed a headline, which is something I know he loves — and that’s one of the most ridiculous lines I’ve ever heard in any sport in my life. Four games into a season. I don’t even … that’s ridiculous.”
“I put nothing — ZERO — on that,” Golic finished.

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The broader context of Simmons’ comments: He opened on the Cavs by calling Cowherd’s assertion that Dion Waiters didn’t fit in and would need to be traded “one of the great jump-to-conclusion rants I’ve heard in recent ESPN history” and saying that you need 20 games before you decide what’s going on with the team. Nevertheless, he said it had jumped out since the preseason — “I assumed not to read too much into it” — that LeBron doesn’t “look the same.”

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“Anyone who thinks LeBron looks the same is fooling themselves,” Simmons said. “He doesn’t have the same impulsiveness. He looks 20 pounds lighter physically. Just his general force-of-natureness capacity — whatever you want to say — it’s not there. And he’s driving to the basket, and he’s under the rim now, and I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if he’s hurt, I don’t know if the big weight loss has affected his game or whatever. This is not a jump-to-conclusion thing. I have been watching this Cavs team since the preseason games started, and he does not look the same.”

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