We’ve largely ignored the man they call Cowturd (or Schrutebag, or whatever you want to call ESPN radio host Colin Cowherd) since our spat with him two months ago. It appears as if he’s picked another fight. This time, it’s with ESPN’s own Bill Simmons:

While we’re here, my ESPN colleague Colin Cowherd mocked my seven trade scenarios for Kobe on the radio last week without reading the entire column or even attempting to understand its premise, namely, that the trade options for Kobe were limited because (A) he needed to go to a big market for a team that could contend right away, and (B) nobody pays 100 cents on the dollar for a team looking to unload an unhappy superstar.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Cowherd embarrassed himself by not understanding basic NBA trading principles like “it would be valuable for L.A. to swap Vlad Radmanovic’s contract for Bobby Sura’s expiring contract in a T-Mac/Kobe deal because Sura’s contract expires in 2008, which would buy them some cap space down the road.”

Look, I know the radio business lends itself to hosts lazily skimming other people’s columns and blogs … but seriously, Colin, in the words of Mark Jackson, you’re better than that. Your show’s on for three hours a day and you get four giant commercial breaks per hour. That leaves you plenty of time to research your segments so you don’t come off as misinformed. No offense.

Don’t think it’s really necessary to waste any time and explain what’s going on here - radio host, desperate for attention and ratings, attacks people. End result - people talk about him (exactly what we’re doing right now!). It’s the Jay Mariotti school of shit-stirring.

If we had a radio show, here’s how we would have handled the Kobe story: the guy’s not getting traded. It’s not happening. Then, we’d take calls from yahoos with preposterous trade scenarios while we ate pistachio nuts and Swedish fish. That’d easily kill two hours. Anybody know how to get a radio show? Is Sirius hiring?

Bill Simmons takes Schrutebag to task (The Buried Lead)