ESPN newbie Rick Reilly had his first chat over at the .com, and he opened up by talking about three things that may have raised a few eyebrows: 1) his new pal Bill Simmons, and 2) comparing journalists to bloggers. Some of you are probably already gassed on this subject, so if you care to skip this post, that’s fine. But at the bottom, we snuck in something about a Kobe radio discussion that made us vomit earlier today. Forgive the rant. Yes, yes, we are aware: sports talk radio = bad for your ears.

Martin Bell (NYC): There’s no way to put this gently, so I’ll be blunt: Are you and Bill Simmons going to get along?

SportsNation Rick Reilly: We’re already getting along. The guy is routinely hilarious. I see him around L.A. and New York now and again. Always friendly. He actually met my girlfriend before he met me and they hit it off. He’s new school, I’m old school, but we still want the same thing: entertaining, compelling columns. And you combine that with one of the purest writers in the country, Gene Wojciechowski, plus all the other writers, and I think this is a helluva staff.

and

Ken (Atlantic City, NJ): Rick, it seems the disconnect at times betweens writers and players it wider that it should be. It seems with the hostility from the players some writers can’t seem to get the details many of us look for.

SportsNation Rick Reilly: Totally agree. When I first started, in 1979, athletes still needed the press. Needed them to be understood. Needed them to get endorsements. Needed them to make connections after their pro careers were through. Now they make so much money, they don’t need us. All we can do is screw up a good thing. So they announce everything on their own websites and cut writers out. That’s why I have to work five times as hard now to get them to interact with me, to talk to me. Like asking Derek Jeter if I can spend the day opening all the mail in his extra locker. It’s harder but you’ve got to find a way. You can’t just sit on your butt and go, “It’s too hard.” Because the day you stop talking to athletes and coaches is the day you’re, dare I say it, just blogging. And bloggers can be funny and can write really well and have great observations. But it’s never as good or as real or as trurthful if you don’t actually attempt to speak to your subject.

As for Simmons, he wrote some sort of Finals preview that is terribly lengthy, and if you want to know his response to Bob Ryan’s BLOG post, here it is (No. 20 in his list):

“That’s right, someone writing a serious rebuttal to an intentionally ridiculous column. I never thought it could happen, but if it DID ever happen, I knew it was going to be a Boston College grad who did it. (By the way, I disagreed with Bob’s serious rebuttal to my intentionally ridiculous column. Both sides need to win for them to have a rivalry; if only one side is winning, then it’s a feud and that’s all. I covered this in pages 183-186 of my book in the chapter about the Yankees-Red Sox feud — complete with analysis of Webster’s official definition of the word “rivalry” — a feud that never achieved “rivalry” status until Oct. 21, 2004. From 1959 through 1984, the Celtics and Lakers were feuding and that’s it. And if you disagree with that, take it up with Webster.)

That’ll be all for these guys for awhile. Unless of course one of them feels compelled to go after Jeff Van Gundy and Mike Francesa, who were on the radio a few hours ago tickling Kobe’s taint with their tongues. It was reprehensible. They both said that in the annals of NBA history, Kobe is the second best ‘wing/guard/perimeter’ (we don’t remember which word) player after Jordan. Francesa went as far to say that (again paraphrasing) Kobe “might have a better offensive arsenal right now” than Jordan, and if he can improve his defense, he might end up the better player.

Hey, we enjoy Kobe’s work as the next guy, but where are these clowns getting their crack, Tatum O’Neal’s dealer? Where were all these Kobe BJs during the last two years when he was bounced from the playoffs in the first round? Kobe’s a fantastic player, and is already one of the 20 best players in NBA history. But everybody needs a wingman. He had one for the first half of this season in double-double Bynum, and then after the Gasol donation (stole that from Van Gundy), he found a replacement.

Hell, if you want to put this Lakers team up against some of Jordan’s teams, it probably is superior. The trio of Kobe-Gasol-Odom trumps all the early Jordan years, when he didn’t have Rodman. Odom probably could go down as one of the finest No. 3 options in NBA history (he’s not quite Worthy-good, but he has to be as good as whomever you want to take from Boston’s teams in the 80s), and it has shown this season in his shot selection - field goal percentage way up - reduction in turnovers, and increased rebounding.

The Lakers’ bench? It has only been one season, but another year with this kind of production and it could rival some of those Pistons subs in the late 80s early 90s. The Lakers record with Gasol is something like 34-8 (couldn’t find it online, but that’s close) since the Gasol deal. Add Bynum to the fold next year and you might as well fire up the talk of a 70-win season. If the Lakers didn’t hoodwink the Grizz into getting Gasol, Kobe may have never gotten that fourth title. With him, plus an emerging Bynum, plus Odom as a third option, plus a strong bench? Challenging Jordan’s six is well within reach. However, all this talent around him, plus the fact he had Shaq for a few years, minus what he did without horses around him (in theory, Kobe never made players around him considerably better, like MJ; otherwise, the Lakers would have done more in the last two seasons), we think, leaves him still well short of Jordan comparisons.