VIDEO: ESPN Ignores Elephant in Room Named Bill Simmons
By Kyle Koster
The Get Up gang had Charles Barkley on Wednesday morning to talk about all things basketball, including comments NBA Commissioner Adam Silver made to Bill Simmons at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. While the Round Mound of Rebound (people forget the greatest shape-based nickname of our time) was speaking, ESPN used some B-roll of the sit-down.
You’ll notice someone is conspicuous in his absence. The Sports Guy is Sports Gone. Get Up made him Get Out.
Ah yes, pay no attention to that disembodied voice. He’s not important here. Simmons, like the rest of the serious sports media watchers, couldn’t help but notice the revisionist history.
UPDATE: ESPN points out that Simmons was included when the clip was shown multiple times later in the day.
A statement from ESPN PR on Bill Simmons/Get Up:
— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) March 7, 2019
“There is absolutely nothing to this. It’s a non-story. We ran clips of Adam Silver with Bill Simmons on ESPN shows/platforms.”
They sent along this handsome screen grab as part of the response. pic.twitter.com/A39iR43v2V
2-min Mark... Incredible CGI efforts by “Get Up” to cut me out of last Friday’s Adam Silver interview. They should have just replaced me with a hologram of Rachel Nichols. Come on @jalenrose defend your boy. ?https://t.co/wgfkfpTc1a
— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) March 6, 2019
It doesn’t appear that there was any Michael Bay-like CGI used to present this footage. Instead, a ridiculous zoom was employed — something a first year A/V student would do on accident and result in a lowered grade on the final project.
Simmons left ESPN in 2015 in a messy breakup. He’s continued to air his grievances with the company, but has also appeared on Katie Nolan’s program and is effectively in a condo timeshare with ESPN for Ryen Russillo’s talents.
Although this is undeniably funny, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have made the exact same editorial choice. Sometimes it’s best to ignore the elephant in the room. Sometimes the damn blogs start nosing around and make things worse.