all aboard the wayback machine
One of my favorite Bill Simmons columns of all time --
Still Haunted by Len Bias, 6/20/2001
Sometimes I see white. That's a pile of cocaine on a coffee table. Maybe it happened this way, maybe it didn't, but I always imagine Lenny Bias turning that Celtics hat around so the bill of his cap wouldn't dip into the pile...
Back in the day, before he moved to L.A. and wrote for Kimmel, before he started name-dropping and published a book, Bill Simmons turned out gems like this almost every week. I still love the Boston Sports Guy, don't get me wrong, and I'm thrilled that most sports fans in the U.S. know him now like I've known him since my freshman year of high school; but everything's gotta lose its luster sometime, especially after it makes famous friends and has to acquiesce to corporate standards.
Sometimes I see gray. That's the color of the concrete on Wyndover Lane in Stamford, Conn. -- the street where I lived as a kid -- which is relevant since I wandered up and down that street for an entire afternoon on the heels of Bias' death.
Just read it. Even if all you know about the name "Larry Bird" is that it's the name of my car, go read it. It's that powerful. The whole thing gives me the same sort of what-if chills I get when I think about things of far greater magnitude than a basketball game, like looking at the past forty years of American history through the lens of a world in which Sirhan Sirhan didn't shoot Bobby Kennedy.
Yeah, I still think about him.
And I hate it.
Still Haunted by Len Bias, 6/20/2001
Sometimes I see white. That's a pile of cocaine on a coffee table. Maybe it happened this way, maybe it didn't, but I always imagine Lenny Bias turning that Celtics hat around so the bill of his cap wouldn't dip into the pile...
Back in the day, before he moved to L.A. and wrote for Kimmel, before he started name-dropping and published a book, Bill Simmons turned out gems like this almost every week. I still love the Boston Sports Guy, don't get me wrong, and I'm thrilled that most sports fans in the U.S. know him now like I've known him since my freshman year of high school; but everything's gotta lose its luster sometime, especially after it makes famous friends and has to acquiesce to corporate standards.
Sometimes I see gray. That's the color of the concrete on Wyndover Lane in Stamford, Conn. -- the street where I lived as a kid -- which is relevant since I wandered up and down that street for an entire afternoon on the heels of Bias' death.
Just read it. Even if all you know about the name "Larry Bird" is that it's the name of my car, go read it. It's that powerful. The whole thing gives me the same sort of what-if chills I get when I think about things of far greater magnitude than a basketball game, like looking at the past forty years of American history through the lens of a world in which Sirhan Sirhan didn't shoot Bobby Kennedy.
Yeah, I still think about him.
And I hate it.
posted by Suzie at 4:41 PM
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