58 Quotes by Bill Simmons

If you don't agree with me, I have two words for you: shut the fuck up.

But that's the thing about basketball: you don't play games on paper.

Writing is like playing golf - you have to keep working at your swing.

The hardest achievement in acting - in my opinion, anyway - is nailing a role that absolutely nobody else could have played. Pacino owned Michael Corleone... but DeNiro could have owned it as well. Who else, though, but Val Kilmer could have nailed Jim Morrison? Does anyone besides Will Ferrell pull off Ron Burgundy?

The best under-the-radar rivalry is Dodgers-Giants. I had no idea how deep that one was until I moved to California... that one goes waaaaaaaaay back, and both sides absolutely detest each other. Fights in the stands, fights in the parking lot, the whole thing. It's every bit as bitter as Yankees-Red Sox without nearly the same hype.

There's a tipping point that happens with soccer in which you just kinda get it. I was drawn to it because the best soccer teams play similarly to my favorite basketball teams - like the eighties Lakers or eighties Celtics - teams that emphasized teamwork over individualism and relied on passing as their biggest ongoing edge.

First impressions matter more in basketball than in any other sport, and they can be savored only in person. Players can't hide behind pads or helmets, so we can stare at them, evaluate every move they make: running, jumping, walking, even ogling the cheerleaders. We can see every ripple and tattoo. If they're lazy, we can tell.

Why should it matter to us when wrestlers are found dead in their beds or seen limping around on two fake hips? Why should it matter to us that there's a list of modern wrestlers who died before the age of 50 - many of them famous - and that the list is more than 70 names long? Hey, there's always another wave of guys on the way. Always.

Our favorite teams bring people together, keep family members close, bond people from different generations. Some of the happiest moments of my life involve something that happened with one of my teams.