Bob Ryan Calls Out Bill Simmons' Celtic Fandom

Mainstream Media is already back peddling these days but their recent practice of throwing each under the bus is getting ugly. The newest fight amongst the bigwigs isn't a new one but the topic is. I give you Round One of the Bob Ryan-Bill Simmons Fight....Ding!

Beware of False Prophets.

Beware of clever people who know what they know, but don't know what they don't know, which is far more important.

There is a younger writer of great renown who loves the Boston Celtics, which is fine. He commands an enormous national audience, who have come to regard him as The Authority on all things Celtic. And he has an exhaustive knowledge of the current team. No problem there.

But he has over-stepped his bounds. He is trying to sum up the whole Celtics-Lakers thing in his dot.com forum, and he starts off by saying that it wasn't really a rivalry because the Celtics won the first eight times the two played in the Finals. He completely dismissed the six series of the 60s because the Celtics won all six, as if this somehow means by definition the two teams did not have a viable rivalry.

Oooooooh! 60s talk. Let the man speak!!!!!!

I'd tend to forgive him on the basis of him not being there, but that would mean that history requires that you had to be there. I wasn't present for the Gettysburg Address or the Bobby Thomson home run, but that doesn't mean I can't have a good idea of what it must have been like to be there. That's what being an historian entails. You do your homework.

Ummm okay. Old people are talking history. Everyone sit in a circle Indian-style and listen.....

So in order to become the 1962 NBA champions Boston had to win Game 6 in LA (119-105) and then return home for a Game 7 in the Garden. And that game was one of the greatest NBA seventh games ever, with the Lakers actually having the last shot with the score tied in regulation. But Frank Selvy, a good jump shooter whose 41 points a game senior year at Furman had included a 100-point game, missed a 10 or 12-foot left baseline jumper at the buzzer. Bill Russell took over in the OT, leading the Celtics to a 110-107 victory. By the way, Russ finished with 30 points and 40 rebounds.

Crap. The old man is right. You know....there could be a whole thing to MSM and New School working together. But until then....I eagerly await your response Mr. Simmons.

Tinseltown Boys (Boston Globe)

(Thanks to Nick from Boston for the link)