Bill Simmons Sums Up our Offseason

[Craiger]

Simmons is a fun read. I like his stuff. But not a journalist.

About Landry Fields, though:

you guys know that if Landry Fields signed ANY offer sheet with Toronto, he couldn't be used in a sign and trade, right? So Toronto did not have to give him a big contract in order to sabotage the Knicks. Even if it was a contract that the Knicks were sure to match, it would serve the purpose.

Therefore, the fact that the contract was made a poison pill means Colangelo ACTUALLY WANTED TO SIGN FIELDS. It was not necessary to offer Fields that much money unless Colangelo did not want the Knicks to match. Therefore, the idea that we are 'stuck' with Fields is, from Colabgelo's perspective, false. He wanted Fields at that price regardless of whether Nash was coming.

Therefore Simmons, unsurprisingly, doesn't know what the f*ck he is talking about and is totally misreading the situation.

Seems to be a bit of a semantics game going on in this thread. Simmons is a sports journalist. But he is an editorialist as opposed to a reporter.

A reporter just presensts the information. An editorialist presents the same information while including their opinion.

So if the column reads:

a) The Toronto Raptors have traded a protected future first round pick to the Houston Rockets for Kyle Lowry - thats a report.

b) The Toronto Raptors have improved their team by trading a protected future first round pick to the Houston Rockets for Kyle Lowry - thats an editorial

There are very few columns that are presented here (or in general) that aren't editorials.


Toronto could have signed Fields to any offer sheet he'd be willing to sign. So the contract needed to be large enough for him to sign it AND sign it in short order so there was no way he'd be involved in the sign-and-trade. The poison pill was added to make it more difficult for NY to just sign him and keep him anyways (and then potentially use a different player in the deal)

So the idea/opinion that Fields contract was based on effecting NYs ability to get Nash is not necessarily false.