I was talking to a friend yesterday about the rumor. He thought there was a 75% chance it was true. I laughed and said I thought there was about a 1% chance. Today I listened to the two most recent Bill Simmons podcasts, and heard him talk about the alleged incident 3 different times. Before the podcast, I was convinced that this was just an internet rumor that had reached meme status, but Simmons seemed genuinely curious if it was true. Simmons doesn’t put much stock in blog rumors, and I imagine he has access to a lot more information then most people, so if he thinks this rumor might be true, then I’m re-evaluating my position. I’m now at 50%.
I typed up transcripts of the podcasts below:
Simmons, Joe House podcast 7/14 38:00
Simmons: He (Dan Gilbert) can leak all those stories to (Brian) Windhorst (Cav’s beat writer), and Windhorst can write a giant feature, and they (LeBron and his people) will never know the stories came from Dan Gilbert.
House: And the “A” Number One story that everyone in America is waiting to get some kind of confirmation on -
Simmons: CAREFUL! CAREFUL!
House: It’s the distraction in the playoff story.
Simmons: Yes.
House: I said it right.
Simmons: Yeah, you said it right.
House: I’m a professional, my brother.
Simmons: What happened between game 3 and game 6?
House: What happened?!
Simmons: When we were talking about the questions that should have been asked of Lebron in that special….The first question has to be ”what happened in the Boston series, how did you go from having a two game lead and you won by 30 pints on their home floor, to losing 3 games in a row and ripping your jersey off at the end of game 6. What happened?” Make him answer that question.
House: It’s a great question
Simmons: This is why they don’t allow me on studio shows.
Bill Simmons, Dave Dameshek and Kevin Hench 7/13 Part 2 14:45
Discussing why LeBron left Cleveland. Simmons says he is more on the side of LeBron just wanted to play with his friends on a great team, but he does see the other side -
Simmons: Especially if some weird things, which we can’t talk about on this podcast, but if there was any sort of real reasons why things fell apart in Cleveland, some team dissention.
Dameshek: Sure, that’s right.
Simmons: You know where I’m going with that
Dameshek : Yes
Simmons: And he needed to leave, and he felt like these are my boys, I want to play with my boys.
Bill Simmons, Dave Dameshek and Kevin Hench 7/13 Part 2 26:30
Kevin Hench: I really can’t see the Celtics beating the Cavs, I just felt like everything fell right for the Celtics. And, that thing we can’t talk about on the podcast, who knows how heavily that weighed on LeBron, but it was bizarre watching some of those sequences where he was barely participating
Simmons: He didn’t seem interested in whether they won or lost.
Kevin Hench: He didn’t seem interested in whether they won or lost. And when they got booed off the court in game 5 it was speculated, but now in retrospect it was done. A switch got flipped in his head.
Simmons: Yeah, I agree.
I imagine it went down something like this: Mac Bangs Dennis' Mom
