Bill Simmons and Brian Windhorst Podcast About Cavaliers' Situations

[Meticode]

http://espn.go.com/espnradio/play?id=12594321

Interesting listen...

Notes:

* Even though the Cavs have turned things around since mid-January, the Blatt/LeBron dynamic is still there. Simmons says friends of his at certain games notices that LeBron bypasses Blatt and goes directly to Tyronn Lue about discussing things on the court in huddles. When Windhorst brought this up to Blatt, Blatt got pissed off.

* Love is dealing with back issues and isn't making it public because it hurts his free agency and doesn't want to make it an excuse.

* Before the turnaround in January 15th in after the game against the Suns when the Cavs dropped to 19-20 right after the game Love ran out of the visiting locker-room into the practice gym to talk to GM David Griffin. No one knows what this conversation was about, but Mason Plumlee pf the Suns after the game went to get up shots, walked into that conversation and then immediately turned around and left as if to say, "I'm not getting in the middle of that conversation."

[Spaulding]

Listening to this now. Will take the chat with a grain of salt. Entertainment none the less.

[RedBlackAttack]

It's pretty well established that Windhorst burned a lot of bridges in Cleveland over the last year or so and that he is not given the kind of access or information that people seem to think he still has available to him.

Other guys have stepped into his (very fat) void and are the "new" go-to Cavs beat writers who do actually have access to the team.

Windhorst just basically observes from afar and gives his own (often biased and/or uninformed) opinion about what he sees... and it is pretty obvious in his reporting when you compare it to writers like Jason Lloyd, Dave McMenamin and Chris Haynes.

If Simmons wanted an actual discussion about what is happening behind the scenes with the Cavs, any of those three guys would have been far better choices. But, Windhorst is still the big name and he is more than happy to supply sensational headlines and controversial talking points if prompted... I guess that's what Simmons was looking for here.

I don't feel like I have any better understanding of what is happening with that team after having listened to that, though. It's the same opinion from afar stuff that Windy has been spewing since Chris Grant was fired last year. Considering everything that Windhorst has gotten wrong over the last 12 months, I'm pretty surprised that people still take him seriously.

[BasedTom]

It's pretty well established that Windhorst burned a lot of bridges in Cleveland over the last year or so and that he is not given the kind of access or information that people seem to think he still has available to him.

Other guys have stepped into his (very fat) void and are the "new" go-to Cavs beat writers who do actually have access to the team.

Windhorst just basically observes from afar and gives his own (often biased and/or uninformed) opinion about what he sees... and it is pretty obvious in his reporting when you compare it to writers like Jason Lloyd, Dave McMenamin and Chris Haynes.

If Simmons wanted an actual discussion about what is happening behind the scenes with the Cavs, any of those three guys would have been far better choices. But, Windhorst is still the big name and he is more than happy to supply sensational headlines and controversial talking points if prompted... I guess that's what Simmons was looking for here.

I don't feel like I have any better understanding of what is happening with that team after having listened to that, though. It's the same opinion from afar stuff that Windy has been spewing since Chris Grant was fired last year. Considering everything that Windhorst has gotten wrong over the last 12 months, I'm pretty surprised that people still take him seriously.

1. fatty and simmons are both employed by E!SPN

2. fatty comes attached to lebron's jockstrap, so it's not unreasonable to think that he might have learned something of interest in between cheeseburger breaks

3. fatty always seemed to undermine everyone besides lebron while he was here in miami- i thought that was just hometown bias for cleveland- but in any event i would assume that if Gilbert and Lebron could come together and put the past aside, then it wouldn't be too difficult for fatty to do the same (considering it wasn't really his choice to leave in the first place)

[christian1923]

It's pretty well established that Windhorst burned a lot of bridges in Cleveland over the last year or so and that he is not given the kind of access or information that people seem to think he still has available to him.

Other guys have stepped into his (very fat) void and are the "new" go-to Cavs beat writers who do actually have access to the team.

Windhorst just basically observes from afar and gives his own (often biased and/or uninformed) opinion about what he sees... and it is pretty obvious in his reporting when you compare it to writers like Jason Lloyd, Dave McMenamin and Chris Haynes.

If Simmons wanted an actual discussion about what is happening behind the scenes with the Cavs, any of those three guys would have been far better choices. But, Windhorst is still the big name and he is more than happy to supply sensational headlines and controversial talking points if prompted... I guess that's what Simmons was looking for here.

I don't feel like I have any better understanding of what is happening with that team after having listened to that, though. It's the same opinion from afar stuff that Windy has been spewing since Chris Grant was fired last year. Considering everything that Windhorst has gotten wrong over the last 12 months, I'm pretty surprised that people still take him seriously.
I feel bad for real cavs fans.

And I'm a knick fan

[ralph_i_el]

What is it with white bball players and back problems? Specifically ones who can shoot?

I get lower back pain after about an hour of shoot around unless I stretch a lot before hand. Maybe it's genetic? Are whites less flexible? My back stress comes from tight hamstrings.

Regardless, I'm shitfaced, about to get a beej, and Windhorst is a fat ****ing loser

[RedBlackAttack]

1. fatty and simmons are both employed by E!SPN

2. fatty comes attached to lebron's jockstrap, so it's not unreasonable to think that he might have learned something of interest in between cheeseburger breaks

3. fatty always seemed to undermine everyone besides lebron while he was here in miami- i thought that was just hometown bias for cleveland- but in any event i would assume that if Gilbert and Lebron could come together and put the past aside, then it wouldn't be too difficult for fatty to do the same (considering it wasn't really his choice to leave in the first place)
Oh, definitely not. IMO, he's been actively undermining this organization for the last year or so.

This is stuff that you would only know if you followed the Cavaliers intensely over the last few years, but it is pretty clear Windy was getting fed a stream of information on a regular basis from Chris Grant's front office -- our GM that was fired last season -- just based on the number and accuracy of his Cavs stories, even in those years when he was covering LeBron down in Miami. He was always seemingly plugged into what was happening from a moves standpoint with Cleveland.

Almost as soon as Grant was fired and Griffin was hired, he began really reaching and almost seemed angry when it came to the Cavs. Near the end of last season during a time when the Cavs were actually playing well and making a playoff push, he publicly skewered the team, saying (1) LeBron was unlikely to come back to Cleveland, (2) LeBron and Kyrie no longer get along at all and/or had a falling out (3) if LBJ ever did come back, it would have to mean KI would get sent packing, because LeBron would never agree to play with him, (4) the Cavs were absolutely not going to get any marquee free agents this offseason, and (5) then he flat-out challenged Kyrie to sign the max... citing that "Kyrie's camp" had been pushing him out of Cleveland for years.

Fatso all but came out and said there was no chance Kyrie would sign longterm here. He actually said either on his podcast or in a blog (can't remember for sure) that Kyrie "could prove him wrong if he wanted" but "he won't do that."

The worst part was, he dropped all of that stuff on the morning of the biggest game of the season for the Cavs. We were in the middle of still fighting for the 8th seed late in the season and had a game with Atlanta (who was the current 8th seed at the time) later that night. The Cavs came out and completely laid an egg, followed by Kyrie lashing out at Windy on Twitter, basically calling him liar.

http://oi59.tinypic.com/fnz3wn.jpg


At that point and in retrospect (what with his being wrong about ... everything), I think it is pretty obvious that he had an axe to grind with this organization. I suspected it was a loss of access when Griffin was made Grant's successor in the front office.

I know one thing... if I were Kyrie Irving, I'd never give Windhorst anything with the way he has gone out of his way to call KI out over the last year or so. And, considering how close this team seems to be, it wouldn't surprise me if Windy has been frozen out all together.

I know this... you don't see him breaking things with this team anymore, all of his "insider" thoughts sound more like opinions based on what he's observing and he often takes a negative viewpoint when talking about the team/organization if at all possible (over the last three months, that has become more difficult for him).

[Achilleas]

* Love is dealing with back issues and isn't making it public because it hurts his free agency and doesn't want to make it an excuse.


back issues is very serious problem in basketball players,they will hurt him all the time and can't be 100 % all the time,

stojakovic had the same problem for more than 5 years and he said that he spent more time last year on psysiotherapy than on training