- [Narrator] Fans have always said cruel
and disrespectful stuff about sports figures.
Things we would never say to their faces.
But the advent of the worldwide web
added a variable, a multiplier to that dynamic.
The internet gave sports fans, a platform,
a potential audience, and no fan seized those things faster
or more forcefully than Bill Simmons.
Simmons rose from regular guy to popular blogger,
to well connected, powerful celebrity, in a matter of years,
at no point discarding his passion
for Boston Celtics basketball.
And when rabid, often acerbic, Celtics fandom
meets a megaphone as loud as say, ESPN,
important people might start listening.
Important people like the coach of the Celtics.
This is how Bill Simmons started beef with Doc Rivers.
Bill Simmons developed a devoted audience blogging
as The Boston Sports Guy,
and expanded that audience nationwide,
when he started working for ESPN and ABC.
Even living in Los Angeles
with a paycheck and a big platform,
Simmons maintained his version of a bloggerly persona,
openly biased, proudly crass.
On ESPN's page two, he wrote long discursive posts
filled with half baked opinions, cruel wise cracks,
movie references, and a regular dose of Boston fandom,
for basketball in particular.
The Boston Celtics, unfortunately for both parties,
were pretty mediocre at the time.
In 2004, Celtics executive Danny Ainge
brought in a fresh face to turn his ship around: Doc Rivers,
a former excellent NBA player
whose first ever coaching job with the Orlando Magic
had ended in his abrupt firing the prior season.
Rivers' first year in Boston
constituted a decent bounce back
and returned to the playoffs,
but the Celtics slipped soon thereafter.
Around centerpiece Paul Pierce, Ainge filled Boston's roster
with a regular influx of rookies and trade acquisitions.
The Celtics churned in place with no clear direction.
Still by the end of that '06 season,
the internet's most prominent Celtics fan
had fixated on Coach Rivers as the scapegoat
for Boston's malaise.
Now, Bill Simmons had to know by this point
that he was big enough for NBA people
to catch him talking like a fan.
In January '06, Knicks' president Isiah Thomas
threatened him by name during a radio interview.
Nevertheless, Simmons felt comfortable
devoting entire pieces to disparaging Doc Rivers.
It is a big deal for an article on espn.go.com
to lead with "Doc Rivers stinks as an NBA coach."
Then over the course of 3000 words,
bluntly call for Doc's dismissal
and lay out an entire eight point protocol
for what makes a coach bad.
Also referenced "Teen Wolf."
Well, just like Isiah, Doc heard,
and he responded in a radio spot,
calling Simmons "just a blogger,"
not a real reporter who covered the team in person
and had any relationship with the guy he was roasting.
Simmons addressed the above the following season,
when the Celtics got even worse.
He explained that he had no hard feelings for the person,
only criticism for a "lousy coach."
All this in the context of a 3,800 word piece
reacting to a River's firing that hadn't even happened.
An exercise Simmons called fun,
immediately before saying it's never fun
to write that someone should lose his job,
before gleefully anticipating the draft lottery.
There's interesting stuff in here
about how interacting with sports figures
might generate as much bias as rooting for them from afar
and how the former phenomenon may have, "sheltered
a personable, but unsuccessful coach like Rivers."
In saying this, Simmons singled out and ignited a side beef
with legendary Boston sports writer, Bob Ryan.
And he referenced "Teen Wolf."
In any event, Simmons' wish casting did not pan out.
The Celtics went a dismal 24 and 58 in that '07 season,
but they didn't fire Rivers.
In fact, they gave him a five year contract extension.
In short, Simmons called Rivers' career milestone
a "poop hot dog."
In long, Simmons typed up a weepy 3000 word column,
lambasting Rivers for bad coaching
and Ainge for rewarding bad coaching.
As long as the Celtics' losing got them the lottery luck
to draft Greg Oden or Kevin Durant,
everything would be okay.
If they got the third pick, not so much.
And then a funny thing happened.
The '07 draft lottery gave Boston the fifth pick.
Simmons mourned the decade to come.
At least he had the Sox and the Pats.
And then a funnier thing happened.
Over the next few weeks, Danny Ainge dealt that fifth pick
plus a bunch of young players off that losing roster,
plus a bunch of cap space to conjure the Big Three:
Pierce, Ray Allen, and former MVP Kevin Garnett.
The very next season,
Doc Rivers coached the retooled Celtics
to the 2008 championship.
The greatest single season turnaround in NBA history.
Simmons expressed his apprehensions during that run,
but once it was over, he gleefully ate shit.
Bill said he'd been wrong many times,
but on the topic of Doc Rivers,
he'd been really, really wrong.
So Doc crushed his reputation, Bill ate his words
and the Celtics won stuff.
Beef over, right?
No, wrong.
We've only begun.
You see, NBA contenders rise and fade,
but Bill Simmons is permanently Bill Simmons.
In the early 2010s Simmons gained steam
as one of the biggest names and faces in sports media.
No longer just a blogger for Page Two,
ESPN let him run his own standalone website,
slather the internet and podcasts,
and critically for our purposes,
cross over into live television gigs.
Simmons built wealth and clout and inside sources
and remained the Celtics fan all the while.
During this time, Bill's Celtics anticipated another rebuild
as the Big Three slowed and dissolved.
In 2011, Rivers signed an extension
emphasizing mutual loyalty, insisting he would stick around
when the day for that rebuild finally arrived,
even though it would be so easy
to chase some other opportunity.
Well, in 2013, Boston barely snuck into the playoffs
where they took a first round tumble against the Knicks.
Mmm.
The day had come, time to empty out,
remake the roster from the ground up,
and watch Coach Rivers fulfill his commitment
to oversee a new era of Celtics Basketball.
Hmm.
After a long and messy period of will he, won't he rumors,
Rivers bailed to go become coach and president
of the Los Angeles Clippers.
Rivers still had three years left on his contract,
that commitment he'd made to help Boston rebuild.
So the Clippers had to arrange a trade of sorts
to pry him away.
With the 2013 draft approaching,
Doc met the media as the new leader of a team on the rise
ready to win right now.
His old team, meanwhile, completed their painful
but necessary demolition, accepting near term losses
for opportunities that would take years to pay off,
all under a new coach.
Here's how Bill Simmons felt about the above.
He posted this tweet just hours before that 2013 NBA Draft.
But of course, Simmons wasn't just any old blogger
firing off takes on Twitter.
Later that day, he was part of ESPN's draft coverage,
draft coverage that included a live offsite interview
with the new coach of the Clippers.
Here is Holly Roe brilliantly identifying
a raw slice of beef and chucking it straight onto the grill.
- [Rowe] Bill Simmons tonight
said he thought you quit on the Celtics.
What's your response to that?
- [Rivers] I would like to call him an idiot,
but I'm too classy for that.
So, I mean, that's just his opinion, that didn't happen.
And he really needs to know the whole truth,
which he doesn't.
- [Narrator] Now brace yourself for a wonderfully tense toss
back to the studio.
- All right, thanks Doc.
- All right. - Back to you guys.
- Ok, so you heard what Doc had to say.
- [Narrator] So Bill, you just got called out pretty hard.
You gonna back down?
- [Panelist] What's your reaction to that?
- [Simmons] The truth keeps changing.
I mean, he's given different quotes about this.
He didn't know, he did know.
He kind of knew, he wanted the trade to happen,
he was coming back, he needed a year off.
When he sticks to a story, I'll believe the truth.
- [Narrator] That would be a no.
Now that they had both used pretty harsh words,
Simmons clarified what he wanted from the old Celtics coach.
- [Simmons] Just own it.
Just admit what you did.
The writing was on the wall,
the Celtics wanted to rebuild,
you didn't wanna be a part of it,
you wanna go to the Clippers, and it happened.
Like just own what you did.
- [Narrator] Not off base,
and certainly a more refined criticism
than simply calling the dude a quitter.
But at the outset of a new job,
Doc wasn't going to let the sports guy have the last word.
The day after the draft, Rivers went on Dan Patrick Show
and addressed Simmons directly.
- [Patrick] Help me understand then what the real story is.
- [Rivers] It's not that hard of a story, Bill.
- [Narrator] Doc acknowledged Bill's version of the story.
- [Rivers] Clearly. Yeah.
I had a selfish motive, I had a chance to not rebuild
and go to a team that is in a different phase
of their franchise, so everybody benefits.
- [Narrator] But also sort of reframed it
as a mutual decision, not quitting.
- [Rivers] This was done together,
this is me not walking into the self and I quit,
or anything like that.
They wanted to unload contracts,
I happened to be one of those contracts.
- [Narrator] And then he turned his attention
back to Simmons, laying out the shape
of this beef as he saw it.
- [Rivers] Yeah. Is he qualified to do the NBA?
Well, we can debate that all day,
but Bill is a fan and and I get that,
not a friend of mine or a fan of mine,
and he never has been.
I just kind of had enough of that
and I thought it kind of ruined the broadcast last night
'cause he kept bringing it up,
so it was almost like he had an agenda.
- [Patrick] Who initiated it?
- [Rivers] I wish we were on the court.
- [Narrator] Unfortunately this beef settling
one-on-one battle never happened.
But yeah, there is Doc's point.
Simmons was a fan, but he was the very rare fan
who could make a stink on national television.
And in another post draft interview on Boston Radio,
Rivers went further.
Simmons didn't just use the ESPN platform
to broadcast Celtics fandom.
Doc believed that Bill had at some point used the access
and connections engendered by ESPN fame,
to try and convince his favorite team to fire their coach.
That is a big accusation, and it hit the airwaves
around the same time Doc's son, Jeremiah,
a player who had just spent some time
with Boston's D-league affiliate
was absolutely eviscerating Simmons on Twitter.
Jeremiah defended his dad, called Bill disloyal and a bully,
and told him to shut up.
Not gonna happen.
The sports guy kinda had to respond,
and boy did he!
First he mocked all those Jeremiah Rivers Tweets,
then Simmons took a more serious tone,
deeming Doc's accusation that Bill tried to get him fired,
an outright lie.
He even called Doc by his given name,
in what kind of reads as a threat.
This was getting outta hand.
But from the outside, it appeared to stop right there.
Why?
Well, a month later, Simmons two part
12,000 word midnight run themed 2013 off season recap
reserved its 18th footnote to explain.
At some point on that contentious Friday after the draft,
Doc and Bill got on the phone
and hashed out their differences.
Doc said, the Celtics didn't wanna keep him.
Simmons didn't buy it.
They agreed that LA was a much better situation for Doc,
and they left it at that.
Two versions of the same story.
Agree to disagree.
Later that year, Doc recalled that phone conversation
basically the same way,
and restated the reason he thought Simmons
couldn't accept his version of the truth.
- You guys gonna hug it out?
- [Rivers] Yeah, we have.
Bill and I have talked about it.
- You hugged it out?
- [Rivers] Bill was a passionate Celtic fan.
He's a reporter, and a Celtic fan.
And that's difficult sometime to separate.
- [Narrator] But hey, a famous journalist
caring deeply about the Celtics
wasn't Doc's problem anymore.
He had moved on from that team
to a team in Bill Simmons' adopted home city
for whom he once owned season tickets.
Doc running the Clippers didn't draw Bill's eye
the way his Celtics stint did,
but they did occasionally cross paths on the internet.
Simmons criticized LA's decision to add Spencer Hawes
instead of Paul Pierce,
Doc said he was wrong and left it at that.
Then months later when the Clippers
traded Hawes and signed Pierce,
Simmons did not leave it at that.
When hideous racist Clippers owner Donald Sterling
finally got booted from the NBA,
Simmons took a little dig at everyone
who engaged with the franchise,
even though they knew Sterling was awful.
That included Doc, and it included himself.
That was a serious column
that included reporting on a serious issue,
and in its aftermath Simmons credited Rivers
for saving the Clippers.
But don't get the idea that Simmons had stepped fully
into serious journalism, nor fully away from prodding Doc.
The sentiment just changed.
During River's Clippers tenure,
Simmons broke up with the ESPN
and became big boss at his own new website,
albeit not a behind the scenes boss by any means.
He ribbed Doc for signing his son, Austin, not Jeremiah,
and then giving him crunch time minutes.
When the once great Clippers began to crumble
just like his Celtics did,
except without a title to show for it,
Simmons got a whole bunch of jokes in Doc's expense.
This is not the tone of an aggrieved fan.
It was just cold detached mockery.
But was it still beef?
Not for Doc, I think.
At least not entering the next decade.
He moved on from the Clippers and took a new job
that gave him other Simmonses to worry about.
Bill by the way, had enough inside info
to correctly predict Doc's move to the Sixers in 2020.
One clear indication
of how far he'd advanced in the industry.
But these days, you can advance quite far in sports media
without relinquishing your fandom.
No one demonstrated that better than The Boston Sports Guy.
Maybe he has since become enough of a media mogul
to tone down the fandom,
or maybe Simmons just stands out less
decades into his career, in an industry now full of fans
and opinion generators.
Everyone's got a Twitter account and a podcast,
including sports figures themselves.
But for a moment there,
Simmons's voice definitely stood out,
and it heralded a changing media environment.
During that era, no one felt its heat quite like Doc Rivers.
Who at least for a period of time,
wasn't content to simply roll with the punches.
(dramatic music)
Thank you so much for watching "Beef History."
If you wanna learn about another Celtics feud
taking place around this time, check out this episode.
(whimsical music)