“I blame the people around him. I blame the lack of a father figure in his life. I blame us for feeding his narcissism to the point that he referred to himself in the third person five times in 45 minutes. I blame local and national writers (including myself) for apparently not doing a good enough job explaining to athletes like LeBron what sports mean to us, and how it IS a marriage, for better and worse, and that we’re much more attached to these players and teams than they realize,” Simmons wrote at the time.
Paul also told The New Yorker that he and James have no plans of ever sitting down with Simmons, who now talks sports in the podcast realm.
“That’s why I don’t speak to Bill Simmons. A lot of that has to do with race, too,” Paul said. “He wouldn’t have said that about Larry Bird. He wouldn’t have said that about J. J. Redick. You get what I am saying? ‘The Decision’ ten years ago is the norm today. It’s what everyone wants to do. Kids won’t even decide where they go to college without it being a big production, and Bill Simmons says some s— like that.”
Peep the introspective interview at thenewyorker.com.
