The news cycle around Amazon founder Jeff Bezos potentially buying the Boston Celtics lasted less than a week, but that didn’t stop The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Fox’s Jason McIntyre from putting their tinfoil hats on and dreaming up an angle anyway.
So when leaks from the Bezos camp confirmed he was not interested in buying the team after all, the crew at Pardon My Take had to tease Simmons and McIntyre for their foolishness.
On Monday, Simmons teased on his podcast and social media that he was hearing legitimate whispers out of Boston that Bezos was a candidate to buy the team, which went up for sale last month. In response, McIntyre suggested on The Herd that Simmons was only dropping the news nugget to raise his profile amid contract negotiations with Spotify.
Friday on Pardon My Take, producer Hank Lockwood summarized the Bezos-Simmons-McIntyre saga and joked about how preposterous it was that Simmons would need to make up Celtics rumors to get attention as one of the biggest sports personalities in the world.
“There’s levels to that s*** that I don’t understand,” said Dan “Big Cat” Katz. “So he’s saying that Simmons is going through a contract dispute, so Simmons decided to talk about the Celtics for once?”
The Pardon My Take guys have some fun at Bill Simmons’ expense pic.twitter.com/WZ44JupI92
— The r/BillSimmons Podcast 🎙️ (@rBillSimmonsPod) August 23, 2024
Simmons is, of course, the host most connected with Boston sports in all of media. He literally came up as an online writer who called himself The Boston Sports Guy, and wrote a book about the Boston Red Sox.
The idea that Simmons would need leverage with Spotify at all is a little funny, but it’s even crazier to imagine that the way he would get it would be to discuss a topic he mentions on almost every single podcast episode … the Celtics.
Colin Cowherd, the Batman to McIntyre’s Robin on The Herd, had a similar response when McIntyre unleashed the theory live on air Monday.
Jason McIntyre has quite the theory about why Bill Simmons reported on Jeff Bezos and the Boston Celtics… pic.twitter.com/P1PhMcLleV
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) August 19, 2024
“He didn’t float it, he probably heard it,” Cowherd said. “Why are you so cynical? Can you just give people credit for potentially having inside information?”
Unless the Bezos leaks are wrong and he comes back into the bidding at some point, this will be a forgotten news cycle. But don’t forget the goofiness of McIntyre’s hot take on the issue.
[The r/BillSimmons Podcast on X via Pardon My Take]
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.