doug wick

Bill Simmons is one of my favorite sportswriters (thanks to my old roommate Stephen for introducing him to me), and Malcolm Gladwell is the funny and insightful author of books The Tipping Point, Blink, and most recently Outliers.

What I didn’t know is that these guys know each other and love to rap about sports, and they have an oddly similar way of being both extremely perceptive about people and human nature – and highly talented at communicating their observations in writing. They are also both very in tune with pop culture and have a great way of mixing their worlds (sports and behavioral psychology) with the familiar in order to make it easier to understand, and more entertaining to read.

The most recent tangle between these two is posted on ESPN.com today, and it’s a great read. My favorite part, predictably, is where they compare sports teams to musical teams (bands). A couple excerpts:

Simmons:

And in my opinion, LeBron [James] has a chance to be U2 or Springsteen in Cleveland. Now that he’s winning, and now that the Cavs know how to build around his personality — in a nutshell, finding complementary players who won’t be threatened by him, enjoy basketball, enjoy life and aren’t afraid of failing — this could just go on and on for as long as he wants. Other stars will take less to play with him. Older players will take the minimum just to play with them for one season. Basically, it will be like Bruce deciding, “Hey guys, we’re going on tour again,” and the rest of the E Streeters dropping whatever they were doing to join him. Why? Because you don’t turn down Bruce Springsteen.

Gladwell:

And that’s the thing I worry about with LeBron. You say that this could go on for as long as he wants, but the truth is these things rarely go on for as long as anyone wants. U2 is a weird exception. In most cases, John turns on Paul, Axl gets fat and Kurt Cobain commits suicide.