As the first round of the NBA Draft commenced on Wednesday night from Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., there were dual presentations of the event from The Walt Disney Company. The ESPN broadcast featured host Malika Andrews with analysis from Jay Bilas, Kendrick Perkins and Andraya Carter, along with contributions from Shams Charania, Bobby Marks and Jonathan Givony. The ABC offering featured Kevin Neghandi as host with analysis from Stephen A. Smith and Bob Myers plus reporting coming from Monica McNutt and Marty Smith. Bill Simmons, former ESPN host and writer, found it confusing to navigate between these options and determine which feed was best to watch for the night.
“I didn’t know which telecast to watch,” Simmons said on a live edition of his podcast on Wednesday night. “It was like, ‘Do I take this samurai sword and jam it into my temple?,’ or, ‘Do I take this chainsaw and saw my leg off?’ I couldn’t figure it out.”
Upon making these remarks, Simmons elaborated to recall that ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins referred to the Toronto Raptors as a top six team in the Eastern Conference once the franchise selected South Carolina forward Collin Murray-Boyles with the ninth selection. Once he heard this, he tried to find a third ESPN channel but then came to realize there were only two such platforms covering the proceedings. From there, he outlined how the NBA Draft began to get weird when the Portland Trail Blazers traded the No. 11 overall pick to the Memphis Grizzlies.
“Cedric Coward, Memphis, moves up with Portland,” Simmons recalled. “Malika [Andrews] calls him, ‘Colin Cowherd,’ which was exciting. I thought Colin Cowherd got drafted for a second.”
Towards the end of the live podcast, Simmons expressed that he was worried about the Boston Celtics making a mega-trade involving superstar Jaylen Brown. In the previous days, the Celtics had traded guard Jrue Holiday and center Kristaps Porziņģis, thus saving $180 million and dropping below the second apron. While this did not end up happening, Simmons perceived enough smoke brewing that he did not take a long power walk and stayed on guard.
“All the people that cover the Draft and you follow on Twitter, people do this every year,” Simmons said. “It’s like when there’s like some sort of big weather event coming and all the weather people on TV are like, ‘Don’t leave your house. This is going to be one of the worst hurricanes we’ve ever [seen],’ and then it turns out it’s fine. We do this with the NBA Draft every year where it’s like, ‘It’s going to be crazy, so many trades. Oh my God — buckle up, it’s going to be [crazy],’ and it never is, and I did feel deep down that that’s how it was going to play out.”
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