Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell had another of their celebrated e-mail exchanges last week. A highlight:
Bands can go different ways just like successful basketball teams. McCartney and Lennon were two geniuses who ultimately needed one another (like Young Magic and Older Kareem, or Shaq and Young Kobe), whereas MJ and LeBron were more like Sting or Springsteen (someone who could carry the band by themselves). And if you want to drag hip-hop or rap into it, the best parallel would obviously be Jordan's post-baseball Bulls: MJ was Chuck D, Pippen was Terminator X, and there is no effing doubt that Rodman was Flavor Flav.According to Simmons' Twitter, Pippen was originally compared to Professor Griff, although I'm guessing Bill didn't want to imply that Scottie is an anti-Semite. Posted by Stephen Silver at May 18, 2009 02:12 AM
I think Charlie Ward would have been more comparable to Prof. Griff.
Posted by: LilB at May 18, 2009 11:12 AM