The world needs another story about the Jordan-era Chicago Bulls about as much as it needs to the leader of the free world to keep telling his desperate, uninformed constituency that drinking Clorox will kill the coronavirus. It's Monday afternoon, less than 24 hours after the premiere of episodes three and four of 'The Last Dance,' and The Loop alone is already up to three Bulls-centric posts and counting. We say counting, because when Bill Simmons fired up the Twitter oven on Monday afternoon and the warm, comforting smell of terrible take cake began wafting through the house, we had no choice but to go ahead and finish off the quartet with a doozy. Go ahead, Bill. Do us the honors.
We didn't want to do this. Really, we didn't. We were this close to holding off too, but then ol' Bill circled back for more punishment, clarifying it was everyone else's fault that he's an idiot. We now return to Bill Simmons at the podium:
"Listen to the pod before overreacting to this tweet." Man, is this some ninja level marketing or what? But long con aside, the point remains: Simmons take is bad because it's wrong and demonstrably so, no matter what arbitrary qualifier you slap on it. Rodman as wan airport janitor while his future NBA peers were at Duke driving around in new Camaros. Then he went through a sudden growth spurt, became three-time All-American and, despite being drafted at the age of 25, went on to win five NBA Championships with two different dynasties.
Then there's the irreconcilable duality of Rodman. Rodman himself claimed that he was one of "47 children" on his father's side. He grew up introverted and impoverished, and barely spoke a word to anyone when he arrived in the NBA with the Bad Boy Pistons. Flash forward a decade and a couple of championship rings, and he was wearing wedding dresses on national TV, releasing his own autobiographies and dating Madonna. In retirement, Rodman made headlines by becoming close personal friends with the world's most infamous living dictator. Hell, you could do an entire doctorate study on the sociological impact that Rodman's ever-expanding collection of tattoos and piercings had on young, black athletes in America.
Maybe you, like Simmons, don't find that interesting, despite slurping up all of Gronk's Boston Lager-fueled antics for years. Maybe the juxtaposition of one Rodman—the shy, NAIA rebound machine—to another—Mr. Carmen Electra with an afro like a leopard pelt—is boring to you. But let's all agree on one thing before we swear off Chicago Bulls stories until this time next week:
Even if that is how you feel, you'd have to be a complete dumbass to tweet it.