Not to beat this Bill Simmons thing to death, but having been referred to now as “Minnesota’s most intrepid (and trusted) pamphleteer of sports culture” we feel as though we have to inspect this story from multiple angles. (For the record: While we think this is all great fun and makes a certain amount of practical basketball and marketing sense, we are 99.9 percent sure the Simmons-for-GM of the Wolves thing is nothing more than an interesting conversation piece and that the Wolves’ brass would never consider it in a million years. Which is their right, given they run a multi-million dollar enterprise. Even if outside-the-box thinking could be useful right about now).

So: based on the fact that a great part of Simmons’ appeal — indeed, the part he seems to be pushing the hardest — is his ability to generate buzz and therefore revenue, we called upon sports business expert Darren Rovell, who used to work with Simmons at ESPN.com. Here is what Rovell had to say:

The bottom line: When you have a celebrity GM, it really doesn’t do much for you financially unless you turn the team around. It is ultimately about winning. Would you get a lot of attention? Yes. But that attention is not really worth much. Teams that have paid so-called celebrity GMs or have awarded people spots because of their name. Same thing with celebrity coaches. Often the finances are misguided.

Now, there is a value if you believe he is an incredible basketball observer and you think he will help turn the team around. But that has nothing to do with Bill Simmons’ name. Would people go and see Bill Simmons’ team because Bill is Simmons is running it?

He would cause some controversy I’m sure. He’d be very bold. There’s only value when your team is winning. The reason the Pistons were able to sell out that big arena wasn’t because bad boy Joe Dumars was in the arena, it’s that he was working with great scouts and making good deals.

On the difference between, say, the Wolves and Knicks hiring a guy like Simmons to run the team: “Here’s the only thing I would say: There is a greater capacity to grow in Minnesota than New York. His potential for value in a popularity boost would be greater because there are more seats to fill.”

Overall: “It’s great publicity value, but the dollar value isn’t much.”

In layman’s (our terms): Rovell was skeptical of the folks on the original Q&A who said they would rush out and buy season tickets if Simmons was hired. So while it might be fascinating and entertaining, apparently it might not be that valuable.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 3:01 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.