Bill Simmons has resurrected his feud with Pat McAfee by taking aim at the ESPN personality’s in-game wrestling promo during Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Friday.
As he has throughout the playoffs, McAfee took on the role of hype man during Friday’s contest between the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, In. McAfee used Friday’s monologue to call out the fact that the Thunder were still betting favorites to win both Game 4 and the series, even though the Pacers had a 2-1 advantage at that point.
Pat McAfee is at the NBA Finals and he just cut a promo saying the OKC Thunder are the frauds and calls out Stephen A Smithpic.twitter.com/UNhfwc9VOS
— Ahmed/The Ears/IG: BigBizTheGod 🇸🇴 (@big_business_) June 14, 2025
During Saturday’s edition of “The Zach Lowe Show,” Simmons questioned the timing of McAfee’s promo. He pointed out that it came at a crucial point in the game with roughly ten minutes left in regulation, and that a hype speech about the Pacers being underdogs clashed with the reality that they were trying to see out a fourth quarter lead.
“My big note is that McAfee did this monologue with, like, ten minutes left,” Simmons said. “This was a crucial part of the game, and he was doing this thing about, ‘We were six-point underdogs, and this is Indiana.’ It was the wrong timing. I would have gone second quarter for that. It was this massive part of the game, and they actually had to stop the game and wait for the monologue to finish before they started playing again. I thought that was really weird.”
Simmons is not criticizing McAfee’s message as much as he is questioning the timing of it, though he doesn’t seem too enamored with the former Indianapolis Colts punter leaning into the underdog narrative either. Obviously, the Pacers went on to let a late lead slip away, and the Thunder tied the series as it shifts back to Oklahoma City.
McAfee’s WWE-style promos have not even been universally popular among Pacer fans during the playoffs. Simmons is right that this one, in particular, probably would have played better earlier in the game than in a crucial fourth quarter.
H/T Awful Announcing