Somehow, it’s now been a full decade since Bill Simmons left ESPN.
But following the 2025 NBA Finals, the void that the Sports Guy left at the Worldwide Leader has never felt larger.
While ESPN’s coverage of the NBA’s championship round has resulted in no shortage of criticism — including just ahead of Sunday’s Game 7 — Simmons and The Ringer’s coverage provided salvation for the sickos who were actually excited about the smallest-market Finals in league history.
Is measuring ESPN’s broadcast coverage against a website that primarily specializes in podcasts akin to comparing apples and oranges? Perhaps. But, as Lil Dicky once said, they’re still both fruits. And in this instance, there shouldn’t be any debate about which one was more ripe.
Whereas much of ESPN’s coverage seemed largely focused on itself, The Ringer’s served as a celebration of basketball, whether it was on The Bill Simmons Podcast, The Zach Lowe Show or any of the outlet’s other NBA podcasts or online content. Perhaps the best way to demonstrate the difference between ESPN and The Ringer’s coverage came via Simmons’ recent trope of saying that “Tyrese Haliburton needs to step up!” — a sarcastic statement he has typically made with a voice impression that he unconvincingly insisted wasn’t supposed to be anyone specific.
“That’s just a fundamental misunderstanding of who he is,” Simmons told Doc Rivers of Haliburton during an episode of his eponymous podcast following Game 5 last week. “You coached Chris Paul. Chris Paul didn’t wanna score 35 points in a Finals game. He wanted to have 20 and 12 or 18 and 14. That’s who he is. If Chris Paul was taking 20 to 25 shots in a game, odds are it was going badly for you.”
“That’s exactly right,” Rivers confirmed.
And yet, despite the Pacers’ run emerging as one of the NBA’s primary storylines over the last two months, the “Haliburton needs to step up” narratives seemed to dominate ESPN’s airwaves after (or during) each Indiana loss. There was also the short-lived feud between the Pacers star and Stephen A. Smith, the latter of whom I strongly suspect was the primary inspiration for Simmons’ impression.
Stephen A. Smith and Kendrick Perkins both went in on an injured Tyrese Haliburton at halftime of Game 5.
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— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing.bsky.social) June 17, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Simply put, The Ringer’s coverage came across as if it was created by people who have been following players like Haliburton since he was a draft prospect, whereas ESPN’s coverage did its best to force both the Thunder and the Pacers into predetermined morning debate show narratives. And although that wasn’t true for everyone at the network — Scott Van Pelt and Brian Windhorst each stand out as obvious exceptions — the reality is that ESPN’s coverage of the 2025 NBA Finals will be best remembered for its lackluster game presentation and its most prominent personalities making themselves the main characters.
ESPN comparison aside, The Ringer’s NBA coverage still deserves massive kudos. Look no further than this past week, in which its founder put together a virtuoso performance featuring five podcasts over the course of eight days, with a guest list that included Russillo, Lowe, Rivers, Chris Vernon, Joe House, projected NBA Lottery pick Kon Knueppel, Kevin Hench, and Rob Mahoney.
The main event came on Sunday night, with Russillo and Lowe joining Simmons for a rare three-man weave episode featuring The Ringer’s three most prominent NBA-focused personalities, each of whom happened to previously work at ESPN. The conversation perfectly encapsulated the strangeness of Game 7 after Haliburton suffered an apparent Achilles injury midway through the first quarter and wrapped with a deep-dive into this week’s NBA Draft, perfectly exemplifying just how big of basketball sickos these guys truly are.
Admittedly, I’m a little biased here, as binging The Ringer’s podcasts played a primary role in helping me survive a 30-hour round-trip from Ohio to Florida and back this past week. Somewhere between Cincinnati and Columbus on Sunday morning, Lowe’s Game 7 preview with Howard Beck only amplified my excitement for the impending championship game.
“It’s here, man. I can’t believe it,” Lowe, who ESPN inexplicably laid off last fall, said. “The Indiana Pacers, regardless of what happens, thank you for giving us some magic. This is real sports magic. What happened to the Indiana Pacers is real sports magic, and we get to experience it one last time against the Thunder, the heavy favorites, the 68-win juggernauts on Sunday. I can’t freaking wait.”
It was the type of sentiment that both felt absent from ESPN’s coverage the last three weeks and has also helped defined the outlet that Simmons has built over the course of the last 10 years.