Horrible article by Rick Reilly

BoiseBYU wrote:

Here's my reply to Rick Reilly:

Rick,



You make a living for your shock value at the expense of athletes who give blood, sweat and tears on the field of battle. You thrive on the attention you create by your bold criticisms.



You were right in your assessment of Fredette in this particular game (although your criticisms lack appropriate context), but your writing profoundly disrespects his body of work and the impact he has had on his team, his conference and, truthfully, the entire nation of college basketball fans this year. It is really a cowardly cheap shot to be among the first to kick a kid, whose skills were used to their fullest to garner Sportscenter ratings by ESPN throughout the season, after his worst shooting night of his career.



In the end, sportswriters like you will come and go, and no one will really know when you are gone. However, long after you're gone, Fredette's jersey will be hanging in the rafters in the Marriott Center, and fans will be telling their kids stories about the magical season that Jimmer helped create. Meanwhile, we don't build monuments to critics, so enjoy the few minutes of buzz your writing has created, it really just makes you look biased and ignorant, and ultimately it hurts your credibility as a serious writer.



P. McAllister

That was and is outstanding. Truth!

+1 Very well written.



I wrote ESPN letting them know of my disdain for having articles that tore down BYU - a partner to ESPN. I explained to them my feelings of betrayal and unprofessionalism. Opinion is one thing but slander and misconstruing facts is another. Let's see if either colon or rick write some sort of followup.

Amen to all of the above.



Reilly is highly impressed with his ability to point out the obvious of a single game. How brilliant. And he apparently has no problem excluding the wealth of information that refutes his conclusions about Jimmer and the Cougars -- this was a phenomenal basketball team with the phenomenal Jimmer. Ignoring the accomplishments of this 30+ win season to make the Jimmer-hate arguments in his article = no credibility.

Hi friends. I've been lurking for about a year and finally decided to join your ranks.



Rick Reilly :utard: disgusts me.



I hope he reads all the responses sent to him.



Here was my reply:

Rick,



You just lost a fan. I used to enjoy your columns. I will never read another word from you again. Way to kick a guy when he is down. You are truly a great human being. I'm sorry that you hate Jimmer and that you hate BYU. I don't know the reasons but Jimmer is a better person than you are and BYU is a great institution with a lot of honor, something that you obviously lack.



Get a clue,



CougarBlue

Rick does indeed = douche

Welcome cougarblue, good thoughts.

I saw a couple Facebook posts along those same lines, but their arguments are circular.



So let me get this straight...Jimmer isn't all that good, and his teammates are pizza delivery guys, and he isn't clutch, and yet they took Florida to overtime.



Jimmer did not have a good game (38% shooting) but the rest of the team was worse (33%). If Jimmer had taken fewer shots and the rest of the team taken more (at the same percentage) BYU wouldn't have even made it to overtime.



Plus Jimmer didn't have a chance to be clutch in regulation. BYU didn't have an offensive possession in the final 1:17 of regulation. By overtime we didn't have much of a chance. We weren't a deep team and the loss of Davies killed our shot at overtime games.



What kills me the most is that a Sweet 16 exit for Jimmer shows he sucked, but Sullinger, Nolan Smith and Kyrie Irving all made Sweet 16 exits with better surrounding casts (including two being on the same team) they lost to lower seeded teams than Florida and none of them forced overtime. Kemba is looking really good for Tournament MVP, but swap his surrounding cast for Jimmer's and tell me he would still be in the Final Four. I don't buy it.

What kills me is that Kemba will probably be the tournament MVP and may get just enough juice from this publicity now that Jimmer's career is over, to eclipse Jimmer for the Naismith POY. The thing that really kills me is that all those things will happen because Arizona went for the win and just flat missed 2 or 3 opportunities in the last 18 seconds to win or send the game into overtime.



Of course all the headlines and the talking heads will be buzzing about Kemba, but lets compare his stat line vs. Arizona to Jimmer's vs. Florida and compare their supporting casts:



MIN FGM-A 3PM-A FTM-A OREB REB AST STL BLK TO PF PTS

Kemba 40 7-17 (41%) 1-7(14%) 5-6(83%) 0 4 7 1 0 2 0 20

Jimmer 44 11-29(38%) 3-15(20%) 7-7(100%) 0 2 5 1 0 6 3 32



Kemba's stat line doesn't appear significantly better than Jimmer's, apart from the turnovers and fouls (I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but a few of those turnovers occurred with contact that wasn't called or was incorrectly called, in my opinion).



Supporting Casts:

BYU FG 14/42 (33%), no other players in double figures (2 w/ 9 pts)

FT 7/9 (78%)

Total points (supporting cast)= 42 (of 74 points -- 57%)



UCONN FG 16/39 (41%), 2 other players in double figures w/ 19

I was half hoping that Rick and Colon were right,and that Jimmer's as average as they claim he is 'cause next year we'll be even better without that boat anchor dragging us down!



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Tom Kirkland replied.



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This is my open response to Rick Reilly's article titled "Jimmer Goes Dimmer" published on ESPN.com.



PROVO - Rick, I enjoy your work but this entry missed as badly as Jimmer did vs UF. "Caught his last act..." you wrote but maybe that's the problem, you missed several of his "out of body" beatdowns on UNLV, Utah, SDSU, his 52 on New Mexico and Gonzaga....which is to say you saw him at his exhausted, stretched-to-the limit worst (with, as you point out, a challenged cast).



Somehow, for some reason, you just couldn't resist throwing religion in there, something I've never heard him bring up. I'm Presbyterian so don't leap to the notion that this is a Mormon rushing to defend him.



He's basically instructed to avoid defending by his coaches since he's needed to do everything else.



He's sublimely talented, shifty, surprisingly quick off the dribble, understands and loves playing through contact but only time will tell about his NBA potential. He WILL be a lottery pick, will play at least 10 years and, as you tried to bury as an afterthought, Jimmer will be the Nat'l Player of the Year many times over. But your biggest miss by not being around him is...he's tough as they come and he's a winner. No other player in college could've led this BYU team (losing 2 starters to injury and Honor Code issues) to 32 wins and within a missed free throw of the Elite 8.



Your blog had a bite that was a bit too severe and smacked a bit of "scoreboard", when it's Jimmer who owns that scoreboard, with the only exception being the one game that you saw against the Gators.



Keep up the great work on the articles, but this was not one of those.



PS: He's an above average trash-talker (which I know you can appreciate) but you'd only know that if you'd been around a bit more.



Anyway, thanks for reading this...if you did.



Please respond anytime.

imho good reply.