Bill Simmons kicked off another round of media drama Friday night, this time taking aim at Dan Le Batard and Awful Announcing after the site highlighted a segment from The Bill Simmons Podcast.
The friction started when Simmons read an email on his show that he had sent to the Los Angeles Clippers, asking to be let out of his season-ticket contract. After Awful Announcing covered that moment, Simmons fired back on X: "Doesn't seem like Dan Le Batard's Awful Announcing blog enjoyed my Clippers letter that much."
That post set off a wave of reactions online, with fans quickly zeroing in on Simmons for turning a ticket dispute into another public beef.
"Bill Simmons starting another media beef!" one user wrote.
The underlying issue is a five-year season-ticket agreement Simmons and film producer Mike Tollin signed when the Clippers moved into the Intuit Dome. The deal came with a 20% discount, and with three years still left, Simmons asked the team to cancel it and return the money he had already paid.
On his podcast, Simmons tied the request to the NBA’s recent punishment of the franchise for salary-cap violations involving Kawhi Leonard. He said team connections had previously told him journalist Pablo Torre’s reporting on the situation was wrong, but after the league’s ruling, he and Tollin felt blindsided. Simmons said they had no idea the team would face "the NBA version of a death penalty."
"The Clippers broke their contract with fans and season ticket-holders, so we would like to break ours," Simmons said.
He also didn’t soften the blow on the team itself.
"Now we're looking at three more years of a non-playoff team with the bleakest future in the NBA. And not just that, but a sixth-row, midcourt view of the single dumbest franchise in the history of the league."
Even with that request on the table, Awful Announcing reported that the Clippers are highly unlikely to let Simmons out of the deal, which means he’ll probably still be on the hook for the rest of the contract.
In Other News...
Kawhi Leonard Debate Is Back And Clippers Fans Know Why
Draymond Green jumped in to defend Kawhi Leonard after Danilo Gallinaris recent criticism, brushing aside the idea that Leonard was the one moving pieces around in the Clippers front office. Greens point was simple enough: Leonard was a player, not the person with the authority to trade anyone, and the renewed debate has put an old Clippers topic back in the spotlight. For a fan base that has lived through plenty of roster drama, it is another reminder of how much scrutiny comes with every decision made around Leonard.
The bigger issue is not whether Leonard signed off on transactions in a formal sense, but how much influence he really had when the Clippers were shaping the roster during that offseason. Even now, the conversation keeps circling back to those choices and what they meant for the franchises future. If nothing else, the reaction shows this is still one of the most sensitive subjects around Leonard and the Clippers, and it is not going away quietly. [Read more 🡒]