The premiere episode of HBO’s new weekly sports talk show hosted by Bill Simmons debuted Wednesday night. The 46-year-old blogger, podcaster and former ESPN talent now hosts his very own talk show on HBO called Any Given Wednesday where he is free to allow guests to swear like sailors and he can have fun bashing Republicans.
Right out of the box, politics rears its ugly head after Simmons declares that LeBron James is living proof that God does not actually hate Cleveland. Within the first 60 seconds of the show, Simmons says, "[LeBron] delivered on the promise of a championship, which puts him in the same conversation as Messier, Ali, Namath, hopefully not Trump." Simmons clearly does not want Trump to deliver on his claim as the Republican nominee at the GOP convention in Cleveland.
The first guest of this new show was former basketball star Charles Barkley, who may or may not have intentionally noted during a conversation about athletes who end up broke that one way to avoid that situation is to get rid of freeloading relatives and friends. “Giving people money doesn’t solve money problems...people are going to keep getting in debt and [if] you keep giving them money, you are just an enabler.” Sounds like a Republican thought to me.
Then Boston fan Ben Affleck gave a long, profanity-laced rant about New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s DeflateGate controversy. Classy.
At the end of the show, Simmons did a monologue about some of the crazy things happening in the world. Some examples he mentioned were the fact that Bill Clinton, a former president, will become the First Lady – note the certainty in this observation he expressed – and then put up a photo of Bill and Monica Lewinsky. And, yes, another mention of his dislike of Donald Trump. He noted Trump won the Republican nomination and then put up a picture of Trump doing his impersonation of the handicapped reporter.
I do agree with Simmons on one point – it is pretty crazy that he has his own talk show on HBO. I bet I’m not alone on that thought.
