Posts Tagged ‘T.J. Simers’

Leading up to this morning’s edition of Jay Mohr Sports, the Fox Sports Radio host could be heard in a cheeky promo built around something LA Times columnist T.J. Simers told him earlier this week.

As Mohr points out in the tease, LA Lakers owner Jerry Buss had barely been dead a few hours when Simers led off his Monday morning on-air remarks with:

“He understood Hollywood better than maybe any other sports owner and in a time before anyone else. So when you’re a pioneer in anything, I think you deserve tremendous credit for having such foresight… Not to mention the young escorts that were with him a lot. He put himself out there as, really, kind of an LA creature.”

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He’s baaaaack.

With Jim Mora Jr. preparing for UCLA’s bowl game, Los Angeles Times columnist T.J. Simers took his act on the road and was in the face of Los Angeles Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni following their 100-94 loss on Tuesday to the lowly Cleveland Cavaliers.

Simers questioned D’Antoni about the team’s defensive work, and well, that didn’t sit to well with the man leading a Lakers team that looks absolutely dreadful.

Fair question at this point in the season when a team filled with superstars is 9-13 and are slowly sliding in the Western Conference standings.

If Simers traveled to wonderful Cleveland, you have to imagine he will be making the trip to New York when the Knicks host the Lakers on Thursday night.

For D’Antoni’s sake, I hope they find a way to pull off the upset.

As a Los Angeleno, I grew up reading T.J. Simers in the Los Angeles Times and hoped one day I could get under the skin of people through the power of the pen and speaking the truth.

All these years later, Simers is still finding ways to piss people off in this town, simply by saying what’s on his mind.

His latest victim was UCLA head coach Jim Mora Jr. following the Bruins rolling over to Stanford on Saturday night at the Rose Bowl.

A win over Stanford would have meant a Pac-12 title game rematch from last year involving UCLA and Oregon. The loss sets up another UCLA-Stanford battle on Friday in rainy Palo Alto — a much better scenario than traveling to Eugene and one of the rare times where it actually pays to tank.

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At this morning’s UCLA football practice, camera crews for ESPN and KTLA are said to have foolishly tried to set up shop in a restricted field area. As a result, coach Jim Mora sent them, the rest of the press corps and members of the school’s sports information department packing for the day.

Go Joe Bruin blogger Carlos Sandoval speculates that this action is directly responsible for a subsequent LA Times tweet announcement that the paper will no longer cover UCLA and USC football practices. And he, for one, is thrilled:

T.J. Simers has constantly bashed UCLA for seemingly no reason other than having an ax to grind while Chris Foster, though more moderate, has been an absolute douche while covering the team. Both act as if covering UCLA football is a labor, so I’m personally glad that they’re willfully leaving. It’s for the best, because they blow.

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Nick Canepa (pictured) has been with U-T San Diego and the paper’s previous incarnation since 1977 and on board as a full-time sportswriter since the 1984 LA Summer Olympics. In other words, this guy knows how to fashion a solid lede:

A certain Los Angeles Times columnist who shall remain nameless (T.J. Simers) has written he has a hunch the Chargers will be in LA by March. That T.J., what a cutup. He’s a master at getting you to pull his finger. In this case, though, he may be right — if all the Chargers attend a Lakers game.

Ha ha. The above first paragraph frames Canepa’s evaluation of what AEG’s impending sale might mean for the prospects of an NFL team returning to Los Angeles. A Chargers rep laughs off Simer’s intuitive abilities, while Canepa quickly expands the scope of his derision to the City of Angles.

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There’s a whole bunch of ink and AM radio chatter being devoted this week to Lamar Odom, sensitive guy. He has abandonment issues… he should have taken the NBA trade veto more like a man… he’s a great guy, wronged.

Now comes a hilarious snippet from the rising star of the cross-town Clippers, Blake Griffin. What he told LA Times columnist T.J. Simers about the league’s most valuable sixth man suggests that Odom’s real problem this past week may have been a head swollen by reality TV:

“The other day I went into Radio Shack for something and the guy says, ‘Oh man, you don’t do like Lamar Odom does and send someone in first to check to see how many people are in here, do you?’ I was like, ‘Man, I just walked in to buy this thing — could you ring me up?’”

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On Monday, LA Times columnist T.J. Simers (pictured) penned an unflattering portrait of Dodgers left fielder Marcus Thames, who played for the Detroit Tigers from 2004 to 2009. The tone of the piece has rankled both Detroit journalists and some of the player’s former teammates.

Adding her voice to the chorus of boos today is Fox Sports Detroit reporter Dana Wakiji. She takes issue with Simers’ ridiculing of Thames last name, as well as with the aggressive line of questioning he pursued for the piece:

Simers seemed proud of the fact that his first words to Thames were, “Are you that horrible on defense that teams don’t think it’s worth playing such a home run threat?” Although Thames just smiled at the rudeness, Tigers manager Jim Leyland would have had something to say to about that–none of it printable.

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