No, Bill Simmons Doesn't Actually Have a Boyfriend

Bill Simmons took his B.S. Report podcast on the road earlier this week and interviewed Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban from the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston. During the hour-long discussion, Cuban made a homosexual joke towards Simmons regarding in-game entertainment at basketball arenas. Carly Carioli of The Boston Phoenix has the specifics: The atmosphere turned even weirder when Cuban began telling the story of how he'd almost fired a Mavs employee for encouraging Dallas fans to do the wave. Cuban hates the wave. "I'd rather have 60 minutes of Kiss Cam," he said, to laughs. Simmons has long been on record as being a fan of the Kiss Cam -- he's even jokingly suggested that it become its own TV show -- and piped up in favor of it. "I like the Kiss Cam," Simmons said. "That's because you and your boyfriend are always on it," Cuban spat. He quickly tried to backtrack, mumbling something about what he'd just said not being a gender-specific remark. Except, as Yahoo!'s Ball Don't Lie blog quickly tweeted, that it was clearly a very gender specific remark. Cuban's comment was edited from the podcast and he apologized Friday for on his blog: This past week I did an interview at a sports conference. It was a 1 on 1 sit down. During the conversation the topic of the Kisscam at sporting events came up . The interviewer mentioned it and commented ”I like the Kiss Cam,” In response to the interviewer comment, I said “That’s because you and your boyfriend are always on it,” Totally sophomoric. I quickly realized that the comment wasn’t appropriate, so I added “”Or his girlfriend, this is gender-independent commentary,” I made a mistake in making the comment. I wasn’t trying to be hurtful. It wasn’t a comment on anyone’s sexuality. It was just me trying to be funny. It wasn’t. I quickly realized it and tried to fix it. I hoped at the time I didn’t offend anyone. This blog post is not about trying to defend what I said. I’m not trying to defend my sense of humor. I’m not trying to convince you I’m not a homophobe. I’m not trying to justify anything at all. I guess what I am doing is admitting that at some level I am prejudiced and that I recognize that I am . There are a lot of things in my life that I need to improve at. This is one of them. Sometimes I make stupid throw away comments that I quickly realize are wrong. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens. It was a mistake and I realized it. I learned from it. If the comment wasn't edited from the podcast, this would have been a non-issue. Moving along ...

Fishbowl

No, Bill Simmons Doesn't Actually Have a Boyfriend

Marcus Vanderberg

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Marcus Vanderberg