Bill Simmons Compares Bulls Rookie Caleb Wilson To Tracy McGrady In Wild Podcast Rant
Bill Simmons is officially in the tank for Chicago Bulls rookie Caleb Wilson. That much has been obvious for months. But the way he chose to express it on his most recent podcast episode was, well, a lot.
Simmons started off with what sounded like a normal comparison. He said watching the former North Carolina forward reminded him of a young Tracy McGrady, with a splash of prime Shawn Kemp mixed in.
“I was like, this is like watching T-Mac again,” Simmons said. “Like, he’s a little taller. He’s like 6’10”, but same kind of skinny, inside-outside, but then is adding this explosive Shawn Kemp side too.”
That is a reasonable-ish sports comparison. Then things got weird.
“And if I was a Bulls fan, I would have no sperm left in my body,” Simmons continued. “It would just be ejaculate in every room in my house. I would lose my mind. I mean, it’s like when we had the colonoscopy. It was when they give you the stuff to clean your colon out. That’s what Caleb Wilson was for sperm. Oh my God!”
There is no elegant way to transition out of a paragraph like that. Let’s just move on.
The Wilson hype train has a real engine underneath all the jokes. He was one of the runaway stars of NBA Summer League, averaging 23.5 points on 50 percent shooting from the field and 41.9 percent from three, plus 7.3 rebounds and 2.5 blocks per game. That is a legitimately loud stat line for a rookie, especially one flashing shot creation, rim protection and pull-up range in the same package.
The Bulls badly need this to be real. Chicago has spent the better part of a decade drifting around the middle of the Eastern Conference standings, and their most recent playoff appearances have been forgettable. Josh Giddey is a nice building block. Matas Buzelis had flashes as a rookie. If Wilson is actually the two-way perimeter creator Simmons is describing, Chicago’s next competitive window suddenly gets easier to picture.
McGrady is a Hall of Fame ceiling. Kemp was one of the most electric athletes of his era. Wilson does not need to be either of them to be a franchise-changer. He just needs to be good.
Summer League has fooled everyone before. The list of rookies who lit up July and then quietly disappeared in November is long. But there is real skill flashing here, and real athletic tools underneath, so the case for excitement is not manufactured.
Simmons will find another way to top himself if Wilson delivers as a rookie. That is a threat and a promise.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
