Surely you cannot be serious, Paul Shirley

Posted on | Sunday, August 28, 2011 | No Comments

That's the end of the wordplay, I promise.

Paul Shirley launched into semi-stardom just before the blogosphere took off. Shirley was a self-effacing former NBA journeyman who turned his time spent playing through 10-day contracts into a respected online writing career, and eventually a solid-selling book about his time in the pros.

Unluckily for Shirley, the times sort of came up around him. Pro athletes (NBA players, especially) took to the Internet with aplomb, waxing goofily on anything and everything, often utilizing the hundreds of hours of downtime an NBA season provides between a morning's shootaround and an evening's game. Shirley utilized his time to cobble together a terribly insensitive post on his new site about Haitians and their apparent refusal to move to, I don't know, Wisconsin, and it's been a slow descent since then.

Up to and including today. Mike Prada from SB Nation and his own Bullets Forever blog found this little nugget from Shirley, posted on his Twitter account early Friday morning.

Hilarious. We know that Shirley was trying to, I guess, make a joke about McGee declining to read his book. I didn't read his book. Even before the Haitian divorce, of sorts, I found Shirley to be pretty insufferable. It hardly means I can't read.

There are jokes about being dumb and there are dumb jokes. This was a dumb joke about being dumb, and, honestly, what was the point here? Tear McGee's basketball acumen to bits, for all I care. We've done it quite a bit on this site. But at least make it funny, Paul Shirley.

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