A Disabled Joke, Courtesy of Bill Simmons

I like Bill Simmons. I read his column, listen to his podcast, follow him on Twitter. I bought his basketball book. That said, I'm not really on board with the disabled jokes.

In a Simmons piece (co-written with Jonathan Abrams) on the implications of a revised NBA amnesty clause, he said that the ineptitude of the Nets front-office should be rewarded doubly, a scenario he then likened to disabled people's parking privileges. Here it is in full, from Grantland:

Here's why we're having a lockout — because teams are so effing stupid that they actually need to waive guys they just signed a year ago. There should be bonus amnesty points for being total morons. The Nets should get to wipe twice the amount of Outlaw's contract off their cap, like how disabled people get to park in disabled-person spaces.

Maybe I'm reading this the wrong way, but it seems to me that Simmons, in a not so roundabout fashion, is equating disability with stupidity, or, at the very least, implying parking spaces for the disabled are a perk, not a practicality.

Whatever he actually meant, the joke's kind of crass and kind of cheap. Without wishing to sound too Puritanical, I would've thought Simmons, with all that talent and experience, could have conjured up a more appropriate and less offensive simile.