Even at $5/month, I almost don’t see the value in it, I can just as soon wait…but I understand those who need their “Insider” fix. ESPN is a good site, but I just check the Tigers, Red Wings, Pistons highlights and surf onward. Besides, what shows up as a rumor on a Tuesday usually makes the FP or News by Thurs.

BTW, that $14.95/yr deal,l has been going on at least 2-3 years now, I subscribed to the Magazine briefly, and it was pitched to me then. $15/yr? That’s like free…even I would jump all over that one.

Um. Why is this posted here? I get that you have a gripe with ESPN, but I don’t see how writing about it on a Pistons blog is going to help your cause. Either subscribe at the new rate, keep paying your old rate, or cancel altogether.

Also, don’t be five minutes late to your fantasy draft next year.

I pay frickin $44.95 for a yearly renewal, there’s a 15 dollar rate?!? What the heck?

I think that ESPN treating its best customers like crap is relevant content for a sports blog. Insider is a principle source for a great deal of the information I post here, and I would hazard to guess that a number of readers are Insider members.

Most subscription sites grandfather longtime members in at LOWER rates. There is a good reason for this.

I just called you need ot say you want to cancel first. Then and only then will they admit that there is 14.95 promotional renewal for customers who have been subscribers for at least 12 months

Your rant reminded me to check out ESPN today. Found this, which I am pretty excited about. Villanueva will be a free agent!

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=4295423

Someone buy an Insider dummy account, and post the login and password. Community accounts for the ESPN loss!

This is perfectly relevant information. Any way to bring down ESPN (with exception to their fantasy football, which rules now) is a good idea to me.

The billing thing is relevant to a sports blog. The fantasy thing is funny sour grapes.

I hate companies that do this. AT&T did it to my mom with her cell phone, charging her an outrageous monthly rate for years for an antiquated phone she never used (had it only for emergencies). So she basically carried around a brick in her purse for $40 dollars a month after being a customer of AT&T for, oh, 50 consecutive years.

kev, sounds like you have one hell of a time today with them! its nice to have the insider, but for their rumors AKA source with accurate information, its a hell waste of money…..exception would be people who regularly blog like you i guess.

i forgot to mentioned….in an economy like this, employers’ employees and customers are being taken advantage, regardless whether their company is beginning to get better or not.

You really want to get ticked off? Try canceling. If you bought the yearly rate, they won’t refund your prorated money so that you say “eh, why not? it’s already paid for.” Then it gets closer to the time it automatically renews, you forget to cancel it before it is automatically paid, you call and tell them you didn’t want to renew, and you can cancel, but can’t get your refund prorated. That was fun.

I can’t see Villanueva signing for the mid level exception which should be aprox. $5.5 to 6M in ’09-10. And if he goes to CLE it means Sideshow Bob will be available at a decent price.

I find if you Google the tease of the ESPN Insider rumor you can find an original source from a local media outlet in one of the given cities so ESPN is basically aggregating rumors from the internet in one spot and calling it ‘inside’ information. To which I say A) Google is free and B) buy Canadian Club, drink milk and read NBA Fanhouse.

See? If you respect your readers they don’t mind a bit of business thrown in with the content.

Pretty much, Insider is garbage. Some of their insider opinions you couldn’t give away and justify the time spent reading it for free. I liked the Scouts, Inc. stuff they would throw up for NFL players, as I found their info to be fairly interesting and worth hours of reading diversion, but the last few years they’re really disorganized and outdated with scouting info … and you can find accurate reports in several other areas on the net, for free.

If we sign Sideshow Bob or trade for him, I will be extremely upset. Fuck that clown.

You know what we should do?

1) Create a DBB poll for our most hated ESPN writer that frequently contributes to Insider.

2) Coordinate a mass comment drive, rallied here on DBB, to post the same comment, word-for-word, on that Insider story.

Example: Bills Simmons predicts that the Detroit Pistons will lose so poorly that they will be in the basement next season. We get 100+ Insider account holders to comment on the article: “Bill Simmons trades press praise for access to the Celtic’s locker room dirty laundry bin. You do the math.”

In other words, we all harrass the shit out of our most hated ESPN writers via Insider.

Speaking of ESPN, just read this.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=4295858

Looks like Boozer may not be an option after all. I’m not an expert when it comes to the rules around salary cap but would this not make it pretty difficult to pry Milasap away?

If Boozer stays on and Milsap is an RFA my understanding is that the Jazz can resign him without any luxury tax consequence. Is this correct?

how did this get by Matt?

Who the hell cares about YOUR difficulties with your fantasy baseball draft OR your issues with a service that you willingly are duped into paying for?

WOW, ESPN ripped you off! Ring the word from the highest peak of the tallest mountain! Raise the problem with the front page of a blog about the Detroit Pistons!

Not even the clowns at Celticsblog tell their readers to call ESPN to complain about a service which, as an earlier reader put it, if you really want to know what their “secret” is, you can google it and find the press clipping they snagged from the newpaper’s website.

Besides, fuck Chris Sheridan… like I want any of my money going to that douche.

I usually wouldn’t say this to you kevin s. but… get bent dude. I’m glad you ended up with David Patton.

I have an ESPN The Magazine subscription which comes with free Insider access. I signed up somehow for $26 for two years – so 50 cents an issue. However, the magazine (ahem, The Magazine) has gotten progressively shittier and shittier. It’s thinner than it’s ever been, has a few sports-related human interest stories and is now dominated by advertising. I used to look forward to getting it every other week; now I barely even read it while I shit. I won’t be re-subscribing in October when mine comes due.

The Insider stuff is pretty much a joke – especially those Rumor sections. The “rumors” are only snippets of local news publications.

“If Boozer stays on and Milsap is an RFA my understanding is that the Jazz can resign him without any luxury tax consequence. Is this correct?”

Sean W…They can go over the salary cap to re-sign Milsap, but they can’t avoid the luxury tax. If Boozer and Okur both don’t opt out it will be tough for them to match a big offer for Milsap.

Ouch. This kind of stings from that article:

“As soon as it looked like the Pistons were the only team with the money and desire to pay him,” one Eastern Conference GM said, “I knew Boozer would be changing his mind. Unless I knew for sure that the Pistons would pay me big bucks, you just can’t make that gamble. I fully expect him to be back with the Jazz next year.”

Uh, whatever, man! We didn’t want you anyways! So there!

Boozer/Milsap, too expensive, too Maxiell…

What’s the beef with bringing Memo back? 4yrs 40 million…or less? A dependable 5 with a reasonable contract who spreads the floor (like Sheed) who’s proven to be a killer in big games and has a history in the D?

Bring Back MEMO!

The Jazz are going to be over the cap with Boozer/Korver back. Nobody else in the market. Pistons still sign Gordon and might even still have cap room. What’s wrong with this move?

Boozer opting in would make it hard for the Pistons to get Milsap if Utah finds a team to trade Boozer to.

I think Utah will definitely trade Boozer. If they don’t they’ll lose Milsap. Then, next summer, Boozer will have them by the balls and will demand a max contract or something close. If not, he’ll leave and Utah will be left with nothing.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Pistons leaked that they weren’t interested in Boozer so they trade for him and get him for 12mil for one year, instead of dealing with him asking for 15mil.

The good thing about this is that Boozer will no doubt play harder next season that he ever has. The downside is that if the Pistons want to keep him, they will have to give him more money and won’t have the cap space to go for someone else instead.

If Boozer doesn’t opt out tomorrow, Dumars should offer Fabricio Oberto for Boozer. That way, they won’t have to pay half of Oberto’s salary. This would add 1.5mil to the cap space (leaving 8-9mil which should be more than enough to get Gortitties).

Ya I wouldn’t mind doing some kind of sign-and-trade for Boozer since it does look like he is staying now. Maybe we could do something involving RIP if Joe D has such a crush on Gordon. It would enable us to free up our logjam at SG after signing Gordon and we would get our frontcourt presence in Boozer at the same time. The Jazz would be saving a little bit of money(a lil over $1 mil) so it might be something they might be willing to do. Just a thought though…

I used to pay the 4.95 for insider and then switched to free access with the magazine. But I’ve even given that up. Insider was just a piece of crap. 90% of the time (and granted this was before Hollinger was so much of their nba coverage) it was just summaries of local news stories. Pay 5 bucks a month to espn to clip links for me? Hell, no. ESPN was getting rich off of other people’s labors. I started using hoops hype instead for my daily fix. When True Hoop started it immediately made Insider worthless. I don’t know what they put in Insider now, but I can’t imagine it is anything great. That’s one thing I have to say about ESPN — for all their dominance in the market, they really don’t produce that much good journalism.

@ M Payne:

You don’t need Insider to go DBB Mafia on ESPN’s boards. They have comments to damn near every article and video posted on the site. You have to have any account with them, a mere userid, to comment.

Assaults on ‘enemies’ could def be coordinated.

Only, your primary target, Simmons, is generally unfuckwithable … his shit doesn’t allow comments. It’s like he’s Mitch Albom or something. Total pussy.

You should have seen the comment-rape conducted by C’s fans on Jemele Hill when she said “boo.” Too bad they don’t like changing Simmons’s adult diapers when he shits himself over some mook and his two cents.

I have a hard time figuring out why anyone would pay $5/month for Insider Access, especially in this day and age, when anything of relevance simply gets copied and pasted to the blogosphere.

The way I see it, I let the bloggers spend their $5, sift the wheat from the chaff for me, and then read the pertinent parts after the chaff has been burned up.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I think you are all crazy for paying espn anything for their horrible internet service… Years ago I looked into it, laughed at it….and to this day will not go to espn.com……CAN I SAY AVERY JOHNSON!!!!!!

forget espn, they are full of beat-writers that know nothing about the game and all they do is speculate, hype, and report on drama. they did a great job on their nba picks btw! so much hype over there. if you want real breakdown from someone who understands the game and who once coached it go to foxsports.com and read charley rosen-one of the few writers who does not buy into hype. it is so refreshing to read his stuff. even randy hill is a better writer than anything at espn. marc stein, ric bucher, adande-are you serious, these guys know nothing.
enjoy this blog though…go pistons! starting lineup in 2009-10: stuckey, hamilton, prince, boozer, and paccului (spell?, backup center from atlanta)…avery johnson as coach….50 wins baby!

that’s funny, i just brought up the issue using the feedback form on their website. they gave me a prorated refund for the rest of the year, and then signed me up at the $14.95 rate. works for me.