Ongoing Feud Heats Up as Bill Simmons Accuses Pat McAfee of Sabotaging Pacers’ Thunder

It was Game 4, and Oklahoma City was down 2-1 in the best-of-seven series against the Pacers. The team looked like it was on the verge of losing on the road once again… and no one could have been happier than Pat McAfee! During the second half, the Gainbridge Fieldhouse witnessed him take the microphone to hype up the Pacers’ crowd as their team was up by three points and had controlled most parts of the game. “Even though we’re up 2-1 in the series with home-court advantage coming into tonight’s game, the Oklahoma City Thunder were favored to win the NBA Title!” he started.

“Coming into tonight’s game, Oklahoma City was favored by 6.5 points! That makes us the biggest underdogs in NBA Finals history! The sportsbooks don’t know, Stephen A. Smith doesn’t know,” he said further as the crowd roared. Not only did he steal the spotlight with this, but also his comments didn’t age well. OKC defeated the Pacers 111-104, and McAfee’s WWE-style performance fell flat. The whole fiasco forced Bill Simmons to comment on it.

Speaking on The Zach Lowe Show, Simmons didn’t hold back: “My big note is that McAfee did this monologue with like 10 minutes left; did you see this in the scoreboard? And was talking about, this is like a crucial part of the game. And he was doing this thing about, we were six point underdogs and this is Indiana; and it was just, it was the wrong timing. I would have gone second quarter for that. It was like this massive part of the game, and they actually had to stop the game and wait for the monologue to finish before they started playing again. I thought that was really weird.”

Lowe chipped in on the significance, “Fourth quarter of a game that is the most consequential game of the season so far.” Simmons hammered home the stakes: “I was talking to somebody before the game, is this the biggest NBA Pacers home game ever? … So the other one would have been Lakers 2004 Game 4. […] They were down 2-1 in the series [in 2004]. This one, they’re up 2-1…” It was indeed a golden chance that those underdogs ended up missing, and Simmons highlighted, “Now that we don’t have 2-3-2 (H/A games) anymore, it’s like impossible to win three in a row [like] in the 2-3-2 at home.”

But here’s the thing with McAfee. His microphone antics caught heat in the Pacers’ Eastern Conference Finals against the Knicks, too, when he put Spike Lee and other visiting fans on blast for supporting the New York team last month. However, Simmons critique of McAfee isn’t something new either.

The McAfee-Simmons fallout & the road ahead!

This critique isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s the latest update in a year-long feud between the media heavyweights:

• Their feud began in January 2024. First, Bill Simmons did an impression of McAfee on ‘The Bill Simmons Show’ and frequent guest, Sal Iacono, too mocked him for his shallow opinions on sports.
• Just a month later, McAfee retaliated and said, “Keep running your mouth, Bill. Keep running your mouth.”
• Simmons then targeted McAfee’s ESPN TV ratings, noting “everybody’s ratings are up except for the NBA and whoever replaced the 12 p.m. SportsCenter.” It was Pat McFee who had replaced the noon edition of ‘SportsCenter’.
• In June 2024, Simmons raised questions about McAfee and his controversial “white b—-” remark about Caitlin Clark. Simmons wondered about his ESPN future, asking if McAfee would even be there by 2025.

But returning to the NBA Finals Game 4, the Thunder pounced when McAfee least expected it. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander dropped 15 in the fourth quarter to lead Oklahoma City to a 111-104 win, leveling the series 2-2. And what was McAfee’s post-game reaction? A succinct, devastated social media post: “Welp.”

With this, all attention will shift to the upcoming Game 5 and also what antics Pat McAfee has in store for us. What do you think?