ESPN's Bill Simmons wrote a piece on Wednesday about the NBA lockout and how it has pushed him to the NHL as a season ticket holder of the NHL's Los Angeles Kings.

In a critique of Simmons' article, SB Nation's Tom Ziller broke down several elements of his argument.

One particularly interesting aspect of Simmons' piece was his assessment of the players' intelligence.

"I don't trust the players' side to make the right choices, because they are saddled with limited intellectual capital. (Sorry, it's true.)," wrote Simmons.

Ziller provided the following response: 

"A sportswriter who asserts without evidence that killing three teams, cutting the schedule, adding a play-in tournament, convincing players to reject millions of dollars and talking to Malcolm Gladwell will lead the NBA to the promised land is accusing NBA players of having limited intellectual capital," wrote Ziller.

"This is outrageous. There's really not much more to say about it other than Bill Simmons just said that players are largely stupid. (On Friday, he pointed out that Paul Pierce, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett, who did some negotiating for the union, had a combined three years of college. I would love to see Simmons argue anything "intellectual" with Kobe.)

"I also wonder if Simmons read Jonathan Abrams' Grantland profile of Hunter, who is on the players' side and has more "intellectual capital" in his fingernail than most of us have in our whole bodies."

Ziller wrote on his Twitter account on Thursday how surprised he was at the absence of any serious reaction to Simmons' comments in relation to comments made this week by Bryant Gumbel about David Stern.