By of the

What is it about Bill Simmons that makes him more than a minor irritant and positions him as a major annoyance when he appears on my television screen?

Maybe it’s his supreme self-regard, his self-appointed authority as a shaman in the temple of hoops, his dreary fan-man love for the Boston Celtics, his self-satisfied grin as the guy who’s pleased to be the source of the odor in the elevator.

Whatever it is — whatever he is trying to do as a studio analyst on ESPN’s “NBA Countdown” with host Sage Steele, Jalen Rose and Doug Collins — can become wince-inducing television. He wasn’t anything special last year on the program with Magic Johnson and Michael Wilbon. This year’s “Countdown” is mostly his and it’s a bizarre, tangled wreck, something you'd find on the top of Malcolm Gladwell’s head.

When you tune in, you feel sorry for Collins, a talented and likable broadcaster, who looks as though he’s been taken hostage. All that’s missing is the pillowcase over his head.

The only chemistry on the show is between Rose and Simmons (left), who are trying for some ebony and ivory music that can pulse at times but is not sustained.

When you peeked in on the NBA Lottery the other night to see how the poor Milwaukee Bucks might fare, you had to suffer the collateral damage that is Simmons’ act. Viewers, for example, were treated to taped replay of Basketball Bill’s reaction to the Cavaliers vaulting to the top spot with only a 1.7% chance of getting there.

On tape we saw Simmons purse his lips and shake his head. Then Bill said the draft lottery system must be scrapped. For what, he didn’t say. He talked about a system that rewards incompetence. He’d know.

If you hung on to watch Game 2 between the Heat and Pacers in the Eastern Conference final, you were treated to Simmons’ attempt at supernaturalism as he tried at halftime to enter the mind of LeBron James.

“LeBron came out kind of strange,” Simmons said. “He seemed like himself in the second quarter. First quarter, he seemed a little out of it. I was almost wondering, did somebody tell him Cleveland won the lottery? Was he thinking about that? I know that’s it’s like weird conjecture, but the way he played in the last five minutes was totally different than he played in the first quarter.”

That’s the basketball equivalent of knowing you’re going to turn the ball over if you throw this pass and you still throw the pass.

And hey, it’s lottery time. If you can’t declare your weird conjecture or lamebrain conspiracy notions around this time, you wouldn’t be a real NBA fan.

But Simmons must be given his due in one respect.

In a tweet, he was the first to report that the Bucks were to be sold and then later in a mailbag blog to be sold to Marc Lasry and Wes Edens. Now that wasn’t weird conjecture. That was impressive reporting with spot-on sourcing. A real get.

But it was telling how ESPN’s own formidable newsgathering apparatus treated his discovery. It was ignored.

As far as I could tell, none of the news editors or reporters part of the company’s various shows, including “SportsCenter,” and ESPN.com, reported or followed up on the item. ESPN policy discourages reporters from breaking news on Twitter, without informing the news desk, which is what Simmons did at first in this case. But he’s not a reporter, so the policy may not apply to him. Or, more probably, as an in-house star, he is immune from the policies that govern mere mortals.

And maybe the ownership of the Bucks was not a topic that the guardians of news at the worldwide leader considered had enough national interest to bother pursuing, unlike an ownership change with the Knicks or Lakers or Heat.

In any case, Simmons’ scoop remained out there by itself on the Island of Tweet, near the Gulf of Mailblog, ignored by ESPN newsies. Eventually ESPN’s Marc Stein reported that Lasry and Edens had purchased the team for $550 million.

Bill Simmons Inc. is working out for ESPN, what with the introduction of Grantland and the successful “30 for 30” film series. Rolling Stone recently reported that Simmons is being paid $5 million a year for all that he does for the company.

But the judgment here is not about Bill Simmons the author, blogger, tweeter, podcaster or producer.

The judgment here is about Bill Simmons the NBA television studio analyst.

And that guy?

That guy’s a bust.

(Photo credit: ESPN)