Bill Simmons on Andrei Kirilenko signing: Maybe it was Irina Pavlova's charm!

As pundits across the internet hand out their grades for the off-season, most follow predictable formats, but Bill Simmons decided, as he often does, to see it all through the cinematic prism, this time comparing the off-season to the Robert DeNiro - Charles Groden classic, Midnight Run. It's somewhere between James Joyce and Hunter S. Thompson.

Literary devices aside, Simmons takes his shot at the Nets by highlighting the bargain basement acquisition of Andrei Kirilenko and suggesting alternative rationales for the Russian star to give up $10 million from the Timberwolves for $3 million from the Nets ... and Mikhail Prokhorov.

"The scariest moment of the offseason: Andrei Kirilenko opting out of $10.2 million guaranteed for one more Minnesota season so he could sign with Brooklyn for $6.2 million over two years. Some NBA peeps are convinced that AK47 either (a) got paid under the table by Russian comrade Mikhail Prokhorov, (b) got charmed by the overwhelmingly charming Irina Pavlova into signing a bad deal, (c) secretly hired the agent Monta Ellis fired, or (d) made the decision while being dangled upside down from a Moscow helicopter at 10,000 feet."

Simmons later concludes after considering all the possibilities, "I think they dangled him upside down from a helicopter."

But what about his thing with Irina. As any long time reader of NetsDaily knows, she has been very helpful to Nets fans and once posted comments on this very site. So we asked for her reaction. Here it is...as always, she is gracious, certainly more gracious than we would be.

"Very nice of him... Obviously (b) is the only reasonable answer and therefore must be correct," the president of ONEXIM Sports and Entertainment emailed us. "I'm gonna a have a hard time arguing with Bill over anything after this.. :-)"

• Bill Simmons on who won and who lost the NBA offseason - Bill Simmons - Grantland