An NBA All-Star Fix, Kendrick Vs. Drake, and the 'SNL' 50th Anniversary Show With Van Lathan and James Andrew Miller

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Van Lathan to discuss another disappointing NBA All-Star Weekend, Bill's plan to completely fix the All-Star Game, a new dunk contest idea, restructuring the weekend, the electric USA-Canada hockey game, and more (3:23) before discussing the state of the Kendrick Lamar–Drake rap beef after the Super Bowl (40:29). Then Bill talks with James Andrew Miller about the three-and-a-half-hour 'SNL' 50th anniversary special episode, what they loved, who they thought was missing, stories from 'SNL' Season 1, the future of 'SNL,' and more (01:05:34). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  It's the Bill Simmons Podcast presented by FanDuel. The NBA season hitting full stride, don't foul out on your chance to win with America's number one sportsbook. Bet on fun markets like live quarter player props and parlays. Plus enjoy our new NBA player prop pages, your one stop shop for player props that include FanDuel's exclusive performance trends. Tracking the last five games for top markets, they even do that. The app is safe, secure and easy to use. When you win, you'll get paid instantly. So download the app today. Bet with FanDuel, official partner of the NBA. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Listen to the end of this episode for additional details.

• 0:45Bill Simmons?

  Must be 21 plus and present in select states. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Coming up, we're going to try to fix NBA All-Star Weekend plus hockey, SNL 50, HBO, lots more next. This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun, sometimes earlier than expected, sometimes after blowing a 3-1 series lead? But what if you went to Cancun? With Expedia, save up to 30% when you bundle and save. You can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness though, hopefully your team doesn't go to Cancun, 1-2-3 Cancun. Or if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save, savings vary. We're also brought to by The Ringer Podcast Network.

• 1:29Bill Simmons?

  I have new rewatchables coming for you on Monday night. We did Wayne's World in honor of SNL 50. A little bit later, Jim Miller is going to be coming on to talk about the big three-plus hour SNL 50 show and our biggest takeaways. Also having Van Lathan on at the beginning of this podcast to talk about NBA All-Star Weekend. And can we save this thing? Is this just a sunk cost at this point? Plus, we have some other stuff we're going to cover. We're also brought to by FanDuel Sportsbook. You know, I didn't do great on my Super Bowl bets and you know, I got seduced like a lot of other people with the Pat Mahomes thing. So I'm trying to make it up to you guys. We have

• 2:09Bill Simmons?

  the seasons coming back after this All-Star break. I basically forced FanDuel to come up with a playoff prop for me. And this is what we did. We are going to do Minnesota, Detroit, and Golden State to make the playoffs. Parlay, plus 160 are the current odds. FanDuel is going to boost this for us because they're our friends. They're going to add a 30% ringer profit boost token on all to make the playoffs and to make the play-in futures. So you could take that little Minnesota, Detroit, Golden State thing, which I love. It's basically going to come down to Golden State, and I believe in Golden State. I'm with you, Draymond. One of the rare times I'm with Draymond. So you could bet that plus 208, and it's going to be available basically from

• 2:52Bill Simmons?

  when you hear this podcast all the way until the Lakers Hornets game on Wednesday night. FanDuel with a ringer future specials tab that you can find really easily. It's going to include that parlay and some other eligible selections. So claim the PBT and the carousel, apply it to my booster, other futures bets that you like. All right, we're going to bring in Van Lathan in one second. Pearl Jam's coming up. I don't know if you knew this, but during the SNL 50, the music show on Friday night, Eddie Vedder came out and he sang Tom Petty, "The Waiting", which was great. And then launched into corduroy, which is the theme for this podcast. Thank you, Eddie. Here's Pearl Jam.

• 3:51Bill Simmons?

  All right, I made Van Lathan come over. We're going to talk about NBA All-Star Weekend, your new favorite sport, hockey.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:57Bill Simmons?

  You're a true patriot now?

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, the hockey got me. It was a great watch. It was very intense competition on Saturday night.

• 4:05Bill Simmons?

  You said the three fights in nine seconds got you?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  The three fights got me. I missed the first two fights.

• 4:10Bill Simmons?

  Me too. I got, started getting emails after the second fight.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Right. And then I turned it on for the third fight, but then...

• 4:18Speaker 01

  I watched two groups of players playing at the highest level, who absolutely wanted to embarrass each other.

• 4:27Bill Simmons?

  In an exhibition that meant nothing, that nobody even knew what it was.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  No one cared. No one cared. No one cared in terms of outside of the world of hockey, but they cared.

• 4:38Bill Simmons?

  And the people in Montreal cared. Did you hear how quiet it got the last five minutes of that game?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Yep, they were super quiet.

• 4:43Bill Simmons?

  They responded.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  When, when they, I learned some stuff. Now, what is it called now? When a power play happens, okay, the power play. And then after the, when they, when they.

• 4:56Bill Simmons?

  Even when they become even sides.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  When they become even sides, what is that called? Killing the penalty?

• 5:01Bill Simmons?

  They've killed the penalty successfully.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  They've successfully killed the penalty.

• 5:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  I heard this term. When they've successfully killed the penalty, the excitement from the crowd, because they didn't give up any goals during the power play. I was on edge the whole time. I'm watching the power play tick down. And I'm like, oh, my God, are we gonna score?

• 5:20Bill Simmons?

  You're getting roped in. I can feel it.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  I got roped in. It's good.

• 5:23Bill Simmons?

  Well, we're taping this before all the Monday games. The Thursday final is gonna be in Boston, USA against somebody. Hopefully, Canada, because I can't wait to see USA versus Canada in Boston. It'll be awesome. But that's not why you're here. You're here for a few reasons.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:36Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna try to fix NBA All-Star Weekend and decide whether it could even be fixed. Is it a sunk cost? You have a theory about, well, do your expiration theory.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Okay, so certain things culturally expire and.

• 5:50Bill Simmons?

  Game shows.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Game shows. Uh, for example, when I was growing up,

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Gilligan's Island and all of these shows from the sixties and the seventies were still in reruns, but they were still in reruns prominently. Like, I still knew all of these characters. I still was aware of all of this stuff. And then one day, it just gets to a point, nobody cares about Gilligan's Island anymore. Nobody cares about Three's Company anymore. These shows just evaporate.

• 6:21Bill Simmons?

  Cheers is like this, and yet Seinfeld lives on and Friends lives on. But then, like, Family Ties didn't. So you just kind of never know when it's gonna happen.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  There's like, there's a, a, a, a bunch of buffer years there. Seinfeld and Friends made it to DVD.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  And because they made it to DVD, like a DVD release and everybody was like, oh my God, it's coming out on DVD. And they lived a little bit long in syndication on TBS and stuff. They're these kids' version, and it sounds really, really bad, of Gilligan's Island, of these older shows.

• 6:56Bill Simmons?

  I a hundred percent agree.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  So they're, that's their, this is an old TV show to a kid now is Friends, it's Seinfeld. That's their, it's an old TV show. But yeah, so things just, they go and they never announce when they're leaving. They never tell you, oh my God, this is the last year that this is going to be relevant. So it can happen. And the question is, could it happen to, the NBA won't ever culturally expire.

• 7:19Bill Simmons?

  Or has it happened already to All-Star Weekend?

• 7:22Speaker 01

  To the All-Star game? Has it happened to All-Star Weekend? Has that culturally expired?

• 7:25Bill Simmons?

  So a lot of it has to do with how being a sports fan has changed from the late seventies to the early two thousands to now, right? When I was a kid, the All-Star game was amazing because it was like George Gervin, David Thompson, and people like that were never on television. So to have like some of my favorite Celtics in a game with people like Walter Davis, it was like, I never got to see those guys play. It really mattered. That peaked in eighty-seven. Best All-Star game we've ever had, though. You remember that, right? Orlando Blackman made the free throws with time expired to send it to overtime.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  I have no recollection.

• 7:58Bill Simmons?

  It's the best All-Star game by far. You, I guarantee if you watched it, you'd have a great time.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Okay, cool.

• 8:04Bill Simmons?

  Goes into overtime. Tom Chambers becomes James Worthy during the game. Magic's just feeding him. Bird's in it, Jordan's in it, everybody's in it. It's amazing. And I think the last good All-Star game was two thousand and one. Because I did a running diary of the oh-three All-Star game, which was Jordan's last one. It went into overtime. And if you just look at the basketball reference, like, oh, that must have been a good game. It wasn't.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:25Bill Simmons?

  Oh, one was the last one. I think what's changed. So I remember I got League Pass in two thousand because I got a DirecTV dish. I got to see all these guys constantly. Social media comes in, the internet comes in. And it's just not special in the same way to see all these guys on a court. So they have, that's problem number one. Is there anything you want to add to that?

• 8:45Speaker 01

  So funny, as much as we have in common, like the different lives that we've lost in 2000. I remember how hiring somebody from the neighborhood so that I could steal cable. And you, and you, and you know, you were getting the, the, the, the direct TV.

• 9:00Bill Simmons?

  Mine was more illegal because I lived in an apartment. I wasn't supposed to have a direct TV dish and I had to lie and pretend I owned the house to get direct TV. Cause it was like literally illegal to have it if you just rented.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  The cable guy literally knocked on our door and was like, hey, I didn't taking it off again. Don't have him come back up. I'm gonna have somebody come out here. Um, so yeah, uh, here's the thing. The, the last All-Star game might've been 2003. Okay. I can understand.

• 9:28Bill Simmons?

  That was MJ's last game. He wasn't good in it and went into overtime. It wasn't a great game.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  But was that MJ Kobe Kobe has a red jersey on and him and MJ are going back and forth.

• 9:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it had a couple of moments.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Right. However, the weekend endured for a little while longer because there were still such memorable moments from the weekend. There was Blake Griffin jumping over the, uh.

• 9:45Bill Simmons?

  Well, that was 10 years. Yeah, that was the last one. Yeah.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Right. And then there was one of the greatest spectacles we've ever seen from the All-Star game. The, uh, Aaron Gordon, Zach Levine dunk contest. We're still having moments where there's still signs of life. It's still kicking, but it hasn't had a pulse now in a while. There hasn't been anything to make you go. As a matter of fact, the only thing I can think of was Steph Curry versus Sabrina, the, the shootout that they had. And they didn't do that this year.

• 10:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Cause you can't, Mac McClung is fun, but I don't care about Mac McClung. They might as well pull somebody from the stands. He's not an actual NBA player. He's like in the G league. So at that point, just go get people from YouTube and have them dunk. It's not like Mac McClung's playing NBA minutes.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Oh, you go against your own, huh? Interesting.

• 10:31Bill Simmons?

  Well, it was a big weekend for the whites.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  It was a gigantic weekend for the whites.

• 10:34Bill Simmons?

  Three point dunk hockey, but you became a hockey fan.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, big deal.

• 10:38Bill Simmons?

  SNL 50, one of the whitest TV events.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, they tried to, they tried to make fun of it. We know the truth though. Um, but so look, there's just no, this used to be something to where you saw all these celebrities and all of these people there. Not because it was a corporate thing, which is kind of how it feels now, right?

• 10:55Bill Simmons?

  Kind of.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Right, right. Now it feels like every time you see somebody famous there at the meta party or the the Pringles event or the whatever, it seemed like before that they just wanted to be there because it was the biggest party of the year or one of them.

• 11:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Obviously, the Super Bowl weekend and other things like that notwithstanding. But now it it it all feels forced. None of it feels like fun. None of it feels grounded in basketball culture in any actual way. Actually, I went on Twitter and I asked what killed All-Star Weekend.

• 11:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  And the variety of answers was so wide, but they were also all plausible, which tells me that the NBA has not just one problem with All-Star Weekend, but several. There's a player

• 11:45Speaker 01

  culture problem as far as how they view the All-Star game. There's a top-

• 11:49Bill Simmons?

  Well, they don't want to get embarrassed.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  They don't want to get embarrassed.

• 11:50Bill Simmons?

  They don't want to end up on Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, you name it, because they got dunked on because they missed the three, anything.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  In this highlight feed type of situation, right? There's a top-down NBA problem, some people were saying with Adam Silver. There's the way we ingest culture, which is kind of-

• 12:04Bill Simmons?

  The enabler, Adam Silver?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  The enabler, Adam Silver. So there's all of these different issues that's going on with the All-Star game.

• 12:09Bill Simmons?

  Well, the three pointers are the other big thing.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Three pointer. And not one clear way to fix it. Not one clear way to say, hey, this will bring the Magic back to the weekend.

• 12:20Bill Simmons?

  It's turned into the where, so the game itself has turned into just a terrible pickup game with no defense. Now, that's the way it used to be for two and a half, three quarters. But the great thing about the All-Star game was it would settle into being an awesome game. And it was always a nice little snapshot of like, who mattered that season? You'd see the five guys on each side, east versus west. You'd have a feel for like, all right, these are the guys now. This is it. Like, everybody else got to play. Now who are 10 guys that really matter? Once they started messing with the teams and doing like the thing they did this weekend, and I flagged it from the beginning, the rising, the four teams and one of them's the rising star. That's just stupidity.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:01Bill Simmons?

  It really is. It's like, nobody wants to see Zach Eadie and Stephon Castle, all these dudes who I like, but we don't see them on Sunday night. This is like, this is where you promote the biggest stars you have. There's nothing fun about watching these guys who have been barely in the league against like Steph Curry.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  They're trying to make the All-Stars play. And they figure if they put the young guys out there, that they won't.

• 13:24Bill Simmons?

  LeBron didn't play.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:25Bill Simmons?

  LeBron's like, I'm good.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:27Bill Simmons?

  Do you think it's weird? He just decided not to play five hours before the game?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  It's incredibly weird.

• 13:32Bill Simmons?

  It's, it's just a rare loss for him because there's no way you're not taking a loss and taking shit for that. So why?

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Everybody wants to see him.

• 13:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  We don't have too many more All-Star games to enjoy him. So everybody wants to see him. Everybody wants, everybody just wants to see him out there. So odd thing.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  So, you know, as I tried to make myself watch it, like I didn't try to make myself.

• 13:57Bill Simmons?

  Well, you love basketball, we should say, as do I.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Love basketball. So I'm going to watch NBA players doing cool stuff.

• 14:03Bill Simmons?

  Where the audience?

• 14:05Speaker 01

  There just wasn't NBA players doing cool stuff. That's what the All-Star game is about. It's about NBA players doing cool stuff. Even the dunk contest, you have Mac McClung doing cool stuff. He's kind of not an NBA player though. So it's, it's still not NBA players doing cool stuff. I.

• 14:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the closest is Castle, who is probably like the third or fourth best Spur. And the Spurs have their five games under 500. He's a rookie. And he was by far the biggest star in the slam dunk contest. That's not good.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  He should have won, maybe.

• 14:38Bill Simmons?

  He's pretty good.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  He was pretty good. But so, you know, it's just, it's tough, man. Like, there was a clip going around of the Thompson brother from up there in Detroit. Flying. Did you see this clip?

• 14:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, I mean, those guys are the best athletes probably in the league right now.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  He flew from like the restricted area and dunked the ball. It looked almost superhuman. And I'm like, that kind of energy and stuff is what you see happen in dunk contests. It used to be one or two stars. And then two or three, oh my God, this guy's a crazy athlete guy. And that mix of guys was enough to make that night electric. And it's just gone. Now we're hoping that they don't fail. And it just doesn't feel the same anymore.

• 15:25Bill Simmons?

  Can I give you a dunk idea? I just thought of this as you were talking. What about dunk battle?

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Okay, what's this?

• 15:32Bill Simmons?

  It's just one guy challenges another guy at All-Star Saturday. And it's just one on one. So like the Thompson twins are like dunk contest, two of us, let's go. And the dunk contest is just like for one on one, just for pride battles. Like Yanis is like, you know what? I'm tired of tired of this Wemba Yama shit. Let's go dunk contest right now, you versus me.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  I would love it. My thing is I would wonder whether or not these guys could take the loss. You know what I go back to? Do you remember when LeBron was adamant about hiding the video of getting poked on at his camp? When the Crawford kid.

• 16:10Bill Simmons?

  I don't remember that story. Which Crawford kid was it?

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Oh, it was, it was.

• 16:14Bill Simmons?

  Jordan Crawford?

• 16:15Speaker 01

  It was Jordan Crawford.

• 16:15Bill Simmons?

  I vaguely remember it.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  So, oh my God. So Jordan Crawford dunks on LeBron at his camp. And they hit the video. They like, they deep shadow protocol, Midnight Boys pew pew. They deep shadow protocol the video.

• 16:31Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  And I just remember at that time thinking, this has been made into such a big deal. Getting dunked on is something that happens. Anyone can dunk on anybody. You get called from behind, you get lobbed, backdoor, whatever. But to me, that vision of yourself as a player and yourself as an entity is the same reason why these guys can't let their hair down a little bit and have fun at an All-Star game. Cause at an All-Star game, for it to be fun. Somebody has to kind of lose. It's, it's competition. It's fun.

• 17:09Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Somebody's gonna lose a three-point contest. Remember Allen Iverson goes out there and has one of the worst performances in the three-point contest that we've ever seen. He laughs about it.

• 17:19Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  He goes, maybe I should have practiced a little bit more. Now with the, with what you're gonna take on Twitter and how these guys are looked at, nobody wants to be that guy. That's AI. That's one of the greatest ever. Who went out there and wasn't a three-point shooter and ended up with 10 and laughed. He laughed about it. So I just think they take themselves a little bit too seriously. We take ourselves as fans a little bit too seriously as well.

• 17:43Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's a pastime to complain about All-Star Weekend. It's been 20 years of it. This was especially bad though, because it was so, so over the top, overproduced.

• 17:54Bill Simmons?

  I just want to see basketball. I don't need to see, I don't need games to stop for a half hour. We don't need to honor the TNT guys forever. We don't need all these different, we don't need like a slam dunk. Let's remember Vince Carter in 2001, whatever that was. And we gotta do that for 10 minutes and then he comes out and has to talk to the crowd. I don't know who that's for. I, it's not for you and I.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:18Bill Simmons?

  But it's also not for, you know, teenagers. It's not for eight-year-olds. I honestly don't know. People just want to see three pointers and dunks and a good game. Just go back to that.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Can I ask you this? Is it possible that the basketball nerds have a hand in having ruined the All-Star game as well?

• 18:35Bill Simmons?

  In what way?

• 18:35Speaker 01

  So.

• 18:36Bill Simmons?

  With the, with the, with the three pointers or something else?

• 18:39Speaker 01

  You and I talk a lot about the differing style of basketball that we like.

• 18:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  I like seeing a motherfucker get dunked on.

• 18:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Okay. I think.

• 18:48Bill Simmons?

  I don't not like that.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  I get it. I think the league misses a Blake Griffin.

• 18:53Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  I think the league misses a, a Deandre Jordan at his height. I think the league misses some good old power basketball to get people up out of their seats. You know what I mean? I think the fact that we don't have as much of that anymore, doesn't really translate to the All-Star game being good, because what the All-Star game then looks like is a regular season NBA game where they're shooting so many threes. They're jack, but when you have the best player, best players on earth. All on the same court, you kind of don't want to see them do that. What you want to see them do is kind of dominate each other. You want to see them get into each other. You want to see all the different styles of basketball that they play clash.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  The old All-Star game was fun because you, it would be in a situation where you had the best players and everybody would have their little one-on-one thing. It would be like, okay, this guy's going to go against this guy.

• 19:46Bill Simmons?

  Right, a little gracious.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Then KG is going to go against Tim Duncan. Then Karl Malone is going to go against Charles Barkley. You're going to get all of that stuff, but that's not how they play the game anymore anyway. So you're really not going to get that in the All-Star game.

• 19:59Bill Simmons?

  That was the, one of the most famous All-Star games ever was 1977, the year after the merger and Dr. J's first NBA All-Star game. Now is when he, uh, I can't remember if he dunked on Kareem or Bill Walton. It was one of them and it was one of his most famous dunks, but he like tomahawk threw it down and he was just awesome in the game in general and really meant something. And it was cool to have all these guys in one game. And that, that faded out by the time Jordan retired the first time.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:25Bill Simmons?

  To me, there's two issues. One is the competitiveness and two is the style. And I think you can pick, you can fix both and I'm going to have a fix for you that I'm going to throw right, right after this break. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything and whether it's a flea flicker or a tush push, you need a plan that fits your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and for your budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. If you're building an All-Star breakfast lineup, you need a few key players. A sausage McMuffin with egg? Sure. Crispy hash browns?

• 21:10Bill Simmons?

  Absolutely. A small coffee to wash it all down? No question. And right now you can get all three for just five bucks. That's a pretty stacked breakfast roster. Get a sausage McMuffin with egg plus hash browns and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Prices may be higher for delivery. All right, Vane, it's time. We're fixing the All-Star game and this is the best I've ever felt about a fix.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 21:41Bill Simmons?

  And I actually really feel like I, I have it. Saturday. Slam dunk. And then the first All-Star game and then Sunday three pointer in the second All-Star game. I'm going to explain. We need, we need the All-Star weekend to have coherence again. It needs to be East versus West.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 22:01Bill Simmons?

  We also need stakes. And the whole thing about, well, home, home court advantage for the finals should go to which conference wins. You can't really do that when you have all these guys who could give a shit about like, Trey Young's not, just wait, I have a fix. Trey Young's not going to care if the East wins because he's not going to be in the finals, you know? So if you make home court, the prize, you go to a 40 minute game, go FIBA rules. So it moves faster and feels different. And you have eight man teams from the East and the West, right? So we pick, we picked 24 All-Stars total. But only 16 of them play in the big game on Sunday with the home court advantage at stakes. Here's the catch.

• 22:44Bill Simmons?

  Only players from top five seeds can be in the All-Star game.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 22:49Bill Simmons?

  So everyone who's in the Sunday game is actually going to care about home court advantage. So I have it seven on each side, plus an eighth person who's a commissioner pick. So eight versus, but we start everything at 7:00 PM. We have the three pointer, three point contests, first round of it, first half of the game, three point contest at halftime. And then the second half of the game. And here, here's, here's what the teams would be. So we would have.

• 23:21Bill Simmons?

  So the West. These are all top five seeds.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:26Bill Simmons?

  Jokic, Jaren Jackson, LeBron, SGA and Harden as the starters.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:32Bill Simmons?

  Jalen Williams and Shingun coming off the bench and Curry as your, as your exemption pick. So it's eight.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:38Bill Simmons?

  East, Tatum, Towns, Giannis, Brunson, Mitchell, Mobley and Jalen Brown. And then the exemption pick would be Cade Cunningham.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:46Bill Simmons?

  And we're just fucking going for it. Whoever wins gets home court advantage. Everybody who's in that game is actually going to care.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:52Bill Simmons?

  Because this is like, we might get a game seven at home if we win this.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Certainly.

• 23:56Bill Simmons?

  So then you have, then you move to the other thing, the Saturday game. You take the remaining All-Stars, there's a Wemby, Siakam, Trey Young, Garland, Dame, Anthony Edwards, AD and Hero.

• 24:07Bill Simmons?

  And you have them play the eight best future guys. Castle, the Thompsons, the first, second year guys. They play those guys. $2 million prize, 250K per person if you win. Eight V eight, same thing, 40 minute games. And you have the slam dunk after it.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  So that game is the Sunday game or the Saturday?

• 24:22Bill Simmons?

  That's the Saturday game.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:24Bill Simmons?

  So that's Saturday game, slam dunk. That's Saturday. Sunday is three point. And then this home court advantage finals game with all the top five, all the best players in the league with actual stakes.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  So I like it. So here's the deal. You still have the rising stars game. Do you have the rising stars game?

• 24:40Bill Simmons?

  I don't have the rising stars game anymore. I have the, I have the eight best rising stars against the eight remaining all-stars who weren't top five seeds. So then we would have to change how we pick the all-star game a little bit. So we'd have to have at least seven from the top five seeds to be in this game.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  What happens when you get a vet in the consolation against the rising stars game? Who doesn't want to be there?

• 25:03Bill Simmons?

  Then guess what? You don't get to fucking play in the all-star game anymore. That's the other thing with this. That's my next wrinkle.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  What you're gonna have is, what you're gonna have is-

• 25:10Bill Simmons?

  That's my next wrinkle. Oh, the game's not good enough for you? Don't fucking come next year. You're not eligible. That's it. Like let's, Adam Silver, the enabler, let's start, let's start hitting people with a ruler. Let's go.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Okay, so the Lakers are the five seed this year, right?

• 25:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so they make it.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  But in, in the past, you might be looking at a situation where you had a team with LeBron who was in the play-in.

• 25:31Bill Simmons?

  LeBron, you're playing, you're playing on Saturday night? Or next year?

• 25:35Speaker 01

  He's not gonna wanna play.

• 25:35Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Or next year, you're not in the game. This is it. Once you diss us with this weekend, you're out. You don't get to play for home court advantage after that. Like let's, let's put real pressure on these dudes. It's like this is an honor and a privilege to be in this game.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  How much leverage do you feel like the league has to do that? I'm asking, seriously.

• 25:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, this is an Adam Silver question.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:57Bill Simmons?

  Because Stern would have been able to do it.

• 26:00Bill Simmons?

  Adam wants to be everybody's buddy. That's the difference.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz.

• 26:06Bill Simmons?

  So again, I'm gonna read you the teams.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Okay, go for it.

• 26:09Bill Simmons?

  East, Tatum, Towns, Giannis, Brunson, Mitchell, Mobley, Jalen Brown, and then Cade Cunningham is the exemption pick. Versus Jokic, Jaren Jackson, LeBron, SGA Harden, Jalen Williams and Shingun Curry is the pick. Eight V eight, forty minute games, three subs, that's it. Everyone's playing, we're fucking going. Home court advantage for the finals at stake. I'm watching that.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  I'm watching it too.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  In your revamped All-Star game, is Victor Wembieyaman?

• 26:38Bill Simmons?

  He's playing on Saturday in this one, but it's like, guess what, Victor? Still a privilege to be here. Go whoop on all these future stars. And by the way, next year, get a top five seed so you can be in the Sunday game.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:50Bill Simmons?

  Cause then it would lead to some, some top five seed jockeying. It's like, oh shit, there's a week to go until they pick the All-Star. We gotta get in there.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Well, it would also lead to something that I think the All-Star, All-Star Weekend needs is stakes and hierarchy. Because if you're a top five type of guy, right? And you're playing in that game, not only are you an All-Star, but you're almost like a more All-Star-y All-Star. Because you're playing on a team that's competitive.

• 27:19Bill Simmons?

  You've grabbed a carrot, which is, I play for a top five team. So I am in our biggest profile game. Here's the other thing I forgot to mention. This is what they lose with this stupid, oh, guys from different teams. And you have Jalen Brunson playing against Towns. And like, I like when teammates are on an All-Star team together. Like this team I laid out, Tatum and Brown get to play together. Mobley and Mitchell get to play together. And then Brunson and Towns gets to play together. And that's like an advantage in a game like this, right? You have SGA and Jalen Williams get to play together.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  And once again, those guys are playing harder because they're incentivized because they want home court advantage.

• 27:57Bill Simmons?

  Hey, it's crunch time, man. We're, we're the two seed. This could be like a game seven in the finals. But everybody who'd be in that game, including LeBron and the Lakers, like, has like at least a puncher's chance to play in the finals. And then you go down to the, to the runner up dudes, like, Wemby, sorry. Like, like, you're not a top five seed yet. You don't get to be in the Sunday game.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Here's the thing.

• 28:18Bill Simmons?

  Work your way up there, buddy.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  I get it. So these are the only two things that are gonna stop the, the idea from really shining. Number one is the NBA is going to want to promote guys like Wimby, whether he's on a winning team or not.

• 28:32Bill Simmons?

  Saturday night, huge audience, right after the slam dunk.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Right. And number two, I guarantee you, you get pushed back from a surly vet, from a Steph, from a guy like that who's happens to play on the team that's not contending right now.

• 28:47Bill Simmons?

  250 grand.

• 28:51Bill Simmons?

  You, your team wins, you get 250K.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  So that's your carrot and then your stick is you can't play in the game next year. You would really be that draconian about.

• 29:00Bill Simmons?

  I would. I think they have to be that.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  But do you think it's that important?

• 29:03Bill Simmons?

  It's not like you're taking money from these dudes. You're just saying like, look, man, you didn't give a shit about this weekend. So we don't want to have you back.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:11Bill Simmons?

  Like this, it's a privilege to be here. You're representing the league. We're trying to build new fans. We're trying, because the other thing with this, if I did that Sunday thing, I would start that at seven o'clock. Right? I want kids to watch it. I want kids to be up at 10 o'clock when we're.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  So you seven o'clock Eastern?

• 29:26Bill Simmons?

  Seven o'clock Eastern.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:28Bill Simmons?

  I want kids to watch it. Like the, the way they started last night, you had kids, it was like almost 11 o'clock at night. And there's this, some stupid thing and they're playing to 40.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:38Bill Simmons?

  Like, it's just like, what are we doing?

• 29:40Speaker 01

  How important to the NBA is All-Star Weekend in your estimation?

• 29:47Bill Simmons?

  I can't tell because I know they make a lot of money from it. It's a corporate event. That's what, that's what they do. I, I mean, if it were up to me, it would be two nights. That's it. I think it's too many nights. I think this break is, like, right now, there's no sports. We're taping this on a Monday.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:01Bill Simmons?

  If this hockey thing wasn't happening, there'd be nothing happening right now other than college basketball and people put down mock drafts.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Spring training, spring training's coming back.

• 30:10Bill Simmons?

  Spring train's coming back.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:11Bill Simmons?

  I saw the new Red Sox double play combo. I got a little excited about it. We got Bregman.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:15Bill Simmons?

  Um, no, I, I think they need to. Some sort of juice or really seriously think about not doing it anymore. Those would be my two options at this point.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Our friend.

• 30:27Bill Simmons?

  Cause here's the thing, it's bad for the league. It's bad to have a bad weekend where every type of fan you have is like, that sucked. I didn't like it.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Particularly bad this year where everyone was talking about the death of the NBA, the whole ratings discussion, the conversation over the product on the court. It was particularly bad this year for them to have a dud of All-Star weekend. They needed to have a good All-Star.

• 30:52Bill Simmons?

  Well, and then you have Draymond too, on the announcing team, just killing it.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's, but that's part of it, right? That's part of the criticism. Part of the criticism is about guys like Draymond who are in those positions, who criticize the product of the league. You hear a lot of people talking about the inside, the NBA guys and all of that. I don't know how real that is. I, I do know that I, I personally enjoy not being baby. I want to hear what people that are that invested into basketball culture, actually think about basketball, so it doesn't bother me. But I can see how Draymond shitting on that idea to have the younger guys on Sunday night, how that puts a preconceived notion in people's mind that those guys shouldn't be there on Sunday night.

• 31:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, but so two things, one, he was right. And I give him credit for saying it.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean.

• 31:41Bill Simmons?

  Two, you don't want somebody who's on TV when it's this like thing you're trying to push and so do your fans, just shitting on it.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:48Bill Simmons?

  Which I, I think is a real problem for them because football doesn't let football people do that. They don't, when the football guys are out there, everything is very like, let's go to so and so who talked to Pat Mahomes. And it's like this glowy glossy light set and Mahomes says nothing for three minutes. They throw it back and Gronk's talking about what a great guy is. And it's just how they do football, but I don't know, I kind of like it. I don't, I don't want to see critical shit when I'm about to watch a game.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  What about something that our friend Charlamagne the God said?

• 32:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  That the game is just suffering from it being too close to the Superbowl.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Being too close to so many other gigantic. I was at the Super Bowl in New Orleans that there's no possible way that I was going to be able to make, make myself get up and go to an All-Star game with all those.

• 32:42Bill Simmons?

  Right, four days later.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Four days later.

• 32:44Bill Simmons?

  You would go if it was a good event. You would go if it was like East versus West with finals home court at stake and people actually giving a shit. Like I've been at All-Star games when people gave a shit. And maybe it was just for a fourth quarter and it's fucking cool. It was one of my favorite things.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Idea that as the Super, as the NFL season kind of stretches out a little bit that.

• 33:04Bill Simmons?

  That they have to reconfigure.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Figure out how, a way to kind of move their game away from the Super Bowl a little bit, or else it's in the halo and the glow of the Super Bowl and the Grammys and the Oscars.

• 33:15Bill Simmons?

  The real week to do it is that, that dead week between conference championship games and Super Bowl.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:21Bill Simmons?

  Where they could maybe do it then. But that's also a good week for basketball because that's the one week people kind of drift toward watching games night after night after night.

• 33:30Bill Simmons?

  I, the question to me is like, do they care? And they, they claim they do. It also feels like who's deciding this? Because whoever decided the structure of this last weekend, I don't understand it. It, it's not like an entertainment person. It's not somebody who can look at basketball objectively. So who is it? Is it like the owners? Like who, I, like, I wonder who's spearheading this?

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Well, when you look at the things that they try to do, to me, it always looks like they're trying to appease the players, which I get it.

• 34:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  They're, they're a league that is run essentially by their players. The players have a lot of power in the NBA. They're the face of the league. The league pushes them in a way that a lot of other leagues don't push their players. But it seems as if they're afraid to make the players step out of their comfort zones. Because at this point, forget about everything else in the All-Star game. Forget about the game, forget about all this stuff. If we just hone in on the dunk contest. The dunk contest used to be such an electric event. Like even more so than the game for me. Such an electric.

• 34:38Bill Simmons?

  Until and then 20 years ago, it started a shift. And then they would have a couple of good ones, but people forget the bad ones.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  But even if you get, this is another thing. If there's a decade span and you get three good dunk contest.

• 34:55Bill Simmons?

  You go one out of every three.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  One out of every three.

• 34:58Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Like we could actually.

• 35:00Bill Simmons?

  That's a win for you.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  That's a win. Like the years that Nate Robinson won, they weren't spectacular, but people, they were memorable. And then if you get something that you can actually, they were, I mean, cause he.

• 35:11Bill Simmons?

  I remember leaving the stadium for a couple of those, being like, never again, never going again.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Right. So I'm saying is.

• 35:17Bill Simmons?

  Dwight Howard.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  But Dwight Howard, that was great stuff though.

• 35:21Bill Simmons?

  Was it?

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. You didn't, you weren't.

• 35:23Bill Simmons?

  I don't like watching centers dunk in the dunk contest.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Oh, but he was some kind of different type of freakish situation. He jumped.

• 35:30Bill Simmons?

  Should Wemby be in the dunk contest? Like, how tall do we go?

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Wemby, but Wemby wasn't going to be able to get to the point. Dwight was still short enough to where he could take flight. Remember the Superman dunk? He threw the ball in there. It's crazy. It was nuts.

• 35:41Bill Simmons?

  Have I told you my, nobody should be allowed to use props in the dunk contest rule?

• 35:47Speaker 01

  I feel like I'm going to hear it now.

• 35:48Bill Simmons?

  Well, just like, what the fuck is a car doing on the court? And also we've already seen it, like, come on.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  But I mean, in a lot of dunk contests, people jump, is a human a prop? Could you not jump over a person?

• 35:59Bill Simmons?

  I think that's about it, but I think the human has to be facing you like they're a defender.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:03Bill Simmons?

  Just make it look at least a little like basketball.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  So what I'm saying is something as, and look, there's even cultural conversations around the dunk contest. Like I can watch on Instagram right now, like Jordan Klingon and, uh, one foot god. And the rest of these dudes that I, that I watch on the internet dunk. And do dunks that are so fucking filthy.

• 36:28Bill Simmons?

  Bring them on Saturday.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Now, that's an interesting thing to me.

• 36:33Bill Simmons?

  What's the difference between them and Mac McCombe? He doesn't fucking play.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  I know, but my thing is I would make the NBA guys dunk against them. I would say, hey, the NBA guys, if you want to, there's guys out there and that's all, all they're doing is dunking. All these guys are doing is dunking. They're just dunking, right? But there's a guy, there's, he's like a seventh grade teacher or something like that. He's like a DJ Clark or something. I think for his name. All he, all they do is dunk. I would make, I would have a dunk contest with those guys. And then make the NBA guys dunk against them. Cause when the white boy, Jordan Klingon, or whatever his name is, gets out there and starts shining on Saturday night.

• 37:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  They're not gonna want to be embarrassed. I will put some stakes on it.

• 37:17Bill Simmons?

  I, I either want real stars.

• 37:21Bill Simmons?

  Or just find me the best dunkers, three point shooters, whatever. I, I think they made a huge mistake not putting a couple of WNBA players in the three point contest too. I just think, I mean, people like the WNBA, like Katelyn should have been in the three point contest, just period. And I would add an esque, like I would have had at least two WNBA players. And I would have made the three point contest longer and I think it would have been more interesting. Like they own the WNBA. It's not like it would be like this crazy. You know, it's basically like what NBC used to do in the nineties where they'd be like, now the Friends stars are going on ER. You know, and they do those crossover shows. I just fucking bring Katelyn. Why can't she be at All-Star Weekend?

• 37:59Speaker 01

  I'm into it.

• 38:00Bill Simmons?

  She's the biggest under thirty star in either sport.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  In basketball, like it, like I, I think that's kind of an Obama era idea. I don't think, you know, that's gonna, people are gonna be down for that now. That's gonna start a real, real, real.

• 38:14Bill Simmons?

  I.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Real.

• 38:15Bill Simmons?

  I.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Dialogue.

• 38:16Bill Simmons?

  I know where you're going.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:19Bill Simmons?

  Counter. Are you turning the channel? That's what we have to go back to with all this stuff is are you turning the channel? It's like Andre Jackson from the Bucks is dunking. I'm pretty sure I can go get a tee.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:30Bill Simmons?

  Right now, and maybe come back for Mac McConaughey trying to jump over at Kia. But if it's like three point contest and Tyler Hero just went, and now here comes Katelyn Clark, like I'm fucking watching. I'm not turning the channel for that. So.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  As much as we're talking about it, is it just over?

• 38:51Bill Simmons?

  I don't think it's over. I think there's real fixes.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Is it, is it just over? Because if it wasn't over, this is like, it's kind of like the, the, uh, the married couple that goes to-

• 39:03Bill Simmons?

  They're in counseling for 20 years.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:06Bill Simmons?

  They broke up, got back together, got an apartment.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  And now they're trying BDSM.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  You, you know what I mean? To kind of figure out their relationship. Really, what they need is to go out and be back on the market. Yeah.

• 39:22Bill Simmons?

  So you think the All-Star Weekend's at BDSM stage?

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Some of this stuff is really getting into having key parties.

• 39:28Bill Simmons?

  This is why I'm telling Adam Silver's got to dress up like a dominatrix and make these motherfuckers play hard again. I mean, seriously. I don't think it's that dire because I think if you have stakes and you have stars, you can still win with a basketball sporting event. And here, to bring it full circle to the hockey, we just watched all these Canadian, USA dudes really give a shit. It wasn't just the three fights. That game was really, that was like a game seven. It was physical, like McAvoy had that awesome check on McDavid. Like, nobody hits McDavid like that. They were flying. They really cared.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  They were-

• 40:01Bill Simmons?

  So you can't tell me that these guys in the NBA, you can't pull that out in an All-Star game.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  So I get what you're saying.

• 40:09Bill Simmons?

  We know it's there. You gotta pull it out.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  I know. They're-

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Well, wow. They're, they're-

• 40:19Speaker 01

  They're, they're playing for something in that.

• 40:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  I, I don't mind your idea. I don't mind your idea because it would be interesting for me. This is the thing. A lot of these things that we're talking about, they, they make the game interesting for me. And that's important for you.

• 40:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  That's important.

• 40:37Bill Simmons?

  Well, I would really care if the Celtics had a chance to get home court in the finals because they won this All-Star game.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Certainly.

• 40:42Bill Simmons?

  Now I'm watching that with like Celtics friends.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  What are you doing to make it interesting for them?

• 40:47Bill Simmons?

  For the players.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  Gotta be money.

• 40:48Bill Simmons?

  Home court matters.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Gotta be money.

• 40:50Bill Simmons?

  Home court matters for the top five seeds. That's a real thing. And then for everybody else, money. Throw money at it.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Throw some money at it, yeah.

• 40:56Bill Simmons?

  It worked for NBA Cup. They threw money at NBA Cup and then people, the guys that played, kinda gave a shit about it.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, they kinda, they wanted to get out there and play. I mean, look, think about it, man. If you win $250,000, I mean, that's one-

• 41:10Bill Simmons?

  It's not nothing. Donate that to somebody.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  One night at Onyx for, for James Harden. I mean, that's, that's, that's a Tuesday at Onyx for, for Harden.

• 41:19Bill Simmons?

  It's great. It's a big win for him.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  So, look, I, I know, I remember baseball in the past. I, I remember them, if I'm correct, they went to, uh, doing home field advantage for the All-Star game for a while. Now, they, they stopped after a while, though, didn't they?

• 41:37Bill Simmons?

  But it had the problem that we're trying to fix with this. You have guys in the game who don't care because they're not going to make the World Series.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:44Bill Simmons?

  So what do they care about? You know, a games, where a game seven of the World Series is. In this case, if you had all the top five seeds, they're not gonna care. Let's take, uh, one more break and we'll get to about Raf Beeps.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Okay, cool.

• 41:55Bill Simmons?

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• 43:09Bill Simmons?

  Kendrick versus Drake. Day 280? I don't know, it's like the Iran hostage crisis. Day 310? Still going. Kendrick's having like, this is like driven Kendrick to like A++ levels. He's just dominating coming off Super Bowl show. Drake still seems like he's interested in continuing the beef. He's like, keeps coming out of his corner. The trainer's like, no, no, no, I'm gonna throw the towels. One more round, one more round.

• 43:38Bill Simmons?

  Is this the last rap beef ever for you?

• 43:41Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 43:42Bill Simmons?

  The last huge one?

• 43:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 43:44Bill Simmons?

  So this is just gonna keep happening?

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:46Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  There'll always be one. There's just not enough room on the mountaintop for everyone. There'll always be one. If the moment that they, that rap beats beefs in, there's no more hip hop.

• 43:57Bill Simmons?

  So we need, it's fundamentally, we need this in the.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Fundamentally, you have to have it. Fundamentally, you have to have, like, I hope everybody's paying attention right now to like what Kanye West is doing. Kanye West, like, made it like he had all of these philosophical reasons for hating Drake. During that whole time back in the day when me and Kanye were, you know, going back and forth or whatever, when we went back to both teams, he actually emailed Kanye and then he emailed me back. And he went through this whole rant and in the middle of the rant, he just mentioned Drake for no reason. This is 2018. He's missing Drake for no reason. It's like, cause the radio was playing Drake, Drake ain't talking about nothing. I was like, this guy must really not like Drake. But really, the reality of it was that the only reason why he had a problem with Drake is because Drake was on top.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Because Drake was threatening him. And now you see Kanye.

• 44:46Bill Simmons?

  That's why most rap beefs happen.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Kanye's sniffing around a little bit and he's acting like he wants it with Kendrick now. So there's always gonna be that one.

• 44:56Bill Simmons?

  That's like, he's like the crazy guy in the street. He's just yelling outside somebody's window.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  But there's always gonna be this competitive thing in hip hop, just like there is in sports to where some guy's gonna wanna take with some other guy.

• 45:07Bill Simmons?

  Well, the reason I ask why is this gonna be the last big one is because Drake lost it so decidedly. I wonder if it becomes like NBA All-Star Weekend, where it becomes not worth it. The risk reward thing is almost too great because Drake would be this casually everyone look back at. Other people think he's just gonna, he'll go away for four months, come back and it'll be fine.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Well, the problem with that is, is that you're never gonna. The rap beef, you don't have as much control over, right? Because somebody can decide that they're gonna diss you for any reason. And once they do, you almost gotta say something. So that's-

• 45:40Bill Simmons?

  Well, if you're on equal footing.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  If you're on equal footing.

• 45:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Sometimes if you're not on equal footing, sometimes you can let it slide. Some guys don't choose to let it slide. With this one, it's particularly interesting because I'm starting to think that this rap beef is going to do irreparable harm to hip hop.

• 45:57Bill Simmons?

  Okay, explain.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  This is tearing rap apart. Like, it's one thing to...

• 46:05Speaker 01

  If you have, if you take any of the other beefs, right? If you take Jay-Z and Nas, if you take Big and Pac, if you take-

• 46:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, Big and Pac both died.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but not because of no rap beef. That was over some shit.

• 46:15Bill Simmons?

  No, but-

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. But it-

• 46:17Bill Simmons?

  Tied together somehow.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like messing around, but that was really over some other shit. Shit, y'all can go to VladTV.com if y'all wanna- You're like, he got the whole scoop over there. Black got the whole scoop. Um, but... This has become such, um... A flag planting by each side. That the seriousness of the allegations, and there's always been serious allegations and like, you know, some hyperbole and all of this stuff. But, right now, it like says something about you if you're a Drake fan. It says something about you if you're a Kendrick fan.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  And it's like, it's this weird hip hop version of the Democrats and the Republicans. And the division that we see politically and culturally like in America, like in music. And that just means that everybody can't party together. And you have Kendrick who's actually saying, "It's time to let the party die." And then you got the girls that's going, "Well, we still wanna shake our asses." "Is it okay if we shake our ass?" And then we don't really know if it's okay. "Is it okay if we don't care about some of the social causes and issues that Kendrick cares about?" And I personally don't, I think you should care, but there's always been a part of hip hop that was just about the fun. This is casting people in such distinct roles-

• 47:40Speaker 01

  It's so vicious. Maybe I'm getting older. I could be getting older, but if this one is so particularly vicious with the fans going at it and really trying to sabotage each other. Then it feels like it's time for everybody to take their foot off the gas a little bit, just like relax.

• 47:54Bill Simmons?

  The internet in full, in full bloom, we've never had for one of these, the way we have the internet in the shape it's in in 2025.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Particularly this post Elon, every no holds barred version of Twitter.

• 48:09Bill Simmons?

  No holds barred.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:10Bill Simmons?

  Every, no hold barred internet in every respect.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:13Bill Simmons?

  And you can go as personal as you want. You can do AI stuff now. There's all these different ways you can make the other side look bad.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Right. And so like, right now it's getting to the point where, okay, so Drake dropped, it came out, it was very successful for them. Wasn't my favorite music in the world.

• 48:29Bill Simmons?

  The one Friday?

• 48:29Speaker 01

  The one that just came out, Sexy Songs For You, Drake and P and D. Um, wasn't my favorite music in the world. However, you could listen to that and tell that somebody gonna like it. And it doesn't mean that you have, it, it doesn't make you a bad person or, uh, it doesn't make you an, an asshole if you like Drake. And it doesn't make you righteous if you like Kendrick. Like they're, they're both two entertainers that, that represent and do different things. And while I probably gravitate a little bit more towards, not don't probably, I gravitate a little bit more towards, uh, what Kendrick does.

• 49:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  I think he's a very important, very important artist with really something to say and really represents something. I like a lot of Drake records and I've always have liked Drake and I've always liked listening to him. So I just think it's being taken a little too far now. A little too far now. I take your foot off the gas a little bit.

• 49:23Bill Simmons?

  My son Ben Simmons, not the Clippers Ben Simmons. He says it's over. Drake's dead. Nobody cares. That's his 17 year old LA take.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  I'll be honest with you. Uh, Drake was beaten in this as decisively as I've seen any rapper ever beaten in any.

• 49:38Bill Simmons?

  Was it like a form and phrasure?

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Wasn't a form and phrase because that joint was two rounds. But I would say it was.

• 49:50Bill Simmons?

  Pacquiao Marquez four?

• 49:54Speaker 01

  See, not, it's not Mayweather Gotti because Mayweather Gotti was.

• 49:59Bill Simmons?

  Ali Cleveland Williams?

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Oh, hell no. If you guys ever want to see a killing machine, go watch Ali versus Cleveland Williams. Ali, it was, no, you know what it could be? It could be, uh, it could be a Hagler Hearns. I'll tell you why. So it's a short.

• 50:17Bill Simmons?

  Longer than three rounds, though.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Longer than three rounds.

• 50:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Or short fight.

• 50:22Bill Simmons?

  With a lot of action.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  With a lot of action. However, at the end of it, Hagler brutalized Tom.

• 50:28Bill Simmons?

  Greatest, greatest, one of my greatest boxing photos ever. Hagler like this with his hands up and in the back you can see Hearns being like carried back to his corner.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:39Bill Simmons?

  Fucking classic.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, Hagler brutalized. At the end of it, it was, it was, it was clear. They both went crazy. But it was clear, very clear and decisive who the tougher motherfucker that.

• 50:50Bill Simmons?

  Do you give Massachusetts credit for Hagler or no?

• 50:52Speaker 01

  I thought, oh, well, yeah, Broxton, right?

• 50:55Bill Simmons?

  Broxton, half hour from Boston, thirty five minutes, Broxton.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  So is that Boston?

• 50:59Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Well, that's why I was so mad. Because he grew up black in Boston, so he had to, he had to beat.

• 51:05Bill Simmons?

  Why did I, why did I open myself up to that?

• 51:09Bill Simmons?

  Why did I do that?

• 51:10Speaker 01

  That's why, that's why he was so pissed off. That's why he was beating people up like that. That's why he had to do it.

• 51:14Bill Simmons?

  That was the hardest fight for me because Sugar Ray was my guy, but Hagler was basically a Boston team. So I picked Sugar Ray because Sugar Ray was my favorite from like the seventy six Olympics on.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Sugar Ray won the fight. He won the fight.

• 51:27Bill Simmons?

  I thought he did. It's one of the great arguments, though.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  He eat it out.

• 51:30Bill Simmons?

  There's other people who are like passionately convinced Hagler won and they get really mad if you bring it up.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Is, this is.

• 51:36Bill Simmons?

  I just think he was sloppy and wasn't landing and he was off balance the whole fight. I didn't think he fought a good fight.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  This is gonna sound so crazy and people wonder about these obsessions I've had. I've watched two different broadcasts of the fight. Like I've watched.

• 51:51Bill Simmons?

  I'm not surprised to see me blinking.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  And then I've watched the, I've watched the fight with the sound off as well. And so it.

• 51:58Bill Simmons?

  Oh, sound off is important because the crowd was really behind Leonard.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  And, and the, um, and the announcers too. He made a couple tactical, tactical mistakes, but I was doing all of that stuff for a podcast, but they, they, he made a couple tactical mistakes. He came out, um, I think Hagler came out orthodox. And he's a softball. He tried to box with Leonard a little bit. He made some mistakes in the fight. I do think that had there been a rematch, that Hagler would have fucking destroyed Leonard.

• 52:24Bill Simmons?

  Well, he went to Italy. There was no rematch.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  He couldn't, he, he.

• 52:27Bill Simmons?

  Hagler wasn't the same after the Mugabe fight. He was kinda, he had a lot of boxing miles on him at that point.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Wasn't the same going into the Mugabe fight either.

• 52:34Bill Simmons?

  Early eighties Hagler against that version of Leonard, he, he knocks him out.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, what, once again, this is Leonard at middleweight. Leonard had come up from forty seven.

• 52:43Bill Simmons?

  But he was smart. He planned out, he would steal like the last twenty seconds of rounds. Like he really figured out how to win a scorecard.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:52Bill Simmons?

  Against Marvin Hagler. Anyway.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Um, anyway, but look, it, I get it. Drake lost the rap beef. It's, it's over. You lost decidedly.

• 53:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but what do you do after you decidedly lost the biggest rap beef? At least of the last ten years, right?

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Oh, this might be the biggest rap beef.

• 53:12Bill Simmons?

  Twelve years?

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Uh, it's certainly the biggest rap beef of twelve years.

• 53:16Bill Simmons?

  Century?

• 53:18Speaker 01

  I, I could make an argument, and look, you'd have to get Night Wonder, you'd have to get Sway. You'd, you'd have to get, uh, Ebro Charlamagne, all of those guys that live and breathe hip hop.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  I can make an argument, this is the biggest rap beef ever. I can make an argument, this is the biggest one ever.

• 53:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's, it's tied to the generations too much, though.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Why would you?

• 53:41Bill Simmons?

  It's almost, it's almost like arguing about different eras of basketball.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Well, but the only reason why I say this.

• 53:46Bill Simmons?

  Cause Biggie Tupac was like, it, the, the whole art form was still evolving as that was happening, you know? And it was, it was so tied into like this incredibly influential decade.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  I get it. And I, I was there for that one too.

• 54:00Bill Simmons?

  And here we're, we're already set. Music is music is what it is. Everybody's figured out their versions of that. So it's like. It's almost amazing that it got to this point. I didn't think it was possible.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  But that's what makes it different to me. So Big and Pop come out and remember, there was also some personal stuff that was going on in that beef.

• 54:17Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  There's some here too, but not quite as much. This seems to be different to me because it's almost more akin to Jay and Nas. Because this is the culmination of an entire generation of hip hop work. You have two guys that come out roughly around the same time. Drake beats Kendrick by two or three years as far as on the national scene. And then for a decade, a decade plus, they dance around each other. They, they poke at each other. There's diss's on records. There's references on records. There's interviews. There's all of this stuff.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  But these two guys along with Cole are recognized as the two biggest stars of their era. These are the two biggest guys in their era. And then they essentially fight or spar or battle for the, the kingdom of that era. They battle to decide who's music and who's more influential, who matters more. And there's so much behind it. You're talking 10 years of work. You're talking two different outlooks on hip hop. Like two completely perfect foils, even down to the fact that one guy represents this long legacy of hip hop

• 55:41Speaker 01

  that comes from Southern California, from Compton. Think about all of the Compton.

• 55:47Bill Simmons?

  Post OJLA.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  All of that stuff, right? And then you have one guy who is an upstart coming from, with a new style of hip hop.

• 55:55Bill Simmons?

  The grassy high zone Drake.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  The grassy, all of that stuff, but still has roots in Memphis, right? It's almost like it was, and I don't want to overstate it. It wasn't just a hip hop battle. It was a. Cultural litmus test in a way, which is another reason why I think people are taking it so, so seriously. It was like a battle to, to, of what the truth of hip hop and hip hop culture is. So it was very, very, very high stakes. And the song that won was obviously a song that accused Drake of a lot of things. But the one thing that it accused Drake of more than anything was not being a part of hip hop. And so it just ended up being incredibly high leverage in a way that I don't think that I thought it was going to be.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  So I can make an argument that like this, because of those reasons, that this is the most consequential one that I can.

• 56:48Bill Simmons?

  Well, the other way to, uh, help your argument is the best song that came out of this whole beef becomes one of the best songs of the decade.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:56Bill Simmons?

  At least most famous, most influential, would be most discussed 20 years from now and people are like, the 2020s, what were the big songs? It would be one of the first ones mentioned. All the other rap beef songs, none of them hit the heights that this did. I mean, this is basically, I'm not going to say Michael Jackson thriller territory, but like that.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  It's a gigantic record. Well, it was gonna be difficult for, first off, Fuck Your Bitch and A Click You Claim to really, really go pop. So it, it, it was, it was gonna be, it was gonna be difficult for that to really, really go pop. But I would say that culturally, Hit Em Up was being played in the club like, this is different. This is a number one record.

• 57:35Bill Simmons?

  They weren't playing Hit Em Up at the Super Bowl.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  They weren't gonna play.

• 57:37Bill Simmons?

  It's like, yeah, it's halftime, Chargers, Niners. Here comes Hit Em Up.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Here comes Pac. Oh, he's got a lot of red on. Um, but they weren't gonna play that, but this one, it went everywhere. And that was also, once again, it was kind of Kendrick saying, you know, not that he hadn't had hit records, it was Kendrick saying, I can make a hit record that dances on your grave. You, you know him for making the people dance. I can have those same people dancing on your grave. And he did that.

• 58:06Bill Simmons?

  It's a tough one. I don't know how Drake bounces back from it. It's also, there's a talent issue too, as successful and, uh, Great as Drake's, some of his stuff has been. Kendrick's just levitating at a slightly different level.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  He's.

• 58:19Bill Simmons?

  Whether you, how much you like his music, whatever, like he's the, the best artist that the genre has produced in the last 12 years.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  Drake is insanely talented. Kendrick takes himself, Kendrick is.

• 58:31Bill Simmons?

  Kendrick's a one on one. He'll never be recreated.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  He makes more important music. He, he, I think the music that he makes is probably a higher difficulty. I don't want to take anything away from Drake's talent, but I don't want, but he's, he's insanely talented. Kendrick, you can't make that many great hits without being talented. That is something that we ain't never seen. I mean, and, and we knew this, he's just, it's almost like he didn't want to, like he's something that we ain't never seen before. To me, to me, and a lot of people would feel that way about, about other artists, about Drake with it. Like Kendrick's ability to communicate, but also to be relatable. All of that stuff, he's, he's, he's just different to me.

• 59:10Bill Simmons?

  You think Drake, cause Kendrick's short. I think Drake really missed a, I think like his dis response could have just been like an entire short song.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  He's, he's talked about the fact that he's short though.

• 59:21Bill Simmons?

  But he didn't really go after it. I think that's like his one move left and it'll probably be clumsy and not work well.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  He should have sampled short people.

• 59:29Bill Simmons?

  Just a whole short song, just like, just mocking Kendrick for being short. It's like his only move left now.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  The problem is, is that you'll do that, but the reality is like.

• 59:39Bill Simmons?

  Then you look thin skinned.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  No, it's an extra thing with Kendrick, cause Kendrick on one of these records, Kendrick says, uh, it might be on Dodger Blue. He says, have you ever ran a fade, then ran three more back to back? If not, then shut the fuck up and keep it rap. And that's basically he's saying, like, if you want to fight, we can fight. You know what I'm saying? You want to fight, like we could fight too. You, the thing is with how, how psychotic he's, we've seen that he is, you just don't know the level that he won't go to. So it's like, the best thing to do is just to rap about it, just rap.

• 1:00:11Bill Simmons?

  Well, Kendrick's going on tour.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Going on tour.

• 1:00:14Bill Simmons?

  And this will just keep going and going.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  It's time to let it go. Kendrick doesn't want to.

• 1:00:19Bill Simmons?

  Kendrick's not letting it go.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  He doesn't want to make the mistake of orienting his career around Drake.

• 1:00:25Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  One, get back to pushing the culture forward like you always have. You've done the victory lap. There's no bigger victory lap than the Super Bowl. Get back to doing the same.

• 1:00:33Bill Simmons?

  Alright, so you're Drake's Tom, Tom Hagen. Yours conciliere. He hires you for a week. What are your two pieces of advice for Drake?

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  Okay, two pieces of advice. First of all, Tom Hagen, not a wartime conciliere, so.

• 1:00:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, how about this? Maybe he was. They just didn't give him the chance.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  But maybe Sonny was.

• 1:00:48Bill Simmons?

  They just decided he wasn't.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Maybe Sonny was just a terrible.

• 1:00:51Bill Simmons?

  Let me tell you what, my crap McFriend.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  She was the best. And I've had him all over the place. Now you get your ass out of here. He doesn't get that movie. Um.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  Uh, what would I tell Drake to do? Number one, the first thing I would say is just remember that you're Drake.

• 1:01:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Okay. Remember that you are literally the artist of the decade for the 2010s. So number one, it's going to be okay.

• 1:01:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  Like, take a breath, go to booby trap, chill out for a second. And also remember why people love you. They don't love you because you are the most devastating battle rapper of all time. They don't love you because of that. You already carried out a one battle. They love you because you make hits. So come back with some fire. Chill and come back with some fire. And I'd say something else. I said this on Higher Learning and Rachel disagreed and the entire audience disagreed.

• 1:01:45Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I can't wait.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  If I were Drake?

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  If this is possible with Jay-Z running things, right? Because I know they don't have the best relationship. If I were Drake, I would do the Super Bowl next year.

• 1:01:58Bill Simmons?

  Interesting.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Yep. If I were Drake, I know it seems like he's coming behind Kendrick, but let me tell you what, if Drake does the Super Bowl next year, let me tell you what could happen. Number one, he can do something, he can answer the Lil Wayne question. Because Lil Wayne wants to do the Super Bowl. Lil Wayne and Drake could do a whole set at the Super Bowl. Then Drake looks like for the entire South, which likes Drake anyway.

• 1:02:23Bill Simmons?

  Oh, so now this is, it's almost like politics. You're trying to win the South.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  You're like, now it looks like Drake is the one who, it looks like Kendrick took the Super Bowl stage away from Wayne. And Drake is the one who gave Wayne his due. You can do the Young Money thing. Drake could do a whole Super Bowl. Whereas Kendrick did a Super Bowl that was very dedicated to his audience. And didn't have some of the hits that he knew before. Drake could do a whole Super Bowl of just hits. It could be just hits. If people are talking about they love hits, Drake could do such a low stakes Super Bowl.

• 1:02:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  I'm talking about Nice For What, Hotline Bling, Miss Me. I'm talking about so many joints. I'm talking about all the joints with, and it could be hip hop. Cause he could have Gunna and Lil Baby out there. If those guys will be on the same stage, he could have Thug out there. He could have literally a Super Bowl full of hits and pop records. And people would like it. And he could leave reasserting.

• 1:03:19Bill Simmons?

  But that's 11 months from now.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  I know. For that 11 months, you gotta, I mean.

• 1:03:24Bill Simmons?

  You do the Will Smith?

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  You chill.

• 1:03:26Bill Simmons?

  You're just gone?

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  You chill. I mean, he already dropped the album, so he probably gonna, he's on tour.

• 1:03:30Bill Simmons?

  Ben Simmons thinks he's dead.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  He's not dead.

• 1:03:33Bill Simmons?

  He said it's, it's done. He's like, nobody cares about Drake anymore. Ben Simmons quote, "My 17 year old son who knows everything."

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  That could be true, but I, I don't think it's true. But that a lot of people care less than they did. But even his back catalog, even his back catalog is enough that Drake will never be out of the public.

• 1:03:51Bill Simmons?

  I like your idea of him attacking different parts of the country correctly. Almost like he's running for an election. He's like, all right, where, where's Kendrick weak? I can get him in the South. Can he get him in the Northeast? Like just start picking different pockets, culminating in the Super Bowl show.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Also, I'll just say this.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  Drake, his, his support was cratering a little bit before this.

• 1:04:16Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Because Drake had, in my opinion, made some really weird moves. Like the decision to kind of support Tory Lanez and diss Meg Thee Stallion. Where, when black women had been the ones that had been supporting Drake. And, and like even when other black men would be like, ah, Drake too soft. I like the way, it was black women that held Drake down and really like, really kept him at the superstar level. And I just remember when he made the decision to make light of Meg getting shot. And to outwardly support Tory like that, a lot of women were like, what is he doing? Like, what's the deal? And so a lot of the insulation that he would have had from getting his ass lit up like he did,

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  was gone for a lot of different reasons, right? For a lot of the, he, he had decided for some reason before all of this started, to go heal a little bit.

• 1:05:11Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  And I-

• 1:05:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but it's almost like wrestling. I always feel like pop artists, different musicians, different genres. You got like an eight to 12 year shelf life.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:23Bill Simmons?

  And then you gotta start figuring out next acts. Like you think about even like somebody like Hulk Hogan, right? Comes in, hits big in the 84 range. And by the time we get to like when he turned and WCW. Yeah, that was like 11, 12 year mark because it was like, his character had run its course the way he was doing it. He's gotta flip it. Now I'm gonna dark, dark my beard and become Hollywood Hogan. With, think about how many musicians have been able to even hit musicians. Big, big hits have been able to last longer than 10 years.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  It's, it's not a lot.

• 1:05:53Bill Simmons?

  Comedian, by the way, another one is funny actors, like comedians, like comedians in movies. Churning out like funny stuff that we care about. It's like eight to 10 years.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  But those comedians-

• 1:06:03Bill Simmons?

  Then they have to audible.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  Then they start-

• 1:06:05Bill Simmons?

  You make a drama.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Start doing drama.

• 1:06:07Bill Simmons?

  Now all of a sudden you're on like a, a streamer show. Like you gotta start. And I think it's really tough to stay relevant in music for that long. Because eventually the new kids that are listening to it are gonna determine who's hot. And they don't wanna root for like, they don't wanna like their dad's music. They want their own music.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  But once again- Another reason why it was smart that Kendrick did it, the timing. He, Drake was at kind of a little low, a lower point. He's still making hit records, CLB for all the dogs, all those things still sold really well. And he hit them when he was down a little bit, so we'll see. But everybody, it's okay to like Kendrick and Drake. It's okay.

• 1:06:45Bill Simmons?

  Van Lathan, just trying to heal America.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  Hey, it's okay to put on Not Like Us, then listen to Family Matters. It's okay to listen to Push Ups, like, and Euphoria. You can listen to, I listened to Nonstop this morning when I was walking the dog. It's okay, you guys, you guys can like both guys. It's okay, it's all right.

• 1:07:02Bill Simmons?

  And if you have your Kanye playlist, maybe roll the windows up as you're jamming along to it right now?

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  Some of them records gonna get played, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, some of them records gonna get played. It's tough.

• 1:07:13Bill Simmons?

  He's a lot of great, huh?

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  The, the guy, the Gaza, the, the Gaza, he's a, he's a real, it's, it's tough.

• 1:07:21Bill Simmons?

  It would have been nice, like, six years ago, if he just, like, moved to Australia and just started raising cattle. And just moved to a different point in his career.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know what? I don't want to talk about Kanye. He's an anti Semite, I don't want to piss anybody off.

• 1:07:34Bill Simmons?

  That's, it's rough.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:36Bill Simmons?

  It's, it's not great. Not great. Meant a lot to my family over the years.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:44Bill Simmons?

  Not awesome. Not a great, not a great turn of events.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  It's just like, it, it's just weird. You can't, you can't, but then.

• 1:07:53Bill Simmons?

  You're not cranking it at a July 4th party.

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's all of the lights.

• 1:07:56Bill Simmons?

  I got seven Kanye songs in a row here for everybody.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  What about All of the Lights, though? What about Street Lights?

• 1:08:01Bill Simmons?

  That's the thing, that's why you roll the windows up. Roll them up! Van Lathan, good to see you. Uh, we're doing rewatchables. Van's gonna be on rewatchables on Monday and then, uh, Higher Learning and Ring of Verse as well. Thank you. This episode is brought to you by PayPal. The holiday rush is coming and you can get ahead of it with PayPal. Shop your favorite online stores with PayPal this season, like eBay for collectibles, Fanatics for teen gear, Walmart for tech. Check out the flexibility to pay now or pay later and split your payments with Pay in Four with no interest, no late fees. Shop now with PayPal. Paying for is subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com/payingfor. PayPal, Inc., NMLS 910457.

• 1:08:47Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Minnehoshan and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys. Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters Friday.

• 1:09:31Bill Simmons?

  Get tickets now. All right, we couldn't let SNL 50 go by without an appearance from our friend Jim Miller, who has been on here many times. He wrote the oral history of SNL. He is an even bigger SNL student than I think I am, which I don't even know how that's possible, but we just had a three and a half hour Sunday night show last night that featured almost everybody ever who's been involved with the show who's still alive. What was your biggest takeaway from last night?

• 1:10:02Speaker 03

  Well, listen, I think it was pretty good. You know, I loved Adam Sandler. Eddie doing Tracy Morgan, I could watch all day, particularly given Eddie's tortured history with SNL. It was just great to see him back. You know, the world's a difficult place. When things work out between people and there's not contention and people forget about things. You know, Bill Murray saying something nice about Chevy Chase. It's, it's time. It's all good. I miss Bill Hader. You know, wish he had been there. Tina continues to be terrific, but there was enough, there was enough good stuff going on that made you feel like it was, it was worthwhile.

• 1:10:42Bill Simmons?

  I think one of the coolest Sandler, I thought, kind of, I don't know if anyone wins a three and a half hour SNL episode with that many people in it, but Sandler's thing was great. And it was when you saw him, it was like, is this gonna be funny? Is it gonna be poignant? It's gonna be both. But he really nailed it. And then for me, the highlight was just seeing Eddie Murphy and Will Ferrell in a sketch together. Because I think those, to me, are the goats. Those are the two best people in the history of the show.

• 1:11:05Speaker 03

  I mean, and by the way, with Adam, let's not forget that Jack Nicholson introduced him. Jack hasn't been seen in, I mean, unless you're at certain parties or whatever. That's a big deal. And it was, it was wonderful for, for that to happen. But, you know, Eddie Murphy being on the innate age is just incredible still. I mean, he saved, you and I have discussed this before, but Eddie saved the franchise.

• 1:11:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:29Speaker 03

  Without a doubt. I don't think if, if that 19 year old Eddie Murphy hadn't come along when he did, we're not talking about SNL 50.

• 1:11:36Bill Simmons?

  Oh, there's no question. And not, not only that, but I think he was the only person who was probably overqualified to be on the show. Like, hey, he ascended out of it. It was like, he was like, moonlighting on the, on the show almost by the end, where I don't, I don't know if that phenomenon's ever been recaptured.

• 1:11:53Speaker 03

  Well, I will say though, Kristen Wiig, I said, I told her, she gets big, big, I don't know. I mean, she came on after Bridesmaids. She stayed on the cast after Bridesmaids. That, that's pretty impressive.

• 1:12:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you're right. Yeah, a couple of people have done that, I guess. But yeah.

• 1:12:10Speaker 03

  And she got, and Kristen got one of the great send offs of all time. Do you remember that?

• 1:12:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:14Speaker 03

  Mick Jagger singing to her and her dancing with Lauren. Not everybody gets that kind of send off.

• 1:12:20Bill Simmons?

  So the big people missing, Hater, and we don't know why they didn't come, but Hater and Ackroyd, I think were the two that jumped out to me the hardest that I just feel.

• 1:12:28Speaker 03

  Colin Quinn.

• 1:12:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but I think Hater would have been involved in multiple sketches. Because you'd think like, Molly Shannon was in multiple sketches, you know, the, the, the way they were using different people and how, how great Hater was as a glue guy. I just think he would have been all over the place. So he was.

• 1:12:43Speaker 03

  He would have been all over. Fred Armisen was in a lot. You know, I, I think, look, I don't, I don't know. I didn't talk to Bill and ask him exactly why. The Ackroyd thing was a little suspicious because at one point he said, it depends on. Who asks me and what they want of me? And it seemed like there was a bill of particulars attached. And as Lorne has said many times to people, we don't negotiate with terrorists. So maybe he was unwilling.

• 1:13:11Bill Simmons?

  Right. And then Dana Carvey was the other one that I was surprised by because he's been on the show this year and he had said he was looking forward to being on it. So I'm not sure what happened with that, but I think he would have been involved.

• 1:13:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, without a doubt, without a doubt, particularly given, I mean, Martin Short was was visible, very visible. And I think Dana would have had a lot to do.

• 1:13:31Bill Simmons?

  So do you feel like part of it was SNL 40 felt like the original version of this? And the 50th is, you know, they're, they're basically rerunning a lot of the stuff they did in SNL 40 with 10 years of newer cast members, only a couple of whom have come even 20% as close to hitting the heights as some of these other people.

• 1:13:52Speaker 03

  You know, you may be onto something. Look, I was there at 20, at the 25th, and that was outrageous because nothing like that had been done. Remember, last night, they did not have a dress rehearsal. So this is the equivalent of Lorne and the writers flying blind, because one of the great luxuries, right? You go in eight o'clock, you throw everything against the wall, you see what sticks, you can figure out what belongs in the show, what doesn't, and also, more importantly, sometimes, the order, right? I mean, you get a real sense of it. I mean, occasionally they'll screw up and put Wayne's World at 10 of 1, the first time it aired. But, but they had no dress rehearsal. And I think maybe

• 1:14:36Speaker 03

  it wasn't that it was derivative, Bill, but that it, because they had done the 40th the way they did it, it was like there was some muscle memory. Like, we can do this, we'll have, we'll still have the monologue, we still need a big music act, we still need a big closing music act. And then, of course, it's the emotional arc that you just referred to with, with Adam, right? Which is, you're gonna have uproarious sketches, then you want some poignancy, then you want some memory, I thought.

• 1:15:05Speaker 03

  I thought one of the great things about Adam also was that they snuck in a memoriam in there, too.

• 1:15:10Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:15:11Speaker 03

  It wasn't just like a capital M Oscars or Emmy memoriam. You saw Jan Hooks, you saw Phil, you saw the people that

• 1:15:19Bill Simmons?

  Norm MacDonald.

• 1:15:20Speaker 03

  Unfortunately, couldn't, you know, of course, Norm. Yeah, I mean, that couldn't be there. So that was an elegant way of doing it. And, you know, they did that in the 25th, in terms of recognizing people who had passed. And so I think that they, I'm not saying they used the same playbook, but it certainly felt like, you know, there was that DNA of 40th anniversary there.

• 1:15:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there was some stuff that didn't surprise me. Like, you knew Paul Simon was gonna lead the show. That was just the way it's gonna go.

• 1:15:46Speaker 03

  Paul and Paul.

• 1:15:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:47Speaker 03

  Open and close with two of Lorne's best friends.

• 1:15:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but Paul was like, you know, he was, he hosted the second show, which was basically, it turned out to be a Simon and Garfunkel reunion. The sketches were shoved to the side. And I think Lorne was so worried after that first show, what would even be in the second show? He geared it towards Simon and then Simon became, you know, this guy that's been on over and over and over again. And now, you know, it's pretty striking how old he looked and how old McCartney looked. And be like, that makes sense, because the show's been up for 50 years.

• 1:16:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. But you bring up a good point about the second show. You know, I feel this way about The Sopranos, and there's actually, somebody should really do, it would be a really cool article. You get the first show and you're spending so much time thinking about the first show, right? And then all of a sudden, it's like, oh shit, we got a second show. And like, The Sopranos didn't find its way till episode five.

• 1:16:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:42Speaker 03

  Saturday Night Live, you know, really, I mean, two, three and four, good stuff and everything, but you still didn't understand the DNA. It wasn't, the broth wasn't fully simmered. And I think that, particularly when you don't get an order, like nowadays on streaming services, you get an order, go do eight. So you're thinking about that. A lot of times, when you're just doing one by one, you need to get them on your feet, on their feet, before you can really learn things. And so Paul Simon on episode two, if people go back and watch it, man, it's, it's, it's an experiment.

• 1:17:19Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:17:19Speaker 03

  It's like, let's call my friend Paul, let's see how we can stitch together 90 minutes.

• 1:17:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and it was basically a musical show with a couple sketches in it. That that second episode thing, I've thought about that a lot because when you're creating a show, especially if it's a drama, you're spending a year plus on the pilot, right? And you're getting notes from all these people and you're going back and then finally you cast it. And you're casting these people who have never played the characters before and it's could be a year long process. You make it and now all of a sudden you have to make eight more episodes, nine more episodes. And you're doing that as fast as it took to do the entire process for the pilot. So it is something that I always think about when I watch new shows.

• 1:17:58Speaker 03

  Well, it's an incredible thing because also in the first episode, you're establishing the characters. So you're trying so hard to like introduce the character that you're spending all that time on that. That's why with like The Sopranos, not to get off track from SNL, but The Sopranos, the biggest fight David Chase ever had with HBO was in episode five was, were they going to watch Tony kill somebody?

• 1:18:20Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:18:21Speaker 03

  And like Chase is like, dude, like this is what the guy does. He's not a Hallmark salesman. He kills people. We gotta show it. And it hadn't really been thought of before that because it hadn't come up. And so I think particularly in for SNL, episode two, episode three, episode four, it's a cocktail, right? And like getting down like how much of Albert Brooks, how much is of a movie? Is how many commercial parodies are we going to have? How much time are we going to do two musical acts or just one? You know, how much time does that leave for everything else? And then of course, what is Weekend Update going to be? Because Weekend Update had this huge advantage, right? Chevy was the only one who said his real name. I'm Chevy Chase or not.

• 1:19:05Speaker 03

  He got all that time by himself. Other cast members who are a little resentful of that, trying to cut back on that. So it takes a couple shows to iron out those arguments.

• 1:19:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and it probably wasn't until the prior episode that the show really knew where it was going and what it was, which was the 11th episode of the first season, right? There's a couple of other good ones until then, but about midway through that season, the show became the show, but they ran the pilot, they ran the first episode on a Saturday night in the 1130 spot.

• 1:19:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was great.

• 1:19:37Bill Simmons?

  It's a man like Carlin's does three different monologues. The Muppets are on there like that. The show's all over the place. They have no idea what it is yet.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  Well, part of it also is though Carlin was stoned out of his mind.

• 1:19:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you can see it.

• 1:19:50Speaker 03

  He was unavailable at certain points throughout the show. The other thing that is worth mentioning is like Chevy 15 minutes before the first show said to one of the producers, hey, what do you think I should do after this? Cause he was convinced it was going to be a failure.

• 1:20:06Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:20:07Speaker 03

  Right? And Lauren kept on Lauren's, I mean, Lauren is Lauren. I mean, he's telling everybody, oh no, this is, we're gonna, this is, it's a hit. We're gonna be a hit. We're gonna be hit even before the ratings suggested it, even before anybody had written about it. But by the fifth time, when Gilda is walking down Avenue of the Americas and start, starts getting stopped by people like, oh my gosh, you're so great and whatever. And she's like, what?

• 1:20:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:32Speaker 03

  The show changes when people know it's a hit.

• 1:20:36Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:20:36Speaker 03

  Even though SNL wasn't going to pander to people and it wasn't going to try and become a hit, right? They were just going to do what they thought was cool and it caught on. And so that also has, I think, a real impact on the trajectory of the show because then all of a sudden you're like, well, we don't really care whether somebody thinks this is going to work or not. We're going to think, we're going to have Beethoven at a piano playing something. Alushi, go ahead, do it. And we think it's cool. I mean, who do, there's no time to like, I mean, they address this, but there's no time to really test that out. So that became a real powerful force.

• 1:21:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And the amount of people that watched the show as it was happening in the seventies versus how it's consumed now, which says so much to do about the choices we have now and just how we consume entertainment. Like in 1978, if you didn't see the show live, it wasn't on again until they ran the reruns in the summer. That was it. You missed it and you just heard word of mouth. Oh my God, they had the sketch last night. Now it's like you can miss the show and if there's something amazing in it, there's a big moment. You just watch it the next day on YouTube.

• 1:21:41Speaker 03

  Miss the show. Most people watch clips.

• 1:21:44Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:21:44Speaker 03

  People get maybe they'll get YouTube clips where they'll they've customized it somehow on X or something else. But you know, I think a lot more people obviously are watching it during the week than are sitting down in their bar calouge at 1135.

• 1:21:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the surprise of I'm watching this. I don't know what's going to happen. That's just shifted into something completely different. But what's weird is the show, at least from an audience standpoint, in 2025 is still big. I think it's like probably the biggest non-sports weekly property that exists.

• 1:22:17Speaker 03

  Well, it's the highest rated non-sports entertainment show on winner television.

• 1:22:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, which is nuts.

• 1:22:23Speaker 03

  Incredible. And that's why you get spend nearly 100 million, million dollars a season doing it.

• 1:22:28Bill Simmons?

  Well, we'll see how long that lasts. Some stuff from the show that jumped out to me. So Meryl Streep, who'd never been on the show, never hosted. And how many times do you think they asked her?

• 1:22:40Speaker 03

  A lot.

• 1:22:41Bill Simmons?

  Weird that she never did it.

• 1:22:44Speaker 03

  You know,

• 1:22:45Bill Simmons?

  She seems pretty fun. Like I'm at and she lives in New York City or she lives in Connecticut. I think I'm just surprised she never did it.

• 1:22:51Speaker 03

  Look, they asked Tom Cruise a lot. He never did it.

• 1:22:55Bill Simmons?

  That makes more sense to me.

• 1:22:57Speaker 03

  Because of dyslexia and the cue cards?

• 1:22:59Bill Simmons?

  No, because he's Tom Cruise. He's weird. I don't, I don't know what to make of Tom Cruise, you know, I don't like going any direction with Tom Cruise. I don't know. You know?

• 1:23:10Speaker 03

  He's a big movie star.

• 1:23:12Bill Simmons?

  He's a big movie star and you know, he's more likely to jump a motorcycle over some mountain than he would be to host a live sketch show or anything could happen.

• 1:23:21Speaker 03

  Actually, you know what? That'd be a great question if I I get him in an interview again. I think what would be more terrifying for you going over like the Grand Canyon in a motorcycle? Or hosting Saturday Night Live and he might say the latter.

• 1:23:37Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I think he would definitely say the latter. So he never did it. Meryl Streep never did it. And then the other one who never did it was Jack Nicholson, who was partying with all these people in the seventies, especially, you know, he's in the Belushi books like he's.

• 1:23:51Speaker 03

  Early and often, man.

• 1:23:52Bill Simmons?

  So by the way, so is De Niro, who was there last night too. De Niro finally broke and hosted, but I think Nicholson and Streep are the two biggest stars that never hosted the show, right? Two most famous actors other than Cruz.

• 1:24:05Speaker 03

  Other than Cruz.

• 1:24:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06Speaker 03

  I would.

• 1:24:06Bill Simmons?

  That's it. Those are the three.

• 1:24:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. Nickel, I mean, De Niro did a couple of walk-ons from time to time and then eventually hosted, but.

• 1:24:14Bill Simmons?

  Well, he did the Joe Pesci show. Yeah, that was the best. That was the best one. When Jim Brewer was, Jim Brewer, probably his best thing when he was doing the Pesci things. So anyway, I love seeing Meryl Streep with Kate McKinnon, even though that Alien Encounter sketch, which is great, but it's the same sketch every time. They're just rerunning all the beats.

• 1:24:31Speaker 03

  I know, but that's when you know.

• 1:24:32Bill Simmons?

  Bad was fun.

• 1:24:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, the ad was fun and Kate is one of the few people that can pull that off that give us, you know, even though you know it's coming, it's still fun to watch.

• 1:24:42Bill Simmons?

  And she's just trying to make everybody else laugh. So we had that. We had Black Jeopardy with Eddie Murphy playing Tracy Morgan next to Tracy Morgan, which was, that was the first time I really laughed in the first, I don't know, 30 minutes where I was like, oh my God, they're doing this. I got, it was super exciting.

• 1:24:59Speaker 03

  It wasn't just Eddie coming on, doing Eddie or doing so. He was actually impersonating Tracy.

• 1:25:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:04Speaker 03

  Who was standing right next to him. It was so good. That was a rough add-on with Tom Hanks, but I will say the Black Jeopardy sketch that Tom Hanks did do.

• 1:25:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:14Speaker 03

  Then was, you know, legendary. It just was really hard last night after, after.

• 1:25:19Bill Simmons?

  No, you didn't need anything else with Eddie. Yeah.

• 1:25:21Speaker 03

  That, that was, that was tough. And by the way, Eddie was good doing that. Eddie was good.

• 1:25:27Bill Simmons?

  Eddie was one of the big winners last night. They tried the Lawrence Welk thing with Scarlett Johansson and Kim Kardashian, Gaston White, that it's, that's the same sketch every time. The Q and A from the audience was captivating, especially with, with the nice, nice TV, nice widescreen, because every time they cut to somebody in the audience, you could watch, you could see everybody who was in like a specific section. I wasn't even really listening to the Q and A. I was like, wait a second. Oh, oh, there's that, and there's that person. And I, I almost feel like that's, they intentionally do that, right? To, so we could just see who's there?

• 1:26:03Speaker 03

  That was the whole purpose of it. They did that in the 40th as well.

• 1:26:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:06Speaker 03

  You, you, you get to show off the wares, you know, I mean, like, because unless people are watching the red carpet or whatever, a lot of those people like Jerry and Larry, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David were in the audience, obviously, but weren't in the show.

• 1:26:20Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:26:21Speaker 03

  So, you know, it's a great way to, to show them off. And not only that, but Tina and Amy are the only, really the only two people that could handle that. Because you got a riff on it, you gotta, you gotta tease that. I mean, it's really, it's much harder than it looks.

• 1:26:35Bill Simmons?

  Really smart way to get a bunch of people involved in the show. I, I gotta say, the most surprising person, I don't know why Kevin Costner was there, because he's never hosted the show. It just felt like they needed a star. And he seems like he's pretty available in general, like he was at UFC last month. But Letterman being there was shocking to me. That was somebody that's never hosted the show, and I never felt like had a real connection to it in any way, but maybe he did, and I'm missing something.

• 1:26:59Speaker 03

  I hate to say it, but it's like driving a Porsche 40 miles an hour. Because why point out to us that Dave is here?

• 1:27:05Bill Simmons?

  Not use him.

• 1:27:06Speaker 03

  And then not use him for anything. I mean, I, I just, I kept on waiting for him to, to do something or say something from his seat even, or whatever. And it wasn't anything. So, I mean, I guess, I don't know, it was weird. Julia too. I mean, Julia is, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, even though she had a hard time when she was an SNL cast, SNL cast member.

• 1:27:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:28Speaker 03

  She could have done, she could have done anything. She's, she's fearless and she's terrific.

• 1:27:33Bill Simmons?

  I was surprised by that. I was surprised Bill Murray ranked the Weekend Update people and started with Colin Quinn 10th, who wasn't there. That just felt like a direct shot, but uh, but that was, it actually felt like old school Bill Murray, like his pace and his timing was really good, I thought.

• 1:27:49Speaker 03

  Well, I thought it was brilliant that he did this black anchors first, got Che out of the way. And then what it wound up really doing was just being a real dig to Colin Jost, who didn't make any of the spots.

• 1:28:03Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:28:03Speaker 03

  So I think the Colin, Colin Quinn thing at the beginning was just to think, to make Colin Jost think that he was going to be on the list. Cause it was Colin and then he waited a bit. I mean, Bill Murray's timing is fantastic and he was a Friday night at Radius and a Music Hall. He was awesome as well.

• 1:28:20Bill Simmons?

  So we had Mulaney's New York Tribute, which was like this big giant movie that moved through the, through the eras of New York. That I actually thought was, was really well-written and uh, interesting. I'm not positive it a hundred percent worked, but I liked it. They ran back, Don't Look Back in Anger, one of the great pieces of content that show's ever produced.

• 1:28:40Speaker 03

  Thank God.

• 1:28:41Bill Simmons?

  And from start to finish, they didn't just run a minute of it. They actually ran it, which I thought mattered.

• 1:28:46Speaker 03

  Really, I mean, the irony, of course, that Belushi wound up dying first, but also when he mentioned Gilda, I mean, the whole thing is just perfect. It's one of, I think it's one of my favorite SNL moments of 50 years.

• 1:29:01Bill Simmons?

  No question. I was watching with my wife and my wife didn't totally understand why they, she's not a big SNL like student.

• 1:29:08Speaker 03

  And you guys got married.

• 1:29:10Bill Simmons?

  Well, she was like, why did they, why'd they run that? That was weird. And I was like, well, here's the backstory. Like they ran that Belushi lives in and he was actually the one that died first. And she was like, oh, like, I think she was like half paying attention, but.

• 1:29:25Speaker 03

  But that's what I meant though, in terms of like the rhythm also. Lauren, I think pays more attention to that, that he talks about. And when you have something boisterous or something supposed to be really broad and loud, and then you come to something like that, it's, it's a really interesting symphony that he's, you know, conducting there.

• 1:29:43Bill Simmons?

  So we had the stagehand, we had uh, the in memoriam thing I thought was probably my favorite part of the show. When they did the inner memorial of all the times they've crossed the line, I'm like, are they gonna show Uncle Roy? They gotta show Uncle Roy. And then they, Uncle Roy, the most indefensible sketch, probably in the history of the show, but it was the 70s and shit happens. The lecherous babysitter trying to creep on Gilda Radner. But they went through all of it and I loved it because it's like, you know what? Comedy changes. The definition of what's funny and what isn't funny changes. It's not, you can't go back retroactively and litigate it. This was stuff that ran.

• 1:30:18Speaker 03

  And not only that, but it's incredibly shrewd because for all of you thinking that we're gonna hide from it and you can go and write about it and just to task for it, oh, we're gonna own it. We'll own it right now. Here you go. And with perfect context. I thought it was the shrewdest part of the entire show.

• 1:30:36Bill Simmons?

  And then Debbie Downer, which I think has has belatedly become one of the most famous sketches in the history of the show. 28. It was funny when it happened, but I think as the years have passed, it's one of the go-to ones people mention.

• 1:30:49Speaker 03

  I think there are Debbie Downer societies. I mean, there are people that that literally talk about it about themselves. They talk about it in therapy. There's a whole big online presence. So, you know, I was wondering whether or not Rachel and Will were gonna do the lover sketch and Will was gonna start cracking somebody up underneath the hot tub, which would have been terrific, but that also is logistically difficult.

• 1:31:14Bill Simmons?

  I would have, if they had asked me, I would have had Neil Diamond storytellers with James Brown and just brought Eddie and Will together and just had them, had them do. I just think that would have gotten the biggest wow from me out of basically anything they could have done if they had just done those two together.

• 1:31:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the one thing that might have worked against that is that requires another level of knowledge on the show, just because it's not as, it's not in the zeitgeist as prominently as some of these other ones or as recently. By the way, how about Sabrina?

• 1:31:48Bill Simmons?

  But that doesn't help the Lawrence Welk sketch. I mean, Lawrence Welk isn't in there. That's the thing. If you're gonna do Lawrence Welk, I would have rather, yeah, anyway. What were you gonna say?

• 1:31:56Speaker 03

  But how about Sabrina Carpenter's line to Paul Simon about my parents? That set, that one line, like, I think it shocked the audience and it set the tone for the whole night because you're gonna see a bunch of people in their 70s and 80s.

• 1:32:10Bill Simmons?

  So there's some Lawrence stuff with this. You know, there's five years where he's not on the show.

• 1:32:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:32:16Bill Simmons?

  Ebersol is running the show and that's, that's been fraught. And we've, yeah, Jean and Jean Dominion initially, she gets fired, Ebersol takes over. You've written about this a ton. It's been talked about a ton. It's always been a little icy with the two of them, but credit dating back to 75. It was notable to me that Eddie was really the only person from that five year run that was prominently involved in anything. Like there was no Piscopo at all. Julie Dreyfus was in the Q and A and that's it. It, it, it was a show that just kind of pretended those five years didn't, Billy Crystal wasn't anything. Martin Short was in it, but Martin Short has become kind of an honorary host slash cast member along the lines of Steve Martin. But he was a big part of that, uh, season 10 cast.

• 1:32:58Bill Simmons?

  But for the most part, he pretends that doesn't happen those five years.

• 1:33:02Speaker 03

  And Billy Crystal was in the audience.

• 1:33:04Bill Simmons?

  Right. Never went to him.

• 1:33:06Speaker 03

  Could have been used. Could have been used.

• 1:33:09Bill Simmons?

  Not used at all for, for anything.

• 1:33:11Speaker 03

  Without a doubt. I mean, listen, and given what happened to Billy on the very first SNL, where he and his manager stormed out because he wasn't going to get enough time. That's a complicated history, Billy Crystal and SNL.

• 1:33:23Bill Simmons?

  Right. Well, then.

• 1:33:24Speaker 03

  All the way through 50.

• 1:33:26Bill Simmons?

  The cast after, Carvey, not there. Hartman, not with us sadly. Same with Jan Hooks and Myers was really the only one. They, they went to Levitt's pretty briefly, but the show was a little geared toward those last, last, uh, basically last 30 years. The, the other notable thing to me, the last 10 years of cast members. Pete Davidson, Bo Nang, they got attention. Marcelo got in on one of those sketches because I think out of the, anyone on the new cast, he seems to be the one there. They think they might've hit, might've struck oil on a little bit. But other than that, like that, that show was not a big win for the current cast, which I think was different from SNL 40, when the current cast was a little more involved.

• 1:34:09Speaker 03

  One of the things you and I have talked about before is that

• 1:34:14Speaker 03

  over recent years, you don't have a lot of reoccurring sketches.

• 1:34:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:18Speaker 03

  Reoccurring characters that you can draw back on. And so that's when it really comes.

• 1:34:24Speaker 03

  To haunt you because you can't all of a sudden, it's not like the cheerleaders were from the past 10 years. So you throw them up or I guess we could go back to the Californians, but you can't do the Californians without hater. So you know, they were in a box, but I think that's part of what was going on. Look, Davidson, I maybe, maybe you'll argue with me on this, but Davidson isn't there because of what he did on SNL. He's there because he became a cultural force with his, you know, many popular.

• 1:34:56Bill Simmons?

  Right, with his social, his social game. Yeah, no, he became a Weekend Update guy, you know, and it wasn't like he was, he was never like, let's build all the sketches around him like he would with Will Ferrell, somebody like that. I think the show's in a weird place.

• 1:35:12Speaker 03

  If you ever get a moment, Pete's first show appearance was on Update and he crushed.

• 1:35:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:19Speaker 03

  He did a great, and so you think, whoa, wait a second. And then, you know, it just, it didn't, it didn't have, I mean, I'm not saying he's not successful, but we know, most people know Pete Davidson because of the incredible runway of beautiful, popular women he dated rather than what he did on the show.

• 1:35:38Bill Simmons?

  And a couple of movies too. So the Lauren piece of this, I'm assuming there's not going to be an SNL 60 with Lauren Michaels. That would be insane. People always thought.

• 1:35:49Speaker 03

  Well, he could show up for it.

• 1:35:51Bill Simmons?

  He could show up for it. No, but he's not going to be producing. Last night, he was sitting in an aisle seat, like three, four rows up. So he wasn't like producing it. He actually seemed like he was an audience member for it. I'm sure he, I'm sure he decided every sketch and what was, who was going to be there and who was going to sit where, but it felt like he was a little more detached than he was probably.

• 1:36:10Speaker 03

  Friday night too, he was, Friday night, he was, you know, he had a great seat at Radio City. He sat there the whole time. I mean, look, they, last night, they had, they had everybody come in, they had, there were some of the top notch, the varsity was in the writers room. They went over that and, and Lauren was very, very, very involved. And I think he geared it so he could actually, God forbid, not be under the bleachers, sit in a seat and enjoy it.

• 1:36:38Bill Simmons?

  Right. So what happens now to Lauren? What's your prediction?

• 1:36:44Speaker 03

  I think he's gonna stay. I think he's gonna stay. I mean,

• 1:36:49Speaker 03

  whether or not there's an emeritus attached to him or not, I mean, but right now, he's already cut back on his schedule. So he's not in every single day and night like he used to be. And I think that what you'll probably see is more people stay. It will be interesting to see, though. I mean, like, obviously, if Tina or Seth comes back to the show, Lauren's emeritus, right? Lauren is, by definition, gonna be saying, I'm handing over the reins. But without that, it'll be interesting to see what happens next season. Originally, he had said he would be, he'd like to make it to 50 and then walk away. But I don't think he, he said, I don't think I'm done. I don't think I'm done.

• 1:37:31Bill Simmons?

  Were you surprised, A, Chevy Chase not featured in anything? Was that because of physical health or something else?

• 1:37:39Speaker 03

  I think it falls under the rubric of something else.

• 1:37:43Bill Simmons?

  Okay. That's it? That's all you got?

• 1:37:46Speaker 03

  Well, Friday night, Jimmy Fallon did something very nice, which was, it may have been a commercial break or something, but he leaned down and he said, ladies and gentlemen, I haven't watched the air copy yet, so maybe it was on air. Ladies and gentlemen, Chevy Chase. And Chevy stood up and took a big bow and like was expecting a big hand. And I don't want to diss him, but it wasn't huge. And I think that the powers that be were aware of that and felt like maybe that wouldn't happen if he was part of the show.

• 1:38:21Bill Simmons?

  Interesting. Well, he certainly has burned some bridges over the years, I think is.

• 1:38:28Speaker 03

  He napalmed him.

• 1:38:30Bill Simmons?

  I think it's safe to say, yeah. So that one was weird. And then the Conan O'Brien.

• 1:38:40Bill Simmons?

  Not involved last night. Is that, is that still going to the, when he took the Tonight Show and didn't, didn't include Lorne and his version of Tonight Show, which people have always said that was one of the reasons Leno was able to kind of double cross him and try to get the show back because he wasn't protected by Lorne? I don't know. Where does that stand?

• 1:38:59Speaker 03

  I don't think, I don't think Conan would be that petty. In fact, I'd like to give him a get out of jail free card in the sense that two weeks from last night, he's hosting the Oscars. And like, it's just like, I can't, I don't know. I mean, very few people would be, going to be hosting the Oscars and then rehearsing a sketch.

• 1:39:17Bill Simmons?

  I'm not talking about Conan being petty. I'm talking about, is there still like some Lorne pettiness with that whole thing? Because I'd always thought there was. No?

• 1:39:26Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:39:27Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:39:27Speaker 03

  No. You know, I think Lorne is at the point now where he's like really too powerful, too rich, too everything. Like, there's very few, like, who's he petty with? I mean, like,

• 1:39:39Bill Simmons?

  That's true. It's a victory lap.

• 1:39:41Speaker 03

  He's declared victory. If you're petty, that means that you're in the trenches fighting with somebody and there's no one that's going to fight with Lorne. Who's got, I mean, unless it's like Sharon Madonna, who's got even one name to mention? Like, he's gonna, he's gonna be like in a, I don't know, with Conan? No, I don't think so.

• 1:40:01Bill Simmons?

  Do you agree with the David Stern theory with Lorne? That I think we've talked about before about the moment you give up this job, you give up this power and influence, that's just never going to be the same. And that's one of the reasons you keep it for as long as you can. Everyone's returning your call the moment you call them.

• 1:40:17Speaker 03

  I always thought that theory said more about David talking to himself than him giving advice to others. Because he was so crestfallen. I mean, you must have seen him. When Adam took over, he was like, where's, like, he was just a man without an island. And I think Lorne, look, Lorne is always going to have agency and the keys to 8H, no matter what. Even if he retires, he can go back there and do whatever he wants. And he's got a million other projects. So I don't think Lorne's gonna, I don't think people are going to stop calling Lorne. The cast may stop worrying about whether he loves them or not, but that's about it.

• 1:40:55Bill Simmons?

  Amazing relationship. All right. So your final grade, it sounds like it was like an A minus.

• 1:41:00Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 1:41:01Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:41:01Speaker 03

  It's good to see, you know, I mean, look, whatever. I, again, I miss Bill Hader. And certainly, I mean, every time you have one of these shows, I mean, the idea that Belushi killed Phil and now Norm and Jan Hooks, I mean, you can go on the list.

• 1:41:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:17Speaker 03

  It really, it really makes it because they died too young.

• 1:41:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:21Speaker 03

  I mean, and Chris Farley, I mean, how ironic is it that Belushi was Chris Farley's hero? He tried on his clothes when he got the show.

• 1:41:29Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:41:29Speaker 03

  And then he winds up dying at 33, the same age that John was when he died. I mean, there's just, it's just, you know, all the sadness surrounding the show is really sad.

• 1:41:41Bill Simmons?

  Um, before we go, any predictions for the second half of the decade for ESPN? Another place you wrote a book about?

• 1:41:48Speaker 03

  Well, we'll see what happens this, this fall, right? I mean, it's a, that's, it's one of the big chapters in ESPN's life, uh, going direct to consumer. And, uh, let's see how far, how much they piss off the cable operators, whether, what, what are they going to charge? I mean, that is, that's a wild calculation. I mean, Jimmy's done his job. He made nice with the NFL. They got, they got the NBA. Maybe they'll improve the NBA shoulder programming, but, uh, I know you're dubious about that, but, uh,

• 1:42:26Bill Simmons?

  Well, they've had, they've had, they've had it for the last, I don't know, two plus decades. But how's it going to be different this, with this contract? It's going to be the same crap.

• 1:42:35Speaker 03

  It's always a work in progress.

• 1:42:37Bill Simmons?

  I feel like it's just getting louder and dumber, the coverage around it.

• 1:42:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, but this, this is going to be different now. Direct to consumer. And look, when I wrote that book, it was 100 million homes. Now it's what, 67? And you times that, times $8 a month, you're talking about real money. You, if you're Disney, you can't buy Pixar, you can't buy Marvel, you can't do any of that with the current financial equation. So it's going to be really interesting to see what happens in the fall when they decide to price that out and see how many people follow them.

• 1:43:09Bill Simmons?

  Um, how do you feel from, uh, people working there?

• 1:43:14Bill Simmons?

  Happy to be working there standpoint in 2025 because you always have a good vibe of

• 1:43:20Speaker 03

  I think most of

• 1:43:22Bill Simmons?

  Workplace happiness.

• 1:43:24Speaker 03

  I think most of the people I talked to, you know, Freud had it. One of his definitions of maturity is the ability to handle ambiguity.

• 1:43:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:31Speaker 03

  So I think there are a lot of people becoming mature or else they're drinking themselves silly on the weekends because it used to be, you know this. I mean, particularly because ESPN is in Bristol, Connecticut. You've got to move your ass up to central Connecticut. You put your kids in school. Everybody's there for 25, 30 years. I mean, if you're at CBS Sports and you don't like it, or you get recruited to NBC.

• 1:43:53Bill Simmons?

  Just jump somewhere else.

• 1:43:53Speaker 03

  You're just going across town. So a lot of people out there for 25, 30 years, it wasn't, those jobs aren't as safe as they used to be. And a lot of people were having a very difficult time, particularly since some real legends were laid off, you know, during these layoffs. So I think there's a level of insecurity, a palpable level of insecurity, Bill, that's never been there before.

• 1:44:17Bill Simmons?

  That's what I'm hearing as well. HBO, another place that you wrote a book about. New series coming out March 3rd, Celtic City, nine parts Celtics docu-series. It's really good. But wait, how are you feeling about HBO these days in the Time Warner empire?

• 1:44:34Speaker 03

  I think there's a branding issue with the whole universe that really hurt HBO. This idea that, I mean, like those three letters are worth just as much in terms of currency and pedigree than any three level letters there are in the ecosystem. And they dialed back on it. And I think Casey Boyce has done the Lord's work. He is without a doubt, one of the best creative executives in the business today. I wish they had more money. I wish they, I mean, I know that they could have done unbelievable things if they had more money, which wasn't always the case. But I think that they, you know, the brand has really lost a lot of its halo.

• 1:45:20Speaker 03

  Not because it's turning out shit, but because it's gotten messed up in this whole discovery plus HBO plus Max and this and that. It was HBO Go, then it was, I mean, it's a lot to go through for a brand. And even though they have some great people working there, I just, I think they deserve better.

• 1:45:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's I think with the Max app like it just shouldn't be that hard to find the best shows HBO has ever done or the new shows, you know, you feel like you're waiting through all these different choices and sometimes somebody's going on there like, I just want to watch Sex and the City.

• 1:45:55Speaker 03

  And I feel like there's a, I feel like there's a lot of politics involved with that, with that homepage. I mean, look at Netflix, it's, it's almost like Darwinian. It's survival of fitness, but it's because you got that algorithm and like, don't mess around with it, man. We know what we're doing. But with Max, it's like subjective. It's like, wait a second, like, and there's this whole big thing with Entourage, you know, where's that? I mean, been deep six too, and you can't find this, you can't find that. It's, um, it's really complicated on that Max homepage.

• 1:46:29Bill Simmons?

  Well, the best, the best way to fight off any sort of weirdness is to just keep putting out good stuff, which it seems like they had to push a lot of stuff to 2025 and it seems like they, they are going to have a bunch of good content this year. And the question will be, how can they push it in the Max app the best possible way?

• 1:46:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. Good luck with the Celtics, man. That's, that's awesome.

• 1:46:51Bill Simmons?

  Thanks. It was a lot of time. Anything else you're working on before we go? Got a secret projects you want to tell us about? No?

• 1:46:58Speaker 03

  Just writing, writing, writing.

• 1:47:00Bill Simmons?

  What are you writing?

• 1:47:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:03Bill Simmons?

  Stuff? Things?

• 1:47:04Speaker 03

  Yes, just stuff. Yeah, I'm writing stuff.

• 1:47:06Bill Simmons?

  New project?

• 1:47:08Speaker 03

  Couple of new ones. Yeah.

• 1:47:10Bill Simmons?

  Oh, all right. Mysterious Jim Miller. Thanks for your SNL 50 recap. Good to see you as always.

• 1:47:16Speaker 03

  Hey, thanks for having me, man.

• 1:47:18Bill Simmons?

  All right. Thanks to Van Lathan and Jim Miller. Thanks to Kyle and Saru Dangahow. As always, you can watch clips and videos from this on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. You can also watch this as a video podcast on Spotify. I hope you did. We will be coming back on Thursday, actually, after the big Austin live show. We're going to run that on this feed. It's going to be good. I promise. And don't forget new rewatch was coming Monday night, Wayne's World. So I will see you on Thursday.