Mavericks Fans Revolt, ‘SNL 50’ Guesses, Oscars Watch, and Super Bowl Leftovers With Bryan Curtis and Matt Belloni

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Bryan Curtis to discuss lingering Super Bowl LIX thoughts (2:58), as well as the Luka Doncic trade from the POV of a longtime Mavericks fan (22:07). Then Bill talks with Matt Belloni about the highly anticipated 'SNL 50' show (59:00), Oscars predictions, Justin Baldoni vs. Blake Lively, Hollywood's relationship with President Trump the second time around, and much more (01:20:45). 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 miss your chance to win some money with America's number one sportsbook. I mean, post-trade deadline. We had one of the craziest trade deadlines we've ever had in the history of the league. We have Fox on San Antonio, Luka on the Lakers, Kuzma on the Bucks, kidding. The Cavs got better, so you have a chance to get all these new look teams and maybe just ride Luka and his point over in the Lakers to win as a parlay over and over again as he gets vengeance on the Mavericks. Bet on fun markets like live quarter player props and parlays. Enjoy our new NBA player prop pages. The app is safe and secure and easy to use, and when you win, you'll get paid instantly.

• 0:45Bill Simmons?

  So, download the app today. Bet with FanDuel, an 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 and listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Must be 21 plus and present in select states. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Hey, if you missed it, we launched a brand new podcast on The Ringer Podcast Network and Spotify. It is called Good Hang with Amy Poehler. First episode is dropping fairly soon. Within the next couple of days, you can follow it on Spotify, video podcast, too. 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.

• 1:28Bill Simmons?

  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. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. We put up a new rewatchables on Monday. We did the Blues Brothers in honor of SNL 50. You can watch on The Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. You can watch a lot of the videos and clips from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. This is a big episode for us because this is our first Video episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast on Spotify. Every episode from now on will be a video episode on Spotify. You can put it on your phone. You can just listen to it. You can pull your phone out. You can watch it.

• 2:11Bill Simmons?

  You can go on your smart TV, your PS5, your Roku, your Apple TV, wherever you want to want to get it. Watch it on the Spotify app. Whatever you want to do, knock yourself out. We are a video podcast from now on. I've had this podcast since 2007. So year 18. It's basically now, I guess, a TV show, a very low budget TV show, as you could see with my hastily put together posters behind me. This podcast, really fun episode. Brian Curtis talking Super Bowl, Luca trade, day 10, still going. And then Matt Belloni talking SNL 50, the Oscars, Lively versus Baldoni, most famous celebrity right now. Lot of good stuff. It's all next. First, we couldn't lose them on the video podcast.

• 2:55Bill Simmons?

  Our friends from Pearl Jam.

• 3:19Bill Simmons?

  All right. Editor at large of The Ringer, Brian Curtis is here. We're recording on a Tuesday morning, action packed. A lot of Brian's interests are in play. And we're going to talk about the Mavericks and one of the craziest NBA situations in a long time. But we'll start quickly with the Super Bowl. Hey, news flash, the Cowboys didn't win another Super Bowl. It's been over, over three decades since the last time. We did have the Eagles when we had the end of Mahomes. We had a lot of takes. Sal and I were doing stuff on Sunday night about Mahomes getting kicked off Goat Island. What was the media reaction yesterday? What jumped out to you? What did you enjoy?

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Well, I think we had a little bit of a Chiefs take crisis with the Super Bowl before the game.

• 4:02Bill Simmons?

  We did.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Did you see all the people trying to make the Chiefs into villains? Like the Pats, like the 90s Yankees?

• 4:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  And they're not villains. They're just not. They're not hated on that scale yet, I don't believe. And people try to, you know, oh, we're tired of them. We're pissed off at Taylor Swift. The refs are in their pocket and they were just trying to get us there that we all hated the Chiefs and we're rooting against them. But I don't actually believe that was the case. I think we might be a little tired of them being good. We might've been kind of annoyed at the way they won games this year, but I don't think they're hated at all. And then my favorite bill was you got.

• 4:40Bill Simmons?

  Wait, wait, hold on on that, though. Who was, who was the best? Who was central casting for best villain? Was it just Duke basketball in the 90s? Who was just the easiest to put right in there?

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:51Bill Simmons?

  Cause even the Yankees, like, I hated the Yankees, but I was like, all right, Jeter, I kind of like, he seems like a nice guy. You know, there, there was, it was more the fan base than the team itself. Duke basketball seemed like that was the easiest one.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Duke was at the top of the scale. The Yankees had the thing where they were outspending everybody and kind of everybody that they were ruining baseball.

• 5:11Bill Simmons?

  That's a good piece.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  In there.

• 5:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. When you're ruining stuff, that's always a good one. I'm trying to think who else, like the Pats. Because of the Spygate, I felt like that in the, the first three Super Bowls, people were like, all right, enough with these guys. But it was a little like the Chiefs thing. But then when Spygate happened, then they became criminals, basically. And then it moved it to another level.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  And then they had a hateable coach, which is another thing the Chiefs lacked. Like, people don't hate Andy Reid. They just don't. Phil Belichick was, was hateable, probably still is hateable in his own way, even as he's tried to rehabilitate his image all year. But I think with the Chiefs, people are just like, eh, okay.

• 5:47Bill Simmons?

  They had the Taylor Swift thing, a lot of Kelsey, a lot of both Kelseys.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Lot of commercials.

• 5:53Bill Simmons?

  They, they were moving a little bit toward the Trump side of stuff, which I think a couple of people ruffled up. For the most part, I don't know. I, I, my, my biggest issue with them was they made it so unfun to talk about the Super Bowl, which we talked about on Sunday night, where it's just like, if you pick them, you kind of feel, you just say, well, Andy Reid is my home. You had no other reason. If you didn't pick them, you felt like an idiot. So it was, I think, the worst Super Bowl to talk about since I've been doing this.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  I think so, but I, like you, talked myself into the Chiefs are going to win it.

• 6:27Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Close game.

• 6:29Bill Simmons?

  It was the first time I ever got slaughtered on a Super Bowl and didn't feel bad really at all. I was like, what are you gonna do? You can't go get some again. What was the other thing you were gonna say about the villain thing?

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Well, I was just saying like by, once the villain thing kind of didn't work out that you heard this amazing take on ESPN and elsewhere, people said, don't be tired of the Chiefs. Appreciate greatness when it's in front of you.

• 6:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  And I was like, what a counterintuitive take. You should appreciate a great football team. Whoa, whoa.

• 6:56Bill Simmons?

  Good tag.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Go, settle down, guys.

• 7:00Bill Simmons?

  What was it like as a TV viewer for the Brady Mahomes experience? Brady announcing the game where Mahomes' goat resume got knocked backwards by about four years?

• 7:09Speaker 01

  So it was a little bit weird, right? First of all, Brady actually got to go to the meetings this week. And apparently, I was told there was a scene in one of the meetings where he and Mahomes were just sitting off by themselves, talking.

• 7:22Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  And people in the meeting, Fox producer was like, look at that. I mean, that's kind of awesome. These two dudes just talking football. It was just one of those moments where you're like, whoa, goat plus goat. Well, almost goat, talking to each other about football. But then it gets to the game and Mahomes just sucks at the beginning of the game. He was terrible. You nailed this on Sunday night. So Brady, I thought, never got to talk about Mahomes' greatness in an interesting way. And at the same time, he kind of made a mistake because he didn't really kill Mahomes. He was talking about how good the Eagles' defense was.

• 7:56Bill Simmons?

  Well, and that's where Romo or probably Romo, but I think Aikman would have been the best because Aikman just doesn't give a shit anymore. Aikman, I think, probably would have been the hardest on him, right?

• 8:05Speaker 01

  I think so. But you know what? One thing you could tell with Brady this year, and this is kind of one of the most fascinating subplots of Brady announcer experiment, was you could tell what quarterbacks he liked and what quarterbacks he didn't, and what quarterbacks he thought didn't measure up. Jalen Hurts, by the way, was in the second category.

• 8:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Every Jalen Hurts game, he would say, Jalen Hurts is better when he gets the ball out of his hands quickly.

• 8:28Bill Simmons?

  Yep. And he would get mad when he, when he held it too long and got sacked or had to run out, throw it out of bounds. Brady would be exasperated.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Which is a nice way of saying he's pretty limited, right? Like, he can do certain things, but he can't do other things. Well, what happens during the Super Bowl? Jalen Hurts kind of balls out. He plays better than Patrick Mahomes. So you could feel Brady really processing that.

• 8:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  In real time. And he sort of got, well, he has a great instinct on when to leave the pocket. Cause he was beating all those rushes and blitzes, right? By running and he kinda got himself there. And he gave Hertz's due. I don't want to say he didn't do that, but that was just funny to hear in real time.

• 9:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And it seems like after 48 hours, the, uh, the second level analysis stuff is whoa, the Eagles actually like go the 2000 Ravens and that some of the other great Superbowl teams. Let's, where do they go? Where do they rank ahead of them? And then it feels like people are kinda test driving some my home stuff. And even people in my life where it's like, eh, are we sure? Are we sure? Are we like, just because they pulled out all these close games? Like, why, why don't they have explosive plays anymore? The guy's about to hit 30. Could you say he peaked a couple of years ago, just as an explosive, awesome quarterback? Like there's always all these excuses around them. Are we sure?

• 9:47Bill Simmons?

  Which I remember hit Brady in the late 2000s too. We had, there was some, are we sure stuff? So I don't think anyone feels really committed to anything. The biggest thing that shocked me, and I, I feel like I say this every year and it feels like it's even, it just speeds up by probably an hour every year. But going back, we both loved like Sports Illustrated in the eighties. The Superbowl would happen. People would talk about it. It would be on SportsCenter for four straight days. And then the Sports Illustrated will come out on Thursday with like the final statement of the game. And then that started to shrink as the internet came and it's kept shrinking. It kept shrinking, but even like when I was at ESPN, Sal and I used to do like Monday afternoon recaps of the Superbowl. Then that became Monday mornings. Then eventually we're just going immediately as fast as we could after the game.

• 10:31Bill Simmons?

  And now it feels like the shelf life to discuss the Superbowl is 18 hours? Is it, is it longer than that? Like, does anyone, even us leading the podcast with this today? I want to do it cause I love talking about all the, all the ancillary stuff with you, but it's like, is it too late? Is it too late to talk about the Superbowl on a Tuesday morning?

• 10:51Speaker 01

  I totally agree. I watch the late SportsCenter on Sunday night after I was, I think right before I listened to you. And at that moment I was kinda like, am I done with the Superbowl?

• 11:01Bill Simmons?

  Is this it?

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Like we had a pod to do the next day, but I was like, have I consumed everything I'm going to consume about the Eagles beating the Chiefs? And the answer is almost yes. I think I had, because I mean, here's the other part of that. You just consume so much now. I mean, you had to wait till Thursday with that SI thing to get all the details and you know, what was Vic Fangio like in the locker room afterwards? I mean, Sheil wrote that, you know, for us right away.

• 11:26Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  So in a way, it was just all kind of there for us. So we don't really need to wait.

• 11:31Bill Simmons?

  And there's no like, nobody's, nobody's parachuting in on like Monday at 3pm with this amazing angle that nobody's thought of. You kind of know what all the angles are going to be by, you know, 10pm on Sunday night, PT.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  The one exception was remember that year Peter King went and hung out with Tom Brady and Jocelyn? Was it Montana up in the cabin like a week later?

• 11:53Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  It feels so old school now, but like, yeah, we're with Brady and he's reflecting on the game and giving me like an hour. That was, that, that, even that, I don't think he would do anymore.

• 12:04Bill Simmons?

  I actually felt like the halftime show and the Kendrick Drake stuff and how polarized and that show ended up being, almost became more of a theme on Monday, at least in, on my text threads and the stuff I was reading. It was more interesting to read how people were receiving stuff, the hidden meanings behind some of the stuff Kendrick did on the, on the halftime and Serena being in it. That one had these levels that kept getting revealed. That used to be how the Super Bowl operated.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Totally. Because what play are we talking about in the Super Bowl? You know, nothing from the second half.

• 12:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Maybe that Mahomes pick six, which effectively ended the game in retrospect. By the way, you mentioned the Mahomes takes. I want to go there with you.

• 12:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Because it feels like Mahomes will work himself into a nobody believes in me news cycle. Because just enough doubt, even if it's bullshit, just enough doubt. And also, Bill, Jalen Hurts, think about this. What were people talking about Sunday night, Monday morning? The Eagles defense. This was a win for the Eagles defense. So Jalen Hurts both win the Super Bowl MVP and pull off the unprecedented double play of being a nobody believed in me guy.

• 13:16Bill Simmons?

  Has that ever happened before? Probably, probably Brady somewhere in the first three Super Bowls where it was all Belichick and all the defense and Brady was kind of the supporting character in a lot of ways.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 13:30Bill Simmons?

  I think would be the only other time I can remember that happening.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  He was seen as a facilitator. He was so good.

• 13:36Bill Simmons?

  He was great. I mean, they basically put the game in his hands and dared him to beat them and, and he did that with the Mahomes stuff. There's a couple of fun wrinkles that could come out. He could go the, you know, the NBA player route.

• 13:51Bill Simmons?

  Like if this was LeBron in the Mahomes spot, we'd already be getting the leaks about he needs more help. They, they didn't find him anyone this year. When Rashid Rice went out, they could have done this, that and the other thing. They knew Kelsey was getting old. They've got to do more. He took less money. It would be, they'd basically make him a victim.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Wait, I thought you were gonna say he was secretly injured. When you said LeBron, I thought I had a secret injury.

• 14:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that would be another one too. Yeah. He had, he had like a quad injury. He couldn't push off his right foot. Yeah, they would be, they'd be doing all that stuff, but it, it kind of doesn't seem like Mahomes. Not only does he not do that stuff, but he always seems at peace, win or lose after the game, right? I, we never see that stuff about, oh, this year, Patrick Mahomes is different. He's just, he's pretty, pretty even keeled, which I think you have to be as a quarterback. The interesting thing to me, which we talked about Sunday night was I, I really do think Kelsey was going to retire. If they won. And the Kelsey, will he or will he not retire? I think will be fun, but just in general, like it's really hard to keep these windows open. You know, with, with NFL teams, we went through it with the Patriots a few different times.

• 14:58Bill Simmons?

  It all depends on the drafts and people wrote some good pieces about, you know, they missed on their left tackle pick this year. You know, Rashid Rice, which would have been this awesome wide receiver pick for him. They missed and so you can just tilt it a little bit or all of a sudden you're catchable. And I think that was the thing that changed the most coming out of this season was like the Chiefs not only feel super catchable now. We don't have to do the thing where we just hand them the game when we're talking about it. Now it's like football has opened up for analysis. So I'm excited for that. From a, from a Super Bowl standpoint, the Brady Fox thing.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 15:34Bill Simmons?

  At the end, $375 million, whatever it is, they certainly got a lot of ink and publicity and podcast content. He was able to go on some of the Fox shows. He had a couple decent moments, like in traditional podcast interview stuff. I don't think from a game thing, I wouldn't even put him in the top eight game guys I heard. He's got this weird Vegas minority stake and he's allegedly hiring the coach and he's involved in their draft. Like, is there a chance just this, just this is it? This is a one and done?

• 16:05Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I don't think, I don't think he sees it like that. And that's for me poking around. He's, I think he's, he's into this. I mean, first of all, the NFL doesn't care about the Vegas thing. You know, other than the meetings. And by the way, let's see where we are in year two with the meetings. Cause I'm not convinced that my, that wouldn't change in year two. I think there's, there's a, there's potential for that to, to be switched up by Goodell and everything after they've gone through that one year of this with him limited.

• 16:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  If you're him, you're getting 37.5 million dollars to work for six months, work hard for six months, but work for six months. The NFL has said, we don't care if you're a minority owner of the Raiders. It doesn't matter.

• 16:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  I got to ask him on Super Bowl week, what his role with the Raiders was, and he didn't tell me and he didn't provide any detail about that. So I was like, okay. So he's not going to tell us, at least for now, about what he's doing with the Raiders. Doesn't have to come clean about it. I mean, seems like a pretty good deal to me.

• 17:01Bill Simmons?

  I have been told pretty explicitly, it's too much money. There's no way he walks away.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:07Bill Simmons?

  It's too much money. And this is, one, one thing I, I think people forget with the, like the super duper famous celebrities. It's expensive to be a super duper famous celebrity. Cause he, everywhere you go, you're paying for like some private jet. You, you know, in his case, he got divorced. Like it's as much money as he's made. He still needs way more money to sustain the lifestyle he does. And this is a 37.5 million dollar check every year. He's not giving it up if he doesn't have to. It's not that hard of a job. It's 22 weeks. You study one game, you fly to the site. Like it's, you know, you have to keep in touch with the league a little bit, but not really. The stunning thing to me is Belichick. I, you know, this is not a midlife crisis because he's in his mid 70s, but even he was at

• 17:52Bill Simmons?

  Super Bowl, you know, he was at a couple of parties. He was walking around with his girlfriend. We saw him at the Fanatics party on Saturday. It's just surreal. This guy who was wearing this, you know, saggy hoodie on the sidelines who just couldn't care less what anyone thought. Now he's in the Dunkin' Donuts commercial with the girlfriend and this girlfriend's five years older than my daughter. It's, there was a lot of like, what the fuck is going on with this guy's stuff in New Orleans over the weekend?

• 18:20Speaker 01

  And he was wearing all the rings.

• 18:22Bill Simmons?

  And wearing all the rings, which he never, that kind of thing he just never used to do.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Just as if to remind the NFL, I won all these rings and you didn't hire me again.

• 18:31Bill Simmons?

  Right. I, I'm really starting to wonder, this is a working theory. I'm not done with it yet, but like 75 and up are just all bets off. It's just like literally are all bets off. We're talking about owners. Cause in sports as fans, we have to deal with so many, so many old people and we, we all have old people in our family. You could see what happens as they hit their 70s, then their 80s and the judgment just gets a little, little nuts. And I just wonder with Belichick, like I, I just, I can't believe some of this. I really find it hard to believe he's coaching North Carolina too. I get it. I understand why he did it. He didn't want to deal with owners anymore. He, he just wants to be a coach, all that stuff. But yet at the same time, he's,

• 19:16Bill Simmons?

  seems like the celebrity aspect of this has become really appealing to him, which I never in a million years would have guessed.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Interesting to watch that because Nick Saban's kind of done the same thing in the college level. And there's another guy, you're like, why would he care about this? But you know what? You go on those podcasts, you go on the TV shows, go on the Manning cast, everybody butters you up. You know, how many times did Bill Belichick get buttered up by media people when he was with the Pats last?

• 19:40Bill Simmons?

  He didn't want, never dealt with them. And then he had this really strange relationship with his owner and just kind of kept his little, he's just basically in a cave, just, you know, going through film.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like the ESPN car wash, except it's, you know, not interviewing you. It's just telling you how great you are all the time.

• 19:56Bill Simmons?

  Really strange. I, it was the whole thing. I, I thought that was the weirdest subplot of the weekend. Um, then the funny, other funny thing that I immediately thought of you. We always call it the Friday news dump. What the Sixers did with the Joel Embiid information that they held and held and held and pushed out.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 20:17Bill Simmons?

  Right after the Eagles won the Super Bowl. It was, I don't even, what do we call it? This is a new level of news dump. The Super Bowl title. We didn't want to bum out our city. This was our only chance to put this out news dump. What is this?

• 20:30Speaker 01

  We clogged the toilet so much, we, the toilet wasn't fixable. We just had to throw it away. We had to put it on the curb.

• 20:35Bill Simmons?

  Why is there yellow tape in a door locked in the guest bathroom? Ah, don't go in there.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  That was so great.

• 20:44Bill Simmons?

  Unprecedented, the best news dump I think ever. I never ever remember a team pulling that off better. They, this crazy Embiid article where it's like, yeah, I'm probably never going to be healthy again. I may need surgery. I shouldn't have played the Olympics. It turns out all that, like, it's like, oh my God, if they put that out on a Tuesday, it would have been like a 36 hour story. And instead it just kind of came and went in 10 seconds.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Totally. Even during Super Bowl week, that would have been huge for a day.

• 21:10Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  It would have, it would have distracted us all.

• 21:14Bill Simmons?

  What's your, what's your favorite news dump ever? I think that might have been mine. It's a really good one.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  I guess you're gonna have to give me a minute on that one, but that's a good one.

• 21:22Bill Simmons?

  All right. Answer that on Press Box on Thursday. Do your top five news dumps on the, on the Press Box pod.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  I remember last year when you had all the amazing political stories and, you know, American stories. There was this thing on Twitter, it's like, if you have anything, now's the time. Send the press release, just print it out. No, no one will notice.

• 21:39Bill Simmons?

  I remember when I was working on my HBO show and we were doing like the test shows and it was like three weeks before the show launched and the guy who hired me to do the show, Michael Lombardo. And he was a huge advocate and like three weeks before it was like Friday afternoon, like 3:15 in the afternoon and all of a sudden the stuff was out that he was out at HBO. And it was like, it was the only time I'd ever like really experienced the Friday news dump. It was so like perfectly calculated to just kind of sneak into the weekend with it. I was like, oh, this is how you do it. This is it. Cause there's any other day or moment, this would have been the biggest Hollywood story. And they were like, eh, this is happening right here. It still happens.

• 22:22Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna take a break and then we'll come back and we gotta talk about.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  This incredible Mavericks situation.

• 22:28Bill Simmons?

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• 23:13Bill Simmons?

  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. One, two, three Cancun. Or if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save. Savings vary. All right. So Curtis, you're from Texas. You're a lifelong Cowboys fan. You're a lifelong Mavericks fan, maybe not as much, but a student of the Mavericks. They've been in your life. It's been a rocky road. There's been a lot of ups and downs. Everything peaked in 2011 with Dirk Nowitzki and probably winning the title, beating,

• 23:58Bill Simmons?

  beating Wade and LeBron and Bosch. And it got weird over the course of the decade. They miraculously end up with Luka Doncic. Cuban sells the team last year. They just seem like if you're picking six franchises you want to be for the next 10 years, they would have been one of the six because they had Luka. Out of nowhere, they trade him in the most shocking, craziest trade in the history of the NBA. And just when you think, all right, maybe this will settle down. It just hasn't. It just keeps going up a level and up a level and up a level. What just your big picture, watching this from afar? Holy shit. What is your take?

• 24:34Speaker 01

  I feel like quoting that notorious Darren Revolt tweet. This is terrible for Dallas, but this is tremendous content. Because you recognize the pain and I have never seen Dallas people this emotionally gutted.

• 24:50Bill Simmons?

  Right. So even like Cowboys, Super Bowl losses, nothing?

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Well, so, okay. So maybe not gutted, but just angry. Like there have been a lot of angry Jerry moments of the last 30 years. I was in middle school when they fired Tom Landry. I was in high school when Jimmy Johnson got axed by Jerry. I remember those were just crazy citywide moments of like, what the hell just happened? But I've never seen the anger like I've seen over the last week and change. Just pissed off. I mean, like visiting even with Dallas sports radio guys. And by the way, Monday was one of the, last Monday, one of the all time sports radio days in Dallas history and probably American history. When they were coming back and doing their shows.

• 25:28Bill Simmons?

  Oh, morning and through the afternoon.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause you were getting your first time to talk about it. And I was like, you know, even going up to them, wow, what a day, huh? And they just look like gutted. I mean, you know, because everything changes. You know, this, this guy you loved, this person you were close to. The fact that it was done by Nico Harrison and Patrick Dumont, we'll probably get into here in a second.

• 25:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  And the way it was done and for what they got. I mean, every piece of it is just absolutely infuriating and gutting.

• 26:00Bill Simmons?

  Well, and then this next level would happen at the home game yesterday where people are getting booed and they're removing fans, which removing fans for not, not doing anything that bad. They're just like being fans. Like they, like I, I've never seen people get pulled out of the arena for the stuff that they got pulled out of last night. Have you?

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Did you see the one guy, right? So they're doing Mavs karaoke. And they come in real close, like a close up on him and he says, fire Nico. And then the camera goes whoop.

• 26:29Bill Simmons?

  Right. It was almost like he flashed, like he pulled it out out of a zipper. And then they just got, they, they were just dumping fans, which is, that's the worst thing you could do. Like it's not only did they do this crazy trade, but they don't seem to understand like how angry it's made people. And they don't really seem that interested in quelling the anger. It's like they're just taking gasoline and pouring it on the fire.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  You get escorted out of the arena for saying, fire Nico, for saying, fire the GM. Are they gonna escort the sports writers out of Press Row? Who wrote the same thing? I mean, why, why is that not a valid opinion?

• 27:05Bill Simmons?

  Well, the other weird thing, and this kind of speaks to the incompetence behind the trade. How did they not anticipate any of this? Like they, they're in Dallas, like Nico Harrison has been involved with the Mavericks longer than the owner. But he's there, he sees how popular Luca is. You go to any Mavericks game, it's Luca jerseys everywhere. I mean, I would say it's a top four fans wearing the jersey of the best player NBA city. It's just, it's just everywhere. And, uh, and little kids everywhere, 77, just everywhere. There was a couple, when I, when I was going to the finals, there was a couple Dirks, couple old school Mavs stuff, but for the most part, it's just Luca. It's like, it's like a fucking Luca army. This was their guy, they've had him since he was 18. They thought they're gonna have him till he was 40.

• 27:49Bill Simmons?

  So to not anticipate that part of it is like, man, I, I really think this makes us slightly better. But my life is gonna suck for the rest of the time I live here, just that alone. And then you have Palenka on the other end going, yeah, we gotta keep this quiet. Nobody can find out because he knows the moment it leaks out, the Mavs fans are gonna basically riot. Um, it's, it's, I, I've never seen anything like this from a hubris slash lack of awareness. Dating back, unless you go back to like the eighties when the league was, you know, everyone was on cocaine and the league was fucking crazy and the teams were worth $12 million and weird shit happened. This is like out of the eighties.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And how about Jason Kidd, no post game presser last night? Wasn't that great?

• 28:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, which they, everyone was saying this is like never happened before with any Mavs team. We've never seen a, a coach just skip the presser. We're taping this, it's 10 o'clock PT, we might find out today Davis is out for like two months.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, that was, that was also kind of a news dump. Bowl too, oh wait, AD is actually hurt. I mean, it, the whole thing, I mean, you say like, he didn't anticipate it, but I feel like he did to some extent, because I feel like the secrecy was driven by Palenka, as you say, so there were no other offers, no other suitors. But I think Harrison kept it quiet too, because he didn't want to face the backlash. He knew it would get crushed. So in the way like you were kind of anticipating it, but maybe not anticipating how big it would be.

• 29:18Bill Simmons?

  Right. Well, this has, I mean, the Patrick Dumont piece of this.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 29:23Bill Simmons?

  As it's evolved. I wrote down the funniest outcomes of the Luka trade so far.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Here we go.

• 29:30Bill Simmons?

  And it's a long list. Everyone made this point, but a trade so bad, people thought Shams got hacked. Well, let's just start there. That's never happened before in the history of professional sports where we assumed the best reporter of a sport got hacked.

• 29:45Bill Simmons?

  Palenka dressing like a Fast and Furious villain for the post-trade conference. I loved. Just like decked out, like he, like he was about to do a concert in New Zealand with it like he, like he used to be on, uh, New Kids in the Block and now he's got a solo career.

• 30:02Bill Simmons?

  I love this one. Everyone's still pretending that Jason Kidd, JJ Reddick, LeBron, Rich Paul, and Anthony Davis didn't know about the trade. This is my favorite. They're still doing it. It's like, this is like Playhouse Theater. If people think Jason Kidd didn't know about this trade, I got like a bridge to sell you. It's unbelievable that they're still pushing this. AD, and we talked about this the, the day after the, uh, on this pod, the day after the trade, like, AD waved his trade kicker and gave up $5.9 million in like 40 minutes to make the trade work. There's no way he didn't know. It's impossible. He has this huge house out here in LA. He loved being on the Lakers. He had to have known. All these people knew and they're, they're still doing it all these days later.

• 30:47Bill Simmons?

  Well, it was so important. We had to just keep it between the owners and, and, and Nico and, and Rob, and that was all, it couldn't get out. Why couldn't it get out?

• 30:58Bill Simmons?

  Why? Cause you knew the Mavericks fans were gonna fucking riot if it got out. Cause it was so fucking stupid. That's why it couldn't get out.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Totally. They tried to square the circle at that Nico press conference, which was also one of the great moments in this whole thing where he said, J Kidd didn't know, but we were aligned on the vision.

• 31:14Bill Simmons?

  Right. Well, but then they said he didn't know to the 11th hour. It's like, you mean the 11th hour of a 24 hour day? Cause there's no fucking way you traded Luca without telling Jason Kidd and talking him through it. Like, first of all, that's, that's insane. If you're running a basketball team and you're not going to walk through all the mechanics of, here's door A and here's door B. And also like, they were complaining about Luca behind the scenes for like two years. And there's no way Jason Kidd wasn't a huge part of this trade. And by the way, Jason Kidd, not exactly the most stand up dude over the years. Like this is the guy who stabbed Brooklyn in the back so he could get the Milwaukee job. Like he's, he's left a trail of bodies everywhere. And they like the Nets in 2007, all of a sudden he got out of there.

• 31:56Bill Simmons?

  Like, this is not like Mr. Loyal, awesome team employee guy. So I, I've just, give me a break on that. Um, and then LeBron, like the way he reacted to the trade after, like if they, if they really blindsided on this, there's no way, no way that he reacts the way he did, which was like, oh yeah, well wait and see. I just think everybody knew this was better. This is a better situation for LeBron. It actually gave him a chance to win a title. It was better for AD to go to Dallas. Anyway, that was one of my favorites. Uh, we mentioned Nico saying they kept the trade talks quiet because neither side wanted it to leak. You mean you didn't want it to leak? Because the moment it got out, there's no way the fan base would let you do it. Uh, Patrick Demont's interview over the weekend.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Incredible.

• 32:40Bill Simmons?

  When he said Kobe was a culture builder.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 32:43Bill Simmons?

  Even though Kobe's coach in 2005, wrote an entire book about how awful it was to coach Kobe.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. And Shaq was the guy who was always in shape.

• 32:52Bill Simmons?

  Shaq's work ethic, which was like the most famous thing about Shaq. The whole, in my book of basketball, the whole thing I wrote about Shaq was that Shaq could have graduated with a 4-0 and instead he graduated with a 3-7 and had a great time. Like that was Shaq.

• 33:07Bill Simmons?

  Mark Cuban, a week late, doing the whole, "I tried to stop it as soon as I found out, but it was too late," because he probably was walking around for a week with everybody just crushing him on the trade. And finally, he had to like get some peace out to Mark Stein like, "Hey, can you, can you put out that I had nothing to do with this? Like, there's really no blood on my hands." The Mavs trading Luka because he couldn't stay in shape and was always an injury risk, but then they got Anthony Davis, who got hurt in the first game. Like, you can't make this up.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Somebody whose nickname is "street clothes."

• 33:40Bill Simmons?

  Right. This guy, this guy's better. I liked, I don't, who knows, that Dave McBenham story yesterday, when it was like LeBron's camp has noticed that Luka got what he wanted right away.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  That was an amazing sentence.

• 33:56Bill Simmons?

  And LeBron has been pushing for this stuff for years. First of all, LeBron's played with, just in the last 14 years, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love, Anthony Davis, and Luka Doncic. He plays on a Lakers team. When they traded for AD, they traded two top two lottery picks, Brandon Ingram and Lonzo Ball. They pushed Julius Randall out, who is another lottery pick. They traded the number four pick that became Deandre Hunter. They put Josh Hart in the trade. They put Mo Wagner in the trade. They traded like two more swaps and picks, including the one that became Dyson Daniels. And they have another pick this year. Like, they gave away like basically a decade of drafts, combined

• 34:36Bill Simmons?

  with the two Westbrook trades. Then they, like, how much can you do for this guy? So I almost don't believe that he couldn't have, there's no way he's, he really feels like they're not doing enough for him. Anyway, that made me laugh. And then, all the Mavs stuff with just, "Hey, let's hold our heads high and thank Luka for seven years. And he brought us to the Western Finals and the Finals. And this was great, Maverick. Good luck in LA." No, they did the opposite. They just leak shit left and right. "He's a fat piece of shit. Maybe he had a drinking problem. His calves could explode. Watch out for his Achilles." There's so many fucking things that are leaking out. It's disgusting.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  It was, and you know me, I'm a student of the now they tell a story. And just as soon as this trade came down, we were all on the clock, right? You guys even said it on the emergency podcast that night.

• 35:22Bill Simmons?

  Here we go.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  But it never really came out because there's really not a reason for this. Right? There's not a great answer. There's always an answer with these things, with these weird stories. What happened? What are the motives here? And the answer is it was Nico Harrison. Like he didn't have, he didn't have a good reason. He just did it. Right. Did this stupid, incredibly stupid thing.

• 35:49Bill Simmons?

  Well, and then Dumont, the, the owner or the guy who's running stuff. The more I talk to people and I, I keep looking for conspiracy theories or whatever. And it just seems like they just felt like they didn't like that. He wasn't in shape and they thought he was kind of a dick. And that just seems like the, that's why they didn't want to give him 350 million. This is the all time new owner syndrome trade we've ever had. We've had so many great ones over the years where somebody takes over a team. And within a couple of months, they're like, here's my idea. And it's usually a disaster. This is the worst one ever.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Yes, but usually you're paying too much for another star, right? That's the new owner syndrome. That's the Nets, that's the Suns, right? You're going out like, let's go get an aging star and spend way too much capital. Go get that guy. This is the opposite.

• 36:36Bill Simmons?

  It's the opposite, but the spirit is always the same. It's always somebody moving into the league who's had some, either had some success somewhere else or inherited the success he had. And they go in and within a year, they think they're smarter than everybody else. And that's, that's always the North Star where they come in and they're like, they're just trying to do a zag. Right? They're not like, I just want to come in. I want to learn this business for three or four years. Trust the people that are in here. I want to be a student of the game. There's a lot of stuff I don't know yet. It's always more like the Ishbia thing where it's like, no. Everybody's doing this, so I'm gonna do this. Like Prokhorov was another classic in Brooklyn,

• 37:20Bill Simmons?

  right? He's just like, picks, what are those? Spend those. And then a year later, he's like, yeah, cut costs. That was stupid. And then, and then he just demolishes the Nets for, you know, decade, but they all have to do it. Even, even Ballmer, who I think was one of the better new owners, but Ballmer, but he took over and, you know, within a couple of years, they had traded Blake Griffin, Chris Paul was out, like, and, and that was probably one of the more successful ones, but they all have to do it.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  You know, what really pisses me off about this is, and this is like, comes from a more personal place is that you and I, before we worked together, both worked with people in our lives, who would make our lives hell. And it wasn't that we had like, I care about journalism, you care about journalism intensely, we're just butting heads over the particular vision. We would look at them and be like, you actually don't care that much. You just like having a job. And when you don't have this job anymore, you're gonna go off and do another job. And you're never gonna think about this again. And I'm gonna think about this for the rest of my life, this moment, because I'm so pissed off. That's Maverick fans to me. Nico Harrison's gonna do a couple more years of GM and then he's gonna never do this job again. And he

• 38:31Speaker 01

  won't think about this as, oh, that was a great failure in my life. He's like, oh, that was weird. You know, a couple of weird years in my career and I'm gonna go work with my buddy Rob again. And, you know, it just doesn't matter.

• 38:41Bill Simmons?

  And he'll move, he'll be out of Texas.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Patrick Dumont will never think about this again. And I just guarantee it. And that is what's just particularly galling about this whole deal to me.

• 38:52Bill Simmons?

  Well, well, and also that Patrick Dumont clearly was not a huge basketball fan, probably until the last six or seven years, just based on that one interview he gave. Um, there's, there's wrinkles to this that I think tie into where basketball is kind of moving anyway. And I've, I've noticed it with my friends' kids, especially kids, maybe, maybe my son's age and under, where they, they, they root for the player over the team. I think video games have something to do with this. I think all the player movement has stuff to do with this. I also just think basketball is different. Guys jump around now. So it's easier to just grab a player than a team, but it's definitely one of the, the player empowerment LeBron generation. This is one of the side effects is like, I like

• 39:37Bill Simmons?

  Russell Westbrook. Now he's on the Nuggets. So now I'm a Nuggets fan. Um, this Luca thing is the most interesting test case for this because I know of a few people who either it's, it's them specifically, their kids or people they know who are like, my, my kid's a Laker fan now. Like this is it. Like we've, we've actually given up on the Mavericks. He's just going to follow Luca to the Lakers. He's going to root for, for the Lakers from now on. I don't remember a bigger version of this in any sport. Like when Brady went to the Bucks, the Pats fans, we rooted for him. Like I rooted for him during the Superbowl, but I was never like, I'm now a Bucks fan. Like we stayed the Pats fan. This is actually

• 40:20Bill Simmons?

  like, it feels like they've lost fans over this, which I don't remember happening.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  It's really fascinating because I'm like you. I have my teams that I've had as a childhood that never changed. I never acquired like a second NBA team or a second, like that bullshit. Get out of here with that. This is the one time I wouldn't blame anybody for doing it. I mean, Dirk sitting there blessing the whole thing last night with, you know, and, and Luca doing the Dirk trademark shot. Dirk, by the way, greatest player in Mavs history, who after he won a title, did a diners, drive-ins and dives tour. I mean, staying in shape. Remember that? Yeah. I mean, so I wouldn't blame anybody if you're just a Luca fan. And now even with all the changes you talk about with what the Mavericks did, why not? Why wouldn't you just keep rooting for him no matter where he's playing?

• 41:07Bill Simmons?

  The other, the other thing I was thinking about just from a historical standpoint with this trade, which speaks to the fact that they had a, you know, a, a sports business executive who doesn't seem like he was a true basketball fan, Nico. Maybe he is, but it's just like his lack of understanding of the history of this stuff was really notable. And then Dumont, who clearly isn't a basketball fan, but there's been so many great players.

• 41:33Bill Simmons?

  Who hit kind of this weird inflection point that Luca seemed to be in, right? Where he's 25, he wasn't at his all time peak yet. You could talk yourself into, yeah, maybe this is never going to happen. And ironically, the Mavericks had one of those guys in Dirk Nowitzki. When they made the finals with them in 06, the MVP season in 07, and then they lose to the Warriors in round one. And then around 08, it really seemed to go sideways and he had some issues. He got involved with a woman that became a thing where he had this bad relationship. And 08, 09, you really felt like Dirk was gettable and that the ship had sailed on him being an awesome player. And they didn't trade with that. Cuban was like, I'm never trading this guy.

• 42:15Bill Simmons?

  Cuban had a chance to trade him in, you know, in 04 for Shaq. That was when Shaq became available. It was like the obvious trade was Dirk for Shaq. He's like, I'm not trading Dirk. Dirk's our guy. And they just kept him. But there's been other guys over the years when people, when teams have blinked, when they've had, you know, they were like, ah, should we trade him? Especially when you go back to the seventies and eighties. This is the first time in a while a team blinked.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:40Bill Simmons?

  You know, even Minnesota with KG, like they, they never traded him. The Wizards did it with C Webb, but C Webb like never had any real success. Luca had real success. He made the finals last year, did the Western finals. Like he, he was actually winning shit. So this, this is why I, I think one of the many reasons, I was even though back, I was reading Houston and Hakeem Olajuwon. Cause in 92 and 93, and you could read, there's a ton of stuff about this, like he almost got traded to the Clippers. He was being shopped around. There was a Reggie Lewis possible trade at one point, like, but they never traded him. They kept him. So this happened before, but this is the rare time where the team just blinked.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  And it's so early to blink.

• 43:20Bill Simmons?

  It's so early.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Early. I mean, 29 year old Luca, you know, maybe you never get back to the finals. You got to the Western Conference Finals one more time.

• 43:29Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Work the, the.

• 43:30Bill Simmons?

  Then you trade him for a seven first round picks and some 22 year old. That's the only way it makes sense.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he has like two seasons in there where he plays like 45 games and then you're starting to, eh, you know, long-term conditioning, whatever. But this is way too early to even entertain that idea.

• 43:45Bill Simmons?

  Um, the other piece of this trade, which I'm happy to go on the record and people can clip this out and shove it in my face for the rest of my life. I'm far more.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Aggregate this every.

• 43:56Bill Simmons?

  Aggregate this right now. I really think this is the greatest thing they ever could have done for him.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  For Luca.

• 44:02Bill Simmons?

  Professionally, career wise.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:04Bill Simmons?

  Motivation wise, this is the all time. We did you a favor by doing this trade. They're like, I already thought he was gonna win a title someday. He, to me, he was the natural pick of anyone under 27 for who was gonna win. Uh, all of the checkpoints that he's hit as a player. But the one thing that was kind of missing was like, guy's carrying too much weight. Like he, you know, if you go back and, and you watch him rookie year, second year, he's just way skinnier and he's more explosive, right? He added all this weight because it made him harder to deal with. It made him more physical. It added a post-up game. But, you know, now I wonder what, between that, some of the stuff we're

• 44:44Bill Simmons?

  already reading about LeBron and him kind of Luca in awe, watching LeBron's workout. I mean, LeBron's like one of the most legendary workout guys ever. And Luca kind of, maybe finally understanding this is maybe what it takes? Usually this happens when somebody's on the US Olympic team. But Luca's Slovenian. Like he was, he never was in that. We was like, and you always have these stories like that. It's 92 had it, 2008 had it, where they're watching the best player and they're like, holy shit, that guy's getting up at 5:30 in the morning to work out. Maybe I should start doing that. And so anyway, I just feel like that's the frustrating thing for me as a Laker hater, that this is just clearly the greatest thing. Plus, everyone comes to California and loses 20 pounds.

• 45:28Bill Simmons?

  It's the other, other thing. So he's, that's just not gonna happen anyway.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  No, I agree. And sometimes in psychology with players, it's like deceptively simple. We're talking about Mahomes, you know, what he's gonna think about all year.

• 45:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  When every time there's a clip on ESPN, mm, mm, look at that, look at that, Brady, you know, fed off that his entire career. So just imagine Luca, read all those stories about being overweight, team didn't believe in me.

• 45:54Bill Simmons?

  They thought his Achilles was gonna explode.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  That is Achilles.

• 45:56Bill Simmons?

  That was my new favorite one in the last week. Ah, it's Achilles. It's ticking time bomb. Oh, okay. Cool. Um, can you just, last thing, can you walk us through how this plays out in Dallas? With your lifelong knowledge, appreciation, historical sense of things in Dallas? A trade that was being compared to the JFK assassination for its impact on the city? How does it play out from an animosity, anger? Just what are the next four months look like?

• 46:29Speaker 01

  So here's what I would say. The Mavericks were created as a franchise in my lifetime. Like they were, they were literally.

• 46:35Bill Simmons?

  Right. 1981.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So.

• 46:38Bill Simmons?

  Or 1980, sorry.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  To watch them, you had, other than that time they pushed the Lakers to seven games in the Western Conference Finals. Until the Dirk era, they were just barely a franchise. Barely a franchise, barely rated on the Dallas sports consciousness, way behind the Rangers. You know, for second place, by the way.

• 46:59Bill Simmons?

  And if only in the 90s, they were like an actual, they were one of the NBA train wreck franchises.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, it was one of those.

• 47:06Bill Simmons?

  I would say one of the three worst.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  People still said Clippers, but it was actually the Mavericks, except the Mavericks would just lose the draft lottery every year. Remember that they gave that 76ers all time wins record a ride a couple of times? I mean, it was just unbelievably bad.

• 47:20Bill Simmons?

  And I remember when they traded Jason Kidd too. It totally made sense because it was like, of course they did. They're fucking stupid. Of course they're going to trade him after two years.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  Oh my God. Was that Sam Cassell and?

• 47:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, whatever. It's like, yeah, we're not sure these three guys can mesh together. So we're going to trade the best one of the three. It was like, you guys are idiots.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Totally. And Cuban and Dirk made the Mavericks into a real franchise.

• 47:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  And then there was another period of, you know, kind of weirdness there at the end where they kind of went, you know, they were declining with Dirk. And then Luca made them again, like no matter what you say, Luke is here. There's a thing to talk about. There's a thing to pay attention to. There's a reason to buy a ticket to a Mavericks game and be excited and get into the Mavericks. And now I just wonder where they slide, you know, on the sports consciousness. And even talking to those radio hosts, the same thing. It's like, what's the Mavericks segment we do? You know, like, what do we do? Do we do an AD segments every week? I don't think so. I wouldn't, you know, if they, they're, you know, let's say they get healthy and they're a playoff team this year. I mean, though, obviously there'll be some interest, people be in, but I just think sliding, you've seen this happen with Boston teams before. We just slide off the map for a while.

• 48:25Bill Simmons?

  How about the Pats?

• 48:26Speaker 01

  And in this case, it's not just because you're bad or potentially bad in a couple of years. It's because people are pissed at you, like they're angry with you. They think you just screwed them over in a way they've never felt before. And I, I just think there's a lot of potential there for them just slide into the ocean for a while.

• 48:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, I mean, imagine if Kyrie leaves. So he's, he can opt out. There's some free agency stuff with him potentially like this could, this could be a house of cards pretty quickly. And then the Davis piece of it, if, you know, if, if he's just not healthy this year, like they have a real chance not to make the playoffs because the West is so good. I was looking at the odds, like I bet it when I was in Louisiana over the weekend. I bet on Fanduel, I bet on Golden State at like plus 155 to make the playoffs. They're plus 102. Tomorrow they might be plus 170, like the West is like, depending on who wins two games in a row. There's 11 good teams plus San Antonio, there's eight playoff spots.

• 49:25Bill Simmons?

  So if you have Davis out for a month, combined with, you know, Kyrie pulls something for a week. Now all of a sudden you're just, you're sliding out of it. So fascinating stuff. Who, who thought Dallas would be this crazy as a sports, as a sports city without the Cowboys being involved? I think that might've been the biggest shocker of all of it.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Oh my God. And I'd tell you the words Brian Schottenheimer have not been uttered once on Dallas sports.

• 49:53Bill Simmons?

  Or, or Jerry Jones possibly winning an Emmy for a landman.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 49:58Bill Simmons?

  The most emotional TV cameo of the, of the last five years. Who knew?

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Best thing he's done in 30 years by far.

• 50:05Bill Simmons?

  Unbelievable stuff. Oh, I almost forgot to do this. So I was saying to you last night when we were texting. That this was the first NBA trade that I felt could be turned into a Ryan Murphy limited series on Netflix.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 50:19Bill Simmons?

  Where, listen, not to compare this trade to the Menendez brothers and Ted Bundy and some of the other things they've done.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  But why not?

• 50:27Bill Simmons?

  But it feels like, you know, you have characters, you have intrigue, you have the Dumonts coming in as like the rich family screwing stuff up. You have Cuban as the old guy hanging on. You have Luca and his like, whoever his entourage is and whatever they could, Ryan Murphy, that character up and make me like, no, no, Luca, it's three in the morning. You can't have Popeyes. You have LeBron and, and, and Rich Paul and AD and the Lakers side and Jeannie Buss and Jay Moore, somebody could, maybe Jay Moore plays himself. Anyway, I asked you to just go nuts with this.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So opening scene of our limited series. It's gotta be this coffee shop meeting between Nico and Rob Pelinka.

• 51:09Bill Simmons?

  On January 7th, immortalized by a photo from some random weirdo in Dallas.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  And did you hear the guy taking the photo was a Lakers fan? So he recognizes Pelinka, but he doesn't recognize Nico.

• 51:21Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Which is a great detail. So he snaps a photo. We see Bill, camera, push in. He's texting a friend and he goes, I just found Rob Pelinka having coffee with some guy, which really.

• 51:34Bill Simmons?

  Opening credits. Boom. Let's go.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Theme song, hard cut.

• 51:38Bill Simmons?

  Boom.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Here we go.

• 51:39Bill Simmons?

  Ryan Murphy's Luca trade.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  And the only, only drawback there is do we want Pelinka to walk away from the coffee meeting and pick up the phone and call somebody and be like, you'll never believe this.

• 51:49Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  You'll never believe what I just heard. We got this going on. Uh, Mark Cuban flashback.

• 51:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Yelling at the refs, buying the team, selling the team.

• 52:01Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Kobe flashback, so we can see Palenka and Nico meeting probably at Lakers games, right? Talking to each other.

• 52:09Bill Simmons?

  So we're going back and forth like the last dance a little bit. Okay.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, yeah, this is a limited series, right? We gotta have, not everything has flashbacks these days.

• 52:16Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  I was playing with some casting here too. You gotta help me with this. I mean, I'm just so sorry we lost Penny Marshall because Marion Adelson, I mean, that would have been the ultimate casting.

• 52:26Bill Simmons?

  Maybe we can bring, maybe we can bring her back. CGI now is amazing. Maybe Penny Marshall's not, maybe it's not dead yet.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  CGI Penny Marshall. Uh, do we want Josh Gad for Patrick Dumont? I kinda like that a little bit.

• 52:38Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's really good. I mean, you could also go Chris Pratt putting the weight back on. After losing the weight and getting muscular the last 12 years, now he's going back trying to win an Emmy.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Who do we like for Cuban?

• 52:51Bill Simmons?

  Cuban's like, uh, I, it's, it, it feels like Jeremy Strong in a zag. Nobody expecting Jeremy Strong here. He's got the Cuban wing on. He's super personable and you're like, whoa, Jeremy Strong is Cuban? This is crazy. Why are they doing this?

• 53:07Speaker 01

  He could be Palenka too.

• 53:10Bill Simmons?

  That's better.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  What if he's reading The Alchemist's Wife, you know, constantly?

• 53:13Bill Simmons?

  Has to be Palenka. What are you talking about?

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Okay, but they have to be quoting, you know, from things and doing, yeah, either one of those guys I could see actually.

• 53:21Bill Simmons?

  Who else could be Cuban?

• 53:22Speaker 01

  I only, I had J K Simmons.

• 53:24Bill Simmons?

  Could Ben Affleck be Cuban?

• 53:27Speaker 01

  I had J K Simmons with a wig and, and at first I was like,

• 53:30Bill Simmons?

  That's great.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  I was like, he's too old, but he's actually only four years older than Cuban.

• 53:34Bill Simmons?

  No, that's great. I like that the most.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Different, but we, we can, we can work on that.

• 53:39Bill Simmons?

  So J K Simmons, Nico Harrison could be 40 people.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Does anybody play Danny Ainge getting, uh, wind of this deal like with 30 minutes to go?

• 53:48Bill Simmons?

  No, he plays himself.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Okay, Danny, we're gonna cast Danny. Uh, Dirk was a tough one for me.

• 53:53Bill Simmons?

  Dirk plays himself.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Okay, uh, Luca?

• 53:56Bill Simmons?

  Actually, you could also do the thing with Dirk where it's like a 6'4" actor with a bad Dirk wig and it's clearly not Dirk, cause that's one of the staples of these shows where the guy doesn't actually follow sports.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, somebody has to be completely ridiculous.

• 54:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's, that's probably Dirk. Dirk's like 6'2".

• 54:11Speaker 01

  What do we do with Luca?

• 54:14Bill Simmons?

  Lucas tough. This is where you get into like the, uh, the Aaron Hernandez show, which I liked. And the guy didn't really look like Aaron Hernandez, but by the end of the show, you kind of felt like he was Aaron Hernandez. So you, you almost need, you need somebody that's big and a little doughy. And that could be anybody. Maybe you're going with an unknown for that one.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Do we need like a De Niro style weight gain where we send him to Italy to eat pasta for like three months? So they can be Luca.

• 54:37Bill Simmons?

  Too expensive in the budget. You have to pretend Italy, you have to pretend it's like Palos Verde.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  I like, this is actually a good series.

• 54:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this is pretty good. And it's, I think the Dumont, the, the Adelson Dumont family, I think features prominently in this.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:58Bill Simmons?

  Just like, you really make Dumont like a villain and, and just a goofball. Who's like trying, frantically trying to read up on NBA history. Like he's reading Halberstan breaks to the game. Somebody told me to read this. I don't know who any of these people are. Just confused.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Can we still get Bill Walton in a trade?

• 55:15Bill Simmons?

  Who's playing Skin and who are the Mavs radio guys? What are those guys?

• 55:21Speaker 01

  You're talking about Ben and Skin. Yeah.

• 55:22Bill Simmons?

  Ben and Skin. Who's playing Ben and Skin?

• 55:25Speaker 01

  My God.

• 55:25Bill Simmons?

  Those are great roles.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  I would have so many ideas for Maverick Sports Radio. I mean, there'd be so many. This would be unbelievable.

• 55:31Bill Simmons?

  Could people play me and, and Russillo and Mahoney doing the reaction pot or are we playing ourselves?

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And Skip plays himself too. Don't forget that. Cause he would have some big takes on this.

• 55:40Bill Simmons?

  Skip with like some de-aging, like the Irishman? Cause we go back into the mid 2000s when he's saying that you can't win a title with Dirk Nowitzki. Then it's like current Skip.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Unbelievable.

• 55:51Bill Simmons?

  Stephen A, Stephen A actor or Stephen A's himself?

• 55:55Speaker 01

  He absolutely wants to play himself.

• 55:56Bill Simmons?

  What about Donald Faison as Nico Harrison?

• 55:59Speaker 01

  Ooh, interesting.

• 56:01Bill Simmons?

  See, that'd be good. Yeah. All right. This is great. Ryan Murphy, get on it. Call us. We're, we're ready to do this. Brian Curtis, you can read him on the ringer.com, a great website. You can also listen to him. On the Press Box, an awesome podcast. One of our, how many years for the Press Box been out? Eight?

• 56:16Speaker 01

  I think it's eight. Yep.

• 56:18Bill Simmons?

  I forced you to do it.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  And I've never been more thankful.

• 56:23Bill Simmons?

  No, you were receptive. I forced fantasy. You were ready. Fantasy was forced. Fantasy took like, he was debating it like it was the Luka Doncic trade for weeks before he actually pulled the trigger.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  He seems to have gotten the hang of it.

• 56:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's doing all right. Curtis, thank you.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Thanks, Bill.

• 56:39Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Nissan. If you're planning on an adventurous 2025, you're gonna need a car that can keep up with you and conquer anything in your path. The Nissan Armada Pro 4X is that car with a twin turbo V6 engine ready to propel your adventures up to 8,500 pounds of towing capacity to haul all your favorite toys and space for eight passengers. This unshakable fortress will chew up and spit out anything you throw at it. Learn more at the all new 2025 Nissan Armada at NissanUSA.com. Towing capacity varies by configuration. See Nissan Towing Guide and Owner's Manual for additional information. Always secure cargo.

• 57:24Bill Simmons?

  All right, the one and only Matt Bellany is here. You can read him on Puck. You can listen to The Town, an awesome podcast. Some have credited him with Craig Horlbeck's rise as a media mogul. I think we can split credit.

• 57:40Speaker 02

  I'd say Craig's moment really was his three-minute rant about risky business at the end of Rewatchables. That was the moment. That was the moment he became a star.

• 57:51Bill Simmons?

  That was when he knew someday he could marry into the Adelson family and maybe run the Mavs. We just talked, Brian Curtis and I just talked about the Luca trade and I was saying how the Ryan Murphy Luca trade mini-series on Netflix I would just watch. And we had a whole bunch of casting stuff. Is there anybody just without you knowing what we talked about? Is there anybody that you feel like would have to be in that?

• 58:14Speaker 02

  Well, did you discuss James Corden?

• 58:16Bill Simmons?

  James Corden as Dumont?

• 58:18Speaker 02

  No, James Corden as Luca.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  That's, that's not a thing.

• 58:25Bill Simmons?

  So we'd have to use like-

• 58:27Speaker 02

  Over here, but it seems like Corden is born to play the role.

• 58:32Bill Simmons?

  I mean, honestly, Ryan Murphy would probably do that because he, Ryan Murphy clearly doesn't follow sports as we've seen from some of his other stuff. So he could be like, yeah, we'll just cheat it and make him look like he's six foot eight.

• 58:43Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, that and Corden might have to lose a few pounds, but-

• 58:48Bill Simmons?

  Or gain a few.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  Luca might have to gain a few, but maybe we, uh, we get Luca at one of his post beer drinking sessions.

• 58:56Bill Simmons?

  What's your Ryan Murphy mini series that he hasn't done yet that you can't believe he hasn't done yet?

• 59:00Speaker 02

  I mean, is there a murder he hasn't exploited yet?

• 59:04Bill Simmons?

  Which is there a Simpson Bruckheimer one that like, do you feel like there's an eighties Hollywood one that's sitting there for him?

• 59:09Speaker 02

  Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer never really feuded. Don Simpson just sort of went off the rails and they, actually they did end up splitting, but I don't know.

• 59:18Bill Simmons?

  Ovitz?

• 59:21Speaker 02

  Who?

• 59:22Bill Simmons?

  Ovitz, like the Mike Ovitz when he was the most powerful agent in Hollywood and then it was not interesting enough?

• 59:27Speaker 02

  About that?

• 59:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I'm telling you, I don't know what's left.

• 59:29Speaker 02

  It's, if he does another Hollywood one, I mean, he could do the Harvey Weinstein story.

• 59:35Bill Simmons?

  Ooh.

• 59:35Speaker 02

  Like Harvey barreling through Hollywood in the nineties and two thousands, knowing what we know now about his downfall. Maybe he could do that.

• 59:46Bill Simmons?

  The problem is with something with an idea like that is I don't know if I'd want to spend time. I felt the same way about the Donald Sterling show. Like ultimately I just didn't want to spend six hours with Donald Sterling. Even if the show is good, there's, there's like some limits I have for.

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  I get that. I mean, you could do the, the comedic version, although Harvey, you can't do comedy with.

• 1:00:06Bill Simmons?

  No, you can't.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  Like this new Lakers show that Jeannie Buss made with Mindy Kaling, uh, Netflix. Like they, when I saw that they were, that Netflix was doing a Jeannie Buss show, I just like winced. I was like, oh no. But they went full comedy with it.

• 1:00:22Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  And that worked. I haven't watched it yet, but at least the trailer looks funny because they, it's just a total joke, the whole thing.

• 1:00:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. SNL 50, one of the many reasons you're here.

• 1:00:35Bill Simmons?

  So it's it's Sunday. I got the music invite. I didn't get the the other one. It's what 200 people?

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  It's 300 people in 8H and it is turning out to be the toughest ticket I have ever seen in Hollywood. Like I don't know that there's even any sports equivalent of how exclusive this is. There are 300 seats. There are, I mean, hundreds of former cast members of the show, guest hosts, musical guests, executives that want in on this, friends of Lorne, Paul McCartney, all of them want into this thing.

• 1:01:12Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  There's no, there's no room. They're, the overflow room is going to be a tough ticket.

• 1:01:18Bill Simmons?

  So you have like, like I talked to Jon Hamm about it in the last week and he said he was going. Right. So there's a level of like, there's a guest host level where it's like Hanks, Jon Hamm, like that. There's probably like 20, 25 of those.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  And Hamm probably didn't tell you this, but he's probably only in because he's hot right now. Like he's, he's, you know, after Landman, after Morning Show, after Fargo, like he's a hot actor right now. So he's in, but like there are probably some frequent guest hosts from the 80s and 90s that are not in because they are not cool anymore.

• 1:01:53Bill Simmons?

  And then you have 50 seasons of cast. Some of them are dead.

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  Some of them are.

• 1:01:58Bill Simmons?

  A lot of them are alive from the 80s on and it's like Eddie Murphy, but then like you get into like, is Piscopo one of the 300? I would think he has to be.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  You'd think so, but remember at the 40th, there was a whole controversy over Victoria Jackson being in an overflow room and she freaked out. So like the cuts are going to be tough. They're doing it right now. Actually, I heard they're doing it today and tomorrow.

• 1:02:21Bill Simmons?

  And, oh, really? And then you have the, the music stuff because there's people like Paul Simon and.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Friends of Lorne.

• 1:02:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the Friends of Lorne, but then also bands like. If Bono wants to be there, like he was, he had one of the best music performances they've ever had. So he has to get in there. So I don't know how they do it.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  Taylor and Travis, they gotta be there. I mean, you just go down the list of people that are either super famous and just nobody ever says no to them, or they're friends of Lorne, or they're important to the show. Like, I can't even imagine. I do not, I would not wish this on anybody to have to pick that room.

• 1:02:58Bill Simmons?

  Nobody has a plus one, I'm guessing.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  Oh, hell no. No, there is not going to be an extraneous person in that room.

• 1:03:06Bill Simmons?

  So they probably-

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  Maybe the CEO of Comcast. Maybe his wife comes.

• 1:03:11Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's the other thing. You need the rich guy circles and you need the network circles. You need NBC people-

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  Ted Sarandos told me he's going, the CEO of Netflix, and he has nothing to do with the show. He's just a fan. But he's powerful enough in Hollywood that he can get in.

• 1:03:27Bill Simmons?

  Well, they had to invite him because he could have basically destroyed SNL the last six years by doing Friday night SNL on Netflix. And he loved the show and he didn't. He's never doing that one.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  Ted loves comedy so much. There's always the rumor that he will just decide to do a Friday night or a Sunday night version and just steal all the people from SNL. I don't, I think he has too much respect for Lorne to do that, but post Lorne, all bets are off.

• 1:03:50Bill Simmons?

  I am positive that as long as Lorne is there, he's never doing that because he loves the show and he loves Lorne. But the moment Lorne leaves, I think Netflix just takes that entire corner.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  And NBC will walk right into it because once Lorne leaves, they will start cost cutting on the show because it's hugely expensive for what it is. And Lorne has been able to beat them back, but they will start to cut costs and Ted will recognize it and he'll swoop in.

• 1:04:17Bill Simmons?

  So you, you think like just the 300 people in this place, which is basically like having the NBA finals, game seven in an arena that has 900 seats?

• 1:04:29Bill Simmons?

  You think they've been planning this for like six months and they started out with a list of like 2,000 names and levels and.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  They started this after the 45th. I mean, the, the entire, this is the culmination of Lauren's life work. Like they have been planning this. Comcast is giving this the whole symphony treatment where every aspect of the company tries to promote this thing. They've been planning, they set this whole, you know, three day weekend thing with the music and then the documentary premieres and all this stuff around the live show. They've been building this thing up. Like it's bigger than a sporting event for TV and they have, they have, Lauren, I guarantee you has been thinking about every single person who will be in that room for more than a year.

• 1:05:14Bill Simmons?

  And we do not think he's retiring after the year. I'm, I'm 99% sure he's not.

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  He has said he is not. He has said he's going to do the fade out thing where he slowly brings in people to help him with certain things, but he is the ultimate decider and push comes to shove, he is in charge. We'll see.

• 1:05:35Bill Simmons?

  How did you feel about the documentaries and all the stuff that they did to lead to this moment? And I have some thoughts on what it might mean to the culture too.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  Because I only knew about the cowbell sketch from columns that you wrote 20 years ago.

• 1:05:50Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  Which caused me to check it out. Um, I thought they were generally good, better than might be expected for promotional documentaries. The, the one with the, uh, the old footage of their auditions, I thought that was super fun. I hadn't seen a lot of that stuff. Uh, the cowbell one was my favorite just because it was amazing. The season 11 one, like there, it raised a lot of questions to me that I don't think the documentary answered. They did a whole documentary just on this lost season where everybody kind of got fired at the end. And, uh, I, it was, it was a little bit like you felt like one of those docs where they're not telling me the whole story here.

• 1:06:32Bill Simmons?

  That was the most frustrating one to me.

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Lauren, huge flex. Didn't even appear in any of the documentaries promoting his show. They had to use archive footage of Lauren. Like he didn't sit for his own documentaries.

• 1:06:45Bill Simmons?

  The season 11 one I was so excited for because that's such a crazy stretch of the show where basically he leaves after year five, Eversol comes in, the show is cratering and then Eddie Murphy saves it. They figure out a way to kind of keep Eddie Murphy, even though he's filming all the stuff in the first half of the show, they dole out the sketches to save it in season nine. And then season 10 becomes the all-star season with Billy Crystal, Martin Short, all those guys. And it's awesome. Season 10 is one of the best seasons in the history of the show. But then all those guys leave and Lauren comes back and Lauren tries to zag and hires all these young writers, young actors, new writing staff, whole thing, and just misses.

• 1:07:29Bill Simmons?

  And I was like, they're doing a docu, this sounds amazing, but it didn't dive into the Lauren stuff. It didn't really dive into why he came back, like the failure, the new show, which he had tried to do where he owned it. He almost went bankrupt from the show.

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:07:41Bill Simmons?

  And basically took the job because he needed the money. Yeah. And the Dick Eversol thing where he was so mad that Dick Eversol was being considered successful with the show. And that's a really fun dynamic, those two.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I mean, Eversol is still alive. Apparently he's not doing great, but that's another mystery is will he show up at the 50?

• 1:08:01Bill Simmons?

  He has to be there. He saved the show. The show's dead.

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  You know what? You would think so, but I don't know how well he's doing these days. And I don't know what that, the state of that relationship with Lauren is. I don't, I don't think they are close. It may be a respect thing that he invites him, but I don't know if he'll, if he'll be there. The season 11 thing is amazing. I actually didn't know about that, that whole thing where they, they ended the season on a cliffhanger of firing all the-

• 1:08:27Bill Simmons?

  Right. And just kept, and he pulls Lovitz out. Lovitz is the only one. That's the other funny thing is Lovitz was the breakout star of that season, which tells you about the season.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  It's amazing. And you can imagine if they did that today. It's just like, so much happened on SNL in the eighties and nineties where if it happened during the social media era, it would, it would be gigantic. And it just kind of came and went at 10 to one in the morning. And maybe people talked about it the next day. Maybe there was a newspaper article and then it was on to the next.

• 1:08:56Bill Simmons?

  I think when they did this for SNL 40 and we blew it, it was my last year at Grantland and we blew it out. We had a whole week. We did the March Madness bracket for, for people on the show. We, we had, we did an awesome job. You can go back and read it for people listening. We had like 20 pieces. I wrote a piece right after the SNL 40 show, which was three hours. And I think the headline was like bloated SNL 40 was actually kind of perfect because that's what the show was. But the 40 year mark was really cool because the show was still really good, really relevant and still really, really good at breaking stars.

• 1:09:34Bill Simmons?

  And it just come off that awesome cast with Hader and Sandberg and Sudakis and Will Forte and Armisen and Kristen Wiig. And you look back at that cast and like, holy shit. Like we, we didn't even realize in the moment how loaded these, all of them went on to do all these other things. And the last 10 years, they just haven't had the same success with the cast. And I think that's, that's what's different. I look at these last 10 years and it's like, there's really no breakout stars that they've developed. Kate McKinnon was probably the last one and she's not somebody who can carry her own thing. She's good as like being part of something. Um, but that's what's changed in the last 10 years, I think.

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think that that coincides with the rise of Tik Tok and online comedy and things that have sort of put SNL in the rearview. Also COVID didn't help a live show like that, that depends on spontaneity. Like those were rough years. They've also, the cast has gotten too big and I think Lauren would probably admit that they just have too many people. He lets them go off and do other things during the season now where like, if you look at someone like Bowen Yang, who they tried to make a star and didn't really work out, like he was, they had a show two weeks ago and he was in LA on the Thursday before the show, announcing the Oscar nominations. And then he gets on a plane and he goes back to SNL for the show on Saturday night.

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  And then on Sunday, he was at Sundance promoting a movie that he had did, that he had done. So like, is, is Bowen Yang even part of that cast? Part of the whole SNL ethos is that you're there. All the time. You're pitching, you're writing, you're, you're, you're coming up with bits. I mean, he was in and out of New York during that week, doing his other projects and is sort of like kinda on the show.

• 1:11:18Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  It's just a different thing now that than, than when you had these tight 10 person casts that had an identity to them. Now it's like sort of a revolving door.

• 1:11:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. The only times they really did that over the course of the show, like Belushi was filming, um, he was filming, uh, 1941. I think in season four and flying back and forth. Eddie Murphy was doing movies when he was there. You made exceptions for like the major stars. It seems like they've, they've made a lot more exceptions in recent years.

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  Will Ferrell did a couple of things, but like when Will Ferrell decided to be a movie star, he left SNL. Adam Sandler left SNL. Like it was a, it was a, it was a thing. Someone like Adie Bryant, Adie Bryant had a Hulu show. That was greenlit aired and was canceled all while she was on SNL.

• 1:12:07Bill Simmons?

  Well, the, the thing.

• 1:12:08Speaker 02

  Whole side career going.

• 1:12:10Bill Simmons?

  The thing you said about the cast, I, when I, I, you know, one of the great moments of, uh, of this podcast, when I was at ESPN was I got to. Interview Lauren in his office, which was, you know, incredible career move for me.

• 1:12:25Bill Simmons?

  Not move, career moment. Uh, it was just like, I can't believe I'm doing this. I had so many questions to ask him. I got to talk to him for. An hour 20.

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  Did he offer you popcorn?

• 1:12:34Bill Simmons?

  I don't think he offered me popcorn. Maybe he might, he might've. Uh, but I talked to him about the cast thing. And I talked to him about my theory about how the cast was like a basketball team and that you had to have the starting five and the. Four or five people off the bench, but once you have 17 people, you know, it's, it's just too hard to get everyone involved. And then he was explaining why he did it and the reasons actually made sense. Where he was like, some people aren't ready for the first year or the second year. It really takes until year three that they're, you gotta develop people behind them. I think the thing they really fucked up in the last 10 years was using these celebrities for big parts.

• 1:13:11Bill Simmons?

  And I've said this before, um, not being able to break new stars with parts like Biden, Trump. These, these things, if you go back to the history of the show, the cast members were always playing the people in the zeitgeist. And they shifted away from that and started giving those parts to. These other people, they even did it in 24, like Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris. Like, why can't that be a cast member? You know, and I think that's what shifted.

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  Alec Baldwin killed SNL.

• 1:13:42Bill Simmons?

  Well, I think the theory of using people like Alec Baldwin, I think was a huge mistake. I know it's like.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  It's like heroin.

• 1:13:50Bill Simmons?

  It is.

• 1:13:51Speaker 02

  It worked really well. People loved it. Lorne got the zeitgeist back for these big stunt moments. He started to get news articles out of who was playing who on SNL. And we saw it during 2015, 2016 with the whole Trump White House and Melissa McCarthy coming in to play Sean Spicer, Matt Damon doing Kavanaugh. Like, all that stuff was so alluring to them that they kind of got addicted to it. And it was, it was like a drug. They, you, you get a high off it, but there's a definite downside. And the downside is the show itself suffers and the people that are on there for four or five years, you don't even know who they are.

• 1:14:31Bill Simmons?

  Right. And I remember right around when it started, Will Ferrell used to do that Janet Reno Dance Party sketch. And then Janet Reno.

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  Probably wouldn't happen today.

• 1:14:41Bill Simmons?

  Would not. It was, I think that sketch is canceled, but Janet Reno came on.

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:14:46Bill Simmons?

  If I remember.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:48Bill Simmons?

  And it was right in early 2000s. They started bringing the people there parroting on. The show was really, you know, the show would go for it with celebrities. It was really mean spirited in, in a way that I used to love and my friends all loved in the 90s.

• 1:15:01Speaker 02

  You look back at some of those David Spade monologues, like those would never happen today. The entire culture of celebrity has changed where if you do that stuff now, you have to expect that you will get blowback from those people. And some of the, they, they court those celebrities so much now that they can't parody them. Like. Who are the two most famous people in American culture right now? I think I've said this either on The Town or I forget where before, but Taylor and Travis. SNL should be going after Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce relentlessly.

• 1:15:34Bill Simmons?

  Having fun with it, but going after them. Totally. I agree.

• 1:15:37Speaker 02

  Totally going after them. But no, they don't because they want them to come on the show.

• 1:15:41Bill Simmons?

  Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. How is that not, how is that not like a talk show where they hate each other? They're next to each other.

• 1:15:48Speaker 02

  I know. It's the thing that everybody in the culture is having, but Blake is married to Ryan. Ryan has a lot of friends. They're in the Taylor Swift universe.

• 1:15:54Bill Simmons?

  But that's what's happened. That's the biggest thing that's happened to the show this century over the last 20 years. And I remember when Tina Fey came on as Palin all those times and then they brought Palin on. And you talked about it's like a drug. They get addicted to the crowd reaction. And then that became like, we're going to have fun with these celebrities, but we also need the celebrities. I remember when Andy Samberg did that Mark Wahlberg sketch. Hey, how's your brother? How's your brother? And, and it was really funny and Mark Wahlberg got pissed and then they're bringing him on the next week to kind of give Samberg shit. And it was like, this isn't the show. The show was like kind of mean and ruthless sometimes with celebs. And now it seems like it courts the celebrities in a completely different way, which I just think is a product that Lauren,

• 1:16:39Bill Simmons?

  being an older guy who just, he's a celebrity himself and that's how he sees it.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  Establishment. Yeah. You know, the, the show was counterculture and then it became the culture. And now it's sort of, uh, it, it's ripe for disruption, to be honest. And you could argue that everything online and Tik Tok and everything has disrupted it, but it is ripe for something. On, on, you know, In Living Color sort of did it. You know, Lauren had a huge blind spot with diverse people, with black people in particular on the show. And then In Living Color comes on, taking Damon Wayans, who was on the show and famously was fired. They disrupted them in the 90s and had a thing going. And I think that was the last time that someone directly took on SNL and won and not beat them, but had their own success.

• 1:17:27Speaker 02

  There is a version of SNL for today's audience that would work, I think. And it's beyond something that's on TikTok. You could say that TikTok is SNL for today's audience, but there's something in a format, in an hour, hour and a half format that would work and is just SNL is just sitting there like a buffalo wandering the Serengeti.

• 1:17:48Bill Simmons?

  I can't believe it hasn't happened yet. No, it's like if Netflix had done this two years ago on Friday nights, I think SNL would have been in real trouble. They would have gotten the jump on them. The other way to beat SNL that nobody is like SNL just goes away from mid May to, you know, late September. And every four years you have these, you have, you know, a political election. That's the most fun part to parody.

• 1:18:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:14Bill Simmons?

  And like Netflix could have just launched a Friday night SNL show last May.

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:19Bill Simmons?

  And just crushed it for four months. And by the time SNL came back, it would have, it would have felt like a dinosaur.

• 1:18:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like a, you know, summer, summer stock or call it, do it as a stunt in the summer. And then you don't even have to compete with SNL. And all of a sudden you've got the political conventions. You've got all the campaign stuff to yourself.

• 1:18:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, um, this is incredible run. The fact that it's been on for 50 years and my entire life. And I remember all the pieces of it, but.

• 1:18:49Speaker 02

  It is amazing. There's nothing like.

• 1:18:50Bill Simmons?

  There's nothing like it, especially like the, the music, which I was really glad they did that music documentary, even though I thought they missed a couple of things that I was just stunned by. But, um, I just, I, I was always, one of my favorite underrated things about the show was just catching all these acts at the greatest time of their career, right? As they're about to do this and they would just over and over again, get these people. And then sometimes, you know, it would just go the other way. This was it. That was the highlight and then it was gone. I can't wait to see what happens Sunday night. I mean, it's one of the, one of the last must see 8:00 PM network shows. That's not sports or not an award show that we're probably ever going to have, right?

• 1:19:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. It's amazing. Uh, FanDuel line, who opens the show?

• 1:19:43Bill Simmons?

  Do they go music or sketch would be my first question?

• 1:19:46Speaker 02

  I, I think they will, they will do a traditional cold open.

• 1:19:51Bill Simmons?

  All right. So if they asked me, I would have the four or five best people in the history of show on stage together.

• 1:19:59Speaker 02

  Oh, I, I do not think they will do that because

• 1:20:02Bill Simmons?

  I don't think they would either.

• 1:20:03Speaker 02

  Because all that does is beg the question of who is the best ever? And that's a question that Lauren does not want to answer.

• 1:20:10Bill Simmons?

  A couple of them are dead though. So that makes it, you know, sad to say, but it's a little easier. But you take one person from each era. You take Ackroyd, you take Eddie, you take somebody from the Hartman era, maybe it's Dana Carvey, you have Will Ferrell, you have maybe Kristen Wiig.

• 1:20:26Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 1:20:27Bill Simmons?

  And it's like the five.

• 1:20:28Speaker 02

  Tudakis?

• 1:20:29Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Hater. No, but I'm saying you just, you have like five or six to start. I think they're going to go with celebrities though to start. It'll be like Tom Hanks, Paul Simon. It'll be like the five timers club, basically something like that would be my guess.

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  Maybe. What, here's an option. What if they do an original sketch with the surviving originals from the 1975 cast?

• 1:20:51Bill Simmons?

  So Chevy still alive, Jane Curtin still alive.

• 1:20:54Speaker 02

  Dan, Lorraine Newman, Jane Curtin.

• 1:20:58Bill Simmons?

  Garrett Morris is still alive.

• 1:21:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. So there's five of them still alive and I believe they'll all be there.

• 1:21:05Bill Simmons?

  Pretty risky there. I mean, some of them are like in their late seventies.

• 1:21:09Speaker 02

  But that, but that eliminates any political problems because you don't have to deal with people who think they were the best cast member ever. You don't have to deal with the Eddie Murphy issue. You don't have to deal with any of these other things. You just say, you know what? We're going to go with the, we're going to go with the five originals and then have something written for them. You know, Al Franken can write it, Donahue or someone like that. And then you start the show with the rest of it.

• 1:21:35Bill Simmons?

  I feel like he's going to take the easy way out and just start with like Paul Simon.

• 1:21:40Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 1:21:40Bill Simmons?

  Like performing with Paul McCartney and like they'll start out with some song with some, with like an awesome band and that kicks it off. And then Chevy Chase, Chevy Chase, I think has to start the show. Like, like officially be the one who like fall, they do some pratfall that they'll tape ahead of time and then it kicks to the credits would be my guess.

• 1:21:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or here's another idea. What about something with Keenan?

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  Dude's been on the show longer than anyone else.

• 1:22:05Bill Simmons?

  Been on the show for 28 years.

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  They could do a whole sketch around how long Keenan's been there.

• 1:22:11Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna take a break and then I want to talk to you about some Hollywood stuff that's going on. This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. Look, I already have my dream job. I run the ringer, argue with Chris Ryan, AKA CR. But even dream jobs have not so dreamy parts. You know, the work that slows you down never seems to go away. That's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They're like digital teammates who actually do the job, start to finish. No handoffs, no homework. That means more time for the work that actually matters, which for me is talking about whether the 86 Celtics can beat the 96 Bulls, which they could. To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. This episode is brought to you by my old friend Amtrak. Being a sports fan can take you pretty far, even across state lines for game day.

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• 1:24:03Bill Simmons?

  All right. I love having Belloni on in mid February because the Oscars is coming. It's usually just a fun time in general for Hollywood. We have the Oscars in about two and a half weeks. Conan O'Brien's hosting. The movies are weird. Fantasy seems to be the only one who's happy with the movies. I just think Fantasy's happy with movies every year. And then we've had some really advanced level nagging of different movies that has really hurt.

• 1:24:34Speaker 02

  Are you aware of what's going on here?

• 1:24:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but well, I'm aware, but explain it to the audience.

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  It is sort of remarkable what is happening with the Oscars this year. The number one nominated film, 13 nominations for Amelia Perez, this Netflix movie about a transgender woman, drug lord, who has an adventure in Mexico. That movie has completely imploded over a Twitter scandal. So the favorite for Best Picture has basically been taken off the map for most of the nominations. Zoe Saldana could still win. They could still win Best Song. But this Twitter scandal involving Carla Sofia Gascon, who is the lead of the movie and just had some reprehensible old tweets that came up,

• 1:25:19Speaker 02

  has basically taken out the movie and it is a five movie race now for Best Picture and nobody knows what's gonna win.

• 1:25:27Bill Simmons?

  What do you think's gonna win? What are you hearing? What's the buzz?

• 1:25:30Speaker 02

  There is the indicators that we've seen so far that are pointing towards a Nora, which would be a remarkable winner in its own right because it starts with about 45 minutes of hardcore sex.

• 1:25:43Bill Simmons?

  I don't see it.

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  With a bunch of nudity in it. It's this like Cinderella story movie about a sex worker who dates this like Russian, well, not dates, is paid to date this Russian kid.

• 1:25:54Bill Simmons?

  She dates drunk Borat, drunk Russian Borat.

• 1:25:56Speaker 02

  Drunk Russian 22-year-old Borat.

• 1:25:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:00Speaker 02

  But.

• 1:26:00Bill Simmons?

  I don't see it winning. I don't think with people over 60, that first 45 minutes is gonna work.

• 1:26:05Speaker 02

  I would have thought that. It would definitely be the most explicit movie to ever win Best Picture.

• 1:26:09Bill Simmons?

  By far.

• 1:26:11Speaker 02

  By far. There's one X-rated movie, Midnight Cowboy, but that is pretty tame.

• 1:26:14Bill Simmons?

  Shouldn't have been rated X, yeah.

• 1:26:15Speaker 02

  By today's standards and.

• 1:26:17Bill Simmons?

  Coming, Coming Home gets pretty into it with the sex stuff.

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  People forget Brokeback Mountain did not actually win. Crash won that year.

• 1:26:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I didn't forget.

• 1:26:28Bill Simmons?

  One of the worst.

• 1:26:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, Crash was amazing. The PGA, the Producers Guild, went for Enora. And those are a lot of older people, mostly men, but it's a lot of older people that I wouldn't have thought would have gone for Enora. I thought they'd go with Wicked. I thought they might go for A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan movie. The Directors Guild also went with Sean Baker for Enora.

• 1:26:53Bill Simmons?

  I saw that.

• 1:26:54Speaker 02

  Those are the only two real indicators so far of groups that overlap with the Oscar voters. This next weekend, we've got the SAG, no, this weekend, we've got the BAFTAs going on in London, which has a lot of overlap. There's a lot of foreign voters, so we'll see where they go. And then the SAG Awards after that are the indicators. But I think it's a five movie race between Enora, A Complete Unknown, Wicked, Conclave.

• 1:27:20Bill Simmons?

  Wicked, come on.

• 1:27:22Speaker 02

  And then, you know, you got to.

• 1:27:24Bill Simmons?

  And the brutalist has to be in there.

• 1:27:25Speaker 02

  The brutalist has to be in there. I mean, brutalist is like, was the favorite a couple of weeks ago. But everybody I talked to, like, it's just polarizing. It's three and a half hours. A lot of people don't finish it when they start watching it on the portal. They say, oh, I've seen it, but they don't actually finish it. The first half is better than the second half, but it's a real, like, like, Sinista movie. And those movies are not benefited by the preferential voting system that the Oscar has, where you rank your choices. And then when a movie is eliminated, that person's second, third, fourth go get attributed to the other movies. So it's designed to build consensus among the voters.

• 1:28:07Speaker 02

  And I think consensus will go, will benefit the more, the broader movies, like The Complete Unknown, or Wicked, or something that is less polarizing.

• 1:28:18Bill Simmons?

  That's fantasy's theory for a complete unknown, which I don't think anyone thinks is a.

• 1:28:23Speaker 02

  I do. I'm on the record on the town.

• 1:28:25Bill Simmons?

  As the, as the best film?

• 1:28:27Speaker 02

  It could be a shocker. It could be the shocker of Oscars, probably the biggest shocker in decades.

• 1:28:33Bill Simmons?

  Some people are on the record that it could win, but I don't think anybody thinks it was the best film of 2024.

• 1:28:37Speaker 02

  What is the best film? I mean, come on. This is all subjective. I enjoyed it a lot. I thought it was a delightful afternoon with the movies.

• 1:28:44Bill Simmons?

  I liked the performances. The performances were great.

• 1:28:47Speaker 02

  The music's great. I mean, you're watching, you're like, holy shit. These are all Bob Dylan songs. These are all, this is great. But I, I thought it was good. It's not like life changing. It's just a pleasant time of the movies and that, to me, that's enough.

• 1:29:00Bill Simmons?

  I think it's gonna win. It's like 20, it's like 23 to one. Yeah. Cause fantasy was explaining that preferential treatment thing to me last week and these movies are too polarizing that are in there. And I just think the way the voting works, everyone's gonna have complete unknown in the top five. Maybe it's four, maybe it's three. A couple of people will be like, I liked it the most. It's my one. And it's just gonna kind of rack up votes, but it feels like, I thought Coda, we, we all bet on Coda, which we talked about. Like it just, that just seems to Oscarated me that year. Cause the year was so confusing and it was like, well, everybody liked this movie. Complete unknown kind of feels like, no, I get it. But complete unknown just feels, people like Chalamet.

• 1:29:44Bill Simmons?

  I could see winning anyway. And this thing I'm looking at now, it's like 23 to one.

• 1:29:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, and keep in mind though, the, the producers guild uses preferential ballot and that one went to Enora. So it can benefit there.

• 1:29:56Bill Simmons?

  So do you think Chalamet wins as we head toward it?

• 1:29:59Speaker 02

  That is the biggest question. It's Chalamet, Adrian Brody with, uh, Ralph Fiennes from Conclave as the dark horse.

• 1:30:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:08Speaker 02

  And I honestly, I do think Chalamet is gonna win. I think that what we saw last year with, with Emma Stone beating Lily Gladstone. Uh, Emma Stone from Poor Things beating Lily Gladstone from, um, Killers of the Flower Moon. I think that the, the voters, like Hollywood is so desperate for young stars now.

• 1:30:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:30Speaker 02

  Like when there is someone that you can rally behind, people will go for it. Like there's just, you know, Adrian Brody has an Oscar already. Ralph Fiennes, like great actor, but like, is he the future of Hollywood? No. I just feel like Chalamet.

• 1:30:46Speaker 02

  He he has sort of stumbled into this amazing career and he's both box office bankable and a good actor and sort of likable and like dates Kylie Jenner and is like a celebrity in the old school way.

• 1:31:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:01Speaker 02

  I just feel like he's got the package people will want to endorse and it's the way to honor the movie.

• 1:31:07Bill Simmons?

  And it would be the most fun speech.

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:31:11Bill Simmons?

  He's very well.

• 1:31:11Speaker 02

  Fine. Are you kidding me? He'll thank his agent, his wife and be off, you know, Chalamet, who knows what he'll do.

• 1:31:17Bill Simmons?

  The shocking thing to me is, at least in the odds that I'm seeing that Demi Moore is the favorite for the substance over Mikey Madison, who I thought, I just thought Mikey Madison was a lock. I, that was the best performance I saw all year.

• 1:31:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that, but this is a career performance thing like.

• 1:31:33Bill Simmons?

  I get it.

• 1:31:33Speaker 02

  Aren't you shocked? When I tell you that Demi Moore has never been nominated for an Oscar, doesn't that shock you?

• 1:31:39Bill Simmons?

  I thought for About Last Night, she should have won.

• 1:31:42Speaker 02

  Or Ghost, like Whoopi.

• 1:31:44Bill Simmons?

  You didn't even blink. I was kidding about About Last Night. I do love her in About Last Night.

• 1:31:47Speaker 02

  About Last Night is a, I mean, that, that's.

• 1:31:49Bill Simmons?

  Wait, be careful. It's a great movie. Be careful.

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  I honestly, I haven't seen it in probably 20 years, but.

• 1:31:56Bill Simmons?

  Do you think the Amelia Perez lady would have won without the, without all the stuff that happened?

• 1:32:01Speaker 02

  Probably not.

• 1:32:01Bill Simmons?

  Or not?

• 1:32:02Speaker 02

  Demi Moore is a, is a classic example of the Academy rallying around someone who is, uh, it's not necessarily their best foot forward, but it's about time and this person should have been nominated in the past and it's about longevity. Like she stuck it out and she got a movie role that was worthy of her finally. She gave a great speech at the Golden Globes, which I think was very strategic, talked about how she was not taken seriously and how she had to persevere. The movie itself is about this desire to be young and to be relevant and to stay in the mix. She has the whole narrative around her and I honestly think a lot of Academy voters won't even watch the movie and will vote for her.

• 1:32:48Bill Simmons?

  I like the movie and I understand why they had to play the last half hour the way they did, but it was not a fun last half hour.

• 1:32:55Speaker 02

  No, it's and honestly, most not most, I think a lot of people will turn it off.

• 1:32:59Bill Simmons?

  It's an excessive movie to say the least, but I it was memorable.

• 1:33:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:05Bill Simmons?

  I would never watch it. It's not gonna be on the rewatchables. I'll tell you that much.

• 1:33:10Bill Simmons?

  And then we have Conan O'Brien.

• 1:33:11Speaker 02

  That Mikey Madison, while is she's amazing, I would absolutely vote for her. If she doesn't win, it's because she's too new. She's not in Chalamet territory where she's a star and we want to endorse her like she'll have her chance. It'll be the Austin Butler moment where he ended up losing to Brendan Fraser because Brendan Fraser had the narrative around him. He's a, you know, a stalwart actor who's done good work. Finally had a moment in a movie that mattered and they gave him the Oscar. It'll be the same thing if Mikey Madison loses to Demi Moore.

• 1:33:47Bill Simmons?

  It's tough when that was clearly the best performance of the year, other than maybe Chalamet.

• 1:33:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:52Bill Simmons?

  Like for me, it was like the two performances that jumped out to me this year from everything I saw were those two.

• 1:33:57Speaker 02

  I'll be a little controversial here. I thought Zoe Saldana in Amelia Perez was fantastic. Singing, dancing, playing that that character. She's the lead of the movie. They put her in supporting because they thought Carla Gascón would be the lead and they'd have a chance to get her an Oscar there. But I think I think Zoe Saldana is amazing in that movie.

• 1:34:20Bill Simmons?

  Baldoni versus Lively, Kendrick versus Drake. 2024 set of 2025, the year of the beef. We could talk about what other beefs we want, but this Justin Baldoni Blake Lively thing is the kind of story that would happen in like the eighties and nineties and you'd read like a premiere magazine or Spy or Vanity Fair in 1994, some giant feature about it. You'd just be like, what the hell is happening?

• 1:34:48Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:34:48Bill Simmons?

  And this story keeps going and going. Yeah.

• 1:34:51Speaker 02

  Now we're getting daily updates and they're they're putting they're setting up websites to attack each other. I mean, it is the difference between the Kendrick and Drake beef and this Baldoni gate that I'm calling it. There's a winner in the Kendrick Drake debate and Kendrick won. I mean, very clearly he won the beef. I don't think there's a winner in Baldoni Blake.

• 1:35:13Bill Simmons?

  Just losers.

• 1:35:14Speaker 02

  They're both losers. They are both, I, I think Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively misplayed their hand here. They thought that they were going to go after this guy and they were just going to shut him down with this New York Times piece. And, you know, she was going to be able to get her reputation back. Cause the stuff that came out during that press tour for it ends with us. It didn't hurt the movie. The movie grossed $300 million. That's the whole joke of this.

• 1:35:38Bill Simmons?

  I think it actually helped the movie. Yeah.

• 1:35:40Speaker 02

  They should have just like walked away, gone their separate ways and like let it lie.

• 1:35:44Bill Simmons?

  It was the biggest movie she'd had in like eight years.

• 1:35:47Speaker 02

  Brought her back. She was super hot after that.

• 1:35:49Bill Simmons?

  She was doing, she was doing like shark movies in the mid 2010s.

• 1:35:53Speaker 02

  She was, but she did take a hit on the branding side because of some of the videos and things that came out. And they looked at that and they're like, this is bullshit. This guy is out there seeding the internet with negativity, they believe. And they went after him to try to get her name back. I don't think that that worked. I think that the long drawn out process here, keep in mind Baldoni has a rich guy behind him. An investor in his company.

• 1:36:21Bill Simmons?

  Like a Peter Thiel Gawker tennis situation?

• 1:36:24Speaker 02

  Style guy, but he's got, I forget his name, but he's got an investor in his company that is super wealthy and can afford to litigate against people like Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively. He's got this lawyer, Brian Friedman, who is a attack dog. And his specialty is fighting for people's reputations as well as their legal rights. So he's not going to lie down here and just let them run over him. They thought that they could go to the New York Times, get the Harvey Weinstein reporter to do this expose. And then he would bow down and probably settle and send, you know, give Blake Lively the rights to do a sequel to this movie and he would go away. He's not going away and they have just been slinging mud at each other. And I don't think either of them is benefiting.

• 1:37:10Bill Simmons?

  Well, you, I mean, this is your background even before you got into what you're doing now.

• 1:37:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was a lawyer. I used to handle these cases.

• 1:37:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Um, there's real defamation potential here that, um, you know, the whole thing is you have to prove somebody had malicious intent with whatever they're doing. It can't be like, oh, I had this throwaway line on a podcast and then I shouldn't have said that. This is like you malicious intent is the key. And it feels like there's malicious intent in this, which is what's so interesting.

• 1:37:40Speaker 02

  There has to be actual malice is the standard or reckless disregard for the truth. And the other element is it's got to be false. If, if it's just unflattering, it doesn't matter. It has to be false. And I think in many of these cases, the stuff that was resurfaced by Baldoni's team allegedly was old interviews of Blake Lively speaking in her own voice. So that's not false. It may be unflattering. Um, and there's some other stuff that they say was false, but it's very unclear who would actually win.

• 1:38:18Speaker 02

  If this case ever does go to trial, because the causation here, even if you're hiding, even if you're hiring shady characters to see the internet with unflattering comments, is that actionable?

• 1:38:33Bill Simmons?

  I was thinking more the New York Times piece of it.

• 1:38:35Speaker 02

  Oh, you mean what the New York Times published and whether that's defamation?

• 1:38:38Bill Simmons?

  Like, I think these two are gonna-

• 1:38:39Speaker 02

  BS case. I don't believe that's real. I don't think, I don't think the New York Times would lose a defamation case for going with a story based on interviews with a subject and a legal proceeding that was actually filed.

• 1:38:53Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Cause it seemed like that, like part of his case was they only took one side of this exchange. They had all access to all of this. They only decided to print this and that, that got into interesting territory just reading about it. I was like, oh, there's something. I can see the case.

• 1:39:09Speaker 02

  But, but again, the standard is whether the reporting was false.

• 1:39:14Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:39:15Speaker 02

  Was it false? You could argue that it was slanted. You could argue that it may even be misleading if you don't include the full context of something. But was it, does it rise to the level of defamation? And should the New York Times have known? And did they purposely disregard certain facts in order to create a portrait of this guy? That was false or, or misleading. I'm not, I mean, we, during the discovery process, we will see what comes out. But from the complaint itself, I'm not convinced that the, that Baldoni has a case against the Times.

• 1:39:52Bill Simmons?

  So you, you think this is basically a nuclear war where both sides just blew each other up? And there's no winners, there's no losers, it's not even a zero sum game.

• 1:40:02Speaker 02

  My advice to them both is settle now, go away for six months and then come back. Like do some settlement agreement where they agree to never say each other's names again. They will never be in the same room and they can try to salvage their reputations afterward because.

• 1:40:20Bill Simmons?

  So Baldoni actually, by doing everything he's done, actually like was able to get on an equal playing field again. Because before this felt like he was gonna end his career.

• 1:40:29Speaker 02

  Depends on who you talk to. I, I think that, that his campaign has helped him after the New York Times piece. I mean, keep in mind, when that piece came out, his agency dropped him. He had a bunch of movies set up that went away. Like that New York Times piece did actually hurt him a lot. So understandably, he returned fire. The, the, the end result now though, is that they are just like machine gunning each other from 10 feet away. And they're, they're killing each other.

• 1:41:07Bill Simmons?

  There's a Taylor Swift piece too, that's kind of fun.

• 1:41:09Speaker 02

  Oh my God. I mean, do you believe that she's masterminding the whole thing?

• 1:41:13Bill Simmons?

  No, I don't.

• 1:41:14Speaker 02

  No, I, I do think that she's probably, she probably encouraged it from the beginning. Everything that she has done in her career has been to stand up for herself, go on the offensive. You know, fight back if she's especially against, if there's, if there's a guy who's been mistreating her in the public. She's gonna fight back and she probably said to, to Blake, fuck this guy, go after him.

• 1:41:37Bill Simmons?

  Well, I don't know if you know this, but Blake Lively has my wife and daughter's support because both of them have landed on, I don't like that guy's face as the reason to side against Baldoni. So.

• 1:41:49Speaker 02

  I did enjoy that the paparazzi happened to see him on vacation with his family and happened to photograph him shirtless in a like beefcake pose. And those photos happened to be circulated about how he was spending time with his family on vacation. So that's it. The machinations going on here. That's the really interesting thing is just the whole underground PR world with these crisis people are fighting for the essentially the share of mindsets of people online. And that to me is a new world in crisis PR that is pretty fascinating.

• 1:42:28Bill Simmons?

  And something you've been writing about and talking about for the last couple of years, some PR people who are just absolute barracudas.

• 1:42:34Speaker 02

  Oh, I know everybody involved here.

• 1:42:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:37Speaker 02

  The woman that the woman who rapped him, Steph Jones, who also rapped Tom Brady, has a, I mean, she is just the worst, the worst. She slimed me. Like, I just, the, the level of depravity of some of these crisis PR people is, is, I mean, you think it's a low and then they go lower.

• 1:42:55Bill Simmons?

  What was the best crisis PR TV show ever? A couple of people have taken swings at this.

• 1:43:00Speaker 02

  Scandal. I mean, that was a lawyer, but Scandal was good. They had, remember there was the Courtney Cox one or she was.

• 1:43:06Bill Simmons?

  That was the one I was thinking of. It still feels like this is.

• 1:43:08Speaker 02

  She was like an editor of like an Us Weekly type, right?

• 1:43:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then Kendrick Drake, is that over? Do people care anymore? Is this going to be it? Or is there, is there like another level to this?

• 1:43:20Speaker 02

  I mean, Drake's gotta fight back, right? He's got an album.

• 1:43:23Bill Simmons?

  I know, but it's, it feels like it just keeps going and going. Does Hollywood care?

• 1:43:28Speaker 02

  No, it's a music industry thing.

• 1:43:30Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:43:30Speaker 02

  But I think that, I think that people in the music industry definitely care. Certainly Universal Music Group cares because they have both of them on their label and they got sued by one of their own artists for defamation.

• 1:43:42Bill Simmons?

  That story is nuts. Where do you stand on?

• 1:43:45Speaker 02

  The NFL certainly cared. They wouldn't let him say pedophile on the Super Bowl.

• 1:43:49Bill Simmons?

  They also stuck up for him though. They, I mean, I think there were some lawsuits behind the scene that they, they kind of aligned with Kendrick.

• 1:43:56Speaker 02

  Maybe. I mean, it's pretty remarkable that that Super Bowl performance aired. Like that is, it was a openly political, you know, a, a, a diss track. I mean, that would have never aired on the Super Bowl 10 years ago.

• 1:44:12Bill Simmons?

  Or about four years ago.

• 1:44:14Speaker 02

  Maybe even four years ago. Yeah. I just feel like that the fact that that, and you know, his, his fans loved it. I think there were probably a lot of like older, like white people in America who like didn't get it or.

• 1:44:29Bill Simmons?

  I could feel him in the Superdome.

• 1:44:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:44:32Bill Simmons?

  You could feel the energy.

• 1:44:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Donald Trump not rocking along to Kendrick's set.

• 1:44:37Bill Simmons?

  He was not.

• 1:44:37Speaker 02

  But honestly, that's kind of great. Like I kind of love that that happened on the Super Bowl.

• 1:44:43Bill Simmons?

  Speaking of Trump, Hollywood during the second Trump term.

• 1:44:47Speaker 02

  Very different.

• 1:44:48Bill Simmons?

  Versus the first Trump term. What are the, what are the differences you're seeing early on here?

• 1:44:53Speaker 02

  I think Hollywood is sort of in this weird place where, where people just don't know what's going on. The, the whole like vibe shift people talk about, all the culture is changing and all these, you know, DEI is under attack and all the whole diversity movement's under attack. Like Hollywood people are, I think, a little more cautious to speak out against Trump than they were the first time around where the whole resistance movement and there was.

• 1:45:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:19Speaker 02

  You know, he barely won and you know, there was this, this feeling of, of, you know, this, this, this guy squeaked into the White House and who is he in the chaos? Now that Trump has been more normalized, I feel like Hollywood is kind of figuring out how to respond. And you've got these big media companies that are like openly paying him off.

• 1:45:42Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's what my question is. There more is there more fear of him this time around with some of the decisions big companies are making because it feels like there is.

• 1:45:49Speaker 02

  Totally. I mean, this, this, this is a president that's like purely transactional. It's what are you doing for me? And Disney, which had this open lawsuit with Trump over the George Stephanopoulos claims on GMA. They just said, you know what? It's not worth dealing with it. We're going to pay him $15 million. Settle this. And if I'm Bob Iger, that's kind of an easy decision. Because the last thing you want with this president is to have a politicized brand. Disney thrives on being a non-political brand. And it had been politicized by Trump and others. So just pay him off and he'll leave you alone. We saw today Disney put out a revise on their DEI initiatives to change their diversity

• 1:46:31Speaker 02

  language to more like talent focused to kind of soften what they are doing in the diversity space. I think a lot of Hollywood companies are looking at Disney and what they're doing to see where they are going to go on this. They don't want to get sued by the Justice Department because they are looking to make shows with, you know, diverse people of color voices. They, they, they want to avoid any problems like that. Um, and now we got this Paramount sale Paramount, the, the studio is for sale. Um, actually they have a deal that they're selling to David Ellison and Trump is now

• 1:47:04Speaker 02

  threatening to hold that up based on the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris on CBS, which he claims was biased. So there's a whole, there's a whole like dealing with Trump issue now in Hollywood that I think people don't really know how to deal with.

• 1:47:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And what happens? Like what happens if he goes to Disney and he's just take him off the air? I'm just going to cause incredible amounts of trouble the next four years or, or what if he goes to Paramount and says? Colbert's gotta go for me to even think about doing this. So all this would be bad for James Babydoll Dixon, by the way, but.

• 1:47:40Speaker 02

  It would be. And that's where I look at everything through the lens of is this good or bad?

• 1:47:44Bill Simmons?

  But what happens if he makes that part of the thing and would somebody stand up to him? Or would they be like, ah, all right?

• 1:47:51Speaker 02

  Something like that, where if the president said, I want you to fire Stephen Colbert, something like that, I think they would probably stand up against. But it's the more nuanced.

• 1:48:02Bill Simmons?

  Are you sure?

• 1:48:04Speaker 02

  I'm not sure. I'm not.

• 1:48:05Bill Simmons?

  I'm not sure.

• 1:48:06Speaker 02

  But.

• 1:48:07Bill Simmons?

  It's like you think like they pay a hundred million a year for the show. It gets out, but it's like, oh, we were thinking about pushing my, like, they could spin it a certain way.

• 1:48:15Speaker 02

  They could, but Trump would probably brag about it. And then who's next? And then it's a purge.

• 1:48:21Bill Simmons?

  Would you be surprised?

• 1:48:23Speaker 02

  I would be surprised with that. I think if you're running a media company, you have to think bigger picture than that. And what's the implications for a move like that? Something like what Sherry Redstone is dealing with right now at Paramount where Trump has this $20 billion lawsuit against CBS News over the Kamala Harris interview.

• 1:48:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:43Speaker 02

  Everybody I have talked to in the legal world said it is a totally bullshit lawsuit, would never win.

• 1:48:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:50Speaker 02

  Trump is doubling down. He's screaming about it on social media. So if you're Sherry Redstone and you can get rid of this by donating $20 million to the Trump Presidential Library, and it doesn't, and it takes away a threat to your $8 billion merger with Skydance that you want, I think that's an easy answer. You do that. You pay him $20 million and you make that go away. That, that is the, that's more likely the kinds of stuff that's gonna go on.

• 1:49:18Bill Simmons?

  Do you think the horrific fires and everything we're going through here in Southern California is gonna change it all the way Hollywood thinks about? It's Southern California thinks about Hollywood as a business because I always felt like it was shifting that like so many people are filming stuff outside of LA and California because the tax breaks are so much better in Canada. You go to freaking South Africa, you go to Atlanta. And it always seemed like missed money and I wonder are they going to start thinking outside the box with stuff like that and maybe trying to bring people back?

• 1:49:51Speaker 02

  I think they already are. I mean, there's this proposal in California to double the tax credits and that was a Gavin Newsom thing that he put in place after the strikes because the strike, I mean, production was already really hurting in the area.

• 1:50:03Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:50:04Speaker 02

  And the strikes were awful and they had this, you know, go up to about 700 and something million in tax credits, which would be good, but wouldn't change the calculus for most productions. I mean, they're shooting reality shows outside of California now because the economics are so much better.

• 1:50:21Bill Simmons?

  It's crazy.

• 1:50:22Speaker 02

  Rob Lowe game show.

• 1:50:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:24Speaker 02

  The game show for people who can't read that aired after the Super Bowl. That, that thing shoots, I believe in Ireland because it's just cheaper to go there and fly all those people there. And that's what I think the movement now within the industry is to try to use some of the momentum from the fires. I hate to use that word momentum when you're talking about fire aftermath, but there is this recognition that if you, they want the industry to come back in LA, there's going to need to be investment. So I think that there will be a state investment. I don't know about federal. I mean, you never know what Trump and them are going to do, but statewide, yes. And then some of these companies, you know, imagine the goodwill if Disney or Universal, one of these said,

• 1:51:07Speaker 02

  you know what? Not only are we going to make five more movies in LA, but we're going to build a soundstage in Altadena and it's going to employ, you know, 300 people and buy jobs that people don't have to go to Bulgaria for the summer to do their jobs in movies. And I think there'd be a lot of goodwill around that, you know, ultimately push comes to shove, it's money. And if the economics make sense, they'll do it. But there is momentum now to at least make the economics better.

• 1:51:36Bill Simmons?

  That's what I'm really hoping for and I, you know, most people aren't going to care about this, but I, we both know so many people who you're making content and you're traveling to these crazy places and you're away from your family for four or five months. And it's just like, why are we doing it this way? Why aren't we filming as much that you watch those TV shows, movies from the seventies and eighties and everything's in LA? And why, like, why can't we get back to that?

• 1:52:00Speaker 02

  And this is not a new thing, but it has become more pronounced as the incentive to exit has gotten bigger. Some of the, I mean, you shoot in the UK, it's like a 40% rebate on everything, on star salaries. Star salaries are currently excluded in California. So you can't get a rebate on paying Tom Cruise $20 million. But in the UK, in the UK, you can get 40% of that back. And, you know, like, everybody I know is impacted. Lucas, Lucas Shaw, my Monday guy on the town, his fiance is in Chicago for a month, a bunch of months because they're shooting a show she's producing and they're, they got credits to do it there.

• 1:52:39Bill Simmons?

  I sat next to somebody at one of the Dodger playoff games. He's like, yeah, I'm about to go to South Africa filming this BET show. And I'm like, is it like set in South Africa? It's like, no, no, it's just cheaper to shoot there. I'm like, what? You're, you've had multiple kids, just go away. It's just, I, they feel like they have to fix that. Meanwhile, the only people that have figured out business in LA is the Dodgers.

• 1:53:01Speaker 02

  Oh, you noticed my hat?

• 1:53:03Bill Simmons?

  I know. I, we have to end on that. They've ruined baseball. They figured out how to make Japan the second revenue stream. They've owned, they now own Japan and California. And baseball's no longer fun. You've ruined it completely.

• 1:53:16Speaker 02

  All, all revenue streams that are readily available to any major league baseball team, should they choose to invest in their own team.

• 1:53:24Bill Simmons?

  It's too late now. They're, it's basically like the Japan Dodgers is, is a rap. You just get everybody now.

• 1:53:30Speaker 02

  Listen, we'll see, you know, best laid plans. A lot of, by, by the mid-season, we might have five pitchers on the.

• 1:53:35Bill Simmons?

  You feel good about this? Like, you really feel good about rigging the system like this?

• 1:53:39Speaker 02

  Why would I not?

• 1:53:40Bill Simmons?

  As long as you can sleep at night.

• 1:53:42Speaker 02

  I, I get it. I get it that other teams are upset about this, but this is not a. Like they're not cheating. These are the rules.

• 1:53:53Bill Simmons?

  No, that's true.

• 1:53:53Speaker 02

  You want to do. And you know, now that football's over, everybody in LA, it's Mookie Betts season for everybody in LA, except one guy, you.

• 1:54:01Bill Simmons?

  This is what I would say if I rooted for the team that was ruining a professional sport in real time. I would say, hey, these are the rules. Sorry.

• 1:54:10Speaker 02

  I get it, but we've won one championship. We won the 2020 championship in, you know, sort of booby prize fashion. It doesn't guarantee anything. And if the Dodgers want to pay that, they are making so much money by investing. Yes, they have a great local TV deal.

• 1:54:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:28Speaker 02

  Yes, they have private equity owners that can structure these deals in a way that defers all this money. And they can make that work. But this is not some system that is out of reach for most of these owners. They are choosing not to invest. And if your owner chooses not to invest, scream at your owner.

• 1:54:49Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm not actually mad at the Dodgers. The Lakers are the team that makes me mad. And if you're like the Clippers and you've really thought outside the box, you build this awesome arena. It started, there's finally a signs of the end with the Lakers with LeBron hitting 40 and you just, they, they don't have any draft picks left. Like they're just going to suck. They're not very, you know, especially well run. It's like, here we go. We actually have a chance to maybe take this. It's way more fun to go to a Clipper game.

• 1:55:16Speaker 02

  And then in one,

• 1:55:18Bill Simmons?

  in one dumb trade, the Lakers are back. Luca is going to be the guy now for the next 10 years and none of it matters. And Luca will be the biggest star in LA in basketball.

• 1:55:26Speaker 02

  You think so?

• 1:55:27Bill Simmons?

  I do. I do. And there's no way for the Clippers to combat that. Like Luca's,

• 1:55:32Speaker 02

  You don't, you don't subscribe to this whole theory that the NBA is suffering because Americans don't root for the foreign players like they do for the American players?

• 1:55:42Bill Simmons?

  Well, they're about to because Luca just went to their most important franchise.

• 1:55:46Speaker 02

  Well, that's,

• 1:55:46Bill Simmons?

  And this is,

• 1:55:46Speaker 02

  We're going to see a big test.

• 1:55:47Bill Simmons?

  This is it. It's not even a test. He's going to be gigantically popular.

• 1:55:51Speaker 02

  Do you think Luca can get to LeBron levels of fandom? I don't.

• 1:55:58Bill Simmons?

  It's an interesting question. I think if it's gonna happen, this is the team for it to happen. And if, and if the trade can light the fire under him and make him truly great, and he can win like three titles in a row and average 30 a game and be the best guy in the league, like, yeah, that's gonna happen. We, we would have said it wasn't gonna happen with LeBron. There was a whole LeBron versus Kobe thing in 08, 09, 2010. He goes to Miami the first year. He sucks in the finals. It seemed, it seemed like it wasn't gonna happen for him. Like, you just never know. Luca has the calendar.

• 1:56:30Speaker 02

  I will defer to you, I will defer to you on, you know, all things NBA, but I just have a hard time believing there's gonna be appetite for Luca to star in a Space Jam sequel.

• 1:56:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but nobody saw the Space Jam sequel. It bombed.

• 1:56:44Speaker 02

  Well, but he got a green lit. He got a green lit and people were buying shows from him for a while. And, you know, Steph Curry has a production company and people think he's a media personality. I just don't know that the foreign players have as much cachet as the US-born players.

• 1:56:59Bill Simmons?

  We've talked about this many times on the pod. We have not seen it happen yet. I think if it doesn't happen in this case with a guy on the Lakers.

• 1:57:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:09Bill Simmons?

  You know, especially if he becomes really good. I still, like anecdotally, just I'm sure you feel the same, like all the LA fans are going bonkers. Like, they can't believe. So this will be the test case. And I think this is the best possible guy for them to get.

• 1:57:22Speaker 02

  It's funny, we're talking about the appeal of foreign players when who's the biggest star in LA right now? Shohei Ohtani.

• 1:57:28Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:57:28Speaker 02

  And like, no one seems to give a shit that he doesn't even speak English.

• 1:57:31Bill Simmons?

  I know.

• 1:57:31Speaker 02

  He does, but not very much. And like, my kid, you know, has three Ohtani jerseys, like the friggin' bobblehead night.

• 1:57:38Bill Simmons?

  That's gonna be Luca.

• 1:57:39Speaker 02

  It was like the Beatles.

• 1:57:41Bill Simmons?

  So let's, let's end on this. Any LA celebrity, athlete, actor, musician, actress, you name it, walks into a restaurant right now in February 2025, who stops the restaurant the hardest?

• 1:57:59Speaker 02

  Oh, Taylor Swift.

• 1:58:00Bill Simmons?

  Okay, so she's clear number one.

• 1:58:02Speaker 02

  She's clearly the number one most famous celebrity in the world.

• 1:58:05Bill Simmons?

  The most like, you're, you're in mid-bite and you're just like, oh my God, it's Taylor Swift. So she's one. So who's two?

• 1:58:12Speaker 02

  Two is a tougher question. I mean, I think it's generational. If it's for you and me, Leo.

• 1:58:21Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:58:21Bill Simmons?

  Right. So you're saying 25 and under, maybe it's Shalhoub.

• 1:58:24Speaker 02

  Shalhoub, maybe, or Zendaya.

• 1:58:27Bill Simmons?

  I don't think it's Shalhoub. Oh, Zendaya is a good one.

• 1:58:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or maybe, maybe a music star. Honestly, the music stars are just so much bigger.

• 1:58:33Bill Simmons?

  There's no football star. I don't think Mahomes does it.

• 1:58:36Speaker 02

  No, Mahomes is boring. And, uh, maybe someone like Selena Gomez for young people. She's just so immensely popular and she means nothing to me and I don't even really like, I don't really get her as an actress, but for young people, she means a ton. Uh, same as Zendaya. Beyond that, like, it's just so generational now. Tom Cruise, probably the biggest movie movie star out there.

• 1:59:02Bill Simmons?

  It's so funny that Taylor has this locked up and like a crazy, crazy, maybe nobody in the 21st century has locked it up like this.

• 1:59:11Speaker 02

  Can you think of anyone else?

• 1:59:13Bill Simmons?

  No, no.

• 1:59:15Speaker 02

  I'd say probably most famous person in the world, other than like the

• 1:59:20Bill Simmons?

  Beyonce?

• 1:59:20Speaker 02

  Or Donald Trump.

• 1:59:22Bill Simmons?

  Beyonce second? No, I'm saying for as number two.

• 1:59:26Speaker 02

  Maybe Beyonce is a huge star, but Beyonce doesn't actually sell that many albums anymore. She's, you know, Taylor was the, had the number one album of last year and the number one tour. And is the number one, you know, celebrity on paparazzi radar. So I think she's just in another league.

• 1:59:45Bill Simmons?

  The guy who's figured out the best, the best version of a celebrity is Mookie Betts. He lives in, lives in LA. So there's a kajillion celebrities here. He's not that big. Like he's like 5'9", 5'10".

• 1:59:58Speaker 02

  Looks like a regular dude.

• 1:59:59Bill Simmons?

  He slides in, he just goes to Laker games. He goes to like Clipper games. He can just go anywhere and you kinda don't even really know. It's Mookie Betts. He, he has it the best.

• 2:00:08Speaker 02

  He can bowl a 300. He, he, he makes $300 million. He, he makes a $300 million contract and he just has a kick ass house in the valley and lives his life.

• 2:00:20Bill Simmons?

  You know, you know, who's up there in a stop the restaurant party standpoint? I talked about the Sunday night of Shaq, just because of the size and how recognizable he is.

• 2:00:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, the NBA guys obviously have a

• 2:00:30Bill Simmons?

  It's that huge advantage. Brady has it too. Brady's like 6'6". So when he comes in, he's like six inches, nine inches taller than everybody and you just notice him.

• 2:00:39Speaker 02

  You can also probably push him over. Light breeze would push him over these days.

• 2:00:43Bill Simmons?

  Come on.

• 2:00:45Bill Simmons?

  All right, Matt Belloni.

• 2:00:46Speaker 02

  I know you're friends. Can you tell him to eat a sandwich, please?

• 2:00:49Bill Simmons?

  Not friends with Brady. No, yeah, I'm not.

• 2:00:51Speaker 02

  You just idolize him.

• 2:00:53Bill Simmons?

  I, eh, well, did, once upon a time, yeah.

• 2:00:56Speaker 02

  Listen, if you were, if you played for my team, I would idolize him too.

• 2:01:00Bill Simmons?

  Matt Belloni, you can listen to him on The Town, you can read him on The Puck, an excellent website.

• 2:01:08Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, what else? Anything?

• 2:01:11Speaker 02

  Uh, what else? I don't know. That's it. Yeah. Listen to The Town, listen, uh, read my Puck newsletter called What I'm Hearing. That's it.

• 2:01:21Bill Simmons?

  Someday, someday Craig Roelbeck will stop a restaurant.

• 2:01:25Speaker 02

  Someday. He will be.

• 2:01:26Bill Simmons?

  It's gonna happen soon. It might, it might be a TGI Fridays. Uh, thanks, Belloni.

• 2:01:32Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:01:32Bill Simmons?

  All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Brian Curtis and Matt Belloni. Thanks to Sarudy and Kyle Gahow as well. Don't forget, you can watch this on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. You can also watch this on Spotify. I hope you did, because we're going video podcast from now on on Spotify. And new rewatchables we put up on Monday night, The Blues Brothers. If you missed it, I will have another podcast for you on Thursday. Enjoy the middle of the week.

• 2:02:24Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures, WildHorse9, 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 Inisherin 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. WildHorse9 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 WildHorse9. Only in theaters Friday. Get tickets now.