An NBA Mailbag, LeBron’s Next Move, and the Wild Paramount-WBD Merger With David Jacoby and Matt Belloni

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by David Jacoby to answer some mailbag questions from the listeners (2:45). Then, Matt Belloni joins to react to the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger and to discuss the winners and losers of the deal (01:11:33). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Matt Belloni and David Jacoby Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo Bundle and Save Book now. #ULTRACourtside could get you closer to the game! https://michelobultra.com/courtside MICHELOB ULTRA® COURTSIDE ’25 to ’26. No Purchase Necessary. Open to US residents 21 plus. Begins on October 1, 2025 and ends on June 30, 2026 Multiple entry periods. See Official Rules at https://michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠⁠⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:25Speaker 01

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• 0:37Speaker 02

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• 1:24Speaker 02

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• 1:36Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. We are also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network, where on the rewatchables, it is officially CR month. That's right, Chris Ryan picked a bunch of movies. We did Sicario on Monday night. We did it live on Netflix. You can watch it on Netflix, you can watch it on Spotify, wherever you hear podcasts. We have Fargo coming next Monday. And then the next one after that is going to be To Live and Die in L.A., which we've been waiting to do forever, a classic. And then the fifth one is going to be L.A. Confidential, and we're going to let everybody vote for the fourth one. So if you follow the rewatchables on Twitter, we'll have some choices for the fourth one. There's some pretty good, we're going to have 12 movies. Vote every day for one of the four,

• 2:21Bill Simmons?

  and then we'll make the finals the fourth day between the three winners. So that's what we're doing. Coming up on this podcast... Dave Jacoby, my old friend from my Grantland days, my ESPN days, he is coming on to do a mailbag with me. We have like two thirds of a mailbag, but some really, really fun basketball questions, some good nickname stuff as well. And then Matt Bellany, who you can hear on The Town, we are going to talk about the Warner Brothers Paramount crazy merger and all the ramifications and ripple effects. So action packed podcast for you today. We'll take a break, bring your Pearl Jam, and then my old friend, Dave Jacoby. This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You gotta love a good deal, whether that's

• 3:05Bill Simmons?

  a quarterback on a short, low risk contract who competes like a top tier quarterback, like a Brock Purdy, once upon a time, or Expedia's bundle and save feature, which allows you to combine flights, hotels and cars into one package for impressive discounts. And not just that, but if you're a member, you can book an item now, add select items later, and still enjoy bundled savings. For instance, if you're a football fan, you want to go to the championship, conference championship, the Super Bowl, wherever it is, and you don't know your team's going to be in, all of a sudden they're in, what do you got to do? I gotta get a hotel, I get a flight, I get a car. Expedia can do all three. You never know when your team's going to be in a big game. Use Expedia. Now that is a winning strategy. Book now with Expedia.

• 4:16Bill Simmons?

  Dave Jacoby is here on a Tuesday afternoon. You're the first person who doesn't like the chairs.

• 4:19Speaker 04

  I do not like the chairs. I don't like the way they look. I especially don't like the way they feel.

• 4:24Bill Simmons?

  You don't like the way they look? What's wrong with the way they look?

• 4:26Speaker 04

  I sink into them too much, right? And, and I like a high top. That's been my posture will be better, less poochy pooch. And right now my knees and nipples are at the same plane.

• 4:37Bill Simmons?

  Well, you've always had a posture thing.

• 4:39Speaker 04

  Below nipples.

• 4:40Bill Simmons?

  Dating back to Jalen and Jacoby, when we had the first chairs and I would make fun of you that you were an invertebrate with the camera angle.

• 4:46Speaker 04

  Well, there's someone who wrote a very serious email that was like, you've got serious problems.

• 4:52Bill Simmons?

  Who wrote that?

• 4:52Speaker 04

  It was a stranger.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  And if you're just listening to this, Bill has something that I had in like,

• 5:01Speaker 04

  1992. What is that thing?

• 5:03Bill Simmons?

  This lap desk?

• 5:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, you've got the beanbag underneath the-

• 5:07Bill Simmons?

  Well, because I like to, we're about to do a mailbag. I'm very excited.

• 5:11Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 5:11Bill Simmons?

  I didn't want to have the mailbag too low on my lap because then I'm doing this and coming up. So it's out of necessity.

• 5:17Speaker 04

  It's a posture move.

• 5:18Bill Simmons?

  And plus later, my wife's going to bring me dinner and I'm just going to eat it like this.

• 5:22Speaker 04

  It's a posture move.

• 5:24Bill Simmons?

  So I did a whole thing about nicknames when Max Kellerman was here.

• 5:29Bill Simmons?

  A couple, people pointed out some nicknames that I missed, including Downtown Freddie Brown. I'd like to apologize to him.

• 5:35Speaker 04

  I'd like to also shout out Downtown Julie Brown.

• 5:38Bill Simmons?

  Who stole it from Downtown Freddie Brown. Slick Watts, The Boston Strangler Andrew Tony, great one. Dr. Duncanstein, remember loving that as a kid. The Microwave Vinnie Johnson, The Mailman, The Chief. White Chocolate was a big miss. The Glove, Big Country, AK47. And then currently, Greek Freak, Time Lord and Slow Mo. I bring all of this up because the whole point of the initial thing was we're just not good at nicknames anymore. We're lazy. We do initials. We do acronyms and we just don't put any thought into it.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  I've got a take on this.

• 6:12Bill Simmons?

  Let's hear it.

• 6:13Speaker 04

  One thing about the sports media world that really bothers me is when athletes launch their brand or their logo. It's either their number or their initials. No one has done this right since Kobe Bryant, who just like stole it from a swab on like Kill Bill.

• 6:30Bill Simmons?

  Who had a couple of chances. Yeah.

• 6:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, but like it's always just initials. It's just like, or like DA7 or something. It's just like, why, why can't we be more creative than this?

• 6:39Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's, so Imran from San Francisco has a theory on this that we've gotten lazy. He blames Kevin Durant. Tough year for Kevin Durant.

• 6:51Speaker 04

  Emron.

• 6:52Bill Simmons?

  He says.

• 6:53Speaker 04

  Kevin Durant.

• 6:54Bill Simmons?

  Kevin Durant deserves blame for rejecting a potential Pantheon level nickname, The Slim Reaper.

• 7:00Speaker 04

  Slim Reaper.

• 7:01Bill Simmons?

  And instead asking people to call him the servant, which no one wanted to do. Players realized they could just reject nicknames that didn't fit their brand. And now we have these vanilla corporate nicknames instead, just a thought. Do we put this on Kevin Durant's loss thing?

• 7:13Speaker 04

  I don't think it's really fair, but Durant was great. Slim Reaper was great. And then he's like, I'm the easy money sniper. Okay. Easy money sniper?

• 7:23Bill Simmons?

  Slim Reaper was an all time great nickname. We could have called him Slim. We could have called him Reaper.

• 7:29Speaker 04

  And it also it visualizes it like it's slow mo is a great nickname, but you can't like see it.

• 7:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:35Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? But you could see him. They've got the graphics of him in the, in the hood and with the sickle and everything. So yeah, maybe it is Kevin Durant's fault.

• 7:42Bill Simmons?

  My thing with nicknames, like slick watts is a good example. The nickname has to become how we say the person's name. It can't like that. We've had some nicknames over the years when it's like the nicknames over here. I even didn't really love the answer for Allen Iverson. And he just, it was just easier to call him AI. I know people like to push the answer.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  The answer's good.

• 8:00Bill Simmons?

  I never personally called him the answer. I always called him Iverson or AI.

• 8:04Speaker 04

  It doesn't roll off the tongue.

• 8:06Bill Simmons?

  You ultimately where you want to be is like Clyde the Glide.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 8:09Bill Simmons?

  Nick, you know, shorten your name, whatever. So anyway, um, Peter T had an idea. There was a lot of con can nipple suggestions, which people know, people know how to get into the mailbag. Just bring him con can nipple.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  You sent me some of the questions. I was like, oh, these people are just tailoring it right for Bill.

• 8:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, listen, it's, it's, it's a human algorithm. Peter T said, uh, he said mailbag nickname submission, con snow. Bill's illegitimate son in Charlotte, like John Stone in Game of Thrones.

• 8:40Bill Simmons?

  He said, as a Duke fan in Colorado, I love that your pod is now 25% Jokic and can nipple talk. I resent that because I feel like it's 50% Boston talk, 25%.

• 8:50Speaker 04

  I'm taking the over on the 50.

• 8:51Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Okay, here, now let's get to the good stuff. There was a lot of Stefan Castle. What are we doing here? This guy needs a nickname. I think people agree, right?

• 9:02Speaker 04

  Can I push back? Con is a unique name in itself and Castle is a great last name. But why do we need to upgrade these?

• 9:09Bill Simmons?

  Well, just wait. Jude from Westport said it had to be something Castle or medieval related. He proposes the dungeon. He's locking someone down. He's sending them to the dungeon. Like, I'm not against it. You've been locked down in the dungeon. Jacob, and a few people suggested this, wanted to call him the moat. Because a moat is perimeter defense for a castle. So it's like, you can't cross the moat.

• 9:34Speaker 04

  Oh, do you know one you haven't thought of?

• 9:35Bill Simmons?

  What?

• 9:36Speaker 04

  That you didn't bring up? Off Knight.

• 9:38Bill Simmons?

  Oh, for, uh?

• 9:39Speaker 04

  Damian Mitchell.

• 9:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 9:40Speaker 04

  That's a great nickname.

• 9:41Bill Simmons?

  You don't like Mike Breen? Mike Breen yelling, "Nobody is crossing the moat."

• 9:45Speaker 04

  Nobody's crossing.

• 9:46Bill Simmons?

  A few people suggested this, though, and I think it's the winner for Stefan Castle. Checkmate.

• 9:55Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 9:56Bill Simmons?

  You don't like it?

• 9:56Speaker 04

  No, I like it. I like it.

• 9:59Bill Simmons?

  And checkmate rises to the occasion. I don't know.

• 10:02Speaker 04

  It's pretty good.

• 10:02Bill Simmons?

  I want to hear somebody test drive it. Khan, a lot of people going DEFCON 3 or DEFCON 7, which is his number.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  Mm-mm.

• 10:12Bill Simmons?

  Not quite there. Khan Air doesn't really work.

• 10:15Speaker 04

  No.

• 10:16Bill Simmons?

  And then a couple of people suggested 2K. 2K's good.

• 10:21Speaker 04

  2K's not bad. 2K's not bad.

• 10:25Bill Simmons?

  2K had 35 last night.

• 10:27Speaker 04

  That's not bad.

• 10:28Bill Simmons?

  That's as good as we've heard in a while.

• 10:30Speaker 04

  That's one thing about the answer. Does the word answer doesn't roll off the tongue the same way that 2K does.

• 10:36Bill Simmons?

  Did you see 2K hit nine threes last night? It's pretty good. The question, the bigger question is, do you need a nickname if your name's Khan?

• 10:43Speaker 04

  No.

• 10:43Bill Simmons?

  Which is, so if we had a nickname, Zara, the nickname Zara would probably be like, "We're good. His name's Khan. It stands out."

• 10:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. It'd be so hard. I mean, if you're going to do something with Khan Cunnipels name.

• 10:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 10:55Speaker 04

  Nips is right there.

• 10:56Bill Simmons?

  Nipsey?

• 10:57Speaker 04

  Nipsey. It's right there.

• 11:00Bill Simmons?

  We had a Nipsey Russell. A bunch of people for Jalen Durin suggested Bull Durin.

• 11:05Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 11:06Bill Simmons?

  Not bad.

• 11:06Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 11:09Bill Simmons?

  This was the best one. I can't believe how good it is. More than one suggestion, so I don't want to give anyone credit. Josh Giddy.

• 11:17Speaker 04

  Don't. Just don't. Just don't. Just don't. Just don't.

• 11:22Bill Simmons?

  Josh Giddy, the Gidler.

• 11:26Bill Simmons?

  The Giddler had a triple double last night. He could have the old 90s poster with like, he's dressed as the Riddler, but it's instead of a question mark, it's a, it's a G.

• 11:36Speaker 04

  I'm not sure, maybe like October, Josh Giddy deserved this nickname.

• 11:41Bill Simmons?

  The Giddler?

• 11:42Speaker 04

  But like, it's, it's too close to something else.

• 11:45Bill Simmons?

  All right. So your favorite is 2K.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 11:48Bill Simmons?

  Dan from Denman Island in Canada suggested, he was one of the checkmate suggestions for Castle.

• 11:54Speaker 04

  Where's Dan in the island?

• 11:56Bill Simmons?

  I don't, it's in Canada. He wanted to, uh, he suggested for Kason Wallace Twitch, cause he has such fast Twitch reflexes that we just start calling him Twist. I don't think he needs a nickname.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  There's a, an ex, a motocross, um, mental militia guy named Twitch.

• 12:12Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 12:13Speaker 04

  He was great.

• 12:14Bill Simmons?

  This is the best one. I don't think he has the right person for this, but it's one of the best names I've ever heard. He said for Jalen Brown to call him Jalapeno, because this is what my group of friends who have a basketball draft call him because of a typo, but it also fits for when he's on a heater. That's a better name for somebody you play pickup basketball with. It's like our friend Juan, we call him Jalapeno, cause he just gets hot in these games.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  Maybe, but yeah.

• 12:39Bill Simmons?

  You don't like Jalapeno?

• 12:40Speaker 04

  Maybe a typo, like, I don't, you know, any nickname you have to sort of like explain with more than one sentence, I'm out.

• 12:46Bill Simmons?

  Do you like Jalapeno as a heat check nickname though?

• 12:49Speaker 04

  Only for like one of my friends.

• 12:50Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 12:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:51Bill Simmons?

  So our best one is 2K.

• 12:53Speaker 04

  2K.

• 12:54Bill Simmons?

  All right. Um, so Alex Lyons wrote in, there's this guy, Robbie Avila from, uh, St. Louis, the guy with the goggles, the 6th and 10th center, you've seen him college basketball. He has three nicknames. Cream Abdul Jabar.

• 13:08Speaker 04

  I'm in.

• 13:09Bill Simmons?

  Steph Blurry and Milk Chamberlain.

• 13:13Speaker 04

  All of them.

• 13:14Bill Simmons?

  So maybe he'll save the nickname.

• 13:16Speaker 04

  Cream Abdul Jabar is it?

• 13:17Bill Simmons?

  Cream Abdul Jabar. Uh, Steph Blair is pretty good too. Okay. Next question is from, uh, D Bob in New York. Who do you think will be the top five players in the league five years from now? So that would be the 2030, 31 season. He said, it's a fun exercise. You never would have predicted Shay or Wemby top five. Five years ago, the top five players in 2021 were Giannis, Jokic, Embiid, Curry, Luka, LeBron, in some order.

• 13:44Bill Simmons?

  To me in 2031, there's two locks, Ant and Luka. But anyway, he's basically like, who do you have?

• 13:50Speaker 04

  If this is, this was harder than I thought it would be.

• 13:52Bill Simmons?

  I thought, I agree.

• 13:53Speaker 04

  This was harder than I thought it would be. And one thing that I'm not going to allow is Ugo Gonzalez being part of the conversation.

• 14:00Bill Simmons?

  Did you see him last night? It's 16 rebounds.

• 14:02Speaker 04

  I did, I did.

• 14:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 04

  But this was harder than I thought. Cause my question for you is,

• 14:09Speaker 04

  like, there's a couple, there's a bunch of 29 year olds who will still be in their prime. But when I'm looking at some players, I'm like,

• 14:16Speaker 04

  Luka will be 32.

• 14:17Bill Simmons?

  Well, can we do the chalk picks? So if we're just going chalk, it's Wemby, Ant, Luka, SGA.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  Whoa.

• 14:29Speaker 04

  Luka and SGA are 32 years old.

• 14:31Bill Simmons?

  I'm just saying chalk.

• 14:33Speaker 04

  Oh, this is, this is the-

• 14:34Bill Simmons?

  For five years from now, safest bets.

• 14:37Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 14:38Bill Simmons?

  And I would have Cooper Flag as my fifth chalk guy.

• 14:42Bill Simmons?

  He'll be 24 at that point. Everything we've seen, how much better he's gotten just in the last two years.

• 14:49Speaker 04

  Uh, Luka and Shay at 32, I started to think that there are others out there. We're not, Jokic is gonna be 36, he probably won't be playing.

• 14:58Bill Simmons?

  He's out.

• 14:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:00Bill Simmons?

  I, I wrote down, I had different categories, Cade and Maxey.

• 15:04Speaker 04

  There's a lot of 29 year olds, Cade and Maxey are on my list as well. And Edwards, but he's in.

• 15:08Bill Simmons?

  Edwards, Edwards, so can we put Wemby and Ant and Bold?

• 15:12Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 15:13Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 15:13Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 15:14Bill Simmons?

  Can we put Cooper Flag in Bold or no?

• 15:17Speaker 04

  He'll be 24.

• 15:20Speaker 04

  Yes, you can.

• 15:21Bill Simmons?

  I, I just think.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  I think there's no way he's not awesome in five years.

• 15:24Bill Simmons?

  It, it, there would have to be some sort of knock on with terrible injury.

• 15:27Speaker 04

  But we're not even having that conversation. Wemby's in.

• 15:30Bill Simmons?

  So Wemby, Ant, Flag.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 15:33Bill Simmons?

  I could offer you A.J. DeBansa, Darren Peterson, D.P., DNP, Chet, Amen Thompson, Jalen Johnson, Palo with a big resurgence. Anybody else?

• 15:46Speaker 04

  Jalen Johnson is on my list.

• 15:49Speaker 04

  I'm, I'm glad you didn't bring up Tatum.

• 15:51Bill Simmons?

  He's gonna be too old. He'll be like 33.

• 15:53Speaker 04

  There's a little bit of me.

• 15:54Bill Simmons?

  I did write him down just for karma.

• 15:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, I know. But there's a little bit of me that's looking at Maxey like, I don't know, could he be top five? Cause you have to play defense too.

• 16:05Bill Simmons?

  He'd have to be in the low 30s point wise for like four straight years in a row. Basically where Mitchell is now.

• 16:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:11Bill Simmons?

  You wouldn't even put Mitchell in the top five right now.

• 16:13Speaker 04

  No.

• 16:14Bill Simmons?

  So probably not.

• 16:15Speaker 04

  Is there a world in which Jalen Johnson becomes like an all around, jack of all trades, nine assists and like 25 points a night guy?

• 16:23Bill Simmons?

  The problem is you have to really win to be in this conversation.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 16:27Bill Simmons?

  His Duke season didn't go well and he's never won anything with Atlanta. So you're really projecting with this.

• 16:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think we're there. I don't think there's anybody else on the list that we're missing.

• 16:37Bill Simmons?

  Okay, so Wemby and.

• 16:38Speaker 04

  It's interesting that you would put Cooper in bold guaranteed and not even mention Nipsey.

• 16:49Bill Simmons?

  I didn't want to put that on 2K.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  It's, it's a lot. It's a lot to ask of 2K.

• 16:54Bill Simmons?

  I think Cade should be in there though. Cade will be high 20s at that point.

• 16:58Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 16:59Bill Simmons?

  Like 20, 28, 29. So I think he would be my fourth pick. And I'm sorry, I think Luca's still gonna be there. It'll be year 13 Luca.

• 17:07Speaker 04

  32 years old.

• 17:08Bill Simmons?

  He's already moves like a 39 year old.

• 17:11Speaker 04

  When I think about Luca and Jokic, I'm like, is this good or bad? Because he doesn't, like, like Maxey relies on athleticism that diminishes over time. Luca doesn't do anything athletic.

• 17:21Bill Simmons?

  So you wouldn't have SGA if he was still this good in five years? You're now talking about the best guard career anyone's had other than Michael Jordan. It would be, it would be better than Jerry West. It would be better than every guard we've ever had.

• 17:35Speaker 04

  I also think they're gonna win a lot too.

• 17:37Bill Simmons?

  That's why you might put him in.

• 17:38Speaker 04

  They're gonna, he's, he's borderline there.

• 17:40Bill Simmons?

  So two spots for Cade, Luca, SGA.

• 17:46Speaker 04

  I think, God, it's hard. This is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

• 17:50Bill Simmons?

  Well, here's the other thing. There might be somebody.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:54Bill Simmons?

  Like, we wouldn't have said Anthony Edwards in 2021.

• 17:56Speaker 04

  He's the number one pick.

• 17:58Bill Simmons?

  We wouldn't have said Anthony Edwards will be one of the five best guys.

• 18:02Speaker 04

  And both Edwards and Cade didn't have a kind of like Cooper rookie year.

• 18:07Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna say Cade. Ah, shit. It's hard to leave out SGA.

• 18:13Speaker 04

  It is.

• 18:14Bill Simmons?

  Especially now that there are the villains that we'd need in the NBA. I started that on Sunday.

• 18:21Speaker 04

  Explain to me why Cade won't be better at 29 in five years than SGA.

• 18:27Bill Simmons?

  The case would be really physical style, putting miles on him the next four or five years physically might break down.

• 18:35Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 18:36Bill Simmons?

  Those big physical guards, it's almost like a big physical receiver or something would be the case. I don't believe that. His team's gonna be good. He's gonna have, he's gonna have Bull Dern the whole time.

• 18:46Speaker 04

  They're gonna bring in a second creator.

• 18:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they'll have somebody, Yannis.

• 18:50Speaker 04

  Bull Dern and Beef Stu. That's a great nickname.

• 18:53Bill Simmons?

  Beef Stu's a great one.

• 18:54Speaker 04

  It's a great nickname.

• 18:55Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna say Cade.

• 18:58Bill Simmons?

  You know what? I'm gonna say SGA over Luka. I don't 100% trust Luka.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  I don't know about Luka at 32.

• 19:05Bill Simmons?

  That video the other day, which I actually thought was kind of a big deal. And normally I'm like, don't overreact to when guys get mad at each other on the bench.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  I could talk about that for hours.

• 19:13Bill Simmons?

  Here, here was the key piece that I didn't think enough play. There was, I think, I think it was Vanderbilt sitting next to him.

• 19:19Speaker 04

  It was Vando.

• 19:20Bill Simmons?

  And he was watching the whole thing. If you watch the video, he's watching them go and he's kinda like this.

• 19:24Speaker 04

  It was the most important thing that Vando did all year.

• 19:26Bill Simmons?

  He's watching and he's watching, he's watching. JJ walks away and it looks like Luka went out to put his arm out, but JJ walked away. And JJ didn't seem to put the arm out as Luka was putting it out. And Luka got mad and stood up and I think it was Vando.

• 19:40Speaker 04

  It was Vando.

• 19:41Bill Simmons?

  He's watching out of the corner of his eye and stands up with Luka to block him from chasing JJ down the sideline. If you watch everything he's doing, it's the stuff, like, we're at a bar at 2:30 in the morning and our buddy.

• 19:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:54Bill Simmons?

  Is like, uh-oh, don't let him go over there. And we're just kinda watching him the whole time. It's like, oh, there he goes. We gotta get him out. That was the vibe. I didn't think it was good.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  I don't think it was good at all. And the first person that it made me think of was Nico Harris. And, and I've said this on the mismatch, but I've always felt like there's just more to the story of what happened in Dallas. And I think that they hated each other. And he was like, guess what? You can be gone. I have that kind of power.

• 20:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 20:21Speaker 04

  I think it was personal. And I think it was vindictive. And I think that he hated seeing Luca every single day. And I think that Luca was disrespectful towards him and probably vice versa.

• 20:29Bill Simmons?

  They clearly thought he was a dick.

• 20:31Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 20:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 20:32Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? That these things aren't reported. I'm not reporting anything. But like, I think that that happened. I think there's a lot of incidents like this behind the scenes that we didn't see.

• 20:42Bill Simmons?

  There's two types of people. And I'm in the wrong camp with this. Like, my wife instantly, if something's happening, she knows. Right? Like if, like when you have little kids and the kid is going down the pool, walking towards, crawling toward the pool or something. And there's a, there's the type that goes, oh, no, that's bad. And then you act. Or there's the person who sees that and they're moving immediately. That was Jared Vanderbilt. He, he saw it immediately. I don't think I would have stood up in time.

• 21:13Speaker 04

  What's the second type of person? What are you?

• 21:15Bill Simmons?

  I'm the one who would have, I would have sat there for the extra second, been like, this is bad. And Luca would have walked by me before I realized

• 21:22Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 21:23Bill Simmons?

  that I should be stopping it.

• 21:24Speaker 04

  Because you, I don't like to compliment you, but you're an excellent room reader and

• 21:27Bill Simmons?

  But not, not, not in the instinctive, this is going, this is bad. What are you? Which side are you?

• 21:34Speaker 04

  Uh, you know, I've rushed a conflict. I enjoy the conflict. I enjoy tension. I enjoy the, just the weirdness of it all and like saying things that I probably can't take back and probably shouldn't say.

• 21:45Bill Simmons?

  The best version of this I've ever seen was, uh, our friend Jalen Rose. There was one time, one of the NBA shows we were doing, and there was, people were arguing. I was one of the people arguing.

• 21:57Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 21:58Bill Simmons?

  And we're walking off after the thing. And Jalen goes, turn your mic off, Bill. Like, he just thinks we knew, turn the mic off.

• 22:04Speaker 04

  He's braided that.

• 22:05Bill Simmons?

  Immediately like read the tea leaves about.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  I know you don't have to say it. I know you're going to say something that you can't regret.

• 22:12Bill Simmons?

  Turn your mic off, Phil.

• 22:12Speaker 04

  And that microphone is going to broadcast to the truck.

• 22:15Bill Simmons?

  Shout out to him.

• 22:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:16Bill Simmons?

  Um, all right. Next question. Gus from Texas. I saved this for if we're ever going to do a mailbag together. He said, longtime BS pod fan. Thanks, Gus. Longtime fan of the challenge. Always love when those two worlds collide, but it's been a minute. If the NBA did a rival style season like the challenge, who would your favorite pairings be? Who would be the C T West team that would dominate? Who would be the messiest, funniest? So I sent this to you.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  I just want to tell Gus that I love him very much.

• 22:43Bill Simmons?

  It's a great question.

• 22:43Speaker 04

  It's a great question.

• 22:44Bill Simmons?

  Two man teams. This is the rivals thing that we love. So would they have to be rivals?

• 22:48Speaker 04

  The, I spent more time answering this question this afternoon to myself than I did, than I've put into anything I've done professionally in 10 years.

• 22:57Bill Simmons?

  Oh, but you were the right person. This is it. This is your vortex of all the things you care about.

• 23:01Speaker 04

  I have found the perfect pairing from the NBA to go to the challenge. But one thing I was thinking.

• 23:05Bill Simmons?

  Is this rivals or just a challenge?

• 23:07Speaker 04

  The thing is, he said rivals, right? So I did think of sort of pairings that would be mismatched, we'll say, right? Like they, they're not real rivals because they, oh, Dube Bate and like beef stew, that's not going to work. You know what I mean? Or like Dillon Brooks and LeBron, that's not going to work. But I was thinking, I was like, they did something like this. Do you remember the season that had like Sean Merriman and C M Punk and like Lolo Jones?

• 23:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was weird.

• 23:33Speaker 04

  I remember thinking, I was like, this is a.

• 23:34Bill Simmons?

  Lolo quit.

• 23:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then she came back another time, but I remember sitting there being like, this can't work. But the athletes weren't as good at the challenges than you would think.

• 23:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 23:44Speaker 04

  And of course, this first person that came to my mind with Johnny Bananas, the GOAT of the challenges and like what makes him good at this? And what makes him good at doing this is he's in great shape. So you can run the final. But he's really good at room reading, like we were talking about earlier and playing the social game. And finding out who's aligning with who, getting the right people out at the right times. So I was thinking of a strategist. So my first answer is going to be a team that I think would be successful.

• 24:10Bill Simmons?

  So not Kevin Durant?

• 24:11Speaker 04

  Not Kevin Durant. But my, the fun answer is a team that I really want to see. And I'll give you that next. I think that I got, I landed on teammates. They're not rivals, but it would be Cade and Ron Holland. Because Cade is very mature, very measured. He's very intelligent and articulate.

• 24:29Bill Simmons?

  Cade and Ron Holland? I was not expecting this.

• 24:31Speaker 04

  This is where I ended up. And I've got a fun one, though.

• 24:33Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 24:34Speaker 04

  The fun one is obviously.

• 24:35Bill Simmons?

  So why Ron Holland, though, over other people on the team?

• 24:39Speaker 04

  I think that Ron.

• 24:40Bill Simmons?

  Just because he's such a good athlete?

• 24:41Speaker 04

  Yes, I think that his type of athleticism, he can like climb up stuff.

• 24:45Bill Simmons?

  So he'd be like.

• 24:45Speaker 04

  And Cade will be like the puzzle guy. Yes, exactly. That's because I, obviously your mind goes to beef stew or whatever, but I think he might be just a little too like big for this. And I think that Ron Holland's got a nice little level of crazy. And I think Cade will be sort of like the brains of the operation. Holland will be like a little intimidating and like a little wild card.

• 25:03Bill Simmons?

  So they'll be in the bunk beds and Cade will be like, let's, let's bring over Draymond Green. We gotta align with them.

• 25:08Speaker 04

  Yes, and my favorite pairing for this, and I used a coach, is LaMelo Ball and Joe Missoula. Just imagine like Joe Missoula.

• 25:19Bill Simmons?

  You can't let Joe Missoula in this.

• 25:20Speaker 04

  Joe Missoula's got like, he's got like a blindfold on and LaMelo Ball's outside the fence. They're like, it's to your right, it's to your right. And Joe Missoula's just like, what the fuck, LaMelo? He just, he rips the blindfold off and just chases after LaMelo, who's just laughing and running around in circles. Like that pairing to me would be the one I would want to see the most.

• 25:38Bill Simmons?

  That's great.

• 25:39Speaker 04

  It would be perfect. And Joe Missoula should be on the challenge.

• 25:42Bill Simmons?

  I think this is, this would be an unbelievable vehicle for Draymond Green, too.

• 25:47Speaker 04

  I think Draymond would be great.

• 25:48Bill Simmons?

  I think he'd be the most compelling character. He'd definitely get kicked out of at least, if he did 10 seasons, he'd get kicked out of three of them. He'd complain about all kinds of stuff. He'd probably get into it with TJ, at least once or twice.

• 26:03Speaker 04

  I don't, I wouldn't mind Durant either. Like you see with him, with Tyler Hero and the Miami bench and like.

• 26:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 26:08Speaker 04

  I watched that starting five show.

• 26:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but Durant, they would just team up and get out in the first episode.

• 26:13Speaker 04

  What would you do to Draymond?

• 26:15Bill Simmons?

  He'd be like Cara Maria.

• 26:17Bill Simmons?

  See now, nobody, nobody, nobody watching this knows what we're talking about. Talking to alternate language. Who would, who would be the Laurel of this, the big bully?

• 26:27Speaker 04

  Oh, I love Laurel so much.

• 26:30Bill Simmons?

  Probably beefed.

• 26:31Speaker 04

  Draymond, yeah.

• 26:32Bill Simmons?

  Well, Draymond's more of like.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  The Laurel's nasty.

• 26:36Bill Simmons?

  I guess he is more the Laurel.

• 26:37Speaker 04

  Laurel's nasty. She will, she will dress you down for no reason.

• 26:41Bill Simmons?

  Who would be the good guy? Would it be Gurry?

• 26:44Speaker 04

  Everybody likes.

• 26:44Bill Simmons?

  Like how everybody loves Mark Long?

• 26:47Speaker 04

  Everybody loves Mark Long. Everybody came here.

• 26:50Bill Simmons?

  That was fun.

• 26:51Speaker 04

  Thanks, Gus.

• 26:53Bill Simmons?

  Sean from North Carolina, I wanted this question for you because you have kids. I only sent you a couple of questions. You don't know a lot of these.

• 26:58Speaker 04

  I know.

• 26:59Bill Simmons?

  So we used to live in a proper country. I would catch all sorts of classics on TV, including the slightly sanitized version of Die Hard on TBS. Streaming services are great, but I wish they had a cable edit option. That way I could show my 10 year old kid Terminator, Terminator two, without it being inappropriate. Do you think Netflix should add this? The parent cut of different movies?

• 27:21Speaker 04

  Well.

• 27:22Bill Simmons?

  And would you show that, would you watch this with your kids?

• 27:24Speaker 04

  You have older kids. And I was around when they were younger and I learned one thing that I've taken from the Simmons household is just like, you want to see Halloween and you're six years old? Cool. Here's a kitchen knife. You know what I mean? It's like, or like cursing in front of your kids. You were very like.

• 27:42Bill Simmons?

  We tried to push the envelope.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  Fire. You know what I mean? And I do that at my house as well, when it comes to content. Like I, me and my son, he's 12. We watched Psycho Killer over the weekend. You know what I mean? Like horror movies, sex scenes. I'll be like, close your eyes. You know what I mean? But he doesn't really do it.

• 27:58Bill Simmons?

  So that's the thing. You have to know where the bad parts are and you cover. So I don't think we need the edit option.

• 28:02Speaker 04

  Necessary to do this.

• 28:04Bill Simmons?

  I agree.

• 28:04Speaker 04

  And I also, I took, I took a page from your book. It's just like, let the kids watch whatever.

• 28:09Bill Simmons?

  They're going to do it anyway.

• 28:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's fine.

• 28:11Bill Simmons?

  You can either like, put your head in the sand and pretend like you're controlling it or.

• 28:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:16Bill Simmons?

  Do it with them and just kind of put hands over their face.

• 28:18Speaker 04

  One of my daughters gets super scared, so she won't watch. Fine.

• 28:21Bill Simmons?

  Like you're watching Terminator with your kid. And all of a sudden that guy's like, I came across time for you, Sarah. And you know, they're about to get it on. Like, you know what? We're going to fast forward this part.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:32Bill Simmons?

  We'll just tell you that it's going to get romantic here. We're not going to watch it together and you just move on.

• 28:36Speaker 04

  My kids will, won't watch things from the 20th century.

• 28:41Bill Simmons?

  I came across time for you, Sarah, one of the great pickup lines in the history of movies. Like, what woman's not at least making out with you after that? You came across time?

• 28:49Speaker 04

  Came across time for you, Sarah.

• 28:51Bill Simmons?

  Thank you. This is from Alex in Delray Beach, and I've gotten this email a bunch of times from people about the 03-04 Kings. Are you familiar with them? Chris Webber's out for, he's torn ACL in the postseason previous year. Peja has his MVP, random MVP season, one of the most random top four MVPs ever.

• 29:11Speaker 04

  Before mentioned White Chocolate, right?

• 29:13Bill Simmons?

  They're 40, no, he's gone by then, they're Mike Bibby. They're 43 and 15 through 58 games. Webber comes back, and as Alex points out, the return was disastrous. Stojakovic's efficiency plummeted. The Kings lost 10 of their final 16, fell to the 4 seed, bounced in round one. Now Tatum is coming back. Is history destined to repeat itself? So there is a doppelganger for this comeback that I forgot about.

• 29:40Speaker 04

  Bill, I thought we were gonna talk about the Kings.

• 29:43Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 29:44Speaker 04

  And then at the very end, you're just like, oh, the Celtics!

• 29:46Bill Simmons?

  Do you remember this Kings thing though?

• 29:48Speaker 04

  Not really.

• 29:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I didn't really remember it either.

• 29:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:51Bill Simmons?

  I did remember the Peja piece, but it wasn't a great year.

• 29:53Speaker 04

  I remember like Laker series and like Divas and like that kind of pre-

• 29:56Bill Simmons?

  Give us your quick, will Tatum screw up the Celtics take? I know you've done on the mismatch already.

• 30:02Speaker 04

  No, adding good players to your team, it helps.

• 30:05Bill Simmons?

  Is he better than Bailey Sharman?

• 30:08Speaker 04

  He might play like 14 minutes too. It's like, adding good players to basketball teams doesn't screw them up. Sorry.

• 30:14Bill Simmons?

  He did say one thing in the weird documentary they've made about his comeback.

• 30:17Speaker 04

  Wait, you're watching that?

• 30:18Bill Simmons?

  No, this was a thing on Celtics Reddit. He said he didn't come back to be a role player. It's like, oh.

• 30:26Speaker 04

  It's fine.

• 30:27Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 30:28Speaker 04

  This, one of my basketball philosophies is like, there's only one ball. I hate there's only one ball.

• 30:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  Share the ball. Like, guess what? If you score, I score. Jason Tatum makes teams better.

• 30:38Bill Simmons?

  We'll be fine.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:40Bill Simmons?

  Steve B. writes, what if Steve Kerr does not have a contract for next year because Steph is winding down? And Wemby is winding up? And he's replacing George Popovich to make a second run in the dynasty? I just like that he called him George Popovich.

• 30:54Speaker 04

  I think Steve B. too.

• 30:56Bill Simmons?

  Steve B. Uh, I was wondering, like, so Kerr, let's say he leaves this year? And the Warriors are gonna be out of the playoffs. Like, they're, they're, I think they're gonna shut Steph down. I just, my spidey senses are like, he said, yeah, it's gonna be like 10 more days. There's only- Thirty nine days left in the season?

• 31:15Bill Simmons?

  What are they gonna, even when he comes back, they already lost Jimmy Butler, they're not good to begin with. What are they gonna play two playing games with Steph with a not 100% need like that? That team should go for a lottery pick.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  KP's already got illnesses.

• 31:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, KP's not coming back like that, that season's washed.

• 31:29Speaker 04

  Is Horford gonna carry you to the second round of playoffs?

• 31:32Bill Simmons?

  Curly leaves, thanks for everything, I'm gonna take a year off, I'll do media, hopefully comes to the ringer. Then San Antonio, who knows, and if anything ever happens on that team, then.

• 31:42Speaker 04

  They might be too good.

• 31:44Bill Simmons?

  Or you wait for the Knicks or some awesome job. You just do media for a year, when you do media for a year, your stock just rises. You see that every time.

• 31:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:52Bill Simmons?

  Right? So you don't think he's gonna replace George Popovich?

• 31:57Speaker 04

  I don't think he's gonna replace George Popovich, because Mitch Johnson's doing a good job.

• 32:01Bill Simmons?

  No, Mitch Johnson's doing a good job.

• 32:01Speaker 04

  That's the problem, it's like, I don't think that's gonna be available to him. And Mitch Johnson wasn't supposed to be the head coach of the Spurs.

• 32:07Bill Simmons?

  No, he wasn't.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  Could you see a front office thing?

• 32:12Bill Simmons?

  Maybe.

• 32:13Speaker 04

  Where it's like, he's not on the bench, but he's just sort of like part of the.

• 32:15Bill Simmons?

  I could see, I honestly, my honest answer for this is, I don't think he coaches again after this. I think he, he did, he did it since 14, 15, did 11 years. He set up his son to potentially be a coach down the road.

• 32:31Bill Simmons?

  Won four, he won four titles.

• 32:33Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 32:34Bill Simmons?

  He won, well, how many did he win with the, he won? One, two, three, five with the Bulls and Spurs?

• 32:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:42Bill Simmons?

  He's won nine titles? It's done, it's a wrap, just do media.

• 32:46Speaker 04

  Is it gonna be on the rewatchables?

• 32:47Bill Simmons?

  It'd be great, I would love to have Steve on the rewatch.

• 32:49Speaker 04

  SK month?

• 32:50Bill Simmons?

  Martin in New York writes, where does Al Horford rank on the, I left my marriage for the stripper twice and to no one's surprise, it didn't work out list?

• 33:00Speaker 04

  You saved that one for me, you saved that one for me.

• 33:03Bill Simmons?

  He left the Celtics twice because he thought the title window was closed, only to be instantly proven wrong 20 games into the season, and he did it twice. It is a tough beat for Al. I never understood the I'm gonna go chase the title with Golden State part. What title did he think he was chasing? You're in a conference with OKC.

• 33:20Speaker 04

  Well.

• 33:20Bill Simmons?

  What do you think's gonna happen over there?

• 33:22Speaker 04

  Also, like, they need you.

• 33:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:25Speaker 04

  Because it's like Post is sort of their other big at the time before they got KP. I'm back to the Warriors. I never really saw it this season for the Warriors.

• 33:33Bill Simmons?

  I thought they'd go over the 46 or whatever, but I didn't think.

• 33:36Speaker 04

  But what did everybody say? Last year, after they added Jimmy Butler, if you look at the numbers, they were the best team in the history of the NBA. And I was kind of like, yeah, they were like in a playoff game for like two months in a row to kind of like get in to the plan.

• 33:49Bill Simmons?

  The thing about NBA history, the older you get, the harder your chances to win the NBA title. That's one of the things I've learned. And the only chance you have is if it's like a weird down year for the league where there's not a lot of stars and there's a couple of bad drafts, some of the younger players didn't pan out, then you can kind of sneak in. League's not like that right now. The league's fucking loaded.

• 34:09Speaker 04

  No.

• 34:10Bill Simmons?

  You're not winning it. Like, I even look at Durant on Houston and Houston, you know, we'll see what happens with them. They've hung around, they're gonna be a three seed, but they're still gonna have to rely on Durant for 10 straight weeks in the playoffs to win a title. And he's 37. I just think it's unrealistic. We saw in 22, remember Tatum took it to him in that Nets series? He was 33 in that series. He's four years older than that. Let's take a break and then I have some more mailbag questions for you. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. FanDuel's putting you in control right from tip off. That's right. You get to choose your reward. Play it safe, go for it, whatever your style, you're in control. I'm gonna figure out some sort of bet for the Celtics Charlotte game. But I think, I think it's gonna be a close game.

• 34:54Bill Simmons?

  I think it's gonna have a lot of points. And I predict my guy 2K, Conk Nipple, some threes from him. But just in general, I think it's gonna be a fast paced, a lot of points game. I'll figure out what my final play is. Check it out on my Twitter account. No matter how you play, FanDuel's giving you the power to choose your award, own your game this NBA season. Head to FanDuel.com/BS to make your pick. Get in the game and play it your way. 21 plus select states or 18 plus DC, Kentucky, Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. What makes basketball so exciting?

• 35:39Bill Simmons?

  All the superior skill on the court. This has been the case my whole life. The craziest thing, I mean, Wemby stuff he's doing every game. There's two, three Wemby moments a game. You're like, I don't know if I've ever seen that. The number one thing for me is when he does the screen and roll. He's going to the basket. Somebody throws him an alley oop and he just catches it and dunks it without jumping. It's an alley oop, but it's not an oop. It's just kind of an alley. And every time he does it, I'm like, I've definitely 100% never seen that anymore. It's a superior play. Superior plays aren't just for the NBA, though. Try Michelob Ultra, the official beer partner of the NBA. And a crisp, refreshing, superior light beer. It's the beer of Max Kellerman. He just told me that.

• 36:22Bill Simmons?

  Plus they're giving you a chance to win courtside seats, custom merch and more. Michelob Ultra, superior is worth playing for. Enter now at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 2526. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21 plus. Begins on October 1st, 2025. Ends on June 30th, 2026. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines and prizes and details. All right, more Mailbag with Jacoby. Mercury P. I don't know if that's a nickname or a real name. I'm so glad you're here for this question. He's proposing two new end of the season awards. The Marcus Morris Award for worst best brother. Oh.

• 37:07Bill Simmons?

  So you're the best brother, but you're the worst player of all the best brothers. Wait, the worst best brother? Out of all the best brothers of the combos, you're the worst one of all the best brothers. It's like the Lonzo Ball would win this year. No, that, no, we'll go into it. And but he also has the Seth Curry Award for best worst brother. I am so confused. Mercury P. has got me thrown for a loop here. No, no, we're working through. There's three, so there's really three categories. There's worst, worst brother, which would be Yanis' brothers. Thanasis? They would win the, sadly, they're nice guys, but they would win the award for worst, worst brothers for players. They're nice guys. Well, but they're the worst players. I was going out for coffee with the Atletico brothers. If we had all the brothers and we did a draft, they would get picked last.

• 37:52Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 37:55Bill Simmons?

  Best, worst brother. So of all the second best brothers,

• 37:59Speaker 04

  The second best brothers.

• 37:59Bill Simmons?

  Who is the best second best brother? That's gotta be Osar Thompson, right?

• 38:03Speaker 04

  Um, yeah, the, yeah, I'm trying to think.

• 38:07Bill Simmons?

  I'll give you the other candidates. Mo Wagner, Champenny, uh, Aaron Holiday.

• 38:13Speaker 04

  No, not a lot there.

• 38:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Champenny, Ron Harper and the Celtics.

• 38:18Speaker 04

  You know.

• 38:18Bill Simmons?

  Cam Christie.

• 38:21Bill Simmons?

  One of the Spencers, pick one. So, yeah, but here's where it gets interesting. Worst, best brother. So it's the brother combo.

• 38:29Speaker 04

  Better brother.

• 38:30Bill Simmons?

  The better brother. Who's the worst better brother?

• 38:32Speaker 04

  Oh, God.

• 38:33Bill Simmons?

  So I'll give you five candidates.

• 38:35Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 38:37Bill Simmons?

  Keegan Murray and his brother Chris.

• 38:41Bill Simmons?

  Max Christie and his brother Cam. Caleb Martin, brother Cody. Tyus Jones, brother Trey. Or Justin Champenny and his brother Julian. I think the answer is Tyus Jones.

• 38:55Speaker 04

  It's a little unfair because Jones and the Martin twins are kind of on the other side of their peak. You know what I mean?

• 39:01Bill Simmons?

  The answer's the answer. We're doing the awards at the end of the year.

• 39:04Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 39:04Bill Simmons?

  Probably Tyus Jones. It wouldn't have been Tyus Jones last year.

• 39:08Speaker 04

  Cause the Moore twins?

• 39:09Bill Simmons?

  He was just playing better.

• 39:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:13Bill Simmons?

  Interesting.

• 39:14Speaker 04

  Best, worst.

• 39:15Bill Simmons?

  Worst, best brother. Here are the nominees.

• 39:20Bill Simmons?

  But do you know how many brothers there are in the league right now?

• 39:22Speaker 04

  More than there's ever been in the past.

• 39:24Bill Simmons?

  It's 19 brother combos.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  Combos?

• 39:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Or 19.

• 39:29Speaker 04

  Sets.

• 39:29Bill Simmons?

  Two brothers, yeah.

• 39:31Speaker 04

  Wow. That's way.

• 39:32Bill Simmons?

  19 combos.

• 39:33Speaker 04

  That's 38 people.

• 39:35Bill Simmons?

  38, plus we have some threes. We have three holidays and three in it to Kupos. We have 40 brothers.

• 39:40Speaker 04

  So, so if there's 50 and there's 500, it's like a 10% of the league.

• 39:45Bill Simmons?

  Turns out DNA is important.

• 39:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:49Bill Simmons?

  Matt T.

• 39:51Bill Simmons?

  Says, me and Nick Wright miss the most obvious coaches for the black versus white All-Star game gimmick that Nick suggested.

• 39:58Speaker 04

  I'm not at liberty to speak on this idea.

• 40:01Bill Simmons?

  No, hold on.

• 40:02Speaker 04

  In the microphone?

• 40:03Bill Simmons?

  He said Larry Bird should coach the black team and Magic Johnson should coach the white team. And then it would bridge generational divides. And then you flip it with the coaches.

• 40:14Speaker 04

  All right. I might have.

• 40:15Bill Simmons?

  I really like that idea.

• 40:17Speaker 04

  See, I'm gonna push back on this.

• 40:20Speaker 04

  One of the scenarios, because I've thought about this a lot, too.

• 40:24Speaker 04

  It's not going to work. I've played this hypothetically.

• 40:30Speaker 04

  I was like, this is not going to work. But one of my favorite hypothetical scenarios in this hypothetical game is the white team jumps out to like a 10-point lead in the first three minutes. Black team calls a timeout and in that huddle, the discussion that black team has is just to be a fly on the wall. Listen to that. I think if you have a Caucasian head coach, you don't get that same conversation. That's my concern there. And also the race war that would come along.

• 40:58Bill Simmons?

  This is from William McGlynn in Sydney, Australia.

• 41:03Bill Simmons?

  He said he just watched K to go for 27 and 17 and thought about how he got waived for no reason by the Sacramento Kings.

• 41:11Bill Simmons?

  He mentions how it's interesting that this has happened more than you think. The Cavs waived Isaiah Hartenstein. The Grizzlies waived Stephen Jackson. Danny Green got waived by the Cavs, picked up by the Spurs. Alex Caruso got waived by OKC, picked up by the Lakers. And he asked what my favorite one of all of those were. And I think it's interesting. I think it's Stephen Jackson. Because they actually win the 03 title because of how Stephen Jackson played in the playoffs.

• 41:40Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 41:41Bill Simmons?

  If you go back and look at that team, Robinson's got a bad back. Danny Green as well. 2013, but they don't win in the finals that he gets hot.

• 41:49Speaker 04

  Remember game one, game two, he had like 35 and 40 points.

• 41:52Bill Simmons?

  He was the MVP heading into game six.

• 41:53Speaker 04

  That's just completely forgotten in history. The Danny Green was the best player on the floor.

• 42:00Bill Simmons?

  But I think it's Stephen Jackson because he actually swung the title.

• 42:04Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 42:04Bill Simmons?

  If you go back and watch those games, it's, he's like the number two guy on the Spurs.

• 42:08Speaker 04

  And he brings us all the smoke.

• 42:10Bill Simmons?

  And he brought us a bunch of joy. He was very pivotal in the melee.

• 42:14Speaker 04

  He's also really fun to have around the office when I was at ESPN in LA.

• 42:19Bill Simmons?

  We gave him his first media chance on the Grantland basketball.

• 42:22Speaker 04

  He would, he had a real presence. He had a real presence around the office. Like you knew, you knew when the elevator doors opened and, and stat came out.

• 42:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:30Speaker 04

  It was a good time.

• 42:32Bill Simmons?

  Glenn Shepard says, I'm listening to the podcast with Kellerman. Crazy that you went from discussing nicknames into discussing Darren Peterson's tattoo of Michael Myers. And the Boogeyman is sitting right there is an incredible nickname. Do you like Darren Peterson more if his nickname was the Boogeyman? And we also haven't had a Boogeyman. Boogeyman's pretty interesting.

• 42:53Speaker 04

  Boogeyman's pretty good.

• 42:54Bill Simmons?

  Cause we had Boogie.

• 42:55Speaker 04

  Yes. Boogeyman's pretty good.

• 42:59Bill Simmons?

  The Boogeyman had 45 last night.

• 43:01Speaker 04

  And the Boogie, there's been a resurgence of Boogeyman lore because of John Wick.

• 43:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 43:05Speaker 04

  And Baba Yaga. So like, it is time to come back.

• 43:08Bill Simmons?

  Maybe that's the nickname, Baba Yaga.

• 43:10Speaker 04

  Too hard to say. Baba Yaga goes down.

• 43:14Bill Simmons?

  Baba.

• 43:15Speaker 04

  Yeah. But Boogeyman would be a really good nickname, but I don't, I think that person has to be scary.

• 43:20Bill Simmons?

  Multiple readers were disappointed in me that I didn't stick up for Darren Peterson more when he has a Michael Myers tattoo. And I'd like to apologize to everybody.

• 43:28Speaker 04

  I had no idea he had a Michael Myers tattoo.

• 43:30Bill Simmons?

  It's a pretty strong statement. All right, Ryan in Chicago wants to know, what five events would you include if there was a Winter Olympics pentathlon? Distance, speed skating, cross-country skiing and downhill skiing are the most obvious three. Would you round it out with ski jumping and luge? Ski jumping, definitely.

• 43:50Bill Simmons?

  I don't know about luge.

• 43:50Speaker 04

  Ski jumping and luge.

• 43:52Bill Simmons?

  But so you have distance, speed skating. I think you have to do the fast speed skating too, right?

• 43:58Speaker 04

  This is a short track.

• 43:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 04

  A short track.

• 44:00Bill Simmons?

  Cross-country skiing would be the last event. Downhill skiing. I think ski jumping's the fifth and I think we're good. Ski jumping would be amazing.

• 44:08Speaker 04

  So what are we creating exactly? The best five?

• 44:11Bill Simmons?

  Some pentathlon.

• 44:12Speaker 04

  Just a random pentathlon. We're not going to do any figure skating.

• 44:15Bill Simmons?

  You can't do 10. I think 10's too.

• 44:16Speaker 04

  No hockey, no figure skating. Okay, this is just like, so it's sort of like, one athlete can, can do all of these things.

• 44:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cause when you think about the cathlone, it's like jumping, running, endurance.

• 44:28Speaker 04

  A little shot putty here and there.

• 44:29Bill Simmons?

  Like strength, it's all these things. So for Winter Olympics, it would have to be skiing, skating, endurance would have to be the five.

• 44:39Speaker 04

  A jump would be nice. I like a little jump.

• 44:41Bill Simmons?

  The jump would be, so the jump's not fun anymore because everybody, there's no danger and everybody's good at it. But if you had these guys where it's like, the jump is his weakest event.

• 44:50Speaker 04

  He hasn't trained much for the jump.

• 44:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:56Bill Simmons?

  Okay. This is from Joshua Tabor, College Station, Texas. If you had to bet your entire net worth on one current NBA player to win at least three championships over the next 10 years, who are you taking?

• 45:10Speaker 04

  Okay, well, it's a different proposal for each of us, um, because of the net worth part. But, um, I had trouble with this. I think the only answer is Victor Wembanyama.

• 45:20Bill Simmons?

  I had SGA and then Wemby.

• 45:22Speaker 04

  I thought about SGA too.

• 45:24Bill Simmons?

  I think SGA because of the OKC situation.

• 45:26Speaker 04

  Exactly. They're going to cycle in more young players, so they'll stay under the cap.

• 45:30Bill Simmons?

  It's gonna be an interesting FanDuel future that they couldn't do because you'd have to realize it over 10 years. But I think SGA would be like a minus 150 favorite.

• 45:38Speaker 04

  I think so too. And I wrote down in my notes, just institutional knowledge. Just like they've won a championship before, same front office, same coaching staff. You know, they're going to have to, you know, cycle through some roster spots, but they've got tons of picks. Sorber and Popovich are the last two first round picks, don't even play.

• 45:57Bill Simmons?

  You know what's funny about Sorber? So the Clippers and OKC, they had the pick swap as part of the Kawhi trade last year.

• 46:03Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 46:04Bill Simmons?

  OKC gets Clippers pick, they take Sorber. I think this is what happened. And then the Clips got number 30 and they took Niederhauser.

• 46:13Speaker 04

  Niederhauser.

• 46:14Bill Simmons?

  I bought stock last week, had a whole argument with Mike Toland in my seats about it. Cause we went to the Minnesota game and I'm like, I really like this guy. And he's like, no way. And I'm like, I'm buying the stock right now. So Toland's my witness. He's good. He's young and runs and jumps and I fucking like him.

• 46:29Speaker 04

  I feel like they were like Zubotz, who had a great year for us last year. It's not exactly working this year.

• 46:34Bill Simmons?

  There's some newing theory stuff.

• 46:34Speaker 04

  But we've got cold cannon Niederhauser, John Jacob, Jiggleheimer Schmidt coming off the bench. He's good. He's good.

• 46:41Bill Simmons?

  Clippers are, yeah, they're kind of interesting. If Garland can come back and actually look like the Garland from the first 50 games of last year, which we haven't seen in over a year.

• 46:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know.

• 46:52Bill Simmons?

  Like him though.

• 46:55Speaker 04

  I understand why they did what they did. They're kind of interesting, but.

• 46:58Bill Simmons?

  That trade was great.

• 46:59Speaker 04

  For everybody.

• 47:00Bill Simmons?

  If you get the somewhere fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth pick, I've started to work on this draft. So they get the Pacers pick if it's five through nine, otherwise it gets pushed like six years.

• 47:10Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 47:11Bill Simmons?

  There's like fucking awesome scorers in that range. Every guy from five to nine is a guy who could average like 25 points a game in the NBA at some point, maybe.

• 47:20Speaker 04

  She seems like there's a 40 point game in college basketball, like every, every week.

• 47:23Bill Simmons?

  These guys are like real.

• 47:24Speaker 04

  Every week.

• 47:25Bill Simmons?

  Acuff's my favorite out of all of them. Like Acuff's gonna come in the league and immediately be a guy. So anyway, I thought that was a good trade. So we have SGA and Wemby. Who'd you put third, Ant?

• 47:36Speaker 04

  Um.

• 47:37Bill Simmons?

  Or Hugo Gonzalez.

• 47:41Speaker 04

  I can't make a case for flag, really. I think it's SGA and Wimby.

• 47:45Bill Simmons?

  It's too hard to say with Dallas.

• 47:46Speaker 04

  Think about it. Three. Three championships in 10 years.

• 47:51Bill Simmons?

  Last guy to win three titles.

• 47:54Speaker 04

  What do you mean?

• 47:56Bill Simmons?

  Last guy to win three titles.

• 47:57Speaker 04

  Is there a question mark at the end of that?

• 47:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:59Speaker 04

  Oh, Steph Curry?

• 48:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:01Bill Simmons?

  It doesn't happen a lot.

• 48:02Speaker 04

  No.

• 48:03Bill Simmons?

  If you're talking general, generational, generational league.

• 48:09Speaker 04

  I had no idea you were asking me a question. You're like, last guy to win three titles. It's like, what?

• 48:13Bill Simmons?

  Steph won four, Duncan won five, Kobe won five. If you're just going this century, three's like a lot. Like Bird only won three.

• 48:20Speaker 04

  LeBron.

• 48:21Bill Simmons?

  LeBron won four.

• 48:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:24Speaker 04

  It's hard.

• 48:25Bill Simmons?

  But LeBron was in the 03 draft. We're talking about the next 10 years.

• 48:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:30Bill Simmons?

  Curry's the last modern guy who won three titles. Even Durant, only two. Klay Thompson heads are like, what about Klay? There's second parts of this question from Joshua Taber in College Station, Texas.

• 48:41Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 48:42Bill Simmons?

  If you had to pick one current NBA star whose legacy is most at risk of looking completely different in 10 years, either way better or way worse, who is it and why? I had a specific guy for this.

• 48:55Speaker 04

  Okay, please.

• 48:56Bill Simmons?

  No, you go. I wait. You're the guest.

• 48:57Speaker 04

  My problem with this question is all of my answers were negative.

• 49:01Bill Simmons?

  That's where my head went to too.

• 49:02Speaker 04

  I was like, all of my answers were just like, bad answers. Mine were Zion and Ja.

• 49:08Bill Simmons?

  Oh, interesting. I've, I've already given up on those guys. To me, that, that would be a positive if it changed.

• 49:13Speaker 04

  Well, I think Zion, it could be like 10 years now, it could be like, do you remember that guy Zion Williams in the NBA?

• 49:18Bill Simmons?

  I think Luca is the answer to this.

• 49:20Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 49:23Bill Simmons?

  Zach and I did a thing on, on the Sunday pod, something I noticed with Luca's MVPs, how we only had a top three and a top four.

• 49:30Speaker 04

  I heard that.

• 49:31Bill Simmons?

  And I wasn't doing that because.

• 49:32Speaker 04

  I'm intrigued.

• 49:33Bill Simmons?

  But I wasn't doing it because I was like, he should have more. It's like, cause we do that with LeBron. It's stupid. The only person who you could definitively say should have more MVPs than they won. Is Michael Jordan. He should have three more MVPs. He should have won nine. I think he won six, whatever it was. But the three that he didn't get, it's fucking stupid when you go back. It's like, I can't believe he didn't win that year.

• 49:56Speaker 04

  Michael Jordan.

• 49:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, also like.

• 49:58Speaker 04

  Would you rather have Kobe?

• 49:59Bill Simmons?

  The 97 one is one of the worst ones, but the 93 was ridiculous when Barkley won. There was another one in like 89 or 90. But with Luca, this is, next year's gonna be year nine?

• 50:10Speaker 04

  I'm intrigued by this, Bill.

• 50:11Bill Simmons?

  But what if he just turns out to be like Dominique Wilkins who made the finals once? And it's like statistically the most awesome and he's in there with all these greats and then it's like, he had one top three MVP, one top four MVP, only made the finals once and that's just this kind of his career.

• 50:28Speaker 04

  All right, counterpoint.

• 50:29Bill Simmons?

  Counterpoint is the ceiling's still high.

• 50:31Speaker 04

  Well, it's not only that, is his style of play. We were just like 10 minutes ago talking about him in five years being one of the best players in the league. And I also think that what happened to him in this trade, however it happened, or whatever really happened behind the scenes, I have no idea what actually happened, but he ended up, he like teleported to the Lakers. You know what I mean? And this team is not built for him. So we saw what happened when Nico did a very good job building a team for Luka Doncic.

• 50:57Bill Simmons?

  A pro Nico stance.

• 50:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He did a really good job. We were all celebrating this guy, you know, with the PJ Washington and Gafford or whatever. If you, the Lakers are not built for Luca to be successful. And I think that when LeBron is gone, they will build a team for Luca to be successful and they'll have some good years.

• 51:14Bill Simmons?

  I see your glass half full on that.

• 51:15Speaker 04

  I am.

• 51:17Bill Simmons?

  I think there's a Tatum, Tatum coming off the Achilles in a possibly negative way. Just like he made first team all NBA a few times. He has two top four MVPs, but can he get back to where he was or was that the peak?

• 51:30Speaker 04

  Or like Jalen Brown sort of like stays in this number one spot and he sort of perpetually sort of goes into like a role.

• 51:37Bill Simmons?

  The other guy I had was Lamela. What if Lamelo, what if Zach had some good stuff about him on my pot Sunday night? What if we are now at this awesome Lamelo moment where he's just gonna be really good for like nine years? And he's remembered as this really fun guy who's in a lot of playoffs.

• 51:55Speaker 04

  Talk dirty to me, Phil.

• 51:57Bill Simmons?

  And it's just like, oh, man, remember when we were worried about Lamelo? He's awesome.

• 51:59Speaker 04

  You know, you know, I love Lamelo so much.

• 52:01Bill Simmons?

  I know.

• 52:02Speaker 04

  He brings me so much joy to watch. I'm so glad that you're now on this team. We argued about Lamelo before he was drafted. Do you remember that?

• 52:08Bill Simmons?

  It took me six years to warm up.

• 52:10Speaker 04

  I was in on Lamelo early. And I said this on this match, every time he has the ball, he's just looking around. He's like, what's the coolest thing I can do with this basketball right now? That's all he wants to do is cool stuff.

• 52:21Bill Simmons?

  As they've gotten better, he's pulled it back a little bit. He's like, he's become more of a winning player, I think, than just, I'm out here to have fun and make highlights.

• 52:29Speaker 04

  Yes, and one Lamelo thing.

• 52:31Bill Simmons?

  With that said, he did drive the Hummer across the guardian into, or across the yellow lines into that car. That was very concerning. Like, that was some crazy bad driving.

• 52:41Speaker 04

  I am looking at my phone, cuz, cuz I saw it and I was just like, that makes no sense. It's not an intersection. He's not making a turn.

• 52:47Bill Simmons?

  Wasn't great.

• 52:48Speaker 04

  I would say that.

• 52:50Bill Simmons?

  The judgment still scares me, but I like where it's heading.

• 52:52Speaker 04

  I know you're watching a lot of Hornets games.

• 52:54Bill Simmons?

  I do.

• 52:54Speaker 04

  And I do wanna get your take on this, this weird substitution patterns in the end of the fourth quarter with Lamelo ball.

• 53:00Bill Simmons?

  Well, I think they're trying to, it's 27 minutes a game. I think sometimes they'll put a more defense lineup.

• 53:07Speaker 04

  It's not offense, defense, though.

• 53:10Bill Simmons?

  So it was last year, that was one of the things where they just started benching him at the end of the games. They seemed very concerned about putting too many minutes on him and kind of like, it's like when you have, when you have kids and you have a win with the kids and you're like, we're having a really fun time with the ball, let's go.

• 53:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:26Bill Simmons?

  Before something bad happens.

• 53:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course. I just feel sometimes like he'll be not in there with three minutes left and I'm like, oh, I guess they're gonna finish without Lamelo. And then with like two minutes left, they'll put him in.

• 53:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 53:37Speaker 04

  It's weird.

• 53:39Bill Simmons?

  Corey Wallace writes, just listen to the Alien rewatchables. Bravo for pointing out how much cats suck in general.

• 53:49Bill Simmons?

  I like to tell people that the bigger cats get, the more likely they are to hunt you for sport. The bigger dogs get, they still lick your face and want, want pets like all good boys do. Also, I could go on and on. Cats shit indoors. They cover said shit with their paws. They walk on tables and counters. What are we doing here? There needs to be more negative coverage of cats in media.

• 54:10Speaker 04

  This is wild. First of all, I just want to say Mallory Rubin is very important to me and you just can't, I can't go anti-cat and be pro, as pro Mallory Rubin as I am. So that puts me in a bad spot.

• 54:22Bill Simmons?

  I was in the same spot, even worried about doing this email in general.

• 54:27Bill Simmons?

  It is a good point, though, when you, when you, especially if, is your Instagram algorithm ever send you cats? Like cats like hitting dogs in the face and stuff?

• 54:36Speaker 04

  I did get that same clips, those AI clips that you got where it was like, oh, is this real? Cats, cats fighting bears. In the first 20 seconds, you're like, oh, my God, cats can beat up bears. And then you're like, oh, this is, this is just fake.

• 54:49Bill Simmons?

  It is an interesting point that the bigger cats get, the more they become predators.

• 54:53Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 54:53Bill Simmons?

  And the cats that we have as pets are just a mini version of those predators.

• 54:58Speaker 04

  But the first thing that came to mind was, I think it was that Liam Neeson movie when the wolves, the gray, I think it's called.

• 55:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:03Speaker 04

  Do you remember the wolves in that movie?

• 55:04Bill Simmons?

  So that could be dogs.

• 55:05Speaker 04

  Those are dogs. And they're, they are pack hunters. And Liam Neeson was at the edge of his life for two, two hours in the cold.

• 55:12Bill Simmons?

  I remember I was, this is in the 90s. I was dating this girl and her family had a cat. We were staying at her house and I went down to get a water. And I heard this weird noise. And in the foyer of her house, the cat had a mouse trapped. And it was like doing the Michael Madsen in Reservoir Dogs. Like, it's like, I'm not gonna kill you yet.

• 55:31Speaker 04

  Stuck in the middle with you.

• 55:34Bill Simmons?

  Really enjoying it. The cat didn't know I was there and I was watching it. It was like just torturing this mouse before I finally took it down. I was like, this cat's a fucking psycho.

• 55:43Speaker 04

  I love how much you were enjoying it like a voyeur. Just sit there, the cat didn't even know I was watching.

• 55:49Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, Reservoir Dogs.

• 55:52Bill Simmons?

  He was like, I got you stuck in the corner. Um, yeah, cats. I don't know. I've never had one.

• 55:58Speaker 04

  I had a tough go with cats. I had, there was two cats. They were Siamese cats, but they were, they were twins. So they're Siamese twins, but they were not conjoined. That makes sense. And they just sat in this, this closet in my parents' room and they hissed at you if you walked by. And I'm like, what is the point of this?

• 56:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's not.

• 56:13Speaker 04

  Like, what are we doing?

• 56:14Bill Simmons?

  Steven in Ohio wants to know, he was reminiscing about the Ricky Davis year before LeBron came, which would have been a great 30 for 30. And by the way, with the way they're picking 30 for 30 topics these days, might actually be a 30 for 30. Who knows? He averaged 20.6 points per game. It was the year of the fake triple double.

• 56:33Bill Simmons?

  And he said, I know you've talked about how easy it is for a lot of people to get to 20 points on a bad team. But he did want to know, who is the worst player to ever average 20 points per game in a season? So I did, I didn't tell you this question.

• 56:44Speaker 04

  I'm not prepping this one. Yeah.

• 56:45Bill Simmons?

  I prepped for it. I went on basketball reference.

• 56:48Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 56:49Bill Simmons?

  First of all, I was very surprised how hard it is to average 20 a game. So it was like less people than I thought. And I had to do a lot of different stuff with the basketball reference.

• 56:56Speaker 04

  I'm trying to think is.

• 56:58Bill Simmons?

  So I went, I tried to figure out like, uh, between 20 and 22 points a game seemed like a good. Cause there were so many people I had to like narrow down the sample size and then did buy win shares and PR.

• 57:12Speaker 04

  Let me ask you a follow up question. Did I know you're gonna know?

• 57:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:15Speaker 04

  We're in the middle of like a scoring boom right now, but is what, where, what, is this the scoring peak? Or was this a previous boom in a previous era where it was like 150, 160? There was another one, right?

• 57:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was in the early 60s. Yeah. Yeah.

• 57:27Speaker 04

  So are we, we're, we're taking those people out of the pool.

• 57:30Bill Simmons?

  So all I did was go back to 19, the merger season.

• 57:32Speaker 04

  Copy that.

• 57:34Bill Simmons?

  I'll give you six players who averaged 20 points a game. Mike James, 20.3. Ricky Davis, 20.6. Dana Barrows, 20.6. Made the All-Star team that year.

• 57:45Speaker 04

  Dana Barrows.

• 57:46Bill Simmons?

  Never nervous Purvis Allison, 20.0 one year.

• 57:51Speaker 04

  Huh.

• 57:52Bill Simmons?

  Tony Campbell, two years in a row in the expansion Minnesota Timberwolves. But I think our answer at 20.3 points a game, Jordan Poole. Jordan Poole averaged 20 points a game.

• 58:05Speaker 04

  Counterpoint, on a certain night, Jordan Poole looks really good.

• 58:09Bill Simmons?

  And the other counter would be, he actually really helped them in the NBA Finals, helped them win a title.

• 58:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, so.

• 58:15Bill Simmons?

  So maybe it's Mike James?

• 58:17Speaker 04

  I'm kind of looking at Never Nervous Purpose.

• 58:19Bill Simmons?

  So, well, the other thing that was interesting about that, it was the only time he ever averaged anything close to that. He had like one big year, but for the most part, he was like between seven and 13. So maybe that's the answer. Never Nervous?

• 58:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's my answer. It's just, he's not, he doesn't exactly jump off the screen when you watch him play basketball. He doesn't exactly jump when you watch him play basketball either.

• 58:38Bill Simmons?

  Ricky ended up on the Celtics, which I know you remember.

• 58:40Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 58:41Bill Simmons?

  He had nights where you're like, wow, this guy might be an All-NBA player.

• 58:44Speaker 04

  Yes. And that's my pool, that's my pool retort too.

• 58:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:48Speaker 04

  Is like.

• 58:48Bill Simmons?

  Jordan Poole had nights.

• 58:49Speaker 04

  On a certain night.

• 58:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:50Speaker 04

  They're putting up 40.

• 58:54Bill Simmons?

  All right, so there's two more great questions.

• 58:57Speaker 04

  Okay, let's do it.

• 58:58Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna give you the second best one first. And then I'm really excited about the last one. This is from Jay in Charlotte. He heard the Hornets deep dive that Zach Lowen and I did. And about, Zach was joking about raising a divisional banner. Wanted to know who had the saddest rafters in the American sports scene. So I just concentrated on basketball. As a Hornets season ticket holder, he has to nominate, he calls it the Spectrum Center. Currently, the Hornets have three things hanging in the rafters. Number six for Bill Russell, which everybody has. Number 13 for Bobby Phillips, who tragically died in a drag racing accident. And the Charlotte Sting jersey number 32 for Andreas Stinson, who averaged 12 points a game in the WNBA.

• 59:40Bill Simmons?

  They've never won their division, made an Eastern Conference Finals, or won a playoff series since the arena opened. The most famous basketball moment in the arena is a drunk guy in a purple shirt taunting Dwyane Wade and hitting two threes in a game six to close out the game when he had seven threes in the year. Is there a sadder rafters in American sports? So I did the research on this, but I just wanted to present that Charlotte case for you. So it's Bill Russell who didn't play for them, Bobby Phillips who tragically passed away in a WNBA player, and no division or conference title, anything.

• 1:00:09Speaker 04

  I don't think you can get sadder than that.

• 1:00:12Bill Simmons?

  I'll present to you the Memphis Grizzlies.

• 1:00:16Bill Simmons?

  No, no any rafters either. Bill Russell, Zach Randolph, Tony Allen.

• 1:00:22Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:00:22Bill Simmons?

  It's still go with Charlotte.

• 1:00:25Bill Simmons?

  Minnesota, Bill Russell and Malik Saleh, who tragically passed away. And that's really it. I don't think they have anything else.

• 1:00:33Speaker 04

  They're gonna do Garnett.

• 1:00:35Bill Simmons?

  They haven't done it yet.

• 1:00:35Speaker 04

  They haven't done it yet. But yeah, but didn't they just, didn't they just sort of like?

• 1:00:38Bill Simmons?

  Orlando only has Bill Russell and Shaq, but they must have the 95 Eastern Conference title, whatever. And they made it in 09, so they'd have two. The answer is actually the LA Clippers.

• 1:00:53Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:00:54Bill Simmons?

  Zero anything. They have no retired numbers.

• 1:00:57Speaker 04

  What?

• 1:00:58Bill Simmons?

  And they've never won anything. They've never won a conference finals. They have nothing.

• 1:01:02Speaker 04

  What about like a Elton Brand or something?

• 1:01:05Bill Simmons?

  They have nothing. They put high school uniforms of California players in their thing. I'm not kidding. They don't have a single retired number.

• 1:01:13Speaker 04

  I'm trying to think.

• 1:01:14Bill Simmons?

  They didn't retire Bob McAdoo's number, who won an MVP in the Buffalo Braves. They didn't retire, basically name anybody.

• 1:01:22Speaker 04

  Chris Paul?

• 1:01:23Bill Simmons?

  Chris Paul maybe will be the first one, but they just, he had this terrible experience with them. Blake Griffin, maybe you get to a point where you retire Chris Paul, Blake Griffin?

• 1:01:31Speaker 04

  I think you do that. That's pretty sad, though.

• 1:01:34Bill Simmons?

  Couldn't you at least retire Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson together? Just have.

• 1:01:40Speaker 04

  That was a great year.

• 1:01:41Bill Simmons?

  It was a really fun year. We enjoyed it. But yeah, the Clippers have nothing.

• 1:01:44Speaker 04

  That's sad.

• 1:01:44Bill Simmons?

  So they are the most depressing.

• 1:01:47Speaker 04

  I feel like just, if we're just going with just rafters, you might be right. But it really touched me when he was like, there's nothing's even happened in this arena notable.

• 1:01:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:59Speaker 04

  Within Charlotte. Cause I was thinking about the one thing would be LeBron staring at Michael Jordan before he dunks in a playoff game. That would be like the most notable thing that's happened in that arena in my memory.

• 1:02:07Bill Simmons?

  Well, now 2K is gonna be raining threes.

• 1:02:09Speaker 04

  2K, they should put him in the rafters already.

• 1:02:13Bill Simmons?

  This is a little sorbet appetizer for, for the last email. John from Jersey City had an email for conspiracy bill.

• 1:02:21Bill Simmons?

  I thought I could turn you on to the latest NBA conspiracy. The Nets rigging the 2026 lottery.

• 1:02:28Bill Simmons?

  I'm a Nets season ticket holder. This is the upcoming lottery. When I got my ticket renewal price for next season, I was shocked. They raised prices 24% for the same seats next season. Last year, they raised it 3%. The only rationale I can think of is to upcharge their season ticket holders who have sat through the mess of the last two years because they must know something the rest of us don't. I'll tell you this, Conspiracy Bill did darken the room. Smoked the pipe a little bit. Thought about this one. Why would they raise ticket prices 24% coming off a terrible season? They don't have a single signature player other than like Michael Porter Jr. Igor.

• 1:03:09Speaker 04

  Jaeger Jom.

• 1:03:11Bill Simmons?

  Igor Demond. What made them raise prices?

• 1:03:15Speaker 04

  But it's a large.

• 1:03:18Bill Simmons?

  It's a sizable lead. Conspiracy Bill was intrigued. Kyler Dickey, by the way, wanted to know.

• 1:03:28Speaker 04

  I'm not buying that one though. The rigged lottery.

• 1:03:31Bill Simmons?

  And Conspiracy Bill got his people together.

• 1:03:34Speaker 04

  They had a meeting about it.

• 1:03:36Bill Simmons?

  Tyler Dickey is another survey. He said, when you talk about craziest stories of the season, everyone's like Katie's burners. That was the craziest, won't get crazy that. He points out the Trail Blazers head coach got arrested by the FBI one game into the season. I'm not the historian of the game that you are, but I've never seen or heard anything quite like this. No one cares about Portland, so this is easily swept under the rug. Did Chauncey actually mess with our players' playing times and development and control outcomes? Did he cut minutes so player props would hit unders? Why is this not a huge deal to anyone else? I don't know. Why isn't this a huge deal?

• 1:04:14Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 1:04:15Bill Simmons?

  Ramona just wrote a huge piece about him today about how he had to like sell his house and he had $5 million bail. Like this is like a major, major gambling investigation and he was in the poker and.

• 1:04:27Speaker 04

  I can't say I know Chauncey that well, but he was around ESPN when I was there and he is like, just like the most responsible measured person I've been around in a professional setting.

• 1:04:36Bill Simmons?

  I thought he was the nicest guy.

• 1:04:38Speaker 04

  Like it's not like some of the stuff you hear about like Malik Beasley, you're like, oh, that's a little weird, but like Chauncey was just like a sweetheart.

• 1:04:45Bill Simmons?

  It's a good point. This one kinda just went away.

• 1:04:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, it did.

• 1:04:48Bill Simmons?

  Not sure why.

• 1:04:49Speaker 04

  It's so long ago. And also the Katie Burger thing, like, he made a Twitter account and it was in like a group chat. You know what I mean? So he's not like, it's not even like public facing tweets.

• 1:05:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00Speaker 04

  Somebody in his group chat just violated his privacy.

• 1:05:02Bill Simmons?

  Somebody betrayed the chat.

• 1:05:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:04Bill Simmons?

  Seems, that seems to be what happened.

• 1:05:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:06Bill Simmons?

  Okay, last question from Dan in Manhattan Beach.

• 1:05:10Bill Simmons?

  I can't wait for your reaction. I didn't send this to you. What if instead of signing with any one team for next season,

• 1:05:17Bill Simmons?

  LeBron makes his retirement tour, an actual retirement tour, by signing a one week contract with all 30 teams? Every team gets one LeBron home game where he starts and plays and they sell thousands of limited jerseys. New York finally gets Knicks LeBron, Minnesota gets an LeBron team up, Miami gets Heat reunion LeBron, we just keep going. He's not gonna win the title no matter where he goes. Why not generate news in every local market?

• 1:05:43Speaker 04

  Never happened, great idea.

• 1:05:46Bill Simmons?

  I couldn't, I couldn't pin holes in it.

• 1:05:49Speaker 04

  There's also this thing hanging on where it's like, I have no idea where LeBron's gonna play next year. So it's just like, there's no sort of like natural.

• 1:05:57Bill Simmons?

  I did this on the, on the pod.

• 1:05:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I saw.

• 1:05:59Bill Simmons?

  To me so with Zach.

• 1:06:00Speaker 04

  You did the Golden State thing.

• 1:06:02Bill Simmons?

  Well, cause I don't think Cleveland, I think Cleveland has a chance to win the title every year. And it's Donovan Mitchell's team and he's not gonna be like, cool, let's add LeBron. Like it's his team, Jalen Brunson, it's his team. These guys don't want the LeBron retirement circus coming into their thing. They'd rather just win the title.

• 1:06:18Speaker 04

  Does.

• 1:06:19Bill Simmons?

  Be my guess.

• 1:06:19Speaker 04

  Does, if he goes to the Warriors, per conspiracy bill, does that team a championship team?

• 1:06:25Bill Simmons?

  No, but it's, it's like a Curry and LeBron last ride.

• 1:06:29Speaker 04

  Porzingis and like Jimmy Butler off an injury and like, that team is not that competitive.

• 1:06:34Bill Simmons?

  One last ride, Curry goes to Charlotte to end his career. So I tried to think about, could this 10 day thing work? And I actually think it could.

• 1:06:42Speaker 04

  Hold on, Curry going to Charlotte, that's gonna take shots away from Nips.

• 1:06:46Bill Simmons?

  That's, it's an older.

• 1:06:47Speaker 04

  Oh, it's like a mentor.

• 1:06:49Bill Simmons?

  2K will be fine.

• 1:06:50Speaker 04

  I'll be the best shooter.

• 1:06:51Bill Simmons?

  2K and then we'll work it out.

• 1:06:52Speaker 04

  Just 2K, kinda like a Chris Paul, Wemby thing?

• 1:06:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:55Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:06:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's there to shepherd him into superstardom. So if it was 30, he'd have to play for 30 teams.

• 1:07:05Bill Simmons?

  It's 60 games total, right? So you play one home game, one road game, or two home games in a row.

• 1:07:12Speaker 04

  Why the road games?

• 1:07:13Bill Simmons?

  Maybe just the home games.

• 1:07:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:14Bill Simmons?

  Maybe it's a two-game home stand. Limited edition jerseys. You'd have two jerseys for everything. It's like a fucking cash cow. It'd be, it'd actually be kind of amazing. And the Celtics would be like, whoa, our LeBron game is coming up on March 4th.

• 1:07:28Speaker 04

  Oh, the tickets would go out of control.

• 1:07:30Bill Simmons?

  You'd like quadruple their tickets.

• 1:07:32Speaker 04

  That's why they raised the ticket prices in Brooklyn. Because of the LeBron game next year.

• 1:07:36Bill Simmons?

  Or is LeBron just going there next year?

• 1:07:38Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:07:39Bill Simmons?

  For an eventual piece of the team?

• 1:07:41Speaker 04

  With J. J. Korman?

• 1:07:43Bill Simmons?

  Just that's it. That's the thing. So if he played on every team.

• 1:07:46Speaker 04

  This would, first of all.

• 1:07:48Bill Simmons?

  It would be an amazing, nobody's done it before.

• 1:07:51Speaker 04

  The league just brought in two new partners and took billions of their dollars.

• 1:07:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:57Speaker 04

  And this is a little gift they can give back.

• 1:07:59Bill Simmons?

  How about this? LeBron's in the golf now.

• 1:08:02Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:08:03Bill Simmons?

  Plays in these different cities. Two home games and you can sample the best courses in each city over the course of two days.

• 1:08:10Speaker 04

  This will never happen, but it should happen.

• 1:08:13Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was an almost unassailable idea. I loved it.

• 1:08:16Speaker 04

  Because.

• 1:08:17Bill Simmons?

  And then he ends up on the last team.

• 1:08:20Speaker 04

  And it's, and it's.

• 1:08:20Bill Simmons?

  And that's the team that has the chance to win the title. And you just kind of slide in. It's like, I had a really good time when I was on Minnesota in December.

• 1:08:28Speaker 04

  Guarantees a ring for LeBron.

• 1:08:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:31Speaker 04

  I only played one game. They won the title.

• 1:08:35Bill Simmons?

  I didn't even think of that.

• 1:08:36Speaker 04

  Guarantees a ring.

• 1:08:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, everyone who played for the team gets a ring.

• 1:08:39Speaker 04

  I mean, this is on the level of Ewan Howes talking about a guy with a metal baseball bat playing for the Wizards. This will never happen, but it is intriguing. It's one of those things where it's like, okay, this won't happen. But if it did, what's the problem?

• 1:08:55Bill Simmons?

  It would be cool if he started out with the shitty teams and then gradually got to, and then, okay, so he was like, we'll do it, but it's gotta be in December. We don't want to screw with our team too much.

• 1:09:06Speaker 04

  Cause I was thinking about like him on the Jazz and I was like, uh, you know what I mean? I was just like, I don't know if I'm gonna even tune in for that one or like the Wizards.

• 1:09:15Bill Simmons?

  I did think, could there be a scenario where he only picks 12 teams? But then I think the other 18, there'd be some fan base that'd be like, what the fuck? And I do like the idea of him having the one game in like Memphis, which is fucking weird. He's wearing a Grizzly jersey.

• 1:09:29Speaker 04

  But the thing is, is that city's on absolute fire. It is like, it's like basically Taylor Swift era's tour, but basketball and LeBron is basically what it is.

• 1:09:38Bill Simmons?

  Every game would be an event. I think Bronny also has to come, so it's, it's two 10 day contracts. You have to get both guys.

• 1:09:44Speaker 04

  Every text thread that I am on would be which LeBron game are we going to?

• 1:09:50Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:09:50Speaker 04

  It would like the second the schedule was released, it would, every text thread that I'm on would be like, which one are we going?

• 1:09:55Bill Simmons?

  He does Knicks, Nets, back to back. So he has Knicks week and then Nets week. He's in New York for two weeks. He's doing all the shows.

• 1:10:01Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:01Bill Simmons?

  This is amazing. It's so cool to wear a Knicks jersey. It's a great idea.

• 1:10:06Speaker 04

  This is a brilliant idea.

• 1:10:08Bill Simmons?

  Dave Jacoby, you can hear him on the miss, hear and watch him on the mismatch with Verno, Chris Vernon. How's Verno handling another tanking season?

• 1:10:16Speaker 04

  You know what? He's not handling it well.

• 1:10:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:20Speaker 04

  But I think that we're doing everything that we can to support him.

• 1:10:24Bill Simmons?

  It's tough when you're whole, when you put your stake in the ground out, we are gonna tank. We got Triple J and Ja when they play together.

• 1:10:33Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:10:33Bill Simmons?

  And, uh, yeah.

• 1:10:35Speaker 04

  It's going, it's not going great. He's watching a lot of college basketball.

• 1:10:38Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's good.

• 1:10:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:40Bill Simmons?

  Good to see you, my friend.

• 1:10:41Speaker 04

  You too.

• 1:10:42Bill Simmons?

  Now it's time for a special segment of the show. It's called Value Mount Rushmore and it's brought to you by Domino's. I love Domino's. I'm gonna talk about real value, no hype, no buzz, just decisions in the game that actually get you more than you pay for. Like how Domino's best deal ever gets you any pizza with any toppings for $9.99. What a steal. Now strap in. I break down my top four value plays. The Clippers just did this. My first one would be when the Clippers traded Zubotz, who's making 20 million a year, so they could start playing their rookie center more. Niederhauser, who makes like 2 million a year. What a deal. If Niederhauser can be put up most of the stats that Zubotz puts up, great. I just saved 18 million. That was a good one. Late round fantasy sleepers, always awesome.

• 1:11:26Bill Simmons?

  I always like to do running backs at the end of drafts because you just draft the backups or rookies and just hope you strike oil with one of them. Futures, I like with the, like, looking for futures ahead for like the NBA NFL season. NFL, you always look for the bad team that has a good schedule the next year and a new coach is a good one. For the NBA, the team that starts to stack the lottery picks and then all of a sudden, even though people don't have high expectations, like Charlotte this year, maybe they'll make a jump up. So that's a good one. Then a fourth one, glue guys. Always good when you're, if you're building a sports team, invest in those glue guys. The Celtics have a couple of good ones.

• 1:12:08Bill Simmons?

  Jordan Walsh, Hugo Gonzalez, Hugo Gonzalez, sorry. Just people that, you know, they're not going to be max contract guys, but you can throw them out and rely on them over and over again for 20 minutes a game. Anyway, the highest tier move you can make for your wallet is Domino's Best Deal Ever. Order any pizza with any toppings for only $9.99. I always do thin. I like the, I like the gluten free crust. I like it well done. And I like the, I like the double pepperoni with extra cheese is my favorite. Get Domino's Best Deal Ever today. Prices higher in some locations. Select this online only offer from February 23rd until April 6th. Size availability varies by crust type, max seven toppings, six for New York style and

• 1:12:53Bill Simmons?

  pan crust. Stuff crust extra excludes XL and specialty pizzas. Minimum purchase required for delivery. Prices, participation, delivery area and charges may vary. This episode is brought to you by Carhartt. We spend a lot of time talking about football, the players, the coaches, the big plays, but there's a whole other team we rarely think about, the people who make the game possible, the workers building stadiums, paving parking lots, growing the grass, welding the goalposts, even making the footballs. They're committed to their craft and they're doing the work long before kickoff. Carhartt is proud to outfit those crews. So next time you're watching a game, take a second to appreciate the people behind it. Learn more at carhartt.com/jointhetrades. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech.

• 1:13:36Bill Simmons?

  Whether it's a pumpkin spice coffee that goes splat in your seat or a weekend tailgate that leaves your trunk full of gear and who knows what, you're going to want WeatherTech in your vehicle. Whether you call it fall, autumn, or spooky season, whether the mess is your fault, the kids, the dogs, or the weather's fault, you're going to want WeatherTech for American-made floor liners and a cargo liner that laugh in the face of fall weather. Visit weatherTech.com today. All right, my friend Matt Belloni is here. You can hear him three times a week on The Town, which you can also watch with his fancy video setup. It's a great podcast. You can also read his newsletter, part of the Puck newsletter world. Very essential, especially lately. There's always stuff going on. And just recently, Warner Brothers, which has been passed around like a Yankees Christmas

• 1:14:20Bill Simmons?

  gift since 2001, seems to have finally found a home. Somebody finally wanted the snow globe. They wanted to keep it.

• 1:14:29Speaker 05

  Finally, I don't know if it's finally. We may be doing this all again in five years.

• 1:14:33Bill Simmons?

  Uh oh. Well, today, the Paramount stock got downgraded to junk status. So everything they just paid.

• 1:14:39Speaker 05

  Their debt was downgraded.

• 1:14:40Bill Simmons?

  Yes. All right, so I have so many ways to go here. I have, I don't think there's been enough talk about the merger name. You've been joking about this on your pod because they can do the acronym, they can do PWB.

• 1:14:55Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 1:14:56Bill Simmons?

  They can do Warner Mount, which you've said a couple of times.

• 1:14:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's my preference.

• 1:15:00Bill Simmons?

  Uh, does the Paw Brothers interest you at all? Paw Brothers or Paw? Just calling it Paw with like a Paw print?

• 1:15:07Speaker 05

  I thought you were going to go P-Sky. That's their current, their current monitor. It's Paramount Skydance. They do P-Sky, which Craig Horlbeck loves.

• 1:15:15Bill Simmons?

  So do you think Paramount just absorbs it and it just stays Paramount? And that's like kind of their ultimate trump card?

• 1:15:21Speaker 05

  I think ultimately perhaps that will be the route. The funny thing is though, the Warner Brothers is much larger than Paramount. So if you're really looking at the, you know, what the brand is and what to do moving forward, you call the whole company Warner's or Warner Brothers or Warner's Paramount. And then you keep the streaming service as HBO or HBO Max.

• 1:15:43Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:15:43Speaker 05

  And just kind of fold Paramount into it.

• 1:15:46Bill Simmons?

  Well, none of us were ever happy with WBD Warner Brothers Discovery. It was just a complete mess and everything Zaslove did was just bizarre and crazy and including his victory lap last week, which you excoriated him for. And yet he's gonna walk away with like $800 billion.

• 1:16:01Speaker 05

  It's, it is unbelievable. The company lost two thirds of its value under his leadership. The only thing that raised the stock was the prospect of it being sold and he locked out. He has these, the world's fourth richest man who's got a son who happens to love Hollywood. It's the, it's the greatest thing in the world. And all of a sudden there's a bidding war because Netflix is like, oh, well, we'll take that. We'll take HBO and Warner Brothers if it's for sale. And all of a sudden you've got a bidding war. All you need is two bidders. And then next thing you know, the stock goes from $7 a share to $31 a share at the sale.

• 1:16:40Bill Simmons?

  Unbelievable. And some people were buying it when it was like 18, 19, hoping that we'd get to the mid twenties. This, so I was really trying to think about this and I was thinking about real life and culture. Is this the most faith anyone has ever shown in their son?

• 1:16:58Speaker 05

  Well, I don't think anyone in the history of the world has had the wherewithal that Larry Ellison does in terms of just sheer wealth. I mean, I guess Elon has what like 10, 12 kids that will someday be old enough to, to have to deal with his money.

• 1:17:14Bill Simmons?

  But this is like in Game of Thrones, Queen Cersei's like. Joffrey, we're riding with you, baby. We know you're 17 and we know you're a sociopath, but I think you can handle the seven kingdoms.

• 1:17:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:17:24Bill Simmons?

  You'll see this in culture, but not in real life.

• 1:17:27Speaker 05

  Wait till Don Jr. Runs for president. Then we'll really see what, what's going on there.

• 1:17:32Bill Simmons?

  Well, I was gonna say the, the Bushes would be the other analogy, right?

• 1:17:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:17:35Bill Simmons?

  Like senior Bush, like kind of grooming junior Bush, but not in a situation where you basically incur 79 million, 79 billion in debt, plus the junk, which is now 3% on top of the 79 million. I've never seen anything like this and I, I gotta be honest, I'm not smart enough really from a math standpoint to understand it.

• 1:17:55Speaker 05

  Well, isn't there a correlation in sports? Aren't there legendary sports owners? I mean, Dr. Bus, perfect example. Dr. Bus, you know, and his kids running roughshod over his empire. I mean, there's gotta be a million examples of very savvy sports owners who turn their entire kingdom over to their kids and all hell breaks loose.

• 1:18:14Bill Simmons?

  Here's the difference. So I did think about that and we see this in sports all the time and almost always it goes horribly and the kids, you know, they're basically their, their qualifications for the job is, I'm related to my dad and he's the rich guy who made all these things. They're not self-made, all this stuff. In this case, David Ellison has tried to put in the time for the last 10 to 12 years to try to figure out like, I want to be a content mogul. So it's, it's a little different than in sports sometimes when somebody's like, okay, I am, I'm gonna full chop. Here's my son. He's now the CEO and he'll be in charge of all of our basketball moves. You're like, oh no. David Ellison really does seem like he, he's, he's ready for the moment. I don't know if anybody else thinks he is,

• 1:18:58Bill Simmons?

  but it seems like he has a point of view and, and, and a style and a take on this, right?

• 1:19:05Speaker 05

  Certainly, and he definitely put in the time. We can argue about how successful Skydance was because their biggest successes have been essentially putting up money and glomming on to original franchises at Paramount. He had, you know, he had Top Gun. He's done Mission Impossibles. He had the Terminator franchise and he did those movies too. Varying degrees of success. So he hasn't made a huge impact via Skydance, but he's put a lot of money into movies and he's made a lot of TV shows. So in that sense, he has been kind of auditioning for this, but now he is in the absolute big league. I mean, he's gone in a, in, in a year and change from being a guy with a semi-successful

• 1:19:49Speaker 05

  production company to arguably the second or third most powerful person in Hollywood.

• 1:19:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Cause I'm trying, there's been so much glass half empty. I'm trying to think like, okay, what is the glass half full side? What are his wins so far?

• 1:20:03Speaker 05

  He gets credit for the, the Tom Cruise relationship and Top Gun Maverick, which he actually produced and made happen. And he gets credit for, I mean, Mission Impossible, these last couple of Mission Impossibles lost money. So, but they were kind of plagued by COVID charges and ended up being some of the most expensive movies of all time. He has built, the, the TV business is not bad. He actually, he's done Reacher. He's done Gracie and Grace and Frankie, which lasted seven seasons on Netflix, which is kind of unheard of. So he has had wins in TV.

• 1:20:38Speaker 05

  He's a producer, produce some producers, you know, some shows are hits, some movies are hits, some aren't. That's very different from what he is now. He is an owner, operator of the two of the five legacy studios. And it's just, it's unbelievable how much power he's amassed. He has news now. He's never had news before. He's got sports. I mean, he's now the proprietor of the arguably the most lucrative NFL package, the ASC package on Sundays. He's got UFC. He's got golf. He's got March Madness. Now he owns all of March Madness. I mean, it's pretty unbelievable.

• 1:21:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So I wrote down all the stuffy that they have now, the content empire, right? 200 plus million subs. Now I don't know how many of those are repetitive. I guess you find that out.

• 1:21:28Speaker 05

  In the US, in the US, antenna just did a study where it's 7.5 million subs overlap in the US. I don't know about overseas, but it's less overlap than with HBO and Netflix. There's a much bigger overlap there.

• 1:21:43Bill Simmons?

  HBO Paramount Plus, CBS, uh, an entity that I think got just discounted during this whole process, Pluto.

• 1:21:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:21:51Bill Simmons?

  They got Pluto, one of my favorites.

• 1:21:53Speaker 05

  I know.

• 1:21:54Bill Simmons?

  TNT, TBS.

• 1:21:55Speaker 05

  They own 90210. That's a big thing for you.

• 1:21:58Bill Simmons?

  They have 90210, they have all the challenges. TNT, TBS, Comedy Central, Discovery, MTV, all those, which I guess can just run as ghost ships on cable for as long as we have cable.

• 1:22:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's zombies.

• 1:22:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:10Speaker 05

  There's zombie networks and they will just milk them for the ridiculousness money and that's it.

• 1:22:16Bill Simmons?

  CNN and CBS News. Which who knows if they're even going to decide they want to be in news. And if you're going to talk about ways to cut debt, if they don't care about news to begin with, that could be just a place that sadly they would just chop.

• 1:22:31Speaker 05

  They're going to chop. I don't think they're going to kill it. CBS, CNN, CNN still throws off a lot of money from affiliate fees because it's a, you can't not carry CNN for like the five times a year that people tune in to watch some kind of breaking news moment.

• 1:22:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:46Speaker 05

  Like this weekend, exactly. But there are about 3,000 people that work at CNN.

• 1:22:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:51Speaker 05

  And there is a big overlap in terms of the product with CBS News. So that is a, the perfect place to start cutting.

• 1:22:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, sadly. Bleach Report, they have, they have all this IP, including DC Comics, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Looney Tunes, Game of Thrones, Top Gun, Mission Impossible, Star Trek, et cetera. And that's the biggest thing that shifted, I would say this century with, with the studios valuing that old IP more than ever. And now we're moving into the AI era and it's even probably twice as valuable as it was.

• 1:23:22Speaker 05

  If we look at what's going on with AI and they're soon going to be, anybody can create anything at any time, right?

• 1:23:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:29Speaker 05

  And YouTube is about to be flooded with AI-generated content. So in a sea where everything is possible, what isn't possible to recreate? And it's known intellectual property. You cannot recreate Batman with AI unless it's licensed, which they may do, but they will own Batman and you can do whatever you want with Batman. And I think that's honestly why Netflix was so interested in buying Warner Brothers because Netflix is increasingly taking on YouTube.

• 1:23:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:59Speaker 05

  They're doing podcasts, they're doing all these other things that eat up innings and eat up time on the service. And if they see AI coming in, they wanted. All of that IP in addition to the hundred years of movies in the library to put on the service.

• 1:24:15Bill Simmons?

  Right. So like for instance, they own the Godfather. There's a world where you could just do your own Godfather sequel between Godfather two and Godfather three and create all of AI and it sounds insane and awful. But like this weekend, I saw a commercial where somebody used was Airbnb. They use golden slumbers from the Beatles for a commercial and I'm like, that song's kind of sacred. This is now a commercial song, but we're just used to this now. All the songs we grew up with in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s are just commercial jingles now.

• 1:24:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, but they're getting paid.

• 1:24:46Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:24:47Speaker 05

  That's the difference. You have to pay for that.

• 1:24:49Bill Simmons?

  But people will get paid for this Godfather kind of stuff.

• 1:24:51Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 1:24:52Bill Simmons?

  It just feels weird, but I guess.

• 1:24:54Speaker 05

  I mean, Disney just did a deal with OpenAI to hand over all their characters for do it yourself content.

• 1:25:01Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:25:01Speaker 05

  Interestingly, in that deal, they did not give the voices and they did not give the actual physical human likenesses of the characters that are human. So if you have Luke Skywalker, it's the animated Luke Skywalker. It's not Mark Hamill. And that's because of the guild, the union regulations. They don't let you do that. You have to pay money for that. And Disney just said, okay, you can have Lightning McQueen and Yoda, but you're not, they're not going to sound like Lightning McQueen and Yoda because they, that's still intellectual property that's controlled.

• 1:25:31Bill Simmons?

  So the, and this is the wild, wild west coming up where we don't know, you know, what if Fox just says, hey, the Simpsons, go to town. Just make sure you pay us. And now all of a sudden there's just Simpsons stuff everywhere. Yeah.

• 1:25:43Speaker 05

  Homer Simpson is involved in this OpenAI deal.

• 1:25:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:46Speaker 05

  Not Homer's voice, because you have to get the voice separate from that, that, that image, but you're going to be able to do Homer Simpson videos on OpenAI and Disney Plus very soon.

• 1:25:58Bill Simmons?

  You also get the Paramount library, the WB library and two giant studio lots.

• 1:26:04Bill Simmons?

  Here's the thing. So 79 million, 79 billion in debt plus the 3% junk piece. So that's even higher.

• 1:26:12Bill Simmons?

  Paramount only controls two things right now when they merge these companies, which it'll take a year, assuming they merge headcount and subscription prices. Right? Other than that, they have no idea how this is going to go, but they, those are the two things that they can finagle the price however they want. Like they could chop. 60% of both companies and merge it into some smaller company. They could also raise the subscription price to some crazy number and do a little like what Disney and Hulu and Fox have tried to do, which has been really confusing. Like you can't, it's been really hard to get one of them. You kind of have to get all three and they dangle the deal.

• 1:26:49Speaker 05

  They're pushing people to the bundle is what they're doing.

• 1:26:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, which is what, where we're headed with this, right? And it'd be like $35 a month and you get HBO and Paramount and you get to watch football on CBS. And that's where we're headed, right?

• 1:27:02Speaker 05

  What, what they are saying is that there will only be one app. It will not be a bundle. It won't be like the Disney Hulu ESPN situation. They are saying that they're, these are going to be combined into one. They're calling it a super app and that it will be something like, let's call it HBO Max. And then you go open it and then there's Paramount plus tile and there's an HBO tile. And there's a CBS sports tile, that kind of thing.

• 1:27:28Bill Simmons?

  So we've never really seen a deal like this with somebody that is a really proud tech person that cares about this stuff and is like, we are going to innovate and do all, we have all of these different ideas, like Netflix has a great main page. You go to Netflix, it, it knows what you like. It knows how to push things in front of you and they're the best at it. You go to other pages like Peacock is just a quagmire. You go to Peacock.

• 1:27:53Speaker 05

  Peacock still doesn't know that I go there every Sunday morning to watch SNL. They do not know that.

• 1:27:59Bill Simmons?

  It's like, I just want to watch the NBA game. How do I, how do I do it? Can you guys help me?

• 1:28:02Speaker 05

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:28:03Bill Simmons?

  It's the worst app of all time.

• 1:28:05Speaker 05

  And then you finally get to SNL and it shows you the last 10 minutes of the episode that you previously watched. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I never watched the last 10 minutes of SNL because I turned it off after we get an update. I want, just show me the latest episode.

• 1:28:19Bill Simmons?

  What's the new one? What's the new traders? Like they just can't figure it out.

• 1:28:24Bill Simmons?

  So subscription price will be one way to make the money back. I still don't know, like I've heard you, you've talked at different pods about how do you get this, this debt down, all this stuff. 79 billion is like a brain breaker.

• 1:28:35Speaker 05

  It's a lot.

• 1:28:36Bill Simmons?

  That's, that's basically the entire Western Conference of NBA teams.

• 1:28:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, honestly, they're gonna have to cut a shit ton of costs. They're saying six billion that they're gonna take out. It's gonna be more than that. And they're saying that there's a lot of synergies and that they, you know, they will probably move everybody to one of the two physical lots and sell the other one. That's a couple billion dollars there. There's a lot of things they can do, merging CBS News and CNN. There's things that are gonna result in headcount reductions, but also just like physical, you know, a presence reduction and costs of, you know, office space and things like that. So you'll start to see those that that come down. But the real risk here is that they it can't come down enough. And that this company just essentially becomes all about paying off debt.

• 1:29:27Speaker 05

  And they're just cutting costs and reducing output and servicing the debt. And it's they're not actually investing in making this a good, you know, uh, productive company like you should be.

• 1:29:40Bill Simmons?

  Which is, I can't remember the first time I came on your pod and we talked about this. This goes to the heart of how stupid these media mergers are. I just don't understand them. They never work. I don't, I even when you look at Disney and Fox, like, I don't know, would Disney run that back? If they if they could do that one over again, would they? I'd love to know if you give them truth serum.

• 1:30:00Speaker 05

  Certain quarters of Disney would run that back. Bob Iger, Bob Iger insists it's great. And I don't think the final, I, you know, listen, I go back and forth on this. I don't know if Disney is where it is today as one of the companies that you assume will survive the streaming wars. If it didn't acquire all the content engines from FX and from Hulu and from, you know, the, the, the Fox properties, putting The Simpsons on Disney Plus. I don't know about that. That is, that is above my pay grade. There's probably some McKinsey study locked in the vault with Walt Disney's head somewhere. Just like, this is what we got out of Fox. But they spent a lot of money and it it caused a lot of debt issues for Disney.

• 1:30:45Speaker 05

  And they're still kind of digging out of that. They got Avatar, though. They got, they got a lot out of it, but it was a lot. Now, we have a better example. In Warner Brothers Discovery, because that was a transaction that produced about $55 billion in debt and Zasloff and his team essentially spent the next three years trying to pay that down. And then that's where we had, you know, cutting the Batgirl movie and firing thousands of people and all these things that kind of they took a hit to the brand. And luckily for them, they found someone to come along and buy this company. But if they hadn't, it would have been a downward spiral, I think.

• 1:31:21Bill Simmons?

  So would you say the best analogy for what Zasloff did here is he bought this house? He couldn't afford in a neighborhood that he liked.

• 1:31:30Bill Simmons?

  Real knew right away, basically, that he couldn't afford to keep the house. And that this was going to go really badly unless somebody else was driving down the street and said, whoa, I really love that house and that was his only out. That's basically what happened, right?

• 1:31:44Speaker 05

  The rich kid, the rich kid in school, he happened to be a friend and he just decided that he'd really like that. And then another guy said, I'd also like it. I don't want the rich kid to have it. And then all of a sudden it's a bidding war. I mean, if you look at the initial projections for Warner Brothers Discovery, they said that they were going to have $14 billion a year in EBITDA, which is a metric for profits. And it never even delivered in that first year. That first year came in under their estimates and it's because the linear TV business, which is where these companies make most of their money, still, the linear TV business is collapsing faster than people anticipated or that they let on. So they're like, oh, wait, we thought we were going to have 14 billion.

• 1:32:27Speaker 05

  Now we only have 12 this year and next year we have 10. And finally, when they're selling this company this past year, it's down to 8.5. And it just keeps melting, melting, melting. And that's it just throws the entire business trajectory off. They had to find a buyer.

• 1:32:42Bill Simmons?

  Who didn't know that the linear TV was gonna die dramatically? Like, we knew this 10 years ago.

• 1:32:46Speaker 05

  Well, it's true, but it's a, it's a matter of how fast it melts.

• 1:32:50Bill Simmons?

  As soon as high-speed internet was here, like, it was, it was a matter of time. I, I think one other thing with these mergers that never gets enough credit, and I say this as somebody who's worked in a couple of big companies, they're so destabilizing. And I don't think people, you, you wouldn't know unless you were working in a company and they either got acquired or acquired somebody else. But from the moment it happens, it's, it's Hunger Games. And you have repetitive departments all over the place, and you have people looking over their shoulder and people looking for other jobs because they don't know if their job's gonna exist. And it's just this, this amount of tension. Like, if Spotify merged with somebody tomorrow, I'd be terrified. I know what I'm dealing with now. I don't know what's, what I'm dealing with another company.

• 1:33:34Speaker 05

  Right, and if you look at these Warner Brothers and HBO people, they just, they have different bosses all the time.

• 1:33:39Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:33:39Speaker 05

  And with different bosses come different objectives, different strategies. And in a creative business, it's really hard to operate from a position of uncertainty and change. You look at some of the most stable places like Universal, which has had the same ownership for the past 15, 16 years. The film studio at Universal was able to build up these franchises and build up the illumination business to have Minions and Super Mario. And they had the relationship with Christopher Nolan. Yeah, you take a bet on Oppenheimer, and then he's gonna give you the Odyssey. And all of a sudden, you've got the biggest filmmaker, they have the Spielberg relationship. All these things, it takes a lot, and it takes a stable team to do.

• 1:34:21Speaker 05

  And when you are changing the rudder every couple of years, it's just a lot more difficult.

• 1:34:27Bill Simmons?

  Well, look at Amazon right now. Amazon's been trying to get into all kinds of different things. And every three months, they have another rework.

• 1:34:34Speaker 05

  It's amazing. I know. And they still haven't gotten what they want out of that entire purchase of MGM, which is a freaking James Bond movie.

• 1:34:42Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:34:42Speaker 05

  They had to buy out, they had to buy out the broccoli family because they essentially refused to make any movies for them because they hated them.

• 1:34:49Bill Simmons?

  Right. I want to do some winners and losers.

• 1:34:54Bill Simmons?

  Winner, the first winner, we talked about him before, but David Ellison, who, I gotta say, I, I've only heard like at least decent things. I don't, he's not like a King Joffrey character where people are like, what a prick. Oh my God.

• 1:35:08Speaker 05

  No, actually very nice guy, very nice guy.

• 1:35:10Bill Simmons?

  Everybody seems to like him. I don't know if he's, should be running one of the biggest content, whatever, monoliths we've ever seen, but he at least seems like, not like a Zasloff thing where he's in it to get some sort of payoff at the end. I don't think that's his intention.

• 1:35:26Speaker 05

  No, he seems to be in it because he genuinely likes this business and wants to make good things. Now, we can argue about his taste. He's made a lot of movies that are not great. And he has much more commercial taste than say like his sister Megan Ellison, who is a great auteur, producer and financier of movies. Until she ran out of money and her father basically said enough's enough, but.

• 1:35:48Bill Simmons?

  That would make her not a good financier, by the way.

• 1:35:51Speaker 05

  Who?

• 1:35:52Bill Simmons?

  I would say Megan Ellison maybe wasn't a good financier because her movies lost money.

• 1:35:56Speaker 05

  Great taste, great taste. Yes. Made some very good movies. But I'd put her rewatchable number up against David Ellison's and I bet she has more.

• 1:36:05Bill Simmons?

  That would be an interesting battle. All right. Winners and losers. First of all, 79 billion in debt. I just staggering. I'm giving that a winner just because I didn't even know that was possible. That sounds like fucking out of Star Wars.

• 1:36:17Speaker 05

  You made the debt a winner?

• 1:36:18Bill Simmons?

  I think it's gonna be a record. I think that's it. I think we've peaked. I don't think anyone's feeding this.

• 1:36:23Speaker 05

  I guess these lenders, like Apollo and these, these big lenders.

• 1:36:27Bill Simmons?

  Sure. 79 is gonna be, this is like, like Barry Bonds said, 73 homers. We're never topping. I'll make it in a winner.

• 1:36:33Speaker 05

  And much like that, we will come to question the, how it all happened.

• 1:36:39Bill Simmons?

  Loser, everyone scared of AI and what it might do to content. This is like your D day. Cause this is now the first time somebody that has, and Brian Phillips wrote about this for The Ringer this week. Somebody with. Real insight and awareness and ability to use data, surveillance, name anything evil that that we're all afraid of.

• 1:37:02Speaker 05

  TikTok. Don't forget.

• 1:37:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:04Speaker 05

  David Ellison's father, Larry, is one of the investors in the US version of TikTok.

• 1:37:09Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:37:09Speaker 05

  And they still are talking about this like magical digital fairy dust that they're going to sprinkle over the whole company and turn it into a big tech media powerhouse. And not sure quite how that's going to happen, but I'm sure it'll be bad for the culture and our data and all these other things.

• 1:37:24Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's going to be, AI is going to probably come in a bunch of different ways for content. I think for when you're talking about editing movies and producing movies and some of, some of the stuff that has just jobs that have existed for 120 years, I'm sure that's part of their plan, right? We could cut the cost here, here, here. We could just have, instead of having 200 people on this movie, we could have 70 and.

• 1:37:50Speaker 05

  That's throughout Hollywood, though.

• 1:37:52Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 1:37:52Speaker 05

  There is a push right now that the thinking is these movies cannot continue to cost $200 million to make, especially in animation, but even in other, you know, sci-fi effects driven movies, they've got to bring the cost down and AI is going to be a big part of that.

• 1:38:06Bill Simmons?

  All right. I have a controversial winner. People who make content because, yeah, all right, I'm going to land this plane. You're going to be confused for most of the time. I think if Netflix got Warner Brothers, I think we would have moved into a dangerous place with content that I would compare to this. Uh, and I'm in an AL keeper fantasy league where we have, we can keep guy, we can keep 10 keepers. We have minor leaguers and all that. And sometimes somebody will get a big lead in like July. And you have to decide like, do I want to chase this guy or would it be stupid to chase this guy and make trades? You know what? I'm going to let him win the title and I, I have a better chance next year. I think Netflix's lead would have been especially like with the know-how and the intelligence they have.

• 1:38:51Bill Simmons?

  I actually think it, it could have turned into a situation where everybody else is like, yeah, we're just going to pick our spots. We can't compete with those guys. And I don't know if it would have been great for people who do movies, television shows and documentaries specifically. Cause who's bidding against them if everybody is just going to be careful because they can't beat Netflix?

• 1:39:11Speaker 05

  Not a bad take. I agree with you and obviously if this merged company can get its act together and become that third or fourth big player alongside Netflix and Amazon and Disney. That that creates a ultimately creates a more robust market if there are four real players that can buy your project at any given time. And then God knows what Apple is doing.

• 1:39:35Bill Simmons?

  Well, I was gonna say, plus Apple, if you're a relatively famous person who looks good in a giant thumbnail.

• 1:39:40Speaker 05

  Exactly. And and they're gonna overspend on whatever you want to do.

• 1:39:44Bill Simmons?

  Jennifer Lawrence, come on up. We got an Apple show for you. Pose. Take a picture.

• 1:39:48Speaker 05

  Yes, yes. I know.

• 1:39:49Bill Simmons?

  But you're divorced mom and and your your husband's been murdered. Go.

• 1:39:54Speaker 05

  The the that is essentially what Ellison has been arguing and what they're going to argue to regulators to approve this deal is that this was a necessary evil to to get Hollywood modernized for the tech era. And that these are globally scaled companies and Hollywood has never faced globally scaled media companies before. It's always been an oligopoly of only these five or six studios can distribute movies worldwide. And that's why frankly, that's why they stayed in existence for 100 years. Now that's all gone with the internet and you have scaled television companies and they need to combine to chase that. And it's going to be painful in the short term.

• 1:40:39Speaker 05

  It's not no question, taking these buyers out, like when Warner's and HBO were competing against Paramount and all the rest, it was just better for buyers. But if this goes through, it will be painful. And then maybe this company can build up and become a real scaled player.

• 1:40:55Bill Simmons?

  Cause I like.

• 1:40:56Speaker 05

  Certainly not taking your best projects to Paramount right now.

• 1:40:59Bill Simmons?

  Right. And if you think about 2017, 18, 19, pre-COVID, there were just a lot of people that had money and wanted to do stuff and were competing against each other. And then that slowly died after COVID.

• 1:41:11Speaker 05

  Well, there was television. There was cable television still making original shows. Now that's all gone. Cable television not making original shows, certainly not in scripted. So it's just the streaming players and a little bit of broadcast TV in there. You know, it's just, it's just a lot less.

• 1:41:29Bill Simmons?

  Melanie's, I I decided to watch the Survivor season for the first time in a while because it's 50. It was a three hour season premiere.

• 1:41:38Bill Simmons?

  CBS is basically like, guys, we gotta go three hours. We have two police shows, two doctor shows, two fire shows. We have football. We don't really have a lot going on. So we're just gonna have this from eight to 11 tonight. Sorry. And guess what? I watched it. Fast forwarded through all the commercials.

• 1:41:55Speaker 05

  And you know what? They're doing a shorter shoot. Jeff Probst came on the town and was talking about how they do a shorter shoot on location now than they used to. And then the episodes are now often longer than they used to.

• 1:42:07Bill Simmons?

  Right. And he is now AI. I don't know if he announced that on the pod.

• 1:42:11Speaker 05

  Would not surprise me. He does not age.

• 1:42:14Bill Simmons?

  Anyway, that's my glass half full is that maybe this will lead to two heavyweights competing for projects constantly, which I'm not against. I might be wrong.

• 1:42:24Speaker 05

  You forgot one loser. I think.

• 1:42:26Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I have a lot of, I have losers coming.

• 1:42:28Speaker 05

  Continue, continue.

• 1:42:30Bill Simmons?

  Well, I have another winner, the NFL, because Goodell, who's just a genius with this stuff, puts that little thing in like, hey, if there's a merger, we get to redo our deal.

• 1:42:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:42:40Bill Simmons?

  So now, now, Skydance in the NFL, you don't need to, you know, it's not hard to figure out that they're gonna be, have the hometown advantage.

• 1:42:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:42:50Bill Simmons?

  But nobody really has an advantage with Goodell. And whatever he wants to do to get more money, he's gonna do it. So if he decides like, I've decided we have Friday Night Football, and we're gonna use AFC teams, and sorry CBS, you're just gonna have to eat shit because we're gonna have good games on Friday night. CBS will be like, okay, fine.

• 1:43:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:43:08Bill Simmons?

  All right.

• 1:43:08Speaker 05

  Not much you can do. I mean, they've been slowly taking games away from those big packages. The one thing I would say is that I do think the NFL still needs broadcast. I don't think you're gonna see them completely abandon CBS.

• 1:43:23Bill Simmons?

  I don't think you will either.

• 1:43:24Speaker 05

  Go to Netflix or something like that. It would, they know their customer, and the customer viewer still wants that broadcast experience.

• 1:43:33Bill Simmons?

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• 1:44:18Bill Simmons?

  Get 20% off your first purchase at Viori.com/Simmons and discover the versatility of Viori clothing. Exclusions apply, visit the website for full terms and conditions. So I have seven, seven suitors for the NFL when this all opens up. You tell me absolutely have to have it. I'd love to have it, or this is a luxury. Those are the three answers. CBS Paramount, I feel like that's a, we absolutely have to have it, right?

• 1:44:48Speaker 05

  100% agree.

• 1:44:50Bill Simmons?

  NBC?

• 1:44:53Speaker 05

  Yes, agreed.

• 1:44:54Bill Simmons?

  All right, we're two for two.

• 1:44:55Speaker 05

  That is, they have the number one program in all of television. It's an anchor of their entire sales strategy and the Olympics are only every four years. NBA so far has not performed as much as they want it to.

• 1:45:08Bill Simmons?

  What are you talking about? Every game ever is the most watched game we've ever had.

• 1:45:12Speaker 05

  Yeah. These Nielsen numbers, let's see next year when the big data is compared against the big data. But uh, I, it's a little less than CBS, but I still think NFL's must have for NBC.

• 1:45:24Bill Simmons?

  Well, we agree. So that's two. Fox, I think is must.

• 1:45:28Speaker 05

  Oh, there, it's, it's mission critical. If, what is Fox without NFL? What, what are they?

• 1:45:35Bill Simmons?

  They have to have it and they've, they've seen, they've seen both realities. When they've had it and when they haven't had it and they don't want to go back.

• 1:45:42Speaker 05

  No, that's what the Bank of America analysts, they just downgraded Fox because of this whole prospect of the rights going up. Because there's, what are they going to do? They have to just eat it.

• 1:45:54Bill Simmons?

  ESPN?

• 1:45:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:45:58Bill Simmons?

  I think they're a have to. We have four have to have it's we're four for four. I think they're a have to.

• 1:46:04Speaker 05

  With all the plans that ESPN is making and how much time they have put NFL on ABC as well.

• 1:46:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:11Speaker 05

  Like, that was not supposed to be the case. And they've renegotiated those deals to put Monday Night Football on ABC a lot. So I think it's a must have.

• 1:46:21Bill Simmons?

  More on them in a second. Um, Amazon is our fifth suitor. I would put them in the

• 1:46:30Bill Simmons?

  need to have it, but it's not a game breaker.

• 1:46:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm putting them in the middle category. I think it's a like to have. Now, they love it. And it's it's one of the only things that consistently works on Amazon. And they feel that they've made great strides in getting better games and the productions are better and they've finally, they've convinced that last cohort of people to watch, you know, when when they first started and took the games from Fox, the ratings went down just because some people in this country didn't know where to find the game. So they forgot about it or whatever. Now they're bringing in more of those people and they it's sort of a cornerstone of their offerings. But like with anything with Amazon, it's a it's it's a luxury. They are a sales platform. They want you to buy more toilet paper and all of this content is just in service of buying more toilet paper.

• 1:47:18Bill Simmons?

  And they need three or four things like the NFL.

• 1:47:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:47:22Bill Simmons?

  To accomplish that goal. I agree. I wouldn't say they're on the level of the first four, but they're one level below. And then the last two are Netflix and YouTube, which I would say are luxury needed, but you're not crying yourself to sleep if you don't get it.

• 1:47:36Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 1:47:36Bill Simmons?

  You'll be fine.

• 1:47:38Speaker 05

  I agree. And especially Netflix, because they they see the numbers and they have a big initiative to increase their advertising sales and the NFL can do that. But they're just not going to fall over themselves to steal away a full package of games unless it makes sense, unless it's like bespoke, you know, the international games. I I've always thought that they're gonna they're gonna eventually evolve into one international game per week or for, you know, 12 of the 17 weeks or something like that. And they will carve out those games for a 9am or or 8am game every week and it will be on Netflix because it will be global.

• 1:48:20Bill Simmons?

  So the 12, 12 international games Netflix owns all 12. And by the way, some of those are already on NFL Network. They could just easily sell them to Netflix.

• 1:48:29Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:48:29Bill Simmons?

  Take the journey game.

• 1:48:31Speaker 05

  If they have to take them away from CBS or Fox, so be it.

• 1:48:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And by the way, the NFL would tell CBS, hey, we're going to take these games.

• 1:48:41Bill Simmons?

  You want to fight? CBS would go, okay, take them. All right. So that's five. There are no other suitors, right? That's seven.

• 1:48:49Speaker 05

  Well, where's Apple?

• 1:48:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Where is Apple? Where's Apple? You tell me.

• 1:48:53Speaker 05

  Are they even in this? That is the eternal question. Are they interested? They have not wanted to dabble. They, they have said that, you know, they like their, their F1 deal that they just did. They want, they like their MLS deal or the MLS. Might have a word about that, but they have not, they have not wanted to just get a game or two here or there. And we'll see, you know, the MLB did a whole Friday night baseball thing with them. I mean, I, who knows if that works. There's just so many MLB games. But I've always wondered.

• 1:49:26Bill Simmons?

  Is how many people have Apple TV? I think is the scarier question because I don't think it's a lot.

• 1:49:30Speaker 05

  It's not a lot and they're now doing things about that. They're putting, they're selling through other things. They just did a deal with Roku to sell Roku. They capitulated and they sell through Amazon now.

• 1:49:40Bill Simmons?

  I thought that Roku thing was fascinating. Because that was, that's their main competitor. Yeah. It was, it was a wave in the white flag, basically.

• 1:49:48Speaker 05

  Absolutely. And they did it earlier with Amazon. They basically came out guns blazing, saying, we are Apple Incorporated. We are the platform that everybody has to have. And everyone's like, ah, not really. When it comes to premium video and they basically raised the right white flag and said, okay, we'll sell via Amazon and we'll sell via Roku. And hopefully we'll raise our numbers.

• 1:50:08Bill Simmons?

  I like Roku. Um, one more winner here. Well, I have a couple more, actually. Netflix, who, look, I love the spin and you've been on it too about like, wow, this is all along, they were, they were trying to push this deal and if they didn't get it, it still was great for them because they sat on it. I don't think that's true. They spent a lot of time on this. Nobody likes to spend a lot of time to not get something, but they did.

• 1:50:33Speaker 05

  And have your stock go down 30%.

• 1:50:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but they did. They did get $2.8 billion as a breakup fee, which they can just now put toward, toward those international NFL games you mentioned and other stuff.

• 1:50:45Speaker 05

  And a big competitor has taken on almost $80 billion in debt to go after this deal.

• 1:50:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:51Speaker 05

  So they got them that. They also, you know, the Ellison's wanted to buy this company for $19 a share in the fall.

• 1:50:57Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:50:57Speaker 05

  And it went up by, what is that, 40% just because Netflix was involved in 30, you know, 19 to $31. So that's a lot.

• 1:51:06Bill Simmons?

  It would be funny if the Mavericks had been able to use this strategy with the Luca trade, where the trade went through and, and then the other teams were like, you didn't get enough. And then the Mavericks like, we didn't get enough. The deal is now we're accepting bids still. And it was like, the Lakers were like, wait, we had a deal. What happened?

• 1:51:23Speaker 05

  Can you imagine if that were true in sports, if you could accept a trade and then everybody could react and up the offer?

• 1:51:30Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:51:30Speaker 05

  Cause they, all it would do is create a lane there for fan bases to go completely nuts.

• 1:51:35Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:51:35Speaker 05

  When a trade is made and then the ownership would have to respond.

• 1:51:38Bill Simmons?

  Right. Well, that was why they never wanted to leak it out. Uh, loser. Everyone at HBO probably because I, they could spin this all they want. We've been in this scenario before, ironically with HBO with AT&T, um, where everybody said, no, no, it's gonna be great. Everybody's gonna work together. I'm gonna go glass half empty on this. Uh, we'll see. But you mentioned on your podcast how Casey Bloys, who's I think probably the most respected TV executive or one of them, um, he is contracts up next year. Um, I think he saw what happened to Richard Puppler in the 2010s when Stanky and AT&T took over. And, uh, this is, uh, I want to see how this plays out for me.

• 1:52:20Speaker 05

  Listen, Casey has it in his contract that he reports to the CEO of the company. So if Paramount wants to honor that and have him report to David Ellison and not have to report to all the streaming executives that Ellison has hired, including a woman Cindy Holland, who was at Netflix, so I don't think he, she and Casey would, would mix well together. Maybe that will work out. Ellison said, straight up, HBO should stay HBO, do what they do best. Easier said than done.

• 1:52:47Bill Simmons?

  What happens if they're bidding on the same project?

• 1:52:50Speaker 05

  Exactly. What, what happens then? I mean, there have been examples of that. Netflix famously has a culture where you can get a no from one division of the company and then you can get a yes from another. So they do have competing arms there within the same company. I don't know what would happen there if they had, if that, that situation existed. I don't know if they'll have the resources to continue to do what they do. The HBO process is really rigorous. They don't just put stuff on. They are not afraid to scrap a pilot and start over. We just, we had Rachel Senet on the town with I Love LA. They completely reshoot that pilot.

• 1:53:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:27Speaker 05

  And most places would just say, just cut bait and be like, okay, busted pilot, we're done. But with HBO, you know, famously with Game of Thrones and like, they just, they work it a lot longer and you can see in the product. And I don't know if that's gonna be allowed anymore.

• 1:53:42Bill Simmons?

  Glass half full Bill would say HBO is so different than Paramount from the audiences they're going for, that maybe this can work.

• 1:53:49Speaker 05

  It's definitely complimentary. You know, they have that CBS style audience on Paramount Plus. They have NFL viewers. They have, you know, the, the sports people.

• 1:54:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:00Speaker 05

  And HBO is not that. They have a different cohort of people and maybe one plus one will be three here.

• 1:54:07Bill Simmons?

  Maybe. Strong emphasis on the M and maybe. The winner, the sports piece of Paramount, which now has the NFL, the AFC side, MLB, NHL, Champions League, March Madness, the Masters, UFC, Zuffa Boxing, which they just launched, like.

• 1:54:24Bill Simmons?

  I mean, I'll throw the same with loser ESPN who has Monday Night Football, college football, and college football playoffs, college hoops, Wimbledon, US Open, NBA, NBA Finals, hockey, wrestling pay-per-views. Like, it's kinda even when you add all the Paramount stuff against ESPN and, and suddenly ESPN doesn't look worldwide leader-ish in the same way, right?

• 1:54:44Speaker 05

  And here's the interesting thing. It's in these deals where Paramount can start to deploy these sports across all of these new cable networks that they own. So you're gonna see UFC on TNT, or maybe even HBO, and you're gonna see them try to get the most out of these sports deals and keep the price of those cable networks as high as possible for as long as possible, because that's where they make their money.

• 1:55:10Bill Simmons?

  Yep. Winner NBC Universal, just because they can position themselves as, "We're over here. You don't like some of the politics, the Paramount, all that stuff? We're, we're just trying to do good stuff and, and, and be here and we, we have stability and come this way."

• 1:55:28Speaker 05

  I don't know if I agree on that one. I would put them in a loser. They, listen, remember, they were in, they made a bid on Warner's. It wasn't a very good bid, and I think it was just to get the, you know, a look at their books. But NBC Universal doesn't have a global streaming product. They have Peacock, which is only domestic. And in fact, their leadership just said today that they're not even trying to be global. They're, they're good with domestic. That is not a long-term strategy. They need something. They need some kind of transformative deal, I think, if they want to be considered one of the global players here. Otherwise, they're just gonna get left behind. They have a great movie studio, though.

• 1:56:06Bill Simmons?

  Great app, though. Peacock app.

• 1:56:08Speaker 05

  Oh, my God.

• 1:56:09Bill Simmons?

  Takes 20 minutes to find anything. I don't know. I, I feel like they can still position themselves as like the underdog that could against this and try to, try to align with some other people and be like, "All these, everyone's spending so much money in this arms race, and we're over here and we're disciplined and we have this business." Might work, who knows?

• 1:56:28Speaker 05

  Maybe, maybe they'll do a joint venture with Amazon to get global or something. I, I don't know. But they have a great, or get bought. They have a great movie studio. They have, you know, they have NBC. They've got a lot of sports still, so it's not like they're bad. They've been bulking up on sports. They got NBA and MLB. So it's not like they're not players. It's just the global streaming strategy piece is, is really tough.

• 1:56:51Bill Simmons?

  But is it okay to just... Have a good business and not try to conquer the conquer the universe.

• 1:56:57Speaker 05

  Look at Sony. Sony doesn't have any global streamer at all.

• 1:57:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:01Speaker 05

  They don't have a general, they have Crunchyroll, but Sony didn't even try to enter the streaming wars and they preferred the arms dealers strategy where they just sell their stuff to everybody else.

• 1:57:10Bill Simmons?

  I like it.

• 1:57:10Speaker 05

  And it seems to be working out well for them. They had K-pop Demon Hunters on Netflix, biggest movie of all time. They have their movies now. They got $7 billion to license their movies to Netflix.

• 1:57:22Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:57:22Speaker 05

  Now, it's a multi-year deal and it's global, but that's a pretty big vote of confidence in your studio to get Netflix to pay you $7 billion to get the first run on the new movies and to be, to be able to air some of the old movies as well. Like, that's why these companies are worth what they are worth, because they have a 100-year library of movies.

• 1:57:44Bill Simmons?

  I would rather be them than Paramount with $89 billion in debt, just, just, just for the record.

• 1:57:50Speaker 05

  Well, and then what's gonna happen if Netflix goes after them? They're not officially for sale, Sony.

• 1:57:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:55Speaker 05

  But, you know, if you want a company that's at least semi-comparable to Warner Brothers as a studio, not the streaming component, Sony is sitting right there. They're not for sale. They're owned by a Japanese company, but who knows?

• 1:58:07Bill Simmons?

  Sony and NBC Universal and that kind of level, I think it's okay. I think it's like in sports, you don't have to be the Dodgers spending $700 million on salary every year.

• 1:58:15Speaker 05

  How dare you?

• 1:58:16Bill Simmons?

  You might be okay being in the NL Central and just banging out wins and playoff appearances.

• 1:58:21Speaker 05

  If that's good enough for you, then that's fine. I prefer the Dodgers.

• 1:58:24Bill Simmons?

  Loser. Everyone that works at Warner's Brothers, this is just brutal.

• 1:58:27Speaker 05

  It's awful.

• 1:58:28Bill Simmons?

  This is like an all-time, this sucks.

• 1:58:30Speaker 05

  And the gut punch, they were kind of coming around to Netflix.

• 1:58:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:35Speaker 05

  They were, Netflix was saying the right things. We believe in theatrical now and we're gonna, this is gonna be a vertical merger. We're not gonna fire everybody. We love what you do. We're gonna sell to other platforms. Then boom, within 48 hours, it's like yanked away from Netflix and all of a sudden, it's not only the Ellison's who have turned CBS into more like Fox News, which is what people at the Warner lot do not like. And then they say, all of a sudden, they're gonna smash together two studios and fire thousands of people.

• 1:59:06Bill Simmons?

  Loser movie theaters. Cause Ellison basically said, we're in your 30 movies over there. I don't believe that number at all.

• 1:59:15Speaker 05

  That seems, seems aspirational. Let's just say that.

• 1:59:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't believe that.

• 1:59:19Speaker 05

  I mean, Netflix tried to make 30 movies a year and literally you watch some of those movies. They're not even finished.

• 1:59:24Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:59:25Speaker 05

  Like they're, they were just pumping them out to get them out because they needed that engagement machine and that, and to put 30 movies a year in theaters. You gotta have a higher bar than just kind of some of the Netflix slop.

• 1:59:39Bill Simmons?

  It's two studios though. So it's really 15 movies from each studio.

• 1:59:43Speaker 05

  It is.

• 1:59:43Bill Simmons?

  Which is like.

• 1:59:44Speaker 05

  More than each of those studios produces currently.

• 1:59:47Bill Simmons?

  Fair. Winner Zasloff. I hate making him a winner.

• 1:59:50Speaker 05

  Oh my God.

• 1:59:51Bill Simmons?

  He's gonna make a crazy amount of money. It's unbelievable. This worked out for him.

• 1:59:54Speaker 05

  Bill, you're, you're gonna say crazy. I'm gonna say grotesque. A guy should not make 800 million dollars off of a financial transaction that causes thousands of jobs to be lost. Like what are we doing? I know it's all about the shareholders and he delivered for the shareholders and that's where his compensation was set. If the shareholders do well, he does well, but, but it, it feels, it feels like insane that this guy who managed the company down, down, down, and then got lucky when someone wanted to buy it can make that kind of money.

• 2:00:29Bill Simmons?

  It's almost like a plot out of Succession.

• 2:00:33Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 2:00:33Bill Simmons?

  Like, like it's like a season three, season four plot where they're like, we'll buy it. We'll ruin the company and then blah, blah, blah.

• 2:00:39Speaker 05

  I know.

• 2:00:40Bill Simmons?

  My last loser is the city of Los Angeles because we're gonna have a ton of people that, that are, you know, that are gonna lose their jobs out of all this, which is terrible. You have these two lots. I'm still suspicious. They're gonna keep both lots in the same kind of, who knows?

• 2:00:57Speaker 05

  Oh, I don't think they will. I think they'll sell one. The question is, will they sell?

• 2:01:01Bill Simmons?

  Who are they selling it to? Well, maybe.

• 2:01:03Speaker 05

  Netflix has wanted the Paramount lot. So maybe Ellison will sell. This was Craig's idea on the town, by the way. It's brilliant. They should sell the Paramount lot to Netflix, have them move in and then everybody at Paramount Warner Brothers goes to Warner Brothers.

• 2:01:18Bill Simmons?

  Interesting. We found out on your pod the other day, Craig loves the Saudis. We found that on the Friday.

• 2:01:23Speaker 05

  Oh, he's a big Saudi fan.

• 2:01:25Bill Simmons?

  Saudi.

• 2:01:26Speaker 05

  Yeah. No, but they gotta be winners here. They're the Saudis. If this deal goes through, we don't know what the money configuration is, but it was announced a few months ago that the Saudis, the Qataris and the Abu Dhabians, they have funds that are in this deal. So all of a sudden they're going to own a piece of CNN and CBS News and all of these outlets that are pretty powerful in terms of potential propaganda.

• 2:01:52Bill Simmons?

  Well, they already own the Lakers, so nobody, nobody seemed to care about that. No, but where Los Angeles is now, this whole decade, COVID, the Hollywood, just all hell breaking loose over and over again, all the strikes, the fires, which the lack of accountability, basically from everybody that runs the city and the state, which has just been disgusting to watch over and over again, the coverups afterwards that people are reporting about, not even noticing.

• 2:02:22Bill Simmons?

  I've never felt more uncertain about the future of this city. The city that you have Netflix moving and building entire campus in New Jersey so they can get better tax credits and build a bunch of stuff there. And all these people bolting, these studios empty, no matter, you could go to Sunset Gower, you could go to all these places that used to be packed and they're just not anymore. Nobody has a plan for any of it. The governor of the state is now running for 2028 election instead of worrying about the state he's in now. And it's, it's just the worst shape we've ever been in with all this stuff. Now on top of it, all these people are going to lose their jobs.

• 2:02:56Speaker 05

  I agree with you to a point.

• 2:02:58Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 2:02:59Speaker 05

  I am, I'm from Southern California and I'm old enough to remember like the late eighties, early nineties with the riots and the gang wars and like where you literally, I was from Orange County, you literally would not go to LA. Like it was, it was bad. And, and this is not that. Like LA is a pretty nice place to live. We both live here. It's a great city to live in, but this is a existential moment for this particular industry that I think is a key driver of the economy. It's not the Only driver, there's many, many different things about LA that make it what it is. But I think it's an underrated aspect of what makes LA LA is this creative class of people that come here to work in the entertainment business.

• 2:03:41Speaker 05

  And that has, that needs a boost. It needs some kind of incentive. Or, you know, maybe the, the city should declare both of these lots to be landmarks that cannot be developed. So we don't get the Paramount lot turned into condos. So that when this industry does come back, whether it's a new version that is AI powered or creator driven. Or the studios get their acts together and there is a growth mode that they can come back and all these places can get filled with, with activity again. I do think it will happen. It's just cyclical and we are in a very big down cycle right now.

• 2:04:17Bill Simmons?

  It's awful. I mean, they built this bridge in downtown LA that they lit up every night. They spent years and years building it and within a year, everybody stole the copper from it. And now it doesn't light up at night. And it was like, what was all the traffic for, for five years? Like I, I don't see a lot of planning and strategy with, I remember when I moved here in 2002.

• 2:04:39Bill Simmons?

  You know, you'd meet people and you'd meet people and like your kids pre K and stuff, but what do you do? Oh, I'm a writer. Oh, I'm an entertainment lawyer. Oh, I do props for movies and everybody seemed to work in the industry somehow. And the more that these jobs and these companies push that stuff, either they're pushing to leave LA and go somewhere else. But their jobs are disappearing. I, I just think LA is going to lose a lot of what made it LA. It's just not the same city if that happens.

• 2:05:06Speaker 05

  I agree, but I do think things are changing.

• 2:05:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:10Speaker 05

  How many people do you know that work in the podcast business?

• 2:05:14Bill Simmons?

  True.

• 2:05:14Speaker 05

  A lot now.

• 2:05:14Bill Simmons?

  A lot.

• 2:05:15Speaker 05

  A lot of those are here. How many people do you know that work in the creator business?

• 2:05:19Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:05:20Speaker 05

  There are full on agencies and production studios and, you know, YouTube has a huge presence here. These are things that were not in LA 10 years ago. So it, the entire notion of the business is changing. There, no, there's no pilot season anymore, though they're doing some pilots, but. Pilot season used to be a thing. People would move here because there were a hundred pilots of TV shows that were made between January and March every year. And it was like a boom town. That doesn't

• 2:05:50Bill Simmons?

  Every year too, by the way, it was like the NFL playoffs. You knew it was happening. You could rely. Now they now we don't even have up for us.

• 2:05:56Speaker 05

  Wasn't it wasn't that your idea to have a Pluto channel just for busted pilots?

• 2:06:00Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 2:06:01Speaker 05

  Like where you just play old pilots?

• 2:06:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we could still do it. There's a million of them.

• 2:06:06Speaker 05

  And you'd see big actors who were on bad pilots before they became famous. I know that would be great.

• 2:06:11Bill Simmons?

  We just did Fargo for rewatchables for next week. And one of the tidbits was that Edie Falco was in the Fargo TV series developed the year after the movie. And if it had become a TV series, she's not Carmela Soprano.

• 2:06:24Speaker 05

  Amazing.

• 2:06:25Bill Simmons?

  Right? And it's like, there's a million stories like that. And now we barely make any TV pilots. But I think when when you have like the New Jersey thing, I thought was alarming. When Netflix feels like this is just better for us to do this than to stay here. That's when you know.

• 2:06:40Speaker 05

  But it's not okay. But but that the days of Netflix being building a production studio in LA, there's just not the land for that. They were they got a swath of land there.

• 2:06:51Bill Simmons?

  True.

• 2:06:51Speaker 05

  To essentially run roughshod on whatever they wanted to do. They did the same thing in Albuquerque.

• 2:06:56Bill Simmons?

  We could have given them city of industry. I still don't know what happens there. Just give them the whole place.

• 2:07:00Speaker 05

  You could. Yes, you could. But there's not the There's not the infrastructure here. There should be. I agree that there should be incentives in place here. And I feel like this state is kind of getting its act together a little bit with some of these production incentives. It's better than it used to be, but it's not competitive with these other places. They want it more.

• 2:07:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:20Speaker 05

  And they're just they're going to get it because there's been this acceptance that people in LA will just like they will be filled anyways. And they're not filled. These studios are not filled.

• 2:07:30Bill Simmons?

  It's crazy to watch what's happening. These places were packed all the time and they're just not. Well, one guy who really wanted it, David Ellison.

• 2:07:39Speaker 05

  He has a chance now. He can build a huge production studio in LA if he wants.

• 2:07:43Bill Simmons?

  Where's he gonna get the money? He's already got 79 million plus 3% of debt.

• 2:07:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, billion, billion.

• 2:07:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, that, the other thing is they're involved peripherally with a bunch of the sports stuff too. Right? These European teams, the NBA Europe League, there's all kinds of IP that can come from that. So it's a, it's, it's a, it's a daunting job. I don't know if he's ready for it. He certainly doesn't have the life experience or the work experience to run anything like that. But I also don't know if anyone does. I don't know who could have done this. You're talking about like Bob Iger.

• 2:08:17Speaker 05

  It's out of another era. We take it for granted these days that these CEOs and people who run Hollywood are in their 60s and 70s. But like in the 80s and 90s, the people running the studios were like 32 years old. Jeffrey Katzenberg was reinventing the Disney Animation Group when he was in his 30s. He was in his 30s, but at Paramount, he was in his 20s. And like, it used to be normal that you ran companies in your early 40s. Now it's less so.

• 2:08:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, we did a good job, but not talking about Trump. I'm glad for both of us. Matt Belloni, you have Monday, Wednesday, Friday every week. And producer Craig, we keep throwing under the bus and saying he loves the Saudis, but it's fine. We share him. We share custody of Craig.

• 2:08:59Speaker 05

  The heart wants what the heart wants. And I am happy for Craig. And he'll live very, he'll live in comfort for his entire life.

• 2:09:06Bill Simmons?

  If we were being held off a cliff like the kids in The Good Son at the end, and Craig was holding on to us, who does he let go? We're gonna have to give him true sentiment, find out.

• 2:09:14Speaker 05

  Me, of course.

• 2:09:16Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. I don't know. He loves you. You take him everywhere. You take him to these parties.

• 2:09:20Speaker 05

  I do. I do take him to parties.

• 2:09:22Bill Simmons?

  You put in more time because you live on the same side of LA with him.

• 2:09:25Speaker 05

  That's, that's true. But you made him a star. You gave him a fantasy football show. So you made Craig a star.

• 2:09:30Bill Simmons?

  All right. Tony, good to see you. Thanks for, uh, thanks for all the time.

• 2:09:33Speaker 05

  Yes, thank you.

• 2:09:36Bill Simmons?

  All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Jacoby. Thanks to Belloni. Thanks to Gahan Eduardo as well. I'm gonna be back on this feed on Thursday. Don't forget about rewatchables. Sicario, that's already up. Fargo coming next week. It's CR month. Buckle up, hold on to your seats. Good times. I'll see you on Thursday.

• 2:10:17Bill Simmons?

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• 2:11:01Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh, writer-director of The Banshees of Minnehoshan and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys, Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters November 6th. Get tickets now.

• 2:11:46Bill Simmons?

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