Part 1: An NBA Popularity Check and Tyson’s Big Comeback With Wosny Lambre and Van Lathan

In Part 1 of a two-part podcast, The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Wosny Lambre to discuss whether tanking in the NBA is possible with as much talent as the league currently has, the new-look Knicks, the serious Cavaliers, and the confounding 76ers (2:07). Then Van Lathan joins Bill and Wos to zoom out on the NBA and wonder whether it's in a better or worse spot now than in other eras (31:29). Finally, they discuss the upcoming Jake Paul–Mike Tyson boxing match and remember Tyson's turbulent career (1:01:51). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Wosny Lambre and Van Lathan Producer: Kyle Crichton 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

  What's happening? It's Todd McShay and I'm back with a new home and a new show at The Ringer and Spotify, The McShay Show. It's a video and audio podcast coming to you year round with all my NFL draft information, big boards, mock drafts, and player movement. Plus, I'll be chatting with some of my best friends in football, including some of your favorite football analysts. During the week, we'll have episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays that'll include discussions about my player rankings, who's rising, who's falling, and who your NFL team should be keeping an eye on. Plus, we'll be reacting each week to the college football playoff polls and giving you previews and picks for each Saturday slate. In addition, I'll have episodes on Saturday nights with

• 0:41Speaker 00

  my immediate reaction to the full day in college football every week. So if you love the college game, the NFL, the draft, or all of it like me, make sure to like, follow, subscribe, and get ready for The McShay Show on The Ringer, Spotify, and wherever you watch or listen to podcasts.

• 1:01Bill Simmons?

  This episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by State Farm. Every football player brings something different to the field. Maybe they have a cannon arm, speed, power. Maybe they have their own podcast. That being said, no two players are exactly alike. And the same is true off the field. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun, sometimes earlier than expected, sometimes after blowing a 3-1 series lead? But what if you went to Cancun? With Expedia, save up to 30% when you bundle and save. You can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness,

• 1:44Bill Simmons?

  though, hopefully, your team doesn't go to Cancun. 1-2-3 Cancun. Or if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save. Savings vary. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. Put up a new rewatchables on Monday. We did Meet the Parents. You can watch on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. You can watch a whole bunch of rewatchables podcasts on that as well. You can watch all the clips and videos from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. We got a two parter today. I don't know, lot going on. Wanted to talk basketball and wanted to talk about the Tyson fight and why NBA ratings are going down. His interest seems to be going up. So I have Big Waz, I have Van Lathan, they're joining us for part one.

• 2:28Bill Simmons?

  And then part two is going to be a football podcast. That's going up later tonight after. I want to see what happens with that Eagles, Washington game too. So part two will go up much later. Part one's going up early and let's bring in our friends from Pro Jap.

• 3:02Bill Simmons?

  All right, Big Waz is here. We're taping this 12:30 Thursday afternoon. Last time I saw you, we were doing the League Pass rankings.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:10Bill Simmons?

  And trying to figure out who we like the most, who we were the most excited to watch. What's changed for you since the season has started? Has there been a team jump out? Has there been somebody that captured your fancy? Has there been a new League Pass mistress for you that you didn't expect to be cheating on with some of the other favorites?

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, and I owe a big apology to Justin Verrier. It's the Chicago Bulls.

• 3:34Bill Simmons?

  Oh, look at you.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Thought the Bulls were going to be fun and Josh Kitty was going to have this new role. And DeMar DeRozan gone was going to open things up, but like they've been way better than I could have expected. Obviously they beat the Knicks last night.

• 3:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Crazy last second foul on a three point shot, but they're just so well coached.

• 3:54Bill Simmons?

  Kobe White's hair got filed.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  I know.

• 3:58Bill Simmons?

  I really think that's what happened. I thought he hit his hair. I've never seen that before.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  That is what happened.

• 4:02Bill Simmons?

  I don't think that he actually fouled him.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  But you know, he airballed a shot to make it look like he got hit pretty bad. But yeah, it's Kobe White, Zach Levine, who I don't know if it's he's found clarity in his role on the Bulls or if he's really dying to get traded.

• 4:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Um, because he was so unhappy this offseason. Like, I just thought, you know, they lost their most consistent player in DeRozan. Zach Levine has been sulking for like two, a year and a half.

• 4:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Um, they're bringing in Josh Giddy, ushering a kind of youth movement kind of thing. I just thought they would stink and it's been the opposite. And Vucevic has been playing some of the best ball of his career. He's taking and making threes. Like, the guy looks rejuvenated. They've been, to me, the team that has kind of jumped off the screen. Like, wow, I thought you guys were gonna be horrible and you're way better.

• 4:52Bill Simmons?

  They're five and seven, which sounds like it's bad, but that's the sixth seed right now in the East Conference. I'm with you. I was thinking about it last night. I watched that Knicks game. Everything they seemed like they wanted to do on paper, including like pick up the pace, play with some pizzazz. It's all happening. I think they're a really, really frisky five and seven team. And Levine, like, I know, yeah, I get it. He was upset about whatever he's got. I don't know what he's upset about. He's certainly got an amazing contract. But you watched him last night against the Knicks and my thought was, this is actually a great situation for him.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:30Bill Simmons?

  He's got guards that push the ball that are pretty, Giddy's pretty unselfish, right? Kobe White, I don't think is like a Trey Young monopolize the ball type guy. And it just seems like Levine's in a nice spot.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:41Bill Simmons?

  And what stuck out to me yesterday, they win the game on that weird Kobe, Kobe White foul, get the Brunson toilet bowl in and out to win it. But you watched the way their bench was celebrating. It actually seems like they liked each other.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:54Bill Simmons?

  Last year it did not.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  No, it was, man, last year was toxic as hell by all indication when you talk to people who was in and around the team at that time. And I think with Vucevic and Patrick Williams, who I'm still like, whoa, what were they thinking with that contract?

• 6:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's like one of those. What do you do?

• 6:14Speaker 02

  I don't know if it's the three or the D.

• 6:16Bill Simmons?

  What's your specialty?

• 6:17Speaker 02

  I don't know. I'm still trying to figure it out, but he's been a more willing shooter.

• 6:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  And like with Vucevic finally being a stretch four, Levine is playing with like a really spaced out floor in front of him. And the guy is really talented, like he's not a, well, this year he's not been afraid to take it to the basket. And there were just some isolation plays last night in the fourth quarter where it just felt like the Knicks had no chance against Zach Levine, which like, when's the last time you've said that about Zach Levine? He looks incredible. And then, you know, the Knicks, um.

• 6:53Bill Simmons?

  Wait, hold on, Zach Levine, because I want to talk about the Knicks. I was thinking about him, Brandon Ingram.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:00Bill Simmons?

  I think Trey Young's about to be in this boat. These guys that got these big deals. Julius Randall. These guys that are being paid like they're superstars. They do put up production and yet there's not a market for them. And it's, and it's because of the second apron. Kurt Goldsberg was talking about in my pod on Tuesday. It's just, it's changed the dynamic of roster building of how we think about players. We take somebody like Brandon Ingram, who was available all summer for anybody who wanted to offer anything and they couldn't trade him. Now he's scoring 23, 24 a game. Zach Levine, same thing. And we're moving into this new era of these guys that it's like, well, this is my price. I don't want to pay that. I'm stuck with you.

• 7:43Bill Simmons?

  But you're still producing.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:44Bill Simmons?

  I don't remember another era like this. The only time I could think was that 2000s when guys were getting those six, seven year deals. And you would just be like, ah, I guess we have Allan Houston now for the entire decade.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's the difference between now and 2000 and like 11 or 12, which is like when I first became a regular on League Pass. It was like. Whoever the Bulls were, when they decided that they were gonna stink up the joint, they were going to have basically three rotation worthy guys in the starting lineup. And everybody else was kinda gonna be like, okay, this team is headed for 17 wins.

• 8:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  They're playing the lottery game and whatever. Nowadays, like the Bulls, we expected to be a bottom four Eastern Conference team. But because they haven't gotten rid of, like, they would have sold off Vucevic, they would have sold off Levine. They would have sold everything off. But not because they kept those guys. Like, they're just not a given win. There's no, like, given wins. And then even the Wizards on some nights of frisky, and I think.

• 8:47Bill Simmons?

  Brooklyn, Brooklyn's another one.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  Brooklyn's another one. Yeah, like, there's.

• 8:51Bill Simmons?

  Toronto.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  There's no process Sixers, is what I always say. Like, that process Sixers team where Michael Carter-Williams was leading that team in scoring for an entire season. That was insane.

• 9:04Bill Simmons?

  And we were like, he's not good. And he was like, when the Rookie of the Year, it's like, well, he's 20 points a game.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 9:10Bill Simmons?

  You know, this is a really interesting point. Can you have tanking when there's too much talent in the league? Cause I think about that with Brooklyn. I watched Brooklyn, I saw them in person on Friday, I talked about it on the pod. Watched them yesterday, the Celtics played really well and beat them, and they played one of their best games. But I watched Brooklyn, I'm like, I know they wanted to be terrible. It's gonna be really hard to be terrible with some of the guys in this team. Like, Schroder's a above-average point guard. Cam Johnson's good. Cam Thomas is a 28 a game guy now. They have shot blocking. This is not like in 2013, 14, when you could just be like, yeah, we're gonna throw a year away. Like, think about what the Lakers had during, uh, during the last couple Kobe years, where it was like, here's Kobe and nobody else.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, it's, it's so different. And I don't know, I, I don't know if it's just the talent, like, these dudes have just come out and played with a lot of pride. Like, just quite frankly.

• 10:03Bill Simmons?

  Do you think it's social media? Like, I, I wonder if it's just hard to suck now, because if you suck.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  With the fantasy and the, and the.

• 10:10Bill Simmons?

  The gambling.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Gambling aspect, that, that might play a part, man.

• 10:14Bill Simmons?

  I feel like it's social media, cause I was thinking about this. Vince Carter got his number retired in Toronto, and I was just thinking how fucking crazy that is.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:22Bill Simmons?

  That.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Where he started.

• 10:23Bill Simmons?

  Cause I was writing for ESPN back then, and he completely tanked on them that year to the point that.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  I was reading those columns.

• 10:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. He tightened on the point that the trade that they made for him is probably the worst superstar trade anyone's made. They had to like take back Alonzo Mourning's contract and a couple other bad contracts. They got two shitty picks. It was like a 20 cents in the dollar giveaway. It was because he stopped playing for them. But we didn't have the apparatus we have now to be like, oh my God, did you see what Vince Carter did last night? Like, he just didn't give a shit. I don't feel like anybody can do that now.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I mean, that I it's it's it's really hard to explain why none of these teams have come out and been, you know, just dog shit. And again, it's early, like, nobody's had.

• 11:07Bill Simmons?

  I guess the dog shit team has probably been Philly.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Sorry, Chris Ryan, but yeah.

• 11:15Bill Simmons?

  They stink.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  But there's a reason for it.

• 11:17Bill Simmons?

  No, there's a reason for it, but they still stink.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, they've been they've been god awful.

• 11:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, think about the other day, JJ, D'Angelo Russell had that play in the corner. And whatever he did, he got his three pointer blocked. He did some stupid step back. And the camera showed JJ so fucking mad and he sat down and he's like, just like sat in his thing and he was like, like a parent mad at a kid. And even that, so now he's like, well, that'll never happen again because he just saw the video of it. It became a big deal the next day. He's like, I can't do that anymore. I just think there's a lot of checks and balances now for bad basketball, lazy basketball, lethargic basketball, people don't give a shit, people going through the motions. I don't know if you can do it anymore.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  And I think what's crazy too is that like the NBA, because of how they handled some of this load management stuff, have been.

• 12:07Bill Simmons?

  How did they handle it?

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Poorly. They've been so effective in messaging that the regular season doesn't matter. This isn't real basketball. Playoffs where things really start and people are playing hard. That's not been the case to start the season. Like, every single one of these games feels like super competitive. People are playing like the people aren't playing with super low waters. There's some teams that are like seem to have a bit of a hangover. I think Denver started the first four games of the season with a bit of a hangover. Minnesota's hangover has been.

• 12:40Bill Simmons?

  Minnesota's not just hungover, they're like, they're like lying in bed with the shades drawn.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, they still can't drive.

• 12:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they're like, ah, man.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  They're way over the legal limit still, yeah, 100%. But for the most part, man, teams have come out and been playing out the gates. Like, OKC feels like they got something to prove. Phoenix, I got something to prove. Cleveland, I mean, my god, they, they've come out like gangbusters. And it's made the regular season excellent for it.

• 13:09Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna read you some of the 2013, 14 Sixers.

• 13:14Bill Simmons?

  Leading scorer, Evan Turner.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 13:17Bill Simmons?

  Michael Carter-Williams, your Rookie of the Year. Shooting 264 from three and 40% from the field. Thad Young was our number three. Spencer Hawes. Number five, James Anderson, playing 29 minutes a game, 80 games. Who was James Anderson? I don't, I was, I was on a studio show that year and I don't remember who James Anderson was. James Anderson, he went to, first round pick from the, I remember him. Uh, Henry Sims? Tony Rotten?

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:52Bill Simmons?

  Tony Rotten?

• 13:53Speaker 02

  I was a Tony Rotten apologist in those days.

• 13:56Bill Simmons?

  Hollis Thompson, Lavoy Allen was their ninth man, but this is our point, like.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:01Bill Simmons?

  You look at the ninth man now in the Nets. The game I went to Friday, like, like Jalen Wilson's coming, I'm like, this guy's good.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:08Bill Simmons?

  Should he play more?

• 14:09Speaker 02

  That, that Sixers team would challenge the Bobcats.

• 14:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Worst win, and they played this season in terms of worst win-loss record ever. Um, and teams just aren't that horrible. And, and some of it, like you said, is the second apron where, you know, contenders, I think in a different era, Golden State would have looked at, they would have said, you know what? Instead of doing the Melton and Buddy Heel to replace Klay, we're gonna pull the trigger on Zach Levine. In a different era, but now with like all of the salary constraints.

• 14:42Bill Simmons?

  The Lakers would already probably have him.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  100%. Um, and, and you know, maybe they keeping a powder dry for Trey Young, who knows? Uh, but yeah, it's, it's just a different era, man.

• 14:52Bill Simmons?

  2014 Bucks, who were 15 and 67. Brandon Knight led the team in scoring. Ramon Sessions was second. Remember him? A young Chris Middleton, third, Ilyasova, John Henson, OJ Mayo, Larry Sanders, hey now, playing 20 games, but man. And then young Giannis was just that, that was great for young Giannis.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Larry Sanders is pissed right now. KD like smokes weed openly.

• 15:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Larry Sanders is like, I tried this, why didn't it work for me?

• 15:22Speaker 02

  They kicked me out the league for this.

• 15:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so if you think about the actual bad teams, Toronto's probably like fundamentally the worst team. But then Scotty Barnes can come back and who knows?

• 15:34Speaker 02

  And they're competitive on a lot of nights, yeah.

• 15:37Bill Simmons?

  They can rebound, they can shoot threes. The other thing is, we didn't talk about the threes. Like, this is the first season the threes are 40% of the shots that everyone takes.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:47Bill Simmons?

  That's just the variance that comes from that. You just never know.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:50Bill Simmons?

  You know?

• 15:51Speaker 02

  I, I, yeah, the threes is always, it's been a sort of, you know, less talented teams. You want to up your variance factor with the threes. Everybody's kind of known this for like seven, eight years now, but like.

• 16:03Bill Simmons?

  But everyone's doing it.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  The discipline with which coaches are actually able to enforce it.

• 16:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  Um, is different now. It's just better infrastructure to make sure. Like, it's just one thing to say, like, we're going to play with pace. We're gonna, you know what I mean? We're gonna shoot the three-point shot. Um, we're gonna encourage as many threes as we can. But to like actually coach it and get your guys to be doing it consistently, to go against their instinct to dribble, dribble, dribble, shoot a long two is different.

• 16:32Bill Simmons?

  You were gonna mention the Knicks.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  What about them?

• 16:38Bill Simmons?

  I miss last year's Knicks.

• 16:41Bill Simmons?

  I miss Hartenstein.

• 16:44Bill Simmons?

  I miss Dante.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:46Bill Simmons?

  They were just more fun to watch last year, and I know they'll figure it out.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:49Bill Simmons?

  The Towns has been incredible. Brunson's not been as good.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 16:54Bill Simmons?

  They're five at the end of games, which it seems like it's a little better offensively, but it's definitely worse defensively.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:02Bill Simmons?

  The rim protection isn't there in the same way, and there's a bunch of it. Now that we have a sample size, some of the advanced stats are like, huh, this isn't really the profile of a tips team.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  No.

• 17:12Bill Simmons?

  So what are you seeing?

• 17:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, the, the Karl Towns rim protection, we knew that was going to be a problem coming into the season, and we just talked about this on group chat with Rob and Justin.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Mikael Bridges is getting smoked on defense. He's just not been a deterrent at all. And again, OG Ananobe.

• 17:34Bill Simmons?

  You can't mention this to the Knicks fans.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  Well, listen.

• 17:37Bill Simmons?

  I mentioned last week, I was like, what was the point of trading five firsts for this guy? If he's gonna shoot 13 times a game, but the other side has been interesting too.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  I think that, I think their scoring is gonna come. I think that he's gonna learn what spots to pick. When to attack, when to just let it fire.

• 17:53Bill Simmons?

  Give him the ball more and just have run through more stuff on them? I guess the Towns Brunson pick and roll is so good.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  They can't afford to because their defense is so bad. Like if you're getting cooked, you kind of have to look at your best player and say, yo, we need points right now. If they were stopping people, then they would be a lot more patient about who gets to do what on offense. But when like, you're constantly having to put out fires because you just gave up, you know, 10 points in a row. Like at a certain point, it is, you gotta give it to Brunson. What I'm encouraged by is that the Towns and Brunson pick and roll is clearly difficult to deal with.

• 18:31Bill Simmons?

  It's a nightmare.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  They're putting defenses in a bind because Brunson, unlike a lot of these star point guards, can be the center on a switch. Like Halliburton's been having trouble with it this year. Brunson, as soon as you put a big man on him, he's killing that guy. And if you, God forbid, you drop on freaking Karl Towns, like that's, that's a nightmare. And so I like that that's already started to figure itself out.

• 18:55Bill Simmons?

  Wait, can we say one thing about Towns?

• 18:57Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 18:57Bill Simmons?

  He's been kind of a winner of the season. Because he's been, I think, better offensively than anybody could have ever expected on the Knicks. And then Minnesota feels worse.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Minnesota is definitely worse.

• 19:11Bill Simmons?

  Oh, we miss Towns. Like I feel like this has been a win all the way around for Towns. And then instead of the Knicks fans being mad at Towns for whatever, they can just now be mad at Bridges. So he wins, he wins, he wins it every way.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Look, I think the Bridges thing is, is everybody's in a patient, wait and see moment. It's been 11 games. I'm not crazy worried about it.

• 19:32Bill Simmons?

  I do wonder if you stop playing defense for like. You're just on bad teams for two years. Like, I wonder if it almost you have to get back in the hang of what it's like to be on a really good team.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  It's not just that, though. It's like when guys start conceiving themselves as 20-point-per-game scorers. And all of a sudden, it's like, no, you're back to being that role guy that you were in Phoenix. It's like, no, I was a ball in Brooklyn. I was like a wing guy.

• 20:00Bill Simmons?

  Can I show you a YouTube clip of my game winners?

• 20:02Speaker 02

  No, he gotta get back to what he was doing in Phoenix, for sure.

• 20:06Bill Simmons?

  If you truth serum them, I wonder what they would say about the whole Giannis piece of this.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  I know you saw the, and I know you saw the graphic last night where they like showed all of the picks that the Knicks sent out to bring Bridges in.

• 20:21Bill Simmons?

  A couple of them were like, good picks.

• 20:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, decent.

• 20:25Bill Simmons?

  Like, we didn't know that there's whatever that Bucks pick, which is so complicated, where New Orleans gets it if it's one through four, and now Brooklyn gets it if it's everything else, but I don't, I think the Bucks are a 500 or worse team. If anything happens to Giannis for a month, that team's gonna be a bottom-five team in the league. They're pulling these games out of their assholes.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Well, it's like, they've won three games.

• 20:46Bill Simmons?

  Well, but the one yesterday.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was a miracle.

• 20:49Bill Simmons?

  Guy gets fouled with the second left, he just has to go one or two, and the game's over, and he bricks both of them, and then Giannis wins an OT. Yeah, I just, I like that they're like, the next thing, if we're gonna be rational about it, the Towns thing has been a huge win. All the other stuff is explainable. Robinson is gonna come back. There's probably some sort of buyout guy they can get in February to replace some of the DiFenzenzo, because it feels like there's a lot on McBride. And then the Brunson, I know he hasn't been quite as good and efficient as last year, but I also feel like it's, teams have been watching this now for a couple of years. It's like Jalen Hurts on the Eagles, where it's like, oh, I know what this is.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  And he's learning how to play a new way. Like, this is a completely reconstructed offense, like, that he hasn't been completely comfortable yet. I don't think it's the biggest deal. I just think it's scary that, like, missing Mitchell Robinson and Precious Achua, is this damaging to your team? Like, that's a, that's a bad sign so far, but again, I think it's pretty early. And right now, they're 20th in defensive efficiency.

• 21:51Bill Simmons?

  Just stunning.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Get that down to 13?

• 21:53Bill Simmons?

  But that's the bigger question to me is, is this the right Tibbs team?

• 21:59Bill Simmons?

  Is this a Tibbs team, the way it's currently constructed? Or is this a, maybe, somebody else with the car keys?

• 22:04Speaker 02

  I mean, I think if Tibbs is worth what he thinks he is, then he needs, he needs to also adjust. Players have to adjust, coaches should adjust.

• 22:12Bill Simmons?

  Can I do a PSA for the other 29 teams? When the Knicks have the ball with like 3 seconds or less, and they need to score, they're gonna throw it to Jalen Brunson in the corner. He's gonna pretend to go left, and then he's gonna do a followaway jump shot. I'm just telling you, that's what's gonna happen. You can pretend to bite on the going left, but then dive forward when he's doing the turnaround. That's his move. It works every time. Do these guys have tape?

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Uh, it's tough in the moment, Bill.

• 22:43Bill Simmons?

  It's like Tatum. Here's what Tatum's gonna do. He's gonna dribble through his legs 7 times, and then when there's 2 seconds left, he's gonna do a step back 26 footer. We know all these moves. LeBron, he has a specific spot on the court. He's gonna shoot a 3 from there. He's gonna make you think he's gonna the basket, hot back.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  The accurate step back.

• 23:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. There's some guys that you just, you know what they're gonna do. And then there's other guys like Durant, where I'm like, I have no idea what he's gonna do. Is he gonna go right? Is he gonna pull up? Is he gonna do the turnaround move?

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Brunson's, yeah. He's gonna try to create space with the little shoulder fake.

• 23:12Bill Simmons?

  He's gotta be so hard to guard, cuz I think they know what he's doing, and he still get, he's, does that pound, bounces in?

• 23:20Speaker 02

  He's got a little Luka in him. In terms of the stop and start. Like, he's not the fastest, but he can get accelerated faster than everybody else. And decelerate faster than everybody else. Yeah, it's not, it's not easy from the couch, Bill. That's what they would tell, tell you.

• 23:34Bill Simmons?

  Well, you know what's, I think the secret hardest move is the Luka 2-on-1, when he slows down, and then almost makes it like a low post move?

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:44Bill Simmons?

  Where he's got momentum, but he stops, and the guy's like also playing the pass, and then Luka just like, I'm just gonna bounce off you in a bank.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  Against the Warriors the other night.

• 23:52Bill Simmons?

  I don't even know what that move is, but I, I feel like he's perfected it.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  And I'm like, that's Draymond Green, one of the best defensive players in my life, and he can't even stop it. It is weird.

• 24:02Bill Simmons?

  Are you scared of the Cavs?

• 24:04Speaker 02

  The Cavs, man, listen, I know like every single smart NBA person, you guys included, on the over unders, had the Cavs over Kenny Atkinson winning Coach of the Year. And I was like, yeah, they're gonna play better, they're gonna be way healthier this year. But like, I don't know, they kinda took off last year when their guys weren't playing.

• 24:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  But Kenny Atkinson has been smart about deploying the lineups, letting Mobley play center at times, being the lone big. He's gotten these guys to understand like the importance of spacing. And they're like Niang, for instance, this guy is completely unconscious. Like, he shoots with the green light of a freaking Kevin Durant at certain points. And Donovan Mitchell, God bless him, he's getting off of the ball a lot faster than he has at any other time in his career. That's always been my biggest criticism of him is that he doesn't see the floor as well as a lot of the guys that I think are a little bit better than him. But this year, he's seeing it, they're believing it. I think there's something to everybody feeling like they have ownership of the offense,

• 25:08Speaker 02

  which Atkinson, you know, he spent some time in Golden State with Steve Kerr. We make fun of Steve Kerr a lot of times with his hippy dippy, like the ball finds energy shit. But Atkinson has brought it.

• 25:19Bill Simmons?

  Hippy dippy.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  That's what it feels like to me. It feels like he's on a commune when he's saying some of that stuff. But like, Atkinson has brought that ethos to Cleveland and they've been way better for it.

• 25:30Bill Simmons?

  And he brought Ty Jerome, because he knew Ty Jerome was good from like two years ago.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  Revelation.

• 25:34Bill Simmons?

  It's like when football, when the guy, like when, uh, the guy Dan Quinn went from Dallas to Washington, he took like a couple Dallas guys with him. It's like, I know this guy's pretty good, I'll grab this guy too. I'm 100% in on the Cavs being real. I don't think there's any fluky shit at all. It totally made, from the first, second, third game, you could see it. And there, I talked about it before, but there's, there's like a charitableness now with Mitchell and Garland.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:01Bill Simmons?

  I don't think Mitchell cares if he doesn't have the ball in the last minute anymore. I felt like he did last year.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah.

• 26:07Bill Simmons?

  I think Garland did a little bit too. I, I just feel like they've sorted out something. And then, you know, they can defend, they can switch, they have a bench.

• 26:18Bill Simmons?

  If as Celtic fan, they're on my radar because I thought we would have the one seed unless somebody got hurt. Now it's like this teams, I think it's gonna be tough to, to, to steal the one seed from them. You start out 14-0, 15-0, like just think about it logically. For the rest of the way, you just have to go like 45 and you know, 18 or whatever. It's, it's not the same pace to get to 60.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:48Bill Simmons?

  And the Celts are gonna have trouble getting to 60.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  And if you look at the Eastern Conference standings right now, a lot of teams are gonna have trouble getting to 50. Um, it's crazy how these things flip because you know, there was all this smoke around Donovan Mitchell for years that he was not gonna, he was not long for Cleveland.

• 27:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  He ends up doing his extension. Um, Shams puts out that report that Garland's representation might.

• 27:16Bill Simmons?

  Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  If Mitchell's still on the team because he feels like he's not being optimized. They bring in Kenny Atkinson and shit, man. Everything sort of flips and everybody has this level of buy-in. It's just so crazy how things can turn on a dime in this league.

• 27:33Bill Simmons?

  Kenny calls him and he's like, I'm gonna optimize your shit.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  And, and A.

• 27:38Bill Simmons?

  Just, just bear with me, buddy.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  They've bought in and they look so much better for, and like I said, before it, it did feel like a your turn, my turn situation.

• 27:49Bill Simmons?

  It did.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  With Mitchell and Garland where I'm just like, man, these guys have complimentary games. They both can shoot, both can drive it. They should be elevating what each other do. And this is the first time in that partnership that I actually feel like it's happening and it's been exciting to watch.

• 28:07Bill Simmons?

  I'm good at very few things. I can spot two pays.

• 28:12Bill Simmons?

  I can make meatballs.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  That's like me with BBLs.

• 28:18Bill Simmons?

  I I can spot that your turn, my turn.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:21Bill Simmons?

  I'm just attuned. I've been watching basketball my whole life. You know it when you see it. You know when it's not perfect.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Look at when Tatum and Brown got rid of that dynamic where they now elevate what each other do where back in the days we were like, oh, these guys are too duplicative. Like, we might have to move one, blah, blah, blah. Now these guys actually play off of each other.

• 28:40Bill Simmons?

  I always believe.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  That is a freaking lie.

• 28:43Bill Simmons?

  I always believed in my guys.

• 28:47Bill Simmons?

  No, I think I think you can tell the difference between your turn, my turn, competitive versus elevation. And now I feel like those guys elevate each other, which is a boring topic for a podcast or a YouTube video or an NBA content segment, but it's what's happening. That team's playing super unselfish. And then you watch a team like, you know, like Philly, when Embiid comes back and how they have to navigate.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  It's gonna take some.

• 29:13Bill Simmons?

  How do you take care of Embiid? How do you? How does Paul George make sure he's involved up? Oh, wait, there's Maxey too. Oh, there's Jared McCain, who's having that would might be the rookie of the year if he could just get playing minutes. How do you navigate all this stuff?

• 29:26Speaker 02

  He's gotta beat out Eric Gordon.

• 29:27Bill Simmons?

  And what happens? Right. And what happens with zombie Nick Nurse? Does he ever turn back into Toronto Nick Nurse? Or is he just zombie Nick Nurse now?

• 29:37Speaker 02

  I mean, Nick Nurse did a great job last year. I think the Sixers definitely overperformed most of our expectations. Maybe the playoffs wasn't ideal.

• 29:46Bill Simmons?

  Playoffs are pretty rough.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  They overperformed most of our expectations. And I think what we can be bullish about is.

• 29:53Bill Simmons?

  Nice. You're in the Nick Nurse Kool-Aid drinking camp.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  I'm just saying last year they were good.

• 29:57Bill Simmons?

  Was it on? Was it on my research?

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Last year they were good. The thing is, Embiid, I know a lot of people killed him for saying, I don't care about MVP. It's about the playoffs. It's about winning. I like that for a team that's trying to incorporate Paul George, that has Maxey, who's ascendant. I like the idea that he's not gonna feel the onus to dominate every possession like he traditionally has for the team, basically his entire career. And so that's a good sign. I think they're gonna be straight. You know what I mean? When Embiid isn't beating dudes up in the locker room for writing bad columns and, you know, they got all the guys.

• 30:33Bill Simmons?

  Yabba Selly. And McCain are guys who could play in a playoff series. So, you know, when they're operating on the fringes and trying to, you're picking out of the lottery, you're trying to grab, take flyers on dudes and usually it doesn't work out. And it seems like both of those guys, I feel like could be in a top seven on a good team. So, but the Embiid is going to be the big thing. Let's take a break and then I got a couple more things for you.

• 30:59Bill Simmons?

  Van Lathan is here, we're going to talk about the NBA Cup because sometimes in basketball, 30 points could be worth more than 30 points. You get 30% profit boost on 30 plus point scorers with FanDuel's 30 on 30. Like it. The Ringer, team me up with America's number one sportsbook to give you a 30% profit boost when you pick a player to score more than 30 points during Fridays. NBA Cup action. I will give you the games and you tell me what you think. I'll give you a couple of options. Brooklyn Knicks, anybody loving that one?

• 31:32Speaker 02

  For 30?

• 31:33Bill Simmons?

  With Cam Thomas action? No. Clippers Houston? James Harden going against Terrapin Twins? No. No, they're going to lock up. Phoenix, OKC? Booker?

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Devin Booker, KD's out.

• 31:45Bill Simmons?

  All right. Great. Booker's going to do it. We'll give it to Devin Booker. So whether you want to write our picks or make a mirror, just look for 30 on 30 in the FanDuel Sportsbook app or head to FanDuel.com/BS for your chance to score a bigger payout. This Friday, you can even parlay it with Mike Tyson, we're going to talk about in a second. Don't miss your chance to find out how much 30 points could be worth. FanDuel's 30 on 30 must be 20 and plus present in select states or 18 plus present in DC. Opt-in required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable bonus or withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wager amount. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. This episode is brought to you by PayPal. The holiday rush is coming and you can get ahead of it with PayPal.

• 32:30Bill Simmons?

  Shop your favorite online stores with PayPal this season like eBay for collectibles, Fanatics for team gear, Walmart for tech. Check out the flexibility to pay now or pay later and split your payments with Pay in 4 with no interest, no late fees. Shop now with PayPal. Paying for is subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com/payingfor. PayPal, Inc., NMLS 910457.

• 32:57Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to by Viori. When it comes to clothes that score high in both comfort and style, Viori is my MVP. Sunday performance joggers, oh yeah. They have the perfect, I could watch a game and then go out to dinner vibe. And the meta pant, that's my number one, I need to look like I tried option. 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. All right, we're back. Van Lathan has joined us.

• 33:26Speaker 03

  What's up?

• 33:26Bill Simmons?

  This is the fun of having an office when people are in there. We're just like, fuck it, let's turn the mics on and go.

• 33:32Speaker 03

  You know how I feel about this.

• 33:33Bill Simmons?

  You've been, you've been preaching this forever.

• 33:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know how I feel about this.

• 33:35Bill Simmons?

  Bring people to the office and shit goes down.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  I'm just, I'm saying, everybody's about to get mad. I'm glad I'm not on Slack because it's gonna go crazy. But I think that, first of all, look, it's a new time. Toxicity is back. So I'm, I feel okay saying that I think everybody should have to come into the office at least 20 hours a week. Like it fit three, that's three days or two days.

• 34:00Bill Simmons?

  Take your 20 hours, it's not a bad idea.

• 34:02Speaker 03

  Three days, however you want to do it, you can still have your Thursday and Friday off. But I'm just not from the era where it was offensive to act.

• 34:11Bill Simmons?

  Show up to work?

• 34:13Speaker 03

  Oh, I laugh at you. I don't care how it comes off, I laugh at you. I'm, I'm not from the era where it was like, one time back in my day, I was on a movie set. I actually brought air mattress to the set.

• 34:26Bill Simmons?

  Oh my God.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  Because I wanted to be there, work, then sleep there so I could be there early again. That's the toxicity I was brought up in.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, yeah, I honestly, I'm, I'm more in the middle of you and some of our Gen Z'ers who just like, see like any stress related issue related to work is unacceptable.

• 34:47Bill Simmons?

  Van loves live bodies to just talk.

• 34:49Speaker 03

  I just like to talk to people all day long.

• 34:51Bill Simmons?

  Conversations.

• 34:52Speaker 03

  Hey, how you doing? By the way.

• 34:53Bill Simmons?

  Were you just talking about Melrose Place? I have some buds.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  Here I come. By the way, Gen Z'er, turns out, Gen Z, turns out not, not as well as we thought. So.

• 35:03Bill Simmons?

  Well, the dudes.

• 35:05Speaker 03

  So we can leave it, we can stop pretending now. Everybody come to work, it's a new day.

• 35:09Bill Simmons?

  I'm bringing a text thread convo that Van and I were having to Waz about the NBA. About the phenomenon of a league that is having its games watched less, but feels like it matters more.

• 35:25Bill Simmons?

  And what's going on? And we all have theories on this. Is the NBA in better, worse, or the same shape?

• 35:31Speaker 02

  I think it's a little bit worse than the peak of our recent peak of 2016, where Steph was like a global phenomenon and like him and LeBron playing that epic seven game finals. Like, I don't think we're anywhere close to that level of health in terms of the league. But they do have the most famous players in American sports. Again, the teams don't like, people don't watch games as much as they might even watch the Jacksonville.

• 36:01Bill Simmons?

  So you take Mahomes, Kelsey, Lamar, and you would take 40 NBA guys?

• 36:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not like Lamar, who I love, is my guy. He's nowhere.

• 36:10Bill Simmons?

  Is he as famous as Jaylen Brown?

• 36:12Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  No, no, he's not. Playing football and basketball famous is like a ridiculous losing game for the football players.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not like they're recognizable people. So like, they can get people to pay attention to them, whether that be for who they're dating or what clothes they're wearing, whatever. They gotta find a way to monetize that attention. But I think once you're in a space where like you create celebrities, like even recently, like a Ja Morant, that's a good place to be. And they just gotta get more creative about getting people to love the game.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  It's interesting talking about the celebrity because I would argue that Austin Reeves is more famous in LA than Justin Herbert is, okay? This is what I would say, those players still exist in the league and they are the most famous guys, but they're they're less consequential in the league than they used to be.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 37:00Speaker 03

  So they're not, it means something at the top of your league to have your most famous players also be your most important players. And I would argue that Steph, LeBron, KD, all of that older guard, they're not really serious, although you could argue this year with how the Warriors are playing, serious threats for the NBA throne.

• 37:22Bill Simmons?

  Oh, don't tell the Laker fans that.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  So they're they're seven and four.

• 37:25Bill Simmons?

  They're, JJ's got this team going.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  Why, why do you do this?

• 37:30Bill Simmons?

  We beat Scottie Pippen Jr. last night.

• 37:32Speaker 03

  You know, why, why, why do you do this?

• 37:34Bill Simmons?

  We beat Huff.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  You, Bill, the vindictiveness towards the Lakers.

• 37:39Bill Simmons?

  It's the Laker fans.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  Hold on, Bill, we gotta, and because we're on this, because I have to talk to you about this, Karl Towns over LeBron in the top 100.

• 37:49Bill Simmons?

  I didn't do that. I had LeBron, I had LeBron 15.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 37:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I had Towns 25.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 37:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I had LeBron.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Towns over LeBron.

• 37:58Bill Simmons?

  No, I had Towns 25.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  Don't you think you're too influential a voice to have this specific bias? Well, don't you think like you, every single shot?

• 38:08Bill Simmons?

  I just wanna see the Lakers play Oklahoma City and some of the other good teams. They played Cleveland and lost by 100.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  Nobody's beating.

• 38:16Bill Simmons?

  The crowd was chanting for Bronny with six minutes left in the Cleveland game.

• 38:19Speaker 03

  Nobody's beating Cleveland right now, though.

• 38:20Bill Simmons?

  Wait, can we go back to, you're talking about those three guys? This is what I said to Van on the text thread.

• 38:27Bill Simmons?

  These unicorn situations they had with six guys, Bird, Magic, Michael Jordan, and Kobe, then LeBron, then Curry.

• 38:37Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 38:38Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if we can replicate that with any under 30 American guy in that way. Even the Kobe thing, if Kobe goes to Charlotte instead of the Lakers, what happens to him?

• 38:49Speaker 03

  The problem is that you're describing 40 years of the NBA, basically. Like, when you're talking about those guys, you're basically going from 1979 all the way.

• 38:58Bill Simmons?

  I'm talking about our last six guys that broke through in a real way.

• 39:02Speaker 03

  I know, but think about the sample size of those guys. That means that every single generation, they've been able to find a guy or two like that. And if this is the first generation why they can't, it's probably the scope of society and culture has changed and not the actual NBA. And so when you look at social media and the other things, for example, you have Zion, you have Ja, right? Like, Ja is an incredibly likable player with an incredible fan-friendly style. 30 years ago, him with the blick, blick, blicky, like, posting it also, it's not a thing.

• 39:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 39:38Speaker 03

  Right? He would post it on the blick. It's not, it's different. So maybe making stars is harder now because of the scrutiny.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  I think it's harder because of the stars and the culture around our stars themselves. Like, I was asking somebody who's now a huge F1 fan about the Netflix show. I was like, do they get into anything on that show? Because I've never watched it. She was like, yeah. Like, they'll be like, that team is cheating. This owner's a, this, this person's an alcoholic, blah, blah, blah. Like, they've made the characters compelling as opposed to that damn NBA show on Netflix, where Jason Tatum is like, I love my mom, I love hoop.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  And I love my son.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  These are the things we learned about Jason Tatum, who's one of the 10, 8, 7 best players in the league. Like, they don't make themselves interesting. People don't care.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  They're afraid to be interesting, cuz it's

• 40:30Speaker 03

  I think that's a problem.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  It makes them less marketable.

• 40:32Speaker 03

  Well, I'll just bring up something and we're podding, have to talk about it. If, we talked about Kobe and what Kobe was able to become. If Twitter's around when Kobe has the situation he has in Colorado, he doesn't survive it.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  I mean, his legacy, I'm telling you, it's

• 40:49Speaker 02

  I think he survives it in LA.

• 40:51Speaker 03

  He might survive it in LA. But in terms of things like that, and as murky or whatever you wanna say that they are, things like that used to happen to athletes. There used to be narratives about athletes.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  You're talking about room for error, for lack of a better phrase.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  Things used to happen and they just wouldn't stick.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 03

  Like, we are retroactively punishing Karl Malone. You know, things used to happen and they didn't stick. So making stars was, right, there was less margin for error. You could do it easier. Now, you got a gun, you got a, an adult star going at you for three weeks harassing you on Twitter. All of that stuff, it sticks to you in a little way and it changes people's perception. And we have to ask if all of that's like worth it. It can make you a star, but it can also take you off your perch.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  I wonder how much of that stuff actually sticks to people, like, off of the internet. And I get it more and more of our society, our internet-based creatures. But I do wonder how often and how long that stuff sticks. Like, to me, what I'm talking about is like Draymond goes on his podcast and he's like, yo, Klay freaking ghosted Steph. Steph was gonna say some nice words about him before the comeback game. And after the lack of, or the conversation that he had with Klay, called PR and said, I'm not doing it anymore. Like, you telling me you put that in that Netflix show? That kind of stuff?

• 42:21Speaker 03

  But do you think that

• 42:22Speaker 02

  That people won't be interested in the story of the NBA? I think they would.

• 42:26Speaker 03

  But that, but that, but being interested in the story of the NBA? Is starting to become, because you don't have to watch the games to, and this is a Tommy

• 42:35Speaker 02

  I think you'd wanna watch that.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  Nah, you don't have, you don't have to watch the games to be involved in that drama. You could follow that drama without watching, without watching the NBA.

• 42:44Bill Simmons?

  This is what Derek Thompson, he came on my pod, I don't know how many months ago, and he was talking about how he's this new breed of NBA fan that loves the NBA but doesn't watch it that much, but loves everything around it and loves following it. My son's like that too.

• 42:57Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 42:57Bill Simmons?

  My son's not, my son wasn't watching, my son wasn't watching, you know, Bucks Pistons last night, but he knows what happened with Giannis, that Giannis had 59 points. And, you know, when I was a kid, I felt like anytime the NBA was on, I was like, oh my god. The NBA's on the USA Network on Monday night, I'm watching, I can see the bullets. I never get to see the bullets. So like, SportsCenter in the 90s, you'd watch, you'd come home, come home from drinking, it felt special. 1:30 in the morning, it's like, oh, Craig Kilborn and Rich Eisen, they're gonna tell me what happened in the NBA, I have no idea what happened. Oh, Karl Malone had a 30 and 25, that, oh my god. And it just felt special. Now it's so available, and not just the games, but like, the players.

• 43:39Bill Simmons?

  I do wonder if that's a piece of it too, like, all these guys have podcasts, there's no mystery with any of them. And then if, if you feel like you have mystery, you have something like the Netflix show where it's like, not buying this version of you. I know there's more.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  It's crap.

• 43:55Bill Simmons?

  You know what I mean?

• 43:56Speaker 03

  Is there anything, just to ask, uh, is there anything about specifically the quality of the play that lends itself to any of this?

• 44:04Bill Simmons?

  I've heard this, I think basketball is better now. I really do. I've, I've been there the whole ride, I'm like amazed by the skills of guys.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  I watched the Warriors and Mavs play to like 130, and at no point was I like, this isn't interesting, competitive, compelling, like, I don't know, I think people could fall in love with it how it is. I think the TV product is a problem, and I know this is like, not a populist thing to say, I think they should ban League Pass, or just like, make it as extremely expensive as possible, like, cost prohibitive.

• 44:36Bill Simmons?

  Or just you only get to pay for three teams, you don't get all 30.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  Or something like that, like.

• 44:40Speaker 03

  I'm not, I'm not understanding, what's?

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Make the product less accessible.

• 44:42Bill Simmons?

  Make it less more special.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Make it more scarce, you know what I mean? Because I think, there's a, there's gotta be a way to make this thing feel less accessible, where it's a game every single night, and like, what do you really miss? If you, if you missed the Heat game last night, what did you miss?

• 44:57Bill Simmons?

  You didn't miss anything.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, but some.

• 44:58Bill Simmons?

  Well, their schedule is too long, too. It's the other piece and they're never gonna change that.

• 45:02Speaker 03

  But doesn't, if you do that with League Pass, I've actually, actually never heard that. It's really interesting. But if you do that with League Pass, doesn't that put the game back in, in sort of a regional space? Because right now, if, if like Charlotte will never, I wanna watch LaMelo.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:16Speaker 03

  And Charlotte's never gonna be on national if I don't have League Pass. And then that makes the game more regional.

• 45:21Bill Simmons?

  You know, LaMelo is a Van type of player.

• 45:23Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 45:24Bill Simmons?

  He puts up huge stats, fun highlights. And the wins and losses don't matter. That's, that's Van's wheelhouse.

• 45:30Speaker 03

  Bill, Bill full of shit. I, I like to watch players that are fun to watch.

• 45:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Fun to watch over winning is Van's mantra.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  Westbrook thing?

• 45:38Speaker 03

  This is, this is.

• 45:38Bill Simmons?

  He loves Westbrook.

• 45:39Speaker 03

  No, not, no, no, I don't. But this is, this is what I said. Bill wants to thrust this on to me.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:45Speaker 03

  Boss, but because of his Jokic thing, he's still holding on to that.

• 45:50Bill Simmons?

  It's not just the Jokic thing.

• 45:51Speaker 03

  What else, what other winning player don't I like?

• 45:54Bill Simmons?

  I'm just saying.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  Give me an example of a winning player.

• 45:56Bill Simmons?

  I'm agreeing that you love watching LaMelo.

• 45:57Speaker 03

  I love watching LaMelo. He's fun to watch and he's unpredictable.

• 46:01Bill Simmons?

  Career winning percentage, 440.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Unpredictable and he's playing better this year.

• 46:04Bill Simmons?

  No, he is playing better.

• 46:05Speaker 03

  So what I'm saying is.

• 46:06Bill Simmons?

  Shout out to LaMelo.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  You getting.

• 46:09Bill Simmons?

  He is playing better. I've enjoyed watching him.

• 46:10Speaker 03

  We get into a situation where the regionality of it and the sport starts to feel like baseball a little bit.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  But, so I don't know. I think that's an interesting idea and I've never heard it.

• 46:21Bill Simmons?

  But we didn't talk about, one of the things we were talking about in the text thread is if your best players in your league are all foreign.

• 46:28Speaker 03

  That's a problem.

• 46:29Bill Simmons?

  What is the history of people connecting with foreign players in America? Because like, I loved Hakeem. Hakeem was amazing to see in person. He was fucking awesome. He was a badass. Like he would, there's videos and you'll see on Twitter and just be like, Hakeem punches a guy. Like he was, he was like a badass. There's multiple videos of him just like turning around and just popping somebody.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  He was the Draymond of his day.

• 46:50Bill Simmons?

  He was like amazing to watch. He was an amazing defensive player. He was the best low post player of his generation and people are like, ah, Hakeem's boring. It's like, I don't, I don't, Giannis, Luka. Embiid.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  I think Giannis's appeal has been mismanaged by the league, by Nike, like.

• 47:10Bill Simmons?

  Oh, what's this case?

• 47:11Speaker 02

  I just think like this whole like, oh, the poor, humble immigrant who was selling, you know, yogurts and grease for a dollar a pop. Like, I just think that was just mismanaged. They should have leaned into like the insane competitor, freakish athlete, whatever guy like the, the way he's been packaged to America as this like cutesy immigrant story, I think was done a disservice to like his actual star appeal. But and Giannis is somebody who's actually embracing Americana in a way that Jokic and Luka just don't. They're just not interested in being American celebrities. They're just like, yo, I want to hoop, win, go home, be

• 47:53Speaker 02

  a great teammate, move on with my life. But Giannis is interesting and be interested in being a cultural figure. And I think that could, could have worked. I just think that they did it for.

• 48:04Bill Simmons?

  I think Giannis is pretty compelling.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  I think the, the, the freaking foreign stuff does hurt the league. If Luka was from Indiana, bro, he would be.

• 48:15Bill Simmons?

  Oh, this is interesting.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Out of here.

• 48:16Speaker 03

  We've talked about this before.

• 48:17Bill Simmons?

  Well, I'm trying to think, what would be the best?

• 48:19Speaker 02

  Out of here.

• 48:19Bill Simmons?

  Town or city for Luka to be in, if his name was like Luke, Luke Doncher.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Either, either Indiana or Kentucky.

• 48:27Speaker 03

  Oregon, Kentucky, all of those places.

• 48:29Bill Simmons?

  Kentucky would be good.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  Where white Hoopers thrive. We need.

• 48:32Speaker 03

  Be like, oh, did you see what Luke did last night?

• 48:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, seriously. And he would have been a phenomenon in the state of Kentucky. He would have went to UK. He would have been this.

• 48:42Bill Simmons?

  Basically, what I have with Drake Bang, North Carolina superstar Drake Bang.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. And or, or Cooper Flag, your new obsession. All these obsessions have something in common. Um, so, look.

• 48:54Speaker 03

  This is the thing. This is a boxing problem. We're big boxing fans.

• 48:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  So boxing has insanely good stars right now. I'm talking about good in their skill. Terence Crawford.

• 49:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 03

  Uh, Oleksandr Usyk, um, Tyson Fury, even though he lost to Usyk, uh, Inua, Inua, like all of these different guys, right? People care for reasons that really, as fucked up as this is, they care for reasons other than how good you are.

• 49:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:21Speaker 03

  Like stories make people care. Like.

• 49:24Bill Simmons?

  UFC's like this, they.

• 49:25Speaker 03

  Skills make champions. Stories make stars.

• 49:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:28Speaker 03

  And you have to be able to relate to a story. Now, some of these foreign guys, they have stories that are just as interesting as anyone. Really more interesting. I left war torn, whatever. Like if you ever, you ever like.

• 49:42Bill Simmons?

  Jokic's story is really interesting.

• 49:44Speaker 03

  Francis Nganu, Jesus, like all of that stuff. The problem is, isn't it, isn't it accessible to audiences? Even in boxing, when guys, when they don't speak English or when they can't really get over to American audiences, sometimes you have problems making stars with them. The only difference there is that for somebody like a Canelo Alvarez, his country backs him such a big, to such a degree that you can still make a worldwide star.

• 50:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 50:08Speaker 03

  Uh, what I wonder about the NBA, you gonna have to, you gonna have to have some dude from LA. You gonna have to have some guy from Ohio. Cooper Flag, as much as we joke about it, Chet Holmgren, as much as we joke, those guys are important to the league.

• 50:24Bill Simmons?

  It could be.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 50:25Bill Simmons?

  AJ could be the guy.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  One hundred percent.

• 50:28Bill Simmons?

  If AJ lands on the right team, AJ DeBansa, a year from now, he might be the guy. Cause I feel like it has to be a wing. This is, Wemby has two problems. Centers have never resonated.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:39Bill Simmons?

  With people like, we talked about that with the Nike contract. It's like, nobody has ever been like, oh, I got, like when I was a kid in this late seventies, we weren't like, oh, I gotta get a Kareem shoe. Or like, oh, I gotta get you in.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Could you imagine? Yeah, yeah.

• 50:54Speaker 03

  Shaq was a huge star.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  Shaq was definitely a transcendent guy.

• 50:57Bill Simmons?

  From a shoe standpoint.

• 50:58Speaker 03

  No, it wasn't a thing.

• 50:59Bill Simmons?

  And also, like, I was there for Shaq. Shaq was pretty polarizing for the 90s.

• 51:03Speaker 03

  How do you mean?

• 51:04Bill Simmons?

  He's just like, people were like, eh, like, why are you making so many movies? Why aren't you in shape all the time? Why'd you leave Orlando after four years?

• 51:11Speaker 03

  We're talking video game, movie, rap.

• 51:13Bill Simmons?

  No, I get it. But people felt in the moment, and they weren't right. But people felt in the moment, like, why does he care about all this other stuff? Why isn't he just trying to win titles? And then he had the MVP season and it flipped.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  And I've said this before, I think another thing, if we were doing the foreign players thing right, we would be doing it, like boxing with the xenophobic, nationalistic sort of spin that we do with every fight. Like, I do remember when Floyd came out to fight Oscar De La Hoya in the sombrero. Like, I'm not saying we should do that in the NBA. I'm not saying we should do that in the NBA.

• 51:49Speaker 03

  But think about Floyd, though.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  But I'm saying.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  But think about Floyd, though. Floyd just went total heel.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:59Speaker 03

  To like, total heel.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  And today's NBA players aren't comfortable with that.

• 52:02Bill Simmons?

  So do we need heels in the NBA?

• 52:04Speaker 03

  You definitely need heels in the NBA.

• 52:06Bill Simmons?

  That's Jimmy Butler, it's sitting there for him right now.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  But he's also 35 now.

• 52:11Bill Simmons?

  Draymond tried to do it and it just made people mad.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  He's a great heel. He is the best heel.

• 52:18Speaker 03

  He's a good heel.

• 52:18Bill Simmons?

  He's hit this point now with the, because I really like watching the Warriors this year where any, like, he had his arm flailed and almost hit this guy in OKC there, whatever, the team the other day. It's like, no, no, Draymond. No, don't ruin this. No. Please.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  It's the best.

• 52:33Bill Simmons?

  But do you think Wemby could be the biggest star in the league as a seven foot five French guy?

• 52:37Speaker 03

  I, I, I've never seen a player that the NBA fans, that I know the diehard NBA fans, had more invested in him being good. Like, if you, there have been guys that have come into the league that it's like. Hey, I like him. Hey, I don't like him. If you talk, Jacoby is fucking great. Cause if you talk shit on Wimby.

• 52:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 52:59Speaker 03

  You get fifty different people telling you that Wimby is basketball Jesus and there's nothing to it. I think if Wimby lives up to the hype, he's a global superstar. People just love Victor Wimby.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  Um, I, I, I made the mistake, I made the same mistake. Cause I don't know if you guys remember the Adrian report where it was like, people are saying he's the best prospect of any sport ever. So I had this bit on the show where I was like, oh, he's the best prospect since Satchel Paige and Ty Cobb. Like I would come up with some old whatever every time. And like, cause you know, I was like kind of, kind of a little bit doubting it at first. And my goodness, man, like the people, like whatever Twitter is just what it is. But in person, people be like, I heard what you said about Wimby. You're crazy. You're wrong. Blah, blah, blah. Like you're right about the Wimby investment. So like, I do think he has.

• 53:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  Major potential. I think Wimby's broken through honestly in terms of culture. Like even when Britney Spears got beat up by his bodyguards at summer league for trying to talk to him that one time.

• 53:57Speaker 03

  Damn, was?

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Well, no, I'm just saying, you don't remember Britney Spears wanted his picture?

• 54:01Speaker 03

  But you throwing so much gas on that Britney Spears got beat up by his bodyguards.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  That's how she represented it on the internet. Anyway, I wasn't there. I didn't see it. But, um, yeah, I think Wimby's definitely up there.

• 54:14Bill Simmons?

  One thing that he has, and I think Edwards has too, and I've seen this happen over the years is when we really want it to happen for somebody. Cause he really felt this when Jordan retired and there was that whole, it was like we were auditioning the next star.

• 54:27Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 54:27Bill Simmons?

  It was like, would you?

• 54:28Speaker 03

  Painful.

• 54:29Bill Simmons?

  Would you like to have Grant Hill, maybe?

• 54:31Speaker 03

  Kobe.

• 54:32Bill Simmons?

  How about T, this T Mac character?

• 54:34Speaker 03

  Vince Carter.

• 54:35Bill Simmons?

  Vince Carter. And then Kobe, I feel like starting in the 2000 finals kind of grabbed it. And then Vince, all of a sudden, that one year when he went head to head against Iverson, it's like, oh, could he grab it? Iverson, even though I think he had like his, his base, but I still feel like it would have been really hard in 2001 for him to become the guy.

• 54:54Speaker 03

  But the thing with Iverson, Iverson is a good example.

• 54:57Bill Simmons?

  He was like a belated, after the fact, people appreciated him more.

• 55:02Speaker 03

  Iverson is a good example of what we're talking about, right? In a time when the NBA was looking for the next Jordan, Iverson was able to carve out his own superstar aura by being completely antithetical to Michael Jordan.

• 55:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 55:17Speaker 03

  Right? He was able to be, and now what we have. I'm sorry, bruh. These dudes ain't got no personality, bruh.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  He's 100% true.

• 55:26Speaker 03

  Like, I mean, it, it, they, they are.

• 55:28Bill Simmons?

  Edwards does.

• 55:29Speaker 03

  Edwards has personality.

• 55:30Bill Simmons?

  Edwards is, Edwards is our big hope.

• 55:32Speaker 03

  He's great, but the older guys do. Steph has personality, LeBron has personality. The way we judge people and the conversations that we have around people and the way that we excoriate them for every little, the food getting a little bland.

• 55:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 55:48Speaker 03

  And if you want to be a superstar, you, you gotta be spicy. There's gotta be some spice to it.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I remember David Stern's, um, dress code thing that everybody said was like mega racist and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And, you know, it was just the idea that like a lot of these guys from the streets or whatever we're called, inner city, whatever euphemism we want to use, were less polished, less media trained, right? Our league is now way more suburban. These kids come from way more affluent backgrounds. They're way more media trained, focus group, consulting freaking to death. And as Van says, it's not as fun. It's just not like, I love Devin Booker. I love watching him hoop. He's famous enough to date Kendall freaking Jenner. Nobody knows anything about him. Nothing.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  Nobody knows a, you can't, a lot of people don't even know what this guy's voice sounds like.

• 56:40Bill Simmons?

  But then you're the flip side of everybody's like, hey, KD, can you, can you stop being so out there? Can you get offline?

• 56:47Speaker 02

  Keep doing it.

• 56:48Speaker 03

  I like that.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  Keep doing it.

• 56:49Bill Simmons?

  I like it too.

• 56:50Speaker 03

  I think, I think KD is interesting and I think the fact that he has embraced the facts. I like it. I like it.

• 56:59Bill Simmons?

  I think he's one of the most authentic superstars we've had in any sport this century.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  100%.

• 57:04Bill Simmons?

  Like, almost to his own detriment a lot of the time.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  Like, could you imagine Donovan Mitchell? He's another one of these guys who's like, perfect. Like, great suburban upbringing, says the right thing, beautifully eloquent when he speaks. Like, he's so polished. Could you imagine him ever saying anything as interesting as KD does on a freaking daily basis? No. And I don't think that's a good thing.

• 57:29Speaker 03

  Now, while we say this, once again, I want to come back to the climate, right? Because we, we, this, part of this is because if you're James Harden. You like to go out to the strip club a little bit. That becomes your whole identity. You you you know what I mean? So so what I'm saying.

• 57:44Bill Simmons?

  Earned that.

• 57:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:45Bill Simmons?

  So he's earned it.

• 57:48Speaker 03

  Once again, I like him. But all I'm like, once again, I like him. But all I'm saying is, look, the NBA is not boring. It's so much fun to watch. All these storylines are so much fun. But loosen up a little bit, have fun, play basketball. But everyone, not just the players, the fans too. I don't need 12 saints that never did anything wrong or never said anything wrong playing basketball. Your favorite players from back in the day? I'm sorry, these guys were intensely flawed.

• 58:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:18Speaker 03

  The GOAT is a legendary asshole.

• 58:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:22Speaker 03

  One of the other guys is a legendary whore. And one of the other guys, if you said the wrong thing to him, he'll throw your ass through a play glass window. So these are people that play basketball. The people part makes the superstar. And so I think that turning them into robots only makes the league a little bit more.

• 58:38Bill Simmons?

  Larry Bird, bar fight during the 1985 playoffs. Hurt his hand.

• 58:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:43Bill Simmons?

  Shooting went south. One of the reasons we lost the title. I was like, what if that happened now?

• 58:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:48Bill Simmons?

  It's like, oh, yeah, the Emirates got in a bar fight and now Minnesota's out of the playoffs.

• 58:52Speaker 03

  Say too is like Adam, God bless him. Um, for all of his shortcomings, in my opinion.

• 58:58Bill Simmons?

  I can't wait for this take.

• 58:59Speaker 03

  He went out and got these guys the bag. Is 10 years.

• 59:04Bill Simmons?

  I thought you were going another direction.

• 59:05Speaker 03

  No, he went out and did that. And you did a great job. Bravo, Adam. Now your next freaking job is to get people to care more about what's happening on the floor in your freaking league.

• 59:16Bill Simmons?

  So it's not.

• 59:16Speaker 03

  And I get it. He was putting all his energies. No, it's not.

• 59:20Bill Simmons?

  Oh, there's a green one.

• 59:21Speaker 03

  Cup courts. I think Adam has amazing business sense. He's smart enough to get the Emirates involved in naming rights. And like, he is incredible at getting the corporate partners to buy into what they're doing. Now he's got to be better at the basketball part and getting people to care more.

• 59:37Bill Simmons?

  The number one thing to me that tells me that that's not going to happen is the schedule, which I've talked about a million times in this podcast. The fact that it's 82 games and not 70. Or seventy-two even, like that they don't care. They they have too much of their product.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  Inventory.

• 59:52Bill Simmons?

  They love the inventory and it's too much and

• 59:54Speaker 02

  It's way too much.

• 59:55Bill Simmons?

  It's just night after night. There's eight games, nine games, ten games. None of them. You never know what's special, what's not special.

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  It's been eighty-two forever. At what point did it become that you would have thought, what was the point to where you felt like they needed to scale back?

• 1:00:09Bill Simmons?

  Late two thousands.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:00:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  I I

• 1:00:11Bill Simmons?

  I also think I talked about this Tuesday. I think that sports much harder to play and it's it's a big reason why these guys are getting injured.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  Religion in twenty fourteen when everybody was was praising Popovich for not playing. Um, they were playing the Heat too. That it was the Spurs and he sat like three of the starters.

• 1:00:30Bill Simmons?

  Everybody.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, everybody.

• 1:00:31Bill Simmons?

  Ruined the Saturday game.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  Yes. And everybody was like, the NBA media consensus was like, Pop is such a genius and blah, blah, blah. And I gotta give it to our guy, Amin. He was like, it's cool when the Spurs do it, but when everybody's doing it.

• 1:00:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  It's not gonna be good and our partners pay us for these games. This is how we make the bulk of our money.

• 1:00:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but the thing is they just paid them more money for the games.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:55Bill Simmons?

  Like they they they pwned it up again.

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  They got blessed with the media environment where these live rights are so so um impactful, but like that's when I got religion on it. When everybody was like, yo, Pop is a genius for this. And I'm just like, well, if teams need to load manage their stars, then that means we need less games. Like, that's just the obvious.

• 1:01:14Bill Simmons?

  Think how good the seventy-two would be right now with like Philly situation where it's like, holy shit, they're two and nine in a seventy-two game season. Like this is, this is dangerous now. They can't fuck around. They, you know, they could be like number ten playing team.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  They'll be fine. They'll they'll finish in the top three of the East.

• 1:01:32Bill Simmons?

  There I have never, I've asked so many people and there's some people in the league who've really pushed for it. Like Steve Kerr is like a massive advocate for it. And he's like written letters and all this stuff and. There's no answer other than nah, we don't want to give up the money. That's it.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  And the thing is-

• 1:01:47Bill Simmons?

  It's 100% money.

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  Mind you, this is, these are the masters of the universe. This is what we're told. These are the smartest business people in the history of planet earth. And like you get this massive increase in revenue with your new TV deal. You would think that it's like, all right, with this windfall, we can make the product better. It might like hurt us in the, in the short run in terms of our inventory, but we're going to find a way to make these games feel more interesting, special, and better monetize the decrease in inventory. But instead they're just like, no, we're going to bash them over the head with 82 from now till eternity.

• 1:02:24Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, they're probably, I mean, the conversation now around the league in terms of the quality of the games, the viewership, might spawn something, but there's been no reason to, right?

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:35Speaker 03

  The league has been incredibly popular.

• 1:02:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:37Speaker 03

  The NBA was like, the NBA helped to normalize the American society in the bubble after. Like they, they should have won some kind of social award. This is dumb. I've said this to you before, bruh. I literally was driving around LA like a zombie during the pandemic. And then I heard on the radio, people were like, I've heard that there are rumblings of the NBA getting everybody back together in one city and playing all the games. And I was, hope.

• 1:03:07Bill Simmons?

  Hope brings a turtle.

• 1:03:09Speaker 03

  I was like, oh my God, if I could just watch some NBA basketball.

• 1:03:12Bill Simmons?

  You know what's crazy about that? I was thinking about that the other day because it feels like it happened 130 years ago and it was four.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  Four years.

• 1:03:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:21Bill Simmons?

  Wow. We were putting cardboard cutouts of fans in the stands.

• 1:03:27Bill Simmons?

  Not only did we not have fans in the stands, we were pretending to have fans in the stands.

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  Virtual fans.

• 1:03:33Bill Simmons?

  Like that Stallone Cobra thing behind Van's shoulder there. And it was like totally normal. That's how desperate we were for basketball. Let's take a break. We gotta talk Mike Tyson.

• 1:03:46Bill Simmons?

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• 1:04:30Bill Simmons?

  is made with 100% fresh beef and cooked right when you order it. Two slices of cheese arranged in a star. Two pickles, side by side. The perfect amount of slivered onions. Get the Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal, fries and a drink for just $8 for a limited time only at McDonald's. For a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California and for delivery. Fresh beef not available in Alaska and Hawaii. Offer not valid for delivery. This episode is brought to you by TikTok. When you watch a football game, you follow the ball, right? Well, there's a video on TikTok where this guy says to watch the players without the ball. Watch the routes and the action away from the play. I'll change how you see the game. And guess what? He's not wrong. That's the thing about discovering on TikTok.

• 1:05:15Bill Simmons?

  One video can change the way you see the game. You can learn something new or see things in a completely different way. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Visit tiktok.com/discovermore. All right, Mike Tyson against one of the Paul brothers. Which Paul brother is it? Jake.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  I was about to say Logan.

• 1:05:33Speaker 03

  It's Jake. All right, Bill.

• 1:05:34Bill Simmons?

  What are, wait, we are right Billy name?

• 1:05:36Speaker 03

  Take everything personally, Jake. You gonna find out.

• 1:05:39Bill Simmons?

  I'm old. Don't take it any personally.

• 1:05:43Bill Simmons?

  Jake Paul.

• 1:05:46Bill Simmons?

  Was, are you old enough to remember early Tyson? Or just the clips of early Tyson?

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Tyson, no. Tyson out, my first real memories of Mike outside of like OVHS was when he came out of the first prison stint, like the Bruno and all of those guys.

• 1:06:03Bill Simmons?

  What do you remember of early Tyson?

• 1:06:05Speaker 03

  Uh, I remember the way things used to go back in the olden days was whispers, reality, stardom. That's, that's, that's how it was with Shaq. My uncle wrote a letter from prison to my, uh, to my dad. And it was like, yo, have you heard about this boy from LSU? Seven foot one, 290 pounds. Have you seen him?

• 1:06:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:28Speaker 03

  Shaquille O'Neal, whispers, boom. And with Tyson, it was this unbelievable wrecking machine. Then you see him on HBO, reality, and then stardom. And so from, I guess he came out. At no point in my young life do I not remember Mike Tyson not being the baddest motherfucker around. And when you watched him, it was obvious you, you were watching something different.

• 1:06:50Bill Simmons?

  That's my memory as well. Well, although I was older, but it was Sports Illustrated cover, HBO fights, this is must watch.

• 1:06:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:58Bill Simmons?

  Saw literally every Tyson fight. Everyone cared the most about his fights versus really anything else in sports, except maybe like the Super Bowl.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 1:07:07Bill Simmons?

  And I don't know, the audience doesn't match up with that, but just.

• 1:07:10Speaker 03

  No, no, no, they do. No, it was, it was a huge thing. It was, it was boxing, cause remember now boxing is in an interesting place at this point. Muhammad Ali is gone in 1980, but really he's gone.

• 1:07:22Bill Simmons?

  And nobody liked Larry Holmes.

• 1:07:23Speaker 03

  Before then, Larry Holmes comes in at the lower weights, Sugar Ray Leonard is your baby.

• 1:07:28Bill Simmons?

  The middle weights and the welterweights took over for half the decade.

• 1:07:31Speaker 03

  And then there's an unstoppable heavyweight buzzsaw. And that becomes must see television.

• 1:07:36Bill Simmons?

  But it wasn't just the buzzsaw. It was the way he talked. It was how weird he was. He was just the most compelling person.

• 1:07:44Speaker 03

  He was dangerous.

• 1:07:45Bill Simmons?

  Interviews after the fight, he would just use crazy words and had like this weird empathy for somebody who he just sent their nose through their forehead.

• 1:07:52Speaker 03

  I'm just, I'm telling you, that's, that was the biggest part of it. The biggest part of it was my, you, you didn't, you never knew which Mike you were gonna get, right?

• 1:07:59Bill Simmons?

  No, I don't think he knew either.

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  Right. And so, and then Mike becomes ubiquitous. He's got the.

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  The Punch-Out video game.

• 1:08:07Speaker 03

  Punch-Out video game. I remember that.

• 1:08:08Bill Simmons?

  Well, the Spinks pay-per-view is what pushed her over the top. When he knocked him out in 91 seconds and everybody was like, that was one of the early, hey, who's house are we going to, which is now a staple of how we watch sports. Back then, it was like, who's getting the fight? Are we all chipping in? What are we doing for food? And then my mom, I don't even think had brought down the nachos yet. I had 12 people in the basement.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  It was over.

• 1:08:31Bill Simmons?

  And we're all like, yeah, the fight's over, but the food's still coming, right? It was just done.

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  That was the only thing.

• 1:08:36Bill Simmons?

  Spinks was terrified.

• 1:08:37Speaker 03

  The only, that, I remember that fight specifically.

• 1:08:39Bill Simmons?

  Remember the deer in the headlights look in Spinks?

• 1:08:41Speaker 03

  We had everybody over. He and my uncle, rest in peace, my uncle Ray. My uncle Ray is like, Spinks is gonna make it a fight. Spinks is gonna make it a fight. He from a boxing family.

• 1:08:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:52Speaker 03

  The whole nine, whatever, whatever.

• 1:08:53Bill Simmons?

  He's gonna box him.

• 1:08:53Speaker 03

  He's gonna box him, he's gonna move. Mike hit Spinks, Spinks goes down to one knee. And my daddy like, uh huh.

• 1:08:59Bill Simmons?

  And then hit him with the second, the punch that ended it was one of the single hardest punches in the history of boxing.

• 1:09:04Speaker 03

  And he's gone, it's over.

• 1:09:05Bill Simmons?

  He's moving forward like it's like in Roadhouse, just to like clear him out.

• 1:09:09Speaker 03

  And we didn't really, that was the bit, we didn't have very much else to do.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:09:13Speaker 03

  We all had to just sit around and talk about how raw Mike Tyson was.

• 1:09:17Bill Simmons?

  The thing with Mike was, he was involved in four, I remember where I was when I watched it, sporting events, which is like, I think he might have the record for me. Cause it was that Spinks fight. It was getting knocked out by Douglas, which is still.

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  Holyfield the ear.

• 1:09:34Bill Simmons?

  Both Holyfield fights. The first fight was incredible that we had that at my house. We had that party, still thought he was gonna beat Holyfield.

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  That's in my mind.

• 1:09:41Bill Simmons?

  And then the ear was, was also insane.

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  It's like, uh, when he came out of prison and he had that like sort of exhibition tour where he fought the big doofy white dude.

• 1:09:51Speaker 03

  Peter McNeely.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, Bruno in the UK.

• 1:09:54Bill Simmons?

  Big Massachusetts moment, Peter McNeely.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  And like, you know, it was like this warm-up to like the real big fights against Holyfield and Lennox Lewis. And like, I would say even back then, the aura still existed and everybody around me assumed he was gonna kill these guys.

• 1:10:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  Like, everybody thought, no, it's Mike. Like, he had the fluke, he went to prison, he's back, he's down with the Muslims.

• 1:10:14Bill Simmons?

  Holyfield was a cruiser. Weight who had moved up to heavyweight, he'd lost to more.

• 1:10:18Speaker 03

  By that time, it was more mythology though.

• 1:10:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:20Speaker 03

  We had, we had, and they knew it because they were picking opponents very strategically for Mike. Mike beat Bruce Selton for a championship, maybe Buster, oh no, he beat Bruno for a championship. They actually paid like four million dollars of step aside money to Lennox Lewis at one point so they didn't have to fight him. So at that point, it was a little bit more.

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  It was smoke and mirrors.

• 1:10:42Speaker 03

  It was more mythology.

• 1:10:44Bill Simmons?

  The fights were awesome though.

• 1:10:45Speaker 03

  They were.

• 1:10:45Bill Simmons?

  Even the Galata fight.

• 1:10:46Speaker 03

  At the.

• 1:10:47Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 1:10:48Speaker 03

  The Mike that we knew was gone even before the Buster Douglas.

• 1:10:53Bill Simmons?

  The way he would move side to side and the combos, like that guy, that guy.

• 1:10:57Speaker 03

  Cussing Tilly Atlas and all of those other guys like leaving, but he still had it.

• 1:11:02Bill Simmons?

  You know what was another amazing thing about his arc was living it in real time, watching somebody like fly two coasts of the sun. And as even the mistakes aren't even done yet and you just kind of knew her, like once he started dating Robin Givens, it was like, this isn't gonna go well for anybody.

• 1:11:20Speaker 03

  Something that was always resonated with people about Mike was the real fight of Mike Tyson's life was never gonna be in the ring.

• 1:11:30Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:11:30Speaker 03

  Because when you started learning about where he came from and what he went through, you always were wondering. It still feels like Mike Tyson won because he won the biggest championship he could have won. You were waiting for the, Mike Tyson has experienced intense tragedy in his life. You were waiting for the moment that it was over. And he ended up like in a really bad, life altering, life changing situation. And he went through some of those, but him fighting was, it was a happy ending to a degree. Whenever you saw him in the boxing ring, because everybody sold you on just how much he had gone through. You mentioned certain things, Mike flies into a rage.

• 1:12:13Speaker 03

  You mentioned other things, Mike breaks down and cries. And so. Of all the things that he's been through, and they are not woke. There are things that he's been through, they are not.

• 1:12:23Speaker 02

  He's a case study, cuz there's an extension of grace that Mike has afforded even after the sexual assault charges and convictions that like people just have decided collectively that we're gonna extend Mike some level of grace, and I think it is some of that vulnerability that you're mentioning right now. Cuz like, there's other people who would've gone through what he's gone through and would've been completely written off by every single segment of society except some of the worst elements. But like, Mike has managed to fight his way through that and be embraced.

• 1:12:57Speaker 03

  We, this is weird territory that we're treading into, but I'll say it like this.

• 1:13:02Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 1:13:04Speaker 03

  He is brutally human.

• 1:13:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:07Speaker 03

  He's brutally human, like, you, you, you watch him and you're like, this is supposed to be the strongest guy in the world, right? He knocks people out, he bowls people over their heads. But there's an interview where, with him and a guy from Canada, where Mike's out there to do his play, and the guy brings up Mike's old case. And he cannot control himself.

• 1:13:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:32Speaker 03

  And you, you get the feeling of, man, I've been through that, I put that behind me, I'm trying to move on and be better, and you're throwing this back in my face. This guy is mentioning something that Mike was convicted of. He is not wrong in saying, this is something from your past, but you still look at him like he's an asshole. You're like, yo, man, why you bringing that up?

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  You know what I'm saying? You still look at him like that because there's something compelling about the amount of truths that Mike Tyson has failed into. And it'll always be that way. He's one of the last ones that we're just like.

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wonder if anybody else could ever have the type of redemption arc. And you know, some people might say it's undeserved, um, you know, some people might say like, you know, maybe human beings deserve to make mistakes and, and live past it. Um, but yeah, I'm fascinated by that element of it. Where like, everybody in the stands that like, Mike has lived a traumatic life, Mike has mental health issues, Mike has done some really fucked up things, but yet Mike is, you know, still somebody people root for. I, I think it's amazing, honestly.

• 1:14:39Speaker 03

  There's one more thing that might factor into it, is that he's.

• 1:14:47Speaker 03

  I don't think people think this consciously. He's been punished.

• 1:14:51Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:14:51Speaker 03

  So he hasn't gotten away with anything.

• 1:14:55Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:14:55Speaker 03

  Per se, there's a lot of things that he probably got away with.

• 1:14:57Bill Simmons?

  Well, but he even said that. He said, I didn't do this, but there's some other stuff. So we're probably even.

• 1:15:02Speaker 03

  Right, so he went to jail. He lost a child. He lost all of his money.

• 1:15:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Speaker 03

  He lost, he, he lost his mentor. He lost, he, he lost his best friend. Life has taken a lot from him. Now, he's gotten a lot, right? And he's been able to come back from all of that. But you've seen, part of it is, and I, and you don't wanna, you don't, I'm trying to pick my words very delicately because the thing that Mike Tyson went to jail for is something that we have to root out of our, of our community, our society, and we have to make sure that we're serious about talking about stuff like that. But there's a part of it to where it feels like, it feels like he's got a chunk of his ass taken out of it because of it. It feels like he's gone through some really terrible, immensely gut-wrenching, horrible things.

• 1:15:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:54Speaker 03

  Um, and look, if no one ever wants to watch or look at Mike Tyson, I get it. I get why you would feel that way. But like even my mother, who is.

• 1:16:05Bill Simmons?

  People love Mike, man.

• 1:16:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, even my mother is just like, she still likes to see Mike Tyson doing well.

• 1:16:11Bill Simmons?

  You know what I think it is? I, Jalen and I interviewed him once when I was at Grantland. We did a pod with him and it was like, it was like a thrill. It was like really, it was so cool to just shoot the shit with him. And I might even said this to him on the pod, but I always felt like he was one of the most self-aware athletes that I ever followed. He was somebody that you would have thought was a complete disaster and he was. But he was also completely painfully aware of all his faults, all his mistakes, all the issues he had, and could talk about it, which I don't, I can't even think of anybody. Iverson, I think, has a little bit of that too.

• 1:16:47Speaker 03

  I think it's kind of the same thing with, with.

• 1:16:49Bill Simmons?

  There's an interest, self-introspection that was always unusual about him. Even as it was like, I'm talking Robin Givens era. All the way through. He always kind of knew. I remember writing a column about it once about. He kind of became the the Tony Montana, say hello to the bad guy character because he kind of knew that was how society saw him.

• 1:17:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:08Bill Simmons?

  It was like, yeah, say hello to me. I'm the bad guy.

• 1:17:10Speaker 03

  It's like.

• 1:17:11Bill Simmons?

  That was who he became.

• 1:17:12Speaker 03

  These people think that I'm an animal, but.

• 1:17:15Bill Simmons?

  So I'm gonna act like.

• 1:17:15Speaker 03

  So I'm gonna do it and I'm gonna sell this fight and I'm gonna intimidate this dude and I'm gonna, you know, talk about.

• 1:17:23Speaker 03

  I'm a fuck you.

• 1:17:24Bill Simmons?

  Say crazy shit.

• 1:17:25Speaker 03

  That was that that one run.

• 1:17:27Bill Simmons?

  I want to eat your kids. His crazy run was the craziest.

• 1:17:31Speaker 03

  His his Mike's crazy run is the craziest run we've seen.

• 1:17:35Bill Simmons?

  By any athlete.

• 1:17:36Speaker 03

  By any athlete, the only person that comes close to was Kanye a couple of years ago.

• 1:17:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:41Speaker 03

  But like.

• 1:17:41Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Charlie Sheen too.

• 1:17:43Speaker 03

  Oh, that's those are the these are iconic crazy runs.

• 1:17:46Bill Simmons?

  So in my column, I created the Tyson zone, which was when.

• 1:17:49Speaker 03

  I remember this.

• 1:17:50Bill Simmons?

  Somebody acts so consistently crazy that you'll just believe any story. And Charlie Sheen entered that.

• 1:17:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:17:56Bill Simmons?

  Kanye, definitely.

• 1:17:57Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 1:17:58Bill Simmons?

  You know, there's certain people where you're like, I'll believe any story now.

• 1:18:01Speaker 03

  Mike's crazy run. And then it was like, not just crazy, but it was like odd, funny, like my back is broken spinal.

• 1:18:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:10Speaker 03

  Like it's like odd like.

• 1:18:12Bill Simmons?

  I guess I'm just gonna fade into Bolivian. That's my favorite. That was the best one.

• 1:18:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:18Bill Simmons?

  We went the first year of Jimmy's show. We went to go. He was the guest host and we went to he had like this pigeon coop in Harlem and I went with Uncle Frank. I was like the writer. And we spent I don't know how long on the rooftop just watching Mike flew pigeons and he was like so sad. And so like traumatized by, you know, his whole life, but he could also talk about it. And he really connected with Uncle Frank and it was this. This really cool, like five minute video we got out of it. But even that, I was like, why is he even letting us up here? It was like he wanted to win people over even though he knew he was the bad guy.

• 1:18:53Speaker 03

  For everybody out listening right now, I want you guys to you're gonna this is gonna be hilarious when you think about this. Think about how jumpy Bill was on the roof of the pigeon.

• 1:19:02Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I I loved it. It was amazing. It was such a cool experience.

• 1:19:07Speaker 03

  Bill is like, uh, Pookie, nice to meet you.

• 1:19:10Bill Simmons?

  No, the thing is, it was only him and like one other guy like he.

• 1:19:14Speaker 03

  He didn't have the entourage anymore.

• 1:19:16Bill Simmons?

  Like all these boxers, you hit that point. He hit that with the Douglas fight. He had two people in his corner.

• 1:19:21Speaker 03

  You think he wins tomorrow?

• 1:19:25Speaker 02

  Phil doesn't think so.

• 1:19:26Bill Simmons?

  What do you think? I'm gonna look at the odds while you talk about this.

• 1:19:29Speaker 03

  I don't know what to think.

• 1:19:30Bill Simmons?

  He's 58 years old, which is just like, Was was asking, could he just like die if he got punched in the heart? Like how?

• 1:19:36Speaker 02

  I think he's gonna be okay. I think he's gonna be okay in terms of physically. I just, yeah, I just have found it hard to believe he's gonna hit this guy enough times to win.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  So from a boxing standpoint, people want, people like to hate on Jake. They do. I've seen Jake in the gym, like in the gym.

• 1:19:53Bill Simmons?

  He's not bad.

• 1:19:53Speaker 03

  Out at Phil's boxing. He's certainly not bad in terms of the guys that he fights.

• 1:20:01Bill Simmons?

  This isn't screeched from Saved by the Bell.

• 1:20:03Speaker 03

  Fuck no. This is a guy that actually has a right hand, like a real right hand. Like he can detonate you with a right hand, right? Um, and he's a big, strong, athletic guy who's got a a fair amount of ring experience now, right?

• 1:20:17Bill Simmons?

  Now, yeah.

• 1:20:17Speaker 03

  So he's not somebody to be fucked over and played with. Any version of Mike Tyson pre-age 50 will work Jake Paul. But it's not pre-age 50. Your stamina goes, your punch resistance goes.

• 1:20:30Bill Simmons?

  Jake's minus 205 on Fanduel.

• 1:20:32Speaker 03

  So, so it, Jake, it, I could, I don't know what's going to happen, to be honest with you.

• 1:20:38Speaker 02

  That's the thing about Mike, you don't know.

• 1:20:41Bill Simmons?

  But that's, people have been asking me like, is this, do you think people are gonna watch this fight or people are gonna care? And I'm like, people are 1,000. First of all, it's on Netflix, which is the single most important

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:52Bill Simmons?

  channel we have now.

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:53Bill Simmons?

  Um, it's a Friday night. People are gonna get together. Somebody's gonna get it. It's super easy to queue up Netflix at whoever's house or whatever bar.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  People are gonna.

• 1:21:02Bill Simmons?

  People are gonna care. I, I actually think people are gonna care way more than I think people realize.

• 1:21:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:08Speaker 03

  I'm watching it. Like, I thought it wasn't gonna happen. I thought after it got canceled the first time that they would never come back to it. The only thing that makes me think that you could see a Tyson victory is that Mike seems genuinely motivated.

• 1:21:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:25Speaker 02

  Like this young kid, he just parachutes into my life's work, my sport, and thinks that he could take me out. Um, I understand why anybody would be motivated by that, but yeah, the man is 60.

• 1:21:37Bill Simmons?

  I, I just can't.

• 1:21:39Speaker 02

  Man is 60.

• 1:21:40Bill Simmons?

  I can't believe, like, I was watching Mike Tyson fight in the mid 80s, followed by something like erotic thriller on HBO. It was like the greatest night.

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  Greatest night ever.

• 1:21:49Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:21:50Speaker 03

  Emmanuel.

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  Mike Tyson. The heart was pumping.

• 1:21:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Oh, the hitchhiker's on.

• 1:21:56Bill Simmons?

  And now 40 years later, he's still doing it.

• 1:21:59Speaker 02

  Emmanuel in space.

• 1:22:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I was like, oh, she's in space now.

• 1:22:04Speaker 03

  See, see, everybody tries to act like it's only me. Waz knows what's up.

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:22:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  What? On the weekends, I never went to sleep before 2 a.m.

• 1:22:12Speaker 03

  What, what, what, what do you, what's your big boxing fan? What do, Jake Paul, real boxer?

• 1:22:19Bill Simmons?

  I think he's an elite celebrity boxer.

• 1:22:22Speaker 02

  Yes, he's real enough.

• 1:22:24Speaker 03

  He's a great celebrity boxer.

• 1:22:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. To me, it speaks to more the evolution of celebrity boxing, which was in the 90s and 2000s where we would put like Screech against Warshack.

• 1:22:33Speaker 02

  I don't think he'd be in the top 100 of actual people in his weight class in terms of, you know, especially not in the world, even in America for that, for that sense. But like to be that famous and to fight that credibly, I think is an actual.

• 1:22:48Bill Simmons?

  It's impressive.

• 1:22:49Speaker 03

  Can, can I tell you guys a, a, a quick story from the gym with Jake?

• 1:22:52Bill Simmons?

  Oh, story from the gym.

• 1:22:54Speaker 03

  Story from the gym.

• 1:22:54Bill Simmons?

  Sponsored by State Farm.

• 1:22:56Speaker 03

  Sponsored by State Farm, like, uh, Philosophy Boxing, Woodland Hills, Phil Palina, shout out to him. There was a heavyweight in the gym. Uh, Jake used to come in the gym, come in the gym, um, with BJ and they, they would fight. Jake's whole team, Jake Roll, he got a whole team that comes in with him and they, they do their whole thing and they spar different guys. Pros, normally they would spar people out of weight class though. So Jake, at that time, he wasn't as big as he is now, 175, 180. The guys he would spar would be middle, sometimes, sometimes even welter that he would spar with. Um, and they were, they were bringing him along, but he was taking it serious. He was in there all the time. There was a heavyweight in there that was like, just hated Jake Paul. Just hated Jake Paul.

• 1:23:42Speaker 03

  Like just did not want it like I want to spar Jake. I want to spar Jake. I want to fucking fight Jake. I want to do all of this.

• 1:23:48Bill Simmons?

  This is start of Creed five.

• 1:23:49Speaker 03

  Hated Jake Paul. Hated Jake Paul. They got in the ring and he was like, this was a guy I've been boxing for a long time. They got in the ring and they sparred. Jake fucked this guy up. When I'm telling you this is like, this is what I could consider to be like a real, we haven't seen him since. Jake fucked up. You guys, I know that Van has a reputation of embellishing stories. This is we, when I'm telling you, hurt him bad.

• 1:24:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:17Speaker 03

  And I was like, oh, because I did not think that was going to go the way that it did. This was a guy that was his same size, had been boxing for a long time. There's literally pictures of him with gloves on when he's like 13, 14 years old. Jake beat the shit out of him and I'm like, he's going to win some fights.

• 1:24:35Bill Simmons?

  Waz, are you familiar with Bakoli?

• 1:24:37Speaker 02

  No, who's that?

• 1:24:38Speaker 03

  Oh shit, this is Bill's guy.

• 1:24:41Bill Simmons?

  He's your guy too.

• 1:24:42Speaker 03

  He is, but Bill is like obsessed with Mark Bakoli. He's a gigantic guy from the continent.

• 1:24:47Bill Simmons?

  He's from, he's Congolese.

• 1:24:49Speaker 02

  Oh, the Congo, the continent continent.

• 1:24:52Bill Simmons?

  I'll just give you the one sentence sell job. Congolese Ernie Shavers meets 1974 George Foreman.

• 1:25:02Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:25:03Bill Simmons?

  That's Bakoli.

• 1:25:04Speaker 02

  So is this like more credible than the Deontay Wilder early clips?

• 1:25:09Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 1:25:10Speaker 03

  No, no, no, yeah.

• 1:25:10Bill Simmons?

  There's nothing like, there's nothing like this guy.

• 1:25:12Speaker 03

  Deontay Wilder is, I don't want to take anything.

• 1:25:14Bill Simmons?

  Nobody wants to fight this guy. Like he can't, he literally cannot get fights.

• 1:25:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't want to take anything from Wilder. Wilder is a bronze medalist in the Olympics who became heavyweight champion with one of the most devastating right, uh, right hands of all time. But like Martin Bakoli is like a, like a, there's a big young heavyweight, Jared Anderson.

• 1:25:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:32Speaker 03

  Great young fighter, just got demolished.

• 1:25:34Bill Simmons?

  The Saudis, the Saudis threw him a ton of money. They're like, will you fight Bakoli? He's like, no. And they're like, here's a lot of money. And he's like, all right. And he got, got absolutely like his career has been altered.

• 1:25:44Speaker 03

  It was one of those, you ever seen, it's not quite.

• 1:25:47Bill Simmons?

  It was like the Frazier Foreman.

• 1:25:49Speaker 03

  I was just about to say, that's what was the fight was going to bring him up, like Frazier Foreman to where you're like.

• 1:25:52Bill Simmons?

  Ball Frazier, just keeps getting falling over.

• 1:25:54Speaker 03

  Halfway into the fight, you're like, ooh. Like halfway into the first round, you're like, ah. And Jared Anderson.

• 1:26:00Bill Simmons?

  Just doing.

• 1:26:01Speaker 03

  Give him credit.

• 1:26:02Bill Simmons?

  Like one of these guys.

• 1:26:03Speaker 03

  He was landing shots.

• 1:26:05Bill Simmons?

  That's what he was doing the whole fight.

• 1:26:07Speaker 03

  But it's not just that, like, McCollum is skilled.

• 1:26:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, no, but it's ultimately when somebody can just, and you just see the other guy moving backwards and it's like he's getting hit by a tornado.

• 1:26:17Speaker 03

  And then it became, and so now, after that, he can't get a fight.

• 1:26:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's my number one. I just want to see him fight. I would watch him fight every two months.

• 1:26:24Speaker 03

  They made, they just made a fight.

• 1:26:26Bill Simmons?

  Jump on the bandwagon, guys.

• 1:26:27Speaker 03

  They made a fight with him, but it wasn't with, uh, Zane or one of those guys. Yeah.

• 1:26:33Speaker 02

  He's gonna kill somebody.

• 1:26:34Bill Simmons?

  All right. Mike Tyson, so we're all watching.

• 1:26:37Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:26:38Bill Simmons?

  Kyle, you watching?

• 1:26:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:39Bill Simmons?

  All right.

• 1:26:40Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, uh, news for everyone. Kyle and I going to Frolic.

• 1:26:46Bill Simmons?

  When is that?

• 1:26:46Speaker 00

  Allegedly. I don't know. Sounds great.

• 1:26:48Bill Simmons?

  What day is that?

• 1:26:50Speaker 03

  When did we say we're doing it?

• 1:26:51Speaker 00

  I said the weekend, Saturday vibes are great, but.

• 1:26:54Speaker 03

  Will they have the games on?

• 1:26:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, three TVs, not the best, though.

• 1:26:57Bill Simmons?

  You can go now that LSU season's over. You can start going to bars on Saturday.

• 1:27:02Speaker 03

  I'll just, I'll just let y'all know, y'all fuck with me with LSU. I'm not, I'm not like a stable person when it comes to LSU. So y'all, you know how everybody likes to get razzed about their team and all that stuff like that? I don't like that shit.

• 1:27:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, but our, but our season is kind of fucked. We still outside hope, though. We run the table.

• 1:27:20Bill Simmons?

  Now you have Jaden Daniels. You just transfer all your love to Jaden Daniels for his Washington playoff run.

• 1:27:25Speaker 03

  And we got, there's a whole NIL battle happening right now. We're about to play probably 10 million for a quarterback.

• 1:27:31Bill Simmons?

  I don't like this at all.

• 1:27:32Speaker 02

  I saw Cam Ward bought his entire offensive line diamond chains. Like, he had like a platter out and as a gift for his.

• 1:27:39Bill Simmons?

  How is this gonna end well?

• 1:27:40Speaker 02

  Amazing season.

• 1:27:42Speaker 03

  He should have bought him for the, should have bought him for the defense.

• 1:27:45Bill Simmons?

  You could give me.

• 1:27:46Speaker 02

  Maybe they play better.

• 1:27:48Bill Simmons?

  If we had, this is a better podcast for another time, but if you told me, what is college sports in 10 years? I'm prepared for 100 scenarios.

• 1:27:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:56Bill Simmons?

  You literally tell me anything. You tell me it's like a 10 college league and everyone else is D3, and I believe that.

• 1:28:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. This is, it's a strange direction it's headed in, for sure.

• 1:28:06Bill Simmons?

  I can't say it's great. Wow, it's great to see you.

• 1:28:08Speaker 02

  Same.

• 1:28:09Bill Simmons?

  Fan, great to see you. Thanks for coming on.

• 1:28:13Bill Simmons?

  All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Cochran and Steve Stroud for producing as always. Thanks to Van Lathan and Big Waz, Wazne Lambra.

• 1:28:23Bill Simmons?

  Stay tuned for part two. It's coming later tonight. I'll see you there.

• 1:28:52Bill Simmons?

  Must be 21 plus and present in select states. For Kansas, an affiliation with Kansas Star Casino. Or 18 plus and present in DC. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit RG-help.com. Call 1-887-897777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit Gambling Helpline MA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support. Massachusetts or call 1-8778-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell.

• 1:29:32Bill Simmons?

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