Herbert’s Future, a Week 6 NFL Preview, Plus an NBA Deep Dive With Cam Johnson, Tommy Alter, Tom Pelissero, and Joe House

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Tom Pelissero to discuss six topics in the NFL. Then, Joe House hops on to make their Ringer 107 picks for the week before Cam Johnson and Tommy Alter join to discuss the Nuggets, the new season, and much more! (0:00) Intro (3:26) Six topics in the NFL with Tom Pelissero (47:57) Ringer 107 picks with Joe House (01:16:26) NBA Over/Unders recap (01:20:35) Jokic, the new NBA season, and more with Cam Johnson and Tommy Alter Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Tom Pelissero, Joe House, Cam Johnson, and Tommy Alter Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo Brought to you by PayPal. Learn more at https://paypal.com/payin4 The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit https://fanduel.com/playwithaplan to learn more about the resources and helplines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by PayPal. The holiday rush is coming and you can get ahead of it with PayPal. Shop your favorite online stores with PayPal this season like eBay for collectibles, Fanatics for teen gear, Walmart for tech. Check out the flexibility to pay now or pay later and split your payments with Pay in Four with no interest, no late fees. Shop now with PayPal. Paying for subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com/payingfor. PayPal, Inc., NMLS 910457.

• 0:39Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast, brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up a new rewatchables on Monday. We did Friday the 13th. The next one's gonna be It Follows, which is one of the best horror movies of the past 20 years. Very excited to talk about it. So that's coming on Monday. You have the whole weekend to watch it. Coming up on this podcast, action-packed. I gave you way too much content this week. There's no way you were gonna listen to my voice for this long, but sorry. This is, this is the time, mid, uh, mid-October. At the top, Tom Pelissero, NFL six-pack, had a whole bunch of NFL storylines we wanted to get through. House came on just to do the Ringer 107 picks.

• 1:19Bill Simmons?

  Last but not least, Cam Johnson and Tommy Alter came in to talk hoops with me for, it was almost an hour and a half, and a really, really, really fun podcast. Obviously, you've probably heard Cam on a couple of different shows over the years. He's just the rare player who, you know, as a podcast tang, seems just like somebody you would have on a podcast anyway, but it's, it's really good. So, uh, a lot of content for you this weekend. We didn't get to baseball. I am really excited for a Brewers. Cleveland-Tampa, doesn't really matter, but Brewers-Cleveland would be the sweet spot for me because Cleveland hasn't won since the late 40s. I don't think the Brewers, not only have they never won, I don't even remember the

• 2:04Bill Simmons?

  last time they've even been to the World Series. I have some Brewers friends in, in my life, including my old college roommate, Chip Kane, who's over the moon and beside himself. So, um, the, the baseball's been really fun. We have the WNBA Finals is finally starting this weekend after they completely botched, let's see, the schedule, the arena. Other than that, uh, great job WNBA. We talk about it later with, uh, Cam and Tommy, but, um, very, very fun stretch coming up here. We taped all of this before Niners-Broncos, so hopefully nothing crazy happened in that game. But if you missed the over-under podcast I did with Zach and House, two parts, west

• 2:44Bill Simmons?

  and east, it's been up for a couple of days, so, um, that's why we, um, have pivoted forward here to some football and some, some NBA talk. It's all next. We're gonna take a break, Pearl Jam, and then Tom Pelissero. This is the Bill Simmons Podcast, presented by FanDuel. Make every NFL week more rewarding with FanDuel Rewards Club. You heard me. Just bet like you normally would, earn points in eligible, settled bets, win or lose, keep collecting points, level up, and unlock bigger rewards. So keep an eye on your Rewards Club progress and see what you can unlock. This is your most rewarding season ever, and it's with FanDuel. 21-plus select states or 18-plus DC or Wyoming.

• 3:26Bill Simmons?

  Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, or call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat, Connecticut.

• 4:00Bill Simmons?

  All right, this segment's brought to you by Uber Eats. We are recording late Thursday afternoon, Pacific time. Tom Pelissero is here. You can read the sweep newsletter, you can listen to him on The Ringer NFL Show. A lot of Eagles news out of nowhere. Jalen Hurts, it was already, uh, the year from hell in a lot of different ways for the Eagles, and now it's gotten worse. And, wait, like, did, did you hear about this before today? What, what was the process before we get into the six-pack?

• 4:26Speaker 01

  So he popped up on the injury report on Friday with a calf, which is where the, the blood clot is, but like, there were no alarm bells about he's not gonna play, he was listed as a full participant, he, it was not, didn't have a game designation last week. So it's one of those things that you kind of file away, like, all right, something going on, but you didn't see anything in the game that was like, askew. You didn't think like, oh, this guy's like limping around. And then it was on Wednesday when Jalen had his presser and he started saying like, this was kind of a unique thing. Remember, he was a full participant in practice yesterday. After all this, he played in the game. The team put out a very detailed statement going through, you know, the doctors and the initial evaluation, and it was a superficial blood clot.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  They put him through more testing on Wednesday night to check on it. The blood clot had moved, so basically now they're getting him on whatever treatment protocol, medication to try to deal with it. He's not gonna play this week against the Panthers. We'll see if they make an injured reserve move with him, uh, over the weekend. Like, could be a serious deal. It sounds like it wasn't something that was a high enough concern that they felt like they needed to pull him out of the game. Remember, you got like a seven-hour flight back and forth too, which-

• 5:37Bill Simmons?

  That's the other thing.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  -with blood clots.

• 5:39Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  It's not super ideal, but, you know, it wasn't something that was bothering Jalen so much he didn't play in the game, or even though he didn't practice yesterday, but it got to the point where, all right, we need to, we need to slow this thing down and get a handle on it. So it's gonna be Tanner McKee playing this week, probably still without Saquon, maybe still without Devante Smith, all the moving parts on the offensive line. And, you know, that division's so bad that, you know, I, I don't even know that like, taking a couple of losses while you're waiting for the quarterback to come back necessarily kills you in this thing.

• 6:10Bill Simmons?

  Right. You can be eight and nine and win the division.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  There, it's the new NFC South. It's, it's a race of like, even the commanders, we'll get to them, I'm sure, later, but they're sitting there at 1-3-1, but it's like-

• 6:23Bill Simmons?

  And they're in it.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  -if you can find a way to get a win this weekend, like, who knows? Like, it's just, it's totally wide open right now.

• 6:30Bill Simmons?

  So that line, the Eagles line, I think moved five points with Jalen Hurts to McKee, which I always am interested by when the quarterbacks disappear. Like, if Josh Allen leaves the Bills, I think that's the highest line move. It's like, it becomes eight points, but the Jalen Hurts being five, I thought, I, I don't know, it's not like their offense was that good, right? So just staring at that game like, okay, it's not like losing Josh Allen. So we'll see, we'll see if they can win in Carolina this week.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  And Howie's always been a big Tanner McKee fan-

• 7:02Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  -since he drafted him.

• 7:03Bill Simmons?

  This is his moment.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Here's his shot to like, go out and play in an offense that, and quite frankly, he on paper is probably a better fit for-

• 7:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  -than Jalen Hurts. I mean, I, I thought that game on, on Sunday, obviously ends in bizarre fashion, but like, you saw the defense step up, Jalen Carter was the best player on the field throughout the game, and Jalen with like, nobody around him, with all the injuries, like, he played pretty well, so-

• 7:26Bill Simmons?

  He did.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  It's unfortunate timing to, to have this happen right now, and you're just hoping, obviously for Jalen, but also for, you know, if you've got hope in the Eagles, that it's not gonna end up being a long-term thing.

• 7:36Bill Simmons?

  Six-pack. Let's start with something we talked about last week. Um, the, oh no, we didn't talk about it last week, because it would happen before. You talked about it in the sweep, but the, uh, the whole Marvin Harrison thing.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:50Bill Simmons?

  So you, you basically, you broke the story that shit was going down, and then shit didn't go down until after they beat the Titans. So was it that simple? That was like, hey, if we don't beat the Titans, we're not doing this trade? What was the backstory?

• 8:07Speaker 01

  It, it wasn't, it wasn't contingent on the outcome, and Nick Casero actually went on the radio and talked about this, that they got the deal done going into the weekend. And Monty Austin, for the Cardinals' GM, was like, hey, we just need to like, slow it down, don't put anything out, which makes it all the funnier that post-game, while the Cardinals haven't even played yet, D'Amico Ryan finally breaks down and goes, you wanna know? Yeah, we traded for Marvin Harrison.

• 8:30Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  And that's how it ends up-

• 8:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  -coming out. But, so, there were a lot of moving parts. There were a bunch of teams. Whenever you start to hear that there's a bunch of teams in it, and you're getting a clear price, you know that this is moving toward eventually a trade. You know, the wild thing was, if you go back and you look at the responses, because I put out the sweep, I filed it Friday night, it comes out Saturday morning, and I've got in there, the lead is basically, they want a second-round pick and more for Marvin Harrison. Everyone's being like, what? No chance. Like, it's gonna be a fifth at most, but-

• 8:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  -former number four overall pick, like, you trade him early. The reason teams move on from those assets early is because there's still intrigue. The further you get into the rookie contract, the more tape you've got saying this guy isn't what you evaluated coming out, the harder it is to get value for him. And so, you know, they're betting a second-round pick. It ends up, because the pick swap is actually a little bit less than a second-round pick, meaning the Cardinals kinda said, okay, well, we're willing to take the best that we can get. It was just in a place with Marvin Harrison Jr. where it wasn't, it wasn't gonna play out in Arizona. We'll see. There's a lot of reasons. You look at the, you know, the advanced stats, the limited separation that he gets from-

• 9:35Bill Simmons?

  He's never open.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  He, he just, he doesn't get open. Like, if you, literally, and there's data to back that up.

• 9:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  He played with CJ Stroud in, in college, and so we'll see if that opens some things up. But it was weird, the whole sequence of events and the, the report of, they've told him, hey, you're being traded, but they're not telling you who. The one thing, and it always registers in my mind, an agent told me years ago, and like, I was holding something and it came out, and he was, he just goes, everything leaks. In other words, the moment you tell a player, they tell so many people, they group text their teammates, they tell their agent, like, it spreads like wildfire. So this idea, like, you were gonna talk to Marvin Harrison Jr. on Saturday morning and say, hey, you're gonna be inactive for the game, because we're gonna trade you in 48 hours, was gonna hold, it got out like, within the hour. And from there, it was just a matter of, by Saturday night, other teams that were

• 10:26Speaker 01

  caller were being told, dude, it's done. Like, don't even bother making an offer, we got a deal.

• 10:31Bill Simmons?

  So neither of us know if this is true or not. Conspiracy Bill kicked the tires on this entire story, and there's an incredible conspiracy that Marvin Harrison was absolutely miserable in Arizona, and was basically not going full speed and kind of tanking the Arizona experience, saving himself for the trade.

• 10:52Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if it's true and maybe I don't think professional athletes work this way, but it is going to be interesting if he goes to Houston and all of a sudden he's separated from people and looking like the guy that we thought he was going to be coming out of the draft. So I'm just monitoring it. I, it's on the conspiracy bill desk and I'm just going to see how it plays out the first couple of weeks.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  This is like the Jerry bringing all of his shoes to the mom and pop shop to get them fixed and then like they're in business for 40 years and then abscond with his shoes.

• 11:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  If Marvin Harrison was setting this up for two and a half years that I'm going to underproduce and underperform solely to get myself up.

• 11:28Bill Simmons?

  It was a long con.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  That would be a long con if there ever was one. It's, we'll see, like he's just, his personality, like everybody, people like him, but he's a, he's very much an introverted type of a guy, you know, like maybe he comes out and he's just super motivated to prove everybody wrong to be back with this guy at quarterback. We'll see. They're obviously betting a very high pick on it and probably also responding to the fact that, you know, when Nico Collins was out, that Texans offense was bad. And when Nico's in there, they're pretty good. So now at least you have a number two who can exploit, you know, another bigger bodied guy who can exploit some of those mismatches. You hope if it's the same Marvin Harrison in Houston that it was in Arizona, people are going to be sitting there and going, why'd they give up a second round pick?

• 12:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, it was the Randy Moss 2006 example, right? He's on the Raiders. He's miserable. And people are wondering if he's washed up, what's going on with him? Patriots end up getting him for a fourth rounder and then he goes to the Patriots. He's immediately Randy Moss again. So the difference is what you pointed out. Harrison has been like this the entire time he was in Arizona. There hasn't really been a stretch, like a four game, anything where you're like, oh my God. But yet every, every year in fantasy, he's always a sexy pick. Like even this year, like people were treating him like at least he was in like the Parker Washington range of like receivers that could be potential 11. So

• 12:52Bill Simmons?

  we'll see. The CJ Stroud piece I like too. And it feels like Houston must have some sort of inside info that this is a place he wanted to be because that second round pick isn't nothing. For somebody who wasn't jumping out of the TV at all when you watched it.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  But that's also, that also goes into the, it's recent enough. It's two years ago. They're like, we had a top 10 grade on the guy. Now we can get him for a second and plug him into a position of need. Like I, I understand the reasoning on it. You're just betting the environment's going to be different. It's, it's wild to think back on that draft because if you, you know, I did, I talked to people league wide and there were three receivers in that draft, if you remember, that people had up high and it was Marvin Harrison, it was Roma Dunze and it was Malik Neighbors. And everybody had him different on the board. Malik Neighbors was probably one as the player that people liked the most, but like he had, what, shot himself on Bourbon Street and they were like kind of the, you know, what

• 13:52Speaker 01

  guy are you bringing in? He was the absolute alpha dog in that program. Brian Thomas Jr. was in that draft too. They were teammates. Brian Thomas is like highlight reel was unbelievable. But Malik Neighbors was the guy who ran the place. Marvin Harrison was, he came with the pedigree, obviously in the name, but it was like, is he as far above and beyond as everybody thought in college? It was like, oh, this guy's obviously like Jeremiah Smith, like, oh, obviously he's going to be the number one receiver in the class. And then once people dug into the tape, it was like, there were varying opinions between all three of those guys. Right now you'd probably say if the neighbors was the best of the three, but he's just been hurt so much, just in terms of like.

• 14:30Bill Simmons?

  Wasn't that the catch with him in the draft though? That people worried about the durability with him was a big piece.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  And just all the other, and the other stuff.

• 14:38Bill Simmons?

  And the yada yada. Yeah. What do we call that? What's the NFL draft for that? And the other stuff.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. The, the off field concerns, but people got comfortable with it because they liked, like the football character was really good. It was like, all right, we just got to get our handle on the guy. Roma Dunze was a great dude, but was his tape, you know, at that, at that same level. And now, you know, here we are two years later and you're getting traded for a second rounder. It's funny you bring up the Randy Moss one because that was part of, I was on the Packers beat at the Green Bay Press Gazette at that time. And Randy Moss was part of a string of near misses for the Packers. Ted Thompson was the GM. Just, he, he rarely made trades. He rarely did anything in free agency. He would occasionally sign a Charles Woodson because he's sitting out there a month after. But like they were in the Randy Moss sweepstakes and Moss on at least some level like really wanted to

• 15:28Speaker 01

  go there and play with Favre. And it got to, would they offer a fourth rounder? And it was eh, we're not going to go there. Like we'll go to a fifth. We're not going to go to a fourth. And then he goes to New England and scores 21 touchdowns or whatever it was the following year. And that, that used to drive certain people in Green Bay crazy because they were always in these different trade things. They never got them done. And you just wonder like, you go back in time in the history of that, because that ended up being a really good Packers team in 07 that under different circumstances, it could have been Patriots, Packers in that Super Bowl. You know, they end up rolling out there with a bunch of young receivers. It worked out well for Green Bay too, but they were right on the precipice of doing that deal.

• 16:10Bill Simmons?

  The draft pick stuff is interesting. Mike Lombardi has this theory that because of all the NIL stuff and people staying longer in college, that anybody outside the top 100 in a draft, like you'd be able to steal these fourth, fifth, six rounders, these kind of wild card guys that you just didn't know, or you got them a year early. But now it's because these guys stayed so long that there's a better kind of grasp on who the top 100 is. So that's why with the second rounder, it's like, it's probably going to be a good pick. You can even see it from the way the draft unfolded, like the guys that are playing from that 26 draft in this year, like the Patriots got somebody at the end of the first round who came in at left tackle and Will Campbell got hurt and was lights out, right?

• 16:54Bill Simmons?

  This was, I think it was like the 31st pick or 30th pick. I can't even remember. But I just wonder like, are we going to, are teams going to start valuing these second rounders more because they're going to understand the draft better than they did? Who knows?

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Well, last year's draft was definitely like that. I mean, after the top 100, it was a, it was a cliff. And even in the first round, there were far fewer clear first round picks than there had ever been. I have to go back to my notes at the time, but I want to say like in an average draft, it's like 20 to 22 guys will actually have legit first round grades for the league. You may not, in different rooms, you're playing different schemes. You may not have all of them up there, but okay, if we're grading for the league, it's like 20 to 22. This year it was like 14 to 16. Like it was a super short list. The 2027 draft is actually regarded as a lot better and deeper. It's not just the quarterbacks, it's the whole draft. So to your point, giving up a 2027 second, like that's, that's gold to Monty Austin for it of go and try to get another player. And

• 17:50Speaker 01

  for Casario, you know, whatever you want to call it here of why they do it, you know, I don't say, I don't think it's desperation, but it's definitely like, hey, we got a window with a really good team. We can do some of these things because Stroud's still on his rookie contract. Like let's go for it and we'll see, you know, they got a win last week to get to one and four.

• 18:08Bill Simmons?

  Also, Stroud's playing really well. I've been really impressed by him this year. I think he's been excellent.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Especially in the games Nico has played, you know, there was a little bit of a dip for offense, but like when Nico Collins has been out there, now with Tank Dell was finally a full participant in practice. Like that's CJ's guy and you had Marvin Harrison and like, they can be a dangerous offense with a defense that despite how they, you know, they let three two-minute, you know, leads go away in the first four weeks of the season. That's why they were 0-4, why they switched defensive play callers and all that. But they're still super talented and Will Anderson is still, you know, potential defensive player of the year kid.

• 18:42Bill Simmons?

  Well, this will be the week. Last week, hard to say because they played the Titans, right? They killed the Titans and they needed the win. Not surprising. But this year, this week, you're in London. It's a really good Jags team and this will be a nice test for them. All right. Next thing in the six pack. I'll say we're at three. Oh, it's our annual weekly chat about Justin Herbert and Jim Harbaugh. What's changed? Anything?

• 19:04Speaker 01

  I would say, well, for the fact that they're 0-5 and now you have one game before the bye to try to get something going, or you're going to be 0-6 and it's going to be, where do you go from here? And how do you approach it? Do you start turning the page? The biggest thing, and I, I saw your conversation with Sal the other day about Jim Harbaugh. That's definitely something that is talked about within the league. I would just say, I would just say.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  I don't get any sense. I have no reason to believe that this is going to be like downhill and Jim Harbaugh is gone and they start over in 2027. I'd be shocked if it goes that way because they won games the past two years because they're doing something totally different offensively. The biggest red flag right now is Justin Herbert's playing the worst he ever has. And yeah, you're five weeks in, it's a long season. It's a very different offense, but like he's throwing picks that you just wouldn't expect to see. So I know, you know, Harbaugh has made some, you know, he's tweaked up like the schedule and different things that they're doing in practice and trying to make some of those small things, but he can't come in and fix Mike's offense.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  It has to be, McDaniel has to adapt to what they're doing. Like, are they going to try to trade Justin Herbert? Like, no, they're not going to do that. But the real question becomes, how much do they say to Mike McDaniel, especially if you get into the buy, like, we got to strip it down. We got to make it simpler. We got to reintegrate more of the Greg Roman type stuff. Remember, Jim Harbaugh until this year had only had one offensive coordinator in the NFL. It was Greg Roman the whole time in San Francisco. It was Greg Roman the first two years with the Chargers. And despite the fact that especially in the San Francisco days, like Jim had the marker, remember, around his neck at all times, like had the big play sheet, like, he wasn't calling it. It wasn't like it was his system. It was Greg Roman's offense.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  So this is the first time in the NFL that Jim Harbaugh doesn't necessarily have a feel for what they're even trying to be offensively. You know, the personnel doesn't quite fit. The

• 21:06Bill Simmons?

  And it's a lot of Miami guys, too. It's not just McDaniel. Like, there's some other guys from that team, too. I, if I was the common sense coordinator for the Chargers, and they're like, Bill, what do you think? I'd be like, hey, can we just, what about that year when Harbaugh, when Herbert threw for 5100 yards? Why don't we run that offense? Seemed pretty good in that one. Maybe that's the offense. Like, it's almost like what the Patriots did with Drake May a couple of weeks ago, where it's like, man, this guy's really good. What are we doing wrong? All right, we'll do more motion. We're going to reduce his ability to think about stuff and we're going to be more aggressive. Like, we're going to try to give him a personality transplant. And in two weeks, he was a different guy. So how do you make,

• 21:49Bill Simmons?

  how do you make Herbert a different guy than what we've seen? I still think he's taken too many hits.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Well, there's, there's no doubt about that. And that's been going on forever. Like, one of the interesting things is the Chargers have, like, they've made a conscious effort, and I verified this with, like, one of my medical data people earlier today, like, they've made a conscious effort to draft dudes in recent years who are healthy in college. Like, if you look at, like, time missed, these guys were like super durable dudes at the college level. Joe Alt being an example, like, just absolutely reliable. All of a sudden, the Joe Alts of the world are getting hurt. Yeah. So like, why is that happening? You, you spend at the left tackle, right tackle, in terms of left tackle with a pick, right tackle, you spend the money, you spend on a center this offseason, they're all gone. They're all hurt. So of course, the quarterback's going to get the shit kicked out of them. It's

• 22:38Speaker 01

  like, why is that happening? I, I would have to imagine they're looking into everything in terms of how they're training. They don't really play in the preseason. It's a pretty light training camp. I know they kind of ramp up in the season. Is there a corollary there? It's like, they're looking at all that stuff. But to go back to, how do you make Justin Herbert different? The biggest thing with Drake May was, you'd already seen him in this offense. You knew he could play at that level with Josh. Right. With Mike, there's no proof of concept right now. And as much as you'd like to think, okay, you know, we're going to, the arrow's going to be pointing up, like, with Herbert specifically, it's gone down. So you're trying to re-instill some type of confidence, which, like, when we talked about with Drake, the way you do that in the season is, you have some success, you make some good plays,

• 23:20Speaker 01

  you stop turning the ball over in ridiculous situations. I think you're also seeing Jim Harbaugh trying to do that for the whole team by like, what was it, fourth and one from his own 40 last week, and you go for it with a seven-point lead, you don't get it, and then that flips the entire game. So as much as we see quarterbacks press, May was doing it, Herbert's doing it, like, Jim Harbaugh's pressing right now, too. Like, everyone's trying to get this thing right. And, and the reality is, there was always going to be a transition phase. It's leaked over into five straight losses. So even those signs of progress, like, the fact that now they're using Kamani Vidal more, they're using, you know, the other running back more, Keaton Mitchell, but they're getting the ball to him in space. But those

• 24:02Speaker 01

  guys are, they're probably a better fit. It's not enough. They're still losing now these one-score games. And I mean, I, you hate to say the season's on the line because the season might already be shot, frankly, for the Chargers. But you better get a win this week at Kansas City, or else it's going to be, you're 0-6, and everybody in the world's going to be calling your GM saying, you know, let's trade for your entire roster.

• 24:23Bill Simmons?

  I have a news flash for you. They're not going to win in Kansas City this weekend.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  They're capable. It's not, their schedule is brutal, too. If you look at the Chargers, I think they face three teams this year coming off bye weeks. They have like, three early window kickoffs on the East Coast.

• 24:38Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's what made the first two games, losing the first two. It was like, and then

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Raiders and Cardinals at home. You can't lose those games.

• 24:46Bill Simmons?

  Who's the Vikings GM right now?

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Nolan Teasley. Came from Seattle.

• 24:50Bill Simmons?

  All right, will you pretend to be Nolan Teasley for a second?

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 24:55Bill Simmons?

  Hey, it's Jim Harbaugh. Just calling you out of the blue here. If we did move Justin, could I get three firsts from you?

• 25:10Speaker 01

  I'm doing the long pause for dramatic effect, which is exactly what Nolan would do. I'd have to, have to think about that.

• 25:17Bill Simmons?

  That's a staff meeting?

• 25:19Speaker 01

  That's, that's really it. Yeah, I'd have to, I'd have to think about that. There's a lot of things that would go in. First of all, Herbert has no trade clause. You'd have to get his permission to do the trade.

• 25:29Bill Simmons?

  You'd have to go from LA to Minnesota. That would be an interesting move when he has his famous celebrity LA girlfriend. I don't know how that would go.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Does he want, does he want to leave?

• 25:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, might not. I'll just ride this out. But it is like, I, I wouldn't do it if I was Minnesota. If it was two firsts, I'd definitely have a longer staff meeting about it, but.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Also, if you're the Vikings right now, and you're winning with your defense and just kind of every year.

• 25:56Bill Simmons?

  Let's make this the fourth one in the six-pack. If you're the Vikings right now, dot, dot, dot. What do you do?

• 26:01Speaker 01

  I mean, you're 5-0. You are getting increasingly efficient play from Kyler Murray. Like, he played pretty well in New Orleans last week, even though he didn't have.

• 26:11Bill Simmons?

  New Orleans is terrible, though. I mean, they've had so many injuries. They're just, they're like a shell of themselves.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  But like, he's playing, if you look at, you know, the EPA and all that, like, it was his, by far, his best game. Jefferson's not 100%. No Addison. TJ Hawkinson gets a concussion on the second drive. And you don't have your left tackle or your left guard. And he still played pretty well. If I'm Minnesota, like, big picture, eventually you want to solidify the quarterback position. That's why they took the swing on J.J. McCarthy a couple of years ago. But like, their most successful seasons have in part been driven by factors that had nothing to do with, oh, we got a young quarterback, and so we can spend on the other positions. With Kyler, he's on the minimum deal. When Sam Darnold came, he was on a very cheap deal. That alone gave them the flexibility to go out and do it. And like, they've got the best defensive coordinator in Brian Flores, who we'll see,

• 27:02Speaker 01

  but, you know, right now, it seems like he's going to be there. We can win in different ways. Maybe we don't have to spend. Like, it would be the exact opposite of how everyone in the league has been, where it's, you just, you try to draft one, you win for the three years on the rookie contract, and now, oh shit, we got to pay him $60 million a year. Well, guess what? The rest of the team around him isn't going to be as good. I, I'm not saying that Kevin O'Connell doesn't want to get off this carousel and just stop having to do it and start from scratch and go through the growing pains all the time. But it's not a bad formula for the way that they are structured, because it gives them those other opportunities. If you bring in Justin Herbert, you're paying him a lot of money. He frankly is in line

• 27:44Speaker 01

  for a new contract at some point, because the market, especially after next offseason, when you got Caleb and Jaden Daniels and Drake May and Bo Nix, that, and Lamar for a new deal, CJ Stroud, Bryce Young, the market's going out way outpace where Justin Herbert's at now. So let's say we got to pay him 60 million a year and give up three first-round picks. And oh, by the way, we're also going to continue to kick everyone's ass on defense. We may not need him to go out and score 30 points a game. It's an honest conversation. I, I think it's different a few years ago, but right now, Kevin runs a pretty similar offense to what Mike does. There have been changes in the blocking scheme because O'Connell comes out of the McVay, where like, they make more protection checks. Kyle just kind of gives the quarterback answers of like, screw the protection, you're just going to

• 28:29Speaker 01

  get the ball out to here. But it's, it's a similar vein of offense. If Justin's not a good fit for what McDaniel's doing, I don't know how good of a fit he is for what O'Connell's doing. So they'd really have to do a deep dive and decide if that's the right thing for him.

• 28:41Bill Simmons?

  I would, I wouldn't trade for Herbert right now because I'm really worried, especially when you look at the history. I talked about this a little on Sunday night. The history of these really talented franchise QBs who just get the shit kicked out of them for a couple of years. Sometimes it, you're not the same. Like, and I, I mentioned this on Sunday night, like, I, I do feel like this happened to Bledsoe. I thought he really got beaten up in the late 90s and especially the 2000 season. And I just think he, just thought he took a lot of hits. And then it all culminated with the Mo Lewis hit. But if you're Minnesota, you're 30th in DVOA.

• 29:18Bill Simmons?

  For offense and you're first in defense and first in special teams. So this is about as weird of a team as you could, as you could have.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  And they're, and they've leaned into it.

• 29:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  They really have. Like there's times where they're just like, we're not gonna, we got a seven point lead. Like this game is over. We're just gonna, you know, play conservatively, run the football, check downs. Like, don't make mistakes. It's, it's part of the genius of what O'Connell did with Sam Darnold. Yeah. Back in 2024, like revived Darnold was, he only asked Sam, as good as they were, and that was a better offensive team. But he only asked him to make like four or five above the line throws in a game. Everything was just like simple throws. So I was like, all right, there's a few times we're gonna dial something up. And you're gonna have to make that throw into a tight window, but other than that, we're just giving you easy throws. It's check downs. It's just keep the thing moving. Um, they did it at a, you know, a really high level. With Herbert, I'd say it's still, and you're right on the, like the, you know, the getting hit stuff, that does matter.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  I look at Stafford as kind of the flip side of it, which was, you know, how much shit Stafford played through? Like how many injuries he had early in his career? And they were just an awful team every single season, like just never in the playoffs.

• 30:26Bill Simmons?

  It seemed risky when they traded for him, cause it was like, was there too much damage already?

• 30:31Speaker 01

  He's like 30, what was he, 34 years old or something at that point? And he'd had every different injury in the book, but he all of a sudden he went to a place where the, the, the offense was just so elevated. And the way he and McVeigh worked together, he was able to, you know, put years on to his career. With Herbert, like I, I think it's still possible. We've seen him play at a really high level. It's even possible they figure it out in, you know, in LA, you know, Matt Ryan wasn't, wasn't a great fit with Kyle Shanahan in that first year. Cause Kyle took the keys away from him and said, you're gonna play my offense, be automatic, throw the ball where it's supposed to go. Matt didn't like it. They still won a bunch of games, which protected this whole conversation from landing there.

• 31:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Year two, they go in and win the Super Bowl. We won't talk about what happened there, but like they went to the Super Bowl and Matt Ryan was the MVP. It does take time if you're used to playing one style. I just don't know how patient they're willing to be. As opposed to, we were one 11 games last two years playing a different style. Let's just go back and do that stuff.

• 31:28Bill Simmons?

  Why can't we talk about what happened in the Super Bowl? That's one of my favorite conversations. Patriots were down 28 to three.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  28, three. Devante Freeman missed a block.

• 31:37Bill Simmons?

  I think the Minnesota thing, though, though they're moving into nobody believes in us zone too. Fan base and players, where it's like, if they're six and O, seven and O, and people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.

• 31:51Bill Simmons?

  I, I think that's a good thing for them. How much money a year can Flores make as a defensive coordinator? Like, could he be paid as a head coach, even though he's a defensive coordinator?

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Like he is, right?

• 32:00Bill Simmons?

  Being paid at the lower end. Head coach market.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Right. There's, the top coordinators are making six, six plus. And the low end of head coaches are in that same range. That's where he is.

• 32:11Bill Simmons?

  Two more six pack things. Fernando Mendoza's on the list.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  You got his first taste of it.

• 32:18Bill Simmons?

  I feel like we're closer to Mendoza range than I think people might think. It's like, oh, he's gonna sit out of here, Kirk Cousins. It's like, eh, I don't know. After like six, seven games. The Patriots brought Drake May in during his rookie year. It was around week five and it was like, there was a good spot for it. And Brissette wasn't playing well, and it just seemed like, okay, this, this makes sense. And he ran for his life, but I thought he learned a lot of stuff. I'm not sold on Mendoza just sitting out a year being good for anybody. And I, I don't mind their team. I know they got their ass kicked last week, but if they have a bad game this week with Cousins against a terrible Bills defense.

• 33:00Bill Simmons?

  Or he's not great, or like, could we see Mendoza sooner? What are, what are you hearing?

• 33:05Speaker 01

  The, the big difference from, and you said it was Brissette was playing bad, like Cousins is playing really well. At the, at this stage in his career, he's playing, he knows that offense so well. He's playing at a really high level. He's showing he can still, I mean, you know, he's thrown drift his whole career. He's made $500 million just making that throw.

• 33:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  And he, he's still doing it. And so I, I think as long as you are in this thing and he's playing well, it's hard to make the move. Where this gets really interesting to me is if any of these teams that has a quarterback issue or an injury.

• 33:40Bill Simmons?

  What do you mean? Seven, like eight teams have quarterback issues.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  But if we're getting closer to these teams that are in the playoff race.

• 33:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Especially one of the teams that's like half the league that runs that style, like the Shanahan, McVeigh, O'Connell, like that blend of offense.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  If you have an injury, how are you not calling on Kirk Cousins?

• 34:00Bill Simmons?

  So give me, so give me a top three teams that you could see him seamlessly fitting in.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  I mean, any of those teams that come out of that, if, again, God forbid, I don't like to predict injuries, but like Trevor Lawrence goes down in Jacksonville.

• 34:13Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you're saying like that? Yeah. Like we're a good team who lost our QB.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Right. I don't think you're trotting Quinn yours out there with all respect to Quinn yours and saying, you're gonna play the next 10 games on a Super Bowl ready team. You know, something happens to Purdy, they have Mac there. That's why they have him. You know, something happens to Stafford, you know, they, the Rams were interested in bringing in Cousins as the backup in the off season. So if you get there, and then if the calculus is for the Raiders, you can get a really high pick. I don't know if it's a first.

• 34:41Bill Simmons?

  That's like a third.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Might be a second or a third.

• 34:44Bill Simmons?

  A third, and if we make round, yeah, if we make round three, becomes a second, like one of those deals?

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or even goes to a first if we win the Super Bowl.

• 34:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  And you get offered that as the Raiders and you're hanging, let's say they're around 500 at the deadline. If you're down in Spy Tech, like you gotta seriously consider it because we all know Mendoza's the future. Cousins is on, he's got that weird option thing in his, in his deal. So like hypothetically, they could try to trade him in March. Like the cleaner thing to do would be if we get a really good offer now, let's trade him and let's put Mendoza in. Now only they know in that building, how close Mendoza really is to going out and starting. But I, I don't foresee a benching Kirk Cousins scenario as long as they're in the playoff chase. I believe they ride this thing out. It's not gonna be Kurt Warner to Eli Manning and you're five and four and just, ah, we gotta play the rookie. I don't think it's that because Clint's a big believer in waiting.

• 35:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  If you had a trade offer that makes sense and you think Fernando's ready to go. I, I wouldn't put it past him, even if the Raiders are still in the playoff chase, just because we all know that's the future. And think about if you get that high pick, what that could do to continue to build the whole thing at a time that, look at the Raiders roster, the offensive line, the receiver group. Certain spots on defense, there's still a places they need to add, get an extra high draft pick. It, it can help you.

• 36:05Bill Simmons?

  When's the trade deadline?

• 36:06Speaker 01

  November 10th.

• 36:08Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah. So we have.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  We got, we got three, four weeks, right? Four weeks of games.

• 36:16Bill Simmons?

  I think the last thing I want to do for the six pack, which you have in here, but I think we can tweak it. The coaching, there were so many bad coaching things last week. Game management stuff, and it was every time we had football, Thursday night had the Bulls thing. That was nuts. Like going forward up 14 with eight, that was just insane. All the stuff Sunday, you know, culminating in the Dan Quinn, Jayden Daniels disaster. And then Monday at McVeigh with honestly, one of the worst coach games I think he's ever had, if not the worst. And I don't understand why coaching is getting, why game management coaching is getting worse. So what, I know you've probably talked to some people around the league, like what's happening? What are we doing wrong?

• 37:01Speaker 01

  It's one of my favorite things to do every week is I follow up with some of the game management coaches for the teams that were not involved and ask them about these decisions. So like with the Bulls one, and I wrote about this in the sweep, like everyone was like, yeah, no, it's not. You do have to have like a gut feel and that stuff does come in, but in that situation, up for the difference between.

• 37:24Bill Simmons?

  Three score game, seven minutes left.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Is so much greater. It's a, it, it, the, normally that would be a clear go. Normally, you know, just first quarter, that's a clear go, but it's a, it's about possessions at that point. The odds of them getting, I think there was like seven minutes left, the odds of them getting three scoring possessions in that time is so much lower than two possessions. It's basically, it's not worth it. So that was a case where he went against the analytics. Todd said himself, you know, he got greedy. The Sirianni one was fascinating because it was so similar to the Schottenheimer decision.

• 37:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  And yet different because of the timeout that was on the board. And so you can certainly make the argument that in that spot, you don't run the risk of the kickoff return because there's no timeout. So that one was like a kind of a coin flip.

• 38:15Bill Simmons?

  I actually, I defended him Sunday night and then some Eagle fans I know who heard it were like, yeah, you left out the part that half our team's hurt. And we had second and third stringers playing special teams, and that's why we gave up, you know, 55 yard return to. To, uh, what was his name? Amir Abdullah?

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's why that happened. We didn't have our best players out there. So I don't know. I, I still,

• 38:38Speaker 01

  It's.

• 38:39Bill Simmons?

  You're giving up a, you're basically putting your faith that your kick return team can prevent a guy from going half the field. Like, I'm still gonna make that bet.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  And, and all these things are such low percentage chances, you know, like we all, we all focus on the coaching decision. And as long as it's like within the realm, again, like what Bulls did was just not within the realm of the game management, like what you would do.

• 39:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Right. This was like, it's a coin flip. You can go either way on this one. It's kind of the strategy, but like, I said this on the Ringer NFL show, at some point, like, how about we make a fucking play? How about don't give up a 55 yard kick return? How about Cowboys defense? Don't give up a 37 yard completion, wide open in the middle of the field. Like, make a play. You know, in terms of the.

• 39:20Bill Simmons?

  But that's what made the Rams thing so frustrating because.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:24Bill Simmons?

  They could not stop any pass play by the Rams. And they get to that spot and he turtles for this kicker that nobody trusted. And in the moment, you're going, what are you doing? Just keep, get closer. You, I don't trust this guy. And I, it was almost like, McFay's done this before. I think he's like, really, a, as great of an offensive line as he is, I think he's really shaky as a game management guy. This has been a thing his whole career.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  The special teams has been a thing and he's cycled through different coordinators and like in terms of the investment in that, in those spots. It's not as been at that high of a level. Yeah. The, the running, the football, I mean, it was kind of like what John Harbaugh had done earlier in the day, where he just keeps running the ball with Cam Scataboo, but that's because it's pouring rain. He's trying to get closer. The Rams had felt like they were just completely comfortable. They weren't running to gain extra yards. They're just running because like, all right, we're just gonna run the plays and then kick, what was it? 44, 45 yard field goal with Harrison.

• 40:22Bill Simmons?

  Buffalo's D was dead. I mean, they, you, it, that game was over. They would have gotten 20 more yards.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  It's, it's not like, you know, rookie Ty Simpson is out there. Like, it's Matthew Stafford. You can completely, you can trust Matthew Stafford to do what Jaden Daniels didn't. And like, Matthew, we just want like a seven yard out here. It's not there, throw it out of bounds. You can trust him to make that pass and going for that kick, he'd already missed one earlier in the game. If you go back and you watch the tape, one thing the Bills were doing that whole game was they were grabbing on all the kick plays. They were grabbing the offensive line, which was how you create the separation. So sure, you're not supposed to do that, of course.

• 40:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  On that last one, you can kind of see the line being pulled apart. And all of a sudden Greg Russo is able to get enough penetration, um, to block the kick. The, the commanders thing, that was a, everyone in the league that I talked to was just like, it is absolutely incomprehensible how that can happen at every level. It's, you know, Dan Quinn, ultimately it stops with him, right? Because he's the one on the sideline. There's 55 seconds left when they go out of bounds.

• 41:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Clock is stopped. You've got time to go, okay, what are we gonna do here? Now, Dan doesn't interfere with his coordinators. He gives them a lot of autonomy. He's also got a first time coordinator in David Blau up there, who clearly, whether it's because he's newer at this, or he's just trying to do a little bit too much, but he calls a run and then the next snap calls for a complete personnel change. They get big personnel. They're motioning. There's 20 seconds, 15. They, they got a guy in motion back and forth. And then Jaden, not having any awareness, it seemed of, we have no timeouts, even though one of the offensive linemen said, we, yeah, we talked about it in the huddle, there's no timeouts.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Like, why you would think you can slide? Like, there's, there's clear tags that coordinators put in. So, at the end of that play, like, one of the common calls is ozone, which means out of bounds or end zone. In other words, don't throw anything in the field to play. We got no timeout. So just, you know, you give the play call and then ozone. All right. Everyone knows what that means. I have to think David Blau gave him that call. And somehow, he's still running. There's just, it's a complete and total system failure. And it, it puts a huge spotlight now on Dan Quinn, who's next game, by the way, Monday night,

• 42:44Bill Simmons?

  San Francisco.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  In San Francisco before a bye. If there were ever a spot where you're like, your team better show up for you, not just use the words like Jaden did today, you know, taking responsibility, saying, we love DQ. Like, these guys better show up and play, or, you know, there's gonna be some bigger problems than just ending up in the tie.

• 43:03Bill Simmons?

  One thing on the Rams really quickly before we go. Two and three. It's fine. Schedule's pretty easy next couple of weeks. Home Arizona, at Las Vegas, home Chargers, at Washington, home Arizona. Could be seven and three in five weeks. But they don't have room for error now. And they're in a division with, you know, uh, Seattle, who I think has just pissed away a couple of games, but is clearly really good. And then San Francisco, who just has, that just seems like they can pull out and win. But I, you know, this happens sometimes with these super teams. Them being two and three with an old QB, Puka, who knows?

• 43:45Bill Simmons?

  And Myles Garrett, no, no idea when he's coming back.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  Probably a few weeks still on that one.

• 43:51Bill Simmons?

  Them missing the playoffs would be one of the great failures in recent NFL history. It really would. Like, when you think of all the capital they spent and, you know, even trading Jared verse and, and the picks they gave up for Garrett, like, those are like damaging trades. If this doesn't pay off and them playing all the way through January, much less not making the playoffs. So, holy shit. The stakes feel like huge right now for them.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  There, there's no question. Their, their 2026 first round picks, they had two of them. They traded one for Trent McDuffie, who was, you know, played well, but like, isn't a complete game changer. He's a really good corner. They use the other one on Ty Simpson, who's currently the third string quarterback.

• 44:32Bill Simmons?

  Doesn't play.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  2027 first belongs to Cleveland. 2028 second and 2029 third also belonged to Cleveland. And the team, the Rams have been the lowest cash spend team over the last five years. Now they're one of the highest. Like, this is how they operate and keep their cap healthy? Like, this was the go for it moment.

• 44:49Bill Simmons?

  This is pushing every chip in. Yeah.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Their exposure was Myles Garrett's an older player. Stafford's older. Devante Adams is older. You know, Puka's not older, but there's a lot of things, right? There's a lot of questions with him.

• 45:01Bill Simmons?

  He's a yada yada guy.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  He's been dealing, like, he, he looked like he was in pain the other night. Like, every time he'd get up off the ground, he's dealing with that groin thing.

• 45:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  You know, and Alaric Jackson gets himself suspended, ended up being one game for punching Bradley Chubb after the game. He still could get suspended over the personal conduct investigation as well. There's just, you're right. That division is so tough. I mean, the 49ers are kind of stringing it together, even though they keep piling up injuries.

• 45:25Bill Simmons?

  I'm, I'm not counting them out anymore. Like, I, I just feel like the Niners, I don't want to bet against them. I don't want to ever assume they're not gonna be a playoff team. But you feel like Niners, Seattle, there's gonna be one NFC East team and one NFC South team. So then the question will be, are there three playoff teams in the NFC North or not? And that's basically who the Rams would be positioned against if they can't turn this record around. They're looking at Detroit, Green Bay, Chicago, Minnesota. All of them.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  And I wouldn't rule out any of those teams.

• 45:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, all of them probably think they can make the playoffs, you know? Minnesota's already 5-0. Chicago's getting their quarterback this week. So, yeah, this is, I mean, the schedule's perfect for them, but, you know, at Las Vegas, if you're banged up next week, that's not the easiest game in the world. And, um, the biggest shock for me is just, I don't think the Rams have been well coached this year. Like, the special teams has been horrific. I don't understand what they were doing with Josh, the, the way they were defending Josh Allen on Monday night, I thought was insane. Like, why are you letting him run around and do whatever the fuck he wants? Like, have you ever watched Josh Allen play? So, one thing I'm taking away is you're not gonna be able to do this. I'm not going to let you do this. Beat me with all the, and they just let him do it.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Well, they, and they were trying at times. If you, if you watched it where like, it would be, all right, here it is, we're spying on him. One guy, and then Josh Allen like makes a, makes a juke move and just goes right past him.

• 46:50Bill Simmons?

  It was the wrong guy.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  I mean, maybe you don't, maybe you don't feel like you've got the right, you know, the right personnel to, to be able to go up against him and actually spy him effectively. Yeah, he, I mean, middle of the third quarter, he was like five of 12 for 60 yards with an interception. That whole game, the first three quarters were total horseshit. They had 200 yards in penalties. Neither offense is playing well. And then the reason I haven't lost faith in the Bills, even though they've been bumpy the past three weeks, or the Rams, is once those two quarterbacks heat up, there's not a whole lot of offenses that are better. Like, those two guys can single-handedly take over a game. And so, yeah, both of them have stuff to clean up and the Rams definitely have put themselves in a hole. But in the end, especially if Myles gets actually

• 47:34Speaker 01

  fully healthy, because he was not himself in week one, if he's fully healthy, I still think they're super dangerous.

• 47:40Bill Simmons?

  Tom Pelissero, Ringer NFL Show tomorrow, the sweep on Saturday. Let's see if we can keep the streak going. Every, every week, you just throw a fucking grenade out there. Get, get the whole 24 hour psycho going. It's been really fun to be a part of it. Great to see you.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Thanks, man. Appreciate it.

• 47:58Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by PayPal. The holiday rush is coming and you can get ahead of it with PayPal. Shop your favorite online stores with PayPal this season, like eBay for collectibles, Fanatics for team gear, Walmart for tech. Check out the flexibility to pay now or pay later and split your payments with Pay in four with no interest, no late fees. Shop now with PayPal. Paying for is subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com slash paying for. PayPal, Inc., NMLS 910457.

• 48:31Bill Simmons?

  Today's Ringer 107 brought to you by FanDuel. Make this your most rewarding season ever. Download the FanDuel app to check out all of our 107 picks and boosted teasers every week. This season, Joe House is here. We make picks every week. Normally, we'd go longer. We'd do some mailbag stuff, but you and I did five hours of content on Tuesday with Zach Lowe on TV. I'm still winded. I'm still tired. We did, we did go and I took you to a secret smash burger place after, that you were like, can I do social media? And I'm like, no, you actually can't. You're not allowed.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  It wasn't, the only thing I'll reveal is that it wasn't a smash burger place. It is a secret.

• 49:10Bill Simmons?

  It's a, don't say no more.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  And the way you can have it.

• 49:12Bill Simmons?

  No, no more.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  You can have the smash burger.

• 49:15Bill Simmons?

  You can't say anything else.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  That's all I said.

• 49:17Bill Simmons?

  It's like Fight Club.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  We've had enough quality time. We've had enough quality time.

• 49:19Bill Simmons?

  It's like Fight Club. You can't talk about it.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  It's enough. It was amazing, though. Top three burger I've ever had.

• 49:26Bill Simmons?

  The highlight of the entire week, of course, which dissected on, um, on Ringer Wise Guys this week, was Dave Chang making us beef stew. I didn't talk about this with you on Sunday night, because I wanted to save it for the Ringer Wise Guys show. Uh, the bundo not trying the stew. And Chang had no idea. And then near the end, it's like, you're gonna have the stew. He's like, no, no, I already ate. And we thought this was the funniest thing ever that apparently the muffin that he got in the hotel bakery was enough to not try Dave Chang's stew. Dave Chang, one of the most famous chefs in the world, made us two different types of stew. And but I was like, no, I already ate. We could not have gotten more jokes about this.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  I mean, it was so enjoyable. Cousin Sal, who hosted a beautiful livestream.

• 50:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, on Twitch.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  For Monday Night Football on Twitch with the guys called Dave Chang out completely out of the blue and and described to him and Dave Chang mother effed the bundle right there live on set.

• 50:30Bill Simmons?

  He couldn't believe it because I didn't tell Chang. I wanted Sal to break the news to him. But yeah, Chang goes, he's dead to me. But when Chang says that, it's real. Like he's the bunny is actually dead to Chang.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  That's a, that's a Korean.

• 50:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's it.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Template, for sure.

• 50:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we, we know a Chang. Speaking of dead to me, there's some teams from last week that are now dead to me, thanks to what they did to me in Ringer 107, including Sean McVay, who I just talked about, Tom Pelissero. I've never, oh, I didn't have the Rams and you had the Rams in Ringer 107. I had them in a parlay, but.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  Same difference.

• 51:09Bill Simmons?

  But, yeah, and we're watching it together and we're so excited that they're in field goal range, that they're going to steal this game and they're just going to move the ball 20 yards down. Nope. Turtled and did all this stupid stuff. I also got to watch your team blow the game on Sunday. That was really fun. You don't like this slate for week six. And this is the first slate I've liked in a while. So it's kind of funny that we saw this differently, but I had, this is the first time in five weeks that I've had more picks than spots for Ringer 107.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 51:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  I'm kind of on the other side. I have a ton of teaser legs. I love the card for teasers. I don't love the card for sides.

• 51:54Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna start because it's week six. We do odd even week. I am one game under 500. What are you?

• 52:01Speaker 02

  Three games under 500 because I went two and three.

• 52:05Bill Simmons?

  Everyone's on the edge of their seats waiting for, waiting for our picks when we're not. I'm so due for a good week.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  Sean McVay can eat a fat dick.

• 52:14Bill Simmons?

  Is that who, is that who's handing it this week?

• 52:16Speaker 02

  That's the whole, I just did the whole segment. Sean McVay, enjoy a fat one.

• 52:20Bill Simmons?

  I'm so glad you brought this up because a reader sent me what the trophy should look like. The Stanley cock.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Somebody superimposed Sean McVay's face next to that. That's for week five. That's who gets it.

• 52:37Bill Simmons?

  Somebody, I gotta find, I gotta give the reader credit for this. It was, it was Joshua A. Thank you.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Thank you, Joshua. What a magnificent Stanley cock.

• 52:48Bill Simmons?

  He had some help, but he made the Stanley cock award for us. So who is it this week? Is it Sean McVay or is it somebody else?

• 52:53Speaker 02

  Just get it out of the way. It's definitely McVay.

• 52:57Bill Simmons?

  Sean McVay. You're the golden boy. You have the entire media behind you. Everybody thinks you're a great coach and you've won a Super Bowl and you're a super smart guy, apparently. Why are you so bad at game management? And why do you throw away special teams year after year? And why do you let Josh Allen run around when he's the most dangerous guy in the league? I thought that, we talked about it that whole night. It was one of the weirdest coach games of the year. It's like.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  That's on Chris Shula. Like they never went to man. Why wouldn't you go to man just, just three or four times so you can have somebody watch Josh Allen? The conversion rate on third down because they were like, well, Josh Allen's got the whole field open in front of him. Let's see if he can run. Well, there he goes again. 120 effing yards for, for Josh Allen. Great job by Josh Allen, by the way.

• 53:44Bill Simmons?

  Daniel Ocean from Toronto said you and House need to do an end of NBA season of people invited to the all you can eat fat dick fest. He thinks it's gonna be like, like Tony Wilbon doing Thanksgiving for the turkeys. I don't know if we can get that sponsored, but well, I'll talk to Jeff Chow.

• 54:00Speaker 02

  Work on that.

• 54:02Bill Simmons?

  Okay, I have the first pick. Ringer 107. I am taking the Dallas Cowboys in Lambeau.

• 54:10Bill Simmons?

  I, on Sunday, I took the Bears in Lambeau and it was stupid. I couldn't find a fifth pick and I didn't feel good about it. And then I felt terrible about it as they got killed. I'm still not sold on this Green Bay team at all. And I actually think because they look good last week, that's a nice, this is a nice spot for this game. They lost Hargrave, which is not great. They have injuries all over the place.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:33Bill Simmons?

  10 days rest for Dallas. Green Bay's defense, this is before the latest injury, on third down, giving up 55%. Dallas is 52%. Dax, by any metric, been one of the three best QBs in the league this year. And I look back at that Packers, they threw the ball, they connected on some deep passes against Chicago's terrible pass defense. They also got five turnovers. That was an everything went right game. I personally don't think the Packers are a playoff team. And I thought Dallas fell asleep at the wheel in that Tampa game. It was just a Sunday after, Thursday after a Sunday, weird game. They're playing 0-4 Tampa, rookie QB, didn't take the game seriously. They were sleepwalking through it. And I

• 55:15Bill Simmons?

  think they're going to be really good offensively. I just think this team's a fucking juggernaut offensively. So I am.

• 55:22Speaker 02

  It's a wagon. It's a wagon offensively. And to your point on the sleepwalking note, that they, that Tampa game was their third game in 12 days because, and, and coming off of a Brazil trip. So they went to Brazil, they, they came home, they, they, they had a terrific performance against Houston on the road. And then short turnaround, had to host Tampa.

• 55:46Bill Simmons?

  QB would not allow the film, a really stupid Bucky Irving long run that kind of flipped the game. So they're, this is Tic Tac Zone. They're minus one and a half in Green Bay. And I think the Cowboys are a playoff team and I don't think Green Bay is. And this is, I'm just long-term, big picture. This is a game I think the Cowboys should win. And by the way, Green Bay is going to have the Brewers in the World Series. And I don't think they really, I don't think it really matters if they lose this game.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  Well, one thing that you're gonna be happy about, Dallas is getting points. Didn't you just say that they were?

• 56:17Bill Simmons?

  Did I have that? I wanted it either way. Did I write that down wrong?

• 56:20Speaker 02

  Well, I understand. You should want it either way, but it's better for them to be getting points. I'm looking at, at Dallas plus one and a half on the Fanduel Sportsbook.

• 56:28Bill Simmons?

  Okay, but did that change though? I want to make sure.

• 56:31Speaker 02

  I don't think so because I, I have them as a teaser leg potentially. They're in my teaser bucket.

• 56:35Bill Simmons?

  You know what's possible? I can't see and I wrote it down wrong. Either way, Tic Tac Zone. I'm happy to take the plus one and a half. Cowboys plus.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  Old guy radio.

• 56:46Bill Simmons?

  Cowboys plus one and a half in Green Bay. Sounds wonderful. I will take it minus or plus. Either way, that's my first pick. Cowboys against.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got super close. I got super close. And I was like, god damn it.

• 56:59Bill Simmons?

  What held you back?

• 57:01Speaker 02

  Just, just Lambeau, just outdoors at Lambeau and the concern around, I mean, Dallas is doing stuff like bringing in Mike Patine, like they're, they're, they're taking Christian Parker from the field. He's going up to the booth. This guy.

• 57:13Bill Simmons?

  It did make me nervous.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Mike Petten's involved now, trying to give some oversight, some insight. And the, the true reason that I moved off of it, at the end of the day, I will have Dallas and I'll have Dallas and some teaser legs, but I'm not putting into the 107. Because the what if, what we saw out of Green Bay, where they're just gonna throw the effing ball 40 yards down the field as many times as they can.

• 57:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  They looked so good against the Bears with, with that. Like that Jordan.

• 57:43Bill Simmons?

  They did look great. He was awesome.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  And, and that's like, oh, it's clicked. They did figure out some pass protection for love.

• 57:53Bill Simmons?

  You know what it is? This is a shootout game that's gonna be decided last four minutes. And I'm happy now that I'm getting point and a half apparently because you can see and I can't. All right. What's your first pick?

• 58:04Speaker 02

  I am rolling with the Dirty Birds. I like the Atlanta Falcons getting points at home against the Chicago Bears.

• 58:14Bill Simmons?

  This line moved a few points because of Caleb Williams.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  The news reports say that Caleb Williams is gonna play quarterback for the Chicago Bears. That actually helps me with the handicap here. Kind of like the idea of a rusty Caleb Williams coming in, but really, there is an advantage that the Falcons have here that supports this angle. And it is their run offense against the Bears run defense without Montez Sweat should absolutely feast. It should be like the smash burger feast with the mashed potatoes and the onion rings and the appetizer of the beautiful shrimp. I'm just saying, that's what we had. And that's not even everything.

• 58:58Bill Simmons?

  And then you went on a plane and probably passed out.

• 59:01Speaker 02

  I sure did. Couple glasses of red. Come on. Red juice. We did that. Yeah, man. So this Atlanta Falcons.

• 59:08Bill Simmons?

  Can I ask you, I stared at this hard.

• 59:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:12Bill Simmons?

  Michael Pennix, we sure he's healthy? We sure he's playing? Because here's what gave me, and by the way, I still might be taking this as my third pick. When Tua came into that game on Sunday night.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  This is a dead bet. If anybody other than Michael Pennix plays quarterback.

• 59:29Bill Simmons?

  Pennix comes out like this and they're all of a sudden, Tua's doing the warmup and you're just like, oh my god.

• 59:33Speaker 02

  It's a dead bet. It's, it's, I mean, and I'll concede it, but I can't get over the advantage. It's already the case that Bijon Robinson is number one in the entire NFL in yards after contact. Well, the, the Bears are exquisite at getting, giving up yards before contact and yards after contact. I think that the version of the Bears defense that we saw last week against Green Bay is the true version of the Bears defense. And the no Montez Sweat thing just took it to a whole nother level for me. I love the idea of Atlanta getting points at home. They are a functional offense and their defense has been very under the radar effective at getting pressure. We don't know how they're doing

• 1:00:14Speaker 02

  it, but they are, they are doing it. And if Caleb is at all hesitant to get out and run because, you know, his first game back post hamstring, I like that angle as well. So I don't mind grabbing the points with Atlanta at home.

• 1:00:29Bill Simmons?

  I looked at it long and hard. I still might take it. All right. My second pick, I think I've picked them every week in Ringer 107, except for last week because it was a Thursday game. And I haven't really enjoyed the fruits of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers yet. They're going to be plus two and a half at home against the traveling Pittsburgh Steelers.

• 1:00:54Bill Simmons?

  Coming off 10 days rest. I like that. Steelers coming off a really nice win where they're feeling great about themselves. I like that.

• 1:01:04Bill Simmons?

  And I think the Bucks are pretty good. The, the, the advanced stats kind of back it up. They're 12th in DVOA. They have the fifth defense, 18th in offense. They have better DVOA than Pittsburgh. They're home. They need the game. And I, there's a couple of extra things with this. I just think Pittsburgh is always going to be within one win or loss from 500 the entire year. I don't think they'll ever be too up. I don't think they'll ever be too down. I think they'll be four and three, four and four, maybe they'll be four and five. Oh, we're back up to six and five. I just think they're going to be right there. But I really like that quarterback as like just random backup who played six years in college.

• 1:01:45Bill Simmons?

  And I thought he seemed really comfortable. They can run the ball. I don't mind some of their weapons. I think, I think there's some energy around this team. I don't, I don't know what this is going to mean for the Baker Mayfield extension they just gave out, but uh.

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  It means the money's gone. That's what it means.

• 1:02:00Bill Simmons?

  That might be what it means. But I don't, the Steelers secondary has been awful.

• 1:02:06Bill Simmons?

  And I think against Aaron Rodgers on the road, it makes sense to me that Tampa could, could stick it to them a little bit. Shut down their run, go after him, make him be 42-year-old Aaron Rodgers, because he's not going to be good every week. Right? When you're old, we know this firsthand, it goes up and down depending on the week. And I think this would be a crazy spot for Pittsburgh wins. Pittsburgh really going to be four and two? To me, it's more likely, we haven't heard the last of the NFC South. And we're just going to be, we're going to be merry-go-round in that top spot. And Tampa is two and four after this weekend. And we're like, holy shit, Tampa's back in this. So I'm taking Bucks.

• 1:02:49Bill Simmons?

  Plus two and a half. I thought about waiting until Sunday and hoping it goes to three, but I don't, I think it goes the other way. I think it ends at one and a half.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  I led with an NFC South team and I'm right here joining you with yet another NFC South.

• 1:03:02Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you're taking them too?

• 1:03:04Speaker 02

  I sure am. They were sitting right there for me. Um, I like everything that you just observed. There are some good numbers in terms of, you know, Todd Bowles and Aaron Rodgers haven't faced each other a ton, but Aaron Rodgers only one and two against Todd Bowles. But what I really like inside the X's and O's is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers like to play cover three. And Aaron Rodgers historically not a fan of cover three. Number 31 EPA, number 30 success rate. It's just, it's, it's not something he's comfortable with. He also has been very ineffective on, on third down this season. His completion rate is way down on third down.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  Tampa, Pittsburgh, not great third down conversions. But I, I like what we saw out of Tampa in terms of some innovation on offense. All of a sudden, all the weapons came to life against that.

• 1:04:02Bill Simmons?

  Quarterbacks moving around a little bit, making shit happen. Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh's low on receivers too.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:04:08Bill Simmons?

  Cause I picked up Roman Wilson last week. He got hurt in the first quarter. Now Jeremy Bernard is the new guy that's been coming in. But they, they basically have a receiver and a half, Friarmouth.

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  Friarmouth playing receiver for them.

• 1:04:19Bill Simmons?

  They're getting these crazy Jalen Warren explosive plays every game that if they continue, he's going to end up with one of the great running back seasons of all time. And I don't think it's going to continue this week. Take him out. Force them into these third and longs, go after Rodgers and take care of business Tampa.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  Ahoy!

• 1:04:36Bill Simmons?

  Pressure.

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  Bucks.

• 1:04:37Bill Simmons?

  Ahoy. We did it. Both of us. Both taking them.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:04:41Bill Simmons?

  Well, that leads me to, well, I'll do a tease now.

• 1:04:48Bill Simmons?

  I just want to mention, I mentioned to you way back when, when I'm gambling on football in the mid 90s with my buddy Jeff Gallo. And we had somebody we called the Betson because it was the mid 90s.

• 1:05:00Bill Simmons?

  And he had a friend.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Conversation.

• 1:05:01Bill Simmons?

  I'm not going to say his full name, but his last name was Stymens. And I think Stymens, he either bet with us or I can't remember the details, but he would have a pick every week. And we would just be like, where the fuck did that come from? And, and Jeff used to do this imitation of Stymens calling, calling in the pick to us and being like, I don't know, I just kind of like the Chargers plus six and a half. So I'm going to start flagging the Stymens picks every week. I'm not taking it yet, but if this works, maybe I'll start.

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  I'm listening.

• 1:05:39Bill Simmons?

  Titans plus six and a half is a Stymens pick. Who's taking that? Who wants that? Who's like, you know, I really liked this week, the Titans. They scored three points last week and their QB is a bust and both of their coaches are going to get fired. I like the Titans. And yet, like I, you can't make the case for them, but the, should the Colts be favored by almost a touchdown over anybody? I don't know. That one stuck out to me. If that one hits, I'm going to take, I'm going to do a Stymens pick next week and make it one of my, one of my five. Okay. My third one. This is a pure, I have the line in my head different than what the line is for the game.

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:06:20Bill Simmons?

  I feel okay putting this in because it's not a tease or a parlay. It's a straight up pick, which means by rules, I can wade into the London waters.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  Oh my God, I can't believe this. Go ahead.

• 1:06:33Bill Simmons?

  Did win last week, but it did take years off my life.

• 1:06:38Bill Simmons?

  Houston's plus two and a half in London against the Jags.

• 1:06:46Bill Simmons?

  It's a neutral field, even though allegedly the Jags are the home team. And I get the Texans are one and four. These teams seem dead even to me. I think this game, whether it should be a pick 'em or not, I don't know. But to me like Jags, Jags minus one, maybe is the highest I'd go. Jags minus one and a half even seems aggressive. The Texans basically have to win this game. This is a kitchen sink playoff game for them. I think they underachieved with, you know, who they are. They're 11th in DVOA and they're one and four, which is nuts. The Jags are second in DVOA and very good this year. And I, I've picked them a couple of times.

• 1:07:29Bill Simmons?

  But I, I just, I like how they played the Jags in the past and Lawrence.

• 1:07:36Bill Simmons?

  I like the Houston in general. I want to keep riding them and I like that I'm getting points. If this was a pick 'em, I would take Houston. So I'm getting plus two and a half. I'm going to bet on their defense. I'm going to bet on the London game. I like their kicker. And I think this is a lower scoring, like a 19 to 16, kind of ugly. There'll be a couple of turnovers, but I'm betting on the Jags. By the way, are we, we are seeing Marvin Harrison this week, right?

• 1:08:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, we are. He's playing.

• 1:08:04Bill Simmons?

  You know, he's going to do something.

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  I don't know what to do here. Cause I, I'll try and show America. This says Atlanta, Houston, Tampa.

• 1:08:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you have Houston too. That's fine. Double piggyback.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  Do that? Is America going to be mad that we have two of the same picks?

• 1:08:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, we're probably going to have the same team too.

• 1:08:23Speaker 02

  Cause I, I mean, I love Houston. Inside the numbers, some of the things that you're observing there. They pressure Trevor Lawrence very effectively. Trevor Lawrence, his completion rate against Houston is low. The familiarity of this Houston defense with what Trevor Lawrence and, and that offense for Jacksonville wants to do. Trevor Lawrence, under pressure, his splits are bad and he has a very low efficiency rate against this Houston defense. But on the other side of the ball, CJ Stroud, Stroud, super, try and say that 10 times. CJ Stroud, super below the radar. It feels like the season.

• 1:09:08Bill Simmons?

  Palisir and I talked about it in the last segment. I, I think he's been genuinely good this year.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 1:09:13Bill Simmons?

  With like weird weapons and no running game whatsoever, and not the best offensive line. I think he's, I think he's looked great.

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  So the thing that Jacksonville's good at is take away the run. They genuinely do have a good run defense. So the F what? Houston doesn't care about that. They'll have Woody Marks, you know, they're, they're missing David Montgomery. So what? Woody Marks will run for 50 yards or whatever. It doesn't matter. They have Nico and they have whatever Marvin Harrison is going to be. I think it's a net positive for this Houston offense.

• 1:09:44Bill Simmons?

  At least give them some physical stuff, maybe, you know, they'll throw to him a couple of times. I love the fact that he played with Stroud in college. I love, but yeah, I just, this is a need game too. Jacksonville's been there for two weeks.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  They're three games behind, behind the Jags.

• 1:10:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. They pulled a win out of their absolute assholes last week against Philly.

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:10:08Bill Simmons?

  Right? Even before what happened at the end, like Lawrence hitting Washington on a pretty crazy pass down the side that he had to make a, like an insane nine out of 10 catch on. But the Jags were dying to blow that game for a while and uh.

• 1:10:24Speaker 02

  Sirianni had other ideas.

• 1:10:25Bill Simmons?

  Sirianni had other ideas and FYI, that was not like that was a good Eagles team. It was basically like Jalen Carter taking them up by himself.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  I mean, it's a pretty good Eagles defense.

• 1:10:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, Jalen Carter was going nuts. But um.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  The only thing that gives pause on this.

• 1:10:41Bill Simmons?

  Fawn went out like in the, with a concussion during the game. I don't know. A lot of things went right for them.

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  There's been three other occasions where Jacksonville is on the second of back-to-back in London.

• 1:10:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  They're three and O in that context. And I think they've covered all three times. They, the last two, they've blown the doors off the teams that they played. So that would be the concern. It's Houston flying across. Um, but I, I, I'm not really cowed by that. That, that's a, it's factored into the very fair plus two and a half. Cause I think these teams are like super even. The original point you made at the top, this is like a minus one. It could be, pick 'em would be fine with me.

• 1:11:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's free. It's anytime like you grabbing an extra point beyond where you think it should be, grab it. Okay. Tease. Well, you know, I.

• 1:11:30Speaker 02

  Glad that you let me, that you let me do that. Cause I was, I was prepared to pivot, but now I don't have to take the Giants.

• 1:11:36Bill Simmons?

  You just, you double piggybacked it.

• 1:11:37Speaker 02

  Take the Giants at home.

• 1:11:38Bill Simmons?

  We're keeping track of the piggybacks for the year.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:42Bill Simmons?

  Tease time. I hit last week. I'm two and three on teases. You, you're not good on teases this year, right?

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  I'm three and two. What are you talking about? Yeah.

• 1:11:50Bill Simmons?

  You're not good with your wise wagers.

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna lose anymore the way I lost last week. I'll tell you that much.

• 1:11:58Bill Simmons?

  The Patriots against the Jets is an easy leg for a tease. I know it's chalk. I know, whatever, but the

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  No, it's good.

• 1:12:04Bill Simmons?

  The Pats, Gonzalez is coming back. You look at the injury report for the Pats and you go, oh no, they're so, oh, they're missing Will Campbell. The rookie left tackle came in and was lights out last week. Loma is, is, he's, looks like we're gonna be fine on that side. Henderson's out. It's fine. We can, we can patch it together without him, but we really, seems like we could get A.J. Brown. I didn't factor that into that pick. That's a bonus, even if he's out there for 20, 25. I think they've found something with this receiver group. They seem like they've gained trust. Kyle Williams, even somebody like Chisholm.

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  Chisholm.

• 1:12:41Bill Simmons?

  The tight ends, I'm still waiting on the big rare and I think, I was calling it when we were watching the games the other day. I just think there's, there's a, there's a breakout game for him. And they're playing the Jets. The Jets have a bunch of injuries. Vrabel hates the Jets. And I just, I would be shocked if the Pats didn't win that game by three.

• 1:13:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:13:00Bill Simmons?

  So that's one.

• 1:13:04Bill Simmons?

  For the other leg, to make this the chalkiest leg that ever existed, I gotta do it. The Chiefs under three, down to two and a half against the Chargers, who seem like they just wanna go home for the season.

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  Mandatory.

• 1:13:18Bill Simmons?

  Chiefs coming off a bye?

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  That's right. All the numbers, all the Andy Reid numbers.

• 1:13:22Bill Simmons?

  Chargers looking terrible? Like,

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:26Bill Simmons?

  They're not gonna win by three, so I, I hate doing it. The other one I was looking at long and hard was the under in the Browns Ravens game, which could, you could get basically, take that up to 49.

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  I'm glad you did. Don't do a total in the tease. Don't do it.

• 1:13:40Bill Simmons?

  You can. It's legal.

• 1:13:42Speaker 02

  I know. It's just, I'm just telling you, don't do it. I like what you did.

• 1:13:45Bill Simmons?

  Thought about that. Thought about the Niners against your stupid team as well, but your stupid team is like not terrible.

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  Yep. They are stupid though. They are stupid.

• 1:13:54Bill Simmons?

  So Pats down to minus one and a half and Chiefs down to minus two and a half. That's my,

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, so shocker.

• 1:14:00Bill Simmons?

  By the way, I will say this with the teases. The teases have had, been really tough the first five weeks in general for a variety of reasons and I, we're gonna have some normalcy for a couple of weeks at some point with some of this.

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  I think so too. I, I, um, lost last week my teaser because I put the shit Saints into a tease and

• 1:14:22Bill Simmons?

  Which was your fault.

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  I was reminded, oh, wait a minute. It took me all the way to week five to remember, don't put shitty teams in teasers.

• 1:14:28Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:14:29Speaker 02

  And ask for a backdoor cover.

• 1:14:29Bill Simmons?

  With a bunch of injuries. Yeah. That's another thing I like about Pats Chiefs. These are two playoff teams at home.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:36Bill Simmons?

  Going against two teams that are not gonna go 500 this year, so.

• 1:14:39Speaker 02

  So I, I obviously have the Chiefs as well. The Chiefs, we know with the extra rest, the Chargers coming off of yet another blown, not just an opportunity to win the game, but, but blown cover.

• 1:14:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  They keep, they keep inventing ways to not cover, so no issue whatsoever. We don't have to discuss the Chiefs leg any further. And I'm a thousand percent taking the Niners minus one and a half.

• 1:15:00Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:15:00Speaker 02

  You kidding me? From seven and a half down to one and a half? This, my, my stupid team is gonna fly cross-country? If this was at home in Washington, I wouldn't mess with it because,

• 1:15:10Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  You know, what, what we saw out of Washington against that Seattle team, you know, they're, they're, they're fighting. Those guys are, are, are, but it's, it's way too much a work in progress on both sides of the ball with the new coordinators. Um, the defensive coordinator especially, they went super conservative in the fourth quarter and let the Giants, let Jameis come back from 14 points. Just not making adjustments the way that they ought to be making adjustments because they're just not all on the same page. So Niners minus one and a half is the other side of, of, uh, my tease leg.

• 1:15:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, never a bad idea to put some money on Brock Purdy. See, I have Brock Purdy and Mahomes. I have Drake May and Mahomes. Feeling good.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  He, he cooks against base defense and Washington likes base defense, so that, that's another element to this. He's, it's a sneaky angle that, uh, our boy Warren Sharp pointed it out. I, I, I love it. Uh, I think the Niners are gonna cook.

• 1:16:01Bill Simmons?

  All right. So Ringer 107, we both have the Bucks plus two and a half at home against the Steelers. We both have the Texans plus two and a half in London against the Jaguars.

• 1:16:11Speaker 02

  What could go wrong? What could go wrong?

• 1:16:13Bill Simmons?

  You have the Falcons.

• 1:16:15Speaker 02

  I do.

• 1:16:15Bill Simmons?

  What's that line again? Plus one and a half?

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  One and a half. They're getting a point and a half at home against the Bears.

• 1:16:20Bill Simmons?

  And I have the Cowboys plus one and a half in Lambeau against Green Bay. I was taking it at minus one and a half and you reminded me it was actually plus one and a half on FanDuel, so that was great. My tease is New England down to minus one and a half and KC down to minus two and a half. You have KC minus two and a half and Ciprius go down to minus one and a half. Remember, if you can wager, uh, in a FanDuel state, you get the minus 110 juice for that because we talked FanDuel into that. Uh, that is today's Ringer 107. It was brought to you by FanDuel. Download the app now to find all of our 107 picks. Make this your most rewarding season ever. FanDuel, play your game. Odds subject to change. What was the biggest feedback you got from the two-part NBA over-unders? Was anybody mad?

• 1:17:06Speaker 02

  The only people that were mad were folks that are in the LaMelo ball hive. They thought I went a tiny bit too far with,

• 1:17:17Bill Simmons?

  You called him Clowney McFarty Pants.

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  I did. Now, I mean, I just wanna be very explicit about this. This is purely basketball driven. I don't know anything about the young man. I wish him well. I hope he has a successful.

• 1:17:33Bill Simmons?

  People were, oh, interesting.

• 1:17:35Speaker 02

  It might be, might be personal. It felt like the, I, I was going, I, I want nothing but the best for him and really all the guys in the NBA. Nearly all of them. I'm rooting for them. I mean, it wasn't per, I just don't like the way he plays basketball. I don't think he is a winning player. I don't think he is

• 1:17:52Bill Simmons?

  I thought you made that very clear.

• 1:17:53Speaker 02

  To winning basketball. I call him Clowney McFarty Pants. Yes.

• 1:17:57Bill Simmons?

  You thought he gets a little cloudy, Clowney McFarty Pants when he's leading a team?

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 1:18:03Bill Simmons?

  Somebody sent me, um,

• 1:18:07Bill Simmons?

  somebody sent.

• 1:18:07Speaker 02

  But not personal. I, I'm rooting for you, LaMelo.

• 1:18:11Bill Simmons?

  Somebody sent me a poster based.

• 1:18:15Speaker 02

  I can't really see it.

• 1:18:16Bill Simmons?

  It's a Clowney McFarty Pants poster.

• 1:18:18Speaker 02

  Already?

• 1:18:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  Who did that?

• 1:18:20Bill Simmons?

  That was from, who did that?

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  My god.

• 1:18:23Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Damian.

• 1:18:25Speaker 02

  AI.

• 1:18:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  Amazing. I need a copy of that. I'll put that in the, in the, in the set. I'll put it up on the set. Yeah.

• 1:18:34Bill Simmons?

  The, I do, we, we went over on the Timberwolves, didn't we? Or did you go, not go over?

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  I went under.

• 1:18:42Bill Simmons?

  I have a couple.

• 1:18:42Speaker 02

  It's a grand experiment. I think you and Zach both went over. It's a wonderful experiment. I'm here to watch it. They look great. Like, there was a clip that came up on my thing of Anthony Edwards talking about, there's our light-skinned player and there's our medium-skinned player and I'm the black player. Like, I, I love that. That's phenomenal stuff by, uh, uh, Anthony Edwards.

• 1:19:03Bill Simmons?

  FanDuel gave me a special little Ringer tab on the NBA page with all my picks.

• 1:19:08Speaker 02

  Oh, let's go.

• 1:19:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And, uh, they also

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  Deserve it.

• 1:19:12Bill Simmons?

  Added a couple, couple, uh, some of the over-unders were in there, but I think we're gonna do some division exact orders and all kinds of things.

• 1:19:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Good. I have some division bets that I'm making, so.

• 1:19:25Bill Simmons?

  I have some Nets fans that are mad at me. That seems to be.

• 1:19:30Speaker 02

  Well, I'm what, all 10 of them? Is that the issue?

• 1:19:33Bill Simmons?

  Listen, the Nets fans are like when somebody's in a bad marriage and the friend comes over and is like, you have to ask for a divorce. You have to get out. And they take it personally and then a year later, they're like, hey, I, I know I got mad at you a year ago, but, um, we are separating now and you were right. Um, that's, that's what it's like to be a Nets fan.

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 1:19:54Bill Simmons?

  Sorry. I'm gonna keep making jokes about the Nets all year, so I don't know what to tell you. Uh, we'll say, on the positive for the Nets fans, the pizza's really good there.

• 1:20:05Speaker 02

  Oh, incredible pizza in Brooklyn. You kidding me?

• 1:20:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the pizza, like when you go in the Barclays.

• 1:20:10Speaker 02

  Oh, actually in the stadium, the pizza?

• 1:20:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Phoenix Pizza. It's delicious. It's right there. It's right outside.

• 1:20:16Speaker 02

  I mean, it should be because Brooklyn has some of the most incredible pizza on planet earth.

• 1:20:20Bill Simmons?

  By the way, you left yesterday?

• 1:20:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:23Bill Simmons?

  And I started eating healthy the next day. It's probably, I have five weeks until Thanksgiving. Yeah. No more bread. No more dessert.

• 1:20:31Speaker 02

  You did a great job of eating. We, there was multiple bagels involved. We had sandwiches.

• 1:20:36Bill Simmons?

  I turned it on for you.

• 1:20:37Speaker 02

  Cheeseburgers. There was stew. We did the whole, the whole thing.

• 1:20:42Bill Simmons?

  It was great. It was a good run.

• 1:20:43Speaker 02

  Phenomenal. Big, uh, big, big waffle.

• 1:20:46Bill Simmons?

  House, I will see you next week. Hopefully, uh, we do well in our picks and we even share a couple of them. Great to see you and we'll

• 1:20:52Speaker 02

  Five and O.

• 1:20:52Bill Simmons?

  Listen to you on, uh, Ringer Wise Guys, the Big Friday Show, which has been absolutely spectacular all season. Uh, the Big Sun preview. We're gonna take a break. We're gonna come back with Cam Johnson and my friend Tommy Alter in studio. We go for a while. It's a great basketball conversation right after this.

• 1:21:09Bill Simmons?

  All right. So we're recording Thursday afternoon. Cam Johnson is here from the Denver Nuggets. Tommy Alter is here. We've worked together for a long time, the most mysterious man in show business. I forced you to come on. I didn't even tell you.

• 1:21:20Speaker 03

  Some would, some would say.

• 1:21:21Bill Simmons?

  Would you have dressed differently or no?

• 1:21:23Speaker 03

  No, I would've worn this exact same thing.

• 1:21:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I figured. Yeah.

• 1:21:26Speaker 03

  Thank you for having us.

• 1:21:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this is great. Uh, we'd always talked about doing something when Cam was in town. Season started next week. And you play for my, uh, adopted Western Conference team, the Denver Nuggets, because my favorite non-Celtic is Jokic. So you've been, this is year two with him.

• 1:21:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:43Bill Simmons?

  Just give it to me. What's it like? Did you have to get used to the passing and the angles and all that shit? Like, is there like a process?

• 1:21:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, you have to get used to it. I don't think, I think like you look at the passes, like the, the pass in Boulder that he made. Behind the back pass. It's not about getting used to that. It's about getting used to the flow of playing with somebody like him. Cause you'd never have before.

• 1:22:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:04Speaker 04

  And even if you have a five, like that is skilled and can, like you, you, you don't. Nobody does the game like Jokic does the game. So.

• 1:22:16Speaker 04

  The figuring out is more of a spacing, when to move, when to play off, all those other things. But those surprise passes and stuff are actually kind of the easier ones because like. As long as you understand the spacing of the court.

• 1:22:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:31Speaker 04

  Like you can kind of feel when you're, when you yourself are open.

• 1:22:35Bill Simmons?

  And he always feels it, right?

• 1:22:36Speaker 04

  And he always knows. That's the thing. He always knows. So like, he can be looking left, actually be going left. If he, and if I'm on the right corner and he catches my man drifting in too far. And you can see it because he can survey the court very easily, very steadily, very, very like, you know, just efficiently. Without having to be sped up and then he can hold. So it's like, okay, if he's there one more second, I'm throwing, throws it right corner. I'm ready. Those are the easier ones. The more of the learning curve was just like how our offense flows when you have somebody, you want the ball in Jokic's hands. You want the ball in Jamal Murray's hands. And so it's like, okay, um, how can I be as efficient as possible to complement what we have going on?

• 1:23:18Speaker 04

  And to, to continue to raise our, our ceiling as an offense. And that's where I started to find my groove essentially.

• 1:23:25Bill Simmons?

  So how long did it take?

• 1:23:27Speaker 04

  It was like, it was a slow start.

• 1:23:30Bill Simmons?

  It felt like by April range.

• 1:23:33Speaker 04

  Well, that's the thing.

• 1:23:34Bill Simmons?

  You could tell you had it.

• 1:23:35Speaker 04

  It was a slow start and then I felt like I was figuring out, I had a little knee injury in December when I come back. Then you know, I think by early, mid, midish March is when I was like, all right, like I'm, I feel very comfortable in what we're doing right now.

• 1:23:52Speaker 04

  And I think it's, I think it's going to continue to grow too. Like I just, you know, getting the second preseason in and I just feel like, I just remember, think back to how I felt last year. And I feel, I feel a lot better about it right now.

• 1:24:02Speaker 03

  Don't you think there's something with, we talked about this with like Timmy last year.

• 1:24:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06Speaker 03

  There's something with shooters in this offense about how you just can't think. Like you just have, when you get the ball, you just have to get it up. And it's what made him so good for them last year was he's just the, he's just an assassin. Like he comes in, he doesn't think about it. He's like getting five jacks up right away.

• 1:24:20Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's just a valuable skill in the NBA in general because like anybody technically probably could do it. Like you could just get the ball and fire it, but to do it and be efficient enough to where they keep telling you like, yes, this is a good behavior. Continue to do it. There's plenty of guys that have that mentality. But you don't really see it because the coaches are like, okay, that's enough, you know? So for Tim especially, that's a, it's a great example because he can do it and he's efficient, shot about 40 last year. On just those like. Unconscious, just let it fly, let it fly guy.

• 1:24:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's like constant heat check mode, even though it's not a heat check.

• 1:24:57Speaker 03

  He just comes in.

• 1:24:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's like he does the first, first possession.

• 1:25:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:00Speaker 03

  Two minutes left in the first quarter, he just comes in and ripping it.

• 1:25:03Speaker 04

  But he can do that because he's a, a professional shooter. So like, that's part of it. That's an NBA skill. Professional shooter, not, not like. Anything besides the fact that like this guy, whenever the opportunity to shoot presents itself, he doesn't need the situation to be going his way or not going. He could miss four, he could miss five, or he could have made the last three or four. He's going to shoot it the same.

• 1:25:24Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's like a podcast thing. When you talk, you don't want to self-edit yourself as you talk. Cause then you start thinking about how you talk. Tim Hardaway comes in and it's like boom.

• 1:25:35Speaker 03

  No, it's like.

• 1:25:35Bill Simmons?

  Just letting it fly.

• 1:25:36Speaker 03

  It's not irrational confidence because he's a great shooter. So it's rational, but it is like confidence. It is like, I don't care what happened. I'm coming in and getting these up.

• 1:25:44Bill Simmons?

  Shireman had that for the Celtics last year and you could see it evolving over the course of the year. It was just, he was in fuck it mode. And then you get to the playoffs and everybody's afraid to be in fuck it mode. Yeah.

• 1:25:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. But Boston was still letting it rip in the playoffs.

• 1:25:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:57Speaker 04

  And they just live and die by the result.

• 1:25:58Bill Simmons?

  When it's not going well, that's when, you know.

• 1:26:00Speaker 04

  But they still did it. Like they, they played through it and you hear a lot of back and forth about like. Change your strategy, stop shooting so many, like this is what they do. So the ideal thing is like, you know, you get, you just, you let it rip. You're struggling, struggling. Then the, the, the script flips. At some point, but like, they have, they, they put that in as their system so much so. And I respect it. Like it, it's, it, it works.

• 1:26:27Bill Simmons?

  It won a title.

• 1:26:27Speaker 04

  Exactly. It works.

• 1:26:29Bill Simmons?

  The problem is when it's not working. You feel like you're in quicksand.

• 1:26:33Speaker 04

  You can't change it though.

• 1:26:34Bill Simmons?

  It's like, fuck, we're 10 for 48. Why are we firing these up?

• 1:26:37Speaker 03

  Also when it's not working, I think even not, forget last year, the, the, when they, uh, lost the Knicks series. It kills your home crowd. It is something that is like particularly bad.

• 1:26:47Bill Simmons?

  The fans get super frustrated.

• 1:26:48Speaker 03

  Shooting like nine for 40 from three is a huge need.

• 1:26:50Speaker 04

  So what do you think? You think that, you think at that point, do you change or do you continue what you do?

• 1:26:55Bill Simmons?

  You still need, you still need something else. It can't just be the threes. You still need either somebody who can create his own shot or be the centrifugal force to create shots for others. They have it now with Tatum. And then with Brown, they had it, but I think it just got rocky when Tatum got back. They never figured out the seesaw with those guys. Cause they didn't have enough time. You know, he came back, he played for 16 games this year and the, I meant to ask you this. I'm just going to ask you now. It feels like preseason matters more this year. Do you feel that? It feels like, like teams are playing their guys. In their lineups more like the Celtics have played, you know, you don't agree with this? Cause it feels like the practice time got condensed.

• 1:27:37Speaker 04

  I do.

• 1:27:38Bill Simmons?

  And they're just throwing, they're actually like treating these games real. Yeah.

• 1:27:41Speaker 04

  It feels like it's part of camp.

• 1:27:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:43Speaker 04

  It's, um, extended practices outside of your training camp that gives you like just another opponent. Like it's, it's more like you, we, like, for example, you take us, we're figuring a lot out in preseason. We're, we're, at least we're, we're trying to execute our scheme. We're trying to implement new concepts. And then like for me. Yeah. And then for me, it's like, I'm going to go out there and try to do these the best I can. Go back to the tape and see how it looks on tape and see like, and just see how that process plays itself out.

• 1:28:18Bill Simmons?

  Well, the other problem is every, well, it's not a problem. It's a strength too. Everybody's so fucking deep now. I can't believe how deep these rosters are. But the Clippers, they waived Cam Christie yesterday because they had, he had some guarantee coming. And it's like, that guy's definitely an NBA player. I don't know if he would have been in their top 10, but everybody's so deep now. And it seems like, like that, this can be a big advantage for the Celtics where they can just. Pick 10 guys every night, rest four and still the 10 they have are going to be good.

• 1:28:44Speaker 03

  You're going to notice the Celtics are going to get worked into a lot of these.

• 1:28:48Bill Simmons?

  That's fair. That's fair. But I do think the deeper rosters for this 82 game season with all the wear and tear and the injuries. Like, do you feel like there's more running now than there was when you got in the league or you feel like it's the same?

• 1:29:02Bill Simmons?

  Do you feel like basketball's harder to play now?

• 1:29:05Speaker 04

  Hmm. It depends on who you are. For me, I don't think it's harder to play, but I think it has maybe a, but maybe a slightly different physical effect.

• 1:29:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:13Speaker 04

  Like you, you can trade some of the, some of the ground and pound for.

• 1:29:20Speaker 04

  Cross-country mileage, you know, there's just a little bit different wear, wear and tear.

• 1:29:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:24Speaker 04

  Um, maybe the speed of the game is different. Maybe the sets we run are a little bit different.

• 1:29:29Bill Simmons?

  The pace is definitely different.

• 1:29:30Speaker 04

  The pace is different. Um. The personnel on court is maybe the bigger one. Like when I got to the league, it was definitely mid-change of two traditional bigs. But I remember like, if you were the four in our Phoenix offense, my first year, like you were kind of playing like on the elbow a little bit, you know what I mean? And so it's like.

• 1:29:52Bill Simmons?

  You had to play there the rookie year.

• 1:29:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. Me and Mikal Bridges were like, who's the four this time down the court? Like. Looking at each other. It was so funny. You'd be like, I don't want to be there. You be there.

• 1:30:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:03Speaker 04

  Um, but you, you can feel that like, it's just, you know, that's another thing I love is like just going back and seeing which sets worked. And then if they worked, how many teams adopted it? Okay. Mostly adopted it. And then the defense would catch up. Um, so I think in just all of this, like you see a lot more guard, guard action now than you did when I, when I first got into the league. You see a lot more.

• 1:30:23Bill Simmons?

  Guard, guard action, meaning pick, guard setting.

• 1:30:25Speaker 04

  Guard setting, pick for guards. It just is, it's chaotic.

• 1:30:29Bill Simmons?

  Our listeners through that.

• 1:30:29Speaker 04

  It's chaotic, chaotic. Um. It's become such a dominant screening game, a dominant pick and roll game, a dominant, um, double pick, two picks.

• 1:30:40Bill Simmons?

  I would argue it's become a dominant illegal screen game, but apparently they're going to fix that this year.

• 1:30:44Speaker 04

  I think the illegal screening is no longer at its peak. I think it was at its peak pre my time in the NBA. I think.

• 1:30:52Bill Simmons?

  Oh, like in the early 2010s?

• 1:30:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:30:55Speaker 04

  Because if I go back and watch those games, like, they were doing some crazy stuff with the screens. I think gradually, they've been cracking down on it a little bit more.

• 1:31:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:05Speaker 04

  But people are just trying to do it in different ways.

• 1:31:07Speaker 03

  There's also the guard big screen. I mean, you have to do it with guard guards sometimes.

• 1:31:10Speaker 04

  Guard big screens are really cool because now, like, these bigs are...

• 1:31:14Speaker 03

  That's what everyone who plays with Zion has to do that. That's how he gets to the rim.

• 1:31:16Speaker 04

  Wemby, Jokic, like, these guys are really good at being the pick and roll ball handler.

• 1:31:22Bill Simmons?

  It's kind of logical, but nobody thought to do it for the first seven years of the league.

• 1:31:26Speaker 04

  It's very hard to guard, too. Um, guard-guard actions.

• 1:31:30Bill Simmons?

  I'm trying to think who the first one... It might have been, the Clippers used to do it with Chris Paul and Jamal sometimes.

• 1:31:35Speaker 03

  How much of that is also just the pure, the guards are bigger? I mean, you have to have a level of size to do this. It's like if you're...

• 1:31:42Bill Simmons?

  Like the Shay size?

• 1:31:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, you have to be 6'4", 6'5", and, and strong to set the pick either way.

• 1:31:49Bill Simmons?

  Or built like Jalen Brunson where you're just a fire hydrant.

• 1:31:52Speaker 04

  No, because you don't even have to be able to set the picks.

• 1:31:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:55Speaker 04

  You just have to be able to go in there with enough intention and enough kind of pace to make the defense have to react to your presence being there. You don't have to be a strong screen setter necessarily. So like, even if it's a smaller guy, like, if they get hit hard on the screen, they'll fall, they'll call like a defensive foul. So it's more like, um, I want to, if, if I were to just kind of guess here, it's kind of maybe based off of matchup hunting.

• 1:32:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:19Speaker 04

  You know, as matchup hunting and these ISOs became more prevalent, it's like, we want to, we want to force this matchup, we want to force this matchup. You're doing it by bringing guards in. So then you start to realize maybe, okay, you bring these guards into the actions and it just causes confusion. If you have a guy that wants, that doesn't want to switch and you put him in a, in a position where he kind of has to, or he has to shut, like, and then, and then everybody on the team gets, um,

• 1:32:46Speaker 04

  a lot better at either playing in the short role or playing off those slip outs and pops. Then you just create that natural advantage. And so everything on offense is just about creating an advantage and then playing off of that.

• 1:32:57Bill Simmons?

  It's so funny watching the old games. I don't know.

• 1:33:02Bill Simmons?

  I'm a dork, so I'll watch the old games and actually have a good time. And the 2008 finals was on this summer because Doc made the Hall of Fame.

• 1:33:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was watching.

• 1:33:09Bill Simmons?

  And, uh, and it, it felt this way in the moment, but we didn't really know how to crystallize it. But we had this awesome small ball lineup. And every time they needed to come back, he would play the lineup. And it was like Posey and Garnett and Allen Rondo and Eddie House, basically. Or sometimes Pierce would be in there for one of them. But, and that would be, they'd shoot threes, they'd spread the floor. But that wasn't how you played basketball in 2008. So it always felt like a gimmick. But now you're watching, you're like, why the fuck didn't we do this three fourths of the game? Like, they can't, they can't guard it. It's perfect for KG. It's like the perfect five. So it felt like, like, when I wrote my basketball book that was '09, the paperback was 10, and that was the Celtic Lakers, the second finals.

• 1:33:51Bill Simmons?

  I felt like everything in basketball changed after that. That was like Curry comes in, the threes change. The six foot six power forwards are just gone.

• 1:33:59Speaker 04

  Lineups go smaller.

• 1:34:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And it's like three guards, it's guys like you playing the four, even though you're not a power forward, and then, and then centers who could shoot. And then it just flips and, and now where you are, where we are now.

• 1:34:11Speaker 04

  I'm just lucky.

• 1:34:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, you could have played in any era, though.

• 1:34:14Speaker 04

  Um, but I'm really lucky that like,

• 1:34:18Speaker 04

  as my upbringing through high school and college progresses,

• 1:34:23Speaker 04

  the league is like...

• 1:34:24Bill Simmons?

  Things are shifting.

• 1:34:24Speaker 04

  The league is like, tall, shoot, tall, shoot. You just naturally have a, a lot higher of a chance. So like, I'm just, I'm really fortunate that I landed where I did.

• 1:34:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm trying to think of guys like you before this flipped.

• 1:34:39Speaker 04

  I mean, there's plenty that just maybe did...

• 1:34:42Bill Simmons?

  Like, shooting forwards with size.

• 1:34:46Speaker 03

  Well, you just might have had to adjust how you approached, your approach, based on the league.

• 1:34:51Bill Simmons?

  I feel like he would have taken shit because it's like, well, he doesn't post up.

• 1:34:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:55Speaker 04

  Exactly. I'm, I'm much more guard.

• 1:34:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, you don't really rebound.

• 1:35:00Speaker 04

  I was little growing up.

• 1:35:01Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:35:01Speaker 04

  Hey.

• 1:35:02Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 1:35:03Bill Simmons?

  What?

• 1:35:03Speaker 03

  So he doesn't really rebound. So that's the other...

• 1:35:05Speaker 04

  I was little, I was little growing up.

• 1:35:08Speaker 03

  That's the other problem.

• 1:35:08Speaker 04

  I was little. Like, I was always the smallest on the court, growing up. That's why I shot threes. I was the smallest player. I played up and I was even, I was small. So, you know, freshman year of high school, I'm 5'8". I'm a point guard. I played point guard and then, like, I was a shooter, so I'd play like a combo off-guard to shoot.

• 1:35:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:27Speaker 04

  All the way until college. College was the first time that I ever got put at a three. I was one and two only until college. And then my fifth year in college was the first time that I had ever been on the lineup as a four. And that's just because we had younger guys and we would teach them less, and I knew more of our offense. So I would just slide to the four in terms of like placeholder on offense because I knew how to execute what we were doing. It just made the system a lot easier. So when I get to the NBA and I have PF next to my name, it's the funniest thing to like my family members, myself, because it's just like, they're like, so the rebounding thing.

• 1:36:03Speaker 03

  Well, also, isn't it, I mean, I would say, I would say Aaron Gordon is like the dream four. He's a four that can...

• 1:36:10Bill Simmons?

  For current basketball.

• 1:36:11Speaker 03

  For current basketball. He can play in any offense. And now the fact that he's as good a shooter as he is makes him actually perfect, no matter how you play. But it is funny because it's like your approach, you got, your guys' approach is still so different. And obviously physically, you're so different. And so it's funny putting you in a position where you are basically having to be like, oh, you're playing, you're playing a similar role to he is, when you couldn't really be any more different.

• 1:36:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, now you get to be a three.

• 1:36:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:36:36Bill Simmons?

  Legit three.

• 1:36:37Speaker 04

  It's all the same, though. It's all the same in today's game. Maybe in Denver, it's a little bit different because we like to play Aaron in the dunker. And, you know, if we saw Aaron, like, we put Spencer in the dunker and we will put, like, last year, it would be Bruce in the dunker a lot. Um, so that's the difference. But most teams, I mean, since I got in the league, like, like I said, originally, our offense in Phoenix felt, the four felt a little bit more like, a little bit more like an older four. But since that year, everything has seemed like, it doesn't matter if you're the two, the three, or the four. It's really what, it's really matchup, who you'll be guarding. You'll be guarding either a, maybe a, a bigger wing, somebody who likes to post up.

• 1:37:18Speaker 04

  Um, it could be more of an old timey, traditional four that's just really good, that has stood the test of time. Um, so it's really defensively, but offensively, what you call, you can put anybody in any action.

• 1:37:30Bill Simmons?

  Especially your team.

• 1:37:31Speaker 04

  Exactly. It's action-based.

• 1:37:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:33Speaker 04

  Anybody can be in any, so like, if you're running screen and rolls, if you're running, um, DHO backside handoffs, if any of these actions, we are all interchangeable. So it doesn't matter offensively.

• 1:37:45Bill Simmons?

  Can young guys just go into that or it takes a while to indoctrinate them?

• 1:37:49Speaker 04

  It takes a while. Some guys are talented, so talent floats you. Some guys are smart and they can figure it out and then they let the game, you know, they're figuring out of the game, um, kind of buoy them. But I think in general, it takes, it takes a little bit to be, to get to efficiency, to get to...

• 1:38:08Speaker 03

  To watch Damar, because Damar is just, he's so smart. He's so smart and he, and he's such a pro. So like, watching that adaptation and how he's already, we were talking about this the other night, like, how he's already adapting to something which is very different than what he's had to do the last couple of years.

• 1:38:24Bill Simmons?

  He scored 25,000 points.

• 1:38:25Speaker 04

  You know what I love about Damar? Like,

• 1:38:30Speaker 04

  his game is always the same. I think basketball is just easy for him. A lot of guys, but for Damar, basketball is easy and simple.

• 1:38:38Bill Simmons?

  So, give us an example.

• 1:38:40Speaker 04

  He can just, he doesn't get sped up. Whoever's guarding him, he doesn't get sped up. And I've had these conversations with him over camp to get his insight. Like, I want to learn, how do you score 26,000 points? You know, I'm pretty far off of that. So it's like, I want to get some tricks to, to get this thing going. And it's just like, you watch him, you guard him, you talk to him, he doesn't get sped up. He understands angles, he understands contact. But like, it's just the flow to his game. You know, he's going to hit you with the between, he's going to hang. You get close to him, he's going to make you pay, he'll bump you, he'll go around. He has neutralizing bumps, he can create space, like...

• 1:39:19Bill Simmons?

  He's got his spots, too.

• 1:39:21Speaker 04

  He got his spots. It's a low, it's a low, it's almost like, it's just like a chill game for him. It's just, it's chill. He's 30, 37 now, I think, like, the game still just looks easy for him. And he can roll off points in a hurry.

• 1:39:33Bill Simmons?

  That's what I was like when I came back and picked up in my late 30s.

• 1:39:36Speaker 04

  Did you feel like you figured it out?

• 1:39:38Bill Simmons?

  I actually felt like...

• 1:39:38Speaker 04

  Aha moment, like?

• 1:39:39Bill Simmons?

  I felt like I was so much smarter and I, and I was just like, I could, I was physically so shot, but mentally, I kind of knew everything that was happening. I was like, man.

• 1:39:48Speaker 04

  Isn't it a shame?

• 1:39:49Bill Simmons?

  I wish I could put my brain in my old body. Seriously. But Chris Paul was like that, too, watching him on the Clippers. He had like his four things he wanted to do. He would just do them over, he was like a diner that had like four things on the menu. And he's like, all right, I'm just going to get my jumper and my foul line. Yeah. I'm just going to go there. The other team knew he was going to do it and he would just get it anyway. And then he'd run back down with a pissed off look on his face. I'm like, yeah, Chris Paul.

• 1:40:13Speaker 03

  It's cool, it's cool when they're, when you sort of come across young guys who have that already.

• 1:40:18Speaker 04

  And you can just...

• 1:40:19Speaker 03

  I think AJ Mitchell has it on the Thunder. I'm just like, you watched the playoffs last year.

• 1:40:23Speaker 04

  I think it's like, uh, a little bit of Shay tutelage, too.

• 1:40:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:28Speaker 04

  Because he's, I think a big part of his game is that ability to play off of contact. That's a huge thing, ability to play off of contact. Like, play off of contact in terms of how to draw it, to draw the fouls, and then how to use it to create your space. And when they teeter that fine line and are able to under, and players are able to understand the difference there.

• 1:40:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:47Speaker 04

  Offense unlocks.

• 1:40:49Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's, when you play with somebody, you're like a sponge, right?

• 1:40:53Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 1:40:53Bill Simmons?

  You're a young guy and you're watching somebody who's really good. It's like Tommy in podcasting, just being in the room with me for four years. Just learning how to do it.

• 1:41:01Speaker 03

  I wouldn't say, I wouldn't compare myself to AJ. I'm not there yet.

• 1:41:06Bill Simmons?

  It's like Tommy's like AJ Mitchell. It's just, he was next to Shay, the MVP, for a couple of years.

• 1:41:11Speaker 04

  Like, the stuff that he's doing in his games, he's, he's adding. He's constantly adding in what he showed last year versus, you know, it's like, okay, he's, he's definitely working on something.

• 1:41:21Speaker 03

  It is funny, though. It's the cra, the crazy thing about Joker to me is he, he ju, you could watch him every day for 10, the stuff he does is just insane. Like, even, I was going to even ask you about the pass, like, I called you about this the other day. Did you feel pressure hitting that shot? Because you're like, this is, this is...

• 1:41:38Bill Simmons?

  After getting the greatest pass of all time.

• 1:41:39Speaker 03

  This is a top three pass of all time.

• 1:41:41Speaker 04

  At the time, so I've had to answer this

• 1:41:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:44Speaker 04

  20 times. It's crazy. It's a preseason, preseason game one pass and it got this much height.

• 1:41:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:51Speaker 04

  Right?

• 1:41:54Speaker 04

  I was not surprised by the pass at all. As a matter of fact, I expected it.

• 1:41:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:58Speaker 04

  As crazy as it sounds, I expected it because he looked and like you see, if you see the angle of like the baseline with him in the front, like as soon as he gets the ball and he looks, I, I slide a little bit more to the corner because I'm like, okay, if a pass is coming, this is the angle that it's gonna, that it's gonna.

• 1:42:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:16Speaker 04

  Come from because he can execute any pass. Like I said, like you just find the windows and the ball will find you.

• 1:42:22Bill Simmons?

  So now he saw you, so now you're ready.

• 1:42:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, he looked over his shoulder when he caught the ball, then got into his back down. He like, that's why I said, he can scan the court more efficiently than anybody I've ever seen and, and like, he freezes people. He sees the court, he got the picture. He requires so much attention that like, okay, you're not going to bring anybody. I can score on this person in front of me, but as soon as dominoes start falling. There was a pass against Chicago the other day and preseason game last Sunday, where he gets the ball in the pocket. I'm at the top, AG's in the corner, AG floods to the rim. He gets the ball, he slowly and very deliberately holds, allows AG to cut, allows my guy to crash down on him.

• 1:43:07Speaker 04

  I'm take two steps down towards the, the, the, um, you know, to the corner.

• 1:43:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. He knows you're going there.

• 1:43:16Speaker 04

  And he just, and those types of like plays, it's, it's a small, simple, probably easily looked over play. But he just processes the game differently. He's just, you know, ultra basketball processing chip in there. In terms of like an ability to keep the ball, to manipulate the ball. It's one thing you see with his rebounding, like his hands go overhead and he can manipulate the ball kind of anywhere.

• 1:43:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:44Speaker 04

  These touch shots, like you combine these skills and like he's pretty unstoppable.

• 1:43:50Bill Simmons?

  So what he just said, so when Bird, his first couple of years, his coach was Bill Fitch.

• 1:43:56Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:43:56Bill Simmons?

  And Bill Fitch used to call him Kodak because he, he would just watch him every day and he was like, I swear like, Bird's brain takes pictures of the court as we're playing offense and he, the picture tells him where all the guys are. And then as he plays and then he goes back to where the picture was and he finds the guy. So his nickname for him was Kodak, but it sounds like what you just said with Jokic.

• 1:44:16Speaker 04

  Same thing, exactly. Hundred percent.

• 1:44:18Bill Simmons?

  I think Magic was like that too. I mean, this is like less than six guys in the history of the league that can see shit like that. That's why I love watching them because I grew up watching Bird and Jokic. You know, same thing. I feel like he could play till he's 45 because it's not like he's going to get slow, but I don't think he will.

• 1:44:32Speaker 04

  He can though.

• 1:44:33Bill Simmons?

  He could, right?

• 1:44:34Speaker 04

  I don't see, yeah, I don't see.

• 1:44:35Bill Simmons?

  Because Bird could have too, but he got hurt. His, his back went out.

• 1:44:39Speaker 04

  I just, Jok is, all of his skills are just like, they, they look like they can stand the test of time.

• 1:44:45Bill Simmons?

  It's almost like the quarterback position. Like I'm sure, you're a Bengals fan. I'm sure like some of the stuff Burrow does during games is in the vicinity of a Jokic thing.

• 1:44:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, uh, yeah. Um, I just like, I just, the one thing I appreciate about Burrow the most is like, he's kind of just a relentless competitor and you can see that out there. And, and one of the things I've come to respect about him the most is like, I've never seen him pass blame on any, anybody or anything. Any, like we've had some crazy losses.

• 1:45:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:18Speaker 04

  Over the years and like questionable losses, but he never, ever will say like, put the blame on a receiver, a receiver, a ref.

• 1:45:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:27Speaker 04

  There was a game against Baltimore a few years back where like it was a two-point conversion to basically win the game. And as he throws, he gets hit in the face, which is an obvious penalty. Doesn't mention anything about it. Just like, we gotta win the game. Like he kind of is built different and he just has an ability to win football games.

• 1:45:43Speaker 03

  You know why he's a Bengals fan?

• 1:45:45Bill Simmons?

  This is a. Weren't you from Pittsburgh?

• 1:45:46Speaker 04

  I am.

• 1:45:47Bill Simmons?

  I mean, that's immediately weird.

• 1:45:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's weird.

• 1:45:50Speaker 03

  It's extremely weird.

• 1:45:52Speaker 04

  Two minutes and it'll make sense.

• 1:45:53Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:45:54Speaker 04

  My dad's from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

• 1:45:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:56Speaker 04

  Grew up a Cowboys fan just because on TV, no Carolina team at the time.

• 1:46:02Speaker 04

  And then just kind of built a dislike for the Steelers because.

• 1:46:07Bill Simmons?

  Cowboys Steelers.

• 1:46:08Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. So when he goes to Pittsburgh for college, still doesn't like the Steelers, but when I'm a kid, they have Cordell Stewart as their quarterback. He kind of likes Cordell Stewart, you know, cheer for the black quarterback.

• 1:46:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:18Speaker 04

  Pretty cool. They kind of got rid of Cordell Stewart after, after a 14 and two year, um, and, and whatever was going on there. They get rid of him and.

• 1:46:26Bill Simmons?

  You know what was going on? The Belichick Patriots. That was what was going on. We kicked his ass.

• 1:46:30Speaker 04

  Okay, and we, and I think my dad had a little bit of, uh, anger in that move that put some salt back into Steelers to, for him.

• 1:46:39Bill Simmons?

  And that was it?

• 1:46:40Speaker 04

  So he's talking bad about the Steelers now. And at the time, I'm impressionable, I'm a child. And so I'm like, I don't like Steelers either. And the Bengals had Chad Johnson. They had just got those jerseys with the bigger tiger stripes on the sleeves. Black and orange, a jersey that says C. Dot Johnson. I want to be a pro athlete one day. Like that's going to be, I'm literally wearing a pro athlete jersey with my name on it and Chad is entertaining.

• 1:47:03Bill Simmons?

  So you're in the Pittsburgh area and now you're a Bengals fan?

• 1:47:05Speaker 04

  And now I have a Chad Johnson jersey. I'm eight years old. Because I begged for one for Christmas forever.

• 1:47:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:11Speaker 04

  And I got it. And then after that, I just became a diehard Bengals fan. And it's actually unfortunate it's for the worst. Because Steelers win two Super Bowls in my time there and it's just miserable. It's causes fights and, you know.

• 1:47:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the Bengals really only had the game when they beat Mahomes.

• 1:47:30Speaker 04

  But do you not remember, do you not remember the, the wild card in 06?

• 1:47:34Speaker 03

  Perfect. Montez Perfect.

• 1:47:35Speaker 04

  No, that's the wild card in 15. No, that was 16. No, that was 17. No, 16. That was 16. 06, we.

• 1:47:42Bill Simmons?

  You just have to remind me because I definitely bet on it.

• 1:47:44Speaker 04

  Up off 14-0, 75 yard bomb to Chris Henry, rest in peace.

• 1:47:49Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:47:50Speaker 04

  Kimo Van Olhoffen rolls up on Carson Palmer's knee.

• 1:47:53Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:54Speaker 04

  John Kitten couldn't hold the lead. We were the best team that year. Steelers won the Super Bowl that year.

• 1:47:58Bill Simmons?

  Forgot about one.

• 1:47:59Speaker 04

  06 in Detroit versus the Seahawks. That would have been us.

• 1:48:02Bill Simmons?

  The NFL and the NBA are very similar in that. There's a lot of what-if interest.

• 1:48:06Speaker 04

  Tons.

• 1:48:07Bill Simmons?

  Because I think we would have won in 08 with the Pats, but that was Brady. We lost in eight minutes.

• 1:48:11Speaker 03

  You think you guys would have beat the Rams in a neutral stadium?

• 1:48:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:48:17Speaker 03

  I mean, you almost won anyways. That was the weirdest, that was the weirdest.

• 1:48:21Bill Simmons?

  Did you go to that game?

• 1:48:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:48:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:48:23Speaker 03

  It was terrible.

• 1:48:25Bill Simmons?

  Cup was great.

• 1:48:26Speaker 04

  Why do you call it terrible?

• 1:48:28Speaker 03

  Terrible's harsh. I just.

• 1:48:29Speaker 04

  Have you, terrible.

• 1:48:30Speaker 03

  By the way, I would feel this this way if the Rams got there this way. I don't like.

• 1:48:33Bill Simmons?

  It's terrible for Tommy because he didn't know any of the players on either team.

• 1:48:36Speaker 03

  I don't like the.

• 1:48:37Bill Simmons?

  He didn't like his suite.

• 1:48:38Speaker 03

  I don't like my seat. I don't like the, um.

• 1:48:41Speaker 04

  He didn't like the colors of the.

• 1:48:42Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't like hometown teams being in it. I think it felt like a normal game. Like it didn't even feel in a weird.

• 1:48:48Bill Simmons?

  It is a little weird. I agree with Tommy on that one.

• 1:48:50Speaker 03

  It didn't feel like even like a NFC championship game.

• 1:48:52Speaker 04

  How many Super Bowls have you been to before that?

• 1:48:55Speaker 03

  One or two.

• 1:48:56Speaker 04

  Because that was my first, so I didn't have anything to compare it to in terms of actual environment. It's weird.

• 1:49:01Speaker 03

  Like I felt like when they won.

• 1:49:03Speaker 04

  It's kind of a weird production, right?

• 1:49:05Speaker 03

  Remember they won at the end? Like it was a good game.

• 1:49:06Speaker 04

  Very good game.

• 1:49:07Bill Simmons?

  Big drive of the game.

• 1:49:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, they won at the end. It felt a little bit like if they had, if they had won the other night on Monday, on Monday night.

• 1:49:13Speaker 04

  But do you think that's also an LA effect?

• 1:49:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but that's possible at the halftime show, which was one of the best ones ever.

• 1:49:19Speaker 03

  It just didn't, it didn't feel like there were the stakes as if like they were randomly playing in Atlanta or New Orleans and all the fans. Anyone who travels to go to a game.

• 1:49:28Speaker 04

  An LA effect too though. I think that's an LA fan base effect.

• 1:49:31Bill Simmons?

  I also think it was, uh, two teams that we didn't have a lot of history with.

• 1:49:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:49:35Bill Simmons?

  Which sometimes that'll happen. Where you just have these two rent, like.

• 1:49:39Speaker 04

  I wonder how Pat's Seahawks felt last year.

• 1:49:41Speaker 03

  But.

• 1:49:41Speaker 04

  Even though those teams have history, it felt kind of weird.

• 1:49:44Speaker 03

  I'll give you a hypothetical. I'll give you a hypothetical and this would be awesome in certain ways. So I don't think it's like a direct comparison. When Dallas gets to the Super Bowl, whenever that is, if the Cowboys are in it. It's going to be crazy, but it was also not really going to feel like the Super Bowl. It's going to be like, oh, this is this Dallas crowd. Like it's not going to be fun for the casual fan. They're going to be like, you're just watching.

• 1:50:04Bill Simmons?

  This has only happened once.

• 1:50:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I don't know.

• 1:50:07Bill Simmons?

  Could happen this year though.

• 1:50:07Speaker 03

  It could happen this year. I don't, it's no one's fault. I just think it was like.

• 1:50:10Speaker 04

  I would, I would want to, wait, okay, but Tampa Bay won in Tampa, but that was with no crowd?

• 1:50:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was a no crowder.

• 1:50:17Speaker 03

  Oh, that was a weird game too.

• 1:50:19Speaker 04

  Because it was.

• 1:50:19Bill Simmons?

  Tommy's ideal matchup is Fever Liberty, where he just knows everybody on both sides.

• 1:50:25Speaker 03

  I like the Chiefs. I'm going to the Chiefs game this weekend. I like the Chiefs Super Bowl.

• 1:50:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, Chiefs. Chiefs AFC, who from the NFC?

• 1:50:31Speaker 03

  I'm Bears, but.

• 1:50:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, but they're not making it.

• 1:50:33Speaker 03

  But the Chiefs, uh, the Chiefs games are, Chiefs fans are great.

• 1:50:37Bill Simmons?

  I gotta say Tommy is a legitimate Bears fan. I gotta hand that to him.

• 1:50:39Speaker 04

  He is.

• 1:50:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:40Speaker 03

  I was thinking about that when you were talking about quarterbacks with Case. That guy just rolls off the street. He just knows how to play quarterback.

• 1:50:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I was trying to think who the basketball equivalent of that is.

• 1:50:50Speaker 04

  Those guys are so, those quarterbacks are so.

• 1:50:52Speaker 03

  Who's the, yeah, who is that?

• 1:50:53Speaker 04

  Studied foot, they're such studied football players that like their brains can float them.

• 1:50:58Speaker 03

  Who's the NBA equivalent of the 39-year-old backup?

• 1:51:01Bill Simmons?

  It's Mike Conley, isn't it?

• 1:51:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:04Bill Simmons?

  Beloved Celtic already.

• 1:51:06Speaker 03

  You know who remind this is this is an old one.

• 1:51:08Bill Simmons?

  They fucking love by everything. He's like, Richard's like adopted him. It's like his surrogate uncle.

• 1:51:13Speaker 03

  This is, this is an old one, but remember, um, John Simmons?

• 1:51:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:51:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:17Speaker 03

  Guys like that, the guys who are just like pro scorers.

• 1:51:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:21Speaker 03

  Who can just put in at any point.

• 1:51:22Speaker 04

  Joe Johnson.

• 1:51:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Joe Johnson's a good one.

• 1:51:24Speaker 04

  Revive, come back, get a couple buckets, go back to retirement.

• 1:51:27Speaker 03

  They come off the street.

• 1:51:27Speaker 04

  Forty years old, go back, you know what I mean? Boogie a little bit.

• 1:51:30Bill Simmons?

  I thought Cam Thomas could be like that. Maybe there's still time, but there's certain guys that just get hoops.

• 1:51:35Speaker 04

  Cam Thomas can get a good bucket in any scenario. That's not, that's never the question.

• 1:51:40Bill Simmons?

  Your guy.

• 1:51:40Speaker 04

  That's never the question.

• 1:51:41Bill Simmons?

  I had still have my Cam Whitmore stock, but I think he's another one who could be like that.

• 1:51:45Speaker 04

  Freak athlete.

• 1:51:46Bill Simmons?

  Just get, he just get, get buckets.

• 1:51:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. Freak athlete. He looks like a football player.

• 1:51:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:52Speaker 04

  Like, he looks like he could have been an elite football player. He does some stuff where just drive down like boom, but rise up above everybody.

• 1:51:58Speaker 03

  You know who's kind of like this now?

• 1:51:59Speaker 04

  Who?

• 1:52:00Speaker 03

  Um, I mean, he's not, he's still sort of in his prime, so he's not full of that yet. I think Norm Powell's like that. I think any team you put.

• 1:52:06Bill Simmons?

  He's a good hoop.

• 1:52:07Speaker 03

  Anytime, any team you put him on, he'll be good in the Bulls. Anywhere he goes.

• 1:52:10Speaker 04

  He'll score.

• 1:52:11Speaker 03

  He's gonna score like eighteen, twenty points.

• 1:52:13Speaker 04

  A certain environment to score. He can manufacture like, um, who was it? Excuse me. Portland and his Portland stint, he was in the corner a ton. But like, you giving him a ball in the corner? It was like on the scout, like.

• 1:52:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:52:26Speaker 04

  He can score in a variety of ways from that corner, like.

• 1:52:29Speaker 03

  Well, that's why Toronto screwed up. Toronto screwed up with him because they didn't get him the ball. Like this guy is really good at this.

• 1:52:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they made a dumb trade too. He was a beloved Clipper. Like he got, you know, he was on a team with Kawhi and Harden and they were going to him.

• 1:52:42Speaker 04

  He came off the bench.

• 1:52:43Bill Simmons?

  Six minute stretches, yeah. Taking over and stuff. We haven't talked about your Bulls team.

• 1:52:48Speaker 03

  What about him?

• 1:52:49Bill Simmons?

  I'm not, there's some energy.

• 1:52:50Speaker 03

  I'm not a Bulls. I, I've given up on the Bulls.

• 1:52:52Bill Simmons?

  Come on.

• 1:52:53Speaker 03

  That's the one, I, cause doing the show, I can't be a fan of any team.

• 1:52:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:52:56Speaker 03

  It's like douchey.

• 1:52:57Bill Simmons?

  It's still Chicago though.

• 1:52:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I'm Cubs, Bears, Blackhawks, I guess. Bulls, I'm not a Bulls fan.

• 1:53:03Bill Simmons?

  You can name six Blackhawks.

• 1:53:05Speaker 03

  I respect, I respect the Bulls franchise.

• 1:53:08Bill Simmons?

  He's like Fever, Liberty, Lynx.

• 1:53:11Speaker 03

  I can't do it. Like I want, I want them to win. Like I want the, I want when the.

• 1:53:15Bill Simmons?

  He roots for his friends.

• 1:53:16Speaker 03

  If the Nuggets are playing the Bulls, I'm rooting for the Nuggets. Yeah, like that's just the, that's gonna, like I root for the Pacers.

• 1:53:22Bill Simmons?

  Tommy's worst case scenario would be a Nuggets Pelicans finals with you versus Trey Murphy. He would be.

• 1:53:28Speaker 03

  I don't think that that's a likely scenario.

• 1:53:31Speaker 04

  Given that we're both in the West.

• 1:53:33Speaker 03

  I don't think a Western Conference Finals is happening.

• 1:53:36Bill Simmons?

  Western finals.

• 1:53:37Speaker 04

  Denver, New York.

• 1:53:38Speaker 03

  No, if we had, if it was Denver, Denver Indy would be tough. I had a tough one with Nick Spurs. Like I like people on both those teams. That was a tough. It's a win and it's.

• 1:53:47Speaker 04

  You just have to, you just have to have the mindset, I'm gonna win. Like I win no matter what. I just, I'm going, I want to watch quality hoops.

• 1:53:53Bill Simmons?

  He's happy for everybody.

• 1:53:54Speaker 04

  Happy for, I win, he wins.

• 1:53:55Speaker 03

  Switzerland.

• 1:53:56Bill Simmons?

  I feel like we say this sometimes, but I really genuinely feel this year that this is the most fun NBA season in a while with all the talent. Cause even like the rookies that came in, these guys are like Boozer's gonna be good right away. Like Acuff, he's gonna have terrible nights, but he's really talented.

• 1:54:13Speaker 03

  Your boy Caleb. He said that draft night.

• 1:54:15Bill Simmons?

  Caleb's ridiculous.

• 1:54:16Speaker 03

  He said draft night, he's like Caleb's gonna be a monster.

• 1:54:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Caleb's T-Mac.

• 1:54:19Speaker 04

  Free. Yeah, he's a free.

• 1:54:20Bill Simmons?

  He's six, ten T-Mac.

• 1:54:22Speaker 04

  He's a free.

• 1:54:23Speaker 03

  AJ's.

• 1:54:24Bill Simmons?

  And then AJ has been saying and doing all the right things.

• 1:54:26Speaker 03

  That team's gonna be fun.

• 1:54:27Speaker 04

  I think, um, I think another like big part of it is the fact that the East seems so strong. This is a strong, a super strong East.

• 1:54:34Bill Simmons?

  Impossible to figure out. We just did our big preview podcast this week and there's eleven playoff teams and there's six spots and four playing spots. And somebody's just not gonna make the playoffs. Like.

• 1:54:44Speaker 04

  Who's your prediction that won't make it?

• 1:54:45Bill Simmons?

  I had Charlotte, but I like Charlotte, but they have all these injuries already. So they're gonna start out, you know, missing a couple of guys. And they could start out like two and eight or something. And I don't know if you can recover if you have a, a two and eight.

• 1:54:58Speaker 04

  Cause those teams above them are gonna keep widening the gap and it's just at a certain point, you're gonna be like.

• 1:55:03Bill Simmons?

  There was a Phoenix year this, uh, before you got there. I think it was with Dragic and Isaiah Thomas and those guys. They won. They won forty eight games and didn't make it. Yeah. So I think you could see like the eleven seed in the East go like forty four and thirty eight and just not make the play in.

• 1:55:20Speaker 04

  I think it's gonna be whoever feels themselves being eleven is gonna drop, drop it.

• 1:55:28Bill Simmons?

  Cause of the tanking rules?

• 1:55:29Speaker 04

  I don't know. I just feel like it's most likely. Like if you feel yourself fighting at ten, I think there's gonna be a bigger gap between ten and eleven. And then seven, eight, nine and ten are gonna be.

• 1:55:39Bill Simmons?

  Jockeying for that spot.

• 1:55:40Speaker 03

  Where'd you put Toronto?

• 1:55:42Bill Simmons?

  Really tough. I'd hire, I had them for the over. Um, I had them in like the four to six range. I think it was like forty six wins, something like that.

• 1:55:51Speaker 04

  It's a lot of good teams out there.

• 1:55:52Speaker 03

  They're gonna be good, I think.

• 1:55:53Speaker 04

  Like this is a lot of good teams in general, I feel like.

• 1:55:55Bill Simmons?

  You kind of have to pick and choose.

• 1:55:56Speaker 04

  A lot of talent.

• 1:55:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cause like Detroit won sixty games last year. Their over under was forty seven and a half. So Vegas is saying, coming out of the gate, this team's twelve wins worse. And they have their best three guys back. So it's like, they can't be that much worse, but then you look at everybody else.

• 1:56:12Speaker 03

  Getting better. Like Kade's just gonna get better.

• 1:56:14Bill Simmons?

  Like we, we've talked about Atlanta a bunch. I like this, I like all the stuff they did. I don't have them as a playoff team.

• 1:56:21Speaker 04

  You think they'll be on the answer?

• 1:56:22Bill Simmons?

  They're gonna be a playing team like nine or ten range. And that's a team that.

• 1:56:27Speaker 04

  Which you're looking on Washington.

• 1:56:27Bill Simmons?

  Is good. Washington, I was, I think they, I need to see it. I need to see those two guys play.

• 1:56:35Speaker 03

  The question, the question's gonna be.

• 1:56:36Speaker 04

  Orlando.

• 1:56:37Bill Simmons?

  Orlando was the hardest one because they have a new coach and I didn't like how they were coached last year. And if they're happier and healthier, why wouldn't they have like forty eight wins? I had you guys over fifty. I just felt like last year you were like, you're from hell. Again, Jokic got hurt in December.

• 1:56:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:56:59Bill Simmons?

  You got hurt.

• 1:56:59Speaker 04

  In December.

• 1:57:00Bill Simmons?

  Jamal put crazy miles on himself. Gordon got hurt. He missed time.

• 1:57:04Speaker 04

  CB.

• 1:57:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Then, then you lost Watson down the stretch. It just.

• 1:57:08Speaker 03

  Everybody got hurt.

• 1:57:09Speaker 04

  Still managed fifty four wins.

• 1:57:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah. And now the conference is probably weaker.

• 1:57:13Speaker 03

  I think Bain will be one of those scorers too. Whether he stays there or somewhere else, anywhere he goes, I think he will be like, he's just a guy that like, it will age well.

• 1:57:23Bill Simmons?

  I agree. Who, who is, uh, see this is like the generic NBA podcast question. Who was the one when you got in the league that you were like, holy shit? For just covering somebody.

• 1:57:34Speaker 04

  Just to guard in terms of how difficult they are to guard or like the cool factor.

• 1:57:38Bill Simmons?

  I can't, no, like how good they were.

• 1:57:40Speaker 04

  James Harden in Houston.

• 1:57:43Bill Simmons?

  Just trying to figure out his yo-yo shit?

• 1:57:45Speaker 04

  I hope that tape gets buried forever. It's probably a November game, maybe. So it's early in my career. I just, if I could like delete that tape for the first half.

• 1:57:56Bill Simmons?

  Well, don't worry. It's probably on YouTube.

• 1:57:59Speaker 04

  It was like.

• 1:57:59Speaker 03

  Clip it.

• 1:58:00Speaker 04

  I'll sum it up by saying this.

• 1:58:02Bill Simmons?

  Why were you guarding him by the way?

• 1:58:04Speaker 04

  Just how the game goes.

• 1:58:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Um, was he hunting you?

• 1:58:08Speaker 04

  Maybe hunting the rook.

• 1:58:11Bill Simmons?

  It's like, get this, bring him over.

• 1:58:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't really, it's bringing up bad memories, but let's just say like the bench is telling you to keep your hands back, keep your hands up, keep your hands out, keep your feet moving, keep your feet still. It's like.

• 1:58:25Speaker 04

  Mikael Bridges comes over to me at halftime. I'm pissed.

• 1:58:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:30Speaker 04

  He comes over to me at halftime, puts his arm around me and is like.

• 1:58:37Speaker 04

  It's okay, bud. He's like, the coaches wanted me to talk to you. It's okay, bud.

• 1:58:41Bill Simmons?

  But that's why all the players love Harden. Cause they've all had to play against them.

• 1:58:45Speaker 04

  A lot of respect.

• 1:58:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they're like, we actually know what.

• 1:58:47Speaker 04

  A ton of respect for James, a ton of respect.

• 1:58:49Speaker 03

  I think a crazy NBA what if, you've definitely talked about a bunch, is the, when, when CP got hurt in that Warriors series. Cause of how good James was playing, how.

• 1:59:00Speaker 04

  And that, and think about, and think about James' legacy, if that flipped.

• 1:59:05Bill Simmons?

  Cause the Warriors were ready to be had too.

• 1:59:07Speaker 03

  They were gonna beat them. They had, they had them on ropes.

• 1:59:09Speaker 04

  CP's legacy and James' legacy, if that flipped and they are as good as they looked and they win that series, they would.

• 1:59:17Bill Simmons?

  But that said, they did miss about seventy five threes in game seven.

• 1:59:21Speaker 04

  Happens.

• 1:59:21Speaker 03

  Well, that's your, that's your live by the three. That was the same thing.

• 1:59:25Bill Simmons?

  That was the weekend because I went to Celtics Cavs game seven when LeBron played all forty eight and was amazing. But we went like nine for forty eight from three or something.

• 1:59:35Speaker 04

  He was unbelievable that day.

• 1:59:37Bill Simmons?

  He was great. Well, that was, when we talk about when you get, when you get smarter, when you get older, in two thousand and eighteen, he really figured out how to game manage. A two and a half hour basketball game where he was basically not getting tired, but doing everything. And went to like pick his spots and try hard, not try hard, take over this moment and stay out there. It was amazing to watch. Cause they, they were like banged up.

• 2:00:03Speaker 04

  That's peak LeBron?

• 2:00:05Bill Simmons?

  No, I think two thousand thirteen is.

• 2:00:07Speaker 04

  Cause the physicality aspect?

• 2:00:10Bill Simmons?

  I just think two thousand, I've never seen anything like two thousand thirteen. He was.

• 2:00:14Speaker 04

  So you say Miami, late Miami Heat LeBron was better than.

• 2:00:17Bill Simmons?

  I think third year Miami Heat was the best.

• 2:00:20Speaker 04

  Cleveland stint LeBron.

• 2:00:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:22Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:00:23Bill Simmons?

  I thought, I felt like he ascended to a different stratosphere. He was shooting that third year. He was shooting sixty percent for like three months, the first three months of the season. It, it actually seemed like he was trying to become a sixty, forty, eighty guy. And he was also the best defensive swing in the league and that was the year he should win the Defensive Player of the Year.

• 2:00:45Speaker 04

  What do you think?

• 2:00:46Speaker 03

  I think the game one of the twenty seventeen, the one where he scored.

• 2:00:50Bill Simmons?

  Two thousand and eighteen. I went to that game. We both did.

• 2:00:52Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then they got swept. He got hurt.

• 2:00:54Bill Simmons?

  That's the best game I've ever seen.

• 2:00:55Speaker 03

  Where he was just going one on five, the JR one, he's just going one on five and he was, and they should have won. And I was like, against.

• 2:01:01Speaker 04

  It's a debate. It's a real debate.

• 2:01:02Speaker 03

  We were talking about that Warriors team the other night because, I mean, you can say it, but it was basically just how, how they just trans, like they transcended what great basketball looked like.

• 2:01:13Bill Simmons?

  The seventeen team did. Yeah.

• 2:01:14Speaker 04

  He hoops.

• 2:01:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:16Speaker 04

  He hoops. I, I, we were talking about it last night and, and like, if you go back to two thousand and eight, you'll see some things with the game that you can say, okay. The NBA players are better now at this or the game is different at that. The skill is a little different. You can go back to two thousand and one nineties, so on and so forth. Twenty twenty six right now, if you go back to that twenty seventeen.

• 2:01:38Speaker 04

  It's not better today. Those guys are good. And so I think as long as basketball goes on, you'll go back to like, watch those games. And the skill level was absurd. What those guys are doing, Klay's catching fire, Steph's catching fire, doing what he does. KD, ultimate skill. On the Cavs, Kyrie's ability to do what he was doing.

• 2:01:59Speaker 03

  And we're probably not gonna have another team like that. But the way the teams get built now.

• 2:02:06Bill Simmons?

  I think the three best teams I've ever seen that was.

• 2:02:07Speaker 04

  Kevin Love, like, these guys are ultra, everybody on court was ultra skilled.

• 2:02:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah, the 17 Warriors, I think are the best team in the last 25 years, in my opinion. But it felt, watching it, it felt unfair, which is the only time I remember feeling that way in a while.

• 2:02:22Speaker 04

  But it was such good basketball.

• 2:02:23Speaker 03

  That's what I said to him. I was just like.

• 2:02:24Bill Simmons?

  How do you have spacing like this, and you have Durant who can get any shot he wants, one on one?

• 2:02:29Speaker 04

  And any like, any, all those guys can like, hit the toughest of threes and the easy, and they're generating easy ones.

• 2:02:37Bill Simmons?

  It's funny, we did, what did we do, six pods with Durant during that stretch? And the first one he did was midway through the first season. Where he was just like, this is the greatest experience of my life. And then we kind of rode the roller coaster over the next two years. By the time we did one after the 18 finals. It's just so hard to win back to back. And you could just see like, the weight of.

• 2:03:00Speaker 03

  I also think people want different challenges at a certain point.

• 2:03:04Bill Simmons?

  No question.

• 2:03:04Speaker 03

  They just want different, you just become like, we know we can do this, we've already done it.

• 2:03:08Speaker 04

  You think so?

• 2:03:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, you won two championships, you have a.

• 2:03:10Speaker 04

  I don't think so.

• 2:03:12Speaker 03

  I don't think everybody does, but I think that, I think that.

• 2:03:15Bill Simmons?

  What's the counter?

• 2:03:17Speaker 04

  There's other factors than wanting a different challenge.

• 2:03:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:22Speaker 04

  There's new challenges that pop up in what you're doing, whether it's personal agendas, whether it's relationships, whether it's disagreements, anything like that. I think those are the bigger glaring issues that start to, I think anybody in a perfect, in a contained, isolated environment, if you could say, you're gonna continue, this team is good enough to continue winning and everything else will be in line, I don't think anybody would say no to that.

• 2:03:46Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's what was funny about Curry during that stretch. Cause KD clearly had some, I, I've talked about this on the pod, my theory was always that, after they won the first title and KD went toe to toe with LeBron and beat him. He was like, now I, we'll get my flowers.

• 2:04:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:04:01Bill Simmons?

  And then all of it, all of it was, well, you just, you went, you.

• 2:04:04Speaker 04

  So that's, that's my point. So then, I guess we can say it's the same thing, but like the personal agenda of, I wanna do it myself.

• 2:04:10Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 2:04:10Speaker 04

  I wanna be the number one A and win.

• 2:04:12Bill Simmons?

  He's like, I can't win the way I want to, cause I already did it here. Now I have to prove it on my own.

• 2:04:18Speaker 03

  Remember the last, his last, his last year there, he got hurt in the finals.

• 2:04:23Bill Simmons?

  But it was, it got sour before that though.

• 2:04:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then Klay got hurt too. So it also just became like, it became sort of like, this thing is ending either way.

• 2:04:31Bill Simmons?

  What we knew is, I went to the game when him and Draymond got into it on the court. I've been to a lot of basketball games, like, you know, you can tell the difference between, oh, those guys had a disagreement to like, ooh, this is bad. You could see it. And, and I don't feel like that was, I think that was it from that, but they didn't think he was staying. And I think it was, you know, we talk about, I think this is why basketball podcasts, there's so many of them, and it's so much of the topics, but it's the most fun sport to talk about. The people, not knowing anything about what's going on with the people. It's like, we're all, we're all fucking gossers.

• 2:05:06Speaker 04

  It's reality TV.

• 2:05:07Bill Simmons?

  It really is.

• 2:05:07Speaker 04

  It's live action, reality TV with a lot of athleticism and, there's a lot of personalities and a lot of this stuff is visible. The interactions between players on court and on the bench, it's naked. Faces are visible, processes are visible.

• 2:05:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:22Speaker 04

  Rumors coming out of here, coming out of there, transactions, like, it's very visible, very visible reality TV.

• 2:05:28Bill Simmons?

  Everybody's got their three to seven people in their lives. They all talk to different people. If anything's unhappy, it's gonna come out. I was on TV back then with the Clippers, with the Blake and Chris. And I knew that it wasn't a good situation. And I would talk about it on TV and then everyone was mad at me. I was like, why are you saying that? It was like, cause I know this isn't going great. And then after it ended, everyone was like, yeah, it was really tough with blah, blah, blah, but you, you could see it when you're at the games. You can tell when basketball players are on the same page, or they're jockeying for stuff.

• 2:06:04Speaker 04

  And the crazy part is, is it's kind of a big part of what keeps the NBA, the NBA. Keeps the entertainment value. A lot of the entertainment value is in this sort of thing where player movement and the, the, like, if everybody was kind of like, extremely compliant and stuff, I, I think people gravitate towards that entertainment wise, where like, there's drama. And there's storylines, like real storylines that come out of the NBA.

• 2:06:33Bill Simmons?

  I remember when that shifted. Cause I had my column, it has been from 01 to 15, had the podcast from 07 to now. It shifted around the decision. And that was when basketball became a 12 month sport. It was the first time the season ended and we were still talking about basketball after the season, like, like the season was still going on. And I think the league likes it.

• 2:06:57Speaker 04

  I think so too.

• 2:06:58Bill Simmons?

  It's, it's now, it's not a 12 month sport, but it's, it's a 10 and a half month sport.

• 2:07:03Speaker 04

  On television this summer too.

• 2:07:04Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 2:07:05Speaker 03

  I understand the, I understand the player frustration though, about the gossip and the locker room stuff becoming public. In part because just like, we all know, there have been, in the last five or six years, there have been teams where like, guys don't get along and they end up winning a championship. Like, you don't, you don't have to like all your coworkers for you to be successful.

• 2:07:24Bill Simmons?

  In any part of life, you don't have to be all getting along at all times.

• 2:07:28Speaker 03

  So it is, there is something frustrating about like, any job you have, where it just being like, all of a sudden it's public that you don't like the VP of marketing. You know what I mean? You're just like, we can still do the job without us being best friends.

• 2:07:40Speaker 04

  It becomes its own thing. And then it's like, the players are there in questioning like, why do people even care about this? Like, we don't care about as much.

• 2:07:46Bill Simmons?

  That was the Jalen Jason thing. That, that, all the noise from the outside eventually came into the inside, but it wasn't like that initially, I don't think.

• 2:07:54Speaker 04

  Just more noise from the outside.

• 2:07:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, it just become, it just becomes a thing where it ultimately, it only matters when it affects the performance. If they're like, if people aren't speaking and the team is bad, then yes, that's a thing that, you know, can be talked about. But if the, if the on-court performance is good, it's sort of like, who cares if we don't like, hang out?

• 2:08:12Bill Simmons?

  You watch The Last Dance, Jordan was.

• 2:08:14Speaker 04

  The power of friendship.

• 2:08:15Bill Simmons?

  Jordan wasn't friends with any of those dudes. He would go, that, that was one of the great things about The Last Dance, all the footage they have of, he'd just hang out with like, the two security guards that he would play cards with. Those were his friends. He wasn't friends with Pippen.

• 2:08:27Speaker 03

  He was friends with Oakley.

• 2:08:28Bill Simmons?

  Rodman was at Vegas the whole time, right? He and Oakley wasn't even on the team.

• 2:08:32Speaker 04

  But like, that stuff didn't, as much as people might have known or heard or seen, that stuff, it wasn't, it didn't get out the same as it does now.

• 2:08:40Bill Simmons?

  The thing that, it's weird, the thing that he dealt with, that The Last Dance went into a little, was the 92, 93, the gambling stuff and some of the off the court stuff. That, you know, it definitely, I think was one of the reasons he probably left. I don't think people would care the same way now. It would be like if people, with something about LeBron, and that was all people talked, like the, the Michael Rubin story this week. And people were focused on that, like it was the biggest story that ever happened. Um, there's just more stuff to talk about now. So then these things happen and it just gets replaced by the next thing, six hours later.

• 2:09:13Speaker 03

  The only comp to this, cause I would say there's nothing to me in the US that's like this, but I think European soccer has a similar thing.

• 2:09:20Bill Simmons?

  Totally.

• 2:09:21Speaker 03

  Where they're, it might even be worse with the gossip stuff, because the British.

• 2:09:25Speaker 04

  I think the gossip there is worse, because they live for it, they live for it.

• 2:09:28Speaker 03

  And, and that also gets, that gets worse too, because they bring in like girlfriends and personal stuff that they kind of, people here even know to kind of stay away from, like, they're relentless with it.

• 2:09:40Speaker 04

  And, and media is more cutthroat. The media is more cutthroat, more, um, yeah.

• 2:09:47Speaker 03

  We, we talked about this, cause he just went over to, to London last month to go to some games, but like, I know of a bunch of like, super good, best players in the world who just don't wanna play in England, cause of this. Like, you could, they could get paid three times as much money and they don't wanna play in England because it's, because you're dealing with the media and the craziness. So they're like, I'd rather hang out in Madrid.

• 2:10:08Bill Simmons?

  Well, think about if you're in London, it would be like if all four sports were happening as one sport.

• 2:10:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:10:14Bill Simmons?

  It's like if football, basketball, baseball, hockey were all the same sport, and that was all talked about.

• 2:10:18Speaker 04

  There, yeah.

• 2:10:19Speaker 03

  I talked to, I talked to, uh, uh, one of the Arsenal guys once about like, if we could ever do a pod similar to like, what we've done sort of in the NBA. And he was like, into it, but he basically was like, if the second we lose, not only are they gonna kill me, they're gonna kill you, they're gonna kill anyone involved in this thing is, is gonna go. So he was just like, the upside of like, of like, providing behind the scenes is not worth the anger of the fans, if you're doing anything that's gonna fuck up like a potential.

• 2:10:51Speaker 04

  Game and.

• 2:10:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:10:53Bill Simmons?

  You know, it's, so it's, when we started doing that KD stuff, that was almost 10 years ago. And now I feel like every basketball player has some sort of platform. And there's so much content now, I don't even, it's really hard to cut through with it for more than four hours. And then it gets replaced by the next thing.

• 2:11:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:11:10Bill Simmons?

  And then you have all the ex-players, they're like, they're like the retired professional wrestlers. Where it's like, Patrick Beverley is saying this about so and so, and then it's just on hoop side.

• 2:11:21Speaker 03

  We've been talking about this because Cam just did a thing, like, we put it out like, two weeks ago, but he filmed it over the summer in Phoenix. And it's literally like, a 14 minute video with like, Puff, his brother, and these guys, it's just him breaking down shooting.

• 2:11:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:35Speaker 03

  Like, it's not a podcast, it's not an interview, it's not a like, it's really not anything but just, almost just like an explanation of like, where your elbow should go, all kinds of different shooting things. And it did, like, it performed super well, performed way better than any pod we've done, has done. And I think a lot of it is because there's really like, the thing has become so oversaturated, that it's hard to, it's really hard to break through unless you're trolling. Unless you're doing something that is like, trying to get controversy, and when you're just doing educational stuff, there is still an appetite for that.

• 2:12:09Speaker 04

  And I like that stuff too. Like, I, I, if, like, I just think of the, you know, average person out there that maybe doesn't know quite as much of what goes on, but has a, has a, has a taste for basketball and the NBA. It's like, I can provide a little glimpse into like, the inner workings of, of how we try to be who we are and play the way we do. And somebody gravitates towards that, like, I love that stuff. And I, I, like, the, the stuff I did in the videos, stuff I, I've told that stuff to hundreds of people, anybody, anybody that's willing to listen. If you wanna ask me about shooting, if you wanna ask me about offense, defense, like, this is where my brain is most of the time.

• 2:12:48Bill Simmons?

  You know why basketball is better fundamentally? It's cause you guys have way more information. It's all like the shot chart stuff, the percentages in the different spots. Being able to study tendencies, being able to study your own tendencies. I think about it, forty years ago, there was zero.

• 2:13:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:13:06Bill Simmons?

  You would have no idea like, oh, I shouldn't shoot from this part of the circle because I'm shooting twenty-two percent from there. I should move down three feet that way.

• 2:13:15Speaker 03

  You know what some of it also is, though, is you guys are more comfortable sharing details.

• 2:13:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, true.

• 2:13:22Speaker 03

  You don't treat it like it's like super proprietary information. Like, I think about, we did an app with P. Crow Armstrong in the offseason before this year. So we obviously had this great year, but we did it in like February and he was.

• 2:13:35Bill Simmons?

  Classic Tommy getting in early on somebody as their meteoric rise, just grabbing them right here.

• 2:13:40Speaker 04

  That's our guy.

• 2:13:40Speaker 03

  That's his neighbor.

• 2:13:41Speaker 04

  That's our guy. That's our guy.

• 2:13:43Speaker 03

  But he, uh.

• 2:13:44Speaker 04

  Dope guy. Amazing.

• 2:13:45Speaker 03

  He basically, he basically like.

• 2:13:47Bill Simmons?

  Robert Wesley.

• 2:13:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's an L.A. guy. But he was talking about the different changes he's made in his swing and things like that. And I just think in the baseball world, they're not comfortable. Like, if they, if they discover something in the cage, they're not gonna go talk about it. They're gonna be like, I have an edge.

• 2:14:03Speaker 04

  Their margins are too thin.

• 2:14:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, I have an edge. I don't feel the need to go.

• 2:14:06Speaker 04

  It's secretive game. Yeah, it's.

• 2:14:07Speaker 03

  Like golf, like golfers are probably not gonna say publicly what they're doing versus basketball. It's a little bit like, I'll tell you because I still.

• 2:14:13Speaker 04

  I still gotta do it.

• 2:14:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I still gotta do it. I'm not sure you can do it even if I tell you it.

• 2:14:16Speaker 04

  Exactly. That's his.

• 2:14:17Bill Simmons?

  Cam would really hate my shot.

• 2:14:19Speaker 04

  No, I wouldn't.

• 2:14:20Bill Simmons?

  No, you, you would hate it.

• 2:14:21Speaker 03

  Might fix it.

• 2:14:22Bill Simmons?

  It's good, though.

• 2:14:22Speaker 04

  Really? If it goes in, it's fine.

• 2:14:25Bill Simmons?

  I kind of pushed it up a little, but I ended in the right spot, but it kind of starts here. I don't think you'd like it.

• 2:14:31Speaker 03

  If it goes in, it's joking.

• 2:14:33Speaker 04

  To the, the, um, an opposite example of that would be, I remember there's a podcast, I think it was CJ Stroud and Michael Parsons, just kind of chatting on a podcast about offense versus defense and how, and then they were kind of building a little offensive versus defensive scenario. And just the way they were able to rattle off their, CJ's offensive concepts and who he was putting where and why. And Mike is saying like, okay, I can counter with this and we're gonna do this. So how are you gonna react? Like, to me, that stuff is so cool.

• 2:15:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 2:15:05Speaker 04

  Watching somebody, as somebody who's loved football, played football, to hear these guys who are, who have PhDs in their specific areas, like the ultimate, these, these football players watch film, they, they know football to a T. And to hear them be able to explain it to me is always cool. So like, if I can offer anything like that to somebody who likes basketball, I'm all in.

• 2:15:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the quarterback position.

• 2:15:29Speaker 04

  Isn't fun.

• 2:15:31Bill Simmons?

  I mean, that has to be the hardest sports position in all the sports, I would guess.

• 2:15:35Speaker 04

  It is. It has to be.

• 2:15:36Bill Simmons?

  And athletically, you have like the Josh Allen and Lamar outliers, but for the most part, their ability to process is ninety percent of what matters in that position. And you can either do it or you can't.

• 2:15:47Speaker 04

  Think about like the difference between a starter and a backup. And then the difference between a backup and somebody who's on the outsides, practice squad, not.

• 2:15:58Bill Simmons?

  Third or fourth string. Yeah.

• 2:15:59Speaker 04

  And it's, it's, the difference is, is, so even to be a backup, you have to be so good to just be able to go in there and barely manage.

• 2:16:07Bill Simmons?

  You're one of the sixty best people in the world at your position.

• 2:16:09Speaker 04

  But just to, just to make sure the game doesn't get, just to make sure the game doesn't get out of hand. You have to be like baseline game manager, like the most simple throws, execution, organization. Like, even that is extremely difficult.

• 2:16:23Bill Simmons?

  You have to study every day, be ready. You're sitting there on the sideline. You don't know if you're going in or not every play.

• 2:16:30Speaker 04

  And they get in, it's just like, don't let the game, don't do anything crazy. Don't let the game get out of hand.

• 2:16:35Speaker 03

  And then the young ones, the young guys, like Mendoza is so lucky to get to watch Cousins, like getting to learn this stuff.

• 2:16:41Bill Simmons?

  Be watching him for about one more week.

• 2:16:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, but whatever.

• 2:16:44Speaker 04

  You think so?

• 2:16:44Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah. I think, I think he's coming in.

• 2:16:46Speaker 04

  I don't think so.

• 2:16:47Speaker 03

  I think it's, but I think that there's a.

• 2:16:48Bill Simmons?

  Gentlemen's bet.

• 2:16:48Speaker 03

  I think there's something nice about just being able to process this stuff and not be thrown in.

• 2:16:53Speaker 04

  Why, yeah, why rush him?

• 2:16:54Speaker 03

  When did Drake, when did Drake start?

• 2:16:57Bill Simmons?

  Drake was like week five, yeah. It was like week five, week six. No, we did, we did it a little earlier because Brissette wasn't playing well and.

• 2:17:04Speaker 03

  But it's like having the, if he had started week one or two and just gotten, and was just completely overwhelmed, it could have thrown off his whole trajectory.

• 2:17:11Bill Simmons?

  That was this year. We already had, we had, we belatedly had that.

• 2:17:15Speaker 04

  He had already had enough success to know that he could.

• 2:17:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:17:18Bill Simmons?

  But you still, adversity is an interesting thing for great athletes.

• 2:17:23Speaker 04

  It is.

• 2:17:23Bill Simmons?

  You still have to.

• 2:17:24Speaker 04

  And it's rarely linear.

• 2:17:25Bill Simmons?

  Get your teeth kicked in. How do you handle it? Do you pick up your teeth? Are you ready to go?

• 2:17:30Speaker 03

  You think he could have made the NBA?

• 2:17:32Speaker 04

  I don't know. I mean, I look at Luke and Luke is really, really good. Making the NBA is hard.

• 2:17:39Bill Simmons?

  Youngest brother, which always helps.

• 2:17:41Speaker 04

  Youngest brother, but Luke is super, like Luke is really good. And he was a, you know, G League kind of fringe guy that went overseas. And I don't know if he's better than Luke as a basketball player, given that he puts so much into football.

• 2:17:54Bill Simmons?

  Drake's like six-five?

• 2:17:55Speaker 04

  Six, smaller, yeah.

• 2:17:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So he would have been a two-guard.

• 2:17:58Speaker 04

  But I, all I, I know for a fact that as, as I met him, Luke said, this kid's gonna be a damn good quarterback. He has it. He said that from the beginning. He has it. So it was cool to watch it. And I saw him play in high school. Like, it was cool to watch it.

• 2:18:15Bill Simmons?

  I was psyched when we got him because I liked that he could have transferred his, before his last North Carolina year.

• 2:18:21Speaker 04

  If you knew the maze, you'd know.

• 2:18:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. And he was, there was no way it was happening. So when we got him, it's like, this guy will always be a Patriot.

• 2:18:27Speaker 04

  You gotta know where his priorities lie too. And I think if people really knew him as a person.

• 2:18:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:32Speaker 04

  I think everybody would just, he would be very loved because he's this simple, salt of the earth kind of people, family guy that there is.

• 2:18:40Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's why those first couple of weeks, the Pats were worried because he lost his confidence, right? And it's like, how do you rebuild this guy who's obviously one of the most talented QBs in the league? How do we get him back? So it seems like they got him back.

• 2:18:53Speaker 04

  Looked great the last two.

• 2:18:54Bill Simmons?

  Took, took two weeks, but that happens with that position too. Cordell was like, Cordell going back to the Steelers, like Cordell was awesome. And then just kind of lost it. And sometimes that'll happen. I had to ask you about the Suns when you were here, the twenty-one Suns. Because you show up and you're in the finals.

• 2:19:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:19:13Bill Simmons?

  But it's a weird finals.

• 2:19:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:19:15Bill Simmons?

  And it's like this finals now that we don't really know how to process the twenty and twenty-one finals where there, these COVID seasons and.

• 2:19:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:19:23Bill Simmons?

  You know, people, I was going to Clipper games because Clippers almost made the finals that year. You know, people were in masks in the stands. You would pull your mask down. It was just weird energy. But you guys came really close and that, the Drew Holiday stripping Booker, and then the crazy alley-oop play is one of the great plays in NBA history, but never gets mentioned ever. But do you feel like if Booker, like if he just scores on that play, do you think you win the title? Like, did that really come down to one play or what happens?

• 2:19:54Speaker 04

  I think you can't simplify it that much.

• 2:19:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:57Speaker 04

  I think it's.

• 2:19:57Bill Simmons?

  Is it rare, rare for the finals to have a, a single play you can point to?

• 2:20:00Speaker 04

  That was game five.

• 2:20:02Bill Simmons?

  Game five.

• 2:20:02Speaker 04

  And if we win that one, we're up three-one.

• 2:20:05Bill Simmons?

  You're three-two.

• 2:20:06Speaker 04

  Three-two.

• 2:20:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:07Speaker 04

  Like, you're, you're, you're in a much better position there.

• 2:20:13Bill Simmons?

  And it was like, both teams were so fucking close.

• 2:20:16Speaker 04

  But the, the thing is, like, you learn, I learned this about playoff basketball this year that made me love that aspect of it. Where like, the margins are super thin and you game plan so, your game plan is so detailed. Sometimes you have clear answers. Like, I felt like our game plan maybe versus the Lakers or versus the Clippers had a lot more, or Nuggets. Like, we, we had very clear answers. The Bucks, it felt like, how are we gonna slow down Giannis? Well, how are we gonna slow down Giannis while trying to keep Drew and Chris in check?

• 2:20:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:46Speaker 04

  And those were tougher questions to ask.

• 2:20:47Bill Simmons?

  Chris was great.

• 2:20:48Speaker 04

  But the games were so, the margins of all of them, I can point to two or three plays every game. It's like, well, game four, we are up,

• 2:21:03Speaker 04

  eighty-five, seventy-six maybe in the fourth. And it's like, defensive stop, a PJ Tucker offensive rebound, kick out, Connaughton dagger three. It takes the game from a, you know, nine-point game or whatever to a six-point game and.

• 2:21:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:19Speaker 04

  Ten minutes left, boom, it's back like that. But imagine a stop and a run out and you're up eleven. It's a completely different ballgame. And those are like killer plays and the strip and, um, um, what was the?

• 2:21:31Bill Simmons?

  Also.

• 2:21:31Speaker 04

  The one where Chris lost it in transition late in game four.

• 2:21:34Speaker 03

  What game was the Giannis, that Giannis block?

• 2:21:36Speaker 04

  Or was that game six that he lost it in transition? I don't know. One of those.

• 2:21:39Speaker 03

  Their block on D.A.

• 2:21:40Speaker 04

  Uh, four or six?

• 2:21:42Speaker 03

  That was big.

• 2:21:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, the block lob. That was huge. The four and six kind of run together, but those games were close.

• 2:21:50Bill Simmons?

  Well, the alley-oop choice was insane. Drew throw, like, when you actually watch how hard of, first of all, if it had gone out of bounds or gone off top of the backboard and you get the ball back and you score.

• 2:22:02Speaker 04

  The one where Chris fouled him in five and game five. And Chris trying to foul him so that he can't dunk it.

• 2:22:07Bill Simmons?

  Right. It's an insane, it's an insane sequence.

• 2:22:09Speaker 04

  And then they get the offensive rebound.

• 2:22:11Bill Simmons?

  And then in game six, Giannis just makes all these free throws.

• 2:22:14Speaker 04

  Fifty points, sixteen for seventeen from the line. Fifty. I looked up with two minutes left in the game.

• 2:22:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:20Speaker 04

  They have ninety-eight points.

• 2:22:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:22Speaker 04

  He has fifty. I'm like.

• 2:22:26Bill Simmons?

  What happened the next year?

• 2:22:27Speaker 04

  And Dallas?

• 2:22:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but well, you guys were.

• 2:22:30Speaker 04

  You talking about the playoffs?

• 2:22:31Bill Simmons?

  But you guys were awesome in the regular season.

• 2:22:32Speaker 04

  Oh, one seed. We won sixty-six games. That's what I said. It's the same thing. You said adversity is going to hit. That's what you just said. Adversity is going to hit.

• 2:22:42Bill Simmons?

  And that's what happened.

• 2:22:43Speaker 04

  And that's what happened. If you look at us from my rookie year, like that's my starting point. It's super linear for us. The year before I got there, it was a nineteen-win team. Monty comes in, we go to the bubble.

• 2:22:57Speaker 04

  And I'm just saying, like, I'm just, I'm grateful that these are the people that I was surrounded with to start my career. Like, that's where that comes in. We go to the bubble. We're twenty-six and thirty-nine going to the bubble. We are not world beaters. But we're a little bit better than the team was last year, but we're not world beaters. We win eight games. Rarely can you leave a season not making the playoffs.

• 2:23:18Bill Simmons?

  But feeling like you had momentum.

• 2:23:18Speaker 04

  And being sub-five-hundred and being like, yeah, because we won eight in a row, really removed from the regular season. We felt like a new team.

• 2:23:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:26Speaker 04

  His energy, like, our practices were high-energy, like, we felt good about ourselves.

• 2:23:30Bill Simmons?

  That's so weird, your rookie season was the COVID season.

• 2:23:32Speaker 04

  But it's all I knew. So it was like, it wasn't too bad for me. I was just like, okay, whatever, cool, let's go. And so we come back next year, you know, Ricky was great for us, Rubio, we add Chris Paul. So it's like, we go fifty-one and twenty-one, get a two seed, that's linear progression. Make it to the finals. You lose. It's like, okay, but look how much we accomplished in a span of two years. We come back for a third season, we are, we start off slow, because that finals ended in late July. The season picks up normal the next season. So it was like a nine-week off-season. So we started a little slow, but then we went twenty straight.

• 2:24:06Speaker 04

  And it's like, we gotta figure it out. We got a good group, we gotta figure it out. Take it all the way. We kind of controlled the one spot for a very long time. We run up against, we beat New Orleans in the first round. They were really scrappy, four-two.

• 2:24:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:22Speaker 04

  You run into Dallas. Dallas obviously has Luca, and they have a lot of good players.

• 2:24:28Bill Simmons?

  JB.

• 2:24:29Speaker 04

  JB. But we had beat them a lot. Like, if you were to go back and mark through, we had beat them a lot of times before that. We had beat them all that year, we had beat them the previous years, we felt good about it. We win the first two pretty handily.

• 2:24:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:41Speaker 04

  They come back swinging, like, they don't go down without a fight. And you have to give them a ton of credit, because it's hard. Going home, two-oh, to keep your. Yeah, to keep your head and to make it two-two. We come back in game five and beat them again, bad, at home, three-two. They win game six, it's like whoever's home wins.

• 2:25:01Speaker 04

  I wish it didn't happen that way, and that's how it happened, game seven. They obliterated us, and like, it hits you hard, because it's like, well, no, no, no, we were supposed to get back to the finals, and like, we had made a step, made a step, made a step, and we're in process of finishing that step, and it's like, no, no, no, no, no, we were supposed to make the finals. So when game seven happened, and it's like halftime, and we're down thirty-five. You're just like, the shock of like, the same thing I told you, like, the success is hardly ever perfectly linear.

• 2:25:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:31Speaker 04

  And maybe you see that with certain teams. Like, Detroit's an interesting example of this, because how do you follow up a sixty-one season? Well, the odds have them finishing lower, like, it's really hard to just perfectly smoothly accelerate.

• 2:25:44Bill Simmons?

  The interesting thing about you guys is you probably shouldn't have made it in twenty-one, and you should have made it in twenty-two.

• 2:25:49Speaker 04

  You could say that. You can very much say that.

• 2:25:51Bill Simmons?

  Because there's a Patriots season like that, too, where we, ninety-seven should have been our best team, but we made it in ninety-six.

• 2:25:56Speaker 04

  Here's my counter, though, is

• 2:26:00Speaker 04

  you want the window to continue to get there, because it's really hard to capture it.

• 2:26:05Bill Simmons?

  Oh, no question.

• 2:26:06Speaker 04

  Like, look at the Thunder last year. They were arguably better than they were the year before.

• 2:26:09Bill Simmons?

  I just thought twenty-one should have been the Clippers' year, and twenty-two should have been your year.

• 2:26:13Speaker 04

  No, I disagree. But they won, they won the series without them. Against the Jazz.

• 2:26:19Bill Simmons?

  But against you guys.

• 2:26:20Speaker 04

  They were humming. They were humming, though.

• 2:26:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:23Speaker 04

  They were humming. I'm not saying one thing or another, but like, the team was, it's not like, they became, they still became a good team to take down the number-one seed, which was the Jazz.

• 2:26:32Bill Simmons?

  Then the Bucks had, you could argue that could have been the Nets' year.

• 2:26:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:26:37Bill Simmons?

  Okay, so.

• 2:26:38Speaker 04

  Foot on, foot on.

• 2:26:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, for sure, for sure.

• 2:26:41Speaker 04

  KD's foot's three inches back.

• 2:26:42Bill Simmons?

  Well, and then they had the injuries, too. The other thing was, you mentioned earlier, like, those three seasons together were really like three seasons in two years.

• 2:26:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:26:51Bill Simmons?

  So it's just, I think there's going to be a whole bunch of weird shit that happens when you have that.

• 2:26:54Speaker 04

  To put a bow on it, we come back in the following season, have a ton of injuries.

• 2:26:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:59Speaker 04

  But when I got back from my knee, I felt like we were we were in a good place. Like, I felt like it was coming back together. Traded.

• 2:27:08Bill Simmons?

  You know who was the?

• 2:27:09Speaker 04

  It's over, just like that.

• 2:27:10Bill Simmons?

  The big beneficiary of all this was the twenty-two Warriors. Because they tossed away the two seasons before, so they were like the freshest. Everybody else, it was like carnage.

• 2:27:19Speaker 04

  Who did they beat?

• 2:27:20Bill Simmons?

  Teams falling apart. They beat like Memphis, they beat Dallas in the Western Finals.

• 2:27:24Speaker 04

  Nuggets, maybe?

• 2:27:27Bill Simmons?

  Early. Somebody was hurt, though. Was Murray hurt at that point?

• 2:27:30Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, Murray was out. It was, they beat the Nuggets.

• 2:27:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they had the, the seeds part. It was like the Patriots' schedule last year, the seeds part.

• 2:27:36Speaker 04

  Nuggets, Grizzlies.

• 2:27:36Speaker 03

  And Boston probably wasn't ready.

• 2:27:38Bill Simmons?

  We weren't ready.

• 2:27:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, Boston wasn't ready, so it was like, you.

• 2:27:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, but Golden State was really good that whole year, too, so.

• 2:27:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, Wiggins was great that year.

• 2:27:44Speaker 04

  They were good.

• 2:27:45Bill Simmons?

  I'm still mad about that finals, but I'm mad about all the ones we didn't win. But that one especially, like, we just weren't ready.

• 2:27:50Speaker 04

  Why are you mad about it?

• 2:27:51Bill Simmons?

  Because we won game one, and I felt like we could have, I think we could have taken game two, and I think we could have ended it.

• 2:27:57Speaker 04

  Twenty-two. Twenty-three was the loss to the Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals. That one doesn't hurt more?

• 2:28:03Bill Simmons?

  No, because twenty-two, they, I don't think, and I think Tatum would say this if he was here, and you lived through it with those four playoff rounds, I don't think he realized how, those guys, you don't know until you go through it.

• 2:28:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:28:15Bill Simmons?

  By the time they got to game six of that twenty-two finals, Tatum was like fucking zombie. Like, he was completely done.

• 2:28:22Speaker 04

  I feel like I can understand your point in the fact that it could be really, really draining.

• 2:28:26Bill Simmons?

  Because like, that first round that year, he killed Durant. Durant was healthy. He went head-to-head with Durant. He outplayed him and beat him.

• 2:28:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:28:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:28:34Bill Simmons?

  And then by the time you get.

• 2:28:35Speaker 03

  That was the end of Brooklyn.

• 2:28:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. By the time you get to round four, and you've been doing it now for a hundred games, and you don't realize what the spotlight and the thing, I don't.

• 2:28:44Speaker 04

  And it's a Warriors' machine that had the success.

• 2:28:48Speaker 03

  You just got stepped. The Steph game four.

• 2:28:51Bill Simmons?

  We got stepped, and honestly, they beat us up.

• 2:28:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:28:54Bill Simmons?

  They got super physical. The team wasn't ready for it, but in twenty-four, they were.

• 2:28:57Speaker 04

  But you win a finals in twenty-four, so isn't it?

• 2:29:00Bill Simmons?

  It's season them for twenty-four.

• 2:29:02Speaker 04

  Isn't it, like, doesn't that make it all fine?

• 2:29:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah. It all worked out.

• 2:29:07Speaker 04

  Like, that group, the Jalen's, they won?

• 2:29:10Bill Simmons?

  It was a weird one for me, because Steph and Joker are my two favorite non-Celtics of like, the last twenty years, and watching Steph in Boston.

• 2:29:18Speaker 04

  Win one.

• 2:29:19Bill Simmons?

  Just.

• 2:29:20Speaker 04

  Jokic won in twenty-two.

• 2:29:21Speaker 03

  How much do you think with all the stuff, I've been, we've been talking a lot about the W playoffs this year, too, and this has definitely been the case with them. So much of this stuff is matchup-dependent. We're just like, like, so for example, the year. The year, the year you guys beat Dallas in the finals a couple of years ago. Who did Dallas beat? OKC? Or they beat, no, they beat Minnesota. I'm not sure you beat Minnesota. I'm not sure you beat either of those teams. Like, it's just, Dallas was a very.

• 2:29:46Bill Simmons?

  But Minnesota was in the same thing where Edwards had never been through the tune-up.

• 2:29:49Speaker 03

  But Dallas was a particularly good.

• 2:29:51Speaker 04

  I think Boston was the best.

• 2:29:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, Boston was great.

• 2:29:53Speaker 04

  I think Boston was the best team that year, and like, that was a no-surprise. That was like the best, I felt like that was like the best team one year.

• 2:30:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:30:01Bill Simmons?

  The analytics would back it up, and yet, when I was in Dallas for

• 2:30:07Bill Simmons?

  game three, and Luca fouled out with five minutes left, and it was like, oh, Kyrie's going to carry Dallas, I was fucking shitting bricks. It's like, of course Kyrie's going to kill us. Like, this is how, this is how this has to come full circle, but he didn't.

• 2:30:20Speaker 03

  That Boston team was crazy. I remember game one.

• 2:30:23Bill Simmons?

  It was a crazy team. With Porzingis off the bench.

• 2:30:25Speaker 03

  He was out the whole playoff, basically. He comes back and he hits like two threes. That's one of the loudest, that's one of the loudest crowds I've heard, was that.

• 2:30:32Bill Simmons?

  Well, Pritchard's half-court shot to end the half was, I think, the loudest I can remember the last however many years.

• 2:30:39Speaker 04

  Really good team.

• 2:30:39Bill Simmons?

  Well, the other thing is, and I know you love these guys, but Drew is like, that's why, I, if, I don't know what Portland's game point is, but if Drew's sitting there for one of these good teams, that's like the perfect guy to have on your team.

• 2:30:52Speaker 04

  Elevates your ceiling so much.

• 2:30:54Bill Simmons?

  Just doesn't care about his numbers, anything. All he wants to do is like, how do we win?

• 2:30:58Speaker 03

  That's a good example. Like, he's a Hall of Fame player, but he's like a, he's like one of these vet QBs. Like, anywhere you, anywhere you put him, any team you plug him on, they're going to be super elevated, just from him just being around.

• 2:31:11Bill Simmons?

  The Celtic fans love Drew.

• 2:31:13Speaker 04

  Elevated, huh?

• 2:31:14Bill Simmons?

  The Celtic fans love Drew.

• 2:31:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:31:16Bill Simmons?

  Because he just didn't.

• 2:31:16Speaker 04

  So did Milwaukee.

• 2:31:17Bill Simmons?

  He could take four shots, and he was happy.

• 2:31:19Speaker 03

  And he was stuck in New Orleans for so long. And it was like, if he had been, and it's such a, it was such a shitshow when he was down there, if he had been somewhere else, like, on just fifteen other teams.

• 2:31:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:30Speaker 03

  Because he was doing this the whole time down there. I remember, uh, who was it? The year they got to the, they played the Warriors.

• 2:31:39Bill Simmons?

  One good AD year.

• 2:31:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, they played the Warriors in the playoffs, and he had to switch guarding Steph, Klay, and KD the whole game.

• 2:31:45Bill Simmons?

  He demolished Portland.

• 2:31:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. And he basically, he was like the one guy who could defend any of them, and so they basically, he was like a free safety, having to guard all three of them at the same time, and you were just like, this guy defensively is like on another planet from everybody else.

• 2:31:58Bill Simmons?

  He's great. Is there a team you're looking at this year that you think is undervalued? That you're just like, wow, I like, I like the guys on this team.

• 2:32:05Speaker 04

  Anywhere?

• 2:32:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, either conference.

• 2:32:08Speaker 04

  Let me think about it. It's always tricky questions to answer. I'll probably stay away from answering a Western Conference team.

• 2:32:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, probably a good idea.

• 2:32:16Speaker 04

  Just naturally.

• 2:32:20Bill Simmons?

  The funny thing with the league.

• 2:32:21Speaker 04

  Maybe Toronto.

• 2:32:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's what, when we did the preview, if they're putting out Murray Boils and Kawhi and Barnes and crunch time, it's a fucking nightmare.

• 2:32:34Speaker 04

  And they play hard.

• 2:32:35Speaker 03

  I think Kawhi's gonna have a big year.

• 2:32:36Speaker 04

  They play hard. And you have Kawhi?

• 2:32:38Speaker 03

  He's gonna have a big year.

• 2:32:40Speaker 04

  Is it, like, but East is tough, so.

• 2:32:44Bill Simmons?

  It's always tough with these old guys. The math is against the old guys as they keep getting older, like just being able, it's not the regular season as much as can you do it for nine months? And the nine months favors the young guys, which is good for like a team like San Antonio.

• 2:32:58Speaker 03

  You guys gave Indy love. Indy's gonna be good.

• 2:33:01Bill Simmons?

  I think it's Indy or New York for the finals.

• 2:33:04Speaker 04

  You put Indy that high?

• 2:33:06Bill Simmons?

  I do. But I'm probably too high.

• 2:33:09Speaker 04

  Why are you so high on them?

• 2:33:11Bill Simmons?

  Cause they did it.

• 2:33:12Speaker 04

  Same.

• 2:33:13Bill Simmons?

  And they.

• 2:33:14Speaker 04

  You had Zoo?

• 2:33:14Bill Simmons?

  And they added Zoo. And I didn't mind the Oubre, just as their ninth or 10th man. Um, and I think, and it just feels like people are sleeping on how, how tight that team was offensively and everything. They just kinda know who they are.

• 2:33:31Bill Simmons?

  You know him, are you forced to be friends with him through Tommy?

• 2:33:34Speaker 04

  No, he's just a good guy. He's easy to be friends with in general.

• 2:33:38Bill Simmons?

  You set them up?

• 2:33:39Speaker 03

  No, they did USA.

• 2:33:41Speaker 04

  Team USA.

• 2:33:42Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's right.

• 2:33:43Speaker 04

  I, you know, I was in, a lot in practice, I was with Tyrese.

• 2:33:49Speaker 03

  That was a good team.

• 2:33:50Speaker 04

  It's like, you know how Jokic makes the game easy? Tyrese is a different kind, but obviously a much different player, but like, I was like, I like playing with this guy.

• 2:33:59Speaker 03

  That team was, the him, Mikail, Brunson, Ant, Tyrese, it was like all the Kessler. It was all sort of like the younger, good players.

• 2:34:09Bill Simmons?

  I always think they should do that. I would put, this, nobody agrees with me, but I would have it be like 27 and under for all the, for all the, uh, American teams.

• 2:34:19Speaker 04

  Even Olympic?

• 2:34:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:20Speaker 04

  Really?

• 2:34:21Bill Simmons?

  And I would wanna have younger guys in there, cause I think the experience is incredible for them.

• 2:34:26Speaker 03

  You think they should make them play, whoever's gonna play in 28, play in FIBA next summer?

• 2:34:31Speaker 04

  No. If you're gonna follow his model, then yeah. If you're not gonna follow his.

• 2:34:36Speaker 03

  I just think that, I think that.

• 2:34:38Speaker 04

  I know what you're saying. I know where you're going.

• 2:34:40Speaker 03

  I think that the reason why we continuously either lose in FIBA, like that team lost to Germany, or have these super close calls in the Olympics, and France is only gonna be better, Serbia's still gonna be really good. It's cause it's a brand new team every time.

• 2:34:56Speaker 04

  And those other teams are like well-oiled machines.

• 2:34:58Speaker 03

  They're like locked in. Like who was it? Valanciunas' team, Lithuania?

• 2:35:01Speaker 04

  They were.

• 2:35:01Speaker 03

  They smacked them. And it was Valanciunas and a bunch of guys who were playing Europe.

• 2:35:05Bill Simmons?

  It's my favorite.

• 2:35:06Speaker 04

  They run a machine-like offense. These guys have been playing together for a long time. It's cool as a basketball.

• 2:35:13Bill Simmons?

  You gotta go in 28.

• 2:35:14Speaker 04

  Diehard basketball fan.

• 2:35:16Bill Simmons?

  It's the best.

• 2:35:17Speaker 04

  It's like, uh,

• 2:35:20Speaker 04

  such a unique perspective that we're not really privy to in, in the United States as much, where these teams like, they approach the game different.

• 2:35:30Speaker 04

  And I respect it a lot.

• 2:35:31Bill Simmons?

  One of my things I would do as a GM is I would try to get as many guys as possible from the same country. Because I think they're, this was always, I always felt this way with Spain in the late 2000s. I would have tried to get both Casals and like Juan Carlos Navarro, like five of those guys.

• 2:35:48Speaker 04

  A young Ricky Rubio.

• 2:35:49Bill Simmons?

  I always wonder why Denver never got Bogdanovich.

• 2:35:51Speaker 04

  Rudy Fernandez.

• 2:35:52Speaker 03

  I agree with you. We saw it in the World Cup this year.

• 2:35:54Bill Simmons?

  He's been playing with Jokic since I were like 12.

• 2:35:57Speaker 03

  A big reason why Spain was so good in the World Cup was all those guys play together.

• 2:36:01Bill Simmons?

  They have like real history.

• 2:36:03Speaker 03

  So they're all like locked in versus like you're just putting people together.

• 2:36:06Bill Simmons?

  If you were playing like the North Carolina guys that you played with when you were like 20.

• 2:36:09Speaker 04

  It's a super valid point of, of NBA roster building. Like this is a whole other box we can get into is like.

• 2:36:17Bill Simmons?

  I would also have an all-lefty team.

• 2:36:19Speaker 04

  Why?

• 2:36:20Bill Simmons?

  I just think it would fuck, it would really fuck with.

• 2:36:21Speaker 04

  Who's on your all-lefty team?

• 2:36:23Bill Simmons?

  Would it would really fuck with teams, cause as you know.

• 2:36:25Speaker 04

  Your eyes are gonna cross on defense.

• 2:36:27Bill Simmons?

  Guard, well, you always, you're gonna have three moments a game where you forget the guy's left-handed, just cause you're tired of running up and down.

• 2:36:32Speaker 04

  But if you're all lefty hand, then, I mean, if you're all lefty team and you're guarding them, then you wouldn't forget.

• 2:36:36Bill Simmons?

  You're just breaking, you're just breaking the other team's braids.

• 2:36:39Speaker 03

  Who's the all-lefty team?

• 2:36:41Bill Simmons?

  Oh, there's so many good lefties now. We're in like, it's like a lefty renaissance. Yeah, JB's, JB's the captain.

• 2:36:46Speaker 03

  Who are the, who are the, who are the three and fours? Just trying to think about like, I know the guards.

• 2:36:52Speaker 04

  Who's your five?

• 2:36:52Speaker 03

  AJ's on it.

• 2:36:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, RJ Barrett's on it.

• 2:36:54Speaker 03

  RJ Barrett.

• 2:36:56Speaker 04

  Who's your five? Oh, you got Hartenstein, isn't he lefty?

• 2:36:58Speaker 03

  Hartenstein's lefty.

• 2:36:59Speaker 04

  I'm just throwing out like, like random-ish.

• 2:37:04Speaker 03

  It'd be funny.

• 2:37:05Bill Simmons?

  You know, for the Olympics in 28, the quarterfinals, it's four games in a row. I think it's the best basketball day of the four years, especially now that the countries are good. It's, I remember in London going and I was just like, I can't believe I'm here for this.

• 2:37:21Speaker 03

  Who do you guys like to see in the quarterfinals? Early predictions, 2026, October 26.

• 2:37:27Bill Simmons?

  Um, I assume Jokic will be in there.

• 2:37:29Speaker 03

  Serbia.

• 2:37:30Bill Simmons?

  US.

• 2:37:31Speaker 04

  US.

• 2:37:32Bill Simmons?

  Um.

• 2:37:32Speaker 04

  France.

• 2:37:33Bill Simmons?

  France, definitely. Spain, definitely. Argentina will figure out a way to be in there somehow.

• 2:37:41Bill Simmons?

  Is, if Giannis is still Giannis, Greece has to be taken seriously.

• 2:37:45Speaker 03

  Canada. Canada will be.

• 2:37:47Bill Simmons?

  Canada, definitely.

• 2:37:47Speaker 03

  Canada should be top three to me.

• 2:37:50Bill Simmons?

  But Canada's like the Buffalo Bills, though. They can't, when they get, when they get in the competition.

• 2:37:54Speaker 03

  Canada just need, they just need to lock in.

• 2:37:56Bill Simmons?

  It never works out for them.

• 2:37:57Speaker 03

  They need to, they have to.

• 2:37:58Speaker 04

  They put in that system where like you have to commit now to play through. So they're doing what kinda like you suggested.

• 2:38:05Bill Simmons?

  And then there'll be some wild card.

• 2:38:06Speaker 04

  What about like a Slovenia, like a Luka or?

• 2:38:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, one of those.

• 2:38:09Speaker 03

  It would be great if the, the Canadians are so mad at the US in general and, and, in life, that if they were like, our goal is to beat them in basketball in the US.

• 2:38:17Bill Simmons?

  This is it, we're gonna take it from there?

• 2:38:19Speaker 03

  As revenge, especially cause we just beat them in hockey. So to be like, you guys beat us in hockey, we're gonna come and beat you in basketball.

• 2:38:26Bill Simmons?

  Do you think Wemby would care more about beating the US in the gold medal game or winning the title?

• 2:38:31Speaker 04

  Title.

• 2:38:32Speaker 03

  Probably title.

• 2:38:34Bill Simmons?

  Especially after last year.

• 2:38:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, probably.

• 2:38:35Bill Simmons?

  He's another one that tasted his own blood. It tastes your own blood. Um.

• 2:38:40Speaker 04

  But it's like, it's like,

• 2:38:43Speaker 04

  character arc, development arc. It's good.

• 2:38:46Bill Simmons?

  All the great ones, including Magic, choked in the 84 finals. It was the best thing that ever happened to him.

• 2:38:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it's.

• 2:38:52Bill Simmons?

  Three titles in the next four years.

• 2:38:53Speaker 04

  That's why we love the games, why we love sports. Cause there only can be one person that wins. So that means a lot of other people who, who are good enough or thought they were, are gonna do it. So it's like, continue to chase it, continue to chase it, continue to chase it until your time is over.

• 2:39:06Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's why I like the Joker this year. It's only his one title.

• 2:39:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, come on.

• 2:39:11Bill Simmons?

  It's one of the 10 best players of all time.

• 2:39:13Speaker 04

  Let's buy some stock. How about it?

• 2:39:15Bill Simmons?

  Um, any last question for Tommy before we go?

• 2:39:19Speaker 04

  No. Let's keep his, uh.

• 2:39:22Bill Simmons?

  What's the most Tommy sentence you've ever heard?

• 2:39:26Speaker 04

  The most Tommy sentence I've ever heard? Hey, man, uh, we're going to dinner tonight at XYZ Spa.

• 2:39:32Bill Simmons?

  And name five people who you can't believe.

• 2:39:35Speaker 04

  He's, I'm like, they're, yes. And it'd be the.

• 2:39:37Bill Simmons?

  It's with Don Cheadle, Stephen Castle.

• 2:39:39Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 2:39:40Bill Simmons?

  And Jay-Z.

• 2:39:41Speaker 04

  Cause there's gonna be a randomness to it, but also like a, huh, like how did you? Like, get everybody on the same page. How'd you get everybody on the same?

• 2:39:50Speaker 03

  I also don't usually know who's coming. I just tell, just be like, whatever, we're having dinner at this time, like tonight. Like I wanted him to come, wanted you to come, you guys were busy. But I'm just like, you just throw out a bunch of.

• 2:40:01Speaker 04

  Wait, don't, yeah.

• 2:40:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:40:02Speaker 03

  Just throw out a bunch, just throw out a bunch of, just be like, come if you want. And then what, what happens sometimes, which is unfortunate, is we'll get a table for like five, and then nine people will show up. And he's like.

• 2:40:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh, so unfortunate. Oh, so.

• 2:40:15Speaker 03

  No, it's unfortunate for the restaurant.

• 2:40:18Bill Simmons?

  Oh, so unfortunate.

• 2:40:18Speaker 03

  It's like, it's not, that's not, that's rude to them to be like, we have a table for this and everyone's gotta squeeze in.

• 2:40:24Bill Simmons?

  Do you wanna come tonight? It's me, Cooper Hoffman, and Jalen Brunson.

• 2:40:29Speaker 03

  He's been to some random, he's been to some random.

• 2:40:31Speaker 04

  And it's cool.

• 2:40:31Speaker 03

  New York is more random than here for sure.

• 2:40:33Speaker 04

  That's actually the reason why. So like, I'm not a New York City person.

• 2:40:36Speaker 03

  He hated New York.

• 2:40:38Speaker 04

  That's, okay.

• 2:40:39Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:40:40Speaker 04

  I'm from the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Like, I'm, I'm not a city guy. It's not in my DNA.

• 2:40:45Speaker 03

  He lived on the outskirts.

• 2:40:47Speaker 04

  I wouldn't call it the outskirts, cause I was very centrally located between my destinations. I lived in Brooklyn, like, close to the Pride City, close to the arena.

• 2:40:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:55Speaker 04

  I was a little bit removed from the action, cause I didn't care to be in the action. That's not really me. But like, as my last season in Brooklyn went on, like we're going to these places, you know, Tommy bringing, like it's fun. And I was like, you know, I kinda like New York, then traded, boom.

• 2:41:10Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that was it?

• 2:41:12Speaker 03

  You got an extra, I thought you were getting traded at the deadline. So you got a, you got a reprieve of like four months.

• 2:41:16Speaker 04

  We had a podcast app that we were doing on the deadline, on the day of the deadline.

• 2:41:21Speaker 03

  With Duncan.

• 2:41:22Speaker 04

  And it's like, um.

• 2:41:24Speaker 03

  Well, Duncan told me, cause we were scheduled, we were scheduled.

• 2:41:27Speaker 04

  Like, we're sitting next to the phones, like, am I gonna have to leave?

• 2:41:29Speaker 03

  I was coming up from DC and we were scheduled to do it at like 5:00 PM or something. And like, they obviously know each other. So it was all sort of like, good to go. And Duncan and I recall me at like 12 and I was like, hey, I'm pretty sure Cam's getting traded. We're still taping this episode. And I called him and he was like.

• 2:41:44Speaker 04

  Just stay tuned, man. Just keep it on the schedule for now. And if I get traded, it'll change.

• 2:41:47Speaker 03

  If he gets traded, we'll still do it. He's just gonna be moving the next day.

• 2:41:51Bill Simmons?

  Well, you knew leading to the deadline that that was.

• 2:41:54Speaker 04

  You time out. Yeah, you always, but you don't know.

• 2:41:57Bill Simmons?

  Especially being out in Brooklyn.

• 2:41:58Speaker 04

  You don't know what's gonna happen or what's not gonna happen. I didn't get traded till the summer. I finished the season in Brooklyn.

• 2:42:03Bill Simmons?

  Do you keep track of that stuff or not, when you're in the trade rumors?

• 2:42:06Speaker 04

  No. I hear about it and I get information about it. It's not even tried to ignore it. It's almost like I detach.

• 2:42:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:13Speaker 04

  Like, like, when I hear the rumors, they're talking about somebody else, not me. Because so many of them, like 99% of them don't happen. I've been traded twice, sure. But like, of all the rumors I've ever heard, it's a lot. So like I detach and almost look at it like it's somebody else. And I'm like, oh, okay. Until it becomes reality. Because if I get attached to any of these potential outcomes, like you're just putting yourself through mental gymnastics.

• 2:42:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:40Speaker 04

  Oh, I've done that before.

• 2:42:41Bill Simmons?

  Isn't Orlando Redfin checking out?

• 2:42:43Speaker 04

  Oh, I, okay, I have done that before. I will admit it. Like, if a rumor pops up, it'd be like, let's say to random city, Minnesota, Dallas, Portland. I'd be like, what, what is it? Where would I be in, okay, let's check the Zillow listings in Portland.

• 2:42:58Speaker 03

  But it is funny, cause when the Phoenix, when they got traded to Brooklyn, they, that trade had been like, talked about over the summer and then there was nothing. There was nothing for like four months. Cause I remember they were out here right before that happened. And he, what he was saying before about that season, it was like, oh, we're loaded up, like we're.

• 2:43:15Speaker 04

  We're getting our mojo back.

• 2:43:16Speaker 03

  This is the team that can make a run. And then all of a sudden, it's like. It should be gets a team immediately.

• 2:43:20Speaker 04

  That's the reality of the NBA, though.

• 2:43:22Bill Simmons?

  Putting you in that trade was malpractice.

• 2:43:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, you can say one way or another, but it happened.

• 2:43:27Bill Simmons?

  Get KD and you keep Cam Johnson would have been the move.

• 2:43:32Speaker 04

  I don't know if that would have flown, though.

• 2:43:33Bill Simmons?

  I guess like they needed Bridges as, no, they, he, they put in 10 draft picks or whatever.

• 2:43:37Speaker 04

  I know, but.

• 2:43:39Bill Simmons?

  That was a crazy trade.

• 2:43:40Speaker 03

  I think it's, Brooklyn, that was the Nets being smart.

• 2:43:43Speaker 04

  If, yeah, if Brooklyn says, if, okay, if, if Phoenix Suns powers that be say they want Kevin Durant, period. And the Brooklyn Nets.

• 2:43:53Bill Simmons?

  And Kevin Durant says, I am only going to Phoenix.

• 2:43:55Speaker 04

  Yes, and the Brooklyn Nets say they want Mikal Bridges and myself, and the Suns say, no, we're keeping one of, like, you, you're gonna, you're gonna put me in the deal then.

• 2:44:05Bill Simmons?

  I think you played poker at some point with this. It's like KD has decided he's coming to Phoenix and Phoenix has decided, you know, and Brooklyn has decided they're trading him.

• 2:44:15Speaker 03

  That was at the deadline, right?

• 2:44:16Speaker 04

  That was.

• 2:44:17Bill Simmons?

  No, it was like two weeks before the deadline.

• 2:44:19Speaker 03

  Or a week before. I thought it was.

• 2:44:21Speaker 04

  What?

• 2:44:21Bill Simmons?

  No, it was, it was leading toward the deadline, but it wasn't at the deadline.

• 2:44:24Speaker 04

  The trade?

• 2:44:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:25Speaker 04

  The trade was on the deadline.

• 2:44:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was, it was on the.

• 2:44:27Bill Simmons?

  Oh, but the rumors started like a week before.

• 2:44:28Speaker 04

  No, the rumors started in the summer, and then they died because nothing ever happened. The rumors started in June. But then when Kai got traded and everything seemed sketchy, then the rumors, and this was a day before the deadline, then the rumors shot up.

• 2:44:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:43Speaker 04

  But then it's just like, okay, we've heard the rumors for nine months. How much truth is there to it? And then the trade occurred, if the deadline was at 2:00 PM on the 6th, the trade occurred at 2:00 AM.

• 2:44:56Speaker 03

  The ownership thing switched over that day.

• 2:44:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, it occurred 10 hours before the trade deadline. So it's like all you'd do was survive one more sleep and you were good.

• 2:45:04Bill Simmons?

  Well, now he has a new identity this year is Cam Johnson's expiring contract.

• 2:45:08Speaker 04

  That's, that is my identity.

• 2:45:09Bill Simmons?

  That's your superhero identity this year.

• 2:45:11Speaker 03

  You think he should do Cam or Cameron?

• 2:45:14Bill Simmons?

  For the expiring contract?

• 2:45:15Speaker 03

  For his name.

• 2:45:17Bill Simmons?

  Cameron Johnson's expiring?

• 2:45:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, what do you think?

• 2:45:18Bill Simmons?

  No, I think, I like him.

• 2:45:20Speaker 04

  I just think I've become Cam Johnson, like, it's become, like, that's my name.

• 2:45:24Bill Simmons?

  No, it's, it's the right move.

• 2:45:25Speaker 04

  Like, you know.

• 2:45:27Bill Simmons?

  Cameron Johnson sounds like you're trying to get serious and start like a company.

• 2:45:31Speaker 03

  That's what I said.

• 2:45:31Speaker 04

  So I'll say that for later.

• 2:45:32Speaker 03

  He's like an auteur. It's like Cameron Crowe. It's like a direct, Cameron is what you do when you're a, when you're an artist. For, for what you're doing, Cam is probably better.

• 2:45:40Speaker 04

  It's lighter.

• 2:45:41Bill Simmons?

  Do you like the second apron?

• 2:45:43Speaker 04

  Do I like the second apron?

• 2:45:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:44Speaker 04

  Not really, no.

• 2:45:46Bill Simmons?

  Didn't seem very player friendly.

• 2:45:48Speaker 04

  It's not. Um, I'm not, I could be a lot better versed in the CBA and all those things, and I probably really should have a better dive so I can articulate better opinions.

• 2:46:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:00Speaker 04

  But I know my personal experience and how it shapes how management approaches. It makes it harder to maintain a team. So if you win, you win, and what happens when you win? Guys look good and so guys then get paid, but then it becomes difficult because you can't keep them all. So then being good is a way of getting yourself up and out of where you're playing, you know? It's almost like there's a level of being mid, good mid enough that like you don't outgrow the salary problems, but you can keep your team. Like, that's how you stay in a spot. But if everybody gets too good or whatever, then like, it's like.

• 2:46:36Bill Simmons?

  Like New York right now.

• 2:46:37Speaker 04

  Yes, that will send them over the edge and they're gonna have some real problems with that.

• 2:46:41Bill Simmons?

  We had it, we won the title and within a year and a half, Porzingis and Drew are gone.

• 2:46:44Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 2:46:45Bill Simmons?

  That's the way it goes.

• 2:46:46Speaker 03

  You think, but that would have happened regardless, you guys had four max, hit four max guys.

• 2:46:50Speaker 04

  And some sub maxes.

• 2:46:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, and Pritchard and, and those guys hadn't even gotten paid yet, like.

• 2:46:55Bill Simmons?

  In an ideal world, you don't have to get rid of two of your best five guys. I did, that'd be my preference, but I, I said this on the pod, I feel like franchise guys should get more of a cap discount for the team.

• 2:47:07Speaker 04

  I respect, I respected that take.

• 2:47:10Bill Simmons?

  I draft Jokic.

• 2:47:11Speaker 04

  You pay him.

• 2:47:11Bill Simmons?

  He wants to be in Denver. I shouldn't have to then be penalized that he's making 60 million a year.

• 2:47:16Speaker 04

  It counts as 50 on the sheet, 45.

• 2:47:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, 40 or 40, it's two thirds.

• 2:47:20Speaker 03

  Okay, see, that's the, okay.

• 2:47:21Speaker 04

  Is that the number you're sticking with, two thirds?

• 2:47:23Bill Simmons?

  Whatever, three fourths, two thirds, like Curry and the Warriors, and then Curry has to take a discount, I mean, he didn't take a huge discount, but at that point.

• 2:47:31Speaker 04

  No, I really respect that take because it promotes things. I don't know, I, I would like the fan perspective too. I think guys like Curry, guys like Jokic that stick around, your Kobe's.

• 2:47:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:43Speaker 04

  Same team, Booker, it means something.

• 2:47:46Bill Simmons?

  Booker, same thing.

• 2:47:47Speaker 04

  It means something, though, like to keep those guys around, like the fan base is rallying around them and they become, you know, when you have the teams that.

• 2:47:53Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna have that with Tatum.

• 2:47:55Speaker 04

  When you have the team, yeah, exactly, you have the teams that shuffle them around a lot, I feel like it's harder naturally for the fans to get attached to the team the same.

• 2:48:02Bill Simmons?

  If football has it where the quarterbacks, there's continuity.

• 2:48:05Speaker 04

  But football, you're also.

• 2:48:06Bill Simmons?

  And you can push the money ahead and be like, Joe Burrow now has a $480 million deal and it's just, the money's nudged.

• 2:48:13Speaker 04

  Such creative accounting.

• 2:48:14Bill Simmons?

  You can't really do that in basketball.

• 2:48:15Speaker 03

  Just do it like the Dodgers.

• 2:48:16Speaker 04

  Football is so creative accounting.

• 2:48:17Speaker 03

  Just pay a dollar every year.

• 2:48:19Speaker 04

  But then also football's a different kind of game where like you really are fans of the team over the players. And there's less movement of maybe your quarterbacks and your receivers and your running backs. Like, there's just less movement.

• 2:48:32Bill Simmons?

  We have to go because we went way too long, but I had a good time.

• 2:48:35Speaker 04

  So did I.

• 2:48:35Bill Simmons?

  When's the, what's your first game?

• 2:48:37Speaker 04

  22nd in OKC.

• 2:48:39Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 2:48:41Speaker 04

  Come out swinging.

• 2:48:41Bill Simmons?

  God damn.

• 2:48:42Speaker 03

  It's a good open.

• 2:48:43Bill Simmons?

  At OKC?

• 2:48:44Speaker 03

  Smoke off the rip. You guys, you guys have Christmas game?

• 2:48:47Speaker 04

  At Warriors. Late night game.

• 2:48:51Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one.

• 2:48:52Speaker 03

  They got some good ones.

• 2:48:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, but you know what? That road Christmas game, I've had it once in Denver.

• 2:48:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:58Speaker 04

  When you have that like 8:00 PM tip off and it's.

• 2:49:01Bill Simmons?

  You basically have no Christmas.

• 2:49:02Speaker 04

  It's like, it's a weird Christmas because you wake up and you just wait for the game. All day, just, the best Christmas game.

• 2:49:09Speaker 03

  Noon.

• 2:49:10Speaker 04

  Is a.

• 2:49:10Bill Simmons?

  The Knicks Noon Game.

• 2:49:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, Knicks, if you're a player, I'd actually say is the 2 o'clock game, 3 o'clock game.

• 2:49:15Bill Simmons?

  Why?

• 2:49:15Speaker 04

  But everyone's at the, it depends on what time zone you're in, because you can wake up and maybe if you, you can have family in town and have breakfast with the family and like a slower Christmas morning. And then you also have like Christmas dinner, like I think it's.

• 2:49:27Bill Simmons?

  It's a double.

• 2:49:27Speaker 04

  We had one versus the Warriors, one of, and 22, let's just say, and, or 21, Christmas is 21, and it was like, super dope.

• 2:49:38Speaker 03

  Did you, did Celtics have it?

• 2:49:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:41Speaker 03

  Who are, who are they? Phillies Lakers, Philly I know is here.

• 2:49:45Bill Simmons?

  I can't remember.

• 2:49:46Speaker 04

  Gotta bring them on back.

• 2:49:48Speaker 03

  Knicks Spurs was the noon one, that'd be a good one.

• 2:49:50Bill Simmons?

  You know, they put the Knicks first, which I didn't really love because they're the champs, but I do think they've tried to establish it like a Detroit Thanksgiving Lions tradition.

• 2:49:58Speaker 03

  Those games are also.

• 2:49:59Bill Simmons?

  The first game is always the Knicks.

• 2:50:00Speaker 03

  For whatever reason, in at least the last couple of years, those games have always been awesome.

• 2:50:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:50:05Speaker 03

  Like, they're always like, last year.

• 2:50:06Speaker 04

  Cleveland.

• 2:50:07Speaker 03

  When Colek brought them back.

• 2:50:09Speaker 04

  And then the year before with San Antonio, Kale had 40.

• 2:50:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, Kale went off against San Antonio. Like, every year they have like some crazy comeback in it.

• 2:50:16Bill Simmons?

  You know what's a cool game now? They did it last year with the Celtics and I think they're doing it again is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving afternoon game, which is on in prime time in Europe.

• 2:50:26Speaker 03

  Is that when you got hurt last year?

• 2:50:28Speaker 04

  No, it was, I got hurt on the 21st, I think.

• 2:50:31Speaker 03

  Oh, you got hurt before Christmas?

• 2:50:32Speaker 04

  Or 22nd, I got hurt right before Christmas. It was a back to back 21, 22, I got hurt on 22. Oh, no, I got hurt on 23.

• 2:50:38Bill Simmons?

  The streamers like these early afternoon games because it's prime time in all these different countries, so they put, like, they want to put like Wemby on at like 2 o'clock on a Saturday.

• 2:50:49Speaker 03

  Boston's on in the afternoon before.

• 2:50:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:51Speaker 03

  Sixers Knicks next week.

• 2:50:53Bill Simmons?

  Same thing, because, because our game last year.

• 2:50:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:50:56Bill Simmons?

  I like, the NBA has figured out the schedule and the WNBA has somehow gotten worse at it. It took eight days off before the finals for reasons that are made unclear.

• 2:51:04Speaker 03

  Scheduling every.

• 2:51:04Bill Simmons?

  There's no sports this week.

• 2:51:05Speaker 03

  Scheduling every game against NFL Sunday is not the.

• 2:51:08Speaker 04

  Scheduling against NFL Sunday and NBA tip off.

• 2:51:11Bill Simmons?

  Wednesday night. Why didn't they go Wednesday, Friday, Monday and you could have three games before the NBA starts?

• 2:51:16Speaker 04

  Where nobody else is competing with you.

• 2:51:17Bill Simmons?

  The fuck are you doing? Like, this is like basic shit. How do you screw this up? And then the freaking Golden State owner has to intervene because Atlanta has 3,500 fans for their games and he's like, this isn't right. It's like you have no leadership in the league? It's crazy.

• 2:51:35Speaker 03

  They don't.

• 2:51:35Bill Simmons?

  This league.

• 2:51:36Speaker 04

  We're trying, man.

• 2:51:36Bill Simmons?

  This league despite itself is, is.

• 2:51:38Speaker 03

  Phil wants to be, he wants to be commissioner.

• 2:51:40Speaker 04

  You want to be commissioner of the W?

• 2:51:41Bill Simmons?

  I definitely do not want to be commissioner.

• 2:51:43Speaker 03

  He's volunteering himself to be commissioner.

• 2:51:45Bill Simmons?

  What I want to do is what I'm doing right now.

• 2:51:46Speaker 04

  Didn't Kathy say she's stepping down?

• 2:51:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, she's done.

• 2:51:49Bill Simmons?

  That is a tough job. You were navigating a lot of stuff. My number one thing.

• 2:51:55Speaker 03

  It'd be a great pivot, right?

• 2:51:56Speaker 04

  It'd be a, it'd be a generational pivot.

• 2:51:58Bill Simmons?

  My number one move would be, would, would be controversial.

• 2:52:01Speaker 04

  Let's hear it.

• 2:52:02Bill Simmons?

  Kaitlyn, you're gonna play in LA now. Here we go.

• 2:52:05Speaker 04

  You're not getting the job.

• 2:52:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. LA is gonna trade five first round picks for Kaitlyn and that's how we're gonna do it.

• 2:52:10Speaker 03

  He's gonna be the commissioner and keep doing the pod.

• 2:52:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:13Speaker 03

  It's like when, uh.

• 2:52:13Speaker 04

  It's gonna be your press conference, your pod is gonna be your weekly address.

• 2:52:17Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna top it, I'll give this state of address every time.

• 2:52:18Speaker 03

  Still doing, still doing NFL picks.

• 2:52:21Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna go.

• 2:52:22Speaker 04

  WNBA is kind of a side job. Come on, man.

• 2:52:25Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna go full 90's stern, I'm just gonna be, I'm gonna be fixing the lottery.

• 2:52:29Speaker 04

  Controlling everything, fixing the lottery.

• 2:52:31Bill Simmons?

  Kaitlyn, you're on LA now.

• 2:52:31Speaker 04

  Trading people, blocking trades.

• 2:52:33Bill Simmons?

  Indiana's fine, they love the team.

• 2:52:35Speaker 03

  He's gonna, it's like the White House Press Secretary, he's gonna have the job for like nine days and they're like.

• 2:52:39Bill Simmons?

  Thanks, stepdad. That's it. That would be fun. All right, Cam Johnson, good luck this season.

• 2:52:44Speaker 04

  Thank you, sir.

• 2:52:45Bill Simmons?

  Tommy, good luck with all of your projects.

• 2:52:47Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 2:52:47Bill Simmons?

  And friendships and dinners. Great to see you as always.

• 2:52:50Speaker 03

  We'll see you there.

• 2:52:52Bill Simmons?

  All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Pelissero and House, thanks to Cam and Tommy as well, thanks to Eduardo and Gao and Chris and Jack and everybody on the Spotify side. I'm gonna see you on Sunday night, we're gonna be live on Netflix, me and Sal, right after, hopefully, a rollicking bunch of, uh, week six games. See you then.

• 2:53:31Bill Simmons?

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