Talking Basketball, NBA, and Hoops With Ryen Russillo

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to discuss the 76ers’ arduous journey to retaining their first-round draft pick, the unknown ceiling of the new-look Lakers (15:26), criticizing NBA player criticism, what it means to be the “face of the league” (32:59), biggest red flags for every NBA title contender, how the Celtics match up with the Cavaliers (01:20:18), Bill’s latest internet rabbit hole (01:55:59), and more. Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Ryen Russillo Producers: Kyle Crichton and Chia Hao Tat The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Order Michelob ULTRA today, available on Doordash! ENJOY RESPONSIBLY © 2025 ANHEUSER-BUSCH, MICHELOB ULTRA® LIGHT BEER, ST. LOUIS, MO. 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?

  Coming up, Sundays, basketball, Rosillo. You know the drill. It's next. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. And whether it's a flea flicker or a tush push, you need a plan that fits your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you. So they can help personalize coverage for your life and for your budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Excitement is in the air. That's right. It's the start of NBA season. I can't wait to get together with friends, share some Michelob Ultras and watch Tip Off. Plus, as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting you closer to the action with experiences that make you feel like you're courtside to actual courtside tickets.

• 0:45Bill Simmons?

  Enter now for a chance to win at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Opening U.S. residents, 21 plus. Begins on October 1st, 2026. Ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes and details. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. We have a new rewatchable coming for you on Monday night. We did an Oscar winner. You'll be able to watch that as a video podcast on Spotify. You can watch it on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. If you love the Oscars, this is going up before the Oscars, but Sean Fantasy and Amanda Dobbins will be reacting to the Oscars.

• 1:26Bill Simmons?

  I think right after the telecast, so check out the big picture for that. We're also brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook, where I don't know if you know, but we're doing these player performance doubles with FanDuel. Two-leg parlays already made for you. Take an NBA player prop, combine it with a bet on that player's team to win. And starting this week, we will have a Ringer PBT on a player performance bet placed on one of the Tuesday games. Rockets Pacers, Warriors Knicks, Bucks Hawks, Nets Spurs, Clippers Suns. I'm going to tweet out my pick on Tuesday. Stay tuned. Be sure to claim the Ringer PBT in the carousel on the FanDuel Sportsbook app. Last thing to plug before we get to the podcast.

• 2:09Bill Simmons?

  Celtic City, the documentary series we did about the Boston Celtics. It's nine episodes over nine weeks. It is on Max and HBO. It premieres Monday night. Get ready for it. Uh, once a week, it's old school. You can watch an episode, you can think about it. Then the next week, another one comes on. It's almost like how they have with White Lotus. That's Celtic City. So, uh, please check that out. We spent a lot of time on it. Really proud of it. So Celtic City, Monday, March 3rd. Get ready. All right. Coming up, got a lot of weird basketball topics to talk about with Russillo. Some big picture stuff, some alpha dog stuff in the league between the teams. Cleveland had a big Friday. We're covering it all next. First, our friends from Pearl Jam.

• 3:12Bill Simmons?

  All right. We are taping this a little after 12:30 Pacific time. Just watch Celtics Nuggets that we're going to talk about later. The star of Shot Caller 2 is here, Ryen Russillo. Uh, you look great. I, the, the, the listeners can't hear, can't see it, but you got like, uh, it's like an early 2000s Red Sox setup guy, Fu Manchu kind of look. Is that a Van Dyke or a Fu Manchu?

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. Um, I was looking at some old pictures of myself. Well, I usually break this out a couple of times a year and I did it when I got my license picture taken last summer and the picture of my license is just horrifying. And so for whatever reason, I don't know. I just, I used to do when I was in my twenties. I, I usually do do it every now and then. So we're, uh, we're back.

• 3:59Bill Simmons?

  I love the board with your face moments. Not just you, but me, I have them too. Where you're just like, ah, fuck it. Grow a mustache.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Didn't you do it for PTI?

• 4:09Bill Simmons?

  I did. We did. We did mustache week. Me and Levittard. We just both grew like big, bushy, like buddy cop mustaches. Yeah, it's fun. Lately I've been shaving. I'm like, that's like, that feels like a move now to be like, yeah, I'm going to shave like a couple of times a week. Back with the shaving.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Honestly, if you went clean shaven, you're just getting ahead of where this is all going.

• 4:30Bill Simmons?

  That's

• 4:30Speaker 01

  In a couple of years, because there's going to be a stretch like anything that's, whether it's fashion or hairstyles. I mean, this is not insightful. It's all cyclical. But there's going to be a stretch years from now where you're like, what the hell was going on? Everyone just had a beard? Like, everybody just had a beard. I remember being so early to the beard that I showed up to the national championship game with it when it was Oregon Auburn. And Todd McShay and Jesse Palmer on the sideline being like, you, you didn't shave? And I'm like, I'm at a football game. I'm not even on TV. And they're like, yeah, but dude, like, you look terrible.

• 5:04Bill Simmons?

  It is funny. So how many years ago was that? Like, early 2010s range?

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:08Bill Simmons?

  Mid 2010s.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Cam was still in college. So it's like, I think it's 15 years ago, that game.

• 5:13Bill Simmons?

  I remember between the first and second years when I was on the countdown show and I showed up for something during the summer and I had a beard. And everybody was like, you're not going to have that on TV, right? Like, they were freaked out by it. It does feel like the beard, the beard stuff has shifted by the last, and then COVID just, it just was full bloom. COVID was, was kind of the apex mountain for beards. Everyone was just like, I don't care anymore.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, that cranked it up. That was like the home run PED phase of beard. We were like, Luis Gonzalez has how many home runs?

• 5:47Bill Simmons?

  It's the early 2000s.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, because then it's a, it's a bit like the arm sleeve thing, like the early arm sleeve tack guy. You're like, all right, I don't, probably don't want to mess with that guy. You know, it's like somebody who's really friendly, but they blink a lot. And just go, eh, I might want to stay away from him.

• 6:04Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you're so over blinking is, is a fear thing for you a little bit?

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Yes. Certain size, a guy that blinks a lot, want nothing to do with it.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Never thought about that?

• 6:15Bill Simmons?

  Good tip. No, it's a good tip.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a good tip for everybody. Yeah.

• 6:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  So anyway, I think the sleeve, the sleeve thing turned into, I just felt like there should have been some prerequisite. Like, you're going to get double sleeves. You're getting arm sleeves. You know, now I don't, and so I think the beard was some kind of transition off of that. I likely will never be clean shaven. Like, I cannot even remember the last time, just full up lather. I don't even have shaving cream at my house.

• 6:43Bill Simmons?

  I would have a beard way more often, but mine just gets white and it actually it used

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 6:48Bill Simmons?

  Used to hide some stuff, but now it's like you actually look younger when you don't have the beard. There's been some weird phases since, ever since I could shave. I think sideburns were a really weird stretch in that 92 to 94 stage inspired by Brandon and Dylan and 90210. And then all of a sudden, people were doing different sideburns things for like a year and a half. That was weird.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  There was also the

• 7:12Bill Simmons?

  High flat top look was in for a little bit. Like, there's definitely been some weird stages looking back on. What was going on there?

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Well, the sideburns thing is again, just the cycle of let me see how low I can bring these down. And it was fine. And then everybody was like, all right, get rid of these. But I remember the first moment, I mean, I couldn't even shave. Like, who am I kidding? But the first moment, guys in junior high for like travel basketball, you know, there'd be a couple early bloomers, if you know what I'm talking about. And you're just like, what the hell's this guy doing? He's got a shaving kit. And like, this guy from Willimantic, like, what's going on? And so then dudes who couldn't even shave, me being one of them, you just felt left out. So guys started shaving their sideburns up as high as possible.

• 7:52Bill Simmons?

  Right. That was a weird, I didn't like that era.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  I hope that never comes back. But yeah, there was also, there was just a lot of chin shit in the early 2000s out of boredom.

• 8:03Bill Simmons?

  I feel like that was baseball related. Cause baseball really had that big comeback in the late 90s, early 2000s, steroids driven, Yankees driven, Yankees versus Red Sox, Bonds and the homerun, Maguire. And then the relievers and the homerun sluggers all started having weird facial thing and it just took off.

• 8:24Bill Simmons?

  Remember Duncan tried it? Duncan had a year in the early 2000s when Duncan went with like the shaved head. A little like your look right now, but it was like, what are you doing? You're Tim Duncan. Why, why are you trying this? What are you trying to look like? He almost looked like Dennis Haysbert.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  The white beard call is right, though, because now I'm at the point where if I let it go, it's patchy in areas where it's not colored. And then I have buddies that are dying their beards. And then all I can think about is Richard Kimball. And I just think like, I don't know, man. Like, I might, I might want to, like, at this point, I don't know that you're necessarily hiding your age, but there are definitely dudes that when they go full beard now, I'm really, even though you've got this salt and pepper thing, you're going way more salt and pepper.

• 9:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  And you've aged yourself so much. So, you know, I don't, I remember when Calhurt's contract was up. I think he had red hair. And I, I was like, what's going on?

• 9:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, he joined FS1. He went, he went blonde for a bit. I've never died or done anything. I just can't do it. I'm just like, if, if nature is taking me certain directions, so be it. It's the way it's gonna have to go.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  I had a really hard time having that ball patch in my head. It was just brutal. And it really.

• 9:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the celebrity game really shook you. The, the high camera shot.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, if I see John Barry to this day, it might be on.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Because my buddies.

• 9:47Bill Simmons?

  Oh, he mentioned it?

• 9:48Speaker 01

  My buddies wanted to kill John Barry.

• 9:50Bill Simmons?

  Did he make a joke about it?

• 9:51Speaker 01

  He talked about it the entire fourth quarter, apparently. I can't even go back and watch the tape. It's too traumatic.

• 9:56Bill Simmons?

  Wow. I wonder if that's on you, the Youtubes.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Oh, it's all over the place. So my, my friends, I'm talking about, and again, Massachusetts friends that aren't exactly the most supportive people.

• 10:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Scholars have argued, well, they don't even argue about it. And so they were like, hey, what the fuck is up with John Barry? And I went, I don't know. Like, I just got done with the game, you know, like, I'm, I'm sitting here trying to ISO against Hunger Games. And I got the Secretary of Education telling me to calm down a little bit. And then I had to sub myself in.

• 10:25Bill Simmons?

  Which Hunger Games person?

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Uh, was it a Josh or something?

• 10:30Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that little, the, the, he was smaller, right? Josh somebody? Yeah.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  I pushed him pretty hard at one point because I just wasn't playing well. I'd actually had like a crack in my leg and, um, you know, whatever. Now I'm making excuses.

• 10:42Bill Simmons?

  So were you the guy who tried too hard? Josh Hutcherson. Were you the guy who tried too hard in the celebrity game? Cause in my game, it was the actor Jesse Williams, who just was going all out. Like he was Russell Westbrook.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  I didn't, look, I shouldn't, I was not a celebrity. Um. You know ESPN was usually pretty good about trying to get somebody on air involved in some of that stuff.

• 11:03Bill Simmons?

  I liked it.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Whatever it was. Yeah, it was just, obviously I'd want to do it, but I clearly wish I had gotten to play before that because then when I went back home to talk to buddies that I played with regularly, they're like, you're terrible now. Like we talked so much shit about like they were like, look out, he's going to go off in this thing. And I was like, yep, I know. But then on the other side, it was a bit like when Kyrie was having his playoff run last year where even if he went four for 20, people would be like, his joy is back and it's unbelievable.

• 11:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  So the threshold for like a good Kyrie stretch was pretty low. And I think it was the same. And so when I got back to ESPN, people were like, oh, you played really well. And I was like, eh, not really. And then you got called bald, I guess for a straight hour. So.

• 11:46Bill Simmons?

  That would be a good NBA award at the end of the year that we should vote on the joys back award. Where we have to vote whose joy was the most back. Who's the, who's the joy of back winner this year? Next year, like the odds on FanDuel's, FanDuel's posting 26 odds and like KD is a minus 300 favorite for the joys back. He hasn't even traded yet.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Right. Because you actually have to factor in the pre miserable.

• 12:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  You can't just pick somebody who's happy all the time. You have to get somebody who's a really moody dude.

• 12:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's tough. I don't know who our joys back guy is.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Well, it's wherever Durant ends up. I think.

• 12:23Bill Simmons?

  For next year.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  It's probably off the board.

• 12:26Bill Simmons?

  Is it Kyrie? Maybe it's Kyrie. Maybe Kyrie because the, the trade was so late last year or the, the turnaround was so late last year. Maybe he's grandfathered in and he's the favorite this year.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  I don't know. He would have won it last year. Could there be Kyrie joy is back voter fatigue? Cause he would have won it last year.

• 12:43Bill Simmons?

  Like a back to back. Donovan Mitchell, who I don't think was completely miserable last year, but I do think has, has like an added level of joy this year. And I think he would be somebody I would at least accept the thing. Paul George probably would be last in the voting. He'd be the, the joy is not back. If that was an award.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  When Embiid's on another team, when they do the joy is back, sit down feature for.

• 13:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. No, it's Jimmy Butler.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Oh, perfect. Yeah. You can't even.

• 13:10Bill Simmons?

  Jimmy Butler's like, he had five points the other night when Steph had 56 and they interviewed him in the locker room and he was like, just delighted. He was saying, I'm just so pleased to be here for this.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Every Jimmy Butler quote, I feel like, did Aaron Sorkin write the perfect, like recovery? Like every quote, it's not just one good quote. It'd be like 12 for 12. They're all perfect.

• 13:32Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  And you think like, hey, Sorkin, come up with a script of this player that basically sabotaged himself, destroyed his own market value, destroyed his own free agency. And like, this isn't new, even if we could get into some of the debates, which I think there's some fair criticisms of some of the Miami stuff, but I mean, ultimately it was Butler that just checked out on the whole thing. You're like, okay, but when he goes to this new team and everybody starts making threes and they win a bunch of games, like give us perfect quotes. Every quote Butler has for like two weeks has nailed it.

• 14:03Bill Simmons?

  It's one of those situations where you're like, oh, I forgot this guy had teeth. We hadn't seen his teeth for like three years because he hadn't smiled since like 2021.

• 14:14Bill Simmons?

  It's like, oh, there's Jimmy Butler's teeth. They're back. Uh, giving these perfect, long monologue answers. And if, if I was on the heat, I'd be so pissed. Like, oh my God, really?

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Was that easy?

• 14:26Bill Simmons?

  This happy?

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:27Bill Simmons?

  You're this happy? Steph is like this much of a joy to be with? Apparently he is. It seems like, I mean, that's another one is Steph is our joy MVP of just like, he just parcels out joy to other people. He's able to like transfer it to them.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Just all you have to do is play with him and then go, when everybody, this is what happens when you cut.

• 14:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Like you cut and then all this stuff is just wide open. I mean, still even at Steph's age with this, so. Butler, it was funny because we had Anthony Slater on who, you know, from the Athletic, he's national, but you know, his background is the Warriors. And he made a really good point because I think anybody that knew about what was going on before the trade deadline and all the different conversations you hear, like the Warriors are a little split. Well, ultimately it matters if Lacob or Dunleavy care, probably more so Lacob because Lacob's the one that's going to have to, as they have him void out the player option, you give him north of a hundred million bucks and you're like, all right. You know, like I would never want to be an owner or a GM in that situation. Be like, the way we can take a chance here is giving Jimmy Butler two plus, you know, hundred million plus over the next two years.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  But Slater was like, whatever the internal debates were, it was what are we disrupting now? A maybe non-playing team? So who cares? And that kind of ends the argument really, especially when you see these results.

• 15:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I said on the, on the pod right after that, it wasn't a hail Mary. It was somewhere between a third and nine and a third and 13 and the guys kind of covered and you throw it anyway. But the odds of Jimmy Butler just going to go and stay and being good immediately were pretty high. And then the odds of him enjoying playing with Steph, that seemed pretty high. And then just watching the weight of the world be immediately lifted off Steph's. I, this would have been a more fun segment if they hadn't gotten crushed by Philadelphia last night.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he didn't play.

• 16:14Bill Simmons?

  Game I did not watch, Quentin Grimes went nuts, Butler didn't play, but.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Can you believe Dallas traded Quentin Grimes?

• 16:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, well, how about, can you believe Philly traded for Quentin Grimes when it was clear that they were supposed to be headed toward a tank thing? Um, I'm, I'm intentionally not, this is not an over-prepared pod because I wanted to do more back and forth stuff, not have like set segments.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  We'll nail it so far because.

• 16:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we, we, there's definitely a couple, uh, big picture stuff I want to hit, but the Philly thing, which I was going to mention later, but we should talk about now because we had Embiid, there was a report yesterday, Embiid went to the owner. It felt like this week was about Philly trying to subtly pin stuff on, on Daryl Morey, the GM. That, that would, you know, we, like, that was something I saw on our show. Well, Daryl Morey was the one pushing for the Embiid extension.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Right. Because if we're going to go down that road. Are you saying, I'm just to interject quickly, just are you going off of like the rumbling of like Josh Harris really was like, not sure that he wanted to do this.

• 17:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, can I?

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Is that what you're talking about?

• 17:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we have to hit this quickly because this is absurd and I'm not going to allow it. Ultimately, one guy owns a basketball team. And when it's that amount of money and it's that big of a decision, that guy's making the call. He's not deferring to the GM. He's not going, I don't want to do this and that's a lot of money, but Daryl says we should, so I'm just going to do it. It's, it's not happening. That's not how the league works. Like the reason Kaminga is still on the Warriors is because Joe Lacob didn't want to trade Kaminga. There's no other reason. Joe Lacob likes Kaminga. He wants, he doesn't want to give up on him and that's why he wasn't part of any of those trades. The owners control the show and they're going to decide what happens.

• 17:55Bill Simmons?

  So they could pass the buck and I'm not defending Daryl because I thought, uh, I would have rather resigned than give Embiid that extension.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  But nobody's going to do that. There's 30 of these jobs.

• 18:06Bill Simmons?

  I would have been like, listen, just can you, can we just talk buyout? Cause this is the dumbest, I can't believe we're doing this. Uh, but then we're now in the bus throwing stage with this Philly situation. And they're in a weird spot because if they get the seventh pick and they don't end up with one of these top six picks in a draft, that's awesome. This is a catastrophic, we haven't had a season this bad for a team in 10 years.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  So you would disagree with my tweet about this being the second worst thing a front office has done, unless you'll allow me the, the leniency that I'm including ownership in that. Cause you're right. I mean, nobody, nobody goes as an owner, like there's so much stuff that happens with ownership, making the final calls and these things. I think even sometimes I'll forget that. Not that I don't know it, but I'd like that you're reminding us of it because.

• 18:53Bill Simmons?

  It's never happening without him saying, yes, okay, I'm in.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  It's three years, 192.9 million. He has a player option in three years for $70 million. He's out for the season. And then when you start hearing about breaking a bone in the leg to help recovery. Um, and I think there was a lot of stuff that was kind of nasty about this where, you know, I don't, I forget who it was, but basically laid out all the options for the 76ers. Then it got turned into the 76ers looking into the retirement exemption. If you, if you can't play again, it's like, look, we're not, we're not even there.

• 19:26Bill Simmons?

  We're two years away from that.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Right. My point of the entire extension was I remember when it happened, I, all I could think of was you have him. Like I know there was all the Knicks stuff, you know, but you, you have somebody who's basically missed half of their career.

• 19:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  And you haven't really done anything with them. We know what the playoff regular season.

• 19:49Bill Simmons?

  You made this second round twice.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Right. So. What's the rush?

• 19:55Bill Simmons?

  Also, you watched him in the Olympics. You watched him in the Olympics not look 100%.

• 20:02Bill Simmons?

  So, so if you don't sign him, you still have under a contract for two years. You can't do the wait and see that what's he gonna do like hold out? You know, it was just, it's a catastrophic decision. And it was bad when it happened. We talked about it when it happened. We talked about it in our season preview. What did you think just out of curiosity? What was the worst decision than that, than that extension?

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Well, you know, Luca's on the Lakers now.

• 20:27Bill Simmons?

  Oh, fair. I thought you were talking offseason. Yeah. Yeah, Lucas, you're right. Luca trades, uh, number one entrenched.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  I've gone to three Lakers games.

• 20:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you're like, when are you buying a jersey?

• 20:44Speaker 01

  I'm Mr. Laker right now.

• 20:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you're just going.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  You know, just seeing him progressively get better and better, which I know is shocking to some that he had missed two months. A big guy who weighs 270 didn't look super crisp right out of the gates.

• 20:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  And just seeing his progression continue and the comfort and what comes with him being comfortable. Like as soon as he starts yelling and getting pissed off, you're like, okay, this is, this is heading in the right direction. That's why I thought that first game that he played against Utah was so funny because he was so tired.

• 21:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  He didn't have time for any of that stuff. And I think a lot of basketball players, even the greatest ones. They'll, they'll try to just find a way to fit in a little bit. And with Luca, it's like, we don't know. Don't, don't try to fit in. Just go ahead and play your style, which I know we're gonna do some Lakers stuff. Because I saw your clip this week and, and I'm with you that. The, the biggest compliment is that now I don't even know what the ceiling is on the possibility for this team, which I think a lot of us thought when this trade happened. It's like, okay, that might ruin 25, but it makes all the sense in the world because now you get to reset your franchise. And now I think that conversation has shifted quite a bit here.

• 21:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's the thing he used to do in Dallas and I've been interested in why, because I know JJ knows it. I think JJ's done a really good job this year. Luca is one of those, do I have it or not in the first quarter guys? Which I think Tatum's a little bit like this too, where they'll use the first quarter to see.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Steph does it all the time.

• 22:16Bill Simmons?

  And I think the Lakers have already been like, yeah, you figure out in the first quarter how you are. And I've been so impressed by LeBron just kind of, all right, I'll, I'll wait and see too. And then I'll see where I fit in today. And then he always gets his stats and he's been, you know, I'm sure you saw it in person. Like he's as active as he's been in a couple of years, but.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  The defensive stuff that LeBron is doing, because you know, I think it's totally fair where when they're bad defensively, a lot of it, you know, there's, there's stuff that I know that we'll get into and I don't know how much rotational Laker stuff you want to talk about between now and where they were. They were a bad defensive team, but you know, he's had his ups and downs, but they're, I mean, this group where you went Luca Reeves, LeBron on the perimeter. Now no AD behind it, like how good can they be defensively? And they've been incredible. And I'm actually going to give a little credit here because Greg St. Jean, who's the son of, of Gary, who's a long time Warriors exec. He was with the Lakers when LeBron was there before, then he was at Dallas with Luca. Then he comes back on a JJ staff and I know him a little bit, so certainly I'm biased.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Be like, hey, you doing anything tonight? And he'll be like, I'm installing our, you know, entry passes against the Utah Jazz. And it's like, all right, you know, he's just, he's just one of those guys to be a head coach at some point.

• 23:27Bill Simmons?

  I have this alternate pin down defense I'm working on, pin down three.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're working on a lot of side out of bounds stuff today.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  I think his relationship with the players, like in the fact that these two superstars, you know, have been there. I think JJ has a lot to do with it. They're just so much more prepared as a basketball team. And there was also stuff like at one point when the record wasn't that much better, we're like, oh, JJ read it. Cause let's face it, like most people were rooting against JJ being successful because of the background. But NBA head coaching paths are, are very non-traditional. Okay. I mean, this has been going on for 20 plus, I don't even know, maybe even longer than that. You would know better than I would, how many times you're like, okay, I guess they're just going to make that guy head coach. And I remember when the records are similar, there was a bit like, oh, well, this isn't any better than Darvin Ham. And you watch them now and how prepared they are, whether it was the Denver game we were talking about just a week ago.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  This team has, has figured some stuff out on defense, on defense that I just didn't think was possible.

• 24:24Bill Simmons?

  I agree. And even when you're watching them, it still feels like they have like legitimate holes. And yet collectively, they've figured out how to cover up for a lot of them. Like, I still feel like the right kind of point guard can just get whatever shot they want.

• 24:38Bill Simmons?

  And then the bench, some of the bench guys that just don't trust at all, but it works and everybody, it's like JJ said this couple of weeks ago, that the biggest lesson he learned as coach during the season was it's all about whether you guys play hard. And it's the most simple point ever. It wouldn't be an interesting mind the game episode. But I think this is the recurring theme for the best teams in the league. Like all of them give a shit game to game, quarter to quarter, half to half. And the Lakers, to their credit, it's, uh, it's impressive. And then you look at Philly on the flip side of that. Where how many times did you watch a Philly quarter where you're like, this is the worst thing I've ever seen? What's happening? Why, how are they allowing this? Same for the Phoenix Suns where they're just like, yeah, just gonna go in the corner.

• 25:22Bill Simmons?

  Not, if I'm not getting the ball, I might not run back.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  The crazy thing about the Suns group is normally you could point to like lack of rotational consistency last year, and yet they still hadn't, like you look at last year's season. And you thought last year was a disappointment because you could just go, imagine if they had all three guys.

• 25:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, would they win like 48?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  They were the sixth seed, weren't they?

• 25:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they were like 47, 48 wins.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  You have this quirky clutch stat that doesn't even make any sense of how bad they were offensively. And you're just like, well, there's no way that'll happen again. Then when I was looking at it for my show, you look at the three dudes and you're getting this elite shot making this incredible output. It's almost like 80 points per game. I think in February, when I did the numbers for those guys. And then it's like, yeah, but everything else like doesn't work. I know Bull Bull's had a really nice run here, but let me actually Laker minute rotation you.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Scouting report. If he has a clean look on the catch and three, he's probably gonna reset himself and move. All right.

• 26:23Bill Simmons?

  Long, I would add that, put long for Bobo, long.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Long length.

• 26:29Bill Simmons?

  Long length.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Which is one of my favorite things I've ever seen.

• 26:31Bill Simmons?

  Be careful, be careful attacking him long.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  In November, the Lakers were 25th on defense. They were eight and six that month. They were 20, 25th on defense, right?

• 26:40Bill Simmons?

  And it felt worse.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're, you know, you're looking at it going at, probably gonna be their thing. They're just not gonna be very good defensively. Why would that be? Well, D'Angelo Russell for that month, 26 minutes a game. Cam Reddish, 21 minutes a game. Dalton Connect is making threes, but he's playing 26 minutes per game. You look at where they're at now in their last 10, and then if I give you the, their number two defense in the NBA, uh, behind your Detroit Pistons, who are just their own story.

• 27:07Bill Simmons?

  And they're like fourth in the last 20, I think, too. So it's, it's getting better each, every 10 game stretch is better than the last 10 game stretch.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  When you shoot it well and you play defense, you're gonna win a bunch of games. So the February minutes, look at the breakdown. So you're replacing D'Angelo Russell 26 minutes a game, depending on the month. Again, I'm just using November. In February, Dorian Finney-Smith, 30 minutes a game.

• 27:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Vando, who just hacks the shit out of everybody, but he's in there for 15 minutes fighting his ass off. Dalton's only playing 13 minutes a game. Um, he's also not shooting it great in February. Then Jordan Goodwin comes in and wreaks havoc on everybody and LeBron's had the second, second or kind of tied for second best defensive rating of any of the main regulars. So.

• 27:48Bill Simmons?

  Right. You get two-way LeBron back as part of all of this, because he was one-way LeBron for two months.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  That's the point. Yeah.

• 27:55Bill Simmons?

  He's been really good. Uh, the Philly thing, I don't know what the answer is.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Did you look at the lottery odds?

• 28:04Bill Simmons?

  The thing is if they, they're probably gonna be sixth and all it takes is one team to jump them. It's this incredible lottery thing because.

• 28:13Bill Simmons?

  If they, if they don't keep the top six, one team jumps them and they fall back to seven. And then OKC gets that pick and OKC's what could be like a 64 win team and probably going to be in the finals. They're going to get the seventh pick, eighth pick in this awesome draft that I've been dabbling in a little bit. I'm starting to get some draft opinions. We don't have to do that today, but this looks like if you're in the top five in this draft, you're getting somebody that is going to be legitimately exciting, right? Like if you got Edgecombe with the fifth pick, it's like that guy might be awesome. He might be, um, you know, like an all NBA wing in seven years. I don't know. This draft just seems stacked, especially compared to this rookie class we just had. So anyway, uh, the Philly thing, wow.

• 28:59Bill Simmons?

  And the Eagles won, and I think the Philly fans are still riding a high, but, uh, it's hard to imagine a bleaker situation.

• 29:08Bill Simmons?

  Unless you're the Suns, because I think that one's slightly bleaker. There's really only the, we got to trade Booker move and it just seems like they're adamant they're not going to trade him. I just don't think they're going to get a lot for Durant. Last year of his deal, making 50 plus million. I don't know what you're getting for him. Year 19 in the league, clearly not exactly the same as where he was seven years ago. I don't, what are you getting for him? Not that much.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Do you want to do some reckless speculation?

• 29:38Bill Simmons?

  Washington would be the most fun for me or San Antonio would be my reckless speculation. What do you have something better?

• 29:46Speaker 01

  I just wonder if there's an, if there's a playoff exit from Houston that motivates them to go, okay, look, we have.

• 29:53Bill Simmons?

  A one timer.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Houston has done a really good, a good job here. I don't know who, who I'm picking them against in the playoffs. Like again, we could sit here and go through all the seeding stuff, but I feel like we'd just be changing it every couple of days. I wonder if there's a Houston exit where they went, you know what? Like we can't pay all these guys. We don't even have minutes for all of these guys that we've hit on.

• 30:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  And it does feel like, you know, you talk about the two timeline thing that it's just hard. It's really hard to thread that needle. And you go, is the two timeline Brooks Van Vliet with the young guys? Or is the two timeline Jalen Green and Shingun with a men Thompson emerging?

• 30:38Speaker 01

  You know, is that, is there any version where Green and Shingun are totally fine realizing that like Thompson might be the best player?

• 30:46Bill Simmons?

  Or is there a Booker trade that you just overwhelm them? I know you don't want to trade Devin Booker, but how about this? And for Phoenix, it's the only get out of jail free card they have, basically. Did you think the? And, and Houston has some Phoenix picks too, is the other piece of that. So I just don't think Ishby is going to be like, okay, cool. Now we're going to tank, we're going to do the process for a couple of years. I don't, I think that dude is wired the opposite way where we can get out of this. If we could just do this. My favorite story of the whole post-trade deadline was that Minnesota was trying to trade for Durant. That was my favorite. I just want to know how that trade's possible between Phoenix, between Phoenix and Minnesota, when they're both like well over the second apron.

• 31:29Bill Simmons?

  What is the scenario where those two teams could have made a Kevin Durant trade? It's like, well, Minnesota had been able to shed some apron stuff. Cool. Where were they doing that? Just, hey, take, can you guys take Randall? Sure, we'll take him. How are they shedding apron? I can't take some of the, some of the after the fact. And I know where it's coming, like Minnesota's like, ah, you know, they, they get to whoever.

• 31:54Bill Simmons?

  We're kicking the tires on Durant. We really try to, yeah, you can run with this. We're really trying to get him. How? You're not getting Kevin Durant. Who are you trading for him?

• 32:05Bill Simmons?

  You can't make a two for one in the apron.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  I like the Luca Milwaukee, Minnesota one. There's more, there's no more reporting on the Minnesota stuff, but like a couple of times that I had heard was like, yeah, they called, but weren't offering Luca.

• 32:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And Milwaukee had no idea he was available. It's great. There's some really good ones. Let's, uh, let's take a break and then, uh, there's a big, one big topic I want to hit with you. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Michelob Ultra, a superior light beer and the ultimate trophy. Win or lose, you're bound to enjoy the ride with a good beer in hand. Michelob Ultra crisp, refreshing, only 95 calories.

• 32:42Bill Simmons?

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• 33:24Bill Simmons?

  rebounds. Let me do those together. You can ride their pick or my pick because I'm tweeting mine out on Tuesday or make your own pick. FanDuel giving all customers a profit boost exclusively on Tuesdays for these bets. So head to FanDuel.com/BS to get your profit boost. Make every moment more with FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook. You must be 21 plus and present in select states or 18 plus and present in DC. Opt-in required. Bonus issued has non-withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wager amount. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. All right. I hate to voting an entire segment to this, but it's been bugging me and I just feel like we have to talk about it. Like because it became a huge topic on Friday and I always judge

• 34:09Bill Simmons?

  this stuff by anecdotally if people in my life are asking about it. I was like, ah, fuck, we probably have to talk about it. But LeBron started this whole thing with the face of the game and how negatively everybody's covering the league. And there was a Gilbert Arenas clip on First Take talking about how nice everyone was back in the day to the stars and now they're not. And I just, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because I've been here the whole time. I think I have a really good handle historically of the league and all the ebbs and flows.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Even if I hated you, I would have to admit that you're right.

• 34:42Bill Simmons?

  Thank you.

• 34:44Bill Simmons?

  I think this is the nicest era to be an NBA star that we've ever had. And it's amazing to me when, when people dwell on the negativity. There's other reasons for the negativity, but if you go backwards and you look at the seventies and the eighties and nineties and two thousands and how players were treated in disgust, it is no contest compared to right now. That's the first thing, and I have some stuff I want to do, but give me your initial take on that.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  I just have a follow up. I mean, why, why would you make that claim?

• 35:21Bill Simmons?

  Why would I make that?

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Why, why would you say, cause I don't know if I agree with you. I need convincing on this because my whole point is no one's ever had more access to hate, uh, which I've talked about a lot. And I think a lot of these players just consistently think that they're hated all the time. I think anybody that does anything that is publicly consumed.

• 35:39Bill Simmons?

  But that, but that's the point. It's not just the NBA. Everyone has more access to the alternate side of what you want to hear in all vocations in life. It's not an NBA thing.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  No, I understand.

• 35:51Bill Simmons?

  Everything thing. So to say it's just devoted to the NBA to me is like ludicrous. This is just what life is like now.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Sell me on the point of those decades.

• 36:01Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Being more negative towards their stars.

• 36:04Bill Simmons?

  Well, so this is the problem with this argument is that if you actually go through it, everybody has gone through the exact same stuff that the guys go through now. So I'm going to do my three minute first take monologue.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  You have time.

• 36:18Bill Simmons?

  1970s, people hated the NBA. The games were taped, delayed, and people bitched about the league and were writing crazy pieces about this league doesn't work. There's actually pieces you could read in Sports Illustrated, the league's too black. What are we going to do? Like it could not have been more negative. I promise you. Uh, Dr. J, beloved star gets to Philadelphia. He's ripped for not winning a title for the first six years until Moses gets there. That's a huge narrative of the Dr. J thing. He can't come through when it matters. Magic Johnson.

• 36:50Bill Simmons?

  Westhead gets fired in 81. He's booed at home. He's devastated, destroyed, crushed. Most selfish guy. What's wrong? These are the modern athletes. He went through all that shit and he's talked about it. He's crushed after the 84 finals too. Larry Bird after the 85.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  And that's with a title in his back pocket.

• 37:07Bill Simmons?

  Right. He already won. Larry Bird had already won too. In the 85 finals, there was the bar fight thing. Everyone was mad in Boston. But then in the 90s season, when he came back from the heel surgery, took a ton of shit about being selfish. Barkley was basically driven out of Philly by the media. Hakeem almost got traded in 92 because it got so bad with him in Houston. Isaiah just got the reputation as you're an asshole. You're a backstabber. They left him off the dream team. Michael Jordan, beloved now, too selfish to win for seven years. Up until the 91 finals, it's like he shoots too much. All he cares about is his own points. He can't win with this guy. And then after he went twice, remember in the 93 playoffs?

• 37:48Bill Simmons?

  It was so negative about the gambling stuff. He stopped talking to everybody. He stopped talking to the media. And then he retired and people are like, is he retiring? Cause it's too much pressure. Kevin Johnson took a ton of shit, couldn't stay healthy. 94 finals. Pippen didn't take the shot in the 94 playoffs and still carries it 30 years later. David Robinson, too nice loser.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Well, didn't he even come back in?

• 38:10Bill Simmons?

  Right. Well, didn't they come back in and then wore that, you know, for 30 years? Dream team 94, I promise you was not popular when it happened. People were not happy with it. Shaq, in the entire 1990s, people bitched about when is he going to take basketball seriously? Why does he do all this other stuff? Why is he doing movies and music? Patrick Ewing couldn't win the big one. Karl Malone, who took more shit than Karl Malone in the last two finals he was in. Iverson, which I think has come around and is like this beloved figure now. He was not beloved in the 90s, in the early 2000s. He took a ton of shit. Christian Laettner, bust, disappointment. All those late 90 guys, when we head into that lockout, remember how much people, how mad people were at the league? These guys are making so much money.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 38:54Bill Simmons?

  Kenny Anderson can't feed his family, all that shit.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  There was so much, like, we've definitely progressed when you go all the way back to the strike in the NFL in the early 80s.

• 39:05Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  And how much society, there wasn't one person going, you realize you're arguing for the owners to make more money. And that's what always pisses me off. It's like, okay, you want to look at these players and look at their salaries and say that they're selfish and they're entitled and all this shit. But ultimately, what you're saying, when you hope they get paid less or lose at the collective bargaining agreement table, you're hoping these owners

• 39:26Bill Simmons?

  Rich guys make more, yeah.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Make more money.

• 39:28Bill Simmons?

  And it's like, I can't identify with somebody who's making that much money. That was an attitude through the 90s. I have a couple more. Jason Kidd traded twice, took a ton of shit. Chris Webber.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  One of those trades.

• 39:39Bill Simmons?

  Well, one of those trades had to happen. Uh, but the Dallas trade. Chris Webber was an all-time hot potato guy and we called him out all the time. His Washington career was incredibly disappointing. He got to Sacramento and it was like, watch C-Web. He's gonna turn completely away from the basket to hear the ball to make Bibby. He wants no part of this. We made fun of him. Kobe, I would say was the most picked apart athlete in the 2000s. I wouldn't even say football player. And that you might go Peyton Manning, but there was a lot of Kobe stuff that then, when he won the two titles at the end of the decade, then it, they kind of circled around the other way. But it got, and there was the trial, there was a whole bunch of stuff with Kobe, but

• 40:17Bill Simmons?

  uh, if you go to the 04 finals, 05, 06, 07, him not shooting in the second half of that Suns game? And how nuts we all went after the fact? Not great. T-Mac, can't win. Vince, quit on Toronto, he's soft. KG, can't win. Dirk, who took more shit than Dirk from 06 to 2011? He's soft. He's a choke artist. He's a loser. Like, he, he, I think he took probably, other than Kobe, the most, Dwight Howard. I keep going. The point is, for whatever reason, this has been the league. And I think it's because you have these personalities that drive teams. People feel really attached to them. Either they're defensive and passionate about them, or they're mad at them. And that's just the ebb and flow in the league.

• 41:02Bill Simmons?

  I, I honestly think it's better than it's ever been with this stuff. You can find hate anywhere if you go online. Doesn't mean that people hate, LeBron has like 50 million Instagram followers.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, I know enough about those timelines. Like, I just remember, you know, when Jordan scored all the points against the Celtics and then lost, and you'd be playing a Little League baseball tournament, and every coach is sitting there in his bike shorts, you know, shitting on Jordan. Now, granted, growing up in New England was the wrong place, because all these guys are going home to worship their Larry Bird altar, but...

• 41:36Bill Simmons?

  Maybe shit had 68.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Like, the collective, yeah, cool scoring, bro, but the lack of respect for who Jordan was, because he was losing to these older, more superior, battle-tested, well-rounded basketball teams. Like, Jordan would have had a very, like, people would have destroyed him if he played now through the first seven years of his career without winning anything, because it's like, if you're the best, you know, you have that kind of attention on you.

• 42:06Bill Simmons?

  I feel like people destroyed them back in the day. I thought that was a, you know, that was a big narrative of his career, is like, yeah, he's super fun, but his Bird and Magic won titles, and he didn't. Like, my point is, this has been a narrative that we've heard forever. And if you don't win titles and you don't come through, in the NBA, you're gonna take crap. But I also feel like that goes for the NBA, for the NFL, right? It goes for baseball with somebody like Clayton Kershaw. This is what we do with sports. If you don't win the title...

• 42:34Speaker 01

  We didn't even do it. But here's the thing, we don't even do it with baseball anymore. So like, that's, because I was thinking about this face of the league stuff.

• 42:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I want to get to that, too.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Right. Like, LeBron, when you are as great as you are, unfortunately, part of that deal is, you're held to the standard where everything is dissected. And Ant got a little taste of that, because Ant was coming up, approval rating through the roof, he's so much fun, he starts talking a little shit, and then they get eliminated. They get eliminated on a May 30th, right? I looked it up. And then he had the receipts commercial on May 31st. Like, they had that one ready to go, where you're showing, like, how much this is impacting players. And I know Silver talked about this years ago, where he just said, like, "Look, we have a league where our stars..." And I'm paraphrasing here, so I hope I'm

• 43:23Speaker 01

  not too removed from the tone of what he was saying, but I think I have it. And then it was like, you kind of have a bunch of guys at the top that are pretty miserable. Like, a lot of players that are really miserable.

• 43:33Bill Simmons?

  He said that, that was when I did that interview with them at the Sloan Conference. That's when he started talking about the unhappiness with the players. And that was 2018, Rach. So it's been a storyline for seven years. It's like, why aren't our players happier?

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Right. So, you know, Ant has had probably this, this shift because the Olympics didn't go the way he thought it would go. I mean, he wasn't even out on the floor for some of that stuff. He didn't look super comfortable after talking a lot of shit.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Again, I don't look at it and go like, oh, man, now I have to reevaluate what I think about you. But Ant is very predictably going to have, if he doesn't have some kind of playoff success here in the next couple of years, it's going to turn back to everything that you just said in your timeline of like, hey, I thought this was supposed to be the guy. You hope you're one of those guys in this sport because I was thinking about Ant relation like, has anybody ever talked about De'Aaron Fox? Like, De'Aaron Fox is a really good player. Makes a lot of sense for the Spurs. I think it's a bit like the Donovan Mitchell thing where like, yeah, it's not perfect, but he's really good. And if we keep waiting around like what this magical acquisition will be, then we might be waiting forever. But De'Aaron Fox has never talked about that. So there's this group outside of these, I don't know, seven to eight players we obsess

• 44:42Speaker 01

  about every single season. There's this group that's not even part of that. And, and again, baseball, the sport, we don't even have any of those dudes anymore right now.

• 44:50Bill Simmons?

  Well, we have Otani and nobody is like, oh, Otani, face of the league. I don't know where that, the face of the league.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  It's more personal. Basketball is just way more personal than the other two sports are.

• 45:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Don't you think? Doesn't it feel like the attachment? I mean, sure, we could pick a bunch of quarterbacks that are as big as stars as any NBA players.

• 45:07Bill Simmons?

  You got helmets on during game. I, I've said this forever. Basketball is the most naked sport, whether you're at the game or you're watching TV, you feel like you have this connection with players. That's just different than the other sports. It just is, especially if you're going and you're watching them and you're watching them during timeouts, you're watching them interact in fouls and during free throws. And I think the social media aspect of it where they can connect to fans immediately, they can see fed, feedback immediately. Obviously, that's not awesome, but I think in some ways it's, it's better for them too, because, you know, in the old days, you could just like, whatever. Like, I think of back to the Peter Vessi New York Post pieces of the eighties and he would just like, you know, he was just absolutely completely eviscerate people.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  He called Alonzo Mourning, the Oregon Groner.

• 45:55Bill Simmons?

  Right, right. It's, uh, it's just a little different now. Um, and you can mobilize people, you can mobilize all your followers against somebody. There's, I, the, the face of the league thing.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, what?

• 46:09Bill Simmons?

  That's another one.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  I don't think I've, I've allowed you this.

• 46:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, cause I think it goes.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Just go for it.

• 46:13Bill Simmons?

  No, I think it goes together. I think, I think with the face of the league thing, we, we probably see it the same way. You don't talk about it. It's not like the People Magazine sexiest man of the year issue where we just nominate somebody.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:27Bill Simmons?

  Is that who it was this year? You, uh,

• 46:30Speaker 01

  Good problem.

• 46:31Bill Simmons?

  You kind of take it, right? And when you think about like, I, I've never, when I was in the eighties, loving basketball, I was never like, I wonder who the face of the league is right now. You, we didn't talk about it. We didn't talk about it in the nineties. Bird and Magic, because they won, Magic won a title as a rookie and Bird won the titles in his second year. The league just sort of shifted to them because they won. And then Bird had the three MVPs, two titles. Then Magic had three MVPs in four years and he won two titles. And it was just obvious those were the guys. And then Jordan beat Magic in the 91 finals. And guess what? That made him the guy. And then Jordan went through all the nineties and then it was like Shaq and Kobe together. I guess this is their league now. And then

• 47:12Bill Simmons?

  that fell apart. And in the mid 2000s, we're like, ah, Duncan, Spurs? Sure. Like no, wasn't like, we're like, Tim Duncan's now the face of the league. Cause one of the cases you see with this face of the league stuff is like, oh, Tatum wins three in a row. He's now the face of the league. I don't think it works that way. It kind of organically happens. Kobe had it at the end of the 2000s. Eventually it shifted to LeBron and then it shifted to LeBron and Curry together. And that's just kind of what happened. We can't nominate Anthony Edwards. It's not, like, this would happen in tennis sometimes, especially in the eighties. It'd be like Boris Becker. See the face of tennis now? Cause he won Wimbledon once? It's like, it's not how it works. You, you kind of ease into it. Nobody would pick Agassi. And then it eventually became, oh, it's Agassi and Sampras.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  What about Von Leno? Did he have the belt? He had the belt there for a little bit.

• 48:00Bill Simmons?

  I, he, it never took. It kept falling off him. But the point with the face of the league now is like, yeah, it's still Steph and Curry. And then somebody's gonna have to win a couple of titles and take it from them. But if Wemby comes in and wins two straight titles and he's the best player in the league, he's the face of the league. I just don't know what that means, Russillo. What does the face of the league mean? Just you get the most attention?

• 48:22Speaker 01

  I think we know it without defining it. You think Steph's the face of the league over LeBron?

• 48:26Bill Simmons?

  I think the two of them together are really, in the last 10 years. I do. I think it's the two of them together.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  I don't know, man. I mean, it's, you could point to a couple of those individuals.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  It's really a talking point, okay? And I think what happens is, is there's this cycle of like, Ant going, I don't necessarily want it. Cause then it's like, what are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to say?

• 48:51Bill Simmons?

  What does he want? So he's not gonna like, try to win the finals? Like, if he wins the title and he's the best player in the league, guess what? You get whatever this amorphous, made up face of the league thing is, cause you become the guy. Like, to me, it's like-

• 49:04Speaker 01

  But don't you also have to be the best player, though? Because even if Tatum, I mean, that's a lot of work to do, by the way, for Tatum, just, hey, let's add two more titles to this. Uh, as great as he is, he wasn't very good today, which I know we'll get to later, but... I don't know that he would ever be the face of the league, cause I've never thought of him as the best player in the league. At least with Steph, there were seasons where I thought he played better than LeBron. I never thought he was actually a better basketball player than LeBron. So to be face of the league, you also have to be at some point, because I know you've done this in the past with your belt hole. I just, it's a really good way to look at the league, like, who has the belt? Who had the belt then? How many belt transfers are we talking about? Jokic just had the belt for a really long stretch, which is really hard to do, but-

• 49:42Bill Simmons?

  But there's a popularity piece that Jokic just doesn't have.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  He's just not gonna have.

• 49:45Bill Simmons?

  That's why, to me, it's Curry and LeBron are the meal tickets to the league. They're the guys who are gonna be in the Saturday 8:30 game the most. They're the guys who are gonna sell the most jerseys, have the most interest. And if they're on a good team, people are gonna care the most. And it's those two.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  What did you think of LeBron's quote? Cause then it turned into-

• 50:01Bill Simmons?

  Which one?

• 50:02Speaker 01

  It basically was like, I didn't ask for it. And then it pivoted into, everybody that covers the league just shits on it, essentially, that we're all too negative.

• 50:14Bill Simmons?

  I mean, I would just have an opinion on his opinion. I don't think it's true though. Because I think when, when you hit the point where you're kind of the guy in the league or one of the two guys, there's a lot of great stuff that comes with that.

• 50:28Bill Simmons?

  You know, you make the most money, you make the most money off the court, you probably have the best chance to win. You can convince the most people to come play with you on like a, you know, on a, on a buyout contract. You can put the most pressure on your owners to do whatever you want them to do. You can make them trade everything they have for Anthony Davis. Like there's real benefits to it. I, I, I don't think it's like this heavy burden. I think for Ant, it's more a scrutiny thing that he's probably talking about like, hey, if you hit this level, you're going to be picked apart in a way that's just a little different, but that's, I mean, that could be anybody, right? That could be Timothy Chalamet right now. That could be whoever is like, whoever you think is the biggest hip hop star right now. It doesn't, it just kind of comes to the territory if you're the best at anything you do.

• 51:13Bill Simmons?

  I don't, I don't know why that would be a burden.

• 51:17Bill Simmons?

  There's, there's good and bad to everything.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  I do wonder though, like the negativity thing.

• 51:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Like I'll have pods where I'll think, are you harping on the same stuff? Yes. Again, if we're doing a basketball pod and like whatever the headline was that week, like you're going to stay topical, you're going to play the hits, but there'll be certain players and like, there's just nothing else for you to say anymore. Like it's established how you feel. There's nothing new.

• 51:43Bill Simmons?

  Like the Suns are a sunk cost as a topic for us. There's nothing else we could say about the Suns this year at this point.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Right. Like I've liked the rant for such a long time, but this past year plus, and not to bring up the hockey tweet like a third time, but he's just like, how could you possibly think that that's a good point? How could you think that just basically telling everybody fuck off? When it's like, man, you're the one, and I, that's also like part of it too. It's like this league is so different with how powerful the players are that. You know, did you think you were gonna get no criticism signing contracts and then asking out before an extension and it either kicked in?

• 52:20Bill Simmons?

  Right. Or how you treated All-Star Weekend, which was, you know, the first time the football season ends, the first time basketball is really in the limelight for real is All-Star Weekend and that everybody treats it like shit. And it's like, we're supposed to say, thanks? Like, what's our, what's our role? Everyone who went to All-Star, I've talked to a bunch of people to All-Star Weekend and they were all like, it was fucking miserable. It sucked. It was awful.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  And the timing of it is so bad now.

• 52:48Bill Simmons?

  For all the good players, like nothing? You don't care?

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, okay, the window is finally shifted. Like you are outside of the football shadow. So like, own this week. And it's like, nope.

• 53:00Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Not only are we not going to own the week, we're going to embarrass the league again. And I don't care about that week. I haven't cared about it for years. I think I've watched the game once in the last 15. This is not new that the players don't necessarily care, but they're not making the most of their opportunities. I think all of us are more negative than we are positive. Okay. I think that.

• 53:18Bill Simmons?

  But that's just life. I think everybody, I don't think that's a basketball situation. I think that's, what part isn't like that? I'm just saying like the internet breeds that. If you go to.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Are you like that to your family?

• 53:31Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm saying you go and then Twitter replies, you go on a Reddit. I remember I was, I was at a, I went to Goldsberg's class in Austin and they did all these studies on different things about how to follow basketball. And one of the, one of the things was about NBA Reddit, just the percentages of positive tweets versus negative tweets are not posts, negative posts, comments versus positive about the league. And if I just told you they did that, what would your response be? What would you think it would be? Probably like, what would the ratio be for you? Just guessing.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  I think it's going to be low. I mean, the way you're leading this, I have to pick a massive split on it. So I'll say 80% negative.

• 54:11Bill Simmons?

  No, it wasn't that it wasn't that bad. I I prejudice you by with my lead in, but it was like 35 65 or 30 70, something like that. But just people are more prone when they're on any sort of forum like that to be negative than positive. That's just, you just have to know that going in. I would argue that people at the games are way nicer, way nicer. It's not even close. I would love for people to go in a time machine and go to like the Fleet Center in 1996. Just get a feel for what those two hours were like with like an angry, you know, fan base that didn't like the product and just had the freedom to just yell at everybody. Like it's to now I look now, I I think it's actually like a pretty nice experience.

• 54:55Bill Simmons?

  Like there will be stories about, oh, there was a heckler who yelled at somebody, they kicked him out. It's like, fucking A. Like there was 30 of those. I remember going to a Golden State Sacramento game when I was visiting my buddies in San Francisco in like 98. And I had no idea that the Golden State fans hated Chris Webber so much. So it was 99. It was that first season. And they were just booing him, yelling him. It was like a two and a half hour Chris Webber roast in the stands. Anything he did, they're going nuts. Like that, those days are over. We don't see Durant and OKC, that comeback game was probably the last time anything like that happened, right?

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, getting a fan removed. And then it become because the player has the power to have that happen now. And it'll become like a topic. And then, you know, if it's a really slow day, you know, you'll discuss like, what, what does this mean?

• 55:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  And I think there's some players that actually like to look for it a little bit more than other players. And you realize like this thing that is definitely an improvement to the experience for the player, a massive because you're completely right about that. Like going to some of these crowds, going to baseball stadiums, going back to Foxborough in the day. I mean, just, you wouldn't even want to bring a kid.

• 56:09Bill Simmons?

  Well, baseball, everyone's on their phone. So that's the probably the safest place you can be an athlete. People aren't even looking up unless a foul ball's coming at them, which can't happen because there's a net.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  The bleachers used to be about how drunk were you going to get and how many fights were there going to be?

• 56:24Bill Simmons?

  And how much and what can you yell at the other players and stay and stay in the park?

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Right. So then when a player has a fan removed, then it becomes kind of this. Think piece of like the dynamic of respect and all these different things like what can you have happen and you're like, yeah, but no one was ever removed in the past. So it actually happened at a much greater rate.

• 56:45Bill Simmons?

  We're not defending the past. It's just the way it was. I just think every year is a little bit different. Listen, if, if players feel a certain way, I'm certainly going to tell them not to feel that way. I do think a big piece of this is self inflicted though by the league. The schedule's too long. If we, if we had a 70 game season or a 60 game season, I don't have to watch these extra 20 games of the Suns, right? There's more urgency for the games. The, the load management stuff, which we've talked about ad nauseam, that made it hard for players, for fans to connect with the, with the league and players, right?

• 57:17Speaker 01

  The players caught way too much shit for that though.

• 57:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, but I think it made it hard. It was something that got brought up and I do think it mattered to fans that they bought a ticket and the guy wasn't there. That's a real thing.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I'm, I'm not saying like, that's going to be the worst experience, especially you don't have the budget to go to more than one game a year and then you bring your kid and he's all fired up. He's got the jersey on and they're not playing. I think there were certain teams, like I really think what the Spurs did in a very Belichick way to just be like, hey, you know what? TNT Thursday night.

• 57:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, fuck you.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  And remember, remember the ABC game? How bad it got there for a while? Where you were like, are you guys seriously like giving the league and your television partner this much of a fuck you? Just hey, we're just going to sit everybody.

• 57:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  And I understand like what the science, and by the way, the science has proven very little because it's not like we go into the playoffs. Like every playoff story is littered with like two or three major injuries. So I'm not sure. I'm not expecting that everybody was just going to be healthy all the time, but I don't know if that's had the positive impact that everybody thought it would be when they wrote about it for non-stop, uh, for years, wrote about it non-stop for years. But that, that's part of it. I don't know, man. I, I guess sometimes I wonder, you know, clearly with this pod, we've got a large audience. Sometimes I feel like I'm. Too negative and instead of like having LeBron give this quote or some of it like, look with his quotes, I don't love all of them. All right. Uh, but he's been giving us quotes

• 58:43Speaker 01

  for two plus decades. So which public figure would I ever be like, you know what? Everything he said for 20 plus years, I've liked everything he said that that person doesn't exist.

• 58:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  It's impossible to have the Shalhame approval rating after the two decade plus run for LeBron. But when I started thinking about like just negativity, him saying everyone is too negative. Well, no, that's not the case, but then I'll, I'll know like of all the games that I watch, especially when it's on like the national broadcast and like Bronny comes into a game and then the broadcasters start talking about like how hard he works. You're like, dude, he's got an NBA uniform on and he's not good and he shouldn't be out there and this whole thing's kind of a joke. So let's evaluate it that way. But

• 59:28Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  There, there will be no, like that won't happen. So it actually strengthens your point. Whenever those broadcasts, like that's when I feel like, am I being negative or am I being like just a, a basketball fan that's frustrated with the way that the national broadcast is discussing a game or discussing certain players when you just go, hey, this person, and again, maybe I shouldn't even use Bronny, but that was just one that jumped out. It's like, you guys are going to do four minutes on like the positives here?

• 59:54Bill Simmons?

  Or, or like Philly before the start of the season, when there was pieces about, here's their plan to win a championship. And it was like, hey, uh, part of the plan is that MB is not going to play back to backs anymore. But here's what they're trying to do. They're trying to be healthy and MB is not going to play back to backs anymore. And his name might be fucked up. Um, I don't know. It just, I

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  Like, are we supposed to be positive about MB? Are we supposed to be positive?

• 1:00:18Bill Simmons?

  Philly situation or, or all of it. I, I just feel like for us, like one of the reasons I think we connected and became friends and we liked doing the pod together is we really love basketball. Like I'll, both of us will be watching these random games on stupid nights and we really give a shit about it. And You can't just talk about all the stuff you like, like, like you gotta have a little balance both ways, but I think, I think we celebrate the game as much we criticize it. There's other shows and, and personalities that I think kind of dine and the, I, this gets me attention if I do this. I don't feel like we do that. Like, I always feel like we're having a conversation about things we like and don't like about the league. Like, I love watching

• 1:01:02Bill Simmons?

  Detroit right now. I could do 10 minutes on Ron Holland right now. I fucking love Ron Holland. Ron Holland's, I haven't even watched, I probably watched 15% of the Pistons games or pieces 20%. Ron Holland seems like he's ready to get into it with everybody on every team. He's like 19 years old. I really like watching them. I appreciate the Pistons. I'm excited to watch them play the Knicks in round one. Um, I think if you lose that side of things, it, it becomes harder for me to take your criticisms seriously. You still have to fundamentally like what you're watching. I don't feel like some people out there do.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  I just like calling out the bullshit because I think there's a lot of it, whether it's another media member's quote, because then there's some guys that are just only positive. And I think, are you just this much of an ass kisser? Like what? Do you think you're gonna hang out with these guys? You know, is he gonna, gonna be able, like, the next time they have, they rent a boat, they're gonna invite you? Like, what? Fucking doing? And so, I know I'd never be that guy, but, you know, kind of your point about like Philly or even the Durant part, like, I think I've, I mean, I didn't even really get on his case during the Golden State thing because I thought he wanted to get away from Westbrook and he wanted to play perfect basketball. And he wanted to,

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  he wanted to like, you know, back to the joy topic. He wanted to experience like absolute, pure basketball joy. But when you have a four-year extension and you want Marks and Nash and everybody fired before it even kicks in, and then you come back and play, and then you ask out, and now you've put together a season, I would say more so this year than last year, but you, I mean, they got killed against Minnesota. Like, that's when the Suns died. And I was dumb enough to think that they weren't dead yet. And they were already dead, but they just had another season. And this season, so. What does Durant expect? Did he expect that people were gonna be like, man, he's still getting you like 29, 30 every single night? Because if you look at the little stuff in between, it doesn't always show it.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  This is not a locked in group. This is a group that seems to be really down on each other. I thought the Coach Bud stuff, admitting that he had told Booker to tone it down. Like, I, I just wondered, I was like, man, I wonder if that'll be-

• 1:03:20Bill Simmons?

  I thought he was gonna get fired this weekend. I really did. I thought there was gonna be like a Don Nelson next thing. All right, let's take a quick break, cuz I wanna keep talking about this. This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun? Sometimes earlier than expected? Sometimes after blowing a 3-1 series lead? But what if you went to Cancun? With Expedia, save up to 30% when you bundle and save. You can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness, though, hopefully, your team doesn't go to Cancun. 1, 2, 3 Cancun. Or, if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save, savings vary. This episode is brought to you by Core Power Protein Shakes. You know how we always talk about the little things that separate great athletes?

• 1:04:04Bill Simmons?

  Post-workout recovery is a big factor. Core Power Protein Shakes help you keep going after your workout with high-quality protein to build muscle and electrolytes to help hydrate. It's all you need for your recovery in one bottle. Available in 26 and 42 gram protein options to pick what works best for you. Visit corepower.com to learn more. So, one last thing on the, on whether people are too critical or not. I can't believe we spent this much time talking about, but I do think it's interesting. It seems like the rise of the ex-player podcasts and voices has contributed to this whole, when everybody's like, we spent too much time comparing the past to the present. And I think the social media piece of that too, where you see all these videos and these

• 1:04:48Bill Simmons?

  breakdowns of this guy against this guy. I just really hope that people realize, and I like some of the ex-player stuff, how unreliable they are as narrator, narrators. These are people that were playing the entire time. They might have opinions based on who they're against. It's not like they spent a ton of time thinking about different eras of the league and stars and comparing. And you'll just see stuff on the, on these shows or pods or on your, on your social feed where you're like- What are we doing? Like, I just feel like the discourse, big picture about basketball as it relates to errors in the past is like the worst it's ever been. And I don't think that's helping with some of this stuff.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  So you really disagreed with Arenas's point? I think that's fair to say.

• 1:05:35Bill Simmons?

  That was just one example. Where I'm just like, they just go back, like, go, go read some of the books. Go read Phil Jackson's book about Kobe in 2005. Like, we just can't, you can't just pretend stuff didn't happen.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  It's just the rate, man. It's the rate of it. And I do not understand, like, I couldn't believe the first time a coach told me, he's like, "Yeah, all the players come in and check their mentions at halftime." Like, you didn't know that?

• 1:06:02Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  And I'm thinking, like, what a ridiculous, but then I thought, okay, well, every single ESPN host, as soon as you go to break, does the exact same thing.

• 1:06:08Bill Simmons?

  That, that always, I could never believe that. What a terrible thing to do during a, during a break at a show.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  Right, because then what happens?

• 1:06:17Bill Simmons?

  Maybe somebody will say I look ugly.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Hey, I've been guilty of it. I used to do it, and then I stopped because I realized you were coming back from break, like, talking to one person.

• 1:06:26Bill Simmons?

  You're arguing with Motorcycle69.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  Every single guy did it. Every one of us. And it made all of us worse hosts. Because, you know, you're, you were distracted. You were talking to this one person. You were focusing on the one negative because nobody was gonna be like, "Hey, you know what? Really good job making a point and a really solid conclusion. No notes, can't pick holes." Because, I mean, everybody's favorite hobby now, like, even if I do a monologue on something for 10, 15 minutes, usually 15 means it's too long, it's like, "Oh, did you think about this?" Like, well, I could have done 30 minutes.

• 1:07:04Bill Simmons?

  You left out, yeah, you left out this thing.

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  Like, that is everyone's favorite hobby right now, at least for what we do, is that, well, here's the point that you didn't make. And then a lot of times, it'll be so obvious, it's like, well, I didn't even point that out, because I don't even know why anybody would even bring it up. And what we do isn't even fucking cool. So when I think about players basically doing the exact same thing, elected officials do the exact same thing. I remember I got into it with Van Pelt, I was like, "Why are you arguing with somebody right now? You're broadcasting the fucking Masters. You are broadcasting the, you're on like the seventh hole." And, you know, he- I realized like kinda no one can help themselves to different degrees. And what I like about our age group is that we know what it was like before this and we certainly are in it deep now for years and years. So we've experienced both of it. Imagine being a 20 something basketball

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  player. So like you're always going to be more impacted by the negativity, the access to it, the rate of it. I think it's just fucks a lot of guys up. So it's hard to tell players you're wrong about the negativity when it's all they've ever experienced. They're not gonna do what you did because they weren't around when you did it. They're not gonna go back and read Sports Illustrated articles from the 70s and go, you know what? I have greater perspective on this. I don't have it too bad right now. Yeah. So I don't think anything LeBron said was necessarily wrong.

• 1:08:17Bill Simmons?

  I was talking about the ex players.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. The ex-player thing.

• 1:08:23Bill Simmons?

  Although there has been some good content lately. Did you see the Vernon Maxwell on All the Smoke talking about when Hakeem slapped him? That was one of the best three minutes I've spent all year.

• 1:08:31Speaker 01

  That was so good. That clip was so good with those guys because Max respects them.

• 1:08:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  And look, Barnes is a wild card and Stephen Jackson, I think people would say is a real one. So, uh, that was, I'm totally with you. I mean, look, if you want to talk ex-players, I don't know if I trust anybody more than Jeff Teague right now.

• 1:08:51Bill Simmons?

  Jeff Teague's been great.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  Every Jeff Teague breakout is like incredible.

• 1:08:56Bill Simmons?

  I love Barnes and Captain Jack because I think when they talk about basketball and the history and how it relates now, like I actually believe in their opinions on it. I've had them on the pod and we were arguing about Kobe versus Duncan, who was the guy in the 2000s, who the one that players, right? No, they both were Kobe.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

• 1:09:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Um, but they made compelling cases for it. And it's like, that's what's fun about basketball is arguing about different things. I have never, the first time I ever remember even thinking about who the face of the league was, was when MJ was retiring and we were kinda like, what do we do now?

• 1:09:33Bill Simmons?

  And then it was like, is it Grant

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Went on for years. It went on for years.

• 1:09:35Bill Simmons?

  Iverson, but it was more like there was such a void. Uh, NFL has never really had to deal with it because they always have two or three quarterbacks who are just there, ready to roll, right? Like that, like Brady and Manning had it forever. And then Aaron Rodgers was just right there and then he moves in and then all of a sudden Mahomes showed up and he's there and Joe Burrow and they've, they always have two or three dudes. Josh Allen's in there now, Lamar.

• 1:10:01Bill Simmons?

  Maybe a couple of other guys will pop in over the next couple of years, but they always have the four to five. The NBA, there will be stretches. We felt it in the mid 2000s. It was like, what do we do? Kobe's on shitty teams. We thought it was going to be him. Shaq's getting old. Duncan's not clicking with people, you know?

• 1:10:18Bill Simmons?

  Is it Dwyane Wade? Oh, Dwyane Wade, oh, six finals. Maybe it's Dwyane Wade. And it was just a lot of that for basically all the way through until we ended up with LeBron and Kobe as kind of the, uh, the guys. But I, I just think it's way more organic than us deciding. It can be the face of the league. If he kicks everybody's ass and wins the title and is clearly the best guy in the league. That's how it happens. There's no other scenario. Right? And then he's selling shoes and people talk about him and people like my mom know who he is. Those are all the checkpoints you have to hit.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. It doesn't happen without

• 1:10:55Bill Simmons?

  We don't decide.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Doesn't, no. And there was that push to try to figure out who the post Jordan guy was. And that void did go on forever. It was the Kobe All-Star game where it just was going to be too early for Kobe to take that on. After some of these other misses and Iverson didn't have the playoff success other than the finals run, but the team just wasn't good enough for this to be like, oh, this is phase one of this sustainable thing with the Sixers. It was kind of just this remarkable defensive run with an offense built around one guy, just hopefully going crazy enough to get you some playoff wins. So I think the lesson in that is that that face never like that face storyline never developed, like that person did not present themselves.

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  And whatever that void was, it didn't mean the league was just going to swallow itself up and cease to exist. And I mean, we can get into some of the ratings stuff, the popularity, whatever.

• 1:11:45Bill Simmons?

  Uh, there, which I There's one piece though.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  It's different.

• 1:11:48Bill Simmons?

  There's a personality piece that I feel like. You know it when you see it, that's probably not going to work as like the lead guy. And I think Grant Hill was a good example. Grant Hill was awesome. But I never felt like he was, there was like a sense of like, almost like danger missing with him. Right. And then Duncan was the same thing. Duncan was the best guy. I still have Duncan like sixth or seventh all, I think I have him seventh all time. And I still think he was the best guy of the 2000s. And yet there was never a moment where people were like Duncan, like they, they ignored a lot of the stuff that he did. They focused on the wrong things and he just didn't care. Right. And I think Tatum is a little bit like that now. Where Tatum's never going to be the best guy in the league, I don't think.

• 1:12:31Bill Simmons?

  But he could be the most successful guy of this decade. Right. He could be the guy when we leave the 2020s, the guy that was the best guy in the most title teams. But he doesn't have that sense of, that, that whiff of something, that same thing with Duncan and Grant Hill. Where it's just, like you, you have to pull on everybody and there's something about Tatum that seems like

• 1:12:56Bill Simmons?

  it doesn't click with people. I don't know what it is.

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  I thought during the broadcast today, that was really interesting because it then turned into like another face of the league conversation. And Doris was talking about like Tatum and essentially saying, you know, if you're that person, then you shouldn't even have to address it. And I love that Breen was like, okay, but he was asked about it. While it was also a game where there was an ad that started with Tatum in a press conference, the commercial where the reporter, again, it's an actress going, you're on top of the basketball world right now. And you're like, okay, he's got the title and he's the best player on a title team. And I think you're rounding up a bit on like what's possible for him because I know we're going to get to Cleveland and all this other stuff.

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  But I liked that Breen was like, okay, but of all the superstars, like this guy is incredibly polite and he also plays like every single game. So yeah, I think there's a personality thing. Yeah, there's a personality disconnect. Like Iverson was the coolest thing ever. All right.

• 1:14:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  It was the coolest.

• 1:14:02Bill Simmons?

  Really polarizing when he was playing. I think people like you and I were probably in the minority of like, I fucking love Iverson. I love how hard he plays. But there's other people that, you know, were like, eh.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he kind of lost, he lost me a bit there towards the end of the Philly stuff because it's just.

• 1:14:19Bill Simmons?

  Mid 2000s on, we're not awesome.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's, there's an approach to like, if you're setting the tone as the best player in a team and then you're taking off and doing your own thing all the time, it just can't be bothered. Like, I don't know how that's good for the team and I don't know how that's good for yourself. So, once we had access to a little bit more of that stuff, I think that's also something else, too, is like, guys used to be able to hide. Guys would be able to hide. We didn't know what was going on with them. We know what's going on with these guys literally every single fucking minute. So, the relationship is so much more intimate and when it is that more intimate, then you're much more likely to find things that you don't like about some of these dudes. But as far as like.

• 1:14:57Bill Simmons?

  But isn't that everything now? It's not just the NBA. I feel like that's every aspect of life is like that now.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  Think about how many people impressed you in the first five minutes and then ultimately let you down. Like, if you think about your professional career, the number of people that, once you had more exposure to them, I mean, I know that's the case for me, so I don't want to speak for you, but then you were like, oh, man, I had high hopes for this person. That's why now, seriously, if somebody nails it with me in the first five to 10 minutes, I'm more worried.

• 1:15:27Bill Simmons?

  You're suspicious.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm like, you were so good in the first five to 10 minutes. I thought, now I'm like, what's wrong with this person?

• 1:15:35Bill Simmons?

  Well, the, the cult concept of celebrity and how fast people can get it and then how fast they can lose it, I feel like that process has definitely been sped up. I see it with, like, my daughter, when I'm always, I'm always asking her, like, what are you, what are you watching? Who do you care about? What's your favorite podcast? What's your favorite video podcast? And it always seems to change.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  What is her favorite podcast?

• 1:15:54Bill Simmons?

  Every, I think it was the canceled podcast, but I think now they had some shit. What, what, what's interesting is, it's like the same cycle over and over again, where she, she really likes somebody and then be like, why don't you listen to that podcast anymore? Oh, they had a meltdown. Oh, one of the co-hosts got canceled. Oh, they ended up turning on each other. And it's just like, the internet just like hyper, hypercharges all of these kind of rises and falls with all of these different social media. It's hard to keep up with basketball. You have the same rise and fall stuff, but the guys are making $50 million a year. And it's like Kevin Durant's on the top of the world in 2018. And then he's down and then he's up and then he's down. Then he goes to Phoenix. It's gonna be great.

• 1:16:37Bill Simmons?

  Now he's down. Oh my God, they're trading him. Now he's gonna, maybe he gets traded to San Antonio in July. It's like, oh, Kevin Durant can teach Wemba Yama how to win. And it's just like a fucking roller coaster. And maybe that's what LeBron was talking about. That the scrutiny and the roller coaster ride of all of this is really hard. And if you're the face, I'm sure it's a bigger roller coaster.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  I can't imagine though, not wanting to be the face. How could you be a pro athlete?

• 1:17:03Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's where it gets, that's where it's hard to take it seriously where it's like, so you didn't want this the whole time when you're doing Nike ads in 2003? You did a special to change teams and so you, you didn't want, you weren't excited for this?

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  I was not surprised by that part of the quote, but whatever. I just like,

• 1:17:21Bill Simmons?

  I like that he's candid though. He definitely, he has such a big platform now. When he talks about stuff candidly, it really does have reactions that last two to three days. Sometimes he does make people think. I think that, you know, the mind the game pod about some of the dialogue about that, about we had to do this pod to save basketball discourse. I take stuff like that probably a little bit personally. Cause he's basically, I don't know, we spent like going back to Grantland and the Ringer. We've, we've tried to elevate discussion and pods and writing and all this stuff. And I think a lot of people have. So when somebody's saying nothing's elevated, you're kind of like, well, I mean, we're trying. You know?

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  I know that I care a lot about what we talk about on this, what I've talked about on my pods and the shows in the past. I mean, I really, I mean, I really cared about putting a lot of thought into what my opinions are going to be. And yet I always knew like, oh, you don't, like, do you know what the help rules are? Do you know what all the terminology is?

• 1:18:24Bill Simmons?

  Second apron?

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, no, that kind of stuff I used to really, then I realized it's like you're spending way too much time on this. Like I would, I would study the CBA pretty religiously because I wanted to have it like down and I used to have it down and now I'm like, I think I'll be okay.

• 1:18:38Bill Simmons?

  Remember we did that one podcast right after they changed the CBA and both of us were so freaked out and we were doing, it was like, we were like trying to take a boat and cross the Pacific Ocean. We're like, I, but then there's this other, we were like so nervous. We didn't understand it.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Because I, I felt like, you know, there's always the like unintended consequences thing that it's just hard to factor in. I was thinking about this the other day, like the timeout before three minutes to go where you lose the timeout. Cause it was like, hey, here's silver and the competition committee. I don't even know if that's what they call it. It's what the NFL does, but they decided, yeah, there's too many timeouts at the end of games. Like let's take a timeout away from them. Okay. What's happened? Everybody just calls it now. So you could come out of commercial break, one possession that the other team looks up and goes, oh, we're going to lose this timeout anyway.

• 1:19:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  So let's make sure we take it now. And so we're not getting any time back because the unintended consequence was that you ended up with coaches just going, I'll take it before I lose it. So now my solution should be just give them one less timeout. Um, and then you'll be fine and back to the original plan. Anyway, the reason I use that as an example is that whenever you're on the fly trying to read a CBA and the highlights from the whole thing, like we were kind of going, this feels like a hard cap. And I was almost scared a little bit to go, is it a hard cap? Like is, is this going to be a hard cap? But yeah, back to the original thing. Like, look, man, I, I do put a lot of thought into this. I always wondered if I could get to an age where I'd be like, you think at this age, you'll just go like, ah, fuck it.

• 1:20:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  I watched, I watched the fourth quarter. Like I'm good. I haven't read anything like.

• 1:20:16Bill Simmons?

  There's definitely ways to cheat.

• 1:20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. And then I think about the guys that played and I think about the coaches and a lot of the people that work in our industry, you know, whether it's, you know, it's, it's not the perfect parallel to it. But there's so many players that I'll listen to and go, okay, wait, you have a problem with me and I didn't play? Like, have you heard your shit? Have you heard how dumb all your arguments? I mean, there's one person in particular that I'm thinking of right now. Like, if I really wanted to do a 10-minute monologue destroying this person's takes and how fucked they are, and I don't know what the motives are behind him, but like, I could. But I really don't want to get in a fight with anybody about that kind of stuff. But that's, it almost brings me back. It's, it's like being a screenwriter where you get really discouraged and then you're like, holy shit, they greenlit that? Let's open up the laptop.

• 1:21:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so I don't know. I don't know if we have the answer. I'm just, my point is, I think the NBA has always had more than a twinge of negativity to it. And I think it has to do with the personalities and the experience of going to games and having those guys right in front of you and the fact that there's a connection that's just different. Baseball used to have it. I think the net has really hurt. I know why they have it. I get all the reasons, but the net is, is, is just tough.

• 1:21:34Speaker 01

  You think the net has ruined baseball?

• 1:21:36Bill Simmons?

  I'm not saying it's ruined baseball. I think it's tough. I think it's tough.

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  I didn't even notice.

• 1:21:43Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 1:21:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:44Bill Simmons?

  Oh, man. I used to love the energy of like, this might be the pitch where a foul ball comes over here.

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Oh, you like being on your toes.

• 1:21:53Bill Simmons?

  Ah, loved it. Nobody's on their toes anymore in baseball.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  Middle linebacker bill.

• 1:21:58Bill Simmons?

  People are just crossing the highway, not worried about getting hit by a car when they go to a baseball game now. You just be on your phone for 20 minutes. You feel the energy around it. It's definitely different. Let's take one more break and then we got to talk about the Celtics weekend. This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. Look, I already have my dream job. I run the ringer, argue with Chris Ryan, AKA CR. But even dream jobs have not so dreamy parts. You know, the work that slows you down never seems to go away. That's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They're like digital teammates who actually do the job, start to finish. No handoffs, no homework. That means more time for the work that actually matters, which for me is talking about whether the 86 Celtics can beat the 96 Bulls, which they could.

• 1:22:43Bill Simmons?

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• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  Which is the only thing, that's the only thing. I love them. I absolutely love them.

• 1:23:32Bill Simmons?

  Say that because I want to come back.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:23:34Bill Simmons?

  Boston, hunger, health and mileage would be my three. Just the mileage on the guys from the hundred game season last year. The fact that they won last year, a team like Cleveland is just going to be a whiff hungerer. And the health of Porzingis and Drew, I think would be the three things that worried me.

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. The only thing I would say, and it's not fair, and it's probably because I watch them too much. But I think they get almost too hunt happy.

• 1:24:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  Where.

• 1:24:03Bill Simmons?

  Everything's happening 40 feet from the basket. Oh, we got this.

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  You know, I get it. Expose the weakness, find the bad matchup. You have these two incredible on ball wings. You have a third guy in Derek White who can do some of that stuff too. I mean, they are, when it is clicking on offense. I mean, the offensive numbers are outrageous. They're terrific. So who am I to sit here and criticize any of this stuff? I criticized some of it last year. It did not matter. But they can get so hunt happy that I wonder in the way basketball is connected. That if other players are just watching somebody hunt the entire time, at least they take turns with it. Some teams will just have their main ball handler hunt the entire time. And it's, it's a minor thing that I noticed, but I'm probably too critical of it because there's no offensive number that tells you. Oh yeah. Like, uh oh.

• 1:24:49Bill Simmons?

  I like the term hunt happy. Congratulations on that. Here's, here's, I agree with you, by the way. I wish they would just run plays every once in a while to mix it up. Like just every once in a while, just put Tatum at the foul line and give him like a Dirk Nowitzki post up. Just so it's not the same thing over and over again where we're just hunting guys, hunting guys, hunting guys. Cause I do think the defenses can get in the rhythm of knowing it's coming and figuring out tricks. So, um, Denver, and we'll talk about that game in a second, but they just have no room for error at all. If they're not making threes, it gets tough. If anyone, if Gordon's out or Murray's hurt, or even Brown's hurt, it gets super tough for them.

• 1:25:33Bill Simmons?

  If Westbrook just sucks, it's almost like they can't, they can't fight it. And it's just, I think they could win three straight rounds. I think they could go four and three and three straight playoff series or four and two. But it's not going to be a team that's like ripping through the playoffs. There's just too many ways it seems like it go wrong game to game would be my red flag.

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  They have lineups that they run out there where, and maybe it's a regular season thing. Look, no Aaron Gordon today, who's their best defensive player and has been shooting it well from three. But he's still somebody that I think teams are going to test. But, you know, so it's not entirely fair because Gordon's missed a couple of games here, but they had a lineup where it was Michael Porter Jr. Surrounded by Westbrook, Brown, who was great today. But I mean, what was his shot total? Like if you go into a game.

• 1:26:24Bill Simmons?

  22.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  He took 22 shots. So if you're sitting there prepping out what you want to do against Denver, you're like, hey, if Christian Brown takes 22 shots, it's probably a win for us today. Right? So it's Michael Porter Jr. Who I think is, you know, if you dig into his advanced stuff, he's not the same guy that he was the first couple of years on the scene. Even though defensively, he was such a disaster then that Malone didn't really even trust him. I wouldn't say he's a plus, but I think he's a total coin toss guy. If he had 21 or he had three, I wouldn't be surprised. I also think he plays a little soft, but back to this lineup. So it's Porter Jr., Westbrook, Brown, Deandre Jordan. In Strother and when you're looking at some of the three point shooting against these guys like Westbrook's going to be open. And when he hit his first three, I thought that was a bad sign for Denver with this stuff.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  You can also see Westbrook decide he's not comfortable shooting. You can also see Westbrook, you know, it's great that he's probably understood his role better here than a lot of the other places. As he's tried to be become a role player like I'd say, what this is stop three as a role player because Washington, he still was clearly the guy. You'll see him be in a hurry to force it back to Jokic, which is showing him being deferential in a way that we weren't used to with so many of the prime Westbrook years. But I think you can also mess them up a little bit. So whether it was the Lakers matchup or the Boston matchup today, again, without Gordon isn't entirely fair. I have, I know you weren't expecting this long, so I'm not going to go this long on the other ones. But I've talked about it being four teams because of the respect for Jokic and Denver was fourth in the FanDuel title odds.

• 1:27:53Speaker 01

  It's, it's those three and Denver's in like a sliver tier by themselves. Cause I just don't think they're as good as Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, Cleveland or Boston. And I don't see how they are going to be as good as those three teams.

• 1:28:06Bill Simmons?

  I have them fourth as well, but I also feel the Jokic piece. When we get to a playoff where they just are playing the same team for two straight weeks. I think that's good for them.

• 1:28:18Speaker 01

  Did you see the spacing stuff, man?

• 1:28:20Bill Simmons?

  I know. Well, the thing that's alarming, the open threes today. How many just wide open threes they took compared to, did they even shoot 40%?

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  They were two for 11 on their first 11 wide open threes.

• 1:28:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's what, that's what would scare me if I'm them.

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  On the game, they got it back to 34%, but they're, they're last in the NBA in points from the three. So their percentage of points, however many they score a game, they have the last or the lowest total of points via the three pointer of anyone. And so then they come to a game like today, like that was going to be really weird if Boston had blown this because approach wise, hey, here's the plan. Here's what we want to have happen. It's exactly what you would hope to do to Denver. But yeah, great.

• 1:29:02Bill Simmons?

  And if I'm Denver, I feel great. It was a one possession game. I didn't have Gordon. Who's my third most important guy. And I still, if I'm Denver, and I know I can be in crunch time in the playoffs with Jokic and Porter and Gordon and Murray and Brown, I still feel really good about where I'm at. If I could just get into fourth quarters with those five guys, not get crushed on those Jokic minutes, but you know, even like something like Tory Craig feels like they could, it could have helped them. I kind of like the Celtics sneaking out the Tory Craig move. I just, Denver doesn't have enough guys I trust. OKC, red flag, just the second scorer, lack of experience thing. Just ultimately, if they're down four on the road in a really

• 1:29:45Bill Simmons?

  big playoff game and a, a team is just swarming Shay and double teaming him, like who's stepping up? I just want to see it. I'm, I'm not, I'm not down on it, but we just haven't seen it. It's very similar to the Celtics last year. Just want to see what happens with that.

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  It'll be interesting if Shay gets his points, Jalen Williams gets his points. Chat, as you'd expect, taking a little time. I thought he was so great in that Brooklyn game when they gave up, what, 76 points to the Nets of all teams with this kind of defense, this historic differential defense based on the league averages. But it might just be, does Isaiah Joe, Dort, Caruso, Aaron Wiggins? I mean, he's, I've joked about him being one of my favorite players, but as far as like a role guy and stepping up and then what he did in February. I mean, every time I watch the Thunder game, I'm always like, man.

• 1:30:33Bill Simmons?

  Do you want to do favorite, favorite bench guys right now? Want to do a team? Cause my favorite bench guy is Ty Jerome, just hands down. Ty Jerome comes in and the score changes immediately. He does nine thanks. I love Ty Jerome. I think he's gonna, I, I genuinely think he's gonna make like $60 million this summer. I'm predicting that now.

• 1:30:52Speaker 01

  I too, I too am fond of Ty Jerome. We have him on the pod coming up this week, by the way.

• 1:30:56Bill Simmons?

  Oh, nice. I'm a huge, joining on Thursday. Great. Um, I'm a huge fan. I love when he comes in, he it's exactly, he's like the most pure bench guy in the league. Comes in, he's gonna play his eight, nine minutes, however long it is, he's gonna affect the game, he's gonna make a shot, he's gonna have energy. And in that Friday night, South the game, I was like, fuck, I, I hope they don't close with Ty Jerome, because Ty Jerome is a problem. By the way, Wiggins is up there for me as a favorite bench guy, too.

• 1:31:25Speaker 01

  There was a moment when Ty Jerome was playing and trying to figure out where his basketball life was gonna go. Van Gundy was on the broadcast, and this is when I knew, I mean, again, anybody that watched him in college, he just, he's very different in that. He, the play is open, there are options open on his plays. That are longer, if that makes sense, like, it's almost like a quarterback watching routes develop. And he finds a way to give the receivers the extra beat to do whatever they need to do. So that you're, you're still defending more shit than you want to defend with Jerome, and that's why he screws up so many of these defenses. Cause you're like, there's no way this is gonna work, and it's a lot of that Nash wrong foot thing, or it's the takeoff to pass, where guys started.

• 1:32:07Speaker 01

  Remember, like, almost running out of the way of Nash's drives, it actually opened up things for Nash, because people were closing out and so freaked about his passing skills. And Jerome has these runners where everything is kind of wrong, and then you don't really know what's supposed to happen. Anyway, Van Gundy was on a broadcast, and it was almost like your grandfather watching Christina Hendricks on an episode of Mad Men for the first time.

• 1:32:31Speaker 01

  Like, just this erotic, slightly, like, the way Van Gundy talked about Ty Jerome's game, it was, it was like, he needed a breath. Like, he needed a moment.

• 1:32:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:43Speaker 01

  And it makes, it makes all the sense in the world, like, Cleveland, when they came back, what was really interesting about their game? They went to 10 guys, I think 14 minutes into the game.

• 1:32:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  They were at 10 guys, and they're 10 guys.

• 1:32:56Bill Simmons?

  You're talking about.

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  Right. They're depending, maybe, maybe you take a coral off the table, shot selection, some of that stuff, let's say nine. Nine of the guys for Cleveland now are really good.

• 1:33:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:11Bill Simmons?

  Ty Jerome Wiggins.

• 1:33:15Bill Simmons?

  I'm trying to think who else are my favorites. I still enjoy Quentin Grimes. I wish he was on a good team.

• 1:33:22Bill Simmons?

  A bunch of the Detroit guys.

• 1:33:24Speaker 01

  They play a million dudes. They're playing 11 guys.

• 1:33:28Bill Simmons?

  Detroit brings their guys in and they're all playing really hard and they're ready to rough people up and get in fights. Red flag.

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  Setting the tone.

• 1:33:36Bill Simmons?

  Lakers is easy rim protection and defending the other team's point guard if it's somebody who can get to the rim. I think it's going to be a problem for them that they could figure it out. And then Golden State turnovers and ball handling. They, they, they still have the dumbest turnovers. Doesn't matter who's on the team. They're just going to have dumb turnovers. They're going to have really bad turnovers in crunch time. I think it's aging Steve Kerr and like dog years watching. I think it drives them nuts.

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  Even when they were arguably the greatest team we've ever seen, they turned the ball over.

• 1:34:04Bill Simmons?

  It's the fatal flaw for Steph.

• 1:34:06Speaker 01

  They play better defense than everybody too, on top of being unguardable. So.

• 1:34:10Bill Simmons?

  And then the last red flag, Memphis. I know you want to do some Memphis stuff really quick and then we'll, we'll circle back to the Friday, Sunday Celtics games if there's anything left. But I, the Ja not being able to make outside shots doesn't seem like it and how everything is so dependent on him just getting to the rim. I just feel like it's going to be easy to stop in a playoff series and it, for me, lowers their ceiling.

• 1:34:33Speaker 01

  I've watched him a lot. The last, I don't know, 10 plus days. I watched the Clippers loss. I watched the Phoenix win. I watched the Phoenix win in overtime. The Knicks loss, which could have gone either way. And they lose to San Antonio, but Ja didn't play last night, right? I don't think Ja or Bain played. That's right. Yeah. Cause Bain was in a sick, sick hoodie. I want to be fair about Memphis, you know, because I think that the most dismissive thing you could say is, hey, they've never done shit. Cause I hear it a lot. Like if I talk to teams, like, hey, who do you like? Who do you not like? What would you think about this matchup? Whatever. There's a lot of never done shit. About a million different teams because you know what it's really hard to do? Win.

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

  It's hard to actually do shit. Like you could even, I don't even know how Windhorse, like again, it's not a criticism of Windhorse, but I was a little shocked at how often like he was talking about how disrespected the Thunder were. Whereas once they get into the playoffs, that a lot of this stuff isn't going to work. And that one, I don't quite understand. I don't think it's even fair to judge the Thunder as some finished product.

• 1:35:35Bill Simmons?

  Did he say that about this season's Thunder?

• 1:35:38Speaker 01

  He said about, I mean, do I have to bring up the quote? Cause it's, I brought it up with Slater. I brought it up with Slater this week where he, he was basically saying like, again, it's not like he's pulling the entire league, but it's like a player thing. There's just players that look at the Thunder, look at their regular season success. Now last year you could point to it and go, hey, look at their health and look at their available guys. Like they had basically played Sacramento had one of those seasons where it's like, okay, you basically ceilinged out though this entire time.

• 1:36:04Bill Simmons?

  You 10 out of 10, your luck factor.

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  I don't understand like, why wouldn't shade? Shade's just going to be as good. Maybe he has a couple of games.

• 1:36:12Bill Simmons?

  This happened to Boston last year though.

• 1:36:14Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 1:36:15Bill Simmons?

  There's just this weird with the, when you said like around the league, there's a feeling like there's not a total respect. This was the Boston situation last year.

• 1:36:23Speaker 01

  So what, yeah. Which team has not won that people were like, hey, that team's going to get it done.

• 1:36:29Bill Simmons?

  Well, this circles back.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  Does it ever happen?

• 1:36:31Bill Simmons?

  This circles back to the Cleveland piece a bit. Cause I think Cleveland is fucking terrifying. I've said this to you.

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  Are you ready to pick them over Boston in a series?

• 1:36:43Bill Simmons?

  I want to see who's healthy on the Boston side.

• 1:36:45Speaker 01

  Okay. And look, let's just do the game of everybody's healthy.

• 1:36:47Bill Simmons?

  If you said gun to the head right now, like what do I think is going to happen? I think it's going to be really hard to win a game seven in Cleveland. I think Mitchell could not be less afraid of the Boston Celtics. And he's been this way for most of the decade. He loves playing them. They have two awesome guards, one who didn't play Friday, and they have length with, with swings and they can't stop him. And if it gets to a situation where there's a couple of big playoff games in a series, he's going to think he can beat whoever the best Boston guy is. And he did it on Friday night. He was the best guy on the floor in the second half. They have length. Mobley's better. Mobley was awesome in that fourth quarter on Friday.

• 1:37:26Speaker 01

  Did you see what else they did too? Is they sat Allen to close.

• 1:37:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, well, that but there was no Porzingis, no Drew. So it's it's hard to overreact one way or the other. But the Mitchell piece and their bench, which is real Hunter, who has always done pretty well against the Celts, who has size, who can at least make guys stink and they don't have to play a Coro. I think Cleveland's really good. And you know what? What my other reason is? They only have 10 losses. It's March 2. Cleveland's good. They should be the favorite and Boston is the favorite on Fandel. They're minus 150. Cleveland's plus 270. I think Boston could beat Cleveland.

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, but think about that sentence. Like, did you think you would be saying that? I think Boston could beat Cleveland.

• 1:38:08Bill Simmons?

  I think they could. Right. No, but Boston was the prohibitive favorites and the odds have not caught up to Cleveland yet. They're plus 270 and they're gonna have home court advantage in any Boston series. That's a real thing.

• 1:38:22Speaker 01

  No Porzingis. Right. Go ahead.

• 1:38:24Bill Simmons?

  Well, I like the way they match up against OKC, too. There's some Garland stuff with them that Boston, they really went after it in the Friday game. They're like, we're just gonna attack him. We're gonna bully him. We're gonna use our wings and and their refs were awful. My dad was the most upset about the refs that he's been in two years coming home. Could not believe Tatum had five free throws. Look, you can excuse that game any way you want. That was an awesome win for Cleveland. Like that to fall down like they did to have Tatum, do they get the fuck out of here thing? And then for them to come back and them knowing that Mitchell might be the best guy in the series? If you're just talking about who can score in a fourth quarter on both sides. So if I'm Cleveland, I'm like delighted by how the season's going.

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  So Mitchell, this season in three games against Boston is averaging 36, 7 and 4 on 50 and 38%.

• 1:39:13Bill Simmons?

  Feels even better.

• 1:39:16Speaker 01

  Splits.

• 1:39:17Bill Simmons?

  He's getting all the shots he wants. He gets the threes he wants. He gets the matchups he wants. He gets the runners he wants. He can get to the rim. And this will be like you did that Drew Holiday extension, right? You did it to make him feel good about last season heading into the playoffs. But ultimately, you're trying to go back to back. And that's a lot of money for a guy who's 34, who's got now like a fucked up finger. But this is that's gonna be the series for Drew Holiday. That Mitchell series, what he can do against Mitchell will be the entire contract.

• 1:39:47Bill Simmons?

  Cause they, I don't think anyone else, White doesn't seem like he can get a handle on them. And they're just putting everybody else in switches and it's gonna have to be Holiday, I think.

• 1:39:57Speaker 01

  First of all, he's just that good. Okay. Like the best version of him. He also rejects the screen in that Dwyane Wade way where I think when you're really good at that, cause I just don't know that there's enough like guys that understand when you turn the screen down and you go the other way. He also splits it out. You know, again, I'm not trying to compare him to Kobe because Kobe would split screens in ways. You were just like, oh my God.

• 1:40:18Bill Simmons?

  It's mid 2000s Wade with three point range is what he reminds me of. Cause he can get, he can get to the basket. He can get in the paint, but he also has this three point shot that Wade never had. And he's just so athletic and it just, who is the right guy to guard him when he's feeling it?

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  Well, it's probably not Hauser. Uh, as good as Hauser holds up, like that was one of the things that I was looking at the last two days with Boston where you, okay, every one of these Hauser minutes or every one of these curl handoffs where you're getting Cornet trying to figure out which side of the paint, he's going to try to contest a shot on, like those are Porzingis and Drew minutes. So even if Drew doesn't end up on him, you're now switching into whatever version of this was. And now pre Deandre Hunter, I didn't care what Mitchell did. I didn't care about what the regular season stuff. And again, it had gone Boston's way. So you could at least point to that as evidence.

• 1:41:09Speaker 01

  But there was always a bad matchup waiting for Cleveland, whether it was finding Garland or Struce having to start on Jalen Brown or, you know, Allen is on Tatum. They clearly like bringing Allen all the way out away from the rim. And then if the Mobley lineup is out there with Allen, trying to keep him pinned to a three point shooter. So like basically you can't have Allen or Mobley ever freelance to the rim. And I actually think in the matchups where Tatum had Allen, like he did a really good job with it because if he wasn't going to be able to finish at the rim, he kind of knew, and he had a massive game there. But now with Hunter.

• 1:41:41Bill Simmons?

  That was one of the best Tatum games he's ever had. He was awesome. Like he was just the matchups and spots he was picking. I thought he was incredible in that game.

• 1:41:50Speaker 01

  But now that they have these Hunter minutes and they closed with Mobley, Hunter, and then the guards, because Garland played and had his moments, even though he's been hunted. And then you have, so Cleveland now has put together spacing options and the Hunter part of it, even though it was expensive, I love that they did this because now it's like, look, nobody's stopping Tatum necessarily, but at least you have somebody size wise who has a defensive thing to him.

• 1:42:16Bill Simmons?

  It's a chore to score against him and he can shoot threes.

• 1:42:19Speaker 01

  Look, the point is, is even without Porzingis and Drew in there, and maybe it feels like a mistake. Cleveland's the favorite.

• 1:42:26Bill Simmons?

  I agree with you. I couldn't believe the odds. I couldn't believe they were plus 270 with home court. I was stunned. The thing you mentioned.

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  Down 25-3 and then you win.

• 1:42:37Bill Simmons?

  On the road. I'm glad you mentioned the Allen not playing in crunch time because I actually thought there was a chance they were going to bench Garland in crunch time and play Ty Jerome because he was so good in that game. They have different lineups they can do, right? They can go a little smaller, they go a little bigger, they can go big in their backcourt. If they feel like Garland is too much of a defensive liability and Mitchell's feeling it, they can just yank him. And I think Atkinson has a real feel for what the team is, but.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  And he has all these different options. I guess I just don't like the default and I'm guilty of it too. Like we have a really hard time with new. It's hard to be ahead of everybody going, you know what? Like, but if I were to listen to somebody be like, Cleveland hasn't done it, Boston has, and that be the reason?

• 1:43:18Bill Simmons?

  That's not a reason.

• 1:43:19Speaker 01

  It's ignoring a lot of basketball stuff.

• 1:43:22Bill Simmons?

  There's not a reason. Now, one thread I was on was convinced that Joe Mazz didn't play Tory Craig in that fourth quarter and did all that Hauser stuff because he didn't care about the game because they're the two seed anyway. He wanted Cleveland because Joe Mazz is, you know, he, he looks at things completely different than everybody else, but he's like, I don't really care about this game. I'm going to try this and see if it works. If it doesn't work, I just won't do it if we're actually in a playoff series. The Porzingis piece, I think is still going to be. A genuine problem for the Cavs if he's healthy. That's the matchup because the other thing is he allows when Mitchell's going to the basket. Now there's somebody coming over with their hand up who's just a little bit of a different person to contend with.

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  And if they want to go double big, you you still have to respect. You obviously have to respect Porzingis, like you feel like Boston has the stretch options. And we might be both making mistake declaring Cleveland the favorite right now.

• 1:44:14Bill Simmons?

  No, the whole point is.

• 1:44:14Speaker 01

  Porzingis being out, but I just think they're that good, man.

• 1:44:17Bill Simmons?

  If we're doing percentages and it's we're going to 100% 100% percentages, Boston, Cleveland, that's it. I would say it's like, you love when I do this. I would say it's like.

• 1:44:28Speaker 01

  I'm writing it down. I got my pen.

• 1:44:29Bill Simmons?

  I would say it's 55 45 Cleveland in my mind. I think there's more outcomes when Cleveland beats Boston than vice versa. And I think that game seven in Cleveland really matters and everyone always discounts this shit and we've had some upsets. We had Minnesota go into Denver and beat them in a game seven. Like I, I know there's games where that happens, but uh, Mitchell, this might be like a Mitchell year. I wouldn't rule it out and it's also, he's an interesting MVP guy now because it's obviously Shane Joker as the top two, and I think Tatum's third. But if Cleveland ends up like 67 and 15 with all the stuff, you almost have to have a cab in the top. It'd be weird for them not to have someone in the top three.

• 1:45:12Bill Simmons?

  So, uh, it would, and it's clearly Mitchell, but amazing year by him. Kudos to him. I, I was a little iffy on him last year with

• 1:45:21Bill Simmons?

  some of the decision making this year. I'm not.

• 1:45:23Speaker 01

  Well, they went to seven games at Orlando.

• 1:45:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:25Speaker 01

  You know, and Orlando, who if you really want to have a bad time, watch them on offense this season. It's funny too, because Cleveland ran the zone where they had Ty Jerome and Sam Merrill at the top of the zone. And you're looking at Orlando's options and be like, I know with the zone, it can like mess you up a little bit and also screws up Orlando's offense that their top two usage guys are 30% each from three and Paolo and Franz. So that's going to put a dent in your plans. But I was watching this going, how can you guys not figure out a way to attack friend of the pod, Sam Merrill and soon to be friend of the pod, Ty Jerome? Like how, I know they're in zone, but like teams will stop screening with zone or they'll stop cutting like they just get freaked out. I mean, Orlando's offense is terrible against everybody in every incarnation.

• 1:46:11Speaker 01

  But this is.

• 1:46:15Speaker 01

  This is one of those deals where you're like, everything seems to be working out for them. And they can be a really, like, you know, we could say how depth is overrated in the playoffs, but there's nothing to me that's overrated about options and they have depth.

• 1:46:28Bill Simmons?

  And lineup, lineup options.

• 1:46:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And OKC has those things too.

• 1:46:33Bill Simmons?

  You think about that Friday game.

• 1:46:36Bill Simmons?

  And again, no Drew, no KP, but Tatum had 46, 16 and 9 and the Celtics lost at home. Like, that's a little alarming. They, Tatum had, I think, the best all-around regular season game I've ever seen him have. And especially the rebounds with him, which just every game now it feels like he's going to get to 10 plus rebounds and seven plus assists. His decision-making was amazing and the Celtics still lost. So if I'm Cleveland, I feel great about that. All right. I think, I think we agree on that. And I would still have OKC. And I guess the last piece we, we didn't talk about and we probably should really quick is just, maybe there's not a lot to talk about that the Lakers. I just think both of us are taking them seriously as a, as a real playoff team. Just because

• 1:47:22Bill Simmons?

  it's two weeks, you just have to go four and three to get to the next round. Is that a team that can go four and three every two weeks? I think it is. So I'm taking them seriously. Whether, I still feel like Denver's above them. And I like your idea of Denver being in the slight layer under the top three. I would still have them fourth, whether, you know, like under tiered or however, and then Lakers, Golden State is the next two. I just think is how I'd have it. I wouldn't have the Knicks with those two.

• 1:47:49Speaker 01

  I just don't know how the Knicks defense is going to be enough.

• 1:47:51Bill Simmons?

  It's too easy scoring them.

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  I know they have Mitchell back now and the lack of depth is really an issue.

• 1:47:58Bill Simmons?

  If Mitchell's there in round one, then I'm going to reconsider, but I just don't trust it. Do you?

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  That's a massive leap to be like, that team is going to get through. I mean, unless somebody does them a favor, so they only have to face one of the two top teams to get through it, but.

• 1:48:14Bill Simmons?

  How focused are you on Pistons, Knicks? Cause I'm like a 10 out of 10.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  I love watching the Knicks though, like even with my doubts, I, that Knicks Memphis game the other night, you know, we didn't really do a very good job on the Memphis thing. So let me just end it this way.

• 1:48:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:30Speaker 01

  There's so much that I like about the team. I think Bain is just solid all the time. I don't know that Al Dama gets enough credit. You know, they're working a couple of other pieces in. I think the Edie thing is still not necessarily great. And I don't know if it's because Bill

• 1:48:43Bill Simmons?

  He was out there in crunch time that on Friday night. I was shocked.

• 1:48:47Speaker 01

  Bill Gurley had kind of a tweet that was like, I'm really smart and you draft guys are kind of fucking morons. And it was like the general premise of like overthinking something and ultimately becoming wrong when he was taken. And it's like, look, man, I think you're not really understanding the NBA part of this where there's a lot of teams that'll sit there in the war room going, hey, the guy we're about to draft is not nearly as good as the guy we're passing on. All right.

• 1:49:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:15Speaker 01

  Like they know this. These teams are not as stupid as people want to make them out to be. But if you're a team that doesn't have a track record of attracting free agents, right? So you're not a destination franchise. You never use caps based on anybody. Maybe you don't have necessarily trade trade assets. The reason why players like Edie would go a little bit later in a draft, which we've already covered some of this stuff before is because you feel like they're already close to their ceiling. And you're like, hey, I know that Amen Thompson is this or a Sir Thompson is this, but what if, what if this raw, like 1% athlete who we like his personality, like what, and I'm not comparing like Thompson

• 1:49:57Speaker 01

  going where he went. And you know, it's, it's also different draft classes, but there's, there's something you have to understand with teams that when they're selecting guys, they know the mistake they're potentially making, but they're thinking about the high ceiling part because the addition of talent is so incredibly challenging in this league. More challenging. It's tougher to be a GM in basketball than any of the other sports. So for teams that are watching, what's that?

• 1:50:24Bill Simmons?

  I'd go football.

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  No way.

• 1:50:28Bill Simmons?

  I think it's so hard to draft in football. It just seems like it's a fucking crap shoot. But can you imagine having a top four quarter, top four pick right now, trying to decide whether you're gonna get fired if Cam Ward doesn't work out for you with the second pick?

• 1:50:39Speaker 01

  Do you want to do this? I don't know that you're prepared to do this with me.

• 1:50:42Bill Simmons?

  I just think it's harder. I'm not, I'm not willing to get in a hour debate about it. I just think there's more players, there's more positions.

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the, the cap thing is the same for everybody. Okay?

• 1:50:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:56Speaker 01

  There's no soft part of it.

• 1:50:59Speaker 01

  There's no like,

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  there's no massive advantage in the five destination cities in the NFL that you have in the NBA. So if you're have not in the NBA, like Utah can be putting together the best plan ever. Is anyone ever signing there?

• 1:51:16Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:51:17Speaker 01

  The NFL doesn't have that. You don't even have real, you don't even have real free agency in the NFL. So on top of like, when a guy wants a trade, like, hey, or we'll just franchise you. And you can miss out on like a top five salary at your position. So.

• 1:51:33Bill Simmons?

  Belichick took, Belichick took the Keel Harry over DK Metcalf and AJ Brown.

• 1:51:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he, he, he can't drive receivers. So that's not a good argument.

• 1:51:46Bill Simmons?

  Belichick traded out of the Trent McDuffie pick and passed up on George Carl Lafferty to take Cole Strange. I just think the draft is like, it almost like breaks their brains how stupid some of this shit is. NBA, NBA is more simple. It's like you going, like your E D point. Do we want to take a guy who has a chance to be potentially like an awesome guy someday? Or do we just take 12 and nine from Zach Eadie for the next five years? Memphis was like, that sounds great. We'll do that.

• 1:52:12Speaker 01

  Right. Cause then it becomes a debate. Is it easier to draft in the NBA or are they better at it? And I just, when it comes down to the quarterback part of it, it's something that we can't criticize for an officer getting wrong. It's the process of evaluating these guys. It's just, no one's figured it out. It's too flawed of a thing. All the, it'd like be watching somebody run really fast in basketball and his dunks are awesome. And then being like, look at all that athleticism and quick twitch stuff. Now he'd be good at quarterback. Cause that's something that happens there. Yeah, we like

• 1:52:40Bill Simmons?

  He was a rotation guy.

• 1:52:42Speaker 01

  We thought he was a rotation guy, but a closing guy for the Memphis Grizzlies and

• 1:52:46Bill Simmons?

  That I did not see. That I did not see, sir.

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  And he and he's also, you know, one of the best post players we've seen in college basketball recently.

• 1:52:52Bill Simmons?

  Good hands.

• 1:52:53Speaker 01

  Do you want to guess how many post ups he has per game right now in the league?

• 1:52:57Bill Simmons?

  Doesn't seem like a lot.

• 1:52:59Speaker 01

  1.6.

• 1:53:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:01Speaker 01

  So you're drafting him and you're asking him to post up 1.6 times per game.

• 1:53:07Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's a weird fit with Ja because all Ja does is go to the basket. So then you have Zach Edie just kind of wandering around that not not great. Can't really post up Zach Edie and have John Marit.

• 1:53:19Speaker 01

  Another thing for my NFL NBA thing, we have seven conversations going on at once here, by the way.

• 1:53:24Bill Simmons?

  It's two hours into the pod. I'm groggy.

• 1:53:27Speaker 01

  You can't bring in a new coach in the NBA with basically the same roster and then just be a completely different team. And there's also the math of the games where a team, a couple of one score possession games go their way. All of a sudden you're a four win team and you go to like a nine win team and you're just like, man, we really figured it out. It's like, no, actually you just recovered more fumbles. But

• 1:53:49Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:53:49Speaker 01

  There's, there's very little that you can do. Um, and then also look in the NBA with the way the drafting works. The second round guys, again, the second round thing was like the most overrated thing ever. And people just love that Henke was stockpiling all these second round picks, but it was so fucking stupid. There's no NBA draft part where you're like, oh, in the fourth round, we grabbed an all pro middle linebacker.

• 1:54:13Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:54:14Speaker 01

  That doesn't happen. So I don't, I don't know. Maybe we can, maybe we can do this on the hit show ringer.com.

• 1:54:22Bill Simmons?

  Team debate? Team debate?

• 1:54:26Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. The more, the more drafts I watch, sometimes it seems like easier than ever. Like Zach Edie clearly was going to be a rotation guy. I couldn't believe there was even a dialogue about it. He's seven foot five and he has good hands. You're going to get four good years out of him.

• 1:54:40Speaker 01

  Wait, so I now I don't even know if we're arguing the same Zach Edie point. Do you like, how about we do this? Do you like Memphis in the playoffs?

• 1:54:47Bill Simmons?

  No, I don't. I don't like Memphis or Houston. I just think it's too early for both of them.

• 1:54:55Speaker 01

  But is it too early for Memphis? Cause that's something like this has been a very weird three year stretch for this team. Okay.

• 1:55:02Bill Simmons?

  To say the least.

• 1:55:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you go back to 22 and I always liked Memphis. I like their rawness, their anti-establishment. You know, the next generation of, of grit and grind. And then when they played whoop that trick in game five against Golden State.

• 1:55:17Bill Simmons?

  You never got over that. Yeah.

• 1:55:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I, I actually, I think I did a monologue because Chris Vernon sent me just a tear emoji after the open where I went, I want Golden State to beat their fucking brains in.

• 1:55:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:32Speaker 01

  When they play in game six, because I was like, you guys are really, really feeling yourself.

• 1:55:36Bill Simmons?

  You down three, two in a series. Maybe don't play.

• 1:55:38Speaker 01

  It was, it was elimination game, three, one to three, two, but it was, it was a lot. It was a lot from those guys. And so then you have the Jai issues, then you have the injury issues. And so like that was a,

• 1:55:52Speaker 01

  they had a seed not that long ago when they were hurt against the Lakers, right? Where no one gave them a chance necessarily in that series. That was the Dillon Brooks thing.

• 1:56:00Bill Simmons?

  Pretty banged up.

• 1:56:01Speaker 01

  Everybody ended up not liking him all that much. So this is kind of like year four of this group.

• 1:56:07Speaker 01

  But I, I don't know that it's like, oh, they're incapable because they haven't done anything when they weren't really fully formed in all these versions.

• 1:56:13Bill Simmons?

  Don't you feel like they're a regular, they're like a regular season team that I'd, I just have less faith in the playoffs about because of, uh, I don't know. I just think teams are going to have better options in crunch time when we get to April, May. And they're trading baskets in the fourth quarters. I just, I also, I don't think their defense is as good as I thought it was going to be. The team's put up big point numbers on them. You notice that?

• 1:56:38Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:56:39Bill Simmons?

  They're way more run and gun than I think I was expecting from them this year.

• 1:56:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, but their defensive numbers, because I looked it up.

• 1:56:45Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I know, but they'll, they'll have these games where they're like 126 to 125, shit like that. That Knicks game was a wild game. That was like not a, I will say, well, it's not a defensive game. Um, yeah. So I got, I have the same six that I had before. And next, hey, Robinson looks awesome for them. Maybe we could reevaluate that in a month. You want to do a quick deep dive before we go?

• 1:57:09Speaker 01

  I do. What do you want?

• 1:57:11Bill Simmons?

  Um, you go. We can, we can do it fast. We'll do it in like three minutes.

• 1:57:15Speaker 01

  I just, I'm still on the pyramids, to be honest with you.

• 1:57:19Bill Simmons?

  Okay, any, any new news with the pyramids?

• 1:57:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, just because like the last guy that built the pyramid after his, you know, the lineage of, of rulers.

• 1:57:32Speaker 01

  He was like, okay, well, my grandfather did this and then my father did this. So how about we do this? I'll build a slightly smaller pyramid. Just because the other guys like you really had a sacrilege because basically people were like, hey, these pyramids take a fucking long time and a lot of resources. And maybe this isn't the sweetest deal for your constituents, right? So I like that it was, it was almost like an ideological shift of the pharaohs. That it was like, if we're gonna do a pyramid, how about?

• 1:58:07Bill Simmons?

  It was a sack.

• 1:58:08Speaker 01

  Little smaller. Yeah.

• 1:58:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:11Speaker 01

  It felt like a real transition of like, I still gotta do one. I still gotta do one. But I'm gonna take it easy on you guys.

• 1:58:19Bill Simmons?

  Did they ever master the pyramids? Was there ever a moment where like with baseball where they, they just figured out guys gotta get on base and that's get on base any way you can?

• 1:58:30Speaker 01

  So is there a pyramid?

• 1:58:33Bill Simmons?

  Is there a pyramid version of OBP?

• 1:58:35Speaker 01

  That matches not putting the ball in play and too many relievers?

• 1:58:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's my question.

• 1:58:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say probably right at the, right at the end, right at the end of the third dynasty, maybe I could have my, my tables wrong, but yeah. I'll check on that. What do you got?

• 1:58:55Bill Simmons?

  I really, Ben and I watched Shane Gillis on SNL last night and had a great time and laughed a lot. And I started thinking about how I think he could have been the biggest star on the show in the last 10 years. And that set me down a long deep dive of how he didn't end up on the show and then was watching different clips.

• 1:59:11Speaker 01

  Here we go.

• 1:59:12Bill Simmons?

  There was, well, hey, we'll leave that aside. There, but there's all this different videos and stuff and one of them was this like two minute video of Louis CK. Uh, just blistering Shane Gillis, like half, half fun, but half whatever. Cause he was so mad that he was doing an ad, but also about to throw the podcast to a Patreon. And he was like, how much money do you need to make from this podcast? Do you really need the money that bad? And Shane Gillis is like, I actually do. Um, but I was just down this whole Shane Gillis rabbit hole thinking about how interesting it would have been if he had just become like Will Ferrell on SNL. And I don't think I was alone with that last night. Cause I thought some of the stuff last

• 1:59:52Bill Simmons?

  night was great. The monologue was as awkward as it's ever been. Um, it's just such a bizarre fit of performer and audience, like whoever's in that crowd where they're just a band behind them, which a lot of people were pointing out, the band's like, can we laugh at that one? Can we do that? Uh, but his sketches and the, the couple of beers thing was fucking great. I thought, uh, it, they really felt like they were pushing the envelope a little bit in a way that, uh, reminded me of some of the best eras of the show. And, uh, it was just like, man, what, this would've been so interesting if there's this alternate universe where he's just on the shit, like nothing happens. He never says the dumb shit and it never comes back to haunt him. And he's just on the show,

• 2:00:33Bill Simmons?

  just kinda doing that same ride that like Will Ferrell did and Phil Hartman, some of these other guys, like what would have been the destiny of that? Anyway, I was deep diving that for an hour last night because I couldn't sleep.

• 2:00:44Speaker 01

  I saw the couple of beers thing. I haven't watched it yet. I did watch the monologue because, I mean, he even talked about the first monologue. I think he was nervous, like it was shocked.

• 2:00:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he was.

• 2:00:53Speaker 01

  Cause he's so good. I've seen him, I think four times now. Whenever he's around, like I want to make sure I can go check it out. And look, I, I like him, but last night, I think there's still this disconnect of people can't understand where he's at. And even though SNL-

• 2:01:12Bill Simmons?

  And his cadence too. It's like that, that stop, start thing he does. If you're not used to it, you're kinda like, what's he doing?

• 2:01:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like there was obviously like peak-

• 2:01:22Speaker 01

  Whatever, you know, political lines you want to argue like SNL was aligned with. I think there was a peak where it was probably like a lot for anybody. Like, I remember they did a news, a weekend news thing or whatever. And they went to some correspondent that was talking about the movie lineup. And then essentially every movie was centered around white male rage.

• 2:01:46Bill Simmons?

  Right? Yeah.

• 2:01:47Speaker 01

  And so whoever the correspondent was that was doing the spoof was just yelling like, white male rage, white male rage. And I wasn't offended as a white male. I was offended because it was so fucking stupid. It just wasn't funny at all. But I felt like because of wherever we were at in our discussions, at least as a country at the time, it was like almost a cool thing to try to do. And it just didn't, didn't work. It wasn't really funny. And now I've looked at different SNL clips. It's like, oh, you can see the shift a little bit. Be like, maybe.

• 2:02:13Bill Simmons?

  Hundred percent.

• 2:02:14Speaker 01

  Maybe some of this pandering stuff that we were doing, or maybe it was people internally that worked on the show. We're like, no, these are important things like we're going to do. You can see there's been a very clear shift of like, let's actually start making fun of both sides a little bit more than we were. So then I don't know if that sets the tone for like what Gillis is walking into. But I think some people look at Gillis and think was when he talks about Trump. When he comes out and says, I'm going to miss Trump being in debates. That for some people, it's like this massive red flag that goes off like, oh, this guy's a Trump guy. You know, he's.

• 2:02:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:45Speaker 01

  White, he's from PA, like clearly he's a Trump guy.

• 2:02:48Bill Simmons?

  Then he goes right for Biden right after.

• 2:02:50Speaker 01

  Right? So I don't think, first of all, I don't think he's as conservative as some people think he is. And the way that like that'll like, it'll happen with certain people like they'll already be like triggered to go, oh no. Like this is a Trump, a pro-Trump comedian out here because he just said, I'm in. And then he makes fun of Trump the whole fucking time. So he's kind of just making fun of everybody there the whole time. I'd ask you this though, like him getting bounced. I knew who he was, but not as, as good. And then pretty quickly I was like, man, this guy is, he's probably my favorite going right now. I think he's really smart on top of being like, the guys that play the goofy thing, but also are incredibly smart with the way they structure the stuff that they're doing is always going to like make me want,

• 2:03:35Speaker 01

  like I'm like, okay, I'm in. This isn't just setup, setup joke or whatever. I think there's some layers to the stuff that he's doing that's really impressive to me. But do you think? Do you think that changed? Cause it, at the time it felt like, and I'm doing a bad job with this. That was the best thing that happened to him because it put him on everybody's radar. But you think the long-term ceiling for him, back to the Zach Eadie thing is lower.

• 2:03:57Bill Simmons?

  I don't think it was the best thing. I think, I think it was bad for him.

• 2:04:00Speaker 01

  Okay, you do. Go.

• 2:04:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I do. I, I think it set him back a couple of years. But, and, but ultimately it became part of his story and he got over it. But, um, you know, I don't think it was, I don't think it was good for him. That, that thing that really helped him was put in that comedy special on YouTube.

• 2:04:17Bill Simmons?

  And it was just great. The one I think he did in Austin, whatever. That was the one when Ben was like, who's this guy? And we were just, we would watch it over and over again. And we thought it was just so fucking funny, like the Trump stuff, everything.

• 2:04:29Speaker 01

  The ISIS thing, when I saw the ISIS thing live in Arizona, I, I mean, he just had everybody. I mean, he, his whole premise was, and again, like, that's a pretty good example of what we're talking about. I don't think he actually is cheering for ISIS.

• 2:04:43Bill Simmons?

  Right, right.

• 2:04:44Speaker 01

  But his whole story and playing it out of getting you to understand why he's rooting for ISIS for all of the reasons that he's laying out. Like, that's brilliant shit, man.

• 2:04:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, and that's also, that was the bones of SNL and there was a lot of the SNL 50 stuff.

• 2:05:00Bill Simmons?

  When they're going back through the old cast and you think like that seventies cast especially. Part of what made, made that great was they just didn't give a shit. They tried everything. And now.

• 2:05:09Speaker 01

  Do you think he has a Sandler, like, potential Sandler timeline that's not reachable now?

• 2:05:16Bill Simmons?

  What do you mean?

• 2:05:17Speaker 01

  Well, if he's, if he's the main guy and he's really funny, he's on SNL for 10 years feels long today.

• 2:05:23Bill Simmons?

  I think it would have been like five years and I think he probably would have done stand-up stuff and then, I don't know what the next thing is, but I think he'd be, I think it would have been really good for him. And I also think the show needed somebody like him, which was, I think the reason Lauren, the new Lauren Buck that came out has a little piece on it. Like he wanted a different type of cast member than they had and somebody that did a lot of stuff Shane did. So I think it would have been really good for him. I also think he would have played Trump, which would have been huge for him because he's really good at it. And you've seen him do it a bunch of times. Anyway. Good deep dive. Uh, anything you got to plug before we go?

• 2:05:57Speaker 01

  Ty Jerome Thursday. Oh, Les Claypool, Primus Tuesday. Birdie taped it.

• 2:06:03Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 2:06:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:05Bill Simmons?

  Well, congrats.

• 2:06:06Speaker 01

  We're getting a little artsy.

• 2:06:07Bill Simmons?

  With the facial hair. Uh, I will see you in a week. We'll see what's changed in the world of basketball. Good to see you. Thanks to, uh, Sarudy and Kyle Gahow as well. Don't forget, you can watch this on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel and, um, you can watch it as a video on Spotify as well. I will see you. New rewatch was coming Monday night. We did an Oscar winner, Russillo. I'll text you about it. Keeping it a secret.

• 2:06:30Speaker 01

  Who did you, who do you want to win the Oscar?

• 2:06:33Bill Simmons?

  Oh, we're taping this for the Oscar. I, I was really hoping Mikey Madison would win best actress because I thought that was the best performance I saw this year, but it doesn't seem like, as we're taping this, doesn't seem like she's gonna win.

• 2:06:45Speaker 01

  I thought she was great.

• 2:06:46Bill Simmons?

  I thought she was awesome.

• 2:06:47Speaker 01

  Best, best pick.

• 2:06:51Bill Simmons?

  I think Onora is gonna win and by default was, but I didn't see The Brutalist, so I'm not gonna pretend I'm Wes and Morris. I just still didn't see it. I will at some point. I just didn't see it and I didn't do the thing where it's like, I gotta see every movie before, you know, I just didn't get to it yet. I'll say it at some point.

• 2:07:08Bill Simmons?

  What do you have?

• 2:07:10Speaker 01

  I only watched those two movies. Oh, and I saw Dune. Saw Dune. Saw Chalamet at the Lakers game.

• 2:07:15Bill Simmons?

  I know. He was, uh.

• 2:07:17Speaker 01

  Sitting a couple of rows in front of me. I wanted to go up to him and be like, hey, here's the deal. It's not about me. Will you go on with Bill? Here's his number.

• 2:07:26Bill Simmons?

  Come on with both of us. Yeah.

• 2:07:27Speaker 01

  No, no, I want you to just, I want you to ice, I want you to hunt him like Darius Garland. Um, I think

• 2:07:36Speaker 01

  it's very clear Chalamet would come on with you if he knew the request was in. I feel like people don't know how big of a deal.

• 2:07:44Bill Simmons?

  I think there's a pretty big PR armada. Yeah.

• 2:07:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:47Bill Simmons?

  It's gonna happen. I'm not worried about it.

• 2:07:48Speaker 01

  They're turning down everything, but any kid that waits outside MSG to meet Amari Stoudemire when he's 10 or 11, that guy wants to go, he already name checked you. So this is, this is an auto. So I thought, is there any way I'll get him? But as I've gotten older, I'm like, I'm never going up to anybody anymore.

• 2:08:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it sucks.

• 2:08:06Speaker 01

  Cause it just.

• 2:08:07Bill Simmons?

  Smart.

• 2:08:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, doesn't work. You can come up to me. I'll be over here.

• 2:08:12Bill Simmons?

  Russillo, see you next Sunday.

• 2:08:14Speaker 01

  See.

• 2:08:39Bill Simmons?

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

• 2:09:20Bill Simmons?

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