Minnesota’s Coming, OKC’s Here, and We Can Save the NBA Season With Kirk Goldsberry and Bill’s Dad

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Kirk Goldsberry to discuss the Timberwolves' late-season surge, exciting Western Conference Round 1 playoff possibilities (2:26), the Thunder beating the Celtics for the second time this season (28:33), and Bill and Kirk's pitch to completely revitalize the NBA (51:10). Finally, Bill talks with his dad about being in TD Garden for the Thunder's 118-112 win against the Celtics, Patriots free agency buzz, the Bruins' decision to trade away longtime wing Brad Marchand, and more (01:16:45). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Kirk Goldsberry and Bill's dad Producers: Kyle Crichton and Chia Hao Tat The all-new, fully electric Audi Q6 e-tron is a new way to experience driving. Learn more at audiusa.com. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  You're listening to the Bill Simmons Podcast presented by FanDuel. FanDuel Sportsbook is the best place to bet on the NBA. We have these fun little Tuesday, Friday player performance stuff. We have same game parlays. We have picks for me sometimes and boosts and all kinds of fun things. Get ready in the playoffs. Download the FanDuel Sportsbook app today to get in on the action. And by the way, The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit theringer.com/rg to learn more. Listen to the end of this episode for additional details. Must be 21 plus, president of select states. Game and problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Coming up, not only are we going to talk about basketball, I'm going to fix basketball. Next. This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun?

• 0:44Bill Simmons?

  Sometimes earlier than expected? Sometimes after blowing a 3-1 series lead? But what if you went to Cancun? With Expedia, save up to 30% when you bundle and save. You can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness, though, hopefully your team doesn't go to Cancun. 1-2-3 Cancun. Or if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save, savings vary. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. Please check out the Prestige TV Podcast where we're doing double episodes every week about White Lotus. I'm on one of them on Sunday nights, the Recap Pod. And then Joanna and Rob midweek doing that as well. Plus, we're covering Severance. I think it's the final week of that, too. New rewatchables coming on Monday night.

• 1:30Bill Simmons?

  I'm just going to tell you what it is right now. Days of Thunder with Tom Cruise. It's officially sports movie month. Tom Cruise, 16-3 washables movie for him. Congrats to him. Just setting all kinds of records. Great guy. So you got that coming up. You can watch that on The Ringer Movies YouTube channel, or you can watch that as a video podcast on Spotify. Just like you can watch this as a video podcast on Spotify. We're also brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook, where I hope you're checking out the 30 on 30, which we do every Friday. I tweet out my pick, try to get 30-plus scoring, a little boost. So stay tuned for that. All right, coming up. Kirk Goldsberry and I are going to talk about some things we've noticed as we head into the home stretch of the NBA season. And then, more importantly, Kirk's class did this

• 2:14Bill Simmons?

  big study of how to fix the NBA season, and we're going to dive into that. And it's really cool. And I urge you to continue to listen through the pod until we get to that part. And then I brought my dad on because he wanted to do a Boston sports report and went to the OKC Celtic game last night. And I had to indulge him. Anyway, that is next. Here are our friends from Pearl Jam.

• 2:55Bill Simmons?

  All right, Kirk Goldsberry is here. You can read him on the Ringer.com. You can listen to him on various Ringer podcasts. He is based in Austin, Texas, where we saw each other after a depressing Spurs Suns game with no Wemby and with Suns team imploding. We have something really good that we're going to talk about later in the pod. This big picture idea that I'm excited to throw at the world. Short term, there's been some stuff going on as we hit these last 20 games. And I talked about this with Rossello two Sundays ago, that there's always a team right around now that starts making a surge, like Dallas did last year, like the Celtics did a couple of years ago. And it's like,

• 3:37Bill Simmons?

  who, who's the team? We talked about possibilities, kind of glossed over Minnesota. And Minnesota kicked Denver's ass last night. The three-point shooting has gotten way better. They're 11-0 in the last 11 Randall games. Stuff's kind of happening, yet they're in the seventh seed. Golden State's 37-28, Minnesota's 38-29. Are you a believer yet? Easy schedule, just a great matchup for them against Denver? Is something happening? What are you seeing? Well, I've always liked this team. And I've

• 4:10Speaker 01

  I feel like they traded Karl-Anthony Towns in part because of the new CBA and I think it it sort of took them off course. I'm a believer that they're going to finish this season very strong for a few reasons. One, you just pointed out Julius Randall is playing his best stretch of basketball since he's gotten to Minnesota.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  He missed pretty much all of February. That's important because they went five of seven in February, but they won those last 11 games with him. I think five in January, now six straight in March.

• 4:40Bill Simmons?

  Well, what are you seeing that's what's he doing differently? Because in the in the first part of the year, it looked like a bad spacing fit. It looked like a weird who's who should take the shot this time and it just it just seemed off. So what changed?

• 4:53Speaker 01

  I think he's playing. He knows his teammates better and he's making better passes. Like at his best, he's a scorer who can also pass. And I think during this stretch, I haven't looked it up. I think he's leading the team in assists. So you have you have Gobert, obviously, is the defensive anchor. You know what Ant is going to do as a scorer. I think he's sort of your second scorer and maybe your primary playmaker when things are going well for him. And without him, their second scorer, Bill, that's a pretty big question mark for this team. So I think his biggest thing is is scoring and playmaking and just filling that void below Ant on the box score. And here's the sneaky thing with this team.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  They have the easiest remaining schedule of all of the Western Conference competitive sort of teams, that top seven group. And it's by a landslide. They have this home stand where Orlando, Utah, Indiana, and two games against the Pelicans coming in. This current win streak could extend to 11 very easily. And I think if there's anybody that's going to catch that group two to five on the Western Conference standings, it's the Minnesota Timberwolves. So I really like their chances of finishing this season pretty strong.

• 6:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's interesting because in this run, they're 16 and nine in their last 25, basically. I think 16 and eight last 24. So the this the record's better. The schedule's been pretty easy, but they did go two and one against OKC and they beat Denver twice, which I think are good signs, especially now that the Lakers don't have a center. Maybe those are the two teams they have to look at. I was studying it today. I test wise, I didn't really notice it until the last week. Just that they seem happier playing together. I thought last night they looked like last year's Timberwolves was noticeable. They might feel like they have Denver's number, but looking at all the numbers,

• 6:44Bill Simmons?

  the three-point shooting is way better, right? So Nas in his last 25, he's 41% from three and he's 18 and seven. And he's having a really nice free agent run. We talked about him on the worst contracts pod, talking about how all these moves they've made, especially the Gobert extension, might have screwed them to keep Nas. And then Timberwolves fans are like, we're keeping Nas. And it's like, well, you made this Karl Anthony Towns trade to save money.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 7:12Bill Simmons?

  Which leads me to believe you're not keeping Nas, especially if, uh, if you have this new ownership, but who knows? He's playing 33 minutes a game and he's been great. Conley in his last 17 is shooting 48% from three. And he looked like dead, dead legs washed up the first six weeks of the season, right? That surprised me more than anything. I didn't think they were going to get anything out of him anymore. And it seemed like he wasn't going to be able to play a crunch time for them. And then Di Vincenzo is the other one. Since Christmas, he's missed some games, but 16 points a game, 47% from three. And he's playing 29 minutes a game. So you say how they don't have a second scorer and you're right. But they've been able to patch it like Nas will have a big game.

• 7:53Bill Simmons?

  Dante have a big game. Randall might have like, it, it feels like they're all rotating. Who's the second guy?

• 8:01Bill Simmons?

  And they're pretty good. I'm surprised Dillingham isn't having a bigger impact for them, but maybe they don't need him.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Dillingham is, is a nice rookie story, but like, come on, we, we, we're talking about a team that had Western Conference title aspirations at the beginning of the year and a rookie really isn't going to slide into that and make a lot of noise. I think Di Vincenzo is a great, great sort of similar thing to Randall. He's, he's gotten time to learn this team. He's fitting in. Um, but remember last year, I thought this team had the best vibes in the playoffs for a while. And a lot of it had to do with Nas Reed, who is like the spirit animal of the whole Timberwolves fan base. Never say anything negative about Nas Reed, Bill.

• 8:40Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Alexander.

• 8:42Bill Simmons?

  I'm sorry, he's going to be in New Orleans next year, but you're you guys are right. Or Washington, wherever he's going to go. Somebody with cap space, Brooklyn, who knows?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they're big and they're physical and they're long and they gave, you know, what everybody forgets, like they give, they give some, they gave Jamal Murray a lot of problems last night. They gave MBJ a lot of problems last night. Uh, when they're really at their best, you know, they have McDaniels on defense, uh, they're long on the perimeter, they're playing hard. And when those same dudes that are playing great perimeter defense are also knocking down shots like that, there's a really good team. That's a really good team and I like it. Uh, and there was a couple of times last night where I thought Randall, like, yeah, it's like what it looks like. He'll just take it right at, uh, Joker and just overpower him. And that's another thing he can do is, is go get an unassisted bucket, uh, in a way that some of these catch and shoot guys can't do.

• 9:33Bill Simmons?

  Sounds like he's won you over. It sounds like the Randall fan club might have to make room for you.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Dude, he is like the ultimate hot and cold analytics guy. Yeah, even there are even whole seasons, Bill, where you're like, this guy's terrible. And then the next season, you're like, this guy's an all-star.

• 9:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  If he has sort of a legacy for the stats nerds, it's like, he is the hardest guy to pin down maybe in the whole league. Uh, and so he's, he's been a frustrating guy to characterize even through the most advanced numbers, uh, over the last five years.

• 10:03Bill Simmons?

  Well, they also have this weird bench, cause Shannon had a couple really good games for them. Like when they beat OKC by three last, last month, end of February, Shannon played 29 minutes in that game. Alexander Walker played 35, McDaniels played 42, Nas played 40. They didn't have Gobert. They didn't have Randall, but they, they're able to, the nine through 11 guys, which is something I think Cleveland has.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 10:32Bill Simmons?

  I think the Celtics have to some degree and OKC has 20 guys. It literally doesn't matter on OKC. They could be like, oh, Jalen Williams isn't playing. Fine. We got three more guys. We could just slot in there. But, um, I do like their depth and they have a little more depth, Minnesota than, uh, I was thinking, it also seems like they're getting a little more than, McDaniels was starting to look like a possible worse contracts guy. But he got going too. And then, you know, the, the, the big thing for me, when you're thinking about the late surgers is do you have like one of the best nine guys? Do you have one of the best eight guys? Do you have one of the best six guys? Edwards is somewhere in the 10. You know, you could have them, you can have eight, you can have nine, wherever. But during this little 24 game stretch

• 11:16Bill Simmons?

  where they're 16 and eight, he's 29 a game, 8.9 free throw attempts and 10.4 threes. And I, I mentioned that because I felt like the, the threes were too high before. And I want, I, I ultimately, like in the playoffs, I think the free throws have to be next to the threes. I want like, in a playoff series, I want 10 and 10 from him, something like that. But, um, you know, he has some stinkers every once in a while. He'll have like the six for 19. He'll have the seven for 29. But for the most part, like, I'm kind of happy where he's at in this season after the season. Where are you at with him?

• 11:54Speaker 01

  I think he's ready to be the best player on a playoff team that's going to win one, maybe two rounds. It's hard for me to see them winning two rounds, just out of respect for the rest of the West. Although, one of the more sort of emergent stories with last night is they give the Nuggets a very difficult time. And it's not just last night. I think it's five straight against them. And it is because Jamal Murray, who has been great, you know, the Nuggets are, you, you, Jokic, you can set your watch by. This guy's going to be great. But Jamal Murray, they seem to have his number. And I think if you can slow down Jamal Murray, you have a good chance to beat the Nuggets in the playoffs. And I think this team is built to slow down the Jamal

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Murray's of the world because of their perimeter defenders. And I think Anthony Edwards is just the kind of Fourth quarter crunch time score, go get a free throw, go get a bucket. I think he's there and I think they're really well rounded. The last thing I'd add, Bill, is I do like their coaching. I like their coaching staff. I think they're built for a playoff series. I think they make adjustments. I think they're not one of these coaching staffs that just goes in and does what they always do. So I like how they're built. And depending on the matchups, which I think is the biggest story in the Western Conference, Bill, going into this last 20 game stretch, 15 game stretch. How these seeds shake out is going to be fascinating.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Who gets who in the first round is going to determine a lot of who makes it to the conference finals. Cause some of these matchups are really good for one side and really bad for the other. And, and I think that Minnesota Denver matchup is a great example of that.

• 13:36Bill Simmons?

  It's a great point. OKC 68 in their last 24, including four losses of either one or two points. Fifth net rating. And they play OKC really well too, which we should mention. Denver, they're built to beat Denver and they have all these athletic wings to throw at Murray. And they have size to throw, not as much size as they had last year with Towns, but they still have a bunch of size to throw at Jokic and you know, they're, it's just a good matchup for them. Doesn't mean they'll beat them in the playoffs, but it's a nice matchup. OKC was interesting because when they played those games, and I thought those games were really fun to watch.

• 14:14Bill Simmons?

  There was a competitiveness, fuck you, athleticism piece that you rarely, the physicality. You saw, we're going to talk about OKC Boston in a second. OKC, even though that I think the myth on them is they're undersized when they're really not anymore. Or they're skinny. They're really physical and I thought, I think Minnesota likes it and they like playing it. And I thought those games, I thought that was a good sign for them, that they hung with them. They also have a lot of guys to throw at SGA who nobody has shut down all year. But they probably have the best chance, you know? And then, and they have a guy on their team who's not afraid of any of them. You mentioned the matchups.

• 14:55Bill Simmons?

  So we're taping this in the morning on Thursday and Golden State and Minnesota are basically fighting for the six seed. Golden State is 37 wins, Minnesota is 38, but Minnesota's played more games. And there's a world where Minnesota gets six and Denver gets three. And that's our 3-6 and Denver's like, fucking A. God damn it. Why, why is that our team?

• 15:20Bill Simmons?

  Just the matchups in general, like Golden State, I'm sure would, doesn't want to see Denver at all. Cause Jokic owns them.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:30Bill Simmons?

  Minnesota would be delighted to see Denver. You just go through and it's like what you said, it's becomes a little rock, paper, scissory. I was waiting for Houston to drop out. But Houston's kind of hung on here. Houston still has a three game, three loss lead over Golden State and a four loss lead over Minnesota. And they're the five seed. And then the Lakers who, you know, we don't know how long LeBron's going to be out. That's another team that could potentially drop, but they'd have to drop a lot down the stretch. So a lot of shit going on, but we could end up, listen to this Goldsberry, we could have.

• 16:02Bill Simmons?

  Minnesota, Denver is a 3-6. We could have Golden State, Memphis as a 2-7. And we could have Lakers, Houston. As the 4-5 with M A Adoka and Dillon Brooks against LeBron, the two guys who have really gone at him in the last two years. That'd be super fun. And then the other one that's in play is the 1-8 with OKC and the Clippers. You know, the Clippers trade SGA to OKC. They make this, OKC has their pick this year and there's just all this history between those teams. So, uh, that would be the most fun version, I think of the four matchups.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Another thing to watch on strength of schedule, because the Western Conference is brutal, depending on, on how your schedule sort of shakes out. The Lakers and the Grizzlies are on the opposite end. They have a very tough remaining schedule. So the Lakers are sort of hanging on to that fourth spot right now, as you mentioned, without LeBron James. The Rockets have won four straight. They could surpass them. You could see a world where the Lakers, the Timberwolves and the Warriors are really good teams. But all going into these first round series as a road team.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  And many of them with championship experience, obviously the Warriors and Lakers have some, some championship experience.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  So it's really interesting to me. I think in a nutshell, the hottest teams out West, not counting the Thunder, have been hot all year are the six and seven right now in the Warriors and Timberwolves. And that just, that just sets us up for a great, great first round. Not to mention the talent over there. The superstar talent, the all-star talent fighting for these slots is just off the charts.

• 17:41Bill Simmons?

  Well, what's funny is Minnesota is a really good road team. They're 20 and 15 now on the road, which I think other than OKC is the best record in the West. The Clippers are a terrible road team. They're 14 and 20. I don't think the Lakers care where they play and they're gonna, they're gonna have Laker fans at any whatever. I think it matters for Houston, though. Houston, I kept waiting to fall off and it felt like it was gonna happen a couple of times, but they're kind of lingering around, hanging around and Lakers-Houston would be a really, really fun, kind of old school, new school series. I don't know how the Lakers are gonna hold on if LeBron

• 18:21Bill Simmons?

  misses three to four weeks here. And who knows? We've seen him recover really fast sometimes and recover really slow other times when there was less at stake, but when you take him out of it...

• 18:32Speaker 01

  They've lost it, yeah.

• 18:34Bill Simmons?

  But you take his, you take the rebounding, defense, second playmaker thing on top of all the other stuff they've already lost and it just feels like insurmountable for them.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, they lost that game in Brooklyn the other night and I think that's a fair indication of the kind of game they can lose. You know, and again, the West is just jam-packed. I think two to five is separated by a game or something like that. So you start losing at Brooklyn, you're gonna drop. The Rockets, as you mentioned, are hot. They've won four straight. They're gonna, they're gonna win those, those kinds of games. So it is, I think it is fair to expect the Lakers are gonna drop and maybe the Grizzlies...

• 19:11Bill Simmons?

  Their next ones are at Denver Friday, home Suns, home Spurs. Might be able to go two and one in those three. Home Nuggets, home Bucks, home Bulls. Josh Giddy Renaissance is here.

• 19:28Bill Simmons?

  At Orlando, at Indiana, at Chicago, at Memphis, home Rockets. That's the rest of the month. So they, they have to go 500 of that in that stage. But do you care if you're the, if you're the seven seed? So you're probably playing the Clippers in the seven, eight game. Right? With real stakes because you don't want to see any part of OKC in round one. And you're playing the Clippers at home. Like it would suck to be the seven seed and have the extra game. But if I'm Golden State, I'm fine. You know, all right, fine. We'll beat the Clippers in the seven, eight and we'll just play the two seed. Like it's not a complete disaster. It's a disaster if you lose though.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  It's terrifying. You got Kawhi Leonard, Ty Lou on the other end. You got one game. I love the plan tournament because it makes these, it sets up for real meaningful games. And you know, I think the executives and the coaches at these teams much prefer the six slot to the seven slot. Just because of the uncertainty, the stress.

• 20:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. You're locked in.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. They, and you let, you get another couple of days to game plan your, your three seed opponent in a playoff matchup. And that's a huge deal too. So.

• 20:38Bill Simmons?

  So do you like the seven, eight, nine, 10, or would you go seven, 10, eight, nine?

• 20:43Speaker 01

  I like, I like how they have it because if you finish seventh, I think you've got to get beat twice at home to get kicked out of. I like the format. I think the seven, eight format is cool, you know? Win one and it gives you this advantage to get in. What are your thoughts on that?

• 20:59Bill Simmons?

  I, part of me wonders if it should be seven, 10, eight, nine. And then the seven still doesn't necessarily, it's not a winner go home for the seven, 10. They would still get to play the eight, nine with home court. But the way they have it, I think probably makes more sense. And the seven, eight is usually a really good game. I mean, part of the problem with the plan this year is the 10 seed in both conferences sucks. Like we're, it's at least in the, uh, in the West, they have an excuse because of what happened to Dallas, the zombie Mavericks.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:33Bill Simmons?

  But they're still the 10 seed. The zombie Mavericks with Spencer Dinwiddie and, uh, I don't even know what center they'd have left and PJ Washington. They might actually be the 10 seed. Phoenix is just like, guys, we've been trying to make this clear for two months. We want to have the season from hell. We don't want to be in there. But you go to the, the East and it's like, ah, all right, Chicago. That Chicago's 27 and 38. It might be in the, might be in there. And then you look at Miami who's 29 and 36. They've lost five. Joe House on the Ringer Gambling Show for the last two weeks. He's convinced Miami's tanking. And his thing on the last two weeks on the Ringer Gambling Show is bet against them second half, live bet against them. They take a lead first half, then they throw it away second half. I

• 22:18Bill Simmons?

  don't know if that's true, but they're a fucking mess and Bam looks terrible lately. Um, anyway, that I think the nine, 10 in the East has a chance to be one of the more depressing playing games we've had. Maybe the number one.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Bulls, Heat.

• 22:34Bill Simmons?

  Bulls, Heat, who don't even want their pick. Right?

• 22:38Speaker 01

  You just hope that the Orlando Magic, because the Magic and the Hawks, they could, they could be decent playoff teams if they awaken from, you know, these, these pretty dark stretches.

• 22:48Bill Simmons?

  I know, but how long do you have to wait for Orlando?

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Apparently longer than two months.

• 22:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So Rudy's right.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Magic are dead.

• 22:53Bill Simmons?

  The Suns is out for the year. Like, uh, the Magic are a cross off to me. Atlanta at least has all of these wings when they get everybody back and healthy and then, and then the random Trey Young, who the hell knows game.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:06Bill Simmons?

  Like that. And they have some size that could always be the Okongwu in a playing game with like 24 rebounds. I feel like Orlando's a cross off. Sorry, Sarudy.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Oof. I think the Cavs and Celtics deserve to have a pretty easy first round series.

• 23:22Bill Simmons?

  Oh, man.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  I think they will.

• 23:23Bill Simmons?

  I mean, look at this. The Cavs are going to get Orlando, Miami or Chicago. Unless one of those teams beats Atlanta. But yeah, I think Atlanta is like, I'm not going to say they're frisky.

• 23:35Bill Simmons?

  But they're 32 and 34. I've watched them a lot. I have a, I have an over bet on them. And just in general, I kind of enjoy watching them and I think they're, they're not bad.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  They need Jalen Johnson. Yeah, with Jalen Johnson, they're a good team.

• 23:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the Hawks, unfortunately, Jalen Johnson out for the year, but you know, this is why you believe in Zach Rieschey. This is why I spent number one pick on him. Um, let's, let's take a break.

• 24:04Bill Simmons?

  And then we'll talk about, uh, OKC in Boston. This episode is brought to you by Audi. The all new, fully electric Audi Q6 e-tron, a huge leap forward, featuring effortless power, serious acceleration, and the most advanced tech of any Audi ever. Experience technology that puts you center stage, the panoramic digital stage, plus an optional screen for front seat passengers. That sounds fun. Perfect for watching the latest sports documentary. Maybe I made it. The Q6 e-tron is not just a new EV. It's a new way to experience driving. Learn more at AudiUSA.com. Always pay careful attention to the road. Do not drive while distracted.

• 24:48Bill Simmons?

  You can cash in by balling out on FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook. I checked, they're still number one. Every Friday night, The Ringer has teamed me up with FanDuel to give all customers a 30% profit boost. When you pick a player to score more than 30 points, this is a lot of fun. You can make a little more money, root for somebody to get 30. I tweet my picks on Friday. There's some good games on Friday, including Clippers, Atlanta, Memphis, Cleveland, Orlando, Minnesota. So we'll come up with a couple of good possibilities and FanDuel, remember, is the home for all of your favorite prop bets. So whether you want to ride with my picks or make your own, just look for 30 on 30 in the FanDuel Sportsbook app or head to FanDuel.com/BS for your chance to score a bigger payout this Friday night. Don't forget I'm going to tweet my pick.

• 25:32Bill Simmons?

  Make every moment more with FanDuel. You must be 21 plus to present in select states or 18 plus and present in DC. Opt-in required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable profits boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wager amount. See terms at sportsbook. FanDuel.com. Game prompt, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit RG-help.com. Hey, before we talk about OKC in Boston quickly, uh, the bottom seven right now.

• 25:58Bill Simmons?

  Washington 13 wins, Utah 15, Charlotte 16, New Orleans 18. That's going to be our bottom four for capture the flag.

• 26:09Bill Simmons?

  Then we have Philly 22 wins, Brooklyn 22 wins, Toronto 23 wins. Russillo's furious. Toronto's making a run at their season over out of nowhere, even though they were supposed to be tanking. So Philly right now is in the five spot. They keep their pick if it's in the top six. And they're doing everything that they scratch Paul George for reasons that remain unclear for the season and beads out. And Philly's going for it. And I think if they get the five spot, it would be pretty hard for them to get jumped twice. So in a weird way, uh, this could work out for our guy, Daryl Morey. You went to Sloan conference in Boston. Weirdest Sloan conference ever?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Well, Dorkapalooza, they did the, uh, they named the transaction of the year, uh, and the Embiid extension did not win it.

• 26:53Bill Simmons?

  Didn't get it. Oh, wow.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  It was the Luka Doncic trade, the Luka Doncic trade, uh, the Paul George deal did not get the transaction of the year. But it was given to, uh, the Los Angeles Lakers. But yeah, I got to see the Boston Celtics play the Philadelphia 76ers. More like the Delaware 87ers the night I chose to attend.

• 27:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, tough one.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Tough one. They're two and eight in their last 10. Uh, they are doing all they can as they should. There's the saving the season for the Philadelphia 76ers is keeping that draft pick in a good draft. That would be.

• 27:29Bill Simmons?

  Really good draft. If you get in the top five in this draft, you're getting like a legit dude.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so they have to do this.

• 27:35Bill Simmons?

  How crazy would that be after all the hype and buzz about them if they ended up with like a top three pick? I mean, honestly, that'd be insane. What were the odds? I guess the odds were actually half decent. Um.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Oh, remember even forget the Georgian and the Georgian, um, and beat stuff. They have a pretty good young backcourt in McCain and Maxie here like.

• 27:58Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  That they could have a young core if they hit on this draft.

• 28:02Bill Simmons?

  Pieces.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's, it's crazy. I know the cap, they're in cap hell. They are in cap hell for the rest of this decade. But if they have rookie players playing over value, that's a pretty good deodorant for that situation.

• 28:15Bill Simmons?

  The Embiid thing's tough. We've been this down this road with, uh. Injured older centers and you're just kind of held hostage by it for a couple of years and then somebody write the story and bead's knee feels the best it's ever been and bead full scrimmage today and then he plays two games and gets hurt again and it's just this cycle you don't want to be in. Washington, Utah, Charlotte, New Orleans, the shocker in that group is New Orleans. We knew somebody in the West was gonna have the year from hell and they were a really good candidate, but to for them to be in the top four of the lottery is nuts with the kind of talent they have. I mean, honestly, it's crazy.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, they they're deep. They can survive a few injuries, you'd think and still be better than this. Better than this.

• 29:02Bill Simmons?

  So here are my OKC Celtics takes and we might we might call my dad at the tail end because he went to the game after after you go, but um, I first of all, OKC has beaten Boston twice and I watched both games and I thought they deserved to win both games and I thought SJ was the best player in each game. There's no KP last night, but OKC didn't have Jalen Williams. So I'm not gonna make excuses. The free throw advantage was way skewed toward OKC. I thought that was more a result of how both teams played and what they're trying to do. The Celtics took 63 threes, which is fucking absurd. But the thing that that has jumped out to me over and over

• 29:42Bill Simmons?

  again with OKC, they play so fucking hard and they're so physical and they're so good defensively and the switching that they do and they're just so committed to a certain level of intensity and competitiveness. It's gonna sound like I'm making an excuse for the Celtics and I'm not. I think I've watched it over and over again. I think teams have a lot of trouble going through an NBA schedule and then you play OKC and they're playing like they play and it's like you can see it like like the guys and then the quotes after the game, Tatum said it, Jalen Brown said it like we didn't do a good job of matching their intensity. That's been this is why this OKC team has been so special as a regular season team. They're fucking animals. You

• 30:25Bill Simmons?

  watch them. It's like every guy in the team is completely beastin' out going crazy. They're they're just like you and if you're not ready for it, you can see it and you can fight back, you can claw back, they do it again and they just over and over again, make these teams look bad from how hard they're playing. So my question to you is, It's a one night thing that works. Could you get used to it over two weeks? If you're playing them in a series over the course of seven games? Would you eventually? Figure out how to match what they're doing, at least competitively and physically?

• 30:58Speaker 01

  I don't know if last year is a fair precedent, but yes, you could if you're you have a really physical, strong front court like the Dallas Mavericks did. That seems like a thousand years ago now, but yeah, it seems it seems like. They are by far the most physical, nasty defense. And and that depth really enables them to play almost like with line changes. They had that perpetual sub story this year, this week, but they have such a great, deep bench. But as you mentioned, they didn't have Caruso, who's one of the the biggest dogs on the team, and they didn't have.

• 31:36Bill Simmons?

  Jalen Williams. Didn't matter. Didn't didn't notice. Just other guys just came in flying around.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  And one of the things that crossed my mind yesterday is that could the second five best players on Oklahoma City be a playoff team by themselves? That's the kind of thing I was thinking like, oh, my God, this team is so deep. Right? You take one of the backup bigs, you take Kason Wallace. You know, you take one of the Jalen Williams, they have so much talent. But the coolest thing about them is they're all aligned to play this ferocious defensive style. One of the crazy stats from that game last night, though, is like, OK, the 63 threes, we can talk about that. They play like that, and you only get 12 free throws. The Celtics only shot 12 free throws. Now Celtics fans might say this or that or the other thing, a lot like you said, has to do with your.

• 32:24Bill Simmons?

  I mean, and it really was. It was nine free throws when the game was being decided, so they they weren't getting a lot at all. They got three at the end.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  And then here's the stat that I thought. I was looking at it today. SGA again was a magnificent player. But he drew 10 fouls himself on the Boston Celtics. He drew 10 fouls himself. He puts you in foul trouble, like it or not. And Jalen Brown was the Celtics player I was most sort of concerned with after this game because he was he got off to a slow start. He started started getting hot in the fourth, but then he entered. He entered the fourth quarter with two fouls. And he fouled out with three and a half minutes left. What happened? SGA got him twice. SGA got him with some of the foul merchant stuff twice. His fourth and fifth fouls, nobody's gonna remember that because they remember him fouling Chet at

• 33:15Speaker 01

  the end, but he had the fifth foul because of SGA's sort of antics there at the elbow. But SGA does that to you. Derrick White fouled out at the end. SGA needs a nickname, maybe the bonus because he's just always drawing.

• 33:32Bill Simmons?

  The bonus?

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. They're just always in the bonus. When does Jalen Williams and Derrick White both foul out in regulation? I don't know.

• 33:40Bill Simmons?

  SGA is a pretty good nickname on its own. It's a good acronym, but the bonus is solid. I like that one.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Well, it just, I was looking it up. He's drawn 10 or more fouls by himself, like 11 or 12 times this season.

• 33:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's funny. I was talking to, obviously have a lot of Celtic fans in my life, some of whom don't watch a lot of OKC. And all the Celtic fans were so mad at SGA for like the fucking foul baiting and all that stuff. And it's like, this is, he does this every game. He's the hardest guy in the league to guard, like hands down. Russel and I talked about it the other day when we were talking about the MVP stuff with him or Jokic. She's having one of the best guard seasons in the history of the league. And I haven't seen a team figure out completely how to guard him yet. You can throw, it seems like part of the strategy is try to throw bigger guys on him like the Celtics did with Brown. You think on paper with Derrick White and Drew Holiday, perfect guys to go against him, but he always gets the matchup he wants. He always gets the shot he wants. He's always either

• 34:38Bill Simmons?

  be able to get to the rim, get a foul, or do a little pull up. And I haven't seen anyone stop him yet. And if you're gonna make the case for OKC to win the title, it's like, they play harder than everybody else and nobody can stop their best guy. Seems like two pretty good things.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't hate him for what he's doing. I mean, he, like, we define athletes in different ways, but in the 2020s, we really started to understand like guys who can change direction and decelerate. Better than other guys are athletes. Those are the, those are top tier athletes. We learned that with Luca and Harden, but this guy just makes it so hard to have proper defensive position, even for guys like Derrick White and Jalen Brown, who are incredible at that.

• 35:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  And, and then he layers on this off-arm Harden-ism where he snakes his left arm when he's dribbling with his right hand into anybody's defensive arms and then he flails and it's, there it is. And that's what happened to Jalen Brown on first fifth foul last night.

• 35:42Bill Simmons?

  But most scorers do this though. That, that, like the thing, the reason I still think Brunson's the best, the best flop foul baiter guy is he's also doing it off the ball. He's doing it when he's on defense. He's just flopping around like a marlin. SGA is just purely trying to get to the free throw line.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:59Bill Simmons?

  He's like, whatever trick I can do to get it.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  I looked it up. There's three guys who are drawing six fouls themselves per game. In other words, they're fouling out the equivalent of a player on the other team every game. And it's, you got Jalen Brunson, your favorite. There's SGA. And then there's the one guy who actually deserves to be on that list, Bill, which is the most physical assaulting player in the league right now, which is Giannis, who-

• 36:23Bill Simmons?

  I thought you were gonna say Scoot Henderson.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Well, and, and-

• 36:29Bill Simmons?

  My guy is back. Scoot Henderson. Russell and I are live. I'm so excited. He was unbelievable. He looked like fucking 2010 Russell Westbrook yesterday. I was going nuts.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's still, we're good. We're good on the Scoot Island or whatever we're gonna call it. But I would say the Celtics fans also can't complain about this off-arm hijinks that Jason Tatum and, and Jalen Brown both played.

• 36:52Bill Simmons?

  Listen, that, that game played the hits for things that are gonna drive Celtic fans crazy. Tyler Ford as the ref, just, just, I think there's a lot of, a lot of, he doesn't like us stuff. The free throw advantage spoke for itself. SGA is super frustrating. And then Jalen had his worst game in a couple of years, you know? And you can't survive no KP and a horrible Jalen game like that. If you're going positives for the Celtics, Tatum was awesome again. I mean, I, I just feel like he's gone up. Russell and I, we talked a couple of weeks ago about, I, I still feel like it's in play that he could make, go to that last level. Murillo thought I was being a little too optimistic on it. I think he's at least gone up

• 37:35Bill Simmons?

  a half level and I think there's an intensity and competitiveness to that.

• 37:41Bill Simmons?

  I just don't feel like was totally there like physicality that is just at another level. There also Maz is putting a bunch of minutes on him, which I like and don't like, but like, he played 45 against the Lakers and I think 42 last night and he wants to be out there. And I think that's the best thing this Celtics have going for them right now.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think bigger win for the Thunder than it was a loss for the Celtics. And same, I would say about that Cleveland win in the same building a couple of weeks ago, that comeback win. That was bigger for Kenny Atkinson and the Cavs to win in that building for what's coming down the road. Again, I don't think there's anything to worry about. If there's one thing to worry about in Boston, it's Kristaps Porzingis, like get well soon.

• 38:27Bill Simmons?

  This weird injury, yeah.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's get that guy back. He needs to get there before I make any judgment about where the Celtics are in this title defense. But dude, he hasn't been there and then that's an issue. We need to get him back in the fold to see this fully fledged Celtics title defense. Because I think teams like Boston, OKC are good enough to beat them without Kristaps Porzingis. I think that's one of the lessons we've learned over the last few weeks that the Celtics team isn't quite as dominant as they were last year and maybe that there's better candidates to upset them in the postseason than there were last year.

• 39:03Bill Simmons?

  Well, there's definitely hungrier candidates and hunger becomes such a big part of this as the season goes long. I, it's funny, like I'll get texts from people sometimes or I'll hear it on a show or a podcast and people, we have to do this thing now about, uh, OKC's not getting enough credit. When will people start talking about OKC? First of all, I think people are talking about them and we did this on Sunday.

• 39:29Bill Simmons?

  I'm at the point with this where if you're not taking OKC and Cleveland seriously as the two best teams in the league that have the two best chances to win the title, I just feel like you're not watching the season. They're passing, Cleveland's had two 15 game winning streaks. I don't know what else they have to show us. That team is awesome and Mitchell is having a great year and, and if like they play OKC in a series, he'll think he's as good as SGA like to me, they check all the boxes and OKC now that Chet's back, that was one, we're gonna talk to my dad, I think later, but my dad came away, like he hadn't really seen a great check game in person.

• 40:08Bill Simmons?

  Chet's been a fucking beast since he came back, you know, and I just think they can go small and big. I think OKC is awesome. I think beating them in a series is going to be really, really, really hard, especially with their good home team too. They get a good crowd. It's a weird place to play. Their fans are like really rabid. They affect the game. They affect the refs and I don't know. I just like, they're the favorite on Fanduel for a reason. They have the best team and they have a guy who can score on every team in the league whenever he wants. That matters.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  Dude, I remember it was Tim's last season. I think I was at the Spurs and yeah, we had the playoff series up there and that place is insane. It's a very difficult place.

• 40:52Bill Simmons?

  It hurts your head. That was my takeaway in the 2012 finals. Like I actually had a headache after the home games. It was like, this is too loud. My head hurts.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  You know, not to go full Spurs deja vu, but it was like that 2012 Spurs team was so great. You remember that, that the team didn't make the finals and OKC came back with Harden and Ibaka and, and took them out. The Spurs were one, I think.

• 41:14Bill Simmons?

  Dude, I wrote the, I wrote the Grantland piece after the Spurs killed somebody about how this had a chance to be like a generational team. And I think OKC swept them after I wrote the piece. Like they just like destroyed them.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were up two, one game too, like by 30 at home in San Antonio and then didn't win the rest of the series. That building is a very, very difficult place.

• 41:34Bill Simmons?

  Well, especially when you have, you're putting young and hungry guys in there. And you know, look, you look at the game yesterday and you go back and watch the fourth quarter, which I did this morning. The Celtics missed wide open shots. A bunch of them in the fourth quarter, whereas OKC actually made some shots and the big guy you have written behind you, I think, because you want to remind yourself to talk about him was Wallace. Wallace made the two dagger shots of the game.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:00Bill Simmons?

  And Wallace was awesome. And Wallace is one of those guys, like I do the trade value list. I was like, where does this guy go? Because there's no way they're trading him. What's he worth? Like, if somebody's like, yeah, we'll do this. We'll give you this awesome player. Give us back Wallace and some picks. Presti's gonna go, no, thanks. You know what? I mean, I'm actually gonna keep Wallace. Thanks. Thank you, though. Thanks for your interest.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  They can't pay all these guys. And Wallace is written on my board because he, he deserves to be because he, he played really well last night. Starter made those big shots, made.

• 42:32Bill Simmons?

  Five of six.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Great shot blocking guard like Derrick White. He loved that.

• 42:38Bill Simmons?

  Awesome.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  And just another great young two-way player in Oklahoma City.

• 42:42Bill Simmons?

  By the way, 21 years old. Born on November 2003.

• 42:50Bill Simmons?

  Two years in, they have him at least for two more.

• 42:55Bill Simmons?

  You know, I, SGA, I'm sure will work with them a tiny bit for salary stuff, but they're gonna have to pay Chet, and they're gonna have to pay Wallace, and they're gonna have to play Jalen Williams on top of SGA. That's gonna be really hard.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Dort and, yeah, like Wallace, Isaiah Joe. Isaiah Joe, so SGA took his, his, his rest at the beginning of the fourth last night, and the Celtics were making noise. And then he hit his own, like, killer three at the top of the arc. Yeah, the depth, I think this has come up with a couple of the teams we really like out West. Depth is gonna be a real separator. It gives you versatility. It gives you sort of injury insurance. And Oklahoma City has the biggest depth. I think your team had the most depth in a way last year. Just could play so, so well. This, this year, I think the Thunder and the Cavs can match that.

• 43:47Bill Simmons?

  I couldn't agree more. Well, the other thing is. OKC has way better variables than the Celtics do. If you're telling me I'm getting everybody for four rounds with the Celtics, I feel great. But I have Horford, who's, I think, 39, who's still playing 28 minutes a game and they're still counting on him in a real way. I have Drew Holiday, who's 34, who's got a fucked up hand. I have Porzingis, who I just have no idea when he's playing and when he's not playing at this point, and it's like a pleasure to see him, but I don't trust that he's going to be out there 100% of the time. I have Pritchard, who's hit or miss, depending on the game and the matchup. Whereas like I look at OKC and it's like, it would really have, something weird would

• 44:31Bill Simmons?

  have to happen for any of those guys to get hurt. They're all young, they're all, you know, same thing for Cleveland. It's a mostly young team that's, you know, you'd have like, Darius Garland got hurt last year because he broke his jaw, somebody hit him in the head. But I just think the durability and consistency of those young guys, when you combine the hunger piece of it, it's, it's going to be a challenge for the Celtics. This is going to be a way different journey for them this year. Like even right now, they're 2-7. They'll play the Hawks, let's say the Hawks are the seven seed. They'll beat the Hawks, that's not going to be like the most fun series. Like the Hawks are, you know, they're, they're, they're not going to roll over. Then they'll have the Knicks or Detroit in round two. That's not going to be easy.

• 45:15Bill Simmons?

  And then they play Cleveland or Milwaukee probably. And that's before we get to the finals and I need all my guys to stay healthy the whole time. Like it's, it's just going to be way harder.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, the, the, the Indiana conference finals last year, right? That, you know, that, this is going to be leveled up.

• 45:31Bill Simmons?

  So that could be every round.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:34Bill Simmons?

  And they won last year, which you can't sleep on. Like it's so much harder to do it the second time.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Let me ask you this, Detroit, New York, if you had to pick that series right now, who are you taking?

• 45:44Bill Simmons?

  So I watched the entire Knicks Portland game last night as my wife and I also watched Paradise. So I had on the iPad watch going back kind of back Paradise is the perfect show you can watch while you're also doing something else. The Knicks have had, they pulled out some of these, some of these late ones. And I kind of think they needed that game last night. I thought Bridges really needed it. Bridges had, was threatening and just become like this appendage. And I thought that was a really big game for them. Towns hit a couple of huge threes down the stretch in the fourth quarter. But I actually think these, this Brunson injury, which you never want anybody to get hurt, but I think it's

• 46:24Bill Simmons?

  a, it's a weirdly okay thing for them because now they have to use this different muscle. I thought they were way too reliant on him. And now it's like, hey, guys, McHale Bridges is a good offensive player. Maybe you should give him the ball every once in a while. Hey, Towns is a good matchup for the last two minutes of a game. So I think they're going to figure some things out about the supporting cast that's going to help him when he comes back.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  That's all good, good analysis. What I see on my, my end of the efficiency landscape is over the last 15 games, Detroit has the second best net rating in the entire NBA.

• 46:57Bill Simmons?

  I know. It's, I look at this constantly and I'm, it's they're the one outlier where you're like, why is this team there?

• 47:04Speaker 01

  It's because they have, you know, Cade Cunningham, Malik Beasley, Malik Beasley turning into Klay Thompson. I don't think many of us predicted that, but he is averaging like 43% from three point range.

• 47:16Bill Simmons?

  He's turned into a 2016 Klay Thompson.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Yes. He's shooting almost 10 a game and he's making 43% of them. It's one of the best catch and shoot seasons of all time. And, you know, they are playing great defense in a way that the Knicks are not.

• 47:32Bill Simmons?

  Well, and they rebound. The rebounding is the other thing. They get second chances. They control the boards. They have size and they're nasty. It's like a nasty team.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  I wouldn't want to play him if I were the Knicks, but you know, want to see what the Knicks get hold. But anyway, I just thought throw that in there.

• 47:50Bill Simmons?

  I like that every guy in the Pistons is ready to get in a fight. Talked about it before, but I just, I love their attitude on everything. And by the way, they have a realistic chance to get the four seed. So we're taping this Thursday morning. Milwaukee's 36 and 28. Indiana's 36 and 28. Detroit's 37 and 29.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:09Bill Simmons?

  And playing better net rating wise. Name a stat from the last 25 games. I'm going to look it up right now as we're talking. Um, just last 25. This is nuts. I have all these bookmarks for the net ratings. And I have like 15, 25 and 20. Detroit's 69 in the last 25 and their sixth defensive rating. And do they, they have the second best D as you mentioned. Like that's a, that's not a small sample size. 25 games is fucking, that's almost two, two months. It's like seven weeks.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  And they have a great offensive player. And I know if you haven't gotten a chance to enjoy the Cade Cunningham breakout season.

• 48:53Bill Simmons?

  Wow. It's beyond a breakout. Would you vote for him for, for, uh, most improved?

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Most improved? Who are our candidates?

• 49:03Bill Simmons?

  I'll give you them right now. Do you have a vote? I can't remember.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  No, I do not have a vote.

• 49:07Bill Simmons?

  I have a vote, so I'm not allowed to bet on this. I always want to mention that. Oh, there it is. Yeah. Oh, he's the favorite. Minus 270.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Is Mobley in there?

• 49:15Bill Simmons?

  Dyson Daniels is plus 220. Mobley's 100 to one.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Now, I will get.

• 49:20Bill Simmons?

  The crazy one is Pritchard as the favorite for six man at minus 240. Malik Beasley's plus 300, which tells me nobody's watching the Pistons. Cause I would have thought Beasley should be the favorite at this point with how important he is. And he's like their, you know, their number two crunch time guy. And I tied Jerome is down to 25 to one. It used to be 55 to one. I, I think he's in there too. And then I guess Nas at 25 to one. I, I don't really think of him as a bench guy because it feels like he starts so much and there's always somebody hurt, but. He's in there too. Who would you have? Would you go Beasley?

• 49:52Speaker 01

  No, I'd go Cade because I think it is the most significant.

• 49:55Bill Simmons?

  Oh, for improved, you'd go Cade?

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. What was the other? Oh, Beasley is sixth man. Yes. I mean, as a nerd who loves catch and shoot stats, like this guy, this season is incredible. It's, it's, it's up there with the, the best catch and shoot seasons we've ever seen.

• 50:10Bill Simmons?

  Well, you know, you know what? The thing with Beasley that I noticed at the end of games, when they're coming out of timeouts and the other team knows they're probably going to run a play with him coming around on a three. And they're like treating him like he's Klay Thompson 2016. This is not, this is now like, oh, this is a nice story. We've, we're well beyond that. Teams are treating him like he's a real guy because he's been a real guy.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And what he brings to that team's offense that needs more offense is, um, is very important to their, their recent success. And Cade is a perfect distributor. Um, I love what they're doing and they, they are not, I, I think you're right. Milwaukee and Indiana sort of fading while they're scorching. I don't think they'll end up as a six seed, which should be good news for, for next fans.

• 50:51Bill Simmons?

  There's just no good stats with Milwaukee. Like last 25, they're 12th, right?

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 51:01Bill Simmons?

  Last 20.

• 51:06Bill Simmons?

  They're 16th. And then you go, if we do, yeah. Well, last 15, same thing. Uh, they are.

• 51:20Bill Simmons?

  They are, Jesus. Oh, ninth. That's not bad for last 15. So there's signs of life, I guess. But last, but Detroit's played better for them for seven weeks is, I guess, the, uh, the big point.

• 51:35Bill Simmons?

  Let's take one more break and then let's do our thing. I'm really excited for this. 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.

• 52:20Bill Simmons?

  Enter now for a chance to win at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to 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. All right. So when I was in Austin, Texas last month for a live show, we went to your sports business class at the University of Texas in Austin, had a bunch of really smart people who had been working for a while on a big project. So you explain what the project was.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, so when the semester began, I'll take you back to January of 2025, and you and Russillo and a bunch of people were doing check-ins on the NBA vibe. And at that time, the story was ratings are way down. And so we designed a case around what's going on with the NBA? And what would you do to change it? And we had a bunch of students, like 40 or 50 students, and we'd worked with FanDuel. They'd sent us some of their handle data, which was really interesting. So to go beyond just TV ratings and look at betting handle as a proxy for interest in the league as a sort of a second.

• 53:35Bill Simmons?

  Especially the live betting, the, yeah, all that stuff.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, because the theory is like, whether you gamble or not, I think we would all admit, if there are more bets on a game, that probably means more people are paying attention to it. It might not just be on in the background. People are actually paying attention to it. And, you know, the key thing we found right away is that it is a good proxy for interest. It mixed a lot of the TV ratings stuff we saw early in the season, which sort of troughed in December and rebounded with that famous Christmas night game between the Lakers and Warriors. And now we're slightly down year over year. But I had the students like, hey, what would you do? What would you recommend to the commissioner of the NBA to improve the popularity of our broadcasts and in the overall league itself?

• 54:22Bill Simmons?

  So right now, the season is 82 games. It starts on October 22nd this year. It ended on April 13th. It's 24 weeks, 82 games. The playing is the mid-April. First three rounds of the playoffs this year starts April 19th, ends June 2nd. So it's seven plus weeks for those three rounds. And the final starts June 5th and ends June 22nd. And your students decided what?

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Got to start it later. Move the start 45 days later in the calendar. Another opening day is in December. You still get that Christmas slate. And you go into July bill. And this is really for one main reason, which is to get away from the monster that is football, specifically NFL and college football, which hogs all of our attention. It hogs my attention in the fall. It hogs your attention. And we think that there's a compelling case for the NBA to consider moving out from under that boot of the football attention. And then in tension economy, I think if you play more of your games

• 55:35Speaker 01

  in January, February, March, April, May, June, July, there's a much better chance for better television audiences and other sort of signs of interest.

• 55:45Bill Simmons?

  So two things with that. They're launching the season October 22nd. They're going against the World Series. They're going against the NFL season has really kicked into gear. All the teams are starting to play better. It's like the height of college football.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  The presidential election?

• 56:03Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah. Every four years, a presidential election is coming. And they're just popping right in the middle of that. And people are like, cool, thanks. They're going, the way they have it structured now. They're basically going against the NFL for the first 11 weeks of the NBA season. So it's like 45% of the season, they're just going head to head against NFL. Now, the playoffs, there's less games eventually. They have the, I talked about how stupid this was a couple of weeks ago. NFL ends, Super Bowl ends. The NBA has already done their trade deadline, so they lose that whole bump from whenever that happens. And then they go right to the All-Star break. And what happens during the All-Star break? There's no basketball and everybody's complaining about how bad All-Star Weekend is. So that's, that's your first arrival.

• 56:47Bill Simmons?

  And then what always happens is we hit the end of February and there's good basketball games. And people are like, whoa, the NBA has got really good. It's like, no, the NBA was really good, actually. You were just, you were concentrated on the football. So I was like, 45 days seemed like a lot to me.

• 57:04Bill Simmons?

  And I did all these different, I sketched it out a bunch of different ways. And I think 45 days is around the right number. So the first thing I did was 42. So if you move everything 42 days, that's six weeks.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 57:18Bill Simmons?

  Right? That starts the season on December 3rd, the week after Thanksgiving. At least that's what would have happened this year. You start December 3rd, 24 weeks, ends May 25th.

• 57:32Bill Simmons?

  Play in May 27th to May 30th. First three rounds, May 31st, ends July 21st. And then the finals go July 24th, ends August 10th. That seems too late to me. I love second, to me, the goal should be, how do we get away from football as much as possible? How do we take advantage of all of June instead of having the finals end on like June 18th, June 19th? Why are we throwing away June? And then could July really work for us? And I think we both agree it could and your students, I mean, talk about the case they made for July.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, July traditionally, and we had, we were lucky enough, Bob Iger came to our class a couple of weeks before and said, there's a metric called H U Ts, households using television, that traditionally says July is a no-fly zone on television. Like, that's why there's no new shows. But with streaming and the changing landscape of media consumption, even he was saying, this is no longer the case. Like, July is open for business. There's, there's streamers that are launching huge shows during the summer now. I think it's a little bit antiquated to say that there's no business case for playing.

• 58:46Bill Simmons?

  It's a lot, it's a lot antiquated. Yeah, I don't think this shit matters anymore. The whole model of like, TV goes from September to May, and we have three networks, and we release stuff, and we have sweeps, and like, it's fucking out. Shows can hit any time of the year.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  And if you're on vacation, you have, you bring your cable package with you. All of us are bringing Hulu or YouTube TV, or whatever it is, with us, wherever we're going. I do think it is a fair criticism, Bill, to say that the NBA Finals being in July would be annoying to a lot of the key stakeholders, whether those are the players, the coaches, the executives, the people running the buildings. People in Phoenix or Los Angeles might not want to be in town in July. Those kinds of thoughts are relevant here. But ultimately, I think there is a strong business case to be made, that we could play the playoffs in the Finals later in the spring than we currently do. That's where I landed, that's

• 59:44Speaker 01

  where the students landed. And I think it's compelling enough, the league should consider it.

• 59:51Bill Simmons?

  Well, so there's two big things. One, the number of weeks you could just get away from football is just 100% positive, that's it. Like, you're not equal to football, you're not going to be. It's a way bigger audience. You don't have the gambling fantasy stuff that football has. You don't have the ability for everybody to mobilize around Sundays. And football is getting better and better at doing their own schedule. They're better at, oh, here's a Friday game. Oh, now we're gonna have two Christmas games. Oh, now we're gonna tackle Saturdays. Like, football is just gonna get better and better at killing the NBA during these first two months. So the more you can get away from that, the better. And then I just feel like, for the NBA, April, May, June, July should be the

• 1:00:33Bill Simmons?

  peak months. And all of July. So one of the things I was looking at...

• 1:00:39Bill Simmons?

  If you moved everything 42 days, but you had a 76 game regular season. So everybody loses three home games, three away games. Sorry, you guys just signed a $76 billion deal. You'll be fine. That would start the season on December 3rd, but ended on May 11th. 22 weeks, 76 games. Play in May 13th to May 16th. First three rounds, May 17th to July 7th. Now we're talking. Finals, July 10th to July 27th. And now, all we've done is we've, we've targeted basically post NFL draft. Our three best months of the season. We don't have to worry about the NFL at all. It's out.

• 1:01:22Bill Simmons?

  And the only thing we'd have to worry about is like the freaking Olympics. But I don't think the NBA players should send our guys to the Olympics anyway. So we're fine.

• 1:01:31Bill Simmons?

  With that, so I've asked NBA people about this in the past. And they said the biggest reason they wouldn't move it is because of the summer schedule. Because we need our summers. It's the two months off, our kids are home from school, whatever.

• 1:01:46Bill Simmons?

  Counter.

• 1:01:48Bill Simmons?

  You'd still have August.

• 1:01:51Bill Simmons?

  During July, you're working anyway with the Vegas Summer League. That's become like a, almost a two week event. I would get rid of Vegas Summer League completely. And use that so that we're done July 27th. The draft is July 31st. Tone down Summer League, don't make it this huge thing. And then you basically get August and September and half of October off before we get the preseason. That makes way more sense to me.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it would make way more money too. And there's a one word that hasn't come up, which explains why it isn't like this already. And that's baseball. When the NBA started avoiding baseball on the calendar was that, that era's version of avoiding football now.

• 1:02:33Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  You know, Mickey Mantle on the Yankees, we can't compete with that. Like let's, let's start our season right after the World Series. Like that's, that was the logic. This is now an updated version of that where Mickey Mantle on the Yankees is now Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. And one further point, what did Disney just do? This week or last couple of weeks is get off of their baseball relationship. That's one of the major media partners and they need inventory later into the spring and summer.

• 1:03:03Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  There's no Sunday night baseball anymore. Well, let's put, you know, the first round of the playoffs into April, May, June and give them more summertime content for those, those key moments. Cause they're also strapped down with football for the entire fall too. So I think there's a lot of compelling reasons to think about this from a media perspective. And as a league that's trying to gain more eyeballs and revenue in an attention economy that's increasingly competitive and increasingly in the sports world dominated by both pro football and high level college football in the fall.

• 1:03:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. If you're being smart about this,

• 1:03:45Bill Simmons?

  everything moving later also means the trade deadline is after the NFL season. Your all-star break and all-star game, if you have one. Now that's moving to mid-March, maybe even during March Madness. Maybe you just don't have an all-star game anymore and you just have all-star break is March Madness. I still love Chris Ryan's idea of having all-star break actually just be bye weeks with 10-team bye weeks, three weeks in a row, where each set of 10 teams gets one week off. And I would get rid of the all-star game. I don't think it works. If they want to have some sort of big corporate event, make that the NBA cup whenever you have that.

• 1:04:24Bill Simmons?

  But the big thing to me that we know we're right is because some of the stuff that they're already doing

• 1:04:31Bill Simmons?

  is a reaction to the fact that football is just killing them. Right?

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:04:34Bill Simmons?

  Moving the TNT Barclay show from Thursdays to Tuesdays during the NFL season is a direct concession that you're getting destroyed on Thursday nights.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:45Bill Simmons?

  Just period. Doing this NBA cup thing is a direct concession that nobody gives a shit about the NBA in late October, November and December. And you need to do something to be like, hey, we're over here. They just need to move it. And here's the other thing, Kirk Goldsberry. We know expansion's coming, 32 teams. If there's ever a time to go to a 69-game schedule, it's when they do these expansion teams. Because 32 games, you play the other 31 teams twice.

• 1:05:16Bill Simmons?

  Right? You have four 18 conference, 18 divisions. So you play everybody twice and you play everyone in your vision one more time and it's 69 games total. All right. So let's start the season December 10th. Let's end it May 4th. Let's play a 20 week season. Let's start the play in May 6th and May 9th. Let's play the first three rounds, May 10th to June 30th, and let's start the finals, July 3rd and on July 20th. With a 69 game schedule. There's no fucking way you can tell me that's not going to be better for the NBA.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  If attention is good, then that's better. And I think the other thing you mentioned in there is like, make the NBA cup the all-star game right after the Super Bowl. That's our welcome back to the NBA moment for football. It's such a great format. Shout out to the NBA for adding that. It really makes those, those meaningful one game events that the NFL has taught us are so great. But the NBA cup is a winning addition to the calendar. And I think you're right. I think we could survive in July. I don't know about summer league in August. That's, that's a tricky part. There will be people who are annoyed.

• 1:06:24Bill Simmons?

  You just have it for the, don't make it as big of a thing as it was and just make it like. I thought the, if you're going to do a counter in this, the hardest thing to figure out is the college season ends, kids graduate. But you wouldn't be able to have the draft until July and end of July. So none of those kids would know where they're playing, who they're working out for, for an extra six weeks. That's not nothing. Maybe you have the draft. Between the regular season and playoffs. I don't know. But that, but that's the only part I can figure out.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  Well, so that, let's say, you know, early April, college season ends. You know, if we're not starting until December, who cares if the draft is, is not till the August or whatever. I think that's fine.

• 1:07:06Bill Simmons?

  Right. Those kids are all working out on themselves. All right. Screw the rookies. So just, I'm gonna go through this one more time. 69 game regular season, once we have 32 teams. Starts December 10th, ends May 4th. We could even say, we'll give everyone next week, we'll start May 11th. But let's say, May 4th. The playoffs are done, first three rounds on June 30th. Finals goes July 3rd, right before July 4th, which would be cool. Through July 20th, and we're done on July 20th. So we basically, if you shorten the season and then move it, and it's a month longer, and now I'm concentrating on my best stuff in May, June, July. That's how you win. And this is how they have to think. And if they don't start thinking this way, I'm gonna really start thinking that they need the leadership at the top.

• 1:07:51Bill Simmons?

  I know they got this giant media deal, but these are easy fixes that they should do.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Well, and the other thing that I think is starting to percolate out there is this rumor of alternate leagues coming around. And I think that it could be-

• 1:08:04Bill Simmons?

  Not a rumor anymore.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  It's not a rumor anymore. And I wonder, you know, in an era where live golf came in and the Saudi soccer thing came in, if the league keeps jamming us up with 82 games and making it such a slog, if they don't show some concession to the athletes or to the players, are they making these rival league potentials more attractive to some of their talent around? And you can call me crazy all you want, I'm only saying if you follow soccer or golf, you've just seen this. Those things weren't gonna be real until they were. I think there's a real chance, the NBA needs to be proactive here. That's what I would say. Keep being proactive, don't be reactive here. There's a chance to make the NBA better.

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  And if you look at the numbers, I think it was Lakers Celtics biggest broadcast of the year.

• 1:08:54Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  When did that happen? After the NFL. If you put that game on a wild card Saturday, you're done. Nobody watches that. And you put it instead in March, and here we have 5 million people watching on American television. That's a big deal. That's the kind of incremental improvement we could ramp up across the, across the business if we got out of the way of football.

• 1:09:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, one of the cool things that your students did, I mean, there's all this anecdotal evidence we have anyway, that football is just destroying everyone else and that it's an absolute monster. But then the college football piece, not just NFL, where college football really crests from the end of August. Mid-November, probably, and then we start getting it. So it's probably mid-November range. So you're going, it's two monoliths every weekend, right? I just don't know why you would do that if you don't have to. The only thing, my big takeaway is, and I didn't really think about it until I was in your class, it makes zero sense to start on October 22nd, October 23rd, anywhere in October. It's fucking stupid. They shouldn't do it anymore.

• 1:10:03Bill Simmons?

  And if they're gonna move, if they want to move it to mid-November, even that makes more sense.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:10:09Bill Simmons?

  But first week of December makes the most sense and they just have to start thinking that way. And I really think like, if you're just trying to get like basketball NBA Nirvana for how a season should go, it should be 69 games. It should start in December and it should end in July and they're gonna win if they do that.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  One, so one of the people at the NBA told me is like, you know, we came up with the NBA Cup as a way to sort of help the owners compensate for a loss of regular season inventory. And when confronted with the, the idea, hey, let's go down to 70 games or 74 games. We're gonna add this in-season property to, to compensate for that. We'll sell it to a media partner. The owners, of course, came back with, well, why don't we do 82 games and the in-season tournament?

• 1:10:51Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  And not lose any money. So I think somebody needs to do a better job of convincing owners and players that somehow we're gonna make the same amount of total revenue if we drop the games to 70, 69, whatever we decide. Cause right now, that's the case that has failed to make it across the table and land with the owners. And that's the simple reason why we still have 82 games.

• 1:11:15Bill Simmons?

  Hey, I have a question. How much fucking revenue do you need? We're gonna have guys making $75 billion a year. Like, how much is, how much is enough? You just signed a $76 billion deal. Like, do what's best for the sport. Try to grow the sport and this is the best way to do it. You mentioned the Alternative League. So it's, it's being pushed by Maverick Carter, who's LeBron, one of his business guys. And when I heard about it, I thought it was, I just thought it was bullshit because I didn't think it was real because I thought, initially everyone thought those guys were getting the Vegas team. And then I, I don't, I think it's wide open. I don't think they have any inside track at all. And in fact, there's other groups that I would bet on before them.

• 1:11:58Bill Simmons?

  And I thought this was a ploy by them to pretend they're doing raising Saudi money and blah, blah, blah. And ultimately, all right, we'll drop it if we get the Vegas team. That's not the case. They, they have got a shitload of money for this and a plan. And everything I've heard is that it's kind of real. I don't know if they have all the money yet, but they have enough that could you, could you form a six team league? And convince five, six, seven stars to basically jump when their contracts? I think the contracts would have to be over, but I look at Luca, he's done in 26. Like that's somebody like, all right, if he's, could this be a live situation? What does he care? He doesn't mean loyalty to the NBA. He just got traded.

• 1:12:39Bill Simmons?

  So good. Like, could you pay, could you build a league and have like six, seven Luca type guys? Hey Luca, here's a hundred million dollars a year. You're playing a 35 game season. And, uh, and you're going to be the face, one of the faces of this league. Like, I think it's real and I think the NBA owners are a little more worried about it than I think has been reported so far.

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Imagine a world where you get paid more money to play less basketball and travel around.

• 1:13:03Bill Simmons?

  Way less basketball.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  Way less basketball. Right? Imagine a world where you're paid more money to play less basketball, travel around the world. You get to live if you're Luca. I'm not, I haven't heard anything, but if you're Luca, you can live in Slovenia and make these flights to Singapore or Manila or Shanghai to play in this touring style.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  F1 almost structured basketball league. Again, anybody who's followed soccer or golf knows this could happen. This could, it's happened. So to sit here and say, this is, this is, this is impossible is to be naive. And.

• 1:13:42Bill Simmons?

  And it's also that we're in a world right now where rich people throw money at sports stuff. It's just a fact. We're in a world now where the Saudis and everybody in that side of the world is pumping incredible amounts of money in a UFC and the WWE and boxing. Like they, they've completely transformed. Boxing, the thing that they couldn't decide to just do that with basketball is nuts.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  It's nice. Basketball is legitimately a global sport now in the NBA. It is a global league to its credit. I got to go to Paris and watch NBA games, but that was two games on the continent of Europe all year long. People in the Philippines would kill to see this level of basketball, people in China, people in Europe, people in Africa, Australia. This is truly a global game, unlike baseball or football. And so I think that makes it even more attractive to somebody to come through and try to disrupt it. Because you know what? Memphis and Cleveland, those are cool cities, but so are Singapore and Shanghai. And there's real money around there.

• 1:14:44Bill Simmons?

  You mentioned that it's a global game. They also have players that I think unlike unlike with some of the golfers, you have players that have huge social media footprints. That if they switch leagues or went or did something else, they'd actually be able to promote themselves, you know? And it's like, I remember when, uh, when my contract was almost up with ESPN. And it seemed like people thought I was gonna leave and they were writing about it. It's like, well, you can't leave ESPN. Can't leave the machine. It's like, guess what? And then all of these people over the next 10 years, including myself, were able to leave and start stuff. And it's like, you don't need the fucking machine. I don't think the basketball players need the machine. I think if they were part of another league, I think, I think people would pay attention to it.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  Dude, down here in Texas, there's like more than one of my friends, multiple friends, Mavericks fan friends that are not joking when they say I'm rooting for the Lakers this year.

• 1:15:35Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Like, maybe these brands aren't as strong as we think they are in the, in the, uh, social media era where you say, oh, Luka Doncic is on. Yeah. Oh, I'm a Luka Doncic.

• 1:15:45Bill Simmons?

  Players.

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Shout out to Jason Gallagher's kid again. I mean, like, that's the future.

• 1:15:50Bill Simmons?

  Jason Gallagher's kid, just repeated mentions on the pod. No, you're right, though. They're just gonna follow, they'll follow him there. And guess what? They'll probably follow him to when he's playing for the Singapore Giants.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying. That's what soccer's taught us, dude. I mean, that's exactly how these kids follow soccer. They're Ronaldo or they're Messi or they're Mbappe and they're going with them wherever that's going. Why wouldn't that happen to these athletes that are just as popular?

• 1:16:15Bill Simmons?

  Well, I'll tell you this, the NBA has to start taking all this shit seriously. They're throwing away the first two months of the season every year. The season's too long. Nobody likes it. The players don't like it. There's all these solutions that they're unwilling to explore. They're going to add two teams and somehow keep an 82 game schedule, which is fucking stupid. And they have all this money that they already got. That allows them now the luxury to rethink this whole system. And that's how they should be thinking. And if they're not thinking that way, they need new people to run the league.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  And one last, one last point about the 82 games. It's more than just too much inventory. Load management, if you look at the data, load management really annoys fans. People don't want to turn on TNT like we did for that Celtic Sixers game the other night and see the Maine Red Claws and the Delaware 87ers.

• 1:17:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  One of the reasons that happens is we're, we're, we're putting too many games out there. If we had fewer games, there'd be fewer load management situations. We would have full, full teams playing each other. The product would be better on average.

• 1:17:18Bill Simmons?

  Well, you'd also have a situation like Philly has now punted on their season. You don't have to watch the zombie Sixers for the next two months. Not give a shit. Like, all right, we're, we're out way sooner, you know?

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  Simulation mode, you can enter.

• 1:17:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. But yeah, I think that's a big thing, Bill. I think the shorter season where games feel more like events. It takes a little blind faith to see that that could get you to more revenue. But I love your point about, hey, well, you just locked up this huge media rights deal. Do you really need a lot every?

• 1:17:47Bill Simmons?

  People are paying the most money they've ever paid for your teams. Like this is a time now to be proactive and try to get better at stuff. And that, this is going to require real vision. And it's not just like, we've come up with the NBA cup. We've added a new event to All-Star Weekend on Saturdays. Like, we're not talking about that. Like, you have a chance to actually fix it. All right, Kirk Goldsberry, it was fun to sit in your class. Shout out to your students. That was a great presentation. I will see you soon. Say hi to everybody in Austin.

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  Thank you, Bill. Thank you.

• 1:18:15Bill Simmons?

  All right, quick break. This episode is brought to you by Fire TV. You ever sit down, ready to watch the game, only to search and scroll endlessly? If so, you need Fire TV. It shows you are live games from your favorite teams all in one place, right on the home screen. No more searching. Just sit down and turn on Fire TV. Separate subscriptions may be required. Feature and content availability may vary.

• 1:18:38Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. Look, I already have my dream job. I run the ringer, argue with Chris Ryan, AKA CR. But even dream jobs have not so dreamy parts. You know, the work that slows you down never seems to go away. That's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They're like digital teammates who actually do the job, start to finish. No handoffs, no homework. That means more time for the work that actually matters, which for me is talking about whether the 86 Celtics can beat the 96 Bulls, which they could. To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. All right, my dad is here complaining to me all during the OKC Celtic game. It's been a tumultuous year for him. He just adopted a new puppy.

• 1:19:21Bill Simmons?

  Lost, sadly lost Sally a couple of months ago. You thought you were going to be a one dog family and then all of a sudden you're telling me you're getting a puppy. Ruby is the name. And, uh, and now you're up with a puppy that's peeing on pads and scratching and biting you. And was it worth it? I guess is my question.

• 1:19:40Speaker 02

  Yes, I think.

• 1:19:45Speaker 02

  I'm just watching it because she's been peeing on the floor all morning.

• 1:19:48Bill Simmons?

  Oh, good.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. She actually, last night was good. She got up at two o'clock. She did her business, went back to bed, woke me up at 7:30. She's only 10 weeks old.

• 1:20:01Bill Simmons?

  Sounds great.

• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean,

• 1:20:05Speaker 02

  like you said, Molly, my wife Molly can bring the puppy when she's 10 years old to the nursing home to visit. It's going to work out great.

• 1:20:14Bill Simmons?

  All right. Good. Congratulations. So you, you went to the Celtic game last night and you hadn't seen this version of OKC in person. What was your take? What was your in-person takeaway of the Thunder?

• 1:20:28Speaker 02

  A couple of things. It's the best team I've seen all year come into the Garden in person. They seem to have 20 players that they just rotated in and out. I didn't know half the names of the players on the team. They just came in, they played great defense, whoever it was. They got rebounds, they passed well. They didn't settle for the three. They only took the three when it was open and they had no lane to the basket. But they went to the basket a lot. I don't know if you saw the free throw disparity. They had over 30 free throws last night and they earned them. They went to the basket. They were physical.

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, we were terrible. We just settled for three shot, three point shot after three point shot. Nobody wanted to go to the basket. Jalen Brown had one of those horrific games that he occasionally has, fouled out, which is so unusual. But he made dumb fouls. And on top of it, it was my least favorite referee crew. So when I saw who the refs were, I was thinking, you know, this is a big game for the NBA. It's on, you know, you think they could have brought in a good crew and.

• 1:21:45Bill Simmons?

  I should mention, my dad's not a Tyler Ford guy. If you see Tyler Ford doing a Celtics game, just know my dad's upset immediately.

• 1:21:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it couldn't have just been me. The whole game, the Celtics were, I know we complain a lot. The Sox complain a lot on the floor, but there were some really horrendous calls last night and the disparity. You know, you're the home team. Even though you're not going to the basket, you should get a few calls, right?

• 1:22:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, see, all the Celtics fans were saying this, but we shot 63 threes. So at that point, you're probably not going to get a shitload of free throws, you know. We weren't going to the basket enough. I also think, Kirk and I talked about the game a little bit, but I left some stuff for you. I thought Dort was like the worst possible guy to guard Jalen. I thought Jalen could not solve him at all. He's just strong, he's smaller, and he just couldn't figure him out.

• 1:22:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was so ironic after watching what a good job Brown did in the previous game on

• 1:22:51Bill Simmons?

  The Lakers, yeah.

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  And in this game, he not only did a poor job on defense, Dorf killed him. You know, he's built like a linebacker.

• 1:23:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:03Speaker 02

  He just, he really out muscled him. I, I know everybody's talked about how, what great shape Jalen Brown is in from working out all summer and, you know, he is a pretty big guy, but Dorf made him look small.

• 1:23:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  It was, uh, yeah, it was a frustrating game for everybody.

• 1:23:22Bill Simmons?

  So this is 51 or 52 years season tickets for you?

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  This is my 51st year.

• 1:23:28Bill Simmons?

  How many guards have you seen in person that were better than SGA?

• 1:23:33Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:23:35Bill Simmons?

  I mean, Jordan, obviously.

• 1:23:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:39Bill Simmons?

  Would you, would you put him on like the, like second highest level, highest level? Like he's unstoppable. Um, and we were throwing everybody at him.

• 1:23:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's, he's in the top 10, obviously. I, I've not seen him in person because I didn't go to the game last year against OKC. He was unstoppable and, and also he's fluid. Like he goes to the basket, looks like he's going to be contained and gets the shot up somehow. He, he has a lot of tricky shots too. Um, and they all go in. Uh, if I'm a defender, I'm really frustrated trying to guard that guy. He was really good. I, I already mentioned that he has my MVP vote.

• 1:24:25Bill Simmons?

  Oh yeah, I, I don't know if you got a vote this year, but I'm gonna pass it along anyway.

• 1:24:30Speaker 02

  I thought because I was in the documentary, I got a vote this year.

• 1:24:33Bill Simmons?

  No, you don't get a vote. Would the SGA, the inability for us to control him reminded me of Andrew Tony a million years ago. I was thinking of some of the other, because I remember we went to that finals game in 08 when, uh, when they beat the Lakers that year. But Kobe, there was that game too, when the Lakers started coming back and Kobe all of a sudden was unstoppable for like two minutes. And there's the crowd, you can feel the energy kind of die because you're going, oh my God, what do we do? Um, SGA is a little bit like that. Like I was thinking about a series against him. And you'd think like with Holiday and Derrick White, and then some size with Brown and Tatum, this is the right kind of team to stop him. But I'm not sure anyone's stopping him this year.

• 1:25:19Speaker 02

  Well, I will, I will have a caveat, though. He, he goes to the basket frequently. I mean, he has a very, very nice, obviously, a good outside shot, made a couple of threes, but his, his game is going to the basket.

• 1:25:32Bill Simmons?

  Right. No Porzingis? Are you going there?

• 1:25:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Porzingis would have made a difference in the middle. Uh, we got out rebounded, out hustled. They, they played a two big lineup and our two bigs were Horford and, uh,

• 1:25:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Luke Cornet.

• 1:25:48Speaker 02

  Luke Cornet. And, uh, we just didn't match up very well. But it wasn't just that. They're a driving team and they had a lot of layups. And I know Porzingis would have made a difference out there.

• 1:25:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. But the problem is, you and I talk about this constantly, like Porzingis has hit the point where it's exciting to have him. But you notice when he's in the game and he just hasn't played enough. And there's this reason, that reason, another reason. And now I'm at the point where you think about having to get through the Knicks and Cleveland and OKC potentially. I don't think they can win all three of those rounds without Porzingis. And I have no idea if he's going to be available.

• 1:26:26Speaker 02

  I agree. Um, I was just reading, he's missed seven of the last eight games. And the one game he did play, he, he had, he was limited minutes. And it's very mysterious. He has, he has this virus that has, that they can't find out what it is. He was at the game last night, all dressed up, sitting on the bench. He looked great, but he wasn't playing the game.

• 1:26:48Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't get it.

• 1:26:50Bill Simmons?

  What, you've gone to a lot of these games. What's up with the, why aren't they better at home this year? What is it?

• 1:26:56Speaker 02

  Too many threes. Um, they get three happy at home. They don't, they don't seem to. Go to the, that's one thing. They don't go to the basket as much. The other thing that I've noticed is that they always start slow. It's like they, they didn't wake up yet. Last night was a prime example. It was nine, nothing and they took a timeout.

• 1:27:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:18Speaker 02

  But now you have nine points you have to make up. And what did we lose by? I think we lost by, you know, seven or eight. I don't know why the slow starts. I don't know whether, I don't know what's going on there. They, you know, if you noticed last night, our first 10 shots, the three-point shots.

• 1:27:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:38Speaker 02

  If, if they're not going in, that leads to a defensive rebound, a fast break by the other team, and suddenly they're scoring. And we don't work the ball inside when Porzingis isn't there.

• 1:27:51Bill Simmons?

  I mean, the thing is, if I showed you, if you didn't even watch the game and I just showed you the stat sheet and it was like, we shot 63 threes and 12 free throws, big guy, we lost. Like that's, that's just, that's a guaranteed loss.

• 1:28:03Speaker 02

  The guy in front of me, Mike, said to me, it was at almost the end of the first quarter. He said, you know, we haven't taken or made a two-point shot yet. Every shot was a three or a free throw. You can't win against a team like OKC playing that kind of basketball. It's, you know, it's hit or miss.

• 1:28:23Bill Simmons?

  Can you give us your, your Tatum? You've watched every season of Tatum's career you've been going.

• 1:28:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:30Bill Simmons?

  I feel like he's gone up half a level. I thought he was awesome in the Laker game. I thought he was really good last night. He certainly wasn't the reason they lost. And in general, feels like he's gone up a notch. So what are you seeing in person?

• 1:28:43Speaker 02

  I, I feel, I agree with you. He's gone up a notch. It's the best season he's had that I've seen him play. He's, he's like a general out there. He controls all of our offensive action. You know, it's, every game he takes three or four shots, he kind of wish he didn't take. That may be, and I don't know whether.

• 1:29:08Speaker 02

  You know, too many times going to the basket, you know, you don't want to be hit every time you go in there, but.

• 1:29:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:14Speaker 02

  It seems like every time he goes to the basket, he can score.

• 1:29:18Bill Simmons?

  I like when he goes to the basket, but then pulls up and takes that 15 footer. I feel like that's unstoppable.

• 1:29:23Speaker 02

  It's it. It's been unstoppable the last, you know, month or so, but he doesn't do it that often. He'll more often settle, you know, he'll be out three point line and all of a sudden I look up and the shot clock's at six seconds, five seconds, and he takes that fall away, pretty long three point shot. And it's hit or miss. He doesn't have a good percentage on that.

• 1:29:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:47Speaker 02

  I'm not, I'd love to see him go to the basket more, you know, maybe if Porzingis was out there opening the lane up a little bit. Uh, OKC really clogged the lane with their bigs. There wasn't a lot of room to drive, which I understand from, you know, why they took so many threes, but you would have been frustrated sitting at that game.

• 1:30:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I didn't enjoy watching on TV. I mean, the biggest thing that shifted this year is we left last season, Tatum and Brown were kind of one A, one B.

• 1:30:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:17Bill Simmons?

  And Tatum has really, and it's, Jalen has had some good stretches and some bad stretches, but Tatum, the amount of stuff that he's doing game to game on both sides is, he's also the best rebounder on the team.

• 1:30:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:30:29Bill Simmons?

  He defends everybody on the other team. Uh, he runs the offense. I, I think he's having an awesome season. Like to me, he's clearly the number three MVP and there's, there's some Yanis people who are like, well, Yanis is 30 and 12 and six, but I just think the Celtics are more successful. And Tatum has as big of a burden and he's also running the offense.

• 1:30:50Speaker 02

  There's a couple of other trends that, that I noticed, you know, it was the fourth quarter, middle of the fourth quarter and Jalen Grant had four points.

• 1:30:58Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:30:58Speaker 02

  And five, and five fouls. That's your, that's your highest paid player. You can't get that out of that guy.

• 1:31:06Bill Simmons?

  You trying to light a fire under Jaylen Brown right now?

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  I, I, I didn't understand his game last night. The other, the other thing you and I have talked about it, their bench, uh, OKC's bench was terrific. Our bench wasn't. Um, I know when you have a starter out, everybody moves up a little bit, but I love Pritchard and I love Hauser, but in really big games against really good teams. Who have, who have a good defense, they shut them down.

• 1:31:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I agree. I agree. That's why I don't think Pritchard, he, he's favored to win six man, but I've just seen too many games where I don't think he's impactful enough where it's like Cleveland, that Ty Jerome will come in and he'll just swing the game when he comes in, you know? There's games where Pritchard doesn't do that, but I also think the amount of money they're paying for the top six guys on this team, it's really hard to have a bench, you know? Like it's just, it's just hard to find that ninth, 10th, 11th guy when you're shelling out the amount of money that they're paying. So it makes sense, but I agree. I thought OKC just seemed so much deeper last night.

• 1:32:12Speaker 02

  OKC did something else that the teams that are beating us seem to be doing. They're picking us up almost at half court.

• 1:32:19Bill Simmons?

  Trying to put miles on Tatum. Yeah.

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and, uh, pushing us out, pushing us out further and making us so. And by doing that, when you look up at the shot clock, it's 10 seconds to go.

• 1:32:33Bill Simmons?

  By the way, we did that to the Lakers on Saturday. That was one of the big reasons they, they were making Luca and LeBron like really work just to bring the ball up, which I don't understand why more teams don't do against them.

• 1:32:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what, that's why Brown was so effective against Luca, against the Lakers. It was, you know, Brown was on a. Alexander last night quite a bit, but he's a different kind of player than Luka.

• 1:33:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:01Speaker 02

  You know, also in person, he's very slight. You don't expect him to be, you know, he gets a lot of rebounds. He's he slid through the lane like.

• 1:33:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:14Speaker 02

  Very few players I've seen. And Brown couldn't stop him.

• 1:33:19Bill Simmons?

  So would you have us, you saw a Boston Cleveland game in person too?

• 1:33:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:25Bill Simmons?

  Would you have us third with those three right now?

• 1:33:28Speaker 02

  Right now I would.

• 1:33:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I would too.

• 1:33:30Speaker 02

  Well, for for kind of a different reason, I know that OKC had a, the Williams kid didn't play last night, but

• 1:33:38Speaker 02

  Cleveland is 100% healthy usually this year. And you and I talked about it. I thought they made a couple of great additions for their bench.

• 1:33:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we like Hunter.

• 1:33:47Speaker 02

  I always loved Hunter. And I always, when Jerome was on OKC, I thought he's a great guy off the bench.

• 1:33:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:55Speaker 02

  So who gets them both? Cleveland's.

• 1:33:58Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:33:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know they had Cap room, but and that's like you said earlier, that's where we have a difficulty when our six players make so much money at the top.

• 1:34:09Bill Simmons?

  What's the, what's the Patriots fever right now with the free agents and the number four pick?

• 1:34:15Speaker 02

  Well,

• 1:34:18Speaker 02

  I think people like the additions.

• 1:34:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:21Speaker 02

  With the exception of, why haven't we signed a receiver? And why haven't we signed an offensive tackle? And like the paper today that Cam, I don't, I can't say I've ever seen Cam Robinson play, except he is a left tackle. And maybe you plug him in for a year.

• 1:34:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's tough. It's tough when the case for somebody is he has two arms, two legs and a head and he plays left tackle. Like, all right, 20 million.

• 1:34:47Speaker 02

  Let's give him a chance.

• 1:34:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:50Speaker 02

  Cooper Cup from the Rams.

• 1:34:53Bill Simmons?

  I think he's.

• 1:34:54Speaker 02

  You think he's done?

• 1:34:55Bill Simmons?

  I think he's, I think it's a wrap. There's some bad stats with him about getting open. Like year by year, the last five years where last year he just doesn't get open anymore. We don't need another guy who can't get open.

• 1:35:09Bill Simmons?

  We already have five guys who can't get open. I, here's where I've talked myself into.

• 1:35:15Bill Simmons?

  Well, first of all, I'm, I'm praying the Giants take Sanders because they don't have a quarterback and it seems like Rogers might go to Pittsburgh and they haven't done anything else. So it's like, please take Sanders. I'm, I am all in. I'm planting my flag on this because they don't need Graham because they beefed up the defensive line. I'm all in on Travis Hunter. I'm all in on taking him at receiver at four. And then maybe in the dime packages, he comes in and plays some D back, but just can, can you turn him into a top five receiver? I think you could. That's your number one receiver. You also have the flexibility. Maybe he can play on the other side of the ball a little bit.

• 1:35:52Bill Simmons?

  It's just like he's, it just seems like he's a sure thing. I want a sure thing at the number four. I want, I want like a blue chipper who would be a $35 million player year someday. That's what I want.

• 1:36:04Speaker 02

  I agree with you. It seems like there's two sure things, uh, Hunter and Carter. And it would be fabulous to have Carter on a defensive line with the additions we've made.

• 1:36:15Bill Simmons?

  Otherwise trade back. Like if you don't get one of those two, trade back.

• 1:36:19Speaker 02

  Trade back. Um, and maybe take one of the other tackles at 10 or 11 or somewhere in there.

• 1:36:26Bill Simmons?

  I do love the Drake May Hunter idea would be super fun, but I think this has been a really fun draft to follow, especially like, we just need two teams to take a quarterback ahead of us and then it shoves the guys down and you're just watching the Giants not get anyone, not make the Stafford trade, not get a free agent.

• 1:36:43Speaker 02

  I'm feeling, I'm feeling optimistic that, you know what happens in these drafts? Teams get really anxious. I don't have a quarterback.

• 1:36:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:55Speaker 02

  And there's two quarterbacks sitting there.

• 1:36:58Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:36:58Speaker 02

  I, I'm not going to be at all surprised if we don't see the Giants take the quarterback. Uh, they have no quarterback.

• 1:37:06Bill Simmons?

  I can't, I can't wait. It's going to be the most exciting draft we've had in a while because,

• 1:37:13Bill Simmons?

  to pick this high and that potentially have it work out. Um, Marshawn, can we talk Marshawn for a second?

• 1:37:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm very, I, I hate the way the Bruins.

• 1:37:25Speaker 02

  Let our 16 year old, 16 year veteran captain of the team just walk away somewhere else, especially to an arch enemy team, the Panthers.

• 1:37:35Bill Simmons?

  That was the worst part for me was Florida, just come on. Out of all the teams, that's who, that's who you're going to trade him to?

• 1:37:44Speaker 02

  Well, the other thing is they, they gave a crazy amount of money to Lindholm.

• 1:37:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:49Speaker 02

  The forward or center forward and he, and he's terrible. So we know Marchand gives 110%.

• 1:37:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:58Speaker 02

  He's our second leading scorer, was our second leading scorer, pony up some money.

• 1:38:03Bill Simmons?

  And he's a legend. He's going to retire, retire, retire as a Hall of Famer, all that stuff.

• 1:38:08Speaker 02

  It's the part of sports that I hate.

• 1:38:11Bill Simmons?

  But it's the Danny Ainge thing, right? Where Danny Ainge used to say, if I was running the Celtics in the late eighties, I would have traded Bird and McHale and started over. You can't be loyal to the memories. He traded Kevin Garnett in 2013. It's like the best thing for the team is to make the move, but I don't know. You get like a late pick in the first round. It's not like this is making or breaking your future.

• 1:38:31Speaker 02

  Well, it's not even a first, it's a second round.

• 1:38:34Bill Simmons?

  It's a conditional second that can turn into a first. Yeah.

• 1:38:38Speaker 02

  I just think that Marchand was not the guy you trade.

• 1:38:43Speaker 02

  You, you work it out or you let him, you let him stay here until the end of the year. We're, we're not going anywhere.

• 1:38:51Bill Simmons?

  His cousin Brian, all right? I know he took this one hard.

• 1:38:54Speaker 02

  He did take this one hard.

• 1:38:56Bill Simmons?

  There's nobody left. I mean, who's like, who's going to be the, well, pastor next to your number one jersey in the stands now. But other than that, nobody left from 2000, early 2010s, that whole run.

• 1:39:08Speaker 02

  Right. Now the, the irony is I think within the two weeks that they traded Marchand, they, they identified next year's ticket prices, which they raised quite a bit. Yeah. So the timing was terrible. I also, don't you think that Neely and Sweeney are on thin ice in terms of where we're headed? And the move, the moves we've made over the last five years?

• 1:39:37Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's a whole generation now that they won the cup though. The month I started Grantland.

• 1:39:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:39:44Bill Simmons?

  This is a million years ago. Yeah, it's like you have like 20 year old kids now that barely remember it.

• 1:39:51Speaker 02

  It was for me, it was two dogs ago.

• 1:39:54Bill Simmons?

  Right. That's how, yeah, I forgot. That's how you measure dog years are living dogs. Um, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. That because they have that. And then the other thing is the Celtics sale that.

• 1:40:05Speaker 02

  Well, this is in the paper today. Did you see it?

• 1:40:08Bill Simmons?

  There's four left.

• 1:40:09Speaker 02

  The four left, yeah.

• 1:40:10Bill Simmons?

  And the bids are the final bids are coming in Friday. There was five and Lori dropped out. The Eagles owner, I think he, I think, uh, like pretty soon after the Super Bowl was out. I thought they thought they, they, they thought there was gonna be five.

• 1:40:24Speaker 02

  When they look, they had a lengthy write up in Boston, well, without that, um, it doesn't look like anybody has the means to pay for this team without a lot of backup support.

• 1:40:37Bill Simmons?

  So that's one of the things about, well, one of the things is nobody knows the composition of all the groups. So you have all these minority partners who are going to throw in money, but nobody knows what side they picked with the four left. And who's on whose team. So it's, it's a lot of, uh, but tying to the Bruins. I think part of the play would be you'd build a new arena. And so you're paying for the team, but then you also know, like in the 2030s, there's going to be some sort of basketball arena that you build. That's like what the Clippers did. So it's really, you're like 10 billion all in. So you need like the capital behind that. But for the Bruins, it's not great because they're going to be stuck in this other building. They'll be the only tenant in seven years. And then the team hasn't been,

• 1:41:22Bill Simmons?

  you know, it's definitely arrow pointing down. So it's interesting times.

• 1:41:26Speaker 02

  A building that's going to be 30 years old.

• 1:41:29Bill Simmons?

  Isn't that crazy? Remember driving by the garden and just seeing the carcass of half of a stadium for that whole winter in 94?

• 1:41:37Speaker 02

  I remember almost 30 years ago, after we had had our tickets in the old garden, 20 years plus. Them taking me into this new garden to pick a seat 30 years ago now. And it, I know they've done it as much as they could refreshing it, but it is what it is. It's not like the new arena, like you've been talking about the Clippers place, how spectacular it is.

• 1:42:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. No, I think the Lakers are in the same boat. The Staples was built, I think in like 99 or 2000, it's quote unquote, state of the art, but it's really not, it sucks. And now they're in this, what do you do? And you have the Clippers who have this incredible arena. So I know that's going to be a piece of the Celtics purchase. You have to think arena.

• 1:42:20Speaker 02

  But you know, Boston as well as I do, there's no land. I mean.

• 1:42:26Bill Simmons?

  There's one part, they, if you go back and you read, remember when we, we were going to have the Olympics in Boston for that, before it got shut down? And they had a whole plan for where it was going to be. And one of the, uh, one of the big locations was going to be on 93 pass, like where Emerson is going toward like Quincy and the Cape. And there's this whole section. Yeah. And I think that's where the arena would go. I think that's the location and I think it's open. So I, whatever. It'll definitely, something's definitely going to happen over the next 10 years. But that, the big thing for me with the Celtics sale is like Pagluka is one of the four guys left. He's the number two owner right now. He's the one that if he gets it, you have the stability, you keep the organization intact.

• 1:43:11Bill Simmons?

  If the other three guys, any of those guys get it, who knows? They just come in like, here are my ideas. I'm bringing in my own guys and you could have just complete dysfunction.

• 1:43:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that really worries me. It's like the year John Y. Brown came in from Kentucky. You know, the people come in outside of Massachusetts, they, they come in with their whole

• 1:43:34Speaker 02

  different ideas, you know?

• 1:43:35Bill Simmons?

  Well, they all want to do their one thing. And then you end up in the Luka Doncic situation where you have the new Dallas owners are like, yeah, let's trade him. We get Anthony Davis and a pick, Max Christie.

• 1:43:45Speaker 02

  Well, the other thing, the other thing we've talked about it, if, if they don't have deep enough pockets.

• 1:43:53Speaker 02

  Brown's probably on his way out the door.

• 1:43:55Bill Simmons?

  The tax bill is pretty crazy.

• 1:43:58Speaker 02

  It is crazy.

• 1:44:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think like some of it will depend on what happens in the playoffs. But yeah, I'm prepared as a fan. I'm prepared and you are too. Like, I don't know what's gonna happen. You're gonna have this new owner group paying six plus billion dollars. The team, let's say they don't win the title and then they're looking at a tax bill of $200 million on top of what they just paid. And it's like, all right, first move. I've decided to do this. God only knows what that's gonna be. It could be anything.

• 1:44:27Speaker 02

  They've already, we just got our packages a couple of weeks ago for season tickets for next year. Significant increase in ticket prices.

• 1:44:36Bill Simmons?

  Oh, really?

• 1:44:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I understand, you know, we won the championship.

• 1:44:40Bill Simmons?

  Need me to wire you some money?

• 1:44:43Speaker 02

  I just wanted to mention it, you know.

• 1:44:45Bill Simmons?

  All right, I'll flag it. I'll talk to my guy.

• 1:44:47Speaker 02

  I read online yesterday that you signed a new contract.

• 1:44:50Bill Simmons?

  Well, yeah, I might have some extra.

• 1:44:55Bill Simmons?

  So they raised, so they jacked it like 10%?

• 1:44:58Speaker 02

  It's a good, each seating area has a different percentage, but I just wanted to mention it, you know, as long as we're talking.

• 1:45:05Bill Simmons?

  Well, you, we have the episode three of Celtic City, which spoiler alert, we, you popped in. We interviewed 100 plus people and we interviewed some old season ticket holders. But that first year you bought the, you bought your ticket was four bucks.

• 1:45:19Speaker 02

  Four dollars, yeah.

• 1:45:20Bill Simmons?

  Four dollars for the 73, 74 season, four dollars. So now it's like, what is it now? Like, like 400 a ticket?

• 1:45:27Speaker 02

  Well.

• 1:45:28Bill Simmons?

  No, not that high.

• 1:45:31Bill Simmons?

  Is it, is it up there? We could talk after. Jesus.

• 1:45:34Speaker 02

  They flexed the tickets.

• 1:45:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Oh, that's right.

• 1:45:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's no one price for the seat for one game. You, you come in and you see Dallas now, one of the terrible teams, or New Orleans. It's a totally different price than the Lakers, for example.

• 1:45:52Bill Simmons?

  And Philly, they could probably, if Philly comes in again, they could probably tank those tickets.

• 1:45:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:57Bill Simmons?

  And knock them down.

• 1:45:59Speaker 02

  But, you know, it's understandable that they raised the prices.

• 1:46:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:04Speaker 02

  On the Bruins end, it's not understandable for the product they're putting out and the fact that they let their captain go.

• 1:46:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's funny, like when we, when you had, we used to go to the games in the seventies and it was all blue collar, all, all like just.

• 1:46:21Bill Simmons?

  The most normal people possible. And then the eighties, we just started watching them go away one at a time.

• 1:46:26Speaker 02

  Right? Yeah.

• 1:46:27Bill Simmons?

  And I remember the guy, the guy with the hat with the mustache, like that guy who's, and all of a sudden he was gone and just, and it just, and then by the time we got to the fleet center, it was just completely different.

• 1:46:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Big Bird with his son.

• 1:46:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:40Speaker 02

  All the regular Mary in front of us, all the regulars. Now, there's a new group of very nice people.

• 1:46:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:47Speaker 02

  It's a different group.

• 1:46:48Bill Simmons?

  There's still some old timers there though.

• 1:46:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, there are.

• 1:46:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. But you're like, I think you're like in the top six of longest runs now or top five.

• 1:46:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I should be. I, I think.

• 1:46:59Bill Simmons?

  Should honor you at halftime or something.

• 1:47:01Speaker 02

  Well, they mistakenly say that this season took a hold of his tickets 55 years, but he got them from his brother who passed away.

• 1:47:09Bill Simmons?

  Right, right, right. It's not like it should be straight through.

• 1:47:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I consider that the same way the Lakers count the Minnesota title. Yeah, right. It's the same thing.

• 1:47:20Bill Simmons?

  Right. We had that in the episode two of Celtic City. They mentioned how the Lakers trying to win their first title in Los Angeles and all, you know, they're not counting the Minnesota titles at all. And then somewhere in the eighties, all of a sudden they're like, yeah, and those five titles we won in Minnesota. I'm sure like if OKC wins the title this year, they're not going to be like, it's our second title following the one we won in Seattle. They're not going to say that.

• 1:47:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I think it's crazy. I guess, well, they've been Minnesota Lakers, so they changed, they didn't.

• 1:47:53Bill Simmons?

  Minneapolis Lakers.

• 1:47:54Speaker 02

  Minneapolis Lakers. So that's, that's what they hang their hat on, I guess. You live out there. I mean, you should have had a good argument with some people about, they probably have 12 titles.

• 1:48:06Bill Simmons?

  I'll tell you, the Luca thing is maddening because they love Luca and the energy at the home games is completely different already. And this is like LeBron, like obviously most, one of the most popular NBA players of this century and one of the most famous and one of the best, but he's been on all these other teams and it's always year to year with him and he's a Laker, but it's, it's a little more of a hard gun. They look at Luca and they're like, this guy's 25, like this guy might be in our life for the next 15 years. Like you can just feel the energy shift.

• 1:48:38Speaker 02

  So when Zoe's date shows up at the front door with a Luka jersey on.

• 1:48:42Bill Simmons?

  No, that's it. That's the door gets slammed. That's not happening. Don't worry. Don't ever worry about that.

• 1:48:47Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:48:47Bill Simmons?

  All right. Good to see you. Congrats on your dramatic debut in episode three, Celtic City.

• 1:48:54Speaker 02

  I still can't. I still haven't hired an agent.

• 1:48:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, probably not. I don't think you need to.

• 1:49:00Speaker 02

  Okay. All right.

• 1:49:01Bill Simmons?

  All right. Good to see you. Thanks, Dad.

• 1:49:02Speaker 02

  You too.

• 1:49:03Bill Simmons?

  All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Kirk and my dad. Thanks to Kyle, Suri and Gahal as well. Don't forget new rewatchables coming Monday. Prestige TV Sunday night, White Lotus recap. And you can get all this as video podcasts on Spotify, which is what you should do. I will see you on Sunday with Priscilla. Have a great weekend.

• 1:49:49Bill Simmons?

  Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas Star Casino. Or 18 plus and present in DC. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-887-897777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling helpline ma.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts. Or call 1-8778-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures, WildHorse9, John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell.

• 1:50:29Bill Simmons?

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