Pod Insights The Bill Simmons Podcast The 2025 Made-Up NBA Awards, Plus Duke’s Collapse With Ryen Russillo About this episode The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to discuss Duke’s Final Four collapse vs. Houston, Cooper Flagg the NBA prospect, and Walter Clayton Jr.’s incredible performance vs. Auburn (2:29). Then they run through their extensive list of annual Made-Up NBA Awards (32:46).
Host: Bill Simmons
Guest: Ryen Russillo
Producers: Kyle Crichton, Chia Hao Tat, and Steve Ceruti
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Transcript 23,473 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Bill 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, we're going to do the made up NBA awards for 2425 with Ryan Rusillo next. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. It's football season.
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1:27 Bill Simmons? See app for details. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. I put up another rewatchables on Friday night. We did the Saint, me and Kyle Brandt, because Val Kilmer died last week. And normally we put rewatchables up on Mondays, but we decided, screw it. We put it up three days early. So you can find it as a video podcast on Spotify. You can find it on The Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. I'm taping this right now. It is late Sunday morning, Pacific time. Tonight on the Prestige TV Podcast, me and Malley Rubin and Joanna Robinson are going to be reacting to the White Lotus season finale. We're doing it live on the Ringer-TV YouTube channel, right around 7:30 PT, 10:30 ET.
2:10 Bill Simmons? Right after that episode ends, we'll be going live and then you can listen and watch as a video podcast on Spotify or get it on the Ringer dash TV YouTube channel. So that's everything we got going. Don't forget about One Shining Podcast as well. They had a live reaction to the final four last night, which Russel and I are about to talk about a little bit. And then coming up right after the Monday night title game, you can get that as well. Coming up on this podcast, we did it last year. We did the made up NBA awards with one week to go in the season. I had a great time. So we're bringing the gimmick back. Me and Russel, we're also going to talk about Duke and, and just colossal collapse last night that we have to discuss. So that's all coming next. First, our friends from Pearl Jam.
3:19 Bill Simmons? All right, we're taping this at 10:30 Pacific time. We're gonna do the made up NBA awards for the 2425 season in a second. Wanted to talk about the final four last night, specifically an unbelievable, unfathomable Duke collapse, Russel. One of the all timers, something that brought me back to where we were in college sports in like the eighties when shit like that seemed to happen way more often. Just watching, when did you start wondering, oh my God, are they going to blow this? Cause for me, it was when, when they got the steal. It was the 77 76 was the first time I was like, oh my God, they might actually lose this.
3:55 Speaker 01 I still can't believe they lost it. The next day, then I'm sitting here. I know you and I both bet it and I don't bet a ton of games, but when I saw the line come out and I had watched, you know, look, I'm certainly far from an expert on college basketball, but I just thought based on the size.
4:11 Speaker 01 Advantage that Duke had and three lottery picks, you know, like, okay, four isn't, isn't that bad of a number in the whole game. I'm like, you should have bet more, you should have bet more. Like you were so right about this, you know, and anybody that, you know, gambles enough, you just have games where you go, wow, I saw this the worst possible way and immediately you know, you're fucked. And on this one, I sat there the whole time being like, I'm so smart. I'm so smart. I would say there was two moments that hinted at what was going to happen. That barrage of threes at the end of the first half kept Houston in it. So they feel good despite being outplayed in the first 20 minutes. They went to halftime feeling good about themselves. Not that this team necessarily needed the confidence boost, but being the dogs, but they're a super aggressive team with, with
4:51 Speaker 01 a lot of confidence. And then really I, I think Cryer, um, and those guys like the two guards just hitting threes. You're like, how is this game not 20? How is it not 25 points? And then I think once you saw that sign, James just could not, he was not comfortable inbounding the ball and they kept going to this, the same flashing thing to the corner where they're running the inbounds catch to the corner.
5:15 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Which you're, you're taught in like seventh grade not to do that.
5:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:19 Bill Simmons? Don't get trapped in the corner. It's the number one thing for the inbounds pass. The number two is just don't throw it up for grabs under your own basket. And they somehow did both.
5:27 Speaker 01 Yeah. I guess I was shocked and some people even said like after James hit his head, that's, but it was very clear. He was freaking out trying to inbound it.
5:37 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
5:38 Speaker 01 And Shire was just fine with it, I guess. And then, you know, then it actually happens and then you have the foul on Cooper. But look, this team was up. They gave up a nine O run with 35 seconds. They didn't hit a field goal for like the last, what 10, you know, so.
5:56 Bill Simmons? Yeah. They had a drought that felt like a half hour with all the challenges and all the reviews and all the other things. And they, first of all, there was a play in this game. I'll be interested to see if you've seen it because I can't remember ever seeing somebody try to strip the inbounds passer before and getting a technical. I feel like that might've made history for me. It probably happened at some point in my life, but I don't remember, but that happens. And I thought, oh, that's gotta be two texts in the ball. It was only one tech. So they go up six, but they have the ball. And then from that moment on, the game just completely fell apart for them. And they had, there was bad defensive stuff, like flag got beat for a layup. They gave up that three when they were up six, when all they did was basically just, you know, a little, a lazy high screen and both guys jumped on the one guy and all of a sudden, somebody else was wide open.
6:41 Bill Simmons? They gave up the inbounds pass steal, wide open three, guy comes flying in from the weak side and dunks it. And then, you know, the guards on Duke were terrible and I really think like if you go on big picture, um, the fact that you're trying to win a title, but you don't really have that one, I got it guys guard. It really seems like that blows up in games like that. You're playing a big football stadium. There's a crazy pressure. And then your sphincter starts to get a little tight and you kind of need that one guy who's like, I got it, I got it, I got this. And they didn't have anybody.
7:16 Speaker 01 No, the guards killed them. And it was, yeah, it's one field goal that Cooper three with the last 10 and a half minutes. So like, that's really the headline. Like we can talk about a call or inbounding. It's like, how does Duke go 10 and a half minutes with only one made field goal throughout of it? I, I think there's also like different discussions. They don't double Cooper on the last play. If he hits that shot, does everybody go, hey, Houston, how do you play that straight up when you know that the ball's going to him? That didn't hurt them. There was also the debate of after the technical free throw by Knippel. Houston played it straight up. And my thing is always at home, it's, it's kids, although you know, some of the guys a little bit older now, but I would foul. I would delay the game out as much as possible because I would expect the younger guys to
7:58 Speaker 01 just miss free throws and Houston plays it straight up, which I think, you know, we could debate it and granted people will just play the result and say, hey, it's smart now. But in that moment, maybe Sampson's going, hey, these guys have been tight for a half an hour.
8:10 Bill Simmons? Right.
8:10 Speaker 01 So let's not foul them. Let's let them run the clock out. They're going to run it down. They're not going to get a great look. And if we play them straight up, you know, at this point, like maybe it's better than, because they would have been down six. If they, if they foul, who knows, he makes it two, then it's probably over. But to decide to play them straight up, which goes against everything I'm saying, but maybe even in the moment, it's like why some of these coaching philosophies don't apply to every single game because things are playing out differently. Houston, look, in the Tennessee game. Most teams I think would have blown that lead to Tennessee because Tennessee was one of these teams when you watch that first half against Kentucky where you go, oh my God, like this is overwhelming, the energy, the effort, how hard these guys play and Houston's the same thing.
8:54 Speaker 01 And Houston's like, fine, you guys want to do this with us? We'll do it. So I, I don't want to like, look, my least favorite thing ever is when the topic in the pre-show meeting is, did Duke blow it or did Houston win it? And it's just stupid. It's TV shows do it all the time. Duke clearly blew this, but it's also ignoring the fact that this is who Houston is. This is a team that was down six with 10 seconds to go against Kansas and forces double overtime game. So they believe it all the time. And so I want to credit them for that, but I still cannot believe that a team like Duke that's this good, that this talented couldn't figure out the inbound thing because James was rattled those last four or five.
9:34 Bill Simmons? Houston relentless, made a couple of big shots, made a couple of big defensive plays like Black and Canipal when they were down six on that layup was, you know, Duke had the opposite play on the other end and they fouled the guy. Um, I was thinking about the big picture thing for me, obviously flag, nobody's going to remember this game in five years. Nobody's going to hold it against him. No, I mean, for like, for the flag NBA arc, when he's like, playing on Charlotte or whatever, age 24, he's in the playoffs. Nobody's going to be like, hey, remember that time in the semifinals?
10:05 Speaker 01 Honestly, I think the people are going to ask him about this game for the rest of his life. Like, I don't know. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is awful, man. This is all time. Like, I know what you're saying. Like, oh, I remember in the turn, but whatever. I think this was so big on this stage for a Duke team that so many people dislike, but yet here he is. And I'm watching him in this game going, I don't know where the flaws. Where's the flaw?
10:28 Bill Simmons? Right.
10:29 Speaker 01 The more you watched him, and I know
10:30 Bill Simmons? Then he sucked in the last two minutes.
10:32 Speaker 01 I don't, did he suck?
10:34 Bill Simmons? Well, he did. He gave up a couple of big defensive plays, gave up a big rebound. He had the foul that over the back, which was, I thought, one of the worst foul calls in a while. But what I was going to say was
10:45 Speaker 01 I push back on that he sucked.
10:47 Bill Simmons? He, well, he sucked in the last two minutes. He did.
10:50 Speaker 01 Sucked, sucked in the last two minutes.
10:51 Bill Simmons? They gave up, they gave up like an absolute slaughter of a run and he was a big part of it. Defensively, he was in multiple plays where his guy either beat him to the basket or he gave up a wide open three on that switch. That was his fault. 7771, 100% his fault on that. Gave up the weak side rebound. I'm just saying it wasn't like, I'm not sending, he's not sending that two minutes to the Hall of Fame committee and be like, here's, here's my case. It was bad. But the whole team was bad.
11:18 Speaker 01 If you were scouting him, you would, you would be in the room going like.
11:21 Bill Simmons? I thought he was the best guy on that team by far. But what I was gonna say is that, that last shot, it's so funny how that, that fork in the road moment of like, he gets the shot he wants. I thought it was gonna go in and he front rimmed it. But if it goes in, now it's like this completely different conversation, right? They, they survived the scare and he has like his Larry Bird Carmelo moment and oh my God, and he finishes with 29 points and he said it for a thing. And instead you're looking back like, ah, that was really rough. I thought he got tight. I thought the whole team got super tight. Proctor looked like he didn't want to dribble anymore by the end of the game. But that's the thing. These guys are flagged 18. These guys are all kids. That's
12:06 Bill Simmons? what always makes me nervous when I watch college sports. I feel so bad that these guys are so young at the stage they're at, you know, with just this kind of spotlight and tension and pressure. I don't think, I think you're wrong though. I don't think it's gonna hang on flag in the same way. I thought he was really good for, for almost the entirety of the game.
12:26 Speaker 01 Are we saying two different things though? Cause I don't, I mean, yeah, I don't know that you're gonna be having Kevin Harlan on a Thursday night TNT broadcast four nights from now going, well, 30 from Cooper, but you know, they blew that game in Houston.
12:41 Bill Simmons? The C-Web timeout game was clearly like, we'll be remembering this, right? When he called the, when he called the timeout that they didn't have at the end of that thing. That was like, oh shit, this one's gonna fall on me. I still think college basketball meant more when that happened. But in this case, I don't know. I just thought, I thought his team really stunk. And I, I watched Duke a bunch of times this year. That was, that stretch in the second half, I thought was by far the worst. I've seen them. It's kind of inexplicable that they couldn't score for that long. I didn't really understand anything they were doing either.
13:16 Speaker 01 No, I guess I'm still shocked that you thought he sucked the last two minutes. I'm gonna have to go back and watch the tape again.
13:21 Bill Simmons? You have to watch it.
13:22 Speaker 01 I think giving up a rebound or getting caught in rotation and somebody hitting a three like that's basketball. I don't know what that means.
13:29 Bill Simmons? What did he do good in the last two minutes? Cause I watched it a couple of times today and I was like, ah.
13:34 Speaker 01 You watched it a couple of times?
13:35 Bill Simmons? I did. There was a YouTube clip and I watched the last two minutes a couple of times because I was so fascinated by it. When you have these things that fall apart, it's almost like game six, 86 where you're like, you're watching each pitch and like, oh, that could end the game. Ah, that could end the game. And that Duke thing was the same thing. There was 10 plays and 90 seconds where you're like, ah, if they get that one, they win. Get the rebound, they win. You know, I don't know.
14:00 Speaker 01 I guess, look, I think they ran down the clock too long on the canipple miss. I think that Proctor missed the free throw. I think Seon couldn't inbound the basketball. And then he turned it over. I think the three that made it,
14:14 Speaker 01 the sharp three that made it 67, 64, that's a free for all. And you know, it's, it's kinda like, wait a minute, the sharp three. I think maybe I'm thinking about the other three. There's another three in here off the tip where it's a complete free for all. And I don't even know how like anybody, you know, it's kinda like one of those offensive rebound threes where you're just like, everybody's so scattered the whole time.
14:36 Speaker 01 I was surprised, did Rick Buker try to argue that flag was fouled on the, on the rebound? I, I couldn't, he was kinda saying, we don't know what is, I think he went with a mystery third arm defense. Classic Rick Buker, but you could, you could see his hand and I didn't wanna like, you know how it is when you're tweeting out stuff and you go, well, did you not factor in Sri Lanka's GDP in the tariff? Then you're like, okay.
15:03 Speaker 01 I just, look, they screwed up so many different times. It's not about that call. But I can't believe an official in that moment is like, I think I'm kinda ready to call something on this box out. Like I think I'm ready.
15:13 Bill Simmons? What was weird was the way Houston was pressing on those inbounds passes and how physical they were. You could have called a bunch of stuff that way either and they weren't. And then flag's getting boxed out going backwards. And I thought the guy took his right arm and kinda hooked flag from behind a little bit from at least one of the angles. Either way, it's just not a foul. Now Houston got the ball anyway. But the issue for me is like, make them have to make a shot to win the game. Don't bail them out with some chintzy call that the guy was like, it seemed like he was just dying to call. He was calling it as they were still like, as flag was tipping the ball. I just didn't, I didn't get it. At that time in the game, I thought it was pretty inexcusable. So from a flag standpoint, you don't think there's any way he goes back, right?
15:57 Bill Simmons? Cause that's another narrative. I don't see why he would.
16:01 Bill Simmons? It's 18, like start the clock, start the clock on your max extension. I don't know. Why would you wait another year to do it?
16:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's what's always left out. When it's like, well, look at the rookie scale stuff for the NBA guys and look at what you could make. And who knows with the NIL stuff, but I always think the NIL stuff, although lucrative is, can be really misleading. Like contracts that just get announced, like a lot of NFL stuff. It's like Russell Wilson, 21 and a half million or like, or 10, you know? So I think the NIL stuff.
16:29 Bill Simmons? Stefan, Stefan Diggs, 69 million for three?
16:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, right. That's a really good one.
16:34 Bill Simmons? It's really 20 for one.
16:36 Speaker 01 It's exactly, it's exactly your point. The agent, the family, everybody else is like, start the clock for the rookie max extension.
16:45 Bill Simmons? In four years, he can sign a max when he's 22 years old. I don't know why you would delay that for any reason. He's also ready to play in the league. It's not like one of those situations where, you know, and watching him a lot, it's been interesting. Like ESPN ran a comps thing about him and I'm not positive. There's a specific comp. There's pieces of different guys. There's some stuff he does that reminds me of Tatum, even though they were completely different players, but like body size, the fact that he can impact the game. The Tatum version now in all these different ways, but then there's pieces of other dudes. I just think if I were him, I'm coming in. There's a weird scenario though, where he could potentially wait to see who gets the pick, right?
17:25 Bill Simmons? Can he pull out by like, the lottery happens mid May and he, I think he can pull out like the end of May, something like that.
17:33 Speaker 01 So they changed the title. It used to be this thing where the NBA withdrawal date was so much later than the NCAA one.
17:40 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
17:40 Speaker 01 And it was done on purpose because the coaches would just vote on it and say, we want to know ahead of time. And then I think they changed it where either it's the same day or it aligns. I think the unknown part of it, like if it were a franchise, you go absolutely not. I want nothing to do with this. Um, maybe, but you have new ownership in Charlotte. You have a winger running things with the Wizards. So there's at least things that you feel like, hey, the guy's making these decisions. It's different than what it was before. So even though these teams aren't exactly. So if, if you hated one of those scenarios that much, would you actually delay it for NIL money that still would probably be close to what your rookie scale would be as a first? I, again, I don't know, but.
18:21 Bill Simmons? Also, he might not be the number one pick next year because there's a couple dudes in next year's draft that everybody loves. You know, you know, you're the number one pick now. Yeah. So Sarita says the latter is May 15th. He'd have a month to look at it. We have not had a scenario where somebody tried to power play the top pick or one of the top picks in a while. Like Danny Ferry famously did it when I was in college because he didn't want to go to the Clippers and I've got shoving his way to the Cavs. Steve Francis basically did it. He got drafted, was unhappy about it, had one of the funniest NBA draft reactions probably ever where he's just like, just seemed like he was being tortured that he went to Vancouver, put the hat on, just kept looking up and then finally pushed a
19:02 Bill Simmons? trade to Houston. It really hasn't happened since then. And I actually wonder why it doesn't happen more often because you always, you know, we've been in this player empowerment era for 15 years now, but we haven't had a rookie come in and say, no, I actually don't want to go to Charlotte. So you can either trade the pick to somebody I want to go to or I'm just going to go back to Duke. And I think he has real leverage now at the NIL to at least pretend he might want to do that. The problem for that theory is I don't think there's like a truly horrible team to go to this year in the NBA. Do you? Like even Charlotte, like is that a bad situation? Like they have a new front office, new owner. Everybody likes Charles Lee. They have some assets. Like that's not a disaster. Washington's
19:44 Bill Simmons? not a disaster. I don't, I don't see a team where I'd be like, oh man, I feel so bad for him. He went there.
19:51 Speaker 01 No, I mean, I was looking at it this morning where I was like, which team, if we're just being honest, be like, they don't deserve him. Like how you used to get mad when Cleveland, you just said Philly?
20:03 Bill Simmons? Philly.
20:04 Speaker 01 Philly is the answer. It's the only answer.
20:06 Bill Simmons? They don't deserve him.
20:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:08 Bill Simmons? You're stumbling into it based on bad organizational stuff. Yeah, don't say sorry. They, they played the season wrong and would somehow get compensated with that would be nuts.
20:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, because you did a Cleveland rant. I think it was the third time they had won the lottery and you were on TV.
20:23 Bill Simmons? On TV, yeah, the Cleveland fans got mad at me. That was absurd.
20:27 Speaker 01 But I got your point.
20:29 Bill Simmons? It's like, come on, three times in five years, the same team's going to win the number one pick. What are we doing? Like, what are we doing? Philly, I, I think if you're talking about what would be the most interesting basketball situation for him, the Philly one would be,
20:45 Bill Simmons? at least on paper, the most interesting. I don't know if it would be the best for him. Because now, now he's on the MB, are you playing or you're not playing clock? He's on the Paul George, whatever the hell's going on there, but at least he'd have good guards. But I think Washington would be the most fun for him from a, just as a basketball fan. Just because of the weird pieces they have, and I think he would fit in with the guys they have and, you know, be, be some sort of connector.
21:11 Speaker 01 The most positive thing that you can say about him is that he's actually not going to need the ball to impact games immediately. So whenever you think about a draft pick that could be the face of your franchise, I mean, because if we're talking like best case scenarios and him being this prospect that we've all been hearing about, even though there was a chance, I think there was conversation at the beginning of the year of like, could the Rutgers guys surpass him? And then the year plays out and you're just like, okay, well, there's, obviously everybody's on the same page now. There's no question that he's the number one guy. But he, your Tatum thing, at least now, I think actually rings true because you're like, hey, Tatum's playing point guard for this team. And Flag initiates so much of their offense.
21:47 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
21:47 Speaker 01 But he also, one of the things I loved about Paolo is that Paolo could have taken every shot and been justified when Duke was in those tight games, but Paolo still wanted to set up other people. He had what I think is like shot make star quality shot making stuff. Yet a deferential thing that actually works well with other talented players where I think young guys have to get to a point where like, hey, you just can't like cool scoring, bro. But you can't just do all of this on yourself and ignore everything else that's going around you. Cooper could not take shots and impact the game. His passing is insane. His instincts are great, his footwork, all the athleticism, the body control. And the shooting ended up being even better, I think, than people thought this year. So.
22:26 Speaker 01 He's really like a plug and play guy. I guess the only knock would be almost like the Wemba Yama thing where you go, okay, in five years, it's Wemba Yama like. Figuring out a way to score on his own in the Western Conference Finals. And I, I think clearly, you know, that's like being a really hard on Wemba Yama. And I think with Cooper, because if you're going to be one of these, there's not 10 guys in the league that probably fit this standard. I don't know how many you think there are, but. Okay, we have a real dude. We're actually like in this, not, hey, every year we have a chance to win a title, but we're at least like, we look like a conference finals team. Cause that's the hope. When you get one of these guys and is he somebody that can score in all of those busted up possessions and.
23:06 Speaker 01 That would be maybe the only thing where you go ceiling wise, like he projects to maybe do that, but that's what will make the difference.
23:12 Bill Simmons? Yeah, there's some tough advanced metrics with him with like the perimeter shots, like that 15 to 20 feet range. You saw it last night. He missed it, but. The thing is he's 18. He's a year younger than he probably should be. I'm just like, if you're just looking, go back and look at Tatum tape when he was at Duke or first year Celtics. Like he had a couple of things he could do. And other than that, he was like, you know, a baby deer in the woods trying to figure everything out and flag is. Where in what I see from an all around game is closer to the Tatum now than that Tatum. In 2018, but I don't, I don't really know if he has a comp. I don't think he's the same kind of natural scorer, but there's so many other awesome things he does. I can't wait to see him in the league. And the, the bummer for him is just from.
23:56 Bill Simmons? A big picture standpoint, he had a chance to have this start to finish college season that just would have been mentioned with Davis in 2012. Carmelo and some of the great seasons. Now that's pulled away. I don't think this loss sticks to him though. It really felt like a team, a team collapsed to me. Yeah, that shot, they'll replay it, but big picture like this. Here's a first take segment for you.
24:22 Bill Simmons? Is it better to lose or win a game like this if you're trying to become a great NBA player someday? Do you need like? Do you need the agony, the thing to go back to during the summer, the pain of that one loss? And be like, I never want to have that feeling again. In some ways you could argue that's actually probably better. Bird always said like getting his ass kicked by Magic in the final game was actually a really good thing for him. It gave him like a whole other level of, of drive. So I don't know, there's a, there's a dumb silver lining. Could have been too easy if they won right away.
24:56 Speaker 01 Are you saying MJ, MJ and Magic, could they have been better had they lost their title games?
25:01 Bill Simmons? If MJ had missed that shot, maybe he wins eight titles. Maybe he never plays baseball again.
25:06 Speaker 01 We're saying two different things though. We're saying two different things on the Cooper, how this sticks to him. I'm looking at it as he's going to be at the gas station in Maine when he's 60. And some guy's going to come up to him and say, I can't believe you lost that game. As if he hasn't heard it his entire life. When I was watching him and like, I think, I don't know if I was reading the lips correctly, but when Shire had him in the timeout and they were getting ready to inbound. I think he said to some like, it's your time, right? Like go, like go make it happen.
25:35 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
25:35 Speaker 01 And how different now, granted, they still have to be Florida, which is, you know, a really good college basketball team. So maybe we're assuming a lot.
25:43 Speaker 01 But he's, he's going to be reminded of this. Probably every day in some fashion for the rest of his life. And it's going to be brutal. And you're right, I, I think the thing that we're, we're separate on is that. It's not going to stick to him as if it's a knock on who he is as a player and he's, you know, he has this great NBA career. None of this is really going to matter. Plenty of guys have lost, they've lost, but this was just such a dramatic loss to blow it this way. And to have so many.
26:12 Bill Simmons? When was the last time we had a college basketball loss like this?
26:17 Bill Simmons? This was like old school.
26:21 Speaker 01 Is this the Memphis, Kansas one where they don't make their free throws?
26:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that's a good one. That was 2008, right? That was like 17 years ago. It just doesn't happen the same way. Wait, one more thing on the NCAA. You talked about the Florida guy last week and how much you liked him.
26:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:41 Bill Simmons? And then you watched him last night and he just looks like he's doing a Jamal Murray impersonation. And I guess now he's crept into the, into the first round. And I don't really know the knocks. He's not as tall as Murray is. And he's older. He's 22, which they always seem to penalize guys with, but he's been impressive enough that I'm now rooting to see him go to a decent team in the draft, maybe a team where he could play. I'm talking about Clayton. But, but I, I've just been really, really, really blown away by his shot making and how he seems to have a sense for when, when his team needs him to do something, right?
27:25 Bill Simmons? If he's on Duke last night, Duke doesn't lose the game. So where do you see him? I know you only started doing the draft stuff, but where, just where do you see him in that whole context? Does this, does this even matter when these teams are looking at this in June?
27:39 Speaker 01 Older, not jump off the screen, that athleticism. So I think that's where I like, I look back at some of the mocks and there was one in the beginning of this month where he wasn't even a second round pick.
27:50 Bill Simmons? Right.
27:51 Speaker 01 And that's where, again, late to this, but the Tennessee SCC tournament game, I was like, holy shit, you know? And then he's basically been that the entire time. We talked about the Texas Tech shot. But what he can do, I'm not comparing him to Steph, okay? But what makes Steph a great shooter is that Steph can have a bad foundation, that Steph can change the release of it, even though it all kind of comes back, you know, it's almost like a Dirk thing. If you looked at Dirk's foundation, you would never say, hey, do what that guy's doing. But everything was always adjusted for whatever the release was going to be. So there's some guys that are just catch and shoot. They can never move. They develop the muscle memory enough that if they catch and shoot in a certain spot, they put up like a really good number. But I don't know that it makes you a well-rounded shooter.
28:33 Speaker 01 And what we see with Clayton is that he can be, that, that corner three that he hit from the left side, or excuse me, it was the right side. So right corner. He's adjusting all of his like arm and release point to get away from the contest. And then it's natural. He also had a drive on the left side where he had read it and he knew what was going to happen. And he knew he was going to get fouled. So he's preparing himself to even throw the ball up at the rim. And it wasn't even an and one. But there's just stuff with him that even if he's not off the page, you know, or I should say off the charts athletically compared to some of the other guys. He seems to keep getting past everybody the entire time. And there's some players, when you're doing the draft, you're like, I don't know if he's like the most dynamic or the most quick. And it's like, okay, but he just keeps, he just keeps getting past everybody every single time.
29:18 Speaker 01 And his pace and his, his comfort in the biggest moments. I haven't done it, but I, I guess I'd have a hard time believing that there's 30 guys that go ahead of him, even at the age.
29:31 Bill Simmons? I would add the, uh, the way he finishes after he, after he bounces into somebody in a drive. And still finishes with touch. That's the thing that reminds me of Murray the most like his, when Murray's really going, he has this ability to kind of bounce off dudes and finish anyway. I think he's really impressive and I, I was mad. I had a, I had the Auburn Duke parlay last night, which then I had to chase with Duke Clippers. So it was a double loss for me last night.
30:00 Bill Simmons? But I, I just thought Auburn was better. And then as you're watching him take over the second half, like, why the fuck did I bet against this guy? This guy thinks he's the best guy in this tournament. I'm not, I'm not doing that again. All right, we gotta get to the made up.
30:12 Speaker 01 Just to add to it though, cause I've been doing it now where like on FanDuel. I hedged it with a Florida, Houston, Florida over Houston plus 750 title. So I was like, I love Duke. I, I love them in this game. And then you're sitting there going, I still don't feel like I was wrong. There's plenty of games where you're like, I'm just wrong on this one. So yeah, I, I got a little title game insurance, so we'll see how it goes. But doubting Houston is a, is a dangerous sport right now.
30:41 Bill Simmons? The most important question I'm going to ask you before we go to the break. Do you think stripping the inbound passer should be worth more than one technical?
30:50 Speaker 01 No, I'm fine with it.
30:53 Speaker 01 You think it should be?
30:54 Bill Simmons? I think it should be, it should be a two tech. That it's just such a crazy thing to do. I just think it should be an extra, add an extra tech to it for how stu- how stupid it is. Then that guy came back and made some big plays. He wasn't phased at all. All right, we gotta get to the made up NBA awards. We're gonna take a break. 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.
31:36 Bill Simmons? 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 the experiences that make you feel like you're courtside to actual courtside tickets. 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+. 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, welcome to a special part of the show, which is brought to you today by Audi with their all new fully electric Audi Q6 e-tron.
32:18 Bill Simmons? So we're gonna do made up NBA awards in a second, but just quick check in, because we got four games left.
32:26 Bill Simmons? The biggest thing that's at stake right now is this Defensive Player of the Year award, which Draymond has. There's like a good media campaign for him right now. Rob Mahoney and I talked about it a little bit on Thursday and both of us thought.
32:39 Bill Simmons? Didn't, didn't really see it, but Draymond's the favorite, basically based off this last 25 game stretch.
32:44 Speaker 01 A large favorite, too, right?
32:45 Bill Simmons? Yeah, basically based off this post Jimmy Butler trade stretch that seems to ignore the rest of the season. I'm not voting for him. I'm either voting for Moby or Dort, because I just thought those guys were better and I want to look at, I'm not gonna decide today. But did you have Draymond all of a sudden as the Defensive Player of the Year or are you leaning somewhere else?
33:07 Speaker 01 I'm not. I think it's the hardest award to vote on, to be honest with you.
33:10 Bill Simmons? With no Wemby?
33:12 Speaker 01 Well, yeah, I mean, he was just gonna win it, but
33:17 Speaker 01 there's like a lot of stuff that Draymond does do that is really important, that may not show up. You know, his switchability, that, that stuff's crazy.
33:27 Speaker 01 But
33:28 Bill Simmons? There's some clutch defense with him too. Like he'll make like the single biggest play in the fourth quarter defensively, a little stuff like that.
33:34 Speaker 01 Defensive player of the year, clearly watching all year, I have thoughts, but I definitely make the rounds with coaches, assistant coaches. And they, the love for Dort and who he is and what he's tasked with.
33:53 Speaker 01 And then the numbers, when you start looking at some of the matchup stuff, which, you know, at times I think can be packaged to be a little misleading.
34:01 Speaker 01 But it's, it's a Dort Mobley, Mobley thing for me right now, but I'm gonna make the calls and, and figure it out, but I, I just think it's such a hard thing to vote for.
34:12 Bill Simmons? Well, the all new fully electric Audi Q6 e-tron, a huge leap forward, featuring effortless power, serious acceleration, the most advanced tech of any Audi ever. Experience technology that puts you center stage of the panoramic digital stage plus an optional screen for front seat passengers, perfect for watching the latest sports documentary. The Q6 e-tron, not just the 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. All right, made up awards time. So we did this last year. I had a fantastic time. We're doing it again. Have a bunch of awards. I couldn't remember last year if I sent you all the nominees. I don't think I did. I think I just sent you the awards and left you on your own to come up with like a winner, but I have nominees for each category. So we're gonna rip through them. And the first one
34:58 Bill Simmons? is unicorn of the year, which Wemba Yama won last year. We created it for him. He got hurt. I don't think, would you say he's eligible? I mean, he could basically win every year. I'd like to come up with a new name for this, right? Can't we, can we, can we zag a little?
35:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, unicorn is like, who was the OG unicorn?
35:20 Bill Simmons? Will Chamberlain.
35:21 Speaker 01 Yeah. Hey, I saw something the other day. They were trying to say he could bench 500 pounds. Did you find that in any of your research? That would be really impressive.
35:28 Bill Simmons? Haven't seen that one yet. 500 pounds is a lot.
35:30 Speaker 01 A lot, especially with long arms.
35:33 Bill Simmons? Really strong guy. Nominees I have, Wemby again, Amen Thompson, LeBron at age 40, Dyson Daniels, or Zach Eadie for Unicorn of the Year. We could just vote for Wemby again.
35:46 Speaker 01 No Chet? Didn't play enough? Not eligible? What do you need? 35 games?
35:50 Bill Simmons? Put Chet in there. Make the case.
35:55 Speaker 01 If they have a playoff run and he plays as well as I think he's going to play, there's going to be some real Chet conversations. I don't know if they get as absurd as Deandre Ayton potentially being a top 15 player in the Suns finals run of a few years ago. That seems inaccurate with further information. But the rim protection numbers, the fact that he can play five out, the fact that he goes coast to coast the other night against Detroit and then finishes. Yeah. So I, I just, hey, just tell them the world, prepare yourself for some big time Chet projections if OKC pulls this off.
36:33 Bill Simmons? I like the Chet one. If we can't give it to Wemby, I think Chet is a good backup choice because I've never really seen another player like him. So I think you're right. I wanted to give this to Amen Thompson, but I feel like he's been in the vicinity of other guys we watched, but I still feel like to have enough athletic ability that people go to see you play basketball and you seem like a better athlete than anyone at a basketball game with all the best athletes feels unicorny. It's in, so at least he's a medalist. So we'll give it to him. Okay.
37:02 Speaker 01 But just to side, Amen's like four of these for me. And then I had to figure out how to whittle it down. So I don't think Amen's a bad choice. I would say.
37:11 Bill Simmons? Like a Michael Phelps in the Summer Olympics one year, just grabbing medals.
37:15 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah. Although I do think if you had basketball where it was like, hey, we'll play one on one, two on two, three on three, five on five, and then we'll play horse. And then it's like Jordan had seven golds. So some of the swimming and gymnastics gold medal count, I think is unfair to the team guys, but we can get into that later. Although this curling thing with China is nuts.
37:39 Speaker 01 I have, if you had an award for most rewinds on the season, it's on me.
37:45 Bill Simmons? That'd be a good category for next year. I always thought the team, like the basketball, basketball team medal just should have been bigger. I think when you're just talking about some of those individual swimming race ones, maybe a smaller one. And then the basketball, I always thought should look like a Flavor Flav type of medal. Next category, the 2011 Blake Griffin Award for most unexpected delight. Once again, Ahmed Thompson. Here he is, along with Cade Cunningham, rejuvenated Jimmy Butler on Golden State,
38:18 Bill Simmons? Austin Reeves, or anyone else you want to mention? Any other nominees?
38:25 Speaker 01 Uh, nope. Cause you already said the guy that I was gonna use in this one. So.
38:31 Bill Simmons? Who is it? Who's your winner?
38:32 Speaker 01 Ahmed.
38:34 Bill Simmons? Alright.
38:37 Speaker 01 Is it gonna be like a Meryl Streep situation here?
38:40 Bill Simmons? No, because I'm giving mine to Austin Reeves.
38:45 Speaker 01 That's a good one.
38:46 Bill Simmons? I, uh, I can't believe how good he is offensively. To the point where he's on a team with LeBron and Luca. And not only does his coach think it's a good idea to run stuff through Austin Reeves, but LeBron and Luca are like, we should run stuff through Austin Reeves. Like, that's the level he's at. I think he's a potential 25-point a game scorer at some point in his career. Um, there's pieces of different guys from over the years, and I'm gonna do the, uh, comparing a white guy to a white guy thing, but there's a lot of Jeff Hornacek.
39:19 Bill Simmons? There's some Paul Westphal, but his ability to get to the basket, create shots for other guys, uh, take huge threes in big moments. I think other teams are really afraid of him offensively.
39:33 Bill Simmons? I've been really impressed. Was not expecting it. And so it's either him or Thompson to me.
39:41 Speaker 01 Do we save Amen for some of the other ones? Cause I think the Reeves part of it is you're not saying it's unexpected because we already knew he was pretty good. But now this is like the Jalen Brown arc where you have to keep adjusting the ceiling every time.
39:56 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I just didn't, I never thought like, I always liked him. I never thought like this guy might be a four time All-Star. Like I was never in my head. It was always like, oh, this guy's a really nice piece for LeBron. Like he really turned out to be a good player. Somebody should pay him. Now it's like, Jesus Christ, this guy, this is like a real, a real offensive star.
40:15 Speaker 01 You know what's crazy? Like, do you remember, do you remember the Spurs thing not offering him a contract?
40:19 Bill Simmons? Oh, shut up.
40:23 Bill Simmons? I didn't tell you this category because we already have the winner, but it's a new category for next year. The Luka Doncic trade award for most cataclysmic NBA moment of the season goes to Luka trade. So we just have to write that one down for next year.
40:37 Speaker 01 There's no way, there's no way we're, I mean, you can sit there and say it. Plenty of unexpected things happen. How about Cuban now doing the tour?
40:44 Bill Simmons? Oh, he's coming up later.
40:46 Speaker 01 Oh, all right. I didn't even realize that was a category. All right.
40:50 Bill Simmons? The 1986 Bill Walton Award for biggest impact under 20 minutes a game guy.
40:58 Bill Simmons? Nominees, Ty Jerome, a Resila podcast guest, 19.7 minutes a game this year, 12.2 points a game. Luke Cornet on the Celtics putting up basically like a six, six in 15 minutes. Obi Toppin, 10 and four, 37% from three, leads the league in field goal percentage around the rim. And then just for fuck's sake, Ben Simmons on the Clippers. Let's throw him into for when he comes in and does whatever Ben Simmons does for 15 minutes. Who do you have for the Bill Walton Award?
41:30 Speaker 01 Ty Jerome, the metrics for a player like him are incredible. He's, it's also real when you watch it. So, I mean, his win shares per 48's over to like point two. So it's, it's a really good number, which sometimes that number doesn't even show up to reflect how well, you know, but when you start kind of getting into that area for a player, especially what he's asked to do, I, I think it's Jerome. And I think he's had some really big moments for them. I just really felt like there was a few weeks there where it was just like, so this guy's just never going to miss any shots and do everything right.
42:02 Bill Simmons? It's one of the best under 20 minute seasons in a while. You know, he's basically coming in for two nine-minute stretches each half and that's it. You don't see him again. And he comes in and he's impactful the whole time. Um, I'm with you. What does he make this summer, you think?
42:20 Bill Simmons? Is he a 15 to 16 million dollar guy?
42:23 Speaker 01 God.
42:24 Bill Simmons? Not a shitload of cap space floating around.
42:27 Speaker 01 No, but not a great free agent field either.
42:30 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Veteran guy. He's going to be in some big games in the playoffs. Think you could see like a 50 for three, one of those type of deals from somebody.
42:41 Speaker 01 Yeah. Uh, cause you're still asking like,
42:47 Speaker 01 you're going, is he going to be our starting point guard? Like, is he playing 36 minutes a night out there?
42:52 Bill Simmons? Well, could he get like the one of those Struce contracts? Like when Struce went to Cleveland, what was it? 464? And they were like, we just need an awesome role player who can make some shots and play swing and maybe he starts, maybe he comes off the bench, but we need him. Very excited for the next category.
43:11 Bill Simmons? The Monty Williams Award for Worst Coach of the Year. This used to be named the Vinny Del Negro Award until whatever Monty did last year, which was the most egregious bad coaching I think we've ever had this century at least. Nominees, Coach Bud on the Phoenix Suns, Nick Nurse on the Sixers.
43:31 Bill Simmons? I'm throwing Doug Christie in here as a nominee based on the last 15 Kings games and just whatever the hell is going on with that team. They're four and 11 in their last 15, not trying to tank. Uh, anybody else you would put in as a nominee here?
43:44 Speaker 01 How is Nurse on here?
43:46 Bill Simmons? I just put him on from the first two months of the season. I needed nominees.
43:53 Speaker 01 I'm gonna zag on you.
43:54 Bill Simmons? Okay.
43:56 Speaker 01 Toronto, Ryakovic.
43:58 Bill Simmons? Okay.
43:59 Speaker 01 Now, not because he did a bad job, but because he did an amazing job. This is the worst tanking.
44:06 Speaker 01 In a bad way, like if the goal were to tank, they were eight and 31. They were unbelievably defensively there for like two plus months. They won too many games. Um, so he was, I'm not saying he's a bad coach, but he did the worst job of executing because the team played so hard. And I think the Raptors were number two against the spread. And depending on what number you got this summer, they're going to end up being an over team, which I
44:31 Bill Simmons? Unless they throw away than the last four games, I think is
44:35 Speaker 01 They play too hard. So I'm, I'm not even comparing him to Monty Williams, but I'm zagging a bit on the nomination of like, hey, what, why, why are you getting these like, there's certain nights with their lineups where I'd go, what the hell is, and then they'd win again.
44:49 Bill Simmons? I'm going to pick Coach Bud.
44:53 Bill Simmons? Because, uh, Phoenix seems the most uninspired night tonight with the most guys that really don't seem like they gave a shit about what happens in the game. I thought Bradley Beal's performance in the Celtics game the other night was one of the most reprehensible things I've seen in a while. And I really hope if anyone missed it, go, go watch some of his minutes in that game. And, uh, if you want to see somebody just completely mail it in, it was, it was awful. Did you see it? It was awful.
45:20 Speaker 01 Yeah. He's, I mean, there shouldn't even be any other nominees for another award a little bit later. I imagine we're aligning that.
45:25 Bill Simmons? Well, I had the 2015 Brad Stevens Award for most untankable coach. And I had your Toronto guy, Jordy Fernandez, Will Hardy and Chauncey Billups. Action packed category. So you'd go the Toronto guy for that one too?
45:39 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know that was a category, so I wouldn't have done that to you.
45:42 Bill Simmons? No, no, I, I, I think he can win both. Um,
45:46 Speaker 01 Has anyone ever done that before?
45:47 Bill Simmons? A double, a double. I have Jordy. They're just like trying to trade dudes, get guys off the team to make them worse. And that team over and over again, every, it's same thing as Toronto. Everyone plays hard. He's a really good in game coach and he's just stolen games left and right. So kudos to him. Speaking of Chauncey Billups, the late 1990s Chauncey Billups Award for best reason never to sell your stock. Our guy, Scoot Henderson.
46:18 Bill Simmons? That's it. There's no other nominees. Scoot Henderson.
46:21 Speaker 01 I was talking to a team this morning about this and their quote, so it's not coming from me, but was that this, we need to have more patience with guards. The way you have to think the game now with the number of defenses that you're seeing, it's almost like quarterbacking now. Like, hey, are they in zone? Is the safety coming down? Is all this different stuff? Like, there's just so much variation for what you're having to face. And I think Cade Cunningham is a great example of this. Like, you saw the physical talent. You imagined he was going to be able to shoot it well. And then at that size, with the passing that we saw from Oklahoma State, it's like, how, this just isn't going to work out. Now, granted, he had some really alarming numbers finishing at the rim, or his inability to finish at the rim. But you saw clearly, and it helped them having spacing,
47:05 Speaker 01 too. But once he started kind of figuring things out a little bit, it just, there might be a lesson in there for some of these lottery pick guards that look lost early on. So maybe there's a scoop lesson in there as well.
47:18 Bill Simmons? I'm going to go backwards to two guys I specifically mentioned, remember for this, because this might have always been a lesson, and we just forgot. Kevin Johnson, Kevin Johnson on Cleveland. I remember going to a Cavs Celtics game and watching him just look like a deer in the headlights. I went with my dad, and we were like, wow, that guy seemed like a bust. And then they traded him for Larry Nance, and he was awesome. And then Billups on Boston. I was going to those games. Now, Patino was yelling at everybody. He lost his confidence. They traded him after 50 games. And then he bounced around. He went to Denver. He went to Toronto. Like, he bounced around before he finally landed on Minnesota when he rejuvenated his career. But
48:02 Bill Simmons? I would just never give up on a high pick after a year or two if I was a team that drafted them. Quarterback's a little different. We've had some quarterbacks where it's like, I mean, when did we know Josh Rosen? Like, the second play of his career where it's just like, ah, that guy's, it's a wrap.
48:20 Speaker 01 I was not. I wasn't that quick on Josh Rosen.
48:23 Bill Simmons? You weren't? You stayed in? How long did you stay?
48:26 Speaker 01 Longer, because I think it was a game against, I forget if it was SC, or maybe it was Arizona, where I thought he was reading the blitz perfectly and hitting the tight end. So, yeah, I fell for it.
48:39 Speaker 01 Terrell Brandon, maybe part of this group?
48:42 Bill Simmons? That's a good one.
48:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
48:45 Bill Simmons? Even somebody like Brian Shaw, who was really up and down and then turned into an awesome role player for a couple of different playoff teams. Yeah, I like your quarter, I like your quarterback point card thing. The Freeman Williams Award for biggest black hole. This isn't as fun as last year when Cam Thomas was just the obvious winner.
49:03 Bill Simmons? I went with LaMelo, which you made the case for on your pod a couple of months ago. But even though he's 21.3 field goal attempts a game in 32 minutes. So he's basically taking two shots every three minutes. He's got a 36 usage rate and the team doesn't win. So I don't feel great about it, but I thought he was the best option. Who'd you have?
49:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, because there's some like alarming shot numbers that we've gone over where it was the most shots, I think, per 100 possessions since Kobe in 2006. And it's like, okay, but I mean, there was even discussions then of like, okay, Kobe's amazing, but is this awesome? You know, and again, like, how dare you even bring it up? And then you mentioned the team around him and all that kind of stuff. Even if I feel like everybody would be guessed, be like, hey, Russillo is just going to jump on this LaMelo thing because of that stuff that you're already talking about. He's such a good passer that I don't think the black hole thing applies to him. Like, I have to, I have to watch you and think you never want to pass. You just don't want to. And I think LaMelo actually wants to pass a ton.
50:06 Speaker 01 I mean, there's a sneaky part of this circling back to the start of the pod where we're talking about Cooper and where he could go. Like, can you imagine him on lobs from LaMelo? Like, what if, you know, is there a version of this LaMelo thing where it works, where he scales down the shot attempts a little? He has some better play, like, you know, again, I'm, I'm probably, I sound like I'm in the marketing room with the front office of the Hornets going.
50:29 Bill Simmons? Hey, they try to shop him.
50:30 Speaker 01 Right, right. Yeah, we have, we have so, we're selling a lot of jerseys.
50:34 Bill Simmons? We didn't want to give him up.
50:34 Speaker 01 Right, right. A couple, couple of options for you here.
50:38 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
50:42 Speaker 01 Delon Banton from Portland, I was like, that guy doesn't like passing.
50:48 Bill Simmons? That's a really good one.
50:49 Speaker 01 He really doesn't, but then his assist percentage number on the advanced stuff was so much higher than I thought it would be. I was like, all right, that's, that's not, the numbers don't back up the eyes on that, but I'm just telling you that guy's not, he's thinking shoot first.
51:03 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
51:04 Speaker 01 If you've watched, if you've watched enough Portland, which, you know, some of us like watching Portland play.
51:10 Speaker 01 So then I looked at top 15 in field goal attempts, not per game, just raw field goal attempt total.
51:16 Bill Simmons? Did the same.
51:17 Speaker 01 Jalen Green's fourth, he's taking the fourth most shots this season in the league.
51:22 Bill Simmons? Is that true?
51:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, Jalen was awesome the other night against OKC.
51:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah, he's been good last month. I've been impressed.
51:28 Speaker 01 They need him, but if you go by the 1394 shots, that's again, 1,394 shots this year. So I looked at it, I was like, all right, who, let's say top 15 shot attempt guys total on the season.
51:41 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
51:41 Speaker 01 The only one, he's the only one under 300 assists. DeRozan is the only one close to him at 316 and Jalen's at like 260 something. Now you could also say, hey, scale it out to 16 field goal attempts. And then Jaren Jackson Jr., who I love, like it's, but then I go, okay, but nobody's giving it to Jaren Jackson Jr. Saying, all right, now set up the offense.
52:04 Bill Simmons? Maybe we don't have a black hole. Maybe, maybe the word's defunct.
52:09 Speaker 01 Resa.
52:09 Bill Simmons? I looked at the Resa numbers. There was high volume. I was surprised.
52:14 Speaker 01 But what are you asked to do? But when you start getting into like 7% assist ratio, like Jordan Clarkson had some years, you're like, man, not a lot of playmaking there. So some of it feels a little bit like, okay, but once the ball is passed to me, what are you more, meaning you and I, like, what do you morons expect me to do? Like, you realize how I fit into our offense? Like, I'm not, not getting the ball to set it back up. So I think it has to be on somebody who's, you're still expecting to maybe make a few plays here and there.
52:44 Bill Simmons? Cam Thomas's stats are basically almost exactly the same as last year. So he's probably the winner, even though I feel I felt way better watching him this year than I did last year. Yeah, we don't really have the, that's why even like LaMelo, I was like, I don't know. Maybe we leave this to funk this year. Let's, uh, we got some media words coming up, so let's take a break before we get to this. This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun, sometimes earlier than expected, sometimes after blowing a 3-1 series lead. But what if you went to Cancun with Expedia save up to 30% when you bundle and save. You can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness, though, hopefully your team doesn't go to Cancun. One, two, three Cancun. Or if they do, you go with them.
53:29 Bill Simmons? Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save savings vary. 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. All right, this is one of the big categories. This is like in the Oscars when all of a sudden they're doing like, you know, best supporting actor, like whoa, we're doing this now. It's the Perk Thinks Jokic Pads His Stats Award for worst sports media take of the year about basketball.
54:14 Bill Simmons? I'm sure you have a couple nominees written down, too. I wrote down four. Perk saying Steph shouldn't be an all-star.
54:23 Bill Simmons? All of Colin Coward's Tatum takes, like all of them for five straight months, which I went on his show two weeks ago and made fun of them for. Marcus Morris has been debuting some Jokic stuff lately. That I really want to talk about. And then Gilbert Arenas saying Bronny would be top five for Rookie of the Year if you played 36 minutes a game. Was an actual Gilbert Arenas take.
54:48 Speaker 01 Is that, if you were playing 36 minutes a game somewhere bad?
54:52 Bill Simmons? Any rookie playing 36 minutes a game is probably in the running for Rookie of the Year. Any other, any other ones that jumped out for you?
55:02 Speaker 01 I think about the Perk Jokic Westbrook video once a week.
55:08 Bill Simmons? The stat pad?
55:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's been years. It's been years. And I can't stop thinking about it.
55:15 Bill Simmons? Every time he talks about Jokic, I can't unwind it.
55:20 Speaker 01 Cause I know what he was doing and there was, there was a video of like, it was kinda like the thinking emoji face. And I kept thinking like, of all the times that I'll, I'll admit the disconnect of me never playing in any game that ever mattered in this sport that I'm in love with. And it's basically my career.
55:47 Speaker 01 And then somebody who did play is capable of suggesting that because one guy gets triple doubles, it's the same as the other guy getting triple doubles. I just, it makes my head explode. Okay, I can't. I still don't have an answer as to how it even happened. So Perk's been on a bit of a heater. He had SGA in the defensive player of the year conversation the other night when they were talking MVP.
56:11 Bill Simmons? Oh, no.
56:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was like, why is SGA not being mentioned as defensive player of the year? And I thought like, well, cause it's March and we know that he isn't.
56:21 Speaker 01 And he's actually, if Wallace isn't on the floor, like the one guy, not to say that he's a bad defensive player, but he's, he's not even like one of the three or four best defensive players on his own team. Although he's gotten defensive, all defensive team votes. I think it was a couple of years ago.
56:34 Bill Simmons? He's a good defensive player, but yeah, he's, he's on the same team with Dort and Caruso and Wallace.
56:38 Speaker 01 Right. So that made me like, I had a relapse on the Jokic Westbrook thing when I was watching that. And so then I saw the Marcus Morris stuff with Jokic and I was like, you know, first take's probably sitting there going, is there anybody that we can find that's kinda in the mix, played, not playing? Maybe we can figure out if he fits in to what we're doing. But like back, different background than Jokic, like, is there anybody available who could come on and just shit on Jokic a little bit?
57:07 Bill Simmons? Was there anybody that Jokic shoved from behind really hard and knocked him out for 20 games?
57:11 Speaker 01 Right. It's his brother, but is there anybody, is there anybody that would like fit into what we're doing here? And it's like, I've got the guy. I've got the guy. And then he went, they must've been high fiving him, being like, you fit in perfectly to.
57:27 Bill Simmons? So you think that was in the meeting? He, he test drove it and they're like, that's great. You should say that.
57:33 Speaker 01 Could you say not top 50?
57:40 Bill Simmons? That was really good.
57:41 Speaker 01 Because when I saw the clip, it was like, no way Marcus Morris kinda shit on Jokic a little.
57:47 Bill Simmons? All right. Next category is the most shameless LeBron related media moment of the year. And unfortunately, there were too many this year with, with people in the media. And we're just going to skip this award, um, including a couple last week that I was just stupefied by. Let's move on.
58:06 Bill Simmons? The Virginia Beach Kings Award for most contrived story on a slow news day. I'll give you the nominees. This is, I think, another, another action packed great category. Stephen A. versus LeBron for 10 days.
58:24 Bill Simmons? The story that Minnesota at the deadline came really close to getting Kevin Durant, even though they're on the 13th apron. And it's like physically impossible for them to make any sort of trade that would have allowed it. I enjoyed that.
58:38 Bill Simmons? Anything, any story that involves an ex-player on a podcast, taking a shot at a current player. Throw in that in there. Any story that made it seem like Joel Embiid was now ramping up to play. Throw in there. And then, uh, my favorite. Paul George has paused his podcast to concentrate on the 76ers season. I thought, I had no notes. I thought that was a tour de force. It's the podcast. It's the, oh, some blame you for that. What else do you have for most contrived story on a slow news day?
59:11 Speaker 01 I'm going to blame myself for this one, but I wrote out a Tumani Kamara open that I didn't do on my pod.
59:20 Bill Simmons? That you didn't do. You were gonna do it to, you knew it to Kamara open?
59:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
59:26 Bill Simmons? Wow, that was a tough headline.
59:29 Speaker 01 Yeah. I probably would have led with the guest on the tweet of that episode.
59:34 Bill Simmons? Kamara underrated?
59:38 Bill Simmons? I think my favorite, my favorite contrived story is the Durant trade, though. That was my favorite. I can't believe Minnesota was floating that out like there was ever a chance in a million years. They had a chance to get Kevin Durant when all the rules make it literally impossible.
59:52 Speaker 01 You know what? Off of that, though, I think we could bring it back to the Luca thing that we haven't even brought up yet is that when it happened, all we were doing with whatever contacts you had is like, did you know he was available? And it was like, no, no, did you hear this? No, no, he wasn't. He wasn't or whatever. And then it like took a couple
1:00:10 Bill Simmons? Heard anything. No calls.
1:00:12 Speaker 01 It took a couple of weeks for us to be fed the idea that he was offered for Ant and that he was offered for Yanis. And then it became, again, it depends on who you believe, because I don't know that any of this stuff was officially reported, but the sense you got from it, I think you and I would agree. So I'm assuming a bit here where it was like,
1:00:31 Speaker 01 yeah, a team called us about a trade, but they didn't say, they didn't say he was available.
1:00:37 Bill Simmons? They said, what would it take to get Yanis? And we were like, what are you talking about? Yeah.
1:00:44 Bill Simmons? Oh, another big award.
1:00:47 Bill Simmons? The McKeskey Award for Best American White Guy. Previous winners included Chet Holmgren, Tyler Hero, Kevin Love, and Mike Miller. So it's a prestigious one.
1:00:58 Speaker 01 Mike Miller actually was close to having the white belt here.
1:01:01 Bill Simmons? He had it. He won it somewhere in the mid 2000s. He grabbed.
1:01:05 Speaker 01 I'm not saying it's, I'm not saying it's wrong.
1:01:07 Bill Simmons? Sometimes, sometimes it's a weak field. This year, it's a strong field. Chet Holmgren, Tyler Hero, Austin Reeves. We'll throw Pritchard in there just to have have four candidates, but this is probably the best category we've had. Now, Holmgren's missed a punch of time, so I'm going to penalize him and make it between Hero and Reeves. And I gotta say, I think it's Reeves. It's Holmgren if we don't care that he missed the games because he's the best out of those guys. But I think if you're going by this season, it's Reeves.
1:01:40 Speaker 01 Right. But just to review.
1:01:43 Speaker 01 Jokic.
1:01:46 Speaker 01 Katelyn Clark.
1:01:46 Bill Simmons? American white guys.
1:01:48 Speaker 01 Trump, Cooper Flagg, White Lotus.
1:01:53 Speaker 01 Been a big year.
1:01:55 Bill Simmons? Flag was a hit last night.
1:01:59 Bill Simmons? So you agree that it's it's Reeves or would you go homegrown on 30 games?
1:02:09 Speaker 01 God, this was a really tough cat. I think there was a time where we were wondering if McDermott was the answer.
1:02:14 Bill Simmons? We had bad years for this. Yeah.
1:02:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's why I just gave you that timeline. What's been going on? Uh, let's see.
1:02:24 Speaker 01 I'll go Chet ceiling, but if you want to ding him for not playing, what he's at 29 games and Reeves has had to really carry.
1:02:31 Bill Simmons? You know what? You're right. Chet's the best out of those guys. We don't have the all NBA rules where it's 55 games or more. We're just going best white guy. He's the best white guy. Dennis Rodman award for best ongoing distraction. Nominees, Embiid. What's going on with this knee? Is he gonna play today? Uh oh, setback. Oh, he's ramping up. Uh, setback. Oh, he's ramping up. Zion. Is he playing? Oh, he's hurt. Whoa. He had 38 points and 17 rebounds last night. Uh, where is he? He's not there anymore. Ja Morant.
1:03:05 Bill Simmons? Jimmy Butler in Miami. Not the Jimmy Butler in Golden State, Jimmy Butler Miami. And then last one, here's where I'm going to put our guy Mark Cuban. For his, it's not my fault media tour.
1:03:17 Bill Simmons? After probably two weeks of getting hammered by everyone in Dallas, why did you trade Luka Doncic and somebody explaining that they didn't? He finally felt the need to give multiple interviews, uh, rubbing salt into the, uh, open wound of the Luka trade. So who do you have for this? Best ongoing distraction? Biggest?
1:03:36 Speaker 01 There's such a recency bias with awards. I think Jimmy Butler needs to be recognized here.
1:03:43 Bill Simmons? I think you're right.
1:03:44 Speaker 01 It started, it started at the playoffs last year.
1:03:47 Bill Simmons? Yep. I think you're right. Plus, watching how great of a teammate and contributor and the way the Golden State guys are talking about him, how amazing he is. And he can score nine points, have five rebounds and still impact a game in these 19 ways. And Steph loves him, Draymond loves him, Kerr loves him. I think it's the right answer.
1:04:07 Speaker 01 He was slow though in that Lakers game and it was something that maybe I wouldn't notice as much if I wasn't there, but he, he basically took off like I think the first 14 minutes. It was strange.
1:04:22 Bill Simmons? I think he's played a lot of minutes the last 25 games in a way that hasn't really happened in a while. And it, I, I've noticed a little bit of the same thing that it seems like he's a little bit dead legsy. But you know, they're in the grind now. They're trying to get, trying to get a top three, top four seed. I don't think they have any choice. I was surprised he played on Friday night, but I think these guys, you know, at this point, it's such a dramatic difference to be three or four versus falling down to eight is the scary one. Nobody wants to be eight. People will play these guys and back to backs, whatever. They don't, nobody wants to be it. So that's it. Oh, the Jim Coughlin Award.
1:05:04 Bill Simmons? For you think you're better than me. Uh, last year, this was won by the LeBron JJ pod. I, I guess we could give it to the Nash LeBron pod this year to mind the game. I don't know if you had any other candidates.
1:05:17 Speaker 01 I've learned to love Shaq. I didn't really appreciate him when I was younger. I guess I did from a basketball sense, but I was never necessarily like rooting for him. And I think at that point, once he was at the Lakers, I was certainly more into my Commonwealth phase. So it wasn't likely that I was going to root for him. So I've learned to love him. He feels incredibly sincere. You know, somebody that's a public figure, his honesty, the way he's talked about stuff. But I mean, just, I'd say you think you're better than me would be Shaq against anyone that's currently playing. Like he just can't help himself and will have these games that are just incredible performances. And then somehow the conversation just pivots back to that they couldn't guard him.
1:06:01 Speaker 01 And if I were a producer, I'd go, dude, you have figured it out. You're great on this show. It was a really tough show to come into. You know, in the beginning, I thought was Shaq.
1:06:09 Bill Simmons? First year was bad.
1:06:10 Speaker 01 Yeah. Is this going to work? Is he looking at those other two guys being like, I was a better player than you. So I should be a bigger star than you. But it's like, hey, Charles is just the star of the show. And then everybody kind of plays off of that. And for whatever reason, like, it almost feels so important that they developed him. Like, they've, he's done a great job developing himself on television, developing himself on television. Everybody behind the scenes, like, it's, it's really important that he's there. And I would say to him, if I were on the show, be like, just be a, like, be cautious of playing the same note over and over again, especially when you have a night in the NBA that's like, should be celebrated.
1:06:44 Bill Simmons? It's good though.
1:06:48 Bill Simmons? Oh, this is a great one. The Andre Blatch Award for most immediately regrettable extension. And somehow we had six nominees, including Joel Embiid. I'm throwing Lori Marketing in. Jamal Murray, throwing him in. Brandon Ingram happened during the season. Patrick Williams and Scotty Barnes. The answer is obviously Joel Embiid, but it's just fun that we had six nominees. And Marketing, I shoehorned a couple in there that probably weren't that regrettable, but it is Joel Embiid is our answer.
1:07:16 Speaker 01 I'm saving Ingram for something else. That's totally fine. Marketing, surprised you would nominate, although it's a bit alarming, but I think that team had just so many on-ball guys that were young and they were like, we want to lose anyway, so we're not going to worry about it. The Patrick Williams one, Sneaky deserves like a lot of credit here.
1:07:38 Bill Simmons? Five for 90.
1:07:40 Speaker 01 Yeah. And he's just, he had a dunk at it the other night. And I was like, this is awesome. They're also down 30, I think, to Oklahoma City within minutes of the game. But the Embiid and the Embiid timeline of it is really why there shouldn't be anybody else receiving votes for this one.
1:07:57 Bill Simmons? Would you consider changing the name next year from Andre Blatch to Joel Embiid Award? If, if Embiid doesn't come back next year?
1:08:09 Bill Simmons? Or did Andre, having an extension that got in the steed and making NBA history that way, well, should that just cement the award for him forever?
1:08:18 Speaker 01 I have a really soft spot for Andre Blatch.
1:08:21 Bill Simmons? Okay.
1:08:22 Speaker 01 Like, we used to talk about him all the time with Van Pelt and I did Wizards Daily, because if you go back to those Blatch years, that group, and then I followed Blatch on Twitter.
1:08:30 Bill Simmons? That was your first book.
1:08:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, I didn't get, I mean, I still have to pay the advance back, but they had a thing where they would be on the road and like, I think one guy on the team complained about having to pay a cover charge going to a club. Like, they were just constantly sharing with you everything you could assume about like where their heads were at that season.
1:08:50 Bill Simmons? Early internet too, and the early social media internet, which made it more fun.
1:08:54 Speaker 01 Blatch's profile pic was incredible. So I followed him immediately and then every now and then he would just drop these gems and then like they'd had a bad losing streak again. And I felt bad for him because he was like just walking around trying to figure it out. It was like late at night. The other thing, I don't know if this could ever be a category, I don't know if it's a segment, but it could be horniest guy on Twitter. Because I'll tell you, with the for you feed, you know, look, if you see somebody cute, you might look at a profile picture, right? And then next thing you know, you're like, hey, this guy likes cute girls, which I think makes, makes, you know, checks a lot of boxes for a lot of American males out there. So then you'll see like a picture and you'll
1:09:33 Speaker 01 go, oh, this guy follows her. And then if I'm being honest, I've, I've kept track of it a little bit.
1:09:41 Bill Simmons? Oh.
1:09:41 Speaker 01 Where I'll go, there's a few dudes that are not afraid to hit that follow button and it just does circle back to the Wizards. So I would like to have you keep it Andre Blatch forever, just because I like talking about him.
1:09:53 Bill Simmons? He made a great case.
1:09:54 Speaker 01 Great passer for his size. Ball handling.
1:10:02 Bill Simmons? The 2025 Ewing Theory Award for star most likely to be Ewing Theory'd next season.
1:10:10 Bill Simmons? I have Ja Morant, Zion and Booker as my three candidates. Booker eligible, never won a title.
1:10:20 Speaker 01 It's gotta be Ja.
1:10:22 Bill Simmons? I agree.
1:10:25 Bill Simmons? Although Ja had the, uh, the game winner the other night.
1:10:30 Bill Simmons? And, uh, had some Memphis fans
1:10:36 Bill Simmons? puffing their chest out a little bit about it.
1:10:38 Speaker 01 And they Yeah, I don't, I mean, look. They're, he's, he's your guy. I understa- we've been through this before. Okay, we know how it works. He's your guy. He's given you a lot of special moments. So you're gonna defend his guy. But I would say to the Memphis fans that are confused on why Ja would be fined versus other players doing the same salute, like, all you have to do is go through the timeline and all the stuff and the Jalen Rose interview and all the things that he had to go through, which again, he brought on himself. And it's fine. Like, I'm not watching him going, oh, I don't like this guy because of all this shit in the past, but it's fairly common sense that you end up being punished based on how often you kind of fall into this category.
1:11:16 Bill Simmons? It's like the Draymond, some of the Draymond stuff. He gets, he gets, uh, punished for a different level of scrutiny because of the past behavior.
1:11:26 Speaker 01 Welcome to life.
1:11:28 Bill Simmons? The Lou Brown Award, out of nowhere team that surprised us the most. Detroit, Portland and Houston, I think are the three. And I would have to say as great as the Portland, Houston out of nowhere seasons were, it has to be Detroit. That team was all time rock bottom last year and turned into a really fun league pass team. They're gonna be a six seed, probably playing the Knicks in round one. There's gonna be at least one awesome near fight in that, in that thing. Cade turned into a real guy. And, uh, for me, it's Detroit. Who is it for you?
1:11:57 Speaker 01 So Detroit's the only team in a full season to triple their win total. So 14 and 68 last year. And I probably said too many times last season going, as bad as they are, how are they worse than Washington? Roster wise, like this team has so many other things that I like about it versus what the Wizards had, and they still ended up finishing behind them. Uh, which speaks to the Monty thing, which you may never get a chance to change that award because it's not just gonna be on record. It is about a dude who took a job who apparently had no interest in learning about his own players. Like, it isn't a, it's a comical
1:12:30 Bill Simmons? And they're still taking shots at him a year later. Anyone associated with that team is still. Pretty bummed out about how he approached the job last season.
1:12:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:12:40 Bill Simmons? For a variety of ways.
1:12:41 Speaker 01 There's a technical thing historically on tripling your win total because the Bobcats in 2012 finished at 7 and 59 and then went 21 and 61 the next year. But remember, that was a shorter season. So they had less games to play, less chances. There's not a Bob. Are you going to do a Bobcats documentary? Or would that be straight to? Is anybody going to do that? Have you been?
1:13:03 Bill Simmons? Probably a one, probably a one parter.
1:13:07 Speaker 01 Seems right.
1:13:08 Bill Simmons? Let's, uh, we'll take one more break and then we have some good awards left. This episode is brought to by WeatherTech. Whether it's a pumpkin spice coffee that goes splat in your seat or a weekend tailgate that leaves your trunk full of gear and who knows what, you're going to want WeatherTech in your vehicle. Whether you call it fall, autumn, or spooky season, whether the mess is your fault, the kids, the dogs, or the weather's fault, you're going to want WeatherTech for American-made floor liners and a cargo liner that laugh in the face of fall weather. Visit weatherTech.com today. This episode is brought to you by TikTok. When you watch a football game, you follow the ball, right? Well, there's a video on TikTok where this guy says to watch the players without the ball. Watch the routes and the action away from the play. I'll change how you see the game. And guess what? He's not wrong. That's the thing about discovery on TikTok.
1:13:50 Bill Simmons? One video can change the way you see the game. You can learn something new or see things in a completely different way. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Visit tiktok.com/discovermore. All right. One of our big categories, the ML car trying to trade for a retired Michael Jordan award for goofiest but possibly real off-season subplot. I have five what ifs for you.
1:14:14 Bill Simmons? This is for the summer. What if the Lakers shopped Luca? What if KD opted out and signed for a vet minimum to chase a title?
1:14:24 Bill Simmons? What if Lamelo, Zion, and Ja were in the same three-team trade? What if Paul George demanded a trade?
1:14:32 Bill Simmons? And what if Phoenix said, fuck this and just stretch Bradley Beal? Those are my five nominees for goofiest but possibly real off-season subplot.
1:14:45 Speaker 01 Without knowing the nominees, I had Beal and that you're dealing with somebody who seems totally happy, just going, I don't care.
1:14:53 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:14:53 Speaker 01 And that's dangerous.
1:14:54 Bill Simmons? Send the checks every two weeks.
1:14:59 Speaker 01 But what is it? Do you think there's any scenario where, where he goes?
1:15:04 Speaker 01 All right, like, I know you don't want me to be here and you guys brought me off the bench for this stretch and this hasn't been a good season. I mean, I don't know. I mean, what's the market for him on top of everything else? Does that fix their problems? Probably not, because he's at this
1:15:19 Bill Simmons? There's only one way to do it at this point. That, and it's happened a couple of times in the history of the NBA. I remember Reggie Theis was a good one. Can't remember if he was on the Bulls or the Kings, but he just got benched and they just didn't play him and they basically tried to break him. The cap situation was way different back then than it is now, but I, that's Phoenix's last resort is to just not play him anymore. And, you know, be like, all right, we'll keep paying you, but you're just not going to play basketball. So, uh, I think it will get to game of chicken. He might be okay with it though. That's the problem.
1:15:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:15:52 Bill Simmons? That whatever I watched in that Boston game, I was really startled by it. I hadn't seen anything remotely approached that in a while. It doesn't, in the social media era, it doesn't really happen.
1:16:00 Speaker 01 By the way, when he also was out for that stretch, there was this kind of tease Phoenix moment where they were, I liked the way they were playing again for like 10 days or something like
1:16:14 Bill Simmons? Yeah, and then they got killed and Durant got hurt and the moment was over.
1:16:19 Bill Simmons? Um, so Phoenix stretching Bradley Beal, which nobody's been stretched with two years and 100 million left on their deal, but as a way to get under the second apron and just basically take the hit for the next five years. It's not inconceivable. Um, the Zaza Pukuli award for the one rule that absolutely needs to be changed. What did you have for this?
1:16:45 Speaker 01 Off-arm drives from the offensive player. It's, you know, this isn't my big rant like last year where I just kind of lost my mind on that podcast, but I think we're all better for it. But this is just, there are certain players, it's kind of the PJ Washington where guys are hitting the hole like a running back and they have that forearm locked out. Davion Mitchell had one the other night where he drove and hit a defender so hard and then got the shot up and there was like a little bit of contact coming back towards him and Davion looked at the rest like, are you guys kidding me? He touched me and you're like, dude, you're mad?
1:17:19 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:17:19 Speaker 01 You off-armed this guy. So I think there's a little cleaning up that has to be done on how aggressive the off-arm is of the ball handler on drives.
1:17:29 Bill Simmons? I like it. I have two runner up and then my number one. I'll make the annual plea, please don't let coaches challenge block charges anymore. Let's just say the call is the call and we just move on. I never want to watch another replay of a review of a block charge. I don't think guys should be able to have to eat the field goal attempt on a half-court shot. I just get rid of that. Make it a team shot, the same way they have like team rebounds. Because then I think it would inspire more people to try to take half-court or three-court shots and we might have a couple.
1:18:02 Speaker 01 If you care about your field goal percentage that much that you end up seven of 15 instead of seven of 16, don't ask for the fucking ball on the inbounds. How about one of the guys who doesn't care? Right. That's what drives me crazy is like, so now you're going to pretend that you didn't get the shot off in time because you didn't want to hurt your field goal percentage. Stop getting the ball on the inbounds. Let the other guys that don't care and understand like as absurd as the shot is, that they're not more worried about a couple percentage points.
1:18:29 Bill Simmons? I also think we should have 20-second instant replay challenges where within 20 seconds, it's like, you think no, and we just flip it and keep the game going versus like the five minutes. But here's my big one. And you know what? I almost had this last year and I think it's gotten worse this year and I really hate it. And I don't know where, where the end game is, but the rolling the ball and the inbounds pass. So the clock starts, but the shot clock doesn't start. And this whole game of like, the ball's just gonna roll and we're gonna kill time. And then somebody's like, all right, fine. I'm gonna run. First of all, somebody's gonna get injured on this at some point. Somebody's gonna dive into somebody else's legs and somebody's gonna lose their knee. I just think it's so fucking stupid. You roll the ball and the shot clock should start and the game clock should start.
1:19:13 Bill Simmons? I don't know why they do it this way. And I would change this. So that's my passion for this year, Russell.
1:19:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm cool with that. I don't know that we're ever gonna get shorter reviews. We might pretend we are, but.
1:19:24 Bill Simmons? Well, 20 second quickie reviews. I left this award open for you, the Ben Simmons Award for Best Ben Simmons Moment. Figured you'd have something and you could just go.
1:19:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, he had a push shot the other night, it was a couple of weeks ago, where it was pretty ugly coming out, but then it went in. And then based on the confidence from that first one going in, he had hit back to back shots within a few minutes of each other, which I think has to be one of the highest output moments we've had in the rotation. I thought it was that until last night playing Dallas. Anthony Davis is on the left side. He has a primary defender on him. Simmons is the low man and Simmons rotated to double Anthony Davis and then communicated in a way that you don't see where it was almost like, hey, you see Davis over there? This is like while the clock is going. I'm gonna now go over here and double team him. So you've got to slide over if somebody cuts behind me.
1:20:16 Speaker 01 And everybody's like, great, that's awesome. And then Davis ran it. So I thought it was great communication, even if it felt a little slower than what I'm used to.
1:20:23 Bill Simmons? Well, so you went positive Ben Simmons moments.
1:20:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:20:27 Bill Simmons? I was gonna go for the, uh, the preseason media day for the Nets. When he said how he's gonna be a leader this year for the team. I had that.
1:20:40 Speaker 01 Buyout watch was fun.
1:20:41 Bill Simmons? Then they bought him out.
1:20:45 Bill Simmons? The 2010 Baron Davis Award for single best mail in.
1:20:51 Bill Simmons? This is, I think, the toughest category we've had so far because you could make a small case for Paul George on the Sixers most years, but not this year. Jimmy Butler on Miami and Bradley Beal just the whole season and it is like Bird and Magic in the mid 80s. We could argue about this for days. I personally think it's Butler on Miami because he was willfully trying to force their hand to get traded and doing all kinds of things. But I also can't shake Beal and I don't want to have co winners. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna let you pick.
1:21:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, if you're just going Jimmy, but you know, like any great drama, he's got that kind of redemptive arc right now. As annoying as that may be, and I would expect Miami fans should be annoyed. I guess, you know, it's hard to pretend that you're in, but I've never understand lacing them up, going to play basketball. And then going, I don't care if I look bad. I can't imagine having that inside of you where you would go, well, that guy scored on me because I don't care. Or I didn't try to help us win because I don't care. And I'm just not gonna, I'm just not really gonna play that hard. I've already made my money or whatever. Like you'd think some of that stuff, like at least with all the bullshit that Durant has gone through, where some of it, I think is unfair.
1:22:11 Speaker 01 Some of it is certainly fair and he's brought it on himself. So I'm not absolving a blame here, but you know, it's been a pretty soap opera ish second half of Durant's career.
1:22:20 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:22:21 Speaker 01 But there's never been a moment where I've seen him going through all of his stuff where I haven't like, I've never questioned how much he wanted to play basketball. I think once he finally gets out there, runs like he wants to beat you the entire time. And look, there's 450, 500 plus players over the course of the season. There's going to be a couple of guys that actually don't really love basketball and don't really care, but I can't imagine actually being really good. Like Beal's an incredibly talented player. We all know how good Jimmy can be. It'll. Forever blow my mind that somebody has that ability and maybe that's just a disconnect of them looking at it as a job and I'm still just in love with the game of going like I don't care if I look bad in front of all these people that came to see me tonight because I'm getting paid and I don't care. So my tiebreaker would be Beal because.
1:23:06 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I think that's the right answer because at least Butler, something really seemingly catastrophic happened with him and Pat Riley and there's some sort of breach, whoever was right, whoever was wrong, that made it impossible for Butler to play even at a decent level for them anymore. He was just broken in Miami. I don't know what Beal's excuse is.
1:23:28 Speaker 01 And look, the metrics are the worst he's been at since his third year in the league. The last time he's played, I think more than 60 games is 2018, 19. So even when the trade was made and we understand how talented he is, because I remember I had said like, if you go through this, this guy's missing like 20, 25% of the season. And there was some pushback because I was using total games on the shortened seasons. It's like, okay, but you're still, you're making an excuse for a guy that doesn't seem like he's available enough. He's, he just doesn't, on top of everything else, which again, you know, if you're Phoenix, with the effort that you get from him on certain nights, you'd almost rather him not be available.
1:24:08 Bill Simmons? We got to rip through a couple of awards here. The Shane Battier Award for Sloan Conference Statner Darling du jour. This just happened, that big article on Jokic's defense and him kicking, kicking passes and how he's had the most kicked passes in, in this decade and more kicked passes. This whole thing about Jokic, like the, actually his defense, by the way, I've always felt this way. I think when you take like the best players, I still feel like, I felt this way about Steph, I felt this way about Bird and Magic once upon a time, even though Magic would get torched by small guards, but those guys were always, they're always in steals. They were always like, could read what the other team was doing. They're always good coming out of timeouts on defense.
1:24:52 Bill Simmons? But I like this whole Jokic thing. And then the other candidate for this is Jokic's on off stuff is just the most incredible it's ever been. I mean, when he plays, they have like a 125.4 rating or something like that, which would be the best ever. And when he doesn't play, they're 30th in the league on offense. So they're either best all time or worst in the league, depending on whether he plays or not. There's so many good advanced stats that I, I swear I don't, I think there's going to be some late Jokic momentum for MVP next week, even though it seems like Shay has it locked up. I think the stats are so crazy. And I don't want to spoil next week's pod. The stats are so crazy and the season has been so unbelievable. FanDuel has Shay
1:25:34 Bill Simmons? at like minus a thousand or something like that. I don't know if it's over yet. That's all I'm gonna say.
1:25:40 Speaker 01 Sounds like somebody's leaning Jokic.
1:25:42 Bill Simmons? Ah, nobody's leaning anywhere. The David Kahn Award for worst GM performance. So my big question is, is this now become the Nico Harrison Award? Did he do enough to supplant David Kahn? Who took Johnny Flynn and Ricky Rubio over Steph Curry? Among 17 other terrible things he did.
1:26:03 Speaker 01 Okay. Nico was good last year.
1:26:08 Bill Simmons? Okay. So just one bad, one bad night?
1:26:11 Speaker 01 Pretty bad one.
1:26:15 Speaker 01 This isn't, I can't believe I called her. It's like, I can't believe I married a cocktail waitress in Thailand.
1:26:22 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:26:24 Bill Simmons? Well, nominees, Nico Harrison, Sacramento firing Mike Brown and then panic trading De'Aaron Fox, New Orleans throwing Dyson Daniels into the Murray trade, Miami's entire handling of the Jimmy Butler deal, or Denver being 5 million under the second apron and not having a bench. Those would be my David Kahn Award worst front office nominees, but the answer is Nico Harrison.
1:26:51 Speaker 01 But I'd at least think you should bring up Masai. Cause Masai is now-
1:26:55 Bill Simmons? Oh, with all the extensions. Great. Let's add him.
1:26:58 Speaker 01 Right. So Masai, sight and scene with Ingram gave him three years, 120 million guaranteed. And you could say he hasn't played a game for him yet in sight and scene. Obviously, he knows what he's doing. Look at the free agent thing that we teased earlier, like maybe there's a number out there for Ingram that's higher than we could imagine, which is usually the lesson that we hear, or I should say experience every time we start going like, oh, why is that guy gonna make that much money? And then he gets signed to it. But it's Scotty Barnes, Ingram, quickly, RJ Barrett, Pirtle. Next year for a combined 156.4 million dollars.
1:27:32 Bill Simmons? Seven seed at best?
1:27:36 Speaker 01 I don't know. I mean, look, what if they get their players back and play them? Maybe with Darko, who knows? I mean, they've, they've outperformed everything you could possibly imagine in the second half of the year. So maybe they're just developing all they got. Maybe they'll be the deepest team in the league next year. It's just an expensive five.
1:27:52 Bill Simmons? I'd love to know-
1:27:53 Speaker 01 For that five.
1:27:54 Bill Simmons? I'd love to know why Denver didn't do a little bit more this year. I don't understand how their bench is this bad.
1:28:03 Bill Simmons? When you are being blessed with the best offensive player since God knows when.
1:28:11 Speaker 01 No, not top 20, but pretty good. Yeah.
1:28:14 Bill Simmons? Not top 20, but close.
1:28:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:28:16 Bill Simmons? I just, I just wanna shout them out. You have this amazing asset you have to spend when you have an asset like that. And they're not doing it. And they own other teams. It's not like they don't have the money. It's very strange to me.
1:28:26 Speaker 01 You know what, though, is this might be the, I drafted these guys. I brought in Pickett. I brought in Watson. You know, I brought in Swather, you know?
1:28:37 Bill Simmons? Just trust me. I know what I'm doing. Well, I don't think you do. Cause I think a lot of people would wanna play Denver in the playoffs the way this is shaking out. Denver and Memphis are the two teams I think people are fine playing. As great as Jokic is.
1:28:51 Speaker 01 It'll be funny if they get bounced out. The, I'm just advanced scouting Jokic. There was a fly in front of me for those watching on the clip.
1:29:02 Speaker 01 I'm advanced scouting it because if he loses in the first round, then it's going to be like, can we get Marcus Morris back in here?
1:29:09 Bill Simmons? Can we have, he's outside the building. I would say them and Memphis are the two best candidates for the 4-0 sweep. In round one, if we were going to have a shocking, I can't believe that team got swept. I would have Denver and Memphis. The Vitaly Patopico Award for worst deadline trade, named after the time Rick Pitino during a strike season gave up an unprotected first round pick for Vitaly Patopico that turned out they could have either taken Sean Marion or Andre Miller and they didn't get either because they got a backup center. So I don't love Miami dumping Dennis Schroder for no reason when they got him in that deal when they clearly kind of want to be a playoff team, I guess. But at the Mark Williams trade, when you have Luca and you have this chance in the West
1:29:54 Bill Simmons? for the Lakers to do that trade and then to back out of it and then just kind of get nothing and now it's unquestionably going to haunt them in the playoffs that they don't have a center. I have to nominate that. Worst deadline is the trade is the Mark Williams cancellation trade. That's what I have.
1:30:14 Speaker 01 I don't know what's going to happen with LA here. I don't know what's going to happen in the West. Okay. Other than I think, oh, KC is going to beat all of these teams and I'd be really, really surprised if they're not representing the West. I think they're that good.
1:30:25 Bill Simmons? Me as well.
1:30:25 Speaker 01 And they have all of these options and it's hard to find like a flaw with them. I mean,
1:30:30 Bill Simmons? We saw one Friday night.
1:30:32 Speaker 01 What would you say that is?
1:30:33 Bill Simmons? The double big lineup, they had some issues. They kind of got pounded on the boards in a way that I was like, oh, okay. A little slight fly in the open. All right.
1:30:44 Speaker 01 Credit to Eme too, for the, the double big patience. Because early on with Adams.
1:30:49 Bill Simmons? Good in that game. You watched that game? Adams was like, they were like impactful in that game. Yeah.
1:30:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:30:55 Bill Simmons? I don't know. That wasn't nothing.
1:30:57 Speaker 01 But no, I came back in after a tough day on the seas and then watched it late. And it's sometimes you're better watching it when you know what happened.
1:31:05 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:31:05 Speaker 01 Cause now you're not watching it with anticipation. You're just watching, trying to figure out what was going on. And you know, I think there'll be, you know, sometimes like this is being really, really critical of an awesome team historically here.
1:31:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:31:17 Speaker 01 But there'll be some like Kason Wallace minutes where you go, well, is that? And then I'm like, what are you, what are you mad about all eight guys not being off the charts, impossible to deal with on?
1:31:27 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:31:28 Speaker 01 Both ends of the floor. Cause I think last year as we were ramping up for the playoffs, like right around this time last year, we were talking Celtics and you just laid it all out. Like whatever your issues are, and I think we both had them with some of the late offensive stuff. There's still games with the Celtics offense. I'm like, is this still really good? And then it's like last 15 second offense. It's like, yeah, it is. It is that good.
1:31:48 Bill Simmons? At some point math becomes math.
1:31:50 Speaker 01 Right.
1:31:50 Bill Simmons? OKC's math is outrageous.
1:31:54 Speaker 01 I like Drew Holiday to have the ball in his hands more often on some of these threes. But that, that's just what they're gonna do. And so even if there's a night where I don't really love it, and then you go check the numbers again and be like, hey, you just, you have to love it. Move on, accept it. You laid out the stat profile historically, point differential, all this stuff. What OKC is doing right now puts them at least on a regular season list of one of the all time special teams. Are you the same place with them now that you were with Boston last year? Where it was a bit of a wake up of like, hey, whatever you think of this team, they're awesome and headed to the playoffs and should be the clear favorite. And we should stop questioning it just because it feels new with them.
1:32:31 Bill Simmons? I think they're the clear favorite in the West. The only difference with them in Boston is Boston at least had had a bunch of guys who had been in a, a bunch of big games and big situations. And OKC.
1:32:43 Speaker 01 I shouldn't even say it's new. You're right.
1:32:44 Bill Simmons? No, but that's, but that, that's the only thing you're gonna nitpick on. If you're gonna nitpick OKC is like, well, we just have to kind of see it. They gotta win four straight rounds. They're gonna be playing some of the best players in the league and some of the best players of all time. And let's see, but the math, the math is saying it would be a complete aberration if they didn't make the finals. Like something really, really truly fluky would have happened. And then when they play Boston, we've seen those games and they had. Really, the two fourth quarters where they, they really stuck it to Boston. So yeah, if you're betting your life, OK, sees the pick. I don't think there's any question. But who knows? I did, I did, I did that Houston game gave me a little hope. We're like, oh, I wonder if we'll see this in the playoffs. I wonder if teams are going to try to bang them around.
1:33:29 Bill Simmons? Um,
1:33:32 Bill Simmons? let's do, uh, the T Moran Award for best, most polarizing NBA family member.
1:33:40 Bill Simmons? Which I think was obviously Bronny this year, just because of all the content he generated.
1:33:46 Bill Simmons? We don't need to cover all the other family members. This one I'm really excited about because this is really where you shine. And I'm interested to see how many guys we have in the same list. The Reggie Lewis, I don't know. I just like this guy award for young guy who doesn't play much. But you just kind of like, last year, Kamara was on our list for this.
1:34:05 Bill Simmons? I have the following nominees and feel free to throw in anybody else. The two Nets guys, Keon Johnson, Jalen Wilson. Those guys just fucking play hard every game. Every time I watch the Nets, I'm like, Jesus Christ, this guy's really gave a shit. Bryce Sensabaugh on Utah. I don't know how much Utah you've watched, but the catch and shoot numbers are, are, are crazy. Like, he's clearly going to be a nine man rotation guy for a good team at some point in his career. We've talked about Ron Holland before. I still like Walker on the Pacers. I don't know why, and I can't explain it.
1:34:38 Bill Simmons? Guy Santos on the Warriors.
1:34:42 Bill Simmons? It's a plus minus is crazy for him. And he also seems very comfortable playing with like Hall of Fame players. And then, uh, I'll throw in A.J. Johnson, just because Zach mentioned him on the pod last week about how he's looked a little frisky on the Wizards. Who do you have? Anybody else I didn't mention?
1:34:57 Speaker 01 There's a few frisky Wizards.
1:35:00 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah.
1:35:01 Speaker 01 Including Bob Carrington, who was my first choice for this at 32 the other night. He is 20 in July and he's getting shots up now, man. He's getting those shots up.
1:35:15 Bill Simmons? He's 20 in July?
1:35:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:35:17 Bill Simmons? Oh, my Lord.
1:35:19 Speaker 01 He's 6'4".
1:35:20 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:35:21 Speaker 01 I sent a text to somebody with the Wizards. Remember they had that like fun Knicks game months ago?
1:35:27 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:35:28 Speaker 01 I sent a text and said, hey, you know, I know like you're not on everybody's radar, but I happen to catch like three games in a, in a 10 day span or whatever. I was like, you guys are playing really hard. And it was just a, thanks for watching.
1:35:41 Bill Simmons? Hmm.
1:35:42 Speaker 01 I don't know if I shared that with you. Sometimes I'm repeating myself here a bit. I may.
1:35:45 Bill Simmons? I don't think you shared that one with me.
1:35:47 Speaker 01 Maybe I shared it off the air, but I.
1:35:49 Bill Simmons? So you got bub, bub's your number one?
1:35:52 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I'm going to give a little love, like his rotational stuff could be out of the mix here now as Minnesota probably feels better about what they're doing. But Jalen Clark having a moment with this team where it's like, hey, Dillingham's going to get the first minutes. And I think it's a little too chaotic for him that they're not going to trust him in some tight spots here. Terrence Shannon not getting minutes when it felt like he was probably one of the more plug and play rotational guys that could come in and get you some buckets because of what he had done in college and he's older and all that kind of stuff. But there have been some defensive things with, with Jalen Clark with Minnesota where I'm like, all right, like this dude, this dude is, is ready. Like he's not remotely intimidated by any of this stuff. So I don't know what he projects to be the three point shooting numbers, you know, it's not like
1:36:35 Speaker 01 it's a high volume, but they're, they're pretty good. And he just competes like crazy and he, he kind of almost jumped the other guys that he would have more expectations for, uh, at certain times this season.
1:36:46 Bill Simmons? I almost threw, uh, Shireman on this. Not enough of the sample size, but there's been a couple of moments where you're like, oh, it's not nothing here.
1:36:59 Bill Simmons? Carol Dawson, a word for most under bash and tank job. Philly's three and 22 in their last 25 and, um, actively trying not to win games. So I, I think they're the winner. Shout out to Utah.
1:37:09 Speaker 01 But they did it, you know, look, we can't even make fun of Philly because you're sitting there and you're looking at the OKC pick and you, when this conversation started ramping up, it's like they have the seventh or eighth worst record in the NBA. And this is the part where I, again, there's certain things with Daryl that I totally respect. It's like, well, if we're doing it, we're doing it. We're not screwing around. We're shutting down. Nobody's here. And they were 19 and 27 at that point and have now on this four and 28 stretch. I mean, Quentin Grimes cost them a couple games in there. This could have been, this could have been like a two and 30.
1:37:38 Bill Simmons? It's gonna be a layup. Yeah. Dwight Howard, sorry dude, I can't help it. I just don't like watching you play basketball award. Um, Julius Randall seems like a nice guy. I just don't really enjoy watching him play basketball. He's my pick.
1:37:52 Bill Simmons? And he's been playing better lately than he's played on Minnesota all year, but I just don't really enjoy it. And I'll be honest, I 15, 16, 17 years of DeMar DeRozan at this point, I think I'm good.
1:38:07 Speaker 01 Oh, you don't see, I actually find myself coming back.
1:38:09 Bill Simmons? I think I'm good. I just feel like I'm okay with it. I'm okay with the experience and Kyle Kuzma is another one that I think I'm good.
1:38:21 Bill Simmons? Just think I'm fine. I'm fine there. Who do you have for this award?
1:38:28 Speaker 01 Just wonder what it was like when Sacramento was like, hey, DeRozan, I can't believe you even offered up DeRozan because I think his closing fourth quarter, like getting to his stuff when he got Mobley twice in that game when they beat him, when the Cavs had that weird road trip stretch.
1:38:40 Bill Simmons? I get it. Great. The team's gonna go 40 and 42 again.
1:38:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, but there was like the Dwight Howard stuff is so funny because.
1:38:48 Bill Simmons? Dwight Howard is really good.
1:38:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, he was really good, but then it was like, hey, I need to be taking all the shots at the end of the games. It's like, what did you work on this summer?
1:38:56 Bill Simmons? Yeah, if I get fouled, I'm gonna make one or two. You have Randall?
1:39:00 Speaker 01 Zach Levine. I just want to know what it was like for DeRozan when they were like, hey, guess what? We we got Zach Levine again.
1:39:07 Bill Simmons? You played with him, right?
1:39:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, you guys have good chemistry.
1:39:10 Bill Simmons? I played with him.
1:39:13 Speaker 01 Thanks for the 30, you know, thanks for the 30 points, dude.
1:39:17 Bill Simmons? It's tough. Levine Levine had the roller coaster ride. It was like a stock this year because I thought he was good on the Bulls and then he left and the Bulls were way more fun to watch right away, which probably wasn't good for him either.
1:39:29 Speaker 01 Look, I'm telling you, I could do 30 minutes on this, but you know, there are guys that aren't my favorite and I come to that conclusion after a lot of watching and noticing things. And I don't think that it's a coincidence that some of the dudes that I haven't been a huge fan of, and guys that I'm talking about that are talented, that usually can score and put up some big, big numbers. But you know, you look at all the Lakers stuff this year and you go, what's different? Like, hey, De'oz Russell isn't out there for 30 plus minutes a night.
1:40:03 Bill Simmons? You know?
1:40:03 Speaker 01 And the second Levine's out of there, even with his ability and the scoring numbers and all this stuff, you know, like, what's different about Chicago? Like, well, you know, even with his numbers, like you're removing all the other little things that are just, they never seemed to click for him. And so those are the players that I, I just won't argue about.
1:40:26 Bill Simmons? Sometimes you're one trade away, sometimes you're one injury away. Ray Allen 2010 playoffs trick or treat award goes to a team or a player. I'm, I'm going Houston Rockets for this because I've changed my mind on them 17 times during the season and I'll probably change it a couple more times as we go. But I went from thinking this is the team you want to play in the playoffs to, I don't know, they kind of freaked me out in that OKC game. And in general, like they've held this two spot and I kept waiting for them to fall to pack and they had that little losing streak. It's never perfect. I don't love their offense in the last six, seven, eight minutes, but they play hard and they're really tough. And, uh, and there's certain matchups where they just overpass. I mean, they out rebounded OKC by 15 rebounds the other night.
1:41:11 Bill Simmons? Granted, the game meant nothing to OKC, but, um, I don't know what to make of them in the playoffs. This might be it. There might be no gear at all. It might just be bad shots down the stretch and they lose the series 4-1 where they led the, in all five.
1:41:27 Bill Simmons? Or maybe there's something more there. I don't know. I don't know what to make of them.
1:41:31 Speaker 01 Clippers for me because
1:41:33 Bill Simmons? Good one.
1:41:34 Speaker 01 Kawhi looked great again last night, getting his stuff, going left, pull up, can't do anything with it. You know, an off the break, kind of transition three, where you just can see that he's totally locked in to what he wants to be. Zoo has been a beast. If you get Zoo against the wrong team, meaning the wrong team for the other side, because there's just a few teams here that want to play small. Like, I don't know if, I don't think the Lakers want to play Jackson Hayes a ton of minutes. I don't think that's breaking news. Okay. So they'd rather go small, but when they're playing against Golden State, and I don't know that I'm right about this, but you're like, are you playing into their hands a little bit by? Playing small and then them being like, we're fine.
1:42:13 Bill Simmons? The answer is yes. They're like, please, we can play Draymond at the five. Thank you.
1:42:18 Speaker 01 Yeah. So now we get to play small. So then when I think about like Houston having the double big thing, which changes a lot of like how you think about their closing group, depending on the big guys they're going up against. Like the Clippers with the way Zoo is playing.
1:42:32 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:42:33 Speaker 01 And I know that it's, it's a coin toss for Harden and all the playoff stuff, although I think I kind of joke with you like you think he'd be due just to kind of have like a nice little like run, but I feel like his pace does not adjust to the pace that you need it to be. And that's why he has the problems that he's had. But there's, there's a scenario where there's a first round matchup for them. And I'm going, oh my God, like, is there a path here? Is there a path to?
1:42:56 Bill Simmons? What if they played OKC in round one?
1:43:00 Speaker 01 Imagine.
1:43:01 Bill Simmons? I've seen them play twice in person and I was like, shit, this would be an awesome playoff series and they have a couple of things they bring to the table that aren't great for OKC. Now, there's some things OKC brings to the table that are horrible for the Clippers, but it's, my point is that's not a typical 1-8 matchup. That's not the Cleveland Cavaliers playing Orlando, no Jalen Suggs in round one. Like that's a hard series you're going to have to win.
1:43:25 Speaker 01 Do you think there's like, it wouldn't be a national media thing because nobody would really care, but considering how all in they went on the Kawhi stuff and how he's, hasn't been healthy at the end of the playoffs, certainly end of the year for a bunch of seasons in a row. The Paul George part of it and then what you've given up and then watching SGA become, I mean, there's just a lot of shit here where you go, man.
1:43:45 Bill Simmons? Imagine.
1:43:46 Speaker 01 Imagine if they had some moment of like a two, two series in the Western Conference Finals where you go, you know, those guys, Lawrence Frank and the crew, like they, the strategy was the right strategy and it couldn't have gone, but yet is there this redemptive arc where they repaired it on the fly and let Paul George just walk because they knew better than anybody else, although they still did offer the three years. Is there some part of this where we're being brought into game five and somebody's written a Wright Thompson essay?
1:44:18 Bill Simmons? Oh.
1:44:19 Speaker 01 And it's, you know what I mean?
1:44:20 Bill Simmons? Torture Clippers?
1:44:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:44:22 Bill Simmons? Well, if you go to the last 25 games, which is a huge sample size, they're fifth in net rating. And when Kawhi plays and looks like the way he's looked really for a few weeks now. It's I just wouldn't want to see that team. And honestly, I wouldn't want to see Minnesota either if I'm OKC. They're gonna, we both think they're gonna make the finals. But the it just sucks that those are two possible 1-8 matchups. Like you play, you're gonna win 68, 69 games and that's, that's your prize. Um, we only have a couple of words left. We can rip through this. Oh, the white chocolate was a problem award for 2025 guy whose season was much better in 42nd
1:45:05 Bill Simmons? Twitter highlights. I'll give you Ja, Zion, LaMelo, Jordan Poole, or Russell Westbrook. Who do you have?
1:45:14 Speaker 01 The turn by Nuggets fans on Westbrook here is amazing.
1:45:19 Bill Simmons? It feel like that game. I mean, they that's another team that might fall out of 7-8. That game was a catastrophic loss. Like to waste that level of where Jokic got to that game and to have it 19 times and then blow it and they haven't won since. It, look, he's fine as your ninth guy and as your guy, we're resting all the starters. Russ, can you just go out there and do everything and put up a 32, 10-10, let us hang around. But we he, I just don't know how you play him in crunch time in some of these games. It's too, it's too much of a wild card. It's too risky, right?
1:45:58 Bill Simmons? The risk exceeds the reward. Can't do it. You've Jokic and Murray and Gordon and Porter and Bronn, like that's it. Russ should never play in crunch time for them in a playoff game.
1:46:10 Speaker 01 This is what I've thought the entire time because Westbrook has been more accepting of this role with them than at any other point. But there may have been, even for somebody as stubborn as he is with his approach to basketball, like maybe even he had a realization of going, I need to change this a little bit. And when you're playing in the same minutes, same lineup as Jokic, like you can see him almost in a hurry to get him the ball back that could lead to some of those other problems. But like on the year, considering how bad they needed somebody to play these kind of minutes, a guy that was never really gonna like question his own value, the ego of a player that you kind of need as a foundation to even play in this league. They needed like it's been a win because of how limited their options were. It's like,
1:46:55 Speaker 01 okay, well, we're going to get this guy cheap because he's been on six teams here in a very short amount of time because he hasn't fitted and maybe he hasn't accepted what he needed to be. So I think there was an acceptance part from Westbrook here that was admirable, but I think anybody that kind of knew where his limitations were, you were like, is he actually going to close? Like, and I'm with you. And it's not just the mistakes in that Minnesota game. There's just a lot of times where you're like, what's the spacing going to look like? Is that going to screw up some of the other stuff they're going to do? I also think there's something with Westbrook too, depending on the matchup, like it's going to be, if I get to play the Lakers, I'm going to prove to them that they're morons. If I get to play against the Clippers, I'm going to, there's a revenge factor with like four of these teams.
1:47:41 Bill Simmons? How many minutes do you think he's played this year?
1:47:45 Speaker 01 Are you asking me total minutes?
1:47:47 Bill Simmons? Total minutes. Total minutes. How many do you think he played?
1:47:51 Speaker 01 I don't, I don't know off the top of my head. I know. I mean, he's played.
1:47:54 Bill Simmons? What would your guess be?
1:47:56 Bill Simmons? I'll just tell you, 2002 minutes heading into tonight's game. He's played 2,000 minutes. That's crazy. They paid, they paid nothing for him. So for that, it's a win. The loss is when he's actually involved in the plot, when they're desperately trying to not fall into that six, seven, eight range. And they had a pretty good foothold for the three spot and now it's looking pretty grim.
1:48:20 Speaker 01 No, he's been really important throughout this season because of their lack of options. And so it has worked out, but the hesitation I always had with it was,
1:48:32 Speaker 01 let's see what happens here in the playoffs. Cause I think this could be the kind of thing where the game log, now who knows, maybe it could be game and score and foul of trouble, all that kind of stuff. But like, if we're talking real close games, the first round for Denver.
1:48:43 Bill Simmons? Yeah, he's not out there in the last eight minutes.
1:48:45 Speaker 01 You look at some of those game logs and it's like, okay, 19 minutes, 15 minutes. And then you're like, uh oh, like now.
1:48:50 Bill Simmons? So who's your wedge? Chaka was a problem guy.
1:48:53 Speaker 01 I would say if you took Isaiah Stewart clips from today and then ran him and said that this was the 90s were like, then everybody would just say, oh, Steph would have just had 12.
1:49:04 Bill Simmons? Oh, he would have been killed. That's good. I like that.
1:49:06 Speaker 01 My least favorite con. The Stewart pulling down Yanis from behind play is indefensible. That's fucking nasty, man.
1:49:14 Bill Simmons? Especially the top five guy in the week. All right. Three awards left. The Travolta and Pulp Fiction comeback of the year. Jimmy Butler, the Lakers as a franchise, or Scoot Henderson? Who do you have?
1:49:26 Speaker 01 Scoot.
1:49:27 Bill Simmons? Okay, me too. Well, this is it. The second most prestigious award we have, it's the 2025 Shamet Face Award. This is your award. I know you put a lot of time and thought and effort into this. So who do you have?
1:49:44 Speaker 01 Con Canipal.
1:49:47 Bill Simmons? On Duke?
1:49:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:49:49 Bill Simmons? Oh, so you're going prospects?
1:49:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, I've already graded it out.
1:49:54 Bill Simmons? What do you, what do you like about it?
1:49:57 Speaker 01 I don't know what age that the red cheeks thing goes away. He's awesome, by the way. I think he's even better than maybe we realize. Maybe get him the ball a few more times last night, but
1:50:10 Speaker 01 you get older, everybody looks younger. There's a weird thing that happens. I don't know what it is with the science of it, but if you look at like fraternity composites. When you're in college, all of the guys from the old pictures look like, you're like, how come that guy was 40? And he was in college. And you're like, that's just dudes looked older. And then when you're older and then you're watching college shoots, like every year, guys just look younger and younger and younger. So I don't think he's on the Mount Rushmore of Duke face. I think that's early Cherokee Parks, maybe a little Quinn Snyder in there. Maybe Grayson Allen, maybe Danny Ferry. So I don't know if Canipal can make that, but there's just a face. And it's not the same thing as Shamet Face, but I'm just projecting him maybe to be there one day.
1:50:52 Speaker 01 And it doesn't even mean that, you know, you, you can be good looking and have Shamet Face.
1:50:57 Bill Simmons? You'd say no when you see it.
1:50:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:51:01 Bill Simmons? Last award, the 2024 League Pass MVP award. Most reliably entertaining guy. Day after day for six months. My winner is Nikola Jokic.
1:51:16 Speaker 01 It's really the only winner, but I would offer up Ant if I had to offer up somebody else.
1:51:22 Bill Simmons? As like an alternative, like Indie Independent Spirit Awards kind of, kind of winner?
1:51:27 Speaker 01 If you can't have Jokic, they go with Ant. Even the Sixers closed the other night. It was awesome. The shots that he was hitting in the double overtime win against Denver. I don't know what it is about the threes when they matter the most. It's almost like a pitcher who cranks, and it's not what he's doing, but it's like the shot goes in with more velocity than it's supposed to on the ones that really matter. There's a, there's a crispness to his shot and his athleticism and the way that it goes in. That's visually appealing.
1:51:58 Bill Simmons? You know, it's funny you mentioned this because it's, it's not a rational confidence because he's rational and confident. But I do think like if it's 1-8 and it's OKC Minnesota. I think out of anybody in the league, he's the one who would go into that series going, I don't care what their record is. I'm better than everybody in that team and like really genuinely, truly believe it. Which has been really fun to watch and he's had some great last three minutes of the game. Kind of turning it up a notch stuff. That, how old is he now? 23?
1:52:33 Speaker 01 I don't know.
1:52:33 Bill Simmons? I think he's 23. Yeah, it's, that's a good one, but Jokic, this Jokic season, and it doesn't look like he's going to win the MVP, but holy shit, man. Just there, there's been 10 games from him this year that you're just like, I just can't believe somebody's doing this. Like when you go like, look at the Wilt shit stats on basketball reference like, oh my God. It wasn't just a 50 point a game year. There was this other season. He had 44 a game. Like, what was that like to watch that? Not that Jokic is just putting up points like that, but just the day to day, like it honestly feels like any box score is conceivable. He's had box scores where like, there's no way anyone in basketball could ever have this. And he's had five of those this year.
1:53:17 Bill Simmons? But then when you watch how he's, just how he does everything for them, like he's their only real rebounder. He runs the offense. He scores all their stuff in crunch time. He sets up everybody else, like everything he does. It's just, I've never seen anything like it day to day. We didn't have league pass in the eighties for, you know, the great players of that era. And we only got to watch Jordan when he was on, you know, TNT. We didn't get to watch this night after night. This is fucking crazy.
1:53:45 Speaker 01 I'm seeing, I look, it sounds like somebody's leaning Jokic.
1:53:52 Bill Simmons? I'm not leaning anywhere yet. I'm keeping an open mind to the last week of the season. It's really tough for me not to vote for somebody who's going to win 68 games and have one of the great guard seasons in the history of the position offensively.
1:54:06 Bill Simmons? Especially when I, you know, I try to value the winning piece. He's going to win 20 more games than Denver, but I, the more I stare at this, that 60 10 10 game like broke my brain.
1:54:18 Bill Simmons? That was unbelievable. I've never, have you ever seen somebody just get the ball 25 feet from the basket? And the other team knew what he was going to do. And he would still back around and just get like a three foot skyhook. Like what the fuck? I know there are business guys in Minnesota, but I just thought that game was just nuts. Wasn't just the points. It was how he was getting the points and how easily he was doing everything. It was nuts to watch.
1:54:41 Speaker 01 That's where whenever I hear anybody just knocking him, I lose my mind because you go, he's in control of everything that's happening. Like everything that's happening and then the understanding.
1:54:53 Speaker 01 I forget what the number was. I don't know if it was Harden to Zubot for number one, but it was like, who has the most field goals that are assisted or something like Christian Brown is number two in the NBA.
1:55:05 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:55:06 Speaker 01 Christian Brown, clearly because Denver hasn't done a good job with his roster maximizing it, maybe the way others should. I also wonder like if Jokic were different, would there have already been some other star player that went through AAU with Jokic and goes, hey, you know, I'm going to come up there and play with Denver. Cause this is, it's getting alarming because of the rings rule for Jokic where it's like, are we going to be allowed to appreciate him? I know we've already touched on some of this other stuff, but he's, he's just orchestrating all of it that's happening and he doesn't want to shoot 30 times. He doesn't want to pull up from three as much as he does. It almost feels like Nash where Nash would have these games. You're like, how come you're not shooting more? Like what's going on? And it's just the way he's wired to play basketball is still somebody that wants all of it to
1:55:48 Speaker 01 kind of connect and work together. And that's why I can't fathom why guys who played can watch these games and then find a way to shit on it. But you know, whatever. I mean, this is kind of normal now with the former player stuff. But yeah, look, really good. Not top 20.
1:56:06 Speaker 01 22 to 20.
1:56:07 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:56:09 Speaker 01 I mean, that Bob Pettit range.
1:56:10 Bill Simmons? Yeah, probably, you know, DeBusher.
1:56:19 Bill Simmons? All right. Those are our made up NBA awards for 2025. Congrats to all the winners and the nominees.
1:56:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:56:26 Bill Simmons? Next time I see you will be Sunday night. We will know the playoff matchups. We will do some all NBA stuff. We might have to go, uh, might even have to go two parts, but I can't remember that. Like looking at the West standings and some games are happening right now as we talk, but this West standings, the volatility of these last, uh, seven days is going to be bonkers to watch. Anyway, good to see you, Russillo.
1:56:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, we got Lakers, Thunder here. Are you watching the studio yet on Apple?
1:56:53 Bill Simmons? I'm three in.
1:56:55 Speaker 01 It's great.
1:56:56 Bill Simmons? You love it. Okay.
1:56:57 Speaker 01 Love it.
1:56:58 Bill Simmons? How many of you watch?
1:56:59 Speaker 01 All three.
1:57:02 Speaker 01 Should you get Rogan on?
1:57:04 Bill Simmons? Seth or Joe?
1:57:07 Speaker 01 Is Joe watching it?
1:57:08 Bill Simmons? I don't know. Joe's watching it. You got Lotus predictions for tonight before we go?
1:57:15 Bill Simmons? Duke Dad?
1:57:17 Speaker 01 Boy, did that meme play out pretty well.
1:57:19 Bill Simmons? It's pretty predictable.
1:57:22 Speaker 01 Uh, I don't know. Somebody's gonna jerk off somebody?
1:57:29 Bill Simmons? That'd be basic. They went back to the well. A double jerk. All right, I'll see you in a week.
1:57:36 Speaker 01 See you then.
1:57:37 Bill Simmons? All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Russillo. Thanks to Kyle Gahow as well. Thanks to Sir Rudy. And don't forget, White Lotus, tonight, on the Prestige TV podcast, and you can watch it live on the Ringer Dash TV right after that show ends. And don't forget, we put up rewatchables, the same. It's up. We put it up three days early, so that's what we got going. I'm gonna be back on this podcast on Tuesday, and I'll see you then.
1:58:19 Bill Simmons? Must be 21 plus and present in select states. For Kansas, an affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18 plus and present in DC. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit RG-help.com. Call 1-887-897777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut, or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org, or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 1-8778-HOPE-NY, or text HOPE-NY in New York. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures, WildHorse9, John Malkovich, and Sam Rockwell. I like those guys. Star in the Charlotte comedy thriller from Academy Award winner,
1:59:04 Bill Simmons? Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Minnehoshan and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys, Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters Friday. Get tickets now.
Previous Lakers-Warriors Takeaways, Wilt Chamberlain, 'White Lotus,' and Half-Baked Ideas With Rob Mahoney and Kevin Wildes Next Denver’s a Mess! Plus, Live at the Masters With the Simmons Crew Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated