Pod Insights The Bill Simmons Podcast Playoff Jamal, Playoff Harden, Farewell Giannis, and a Draymond Deep Dive With Kirk Goldsberry and Zach Lowe About this episode The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Kirk Goldsberry to react to Tuesday's NBA playoff games, discuss Giannis’s future, and more (3:28). Then, Bill chats with Zach Lowe about Draymond Green and his unique career with the Warriors (53:03).
Host: Bill Simmons
Guests: Zach Lowe and Kirk Goldsberry
Producers: Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Conor Nevins
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Transcript 21,529 words · 3 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 has made it easier than ever to see how your bets are doing without even opening the app. Now you can get the latest updates, follow along in real time directly from your phone's lock screen. Yeah. Or Apple Watch, no login required. Just head to your My Bets page to turn it on. If you don't already have it, download the Fanduel Sportsbook app today to get in on the action. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available and listen to the end of this episode for additional details. You must be 21 plus and present in select states. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Coming up, I'm going to talk about a new sport I just heard about.
0:45 Bill Simmons? Basketball, it's next. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. It's football season. Uber Eats is delivering deals every game day. This week, get 10 free boneless wings from Wingstop on qualifying orders. Game on, flavor on, Wingstop is here. So if your fantasy league is coming over for some in-person smack talk, order Wingstop on Uber Eats and get 10 boneless wings free. It's the perfect way to keep everyone fed tonight so you can focus on the game. No matter who scores big tonight, you'll score a great deal. Order now and get 10 boneless wings free from Wingstop only on Uber Eats. Offer valid from September 14th to September 27th and from November 2nd to November 16th. Order minimum before taxes and fees is required. See retailer storefront for details.
1:30 Bill Simmons? Taxes, fees, and terms apply. Product availability varies by region. Exclusions may apply. See app for details. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new rewatchables last night. We did Someone to Watch Over Me. It is a movie with Tom Berenger, Mimi Rogers, and Lorraine Bracco from 1987, directed by Ridley Scott. It is an absolute cable classic. It was a one for us, for me and Chris Ryan. I broke down during this pod about as hard as I've ever laughed during a podcast. It gets super goofy. And after we do one for us, we always like to do a giant movie. So a giant movie is coming next week. Stay tuned for that. I hope you're checking out thereinger.com. Hope you're checking about all of our Ringer podcast stuff.
2:14 Bill Simmons? Bill Simmons YouTube channel, which we go live on Sundays with Russillo. We kind of staggered it. We did a late live and an early one with Russillo and Van on Sunday. That was super fun. FanDuel, by the way, I've been working with them. We're going to start this new gimmick on Wednesday with Lakers, Timberwolves, game five. You can tail or fade my pick. Each week I'm going to pick a player prop. I'm going to go in, I'm going to say what I think is going to happen. You can either believe me or not believe me. I just hit on, on Sunday, I hit a plus nine, 21, four leg parlay. It was pretty impressive, I gotta say. Let's see if I can keep the momentum going. So I have LeBron over nine and a half rebounds. I think is going to be the one. You can either back me or you can go against me.
2:59 Bill Simmons? But if you do it, FanDuel is offering you an opportunity to have a 50% boost either way. So you win if you like what I thought, or you want to go against what I thought. Anyway, check out FanDuel Sportsbook on Wednesday to see what boost I'm betting. What bet I'm boosting, I just told you what it was. And then you can imply that profit boost. I love when the customers ride with me. I've been decent. So there you go. Coming up on this podcast, Kurt Goldsberry and I, we watched four basketball games. I was watching some hockey too. And we're reacting right afterwards to everything we saw. And then a little bit later, Zach Lowe, he came on last week on a Tuesday and we banked something fun.
3:43 Bill Simmons? We did it again this week. We want to talk about Draymond Green and we want to look forward to Timberwolves Lakers. So that is the podcast today. First, our friends from Pearl Jam.
4:18 Bill Simmons? Recorded this part of the podcast 9:45 Pacific time. I thought the Clippers Denver game was gonna be a lot better. I thought Kirk Goldsberry and I would be talking about all these unbelievable narratives. Instead, all the narratives came in the first game of the day and the second game of the day. And then the games got worse as they went along, but Denver kind of put it on the Clippers tonight, Kirk. I did not see this coming. I thought Denver was lucky to be 2-2. I thought the Clippers were a better team. And Jamal Murray became playoff Jamal Murray again tonight. Harden was invisible. Where do you want to start? What jumped out to you tonight?
4:55 Speaker 01 You gotta start with Jamal Murray. I mean, that was the game they needed from him in this series, in this exact moment. It was his best playoff game since the bubble. The Clippers looked tired, though. The Clippers looked, I don't know if it was elevation or they just hadn't had enough rest, but they looked like they were slower to the basketball. They looked old and you sort of alluded to it, Bill. James Harden did not look very good. I think the headline's got to be Jamal Murray, but there was a little bit of an underwhelming current from these Los Angeles Clippers to me.
5:28 Bill Simmons? Well, if you said before the game, Jamal Murray is going to have his best game of the playoffs and his best game in a while. And also Russell Westbrook's going to come off the bench and score 21 points in 23 minutes. I would have said, oh, the Clippers are in trouble. But I'm with you. They look slow to the ball. There was a moment in the fourth quarter for about four or five minutes where they looked like they did earlier in the series. But other than that, the Harden thing is just dumbfounding. I can't, you know, he's now in his mid 30s.
6:00 Bill Simmons? He was in the 2008 draft, 2009 draft, I can't even remember. And it's just been such a huge part of his, uh, his resume, his career. How we're going to remember him 30 years from now is like this amazing player. And just over and over again, it wasn't quite there in the playoffs. They really needed a big James Harden game, either last game or this game, one of those two. Does he have it in him anymore? Maybe we're, are we expecting too much? Cause I voted for him for 13th year NBA this year. I thought maybe, you know, one of the first five games he could, he could own. I guess not.
6:36 Speaker 01 Three of nine tonight. I mean, players that shot more than him. Zubac had 15 shots, Kawhi had 15 shots, Norman Powell had 12 shots. Bogdanovich had 11 shots, three of nine, Bill. And then, okay, maybe he's getting it done with the dimes. No, barely had five assists. A lot of those were later in the game. I was just, no, I'm ready to say if it's a big game, like a game five and big series like this. I just, I'm almost more expecting of this kind of performance from him at this point, which is sad. So I don't think we're ever going to see it. Now maybe he, we, we get another chance here in game six or game seven. And he tells me, and I'm wrong with the performance that, that just turns back the clock.
7:16 Speaker 01 But this was just a complete no show from a guy who's had a bunch of no shows over the last 10 years in big moments like this.
7:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I did a, I did a rare tweet. I tweeted that they had him guarding Jokic in the second half. So we could remember that he was in the game because it was too hard to, to tell. They're built so that they could survive kind of an offensive no show game from Harden.
7:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:42 Bill Simmons? The problem for them was Denver, Denver went up a notch. They kind of stayed the same. Denver got Westbrook back, which was huge for them because that was just 23 extra minutes from a bench guy. They played Jordan a little bit more. I'm with you. Maybe the elevation going against an older team helped a tiny bit. But then, you know, I start thinking about some of the stuff I used to write about back when my fingers worked. And this is a Clippers team that has just been snake bitten really since they moved to Southern California. And that loss they had game four, where they fought all the way back and then they lose on an alley-oop where the ball seemed like it was touching the tip of Aaron Gordon's fingers and it ends up counting because they couldn't overrule it. And that loss was so devastating.
8:27 Bill Simmons? I'm watching the game tonight. I'm like, man, maybe that, maybe that beat the fight out of them a little bit. I don't know.
8:35 Speaker 01 This is a team that was supposed to be one of the best defenses in the playoffs. One of the best defensive rebounding teams in the playoffs. The stat that I kept going back to is I think they ranked first in defensive rebounding percentage all year long. And then in this playoffs, they ranked 15 out of 16 in that category. Some of that is because of Jokic. But this is also a defense when Jamal Murray gets going, you'd think Kawhi Leonard or Chris Dunn or some combination of Ty Lou schemes could do it. And they just didn't have the fight tonight at all. And I don't know what, how many points did the Clippers end up with? 131, Bill Simmons.
9:11 Bill Simmons? The Nuggets.
9:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, sorry. The Nuggets ended up with 131, Bill. And that's just, to me, that's a dumb guy stat, but that's what you need to know. You're not going to win a lot of playoff games if you give up 131 points. So this is a proud defense that just laid an egg tonight.
9:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah. And you think like, big picture with the Clippers. It's never easy with them in a playoff series in the history of their franchise since they moved to Southern California. They've never won a playoff series in four, four or five games ever. Like, think about how impossible that is.
9:41 Speaker 01 That's crazy.
9:42 Bill Simmons? They had the 2021 where Kawhi is averaging 30 a game and looking like the, one of the best guys in the league. He gets hurt. They end up losing the Western Finals, only time they ever made it. They blew the 3-1 lead to Denver in 2020. They blew that 19-point lead to the Rockets in 2015 when they had a chance to close and go to the West Finals. They blew that OKC series in 2014 when Chris Paul, the point god, just completely fell apart in game, game five, when they could have had a lead coming back to Clippers. They had that 2006 against the Suns when they put in Daniel Ewing and he fouled Roger Bell on a three and the Suns ended up winning in OT. This is just the legacy of this team.
10:26 Bill Simmons? And if you talk to any of their fans, they, it's almost a little like Junior Red Sox itch before 2004. They build the hopes up, they, they convince themselves this is the year and then they get kicked in the nuts. I still think they can win game six. What's a little scary is that Jokic didn't put a lot of miles on himself tonight. Murray carried everything, Westbrook carried some, they were able to rest him and he could just snap his fingers in game six and dominate them like he did in game four. It's looking bleak for the Clippers. I, I might've been wrong on this series, Kirk. I'm bummed.
10:57 Speaker 01 I was wrong too. I remember, but I was like very scared coming into the playoffs because I was like looking at this Clippers team. They have that history you just mentioned, but then they have James Harden, Kawhi Leonard and Ben Simmons, who by the way.
11:12 Bill Simmons? Yeah, enough.
11:13 Speaker 01 What, what a beautiful shot tonight. He had, he got to the, the, just inside the paint. He, he rises up for that little half hook and he almost hit the rim. God bless him.
11:23 Bill Simmons? It was to the left of the basket. It was, he shot it at 10:30 at night on a clock. It just was diagonal to the left. This is rough.
11:32 Speaker 01 But on Bruno's podcast like three weeks ago, when all the trends that I look at throughout the year are pointing to the Clippers are the best analytic team closing the season.
11:43 Bill Simmons? Except they're the Clippers.
11:44 Speaker 01 Except they're the Clippers. And I was like, I'm not going to know what to do. I picked them to win this series in seven games too.
11:53 Speaker 01 I now would, I wish I could switch it. They just, they just haven't been there. And I, I think they could win game six, but I just didn't, unless they completely reinvent themselves for a game seven, what we saw in Denver tonight is not going to get it done, obviously.
12:08 Bill Simmons? Yeah, but I mean, the counter is they have been there. Kawhi has been the finals MVP in two different cities. Harden's been in the playoffs for his entire career. Derek Jones was in the finals last year. Norm Powell has been in big playoff games. Ty Lou coached in the finals a bunch of times. Van Gundy was in big games.
12:24 Speaker 01 Derek Jones was in the finals last year.
12:26 Bill Simmons? This is about as experienced of a, of a random team as you're going to get. They don't have the best player in the series, which is a problem. And they're just trying everything possible to mess with them. But I think the, the, the best thing that happened to the Nuggets in this series, other than Jamal Murray seems to be getting better as it's going along. Christian Brown's doing, uh, it really seems like he's in Harden's head a little bit. He just, he's low to the ground and seems to have a sense of that herky jerky style that Harden has. And he's kinda, he's doing the defensive herky jerky version of it and he's moving back and forth with it. And I think Harden's just having a lot of trouble going by him. In game four, in the fourth quarter, I think because Brown was tired,
13:08 Bill Simmons? Harden started going by him in the fourth quarter, but I think it might've been tired legs more than anything. But Brown seems really confident against him.
13:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think if we say there's Harden, Leonard in one corner, and then you have Jokic and Murray in the other corner, the second tier guys, the, the Brown and Aaron Gordon, obviously have been great. Those like guy number three and guy number four, those have been the Nuggets guys that have gone. Christian Brown hit that huge three, I thought, to end the third quarter, uh, in this game, which really set the tone. He's really an emotional leader. That's sort of a, a big thing for him. And you mentioned earlier, Russell Westbrook, uh, getting a performance like that too is just a huge gift. Uh, and, and another reason they put him over the top tonight.
13:52 Bill Simmons? Did Denver, watching them these last five games, and especially game four, game five, did it change your opinion at all about whether they could actually throw some haymakers at OKC?
14:05 Speaker 01 The defense is still a big red flag to me. The defense is, I don't know if they're going to keep up with the Oklahoma City Thunder if they play them in the next round. So I, I still think that's their Achilles heel. I don't think they'll be able to hold up on that end of the court against that young, ferocious, deep team with so much rest and so much energy coming into that series. So they've won me over with this, this, this, this starting five, the Murray, Jokic, Porter, who has come around in this series.
14:37 Bill Simmons? He did after a game one no show.
14:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, and getting called out, kind of, I mean, by, by the Joker. But that, that starting group, I think can hang. Where I have trouble, Bill, is below that line where the Thunder are just, they almost have a second starting five and this team has, you know, Russell Westbrook and DeAndre Jordan.
15:02 Bill Simmons? OKC versus Denver, if that's what we end up with. It's an MVP battle too, which is always fun.
15:09 Speaker 01 Oh, that's great. And it's a, it's a big, a big Hartenstein test. That's why they got that guy.
15:13 Bill Simmons? Well, and also Denver got rid of Hartenstein.
15:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:17 Bill Simmons? James Harden, man. I, I don't know. I had a couple of people in my life who are like, why are you so high on the Clippers? They have James Harden. I'm like, no, James Harden was good this year. It's like, yeah, he's James Harden.
15:28 Speaker 01 Yeah. It's different, dude.
15:31 Bill Simmons? It's like, no, no, no, no, I'm the one for Kim Kardashian. She told me, this is it. It's going to work out this time for her. That she's going to live happily ever after. We'll see what happens Thursday night. I'm going, the crowd will be great. We're due for, if you had to pick a seven game series out of the available choices, which are probably this one, Golden State, Houston, even though Golden State's up 3-1, Minnesota, and the Lakers, which will be 3-2 after Marrow and when, uh, the Lakers shoot 68 free throws, or Detroit versus the Knicks, who would you go for a seven gamer? Cause we're getting one, that's just the rule.
16:06 Speaker 01 I, I feel like Detroit needs, they need to win one of these games. They had a tough weekend back home in, in Michigan. I think they're going to win game six, uh, back at Little Caesars.
16:18 Bill Simmons? Want to talk about that game?
16:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, I thought it was a great game. Um, you know, New York is fortunate that there wasn't a late foul call at the end of Sunday's game.
16:32 Bill Simmons? Yes, they were.
16:33 Speaker 01 But they've been playing with fire in this series and they've been getting away with it. I think, you know, they had a poorly timed injury here at the end of this game, but you know, the Pistons have been ahead, Bill, in every fourth quarter of this series. I think in game one, they weren't ready for the smoke of the moment. But since then, these games all could have gone either way to an extent. And I think tonight, Cade Cunningham, they played better pick and roll offense than the New York Knicks. And they took it to them and I, I'm not shocked, but I was impressed.
17:14 Bill Simmons? 25, 10 and 10 for Cade, seven turnovers. It's been an extra three turnovers a game for him because he has the ball so much. But the stat that jumped out to me, Detroit, seven for 29 from three and they went on the road. That's really hard to do.
17:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:32 Bill Simmons? The, the Knicks, 15 for 33 from three.
17:40 Bill Simmons? So they were plus eight on threes.
17:42 Speaker 01 Right.
17:43 Bill Simmons? And they lost at home. But the key to this game, so Detroit, they shoot eight for 29 from three. No surprise, they've not exactly, if Beasley's not going, not exactly like an awesome three point team. But the Knicks, nine for 25 from three. Right? So red flag number one. Red flag number two, Brunson, four for 16. And it's hard to tell a hurt he is. Sometimes you can do like, he got hurt in game four and he came back and you get the adrenaline 20 minutes before your, your ankle starts to feel even worse than it did. He definitely looked hobbling around. He goes out at some point, probably like what, three, four minutes left in the fourth quarter. Then Tibbs has a chance to put him and Hart back in and doesn't use his last timeout.
18:27 Bill Simmons? And those guys are just standing there for a minute and a half. One of many bizarre Tibbs coaching decisions, but I, what you said before about the quarters, this series has been even for a week and a half. And Detroit, they, they take the leads early in these games or they're close. They hold like they're, they're never like having really swoons. Their defense and their rebounding has always been able to keep them around. And Cade's been, you know, the most consistently good player in the series. I don't. If I'm a Knicks fan now, I'm just putting miles, even if I get through this series, I'm just putting miles on my guys who already seem worn down with the Celtics just getting rest and waiting. But do you think they, like, who do you think wins a game six between these two teams based on what you've seen?
19:11 Bill Simmons? I think it's gonna be a hard task for the Knicks.
19:13 Speaker 01 Detroit played better basketball tonight. You know, I think the play that sealed it for Detroit in my mind, one of the most beautiful passes of the playoffs, but Detroit just picked apart the Knicks in the pick and roll game. Jalen Durin is growing up in front of us. This kid, he's a monster in person. If you haven't seen him, it's just like one of these guys. It's just a different size than everybody else. One of the great rebounders in these playoffs. But I think like there was a pick and roll near the end. You know, the Knicks sent two towards Cade who ended up with the right elbow. And who was it who snuck into the dunk? Aser Thompson, who also played a great game.
19:52 Bill Simmons? He was awesome today, yeah.
19:53 Speaker 01 Sneaks, yeah, cat falls asleep and Cade throws that pass, a rocket pass right into the dunker and, and Aser finishes it. And it was, it wasn't quite curtains because the Knicks made some shots. But that was just a, I think, really emblematic of a bread and butter play where the Cade Cunningham pick and roll with Durin, sometimes it was Paul Reed, is just basic basketball and it looks better, especially with a hobbled Brunson than what the Knicks were able to counter with. So I think the Pistons have a very good defense. They're very young and motivated to win this game six at home and the fundamental basketball they're playing right now. And one other thing is like, you talk a lot about
20:37 Speaker 01 tips coaching, I know that. Can we post up Karl Towns on Tobias Harris, please? He, he just dominates him when they do it.
20:46 Bill Simmons? It's like they're afraid he's gonna get offensive fouls or something. I can't think of another reason.
20:51 Speaker 01 I have no idea, but every time they do it, it's like, there's no answer. Tobias Harris has no chance.
20:56 Bill Simmons? Well, you know my rule, Kirk Goldsberry. If you do, if you do something and the defense completely overreacts and doubles it because they don't have an answer for it, maybe do it again.
21:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:07 Bill Simmons? Give it a whirl. That might be a sign that, that it's something to do.
21:10 Speaker 01 Particularly if Jalen Brunson is, is, is playing on one foot. I don't know what his injury is. I'm not, I'm not speaking out of turn here, but if your star is hurt, you have this other guy, this other bread and butter action you could increase. Um, and, and if, if it's going to be Tobias Harris defending Carl Towns on the block, dude, make them pay for that. Go old school. Uh, you know, and I, I haven't seen enough of that, those adjustments from Tibbs.
21:38 Bill Simmons? I thought the Knicks were going to win in five. It seemed like they were going to win in five tonight and then Detroit had other ideas.
21:45 Bill Simmons? I just continue to be underwhelmed by the Knicks. And I know now people could say, no, Brunson's hurt. Like, well, everybody in that team plays huge minutes. The more minutes you play, the odds are going to increase that you're going to have an injury. It's just the way it goes. Um, but in general, like,
22:04 Bill Simmons? I don't know. They did, like, I'm not afraid of them. I'm way, I, I said this before the playoffs. I'll say it again. I was way more afraid of playing Indiana than the Knicks. I think Indiana knows who they are. I think they have an identity and the Knicks, not sure what their identity is. It's a lot of Brunson. It's a lot of standing around. They can have these little spurts. Towns can get hot every once in a while. Sometimes their wings look awesome. Other times I forget they're out there. Um, for all the quote unquote awesome defense that their wings were supposed to, to bring, like over and over again, you see guys get the kind of shots and plays they want, like Cade. You would think like with Bridges and Nene Obi, it's like, we should be able to shut down Cade or limit him or whatever. And it, you know, I, I don't think that's happened. And a lot of it has
22:48 Bill Simmons? to do with he's able to get the switches he want. I get it. But I just don't, the balance of the team just doesn't seem right to me and I felt that way for a while.
22:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's two things. The interior defense with Towns, when they made the Towns deal, that was always the red flag to me. Are we really gonna see a playoff defense anchored with Karl-Anthony Towns? And as I said, at this key moment, you know, it's, it's not his fault, but that's who you're relying on to be your, your rim protector. He's, he's not always great at that. And then the other thing is sometimes the offense looks like crap. And there's, there's multiple possessions in big moments where it's just Brunson pounding the air out of the ball. And everybody else standing around and there's either gonna be a foul or some kind of fade away and nobody else is gonna touch the basketball. And I hate that. I hate watching it. And I'm sure the players playing alongside, it's just not.
23:37 Bill Simmons? I don't think the fans like it either. You can feel like there's a weird energy from these Knicks games. The crowds were way better last year, I think. This year, there's a nervous energy and you can feel the frustration. It's coming through the TV.
23:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, the pick and roll game too. It's like they only scored 27 points in the pick and roll game. And, and, and the Pistons doubled them up in that category. Uh, again, Cade Cunningham, it's a lot of people's introduction to him. Uh, but you know, there's a danger, cause if they do win in Detroit, look out, look out, Bill.
24:07 Bill Simmons? If the Pistons win.
24:08 Speaker 01 If the Pistons win in Detroit, look out.
24:11 Bill Simmons? Well, so that game's gonna be win. Is that a Thursday game?
24:15 Bill Simmons? That is, yeah.
24:16 Speaker 01 I don't know.
24:17 Bill Simmons? That's not great for the Knicks, right? That's, that's, uh, two games later and Brunson's hobbing around and Hark got hurt at the end of that game and they have no bench to begin with. And the Pistons are young.
24:28 Speaker 01 That's such an underrated part of this, like Cleveland getting out in four games and, and OKC get, yeah, the Celts getting out of there today.
24:35 Bill Simmons? The Celts punted on Holiday for the series and kept their fingers crossed that he could get healed and they got out of it.
24:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, and they just need all the treatment, some cold plunges, you know,
24:47 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
24:47 Speaker 01 All that rest. And these other teams are going to be flying back and forth, put more miles on their bodies, twisting ankles. It's such an underrated part of this. So it was good that Boston emerged relatively unscathed from that Orlando series.
25:02 Bill Simmons? Well, I want to talk about that. Let's take a quick break. We'll talk Boston, Orlando. Hey, it's NBA playoff time. Get in on the action with FanDuel Sportsbook, our friends, America's number one sportsbook. You think you know it's going to go down? Well, check out Wednesdays because you can make those predictions count with the Hump Day Parlay Profit Boost, weekly parlay specials tied to top point scores, double doubles, whatever you want. I'm also going to be doing a little special gimmick that you can find on FanDuel Sportsbook, where you can tail or fade me. I'm going to release my prop on Wednesday for the Lakers-Timberwolves game.
25:40 Bill Simmons? And I think it's going to be LeBron over under rebounds because I like the over. I think it's nine and a half, but you can tail me on that or you can go against me. You can have either choice. Choose your own adventure. Don't be a spectator during this awesome NBA postseason. Head to FanDuel.com/BS and download America's number one sportsbook and make every moment more. You can do Hump Day bets. You can do my little tail or fade bet. You must be 21 plus and present in select states or 18 plus and present in DC. Opt in required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wager amount. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMER or visit rg-help.com.
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27:00 Bill Simmons? For the last decade. By the way, you should put that on, especially we're about to hit the summer. It's getting sweaty in the summers. The original degree cool rushes back and it smells like victory for all of us. So Boston Orlando, I was expecting a little bit more of a slugfest. It was a weird game. It was close. It was close. It was close. Palo got in foul trouble. And then the Celts went on one of those runs that they had a lot last year. They've had them intermittently this year, but more on the road than at home weirdly, but they'll just have these third quarters or second quarters, whatever, where they'll just go on these like 28 to five runs and guys are hitting threes and they just put the game away in five minutes, which is what happened. I will say, and I know I talk about Tatum a lot on this podcast and people are probably
27:44 Bill Simmons? tired of it, but he's just, Tatum's just been awesome. Yeah. And there's, there's an edge to him that he just didn't have last year. And I think a lot of it comes from Missoula. I think Missoula spends a lot of time talking to him, talking in his ear, motivating him, pushing him, pushing to be bully, pushing to be tougher. Even that play when he got knocked down, when he got hurt in game two or game one, and Missoula was like, get up, get up. Like he's just, he's just constantly trying to make him a beast. And you see it in these games. Like he's carrying himself down. He's got this little half sneer he does sometimes. Yeah. I just think he's been awesome
28:22 Speaker 01 in these games. Is the new wrist thing that he's doing related to the injury? Is it like a celebration of overcoming the wrist injury? Is that what he's doing?
28:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it feels like you tried to break my wrist, but it's still here. Like one of those type of things.
28:35 Speaker 01 But that's new. I like that too.
28:37 Bill Simmons? Yeah. But that, that thing is Orlando can't shoot. And, you know, they were, the over under for them winning a game in this series was probably 0.5. They won their game, but they just cannot, they can't shoot. There was that, as it was slipping away in the third quarter, Franz took a three. And it went like over the backboard and hit the over the rim and hit the other side of the backboard. It was one of those bricks and it was just like, that's it. That's the highlight you need to know.
29:03 Speaker 01 Eight of 38 from three for the Orlando Magic. There's a couple of teams in the playoffs, like Houston, I think we we fairly characterize as they're going to have trouble scoring the ball. But Orlando is going to definitely have trouble shooting the basketball. And then the other thing I like is Orlando does play phenomenal defense. And for a long time, the Celtics, I think, had no threes deep into the second quarter in this game.
29:26 Bill Simmons? They didn't have a three in the first in the first half.
29:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, I was trying to go back between these two games and it was it was pretty incredible. Like, so shout out to them. They they do some good stuff and they force you into these isolation modes. And that's where Tatum really shined, I thought. And I know sometimes the Celtics are at their worst in those isolation moments. But Tatum can get buckets in those moments. And they actually, if you look at the advanced stuff tonight, they really dominated in that isolation category. And duh, that's Jason Tatum. But, you know, it was 59 58 to your point with six minutes left in the third quarter. And then I don't know what the final score was. I guess it ends up being 120 to 89.
30:09 Bill Simmons? So they were 36 to 13 in the third quarter. You know, I think the Celtics organization has been really impressed with Orlando. And I think there's a sense of relief that that team wasn't healthier this year, that that team was probably the third best team in the East. If you just, you know, you think like Palo goes down for a while, Franz goes down for a while, Suggs goes down for 60 65% of the year. But that team is really tough. They're not afraid of the Celts. They match up on the wings with Brown and and Tatum, at least physically. They rebound. They had a couple playoff guys that weren't afraid to close on you. And I think if they just had a healthy team all year, I think that team would have
30:54 Bill Simmons? been really good. And looking forward, like we were joking with Saru about, you got to sign Todd Jerome. Bobby Marks had a tweet where he tweeted where they were sitting going into the summer. They've kind of paid the piper already with some of their moves. They're like over, I think 200 million with their salaries right now. Cause Palo already kicked in, Franz, you know, they paid KCP. Going down the line, like they're, they're spending actual money now. And I don't, this is kind of the team. So their best move is going to be Ken Suggs come back, be healthy, and then can Anthony Black make a leap, I think.
31:28 Speaker 01 And Franz needs to develop the jump shot. And there's been some aggression there. You mentioned this, there's the hitch in the shot. It's not great. But if they can get healthy, Mo Wagner, Jalen Suggs, you know, I'm not going to put them in the class of the Celtics or the Cavs, but I liked where you have.
31:46 Bill Simmons? It could be Indiana.
31:47 Speaker 01 Three, four, they could replace Milwaukee in that three, four, five tier. And they, they might've been there this year if they had just been healthy. You, you alluded to it. Their three best guys all missed significant time and they ended up at the seventh spot and won a game against the champs. It's, it's, it's just like the rung on the ladder this organization is at right now. And I think they, they should expect to be a little bit higher next year for sure.
32:13 Bill Simmons? Well, the Celts definitely respected them because they brought Tatum back. They probably should have waited one more game and they felt like they couldn't. And then they tried to roll the dice with, with not playing Drew and hoping he could be healthy for the next series. Now he gets more time. But with the way the Knicks look, that second round series might not be as maybe grueling as, as you thought. The team you wouldn't want to play is Indiana.
32:36 Speaker 01 You're confident. You're confident.
32:39 Bill Simmons? I mean, the way the Knicks look, the way the Celtics have looked for the last almost two years, like I, they have to be like pretty heavy, heavy favorites to advance to round three. Indiana had an incredible comeback against Milwaukee that I wasn't surprised by, even when they were down seven with 45 seconds left. I had Indiana money line and a bet and I was like, I'm not giving up. I feel like they might make it three. I didn't expect them to win. I thought maybe they had a chance to force the other overtime. But, but Halliburton, and I'm texting, I have a friend who, who's a big Halliburton person. I was texting midway through the fourth quarter. I'm like, typical fucking Halliburton.
33:22 Bill Simmons? God forbid, he takes over and does anything and then he took over and then some like down the stretch in the fourth quarter. It's almost like he forgets sometimes that he could just go right by people. And what was, what was interesting about the end of the fourth quarter and the OT, he went by Giannis, he cooked Giannis. I'm gonna say three or four times. Nobody, I, you don't normally see somebody do that to Giannis, including for the game winning shot. I was stunned. Were you surprised by that?
33:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, I said, I said out loud, good luck with that for the game winner because he's like, he's iso'd on the left wing against Giannis and he's like, I'm going to take this to the rack.
33:59 Bill Simmons? That's crazy. He did it multiple times.
34:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, good luck. And he did it. Um, in that exact moment, I was surprised. We have to go through the seven point lead in 40 seconds. So AJ Green misses a free throw. Nemhard uses like a, a Myles Turner screen and Giannis, this is his fault. He's in drop coverage. So Nemhard just rises up and shoots a 28 footer. Okay. So four foot, four point game, timeout. Here comes the first big blunder. AJ Green inbounds and Trent gets trapped, anticipates a foul, didn't come and just throws a bad pass and Nemhard picks it off. Pacers pretty patient. Then, then we get the first big Halliburton play, the three point play that cuts it to one. Timeout. And then this is one of the most depressing plays in NBA history.
34:46 Bill Simmons? The tread through the legs?
34:49 Speaker 01 I don't want to, I don't want to tell you what it reminded me of, Bill, because it'll trigger young.
34:54 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I thought, I thought Buck there. No, don't worry. I thought, I thought.
34:57 Speaker 01 All right. As long as, as, yeah. So.
34:59 Bill Simmons? I mean, the dude had, he hadn't had 30 points all year and he hadn't had eight threes all year and he did it twice in three games, Trent, right? He, he literally carried them down the stretch and then had two boneheaded plays that cost them the season, basically.
35:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, I did a rare tweet myself. I said, you know, overtime score, Indiana eight, Gary Trent 12, because it, it looked like with one minute left in this, in this game, like Gary Trent had just saved the Bucks season. I feel like.
35:25 Bill Simmons? He took 25 shots, Kirk.
35:27 Speaker 01 Yeah. He became the second biggest player in Milwaukee after, you know, after the Dame injury and, and he, yeah, he made huge three after huge three. Uh, and then these two mammoth turnovers, just a cruel, cruel ends to their season and potentially, Bill, the Giannis Antetokounmpo era.
35:48 Bill Simmons? There's a lot of interesting stuff, both from watching the game and the box score.
35:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:53 Bill Simmons? Brook Lopez, seven minutes, Kyle Kuzma, 12.
35:57 Bill Simmons? So Doc basically bailed on Kuzma. Who was somebody they traded Middleton for, beloved Buck, to get under the Tyler cap. They gave up AJ Johnson, who some NBA people kind of like. And there's some swap, I think in 28, that they gave up as well. And it took Doc Rivers about four games to get tired of Kyle Kuzma. Giannis leaves a 30, 20, 13 on the court.
36:26 Bill Simmons? Including 18 defensive rebounds. And the game ends with him getting burned by Halliburton and then taunted by Halliburton's dad, who just looked deranged. I didn't understand what was happening and I can't believe Giannis had the restraint. But then Giannis is saying good, saying good game to Ben Matheran. And now he's like doing the Fredo Michael Corleone cup to the head, like. And just looked like he was gonna, everyone was talking about this 100 guys against a gorilla. It seemed like it was gonna be 100 Pacers versus Giannis at one point, the Artest melee too.
36:58 Speaker 01 Dude.
36:59 Bill Simmons? What an ending.
37:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, I have no idea where to start with what happened after the game. From, from the Halliburton dad incident to the Matheran hug that turns into a shove. And I've never seen any.
37:13 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
37:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was, it was very strange.
37:16 Bill Simmons? Giannis was so mad and, you know, Giannis does a good job in the press conferences of being like, you know, I try to be humble and blah, blah, blah. But Giannis is a fucking badass, man. He gets mad, he, there's like, the switch can go off with him. And I was, I really felt like there was gonna be a massive melee at the end, which would have been bizarre.
37:33 Speaker 01 There's some troubling end of game stuff where he's, he's a very competitive guy and he's lost his cool. Do you remember early in his career, he tackled Mike Dunleavy?
37:41 Bill Simmons? Right.
37:42 Speaker 01 Remember that?
37:42 Bill Simmons? That other time when he went and grabbed the ball? Yeah, it was Mike Dunleavy Jr. That other time when he grabbed the ball from Indiana that started this whole, yeah. So he gets a little feisty.
37:51 Speaker 01 And I was, I was worried and it also evokes and sort of gives the Pacers a little bit of credit and some shine here. It evokes like these incredible Reggie Miller moments from that franchise's history where they have, oh my God, what? So they just got another one of these like, what was, you did the 30 for 30. Was it eight points and nine seconds?
38:12 Bill Simmons? That was one. Yeah, he had a bunch of them.
38:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, but the, yeah, the seven, seven point comeback, eight oh run and 34 seconds is just unbelievable from the Pacers perspective, too.
38:22 Bill Simmons? Also in that building, which I know you've probably been there for a game, right? It's, it's that and the Clippers arena are the two best arenas and uh, just cool that that happened right there. I thought Neesmith, you know, you look at the minutes and it's not really an accident. Halbert and Siakam, Nemhard, Neesmith and Turner, just all playing huge minutes. Four of those guys were over 40. Matheran, he switched the rotation a little. So Matheran and McConnell basically just come in for these little eight, nine minute stretches. That's it. Some top and not that much, but I think when we go to this next round, and I continue to, to think that they have a real chance against Cleveland
39:03 Bill Simmons? to at least take it six or seven and throw some, throw some punches at them. But this Halbert piece, the, when he realizes he can get to the rim, who's stopping him on Cleveland? Like this is a good matchup for him. They don't really have like a good defender to throw at him. Um, I don't know. I, I just think they can hang in this series.
39:27 Speaker 01 They're going to score points. Um, I think the front line of, of, of the Cavs will, will have something to say, uh, between Mobley and Allen. And, and I like, you know, Deandre Hunter, I like, uh, you know,
39:43 Speaker 01 Ty Jerome obviously deserves some credit, but I think, can we do a little bit more on Milwaukee? Like you look at this.
39:49 Bill Simmons? Yeah, let's do it. Let's wait. Can we do one more thing on Indiana? And then let's do more.
39:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go, go ahead.
39:55 Bill Simmons? What do you think the line is for Indiana Cleveland?
39:57 Speaker 01 Indiana, Cleveland, Cleveland minus 200.
40:02 Bill Simmons? Yeah, Cleveland minus 480.
40:05 Speaker 01 Oh dang.
40:06 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I'm telling you, nobody's respecting the Pacers. All right, let's move to Milwaukee because that did feel like I, sometimes you, you have a feeling when it's a guy's last game for a team. I remember LeBron in 2010.
40:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
40:21 Bill Simmons? Leaving Boston in a very strange last game in general by him, but then taking off his jersey right at the end. And there's something, some, you just felt like, oh, man, this is probably not ending well. The honest thing ended a little differently. It almost ended with a melee, but uh, I find it hard to believe he's going to be a Buck next year. I don't see it.
40:44 Speaker 01 And, and I was listening to Rob Mahoney and Zach, who are great the other day, and, and I'll stack on their point. Can you blame him? Look at what's happened around him at this franchise since they won it all. They've sort of taken the car apart piece by piece and he's really all that's left. Like Lopez is there, Portis is there, uh, but Middleton and Holiday are gone. You know, Bud is obviously gone. And what we see there is, you know, Chris Middleton for Kyle Kuzma? Are you kidding me? And Kuzma's not even playing in these games, played 13 minutes, was 2-5.
41:24 Bill Simmons? I was, I did the Was Mahoney trade deadline pod and I was on the record adamantly. I did not see the Kuzma thing at all because he, he hadn't played a meaningful basketball minute or a good basketball minute for like a year.
41:36 Speaker 01 Right. Since he was at Disney World in the pandemic. Uh, but yeah, I think, can you blame him? I think is what Mahoney was saying. And, and I think it's fair. Like he got them a title.
41:49 Bill Simmons? Damian Lillard. Can I blame him a little bit?
41:52 Speaker 01 For leaving?
41:53 Bill Simmons? No.
41:54 Speaker 01 You can, I mean.
41:55 Bill Simmons? Can we blame him a little? Because they did that Drew Holiday trade.
42:00 Bill Simmons? For Dame Lillard because they were feeling some pressure with him to do something because they weren't sure if he wanted to stay or not. And that was, I thought it was a panic trade when it happened. I was in the minority, but they gave up swaps in 28 and 30. They gave up their 29 firsts. They gave up Grayson Allen, who was, had some, you know, at least was a bigger contract they could put in a deal. And when you think about it, they kind of shot their asset wide with Damian Giannis that I just never believed that made them like a favorite in the East. I thought it was a little bit of a hail Mary. And were they, would they have been better off keeping Drew? Maybe using those picks with Grayson Allen, Chris Middleton, whoever, and trying to add another piece to the foundation? I mean, in retrospect, yes.
42:47 Speaker 01 I'll always remember I was at the Grant Williams game in Boston. I don't know if you were there.
42:50 Bill Simmons? I was.
42:51 Speaker 01 Zach was talking about it the other day. It's like a sliding doors moment, right? Because I remember talking to everybody being like, man, it feels like we're going to be watching these two teams play for this Eastern Conference championship for a long time.
43:03 Bill Simmons? All decade. Yeah.
43:05 Speaker 01 And then this team is just, and that's why I think it's an interesting macroscopic study. Like you could talk about this collapse in the last 34 seconds here, but really this is a collapse that's three or four years long. And just goes to speak to the importance of ownership, transactions, roster building. But dude, yeah, I thought that Giannis and Milwaukee were going to be a big time factor for a huge part of the 2020s. And they simply haven't been since that Grant Williams game.
43:35 Bill Simmons? Well, it starts with the Drew, the original Drew Holiday trade, which helped win them the title.
43:39 Speaker 01 Right.
43:40 Bill Simmons? But also included their 24 and 26 firsts and swaps in 25 and 27, plus the George Hill bloodsow contracts that they kind of were trying to get off of as part of the trade. But they're playing catch up, they're playing asset catch up after that.
43:55 Speaker 01 Yeah. And they've not made any good draft picks, Bill. During this this crucial time where even if you get somebody like Dalton Connect or Corey Joseph, like when the Spurs were picking at the Derrick White, we would always pick well at the end of the Dejounte Murray, you got to get those picks to keep the momentum going to add role players and they just haven't been able to find anybody in the draft. They have A.J. Johnson, Tyler Smith, Chris Livingston, Bochamp, Isaiah Todd, R.J. Hampton, Jordan Awora, like nothing. That's their 2020s draft history. So it's just they haven't been able to build from the draft either. And that's a huge reason why this roster is so thin, too.
44:39 Bill Simmons? Well, the red flag was when Lazary, the co-owner, he finished his managing partner thing and then he's like, I'm out of here. And he sold the stake to the Browns owner. I was like, ah, that's curious. And it was like, you know, he was like 2008, the big short. He knew it was coming.
44:56 Bill Simmons? Where do you want Giannis to go?
44:58 Speaker 01 Oh, well, if San Antonio is an option.
45:00 Bill Simmons? Just as a basketball fan, where do you want him to go?
45:03 Speaker 01 I mean, I will, again, hand up, I'm very biased like you are with the Celtics. I will say the San Antonio Spurs. I think it would be a really perfect pairing, evoking the great Duncan, Tim Robinson era, or David Robinson, Tim Duncan era.
45:18 Bill Simmons? Tim Robinson, Netflix comedian, Tim Robinson?
45:21 Speaker 01 Dude, I saw his, his new 24 movie. What is that called? But anyway, I think that's, what about you?
45:31 Bill Simmons? San Antonio is the high upside, holy shit, like galaxy brain explosion. And they have the assets, right, to do it. But that's, that would be the one that I think made everybody go, oh, no, what's that going to look like? I think that's a pretty weird fit. In some ways offensively, but in other ways, the fact that Wemby wants to be 25 feet from the basket and Giannis should probably be playing closer to the basket. Maybe that fits, but defensively, that sounds like an all time nightmare from, uh, how are you going to attack the room against those two guys? You might as well just get jack threes.
46:07 Speaker 01 It's just like David Robinson and Tim Duncan 20 years ago. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, that's why I love it. It's a fantasy of mine. Realistically, I don't, I don't know if that's a possibility.
46:18 Speaker 01 Have you thought about it other destinations?
46:20 Bill Simmons? Yeah. I mean, Russell and I talked about it a little on Sunday, just like the obvious ones, Houston, cause they have the, the problem for Milwaukee is they don't really have their picks. So it's not like they, you know, it's not like it makes sense for them to tank. Cause what are they tanking for? They don't have their picks to tank for. So what makes more sense is like them doing a two for one and a three for one and getting a couple of assets back with that. So that's, that's the Rockets, basically. Um, that's one. And I think you're probably trying to get some sort of big piece. The Knicks are the other one that I think would be mildly intriguing. If it was a Towns, Bridges, Giannis going back with a contract, then, you know, you start doing that.
47:03 Speaker 01 There's been smoke around Miami and Giannis for years.
47:07 Bill Simmons? He's in the same spot there that he's in with Milwaukee. Miami sucks.
47:10 Speaker 01 I agree.
47:11 Bill Simmons? They just got absolutely annihilated in the Cleveland series. They had their whole team. It's not like somebody was missing.
47:17 Speaker 01 Again, when Ernie Johnson at halftime is like, this is the worst basketball game.
47:21 Bill Simmons? Yeah, we're not showing highlights.
47:23 Speaker 01 He's, he's saying that on air, by the way. He's not saying that at the water cooler before they go to the segment. He's saying that on air. That's how bad it was.
47:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll see. I don't, I don't think he's there next year though. It did feel like there was some sort of a finality to it, but you never know with these guys. Like the key to me is he already won the title.
47:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
47:42 Bill Simmons? So when you've already won, it's like, ah, I don't know. I like it here. But, uh, there's always been some, some Brooklyn buzz. The problem like with a team like Brooklyn is can you give the assets back that actually makes it make sense for Milwaukee who can't tank? You know, what, what's the point of Milwaukee going 20 and 62 next year if their pick is going somewhere else?
48:05 Speaker 01 They might not have a choice. We've seen that one before too, but, um.
48:09 Bill Simmons? What do you think about Wemby, by the way? Anything?
48:12 Speaker 01 I think there he's on schedule to return for for next season. I haven't heard anything specific medically, but he was caught playing soccer in Costa Rica on video. I don't know if you saw that, Bill. It was it was a very interesting video. It was like.
48:30 Bill Simmons? I missed that video. That sounds great.
48:32 Speaker 01 Hey, you got to be deep onto the Spurs message boards to see these these great videos of Wemby playing soccer.
48:40 Bill Simmons? Do they rig the draft for a Cooper flag for the Spurs like they did with Tim Duncan in 1997 or no?
48:46 Speaker 01 Well, they just got two Rookie of the Years in a row, so why not go for three? I mean, shout out to Stephen Castle, Stephen Castle for getting the Rookie of the Year. Not a great class, but I thought he was deserving. I don't think they're going to rig the draft for for the Spurs to get Cooper flag. But dude, Cooper flag can play, dude. This guy's going to change the fate of wherever he gets. This is another one of the biggest lotteries of the century. Whoever gets that number one.
49:15 Bill Simmons? Well, the good thing is there's other good guys. Like even if you get the third or fourth pick in this.
49:20 Speaker 01 Right.
49:20 Bill Simmons? Draft, you're going to get somebody who's like even Edgecombe is like a real guy. Like if he the Spurs got him and put him with Castle and all their wings, like that's an amazing outcome.
49:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, the Spurs have two picks they're pretty excited about. I think most likely outcome is right, eight and 14, something like that. And and they could combine those and try to move up or they've drafted pretty well in the past.
49:44 Bill Simmons? Or they send both of them to Milwaukee in the Otis trade.
49:48 Bill Simmons? Or they send Wemby. I mean, talk about an international basketball team. That's like the league's wet dream.
49:53 Speaker 01 I know.
49:54 Bill Simmons? Giannis is the greatest international story they've ever had, other than Hakeem. And and Wemby is going to be the true galaxy face of the league. They're hoping four or five years from now, unless Anthony Edwards takes that too. Who do you have in Minnesota Lakers?
50:10 Speaker 01 You have to take Minnesota at this point.
50:12 Bill Simmons? Okay.
50:13 Speaker 01 J.J. Reddick, I, I think. You know, there's two reasons, depth and defense. The Lakers don't have much either. And I think the stat was that nobody has ever played all five dudes for the last 24 minutes of a playoff game. And J.J. just did that. That tells you something.
50:32 Bill Simmons? Yeah, but Denver did the same thing on Saturday and it worked. And now we don't have to hear about it anymore because they won the game. J.J. did it. I'm not defending J.J. I don't understand why you would have paid Gabe Vincent for five minutes. He was. I feel okay with Gabe Vincent out there. I didn't get that.
50:47 Speaker 01 You'd like to think Jackson Hayes can do something, but I think Minnesota just deserves credit. And, and the other thing is the defense. Los Angeles' defense is not good enough. Jade McDaniels is exposing them on drives. And no disrespect to Jade McDaniels, he's helping Minnesota win this series. But that goes to show that this is, this is not the Thunder defense, dude. This is not the Rockets defense. This is the Lakers defense. It's been a red flag for me for a while.
51:17 Bill Simmons? No rim protection, no rim runner.
51:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:21 Bill Simmons? The rim, just not really involved.
51:23 Speaker 01 And, and Luca like has not been great on defense. And again, the Western Conference is unforgiving. You want to call it a weak link era of NBA basketball, fine. We're hunting matchups, whatever you want to say. Anthony Edwards is just the best offensive player in the series right now. And on top of that, I think Minnesota has a better defense and more depth. So I'm taking Minnesota, Bill. I, I agree. I think there might be a free throw discrepancy tomorrow. Is it tomorrow? I'm guessing it's tomorrow.
51:59 Bill Simmons? I'm going tomorrow and I'm just gonna be laughing the whole time.
52:02 Speaker 01 You're going to games back to back, huh?
52:05 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah.
52:05 Speaker 01 Sports guy.
52:06 Bill Simmons? Basketball, playoff basketball, it's the best. Sadly, it's gonna be over soon. Have you seen anything that makes you think it's not gonna be Boston, OKC?
52:15 Speaker 01 I think Cleveland deserves a little more respect and the Drew Holiday hamstring injury, Bill Simmons.
52:22 Bill Simmons? Not happy about it.
52:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, not great. So, look, Cleveland, I think if Boston is limited somehow, Cleveland is a very dangerous team. So Drew Holiday in street clothes is my answer to that question. Have I seen anything that makes me think Boston might not get there? If he comes back, I love that dude. If Porzingis is healthy, if Tatum is playing like this, Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, Peyton Pritchard, Joe Missoula, I think they deserve to be favorites coming out of the East, but Cleveland is shooting the shit out of the basketball. They've been a great team all year. They've won in Boston, if I'm not mistaken.
53:01 Bill Simmons? No, Mitchell, Mitchell always does well against Celtics. They, they're always good games. It'll be a good series.
53:06 Speaker 01 I'm picking Boston, but I will not be shocked whether it's because Drew Holiday's limited, somebody else goes down, that Cleveland wins the Eastern Conference. So I, I think that's, that's the case. On the Western side, OKC, again, clear favorite. I don't see anybody in their class right now on the Western Conference side.
53:27 Bill Simmons? I don't either, but who knows with this Minnesota piece? And who knows with Golden State? Because Golden State's loved playing OKC forever. And, you know, I'm not, I'm just, I would, if I had to bet, I would stick with my preseason, OKC, Boston. But I think Minnesota and Golden State, and then the way Denver played tonight, who knows? All right. Kurt Goldsberry, writing for the Ringer.com, popping on our podcasts. Always good to see you.
53:52 Speaker 01 Thank you, Bill. Good to see you.
53:54 Bill Simmons? This episode is brought to you by Workday. Guessing is for game shows, not your business, especially when your margin for error is zero. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance, and IT with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission aware, giving you accuracy 24/7 and the ability to not just get work done, but get it done right. It's a new Workday. This episode is brought to you by PNC Bank. In today's sports, everyone is constantly trying to outdo each other. Trick formations, infield shifts, constant rotation changes. Yet it's proven time and time again that strong fundamentals are the thing that will lead you to victory. Banking, no different.
54:37 Bill Simmons? While everyone else tries to outdo each other, PNC Bank just keeps going right down the middle with steady, calculated money moves and the financial wins just keep coming. PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865, brilliantly boring since 1865 is a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group, Incorporated. PNC Bank, National Association, Member, FDIC. All right, our friend Zach Lowe is here. We're taping this before the four Tuesday games, but also before the two Wednesday games. And it's an awesome doubleheader of Golden State-Houston Lakers-T Wolves. I covered it on my pod on Sunday. You covered it on the Zach Lowe Show on Monday. But we're here to talk about Draymond Green and then we can talk about those games at the tail end.
55:21 Bill Simmons? Last week, we did Kawhi. We deep dove. This week, we're going to do Draymond and we're going to deep dive. You wrote about him, I think, two years ago, maybe right after the pool incident.
55:33 Speaker 02 Many, many times, but yes, including, including taking that moment as a, hey, wait a second, let's take stock of this guy's Warriors career, which felt a little, a little like it was on shaky ground as the Warriors were approaching, you know, the, do we pay all of these guys, the young guys, the old guys, everybody? Can we do that? And if not, who's the casualty?
55:56 Bill Simmons? It's felt, one of the things I was thinking about as we go into this, it's felt a couple of times over the last three years that we might be at the end of the road with Draymond and the Warriors, right? And the pool punch was the first time. The second time was when, are they going to be able to figure out his contract or not? And then even this year, when it didn't really seem like they had any moves and the question became, well, I mean, maybe would Draymond be somebody that they might be trying to flip? He's feels, I don't want to say on thin ice, but it's felt a little rocky. And now I feel the best about it that I've felt probably since the, the 22 finals. But even the 22 finals, he was getting yanked around. I don't think he looked particularly great. He looks great now.
56:39 Bill Simmons? And this Curry-Draymond thing is now officially over a decade. And there's something really unique and special about it that just continues to persevere. And you could feel it in that Houston game.
56:50 Speaker 02 Um, it felt like the punch changed his standing within the Warriors. They've all, they've all acknowledged that like that, that, that was very hard for the team to get over. It was very hard for Jordan Poole to get over. Then you follow it up with the suspensions, right? Like last season, we get suspended for, I don't know how many games. It was indefinitely after the Gobert incident and then the Nerka incident. And then there was like the flirtation with Memphis in free agency that I think was at least semi-real. You know, I'd or the potential of it anyway. Yeah, I mean, it's, but, but I always wrote, I mean, you know, who's sad listening to this is the guy who signed with Dallas in free agency to play with Luca and make some spot up threes. And I always wrote that those three guys were, it was magic.
57:35 Speaker 02 Like it's why you play basketball to get that kind of level of feel and chemistry. And just, you can do it with your eyes closed. You know where everyone's going to be at all time, that those three guys were meant to play together and should have played together forever. And at least two of them look like they are going to play together forever in their NBA lives.
57:54 Bill Simmons? It's the hardest thing to find in professional basketball now with the way guys move around. With the way now we have this first, second apron. You know, I'm always thinking like, we had the last episode of Celtic City and it's built during Brown and Tatum. And it's just like, I don't even know if it's sustainable to have two guys making a max once it gets into the 60s, 70s anymore. They, what Brown and Tatum have, I don't think remotely approaches the Draymond Curry thing, because those guys actually have figured out how to elevate each other, which I think is the last level when you're talking teammates. Klay was in there too, but really Draymond, you could feel when Draymond wasn't in the game, what it meant to Curry, all the little pick and pops and handoffs and just that ESP that they had for each other.
58:38 Bill Simmons? I can't think of like this, the, when I was growing up, they always talked about how the seventies Knicks had that. Right. I think Bird and McHale kinda got there. I think Jordan and Pippen almost like defensively as athletes became so attuned, like they almost seemed like a pair after a while. It's really hard to get to. And with Draymond, I feel, I've always felt like there's gonna be a shelf life and it was gonna flame out. And he was just being more and more erratic as his career went on. He had the podcast. He's becoming unlikable in a lot of ways too. And then you watch like last night, it's like.
59:12 Speaker 02 I was gonna say, he almost got, he's almost ejected from like every third game.
59:18 Bill Simmons? Yeah, you're wait, you're just teetering on this balance beam with him. And you know, he gets that first technical and then you instantly get the flashbacks to 2016 game four when I, I'll always think LeBron knew what he was doing. And I think it was a smart play. He tried to bait Draymond into retaliating, knowing that one more or anything and Draymond was suspended for the next game.
59:37 Speaker 02 And by the way, if you're right, and there's never gonna, maybe one day though LeBron will talk about this and, and try to make himself the protagonist of that one step ahead thing is Draymond has also tried to make himself the protagonist of like almost everything good that's happened for the Warriors, including you mentioned the 2022 finals. The turning point for him was getting in Jalen Brown's head. That was like being physical with Jalen Brown, getting in his head. They all, my God, I knew we had him at that moment. I mean, he said that. But if, if, if you turn out to be right about this LeBron thing, what a tribute to Draymond Green's greatness, actually, that LeBron thought it was worth, it was worth getting him out of the series for a game, right? That he, that he respected him that much. But you mentioned all these prior teammate combinations.
1:00:22 Speaker 02 And what's super interesting about this one is that we've seen like Tatum and Brown, you went Tatum and Brown and backwards to some of the historical ones. We've seen the, the game has been ruled by big men, like you mentioned, McHale, low post guys, Shaq and Kobe, we can go on and on. And big wings. These guys are neither of those things and they're both totally unusual superstars or stars, whatever you wanna call Draymond in NBA history. And almost archetypal players that are specifically archetypal to this era of three-point shooting, which Steph revolutionized and accelerated the development of is going to happen anyway. And Draymond as the ultimate switch defender, when more defenses were like,
1:01:04 Speaker 02 we just got to try and switch everything because this shooting is so massively important and swing so many games. And Draymond may not have a good sort of analog in the history of the NBA. Steph obviously has no analog in the history of the NBA. And, and Steph, Steph is, is one of one. Draymond became this weird archetype where for about four or five years, people searched the draft for, we got to find someone like Draymond. Can we find our Draymond? Could Grant Williams be our kind of Draymond Green?
1:01:36 Bill Simmons? The funniest one.
1:01:36 Speaker 02 Yeah. And, and, and it was, it's just so interesting that you go through those pairs of superstars and these two guys are just strange in terms of body type, skillset, and that not only just strange, but strange and meant to play in this era and meant to play together in this era.
1:01:54 Bill Simmons? Yeah, like, I remember he started playing when we were working together at Grantland. And it was the early days of the five man lineups and the plus minus stuff really early, like primitive, like your, people are carving it out in stone, the numbers, trying to figure it out.
1:02:11 Speaker 02 Websites that are dead, that are gone.
1:02:13 Bill Simmons? You get, you get like a virus if you downloaded any of the websites, but there was some stuff with David Lee and it was one of the first times. Cause I remember that there was that Grizzlies season and I was on TV that year with Memphis where the Rudy Gay lineups versus the non Rudy Gay lineups.
1:02:28 Speaker 02 To dark, to dark time, the Rudy Gay, the Rudy Gay discourse, dark times.
1:02:32 Bill Simmons? Remember they trade him and everyone went nuts. And the people who were actually like, kind of studying this shit were like, eh, they might not miss him. And then he, they make the Western finals, but there was a similar thing going on with David Lee, who had good stats, good counting stats, hustled, was the type of guy that in the old school way, be like, like that guy, good jump hook, like he does some good stuff. And he was a, you know, a good starter. But Draymond was in there and the lineups took off.
1:03:00 Speaker 02 Always the foil in this story. David Lee, a very good NBA player who could do a lot of good NBA things, including, you know, remember that finals when they started to go small against the Cavaliers and it was like a garbage time of a game they were losing and David Lee was like heavily involved. Yeah, Draymond, you know, was picked 35th in the draft. Warriors picked him after they picked Festus Zili in the same draft. So it's kind of like the old, you know, when I used to wax poetic to the Spurs about, you know, Manu Ginobili's the greatest draft pick in the history of the NBA. You guys were such geniuses picking him at 50, whatever. And they would always tell me, well, if we were such geniuses, why did we pick Gordon Giracek like 25 spots higher in the same draft?
1:03:41 Bill Simmons? Right. That's the Tom Brady. They passed on him every round until the sixth round. Same thing.
1:03:45 Speaker 02 And it's, it's the same with Azili and Draymond, but maybe Draymond is the only one that expected anything even 50% as great as the career and impact he ended up having on a team that ended up being the absolute perfect place for him.
1:04:02 Bill Simmons? Well, he always had the confidence, right? So he won in high school and he won in college. And then he came to the pros. He wasn't playing that much. And I remember I was on, I was on countdown. It might've been the 2013 season. We were talking about the Warriors in the playoff, 2013 or 14. And we were talking about how nobody could shoot on the Warriors other than Steph and Klay or I forget what it was. And I made some joke about, you don't want Draymond throwing up bricks or stuff like that. And he came at me on Twitter. And I was like, look at this guy. Who, I kind of liked the face of this. So it was like, all right, that's cool. But he, he always kind of carried himself. Like you guys don't realize how good I am yet. And then 2015, once Lee gets hurt and the rest is history. But that's, I always think about luck
1:04:47 Bill Simmons? with this stuff where you think, you know, it just became a story again recently about Bogut talking about the thing that I thought everybody knew that Milwaukee had the choice between Ellis and Curry in that trade. And Curry's ankles were so, yeah, are you, you're dubious of that one?
1:05:04 Speaker 02 No, I mean, it's been, it's been whispered about for so long. I
1:05:10 Speaker 02 Can we ever really confirm it? I mean, like, who has anyone in the room in a public setting come out and confirmed it?
1:05:18 Bill Simmons? I always heard they gave them the choice.
1:05:20 Speaker 02 I've heard.
1:05:21 Bill Simmons? I don't think Lake up will ever admit it. Was Lake up even there at that point? He was right. Whoever the owners were. Yeah. I, because I think there was this real feeling that Curry's ankles were always going to be an issue, you know, that that this was never going to be a thing that healed. So you get luck with that. You keep Curry. You get.
1:05:38 Speaker 02 Not only that, how about, how about you get the discount on his first contract? Four years, 44 million or something like that. That allows you to do all this other stuff.
1:05:44 Bill Simmons? That's luck. Number two. Luck. Number three is the Kevin Love trade, which is one of the most polarizing organizational, should we do this or not sagas probably ever to the point that they're asking people like us, what do you think? Would you do this? Would you put in that? Wouldn't that have been ultimately, would that have been David Lee with Klay and maybe even Draymond in that trade too?
1:06:06 Speaker 02 I, I don't, I don't remember exactly what it was, except that Klay was in it. I think I, I remember iterations being discussed with Klay and Harrison Barnes, both in it. Um, I don't remember exactly what it would have been, other than it was a clear, like Klay was in the trade. It was like Splash Brothers or no Splash Brothers.
1:06:22 Bill Simmons? And I think Kerr was one of those who was like, I think the shooting that we have is like really special.
1:06:28 Speaker 02 Jerry West, Jerry West was ready to throw himself in front of the train tracks on that. It's like, we're not doing this. This is a bad move.
1:06:33 Bill Simmons? Think he had like a winning time tantrum, like the guy in winning time? Do you throw a chair through the glass window?
1:06:38 Speaker 02 No, he always, he hated his portrayal in winning time and RIP to the logo. One of the best, one of the best ever.
1:06:45 Bill Simmons? Now we have the half court logo, Ben Simmons. He gets to the half court logo and he stops dribbling. Um, but then the other, the other luck thing was, uh, was the, the cap spike in 16 and all of these things come together and really the only unlucky break. I mean, until 2019, the only unlucky break was that Draymond, uh, you know, punching LeBron in the balls. Have you watched that clip recently?
1:07:08 Speaker 02 I have, I have not.
1:07:09 Bill Simmons? It is the most do be. I forgot how awful it was. I, it's, it might be number one for me for the league stepping in and trying to push a narrative. It is awful. It's comes up. He kind of swing, because LeBron's standing over him. Like they get caught up and he's just standing over him like a little, almost baiting him. And Draymond gets up and he kind of waves his hand. And I just still can't believe that happened because if you remember from, what's the score in that Bucks game?
1:07:39 Speaker 02 No, no, I'm actually, I want to, I'm trying to remember in my head, the sequence of events from that series. So I'm looking up the game logs. So I'm going to talk about.
1:07:47 Bill Simmons? So I want to talk about that game really quick. Cause game four, when Draymond gets kicked out or gets the flagrant at the end or whatever it was. They go into Cleveland, they're up 2-1 in the series. It's probably one of my favorite five Warriors games from that whole Curry era because they lay the smackdown. Like Cleveland, they're toe to toe.
1:08:07 Speaker 02 They pulled away down the stretch.
1:08:09 Bill Simmons? Pulled away down the stretch and we, and we're leaving that game going, they definitely have the best team. This is going to be what the greatest season in the history of the NBA. And then the suspension happens and it.
1:08:18 Speaker 02 So I was at the game. And I, I have this memory of doing something after the game with Jay Adande, maybe. Um, I don't know why that would make sense. And you know, when you're at these games, sometimes you're not looking at the video, the video feed like, um, in detail. And none of us realized at the time exactly what had happened and put together what was possible. And now this is why I was looking back at it. So that was June 10th, 108 97 Warriors win. There were two days off until the next game in the Bay, June 13th.
1:08:59 Speaker 02 And I remember they took a while to rule on it because I went out to dinner on June, what would be June 11th, I guess, with a couple of Warriors people. And they were like, I mean, the, the level of tension, it was not that fun of a dinner because they.
1:09:16 Bill Simmons? Bogut was already out. And Curry was Curry had the, what was his ankle injury? So they were kind of limping to the finish line as it was.
1:09:23 Speaker 02 But it was not a fun dinner because they didn't know still what was going to happen with Draymond. They were fuming about what they viewed as lobbying by the Cavaliers for a suspension. They were fuming because they thought the league was going to quote, I mean, every team see everything through the lens of their own bias and what is good or bad for them. And they, they viewed like the league's going to scapegoat Draymond. We could see this coming, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
1:09:48 Bill Simmons? Right.
1:09:48 Speaker 02 It was not a fun dinner. And then it was another full day until they announced the suspension. Then he goes and watches it from the A's. Well, didn't he go to the A's game or so? He was in a luxury box somewhere with Bob Myers. I remember.
1:10:00 Bill Simmons? That was indefensible. The, the.
1:10:02 Speaker 02 The suspension. So you think the suspension was it? But it was a flagrant points thing. It was, he, he had accumulated all the points, right?
1:10:08 Bill Simmons? You can't decide a finals like that. And it was bogus. I feel like it was bogus. The Robert Horace shove, um, when he shoved Kerr into the scorer's table and a couple of, uh, current, uh, Nash into the scorer's table and a couple of Nash's teammates responded because you're gonna, you're gonna move toward your guy who just got decked in the scorer's table. I thought that and I thought the Miami, New York thing in the late nineties was, those were the three that really stayed out to me. It's like.
1:10:34 Speaker 02 I'm, I'm reading it now. This is Kiki Vandeweghe. Kiki Vandeweghe involved. I remember, I remember they were waiting to hear from Kiki.
1:10:40 Bill Simmons? He's back.
1:10:41 Speaker 02 The cumulative point system is designed to deter flagrant fouls in our game. Kiki Vandeweghe said, while Draymond Green's actions in game four do not merit a suspension as a standalone act, the number of flagrant points he has earned triggers a suspension for game five. And I remember he had a couple of really dumb ones in the early in that series. There was one, he like throws Michael, I think Michael Beasley is involved. He plays for the Rockets at that time and he throws them to the ground and like almost garbage time of like a decided game. You're like, what are you, what are you doing, man? And there was, that's the Steven Adams. Um, uh, this.
1:11:15 Bill Simmons? Well, he hit Steven Adams in the balls two different times.
1:11:17 Speaker 02 Yeah. When you got to those groin quite well. Um, still now they're still going at it right now. Steven Adams and Draymond Green.
1:11:23 Bill Simmons? The other thing is he comes back, Cavs blow them away in game five, game six, but Draymond comes back from game seven and plays the best game of his career. And I think he's single-handedly keeps him in the game because Curry is running on fumes of his fumes of his fumes at that point. That game got super tense. The last five minutes is an all-time rock fight after LeBron hits the two threes over Azili because the Warriors are a guy short and, um, and that Draymond game's wasted and he's, I don't want to say he's the reason they didn't win the title that year, but that incident, I think they went in five. I just think they go back to, to Golden State and finish it.
1:12:01 Speaker 02 It felt, it felt like a, we've seen this series a hundred times, a million times before. Road, road favorite wins game four, kind of a tough gutsy win on the road, goes up 3-1, finishes the job at home. Like we've all seen this, but we're, we're taping this on Tuesday at 6:45. There's like three series are zooming tonight that feel exactly like that in the current first round.
1:12:23 Bill Simmons? So you wrote, when you wrote about Draymond, you used a word that I thought was a great word and I wanted to put it in the context of, uh, of history. So I always talk about glue guys, right? He's better than a glue guy.
1:12:40 Speaker 02 Oh, no question.
1:12:42 Bill Simmons? You, he's not, obviously not like a star role player. That seems too low too. But in the piece you wrote, you used the noun amplifier, how he amplified Steph in all these different ways. And I was thinking like, that's the right word amplifier. So I was going through like my favorite amplifiers. Cause I think that feels like it's more status, right? It's that you're not a role player. You're not a glue guy. You're like, I am, I am actually better than a role guy. And not only that, but if you put me next to an awesome guy, I'm going to make that guy better. So Rodman, I think is an all-time amplifier. I think Ben Wallace got there in the, in the mid
1:13:25 Bill Simmons? 2000s, 03 to 07. Horace is a classic example, seven titles, but you could kind of fit him in. He didn't need the ball. He could guard whoever. He could guard different positions. You could always count on him to come through when it mattered. Um, Michael Cooper, Bobby Jones, Paul Silas, Casey Jones was the famous one from the Russell Celtics. And then there's some, there's two old, I put older in front of these guys' names. Older Andre Iguodala.
1:13:57 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:13:57 Bill Simmons? So we're like around 15 range, right?
1:13:59 Speaker 02 Double amplification for the Warriors.
1:14:01 Bill Simmons? He could have been the best guy on a 45 win team in his prime, but older version. And then I think older Drew Holiday too. Kind of the Bucks Celtics era. And then the only other two I have, and they're maybes for me are Derek Fisher and Bruce Bowen.
1:14:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, Draymond's on another level from those guys.
1:14:20 Bill Simmons? I wanted to, I wanted to mark them down.
1:14:24 Bill Simmons? But I think of all those guys, I think Draymond might have been the best amplifier. I think he might be the number one amplifier.
1:14:31 Speaker 02 Well, let's, let's, let's keep, let's be simple about it. You know, people do this thing with Draymond where like, well, what would he be if, if he got drafted by the Pistons? And he doesn't have Steph and how many even ex-players have sort of derided Draymond like this? He has Steph and Klay and all he has to do is throw handoffs to them. Wow, big whoop Draymond Green.
1:14:48 Bill Simmons? Yeah, but.
1:14:53 Speaker 02 He's not the same player without Steph Curry. Almost nobody would be. If you're ranking the reasons why the Warriors have four championships in the last, whatever years, it's Steph Curry up here at number one, and then a giant gap between whatever you think number one to number two, what number two is. And that's fine and fair. Draymond has two things that I think are indisputable about. I think he's a Hall of Famer. I think he should be a Hall of Famer.
1:15:17 Bill Simmons? No question. Michael Cooper made the Hall of Fame.
1:15:19 Speaker 02 Well, even whatever. He's the greatest defender of his generation, which I would define as sort of like the post KG Duncan generation of players. He might be the most versatile defender in modern NBA history. He is like, there's this alternate reality where, okay, so imagine the Warriors without Draymond Green, but they have Steph Curry and Klay Thompson and Harrison Barnes and whatever else. They're still awesome. They still might be a championship team. You could, you could replace Draymond with, I use Clint Capella as my like stand in, screen and dive, spread pick and roll center, blah, blah, blah. But Draymond.
1:15:58 Speaker 02 Draymond's ability to play center on defense and switch across every position is completely unique, almost completely unique in modern NBA history. And he's also, while at center, one of the greatest passers on the move in the history of the NBA. And both of those things allow the Warriors to play a style that is completely unusual and unique to them. And he's a big part of that. And he lifts up Curry is better because of all the stuff Draymond can do. When you give him four on threes, when you play a handoff back and forth with him, when you are, when you can take certain risks defensively because you can play this super small ball lineup because he's a 6'6" guy who can play center.
1:16:41 Speaker 02 The defense and the passing, this is a guy, he's led the team in assists, like many times. It's, it's not, that's what separates him from like your glue guy role player. Like those dudes aren't dishing seven, eight, nine, 10 assists approaching, you can triple singles. He gets made fun of a lot for that, but those are almost triple doubles. He's a totally unusual player and, and made the Warriors both unusual and better.
1:17:05 Bill Simmons? Those four on threes you mentioned, he's got to be in the running for the best one in that situation. Can you, we see it all the time now, right? Like even the Nuggets Clippers series, the Nuggets are trying to put Zubots in that situation.
1:17:17 Speaker 02 And he's been, he's been doing really well. Those guys are really good at it.
1:17:20 Bill Simmons? Hartenstein, you know, they'll try to put him. Horford is somebody that gets in that situation. But through the league, when teams are trying to take out somebody, oh, let's do four and three, and the guy at the foul line will make the bad decision. The thing with Draymond is the Warriors just know how to cut. It's like, it was amazing to watch Butler immediately fit into that, right? It took him like 10 seconds to be like, oh, if they're gonna do that, I'm just gonna cut. I'll get layups.
1:17:44 Speaker 02 Horford is a great name because he's still good at it now. And in his prime, when he was more athletic and faster, he was really, really close in sort of speed and decision making to what prime Draymond is or was. But he wasn't as, Draymond is, I mean, in the stupidest sense, is just so fast. He moves really fast compared to the average big guy. Who's going to set a screen and roll to the rim? And then he makes his decisions faster and more intelligently than almost everybody else in the league in that situation. It's a really hard, it's not a hard combination to find. It's like a borderline impossible combination to find because there has been no next to Draymond Green. And you know, you can do the counterfactuals of like, well, does he even get those four on threes?
1:18:29 Speaker 02 If he's playing with whatever anonymous Eastern Conference guards in Charlotte or Detroit or whatever. And the answer is he doesn't get them in the same way, with the same amount of space in the same frequency.
1:18:41 Bill Simmons? He just would have changed how he played, I think.
1:18:43 Speaker 02 But I do, I do think he would have been a very good player, a great player anywhere. Because the defense and the passing are translatable skills to any setting.
1:18:53 Bill Simmons? It was hard to recognize in the moment for a little while because we were so used to these six foot six undersized guys getting drafted, going 15 picks too late. There was that whole Brandon Bass generation of NBA player in the 2000s. Where it was like, they couldn't shoot threes. They were bangers. They were second round picks or low value guys. They were all missing something, right? They were either three inches too short or they couldn't really rebound or they, you know, David West was probably the best version of all of them. And Draymond just seemed like, oh, he's going to be in that bucket. And then to watch the player that he became, and then we need to mention like the competitiveness and that.
1:19:36 Bill Simmons? I don't think anybody has ever been more of an alpha who probably has a worse basketball reference page. Right? If, if like, we can't look this up on Stathead on basketball reference, but it's like, who, who has the lowest points per game? Who carries himself like an alpha? He might be in the running.
1:19:55 Speaker 02 Well, look, he's 35 years old. It's 2025. And in the first round of the playoffs, he stood up the Houston Rockets best player, who has a massive height and weight advantage on him in the most important possession of maybe the entire series. Stood him up, played impeccable defense, forced a miss, let everyone know about it. And let everyone know like, hey, I'm 35, I'm old now. Don't come at me like that. Go somewhere else on your crunch time possessions, Ime Udoka. It was like, he's been sensational for the.
1:20:28 Bill Simmons? It would have been funny if Ime Udoka was like, uh, have you seen the other guys on my team? Where else was that gonna go? Was it gonna be the Fred Van Vliet step back? Like, what were my other options?
1:20:39 Speaker 02 Fred, Fred was.
1:20:40 Bill Simmons? Did you watch Jalen Green tonight?
1:20:41 Speaker 02 Fred was rolling and Jalen Green was on the bench. So I was watching him on, I was actually watching Jalen Green on the bench. Because I was doing the body language doctor thing of like, is he engaged?
1:20:50 Bill Simmons? He stayed engaged, yeah.
1:20:51 Speaker 02 He was engaged.
1:20:52 Bill Simmons? He was engaged. Ime, with four seconds left and no timeouts, leaving Adams and Shingun out there for the scramble three situation was incredible. I don't, I don't know if he just passed out. I would have dusted off Reed Shepard and just been like, can you just do Peyton Pritchard impersonation? I know you haven't played all series.
1:21:11 Speaker 02 I gotta say, I don't want to plant bad seeds in your head or make this about the Celtics. Peyton Pritchard's on a little cold streak on half court to.
1:21:19 Bill Simmons? A little cold streak, he's like 0 for his last 60.
1:21:21 Speaker 02 Well, the, yeah, the 30 to 60 footers aren't falling anymore like they were last playoffs.
1:21:26 Bill Simmons? Well, the other team knows it's coming. Um, going back to the amplifier thing. And what you said about how unique Draymond is, if you take all the other best amplifiers, I don't think any of them work as well as he works with the Warriors because of the passing and the four and three stuff. Like, if you just put Ben Wallace on the Warriors, let's take that five year Ben Wallace run and make it 10 years. And they would have been better, you know, from a rebounding standpoint. Defense, I don't, I'm not sure he would have been able to guard, you know, as many types of guys that Draymond guard. But he was an incredible defensive player there. Um, and you don't really get anything else and you get terrible foul shooting. And you, you know, you start listing like, oh, well, you also get this and like, that doesn't work.
1:22:11 Bill Simmons? I can't even think of anybody else I would put in. Can you? It's almost like Cartenstein, but a more playmaking version of him, but for 10 years.
1:22:24 Speaker 02 The passing is, is what makes it sing on offense. And just like, you know, you go back and watch prime Draymond Green defend James Harden. It's like, sometimes the primary assignment off and on switch, you're like, oh, is he the best guy on the Warriors at defending this guy? And also the best guy on the Warriors years later at defending Jokic? Like, that's, that's a, that's a unicorn on defense.
1:22:49 Bill Simmons? Like the 17 Warriors, which I think have a real case, especially as the years pass for best team. I don't know if I'd vote for them, but I think they have a case. And one of the cases is when you're putting out Draymond and Igudala and Klay, who was a really, really good defender in the mid 2000s. You have those three guys out there at the same time with Curry and then Durant as the six foot 11 Spider-Man can protect the rim and do all these different things. That was, that might be the best five man lineup I've seen in person. Even the Bulls always had somebody who was a little bit iffy on the movie poster, you know?
1:23:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, Steph, Klay, Igudala, Draymond, Durant.
1:23:34 Bill Simmons? I don't know if we're doing better than that.
1:23:36 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, I remember being at a, in Denver at a Nuggets Warriors game pretty early that season. Might've been the season, I don't know, some, it was sometime in that 17 or and or 1718. And they did the thing where they were all on the floor together in the third quarter of the game. And it was just, you didn't even understand what, it was just like a tidal wave and you, it was like you lost consciousness watching the game and it just became this blur of noise and sound and like blue jerseys flying around. And all of a sudden it was, they had put up like a 22 to two run in two and a half minutes. I mean, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you just, it felt like watching this cyclone and good teams, the Nuggets were a good team. We're just looking around
1:24:21 Speaker 02 like, I don't even understand what's happening to us. Like, what are we supposed to do? Where's the ball? That guy has, that guy, it was like unbelievable. It was too much talent, which everybody knew when they got him. It was like, okay, well, this is a wrap for a couple of years.
1:24:33 Bill Simmons? They broke the 2017 Cavs and now as the years pass, it seems like the Cavs were like the underdog in the relationship. Meanwhile, they won the lottery three out of four years. They had Kyrie Irving. They traded a number one pick for Kevin Love. They had all these expensive role players like Tristan Thompson. I think they had, what, one of the five biggest payrolls in the league? And they had LeBron James still in his prime. Like, that was not, that was not Hickory High trying to, uh, trying to make it through the tournament in Indiana in 1954.
1:25:04 Speaker 02 The 2017 Cavs are the best Cavs team of LeBron's two times in Cleveland. Um, the team that lost in the finals that year. In my opinion, that was the best.
1:25:13 Bill Simmons? What's the, what's the best LeBron team to you?
1:25:17 Bill Simmons? We're still talking about Draymond, but.
1:25:19 Speaker 02 I think 13 Heat are going to be tough to beat. Whatever. That was the Heat team that had the 20 something game winning streak and they ran into some issues in the playoffs that I thought were a little bit frankly beneath them. I thought they should had an easier time in the East playoffs and then they beat the Spurs. I think, I mean, 17 Cavs didn't win. 16 Cavs will always be another measuring stick team.
1:25:39 Bill Simmons? I wouldn't have them though.
1:25:41 Speaker 02 I'm going blind. I haven't looked back at the numbers of what that six, some of those teams, this Cleveland 2.0 teams, as you know, as an Eastern Conference basketball fan, kind of just cruised through parts of the regular season and like.
1:25:54 Bill Simmons? Conference was terrible.
1:25:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:25:55 Bill Simmons? I think the, the first maybe two thirds of that 2013 Miami season is the answer. But when they got to the playoffs, it wasn't just like that. It got a little rocky with them. Uh, I thought Wade, that was when he really started to break down a little bit and he just didn't feel like Dwyane Wade in the same way anymore.
1:26:13 Speaker 02 That year and he was like, I just don't feel like this Pacers team should be taking these guys to seven.
1:26:19 Bill Simmons? I do think the streak, which was just great. I think the streak had a little do with that. I think it took a lot out of those guys, but I would say 2013. I also think, hard to say with COVID,
1:26:32 Bill Simmons? what happens in that 20 season, but if you look back at the guys on that team, it's a pretty good team, you know?
1:26:38 Speaker 02 Very good team.
1:26:39 Bill Simmons? We have LeBron.
1:26:39 Speaker 02 Championship team.
1:26:40 Bill Simmons? You have Davis who's in his late twenties. You got Caruso in there. You have Caldwell Pope. You have Kuzma before he kind of went off the rails.
1:26:49 Speaker 02 And by the way.
1:26:49 Bill Simmons? Dwight Howard protecting the rim. That team was talented.
1:26:52 Speaker 02 Relevant to this discussion. Uh, where are the Warriors at that time?
1:26:56 Bill Simmons? The 20, well, that was the year. That was the Durant, Klay combo injury. Durant leaves and Klay.
1:27:02 Speaker 02 Which is why, you know, and they get, they get three shots in the lottery during their sort of down period. You know, Kaminga, Wiseman, Moody, the payoff has not been substantial.
1:27:18 Bill Simmons? I like Moody. I'll buy your Moody stock right now.
1:27:20 Speaker 02 No, no, I like, I like Moody a lot. I've been on the.
1:27:23 Bill Simmons? You want to put it for sale?
1:27:24 Speaker 02 No, no, no, I'm just, they, I, I think, obviously, the Wiseman thing is a huge bust.
1:27:29 Bill Simmons? Well, but that was also COVID draft. I, I gotta defend them a tiny bit on that. That draft, you go back in that draft, that draft is bonkers. The Kaminga is less defensible.
1:27:38 Speaker 02 I don't even care. And Kaminga, they got in a master stroke trade, selling as high as possible on D'Angelo Russell.
1:27:45 Bill Simmons? How did they not know to take the, the IQ six foot nine, four leg guy?
1:27:49 Speaker 02 My point is this, that's why.
1:27:54 Speaker 02 You know it when you see it. Certain NBA championships just mean more than other NBA championships. Sometimes it's because of a star player finally winning one in his home city like Dirk in 2011. Sometimes it's everything magical comes together for some unexpected team. Sometimes, sometimes it's a team sort of stamping itself like a prior champion, sort of proving like that, yeah, the first one was legit. The 2022 Warriors championship is one of those more special than a lot of other championship championships because a lot of time had passed since the last Durant one. It didn't feel all that likely that they would get back to the mountaintop. If you look back, like,
1:28:34 Speaker 02 it's a strange roster of dudes, many of whom are not there anymore. Klay, Poole, Wiggins.
1:28:40 Bill Simmons? Well, also Klay and Draymond, that weird points of their career where we weren't even sure if they were elite guys anymore or not.
1:28:46 Speaker 02 And, and they are taking advantage of this like interregnum in the West where like the Nuggets are in a waiting period for their guys like Murray and Porter to get back healthy. The Clippers are never healthy and now they are healthy, but they were like, that was a legit awesome Warriors team that leaned back into the style of basketball that Steve Kerr wants to play, the beautiful game, the ball movement, and had enough to squeeze out four series against teams that just kind of weren't ready for all of it.
1:29:14 Bill Simmons? Yeah, and, and the game four, I'm with you like that one meant so much to the kind of Steph career, resume, all that stuff. But also it seemed like they were never going to be in that situation again. You didn't even mention the Suns. That was another one where the Suns coming off the finals, they were, what were they like 50 and six at one point? Just seeming like they're heading back and then just falling apart against Dallas.
1:29:41 Speaker 02 Game seven, no, but now we're really off track, but game seven, Dallas, Phoenix and game seven, Boston, Milwaukee were the same day that year.
1:29:51 Bill Simmons? Oh my God, you're right.
1:29:53 Speaker 02 And I was traveling to Chicago for the combine and my flight was like so poorly timed. Like it took off in the middle of the third quarter of Celtics Bucks and then it was going to land and Suns Mavs would already be, you know, first quarter, second quarter. I was like, I'm going to miss like so much. And I land and it's like Celtics win by a lot. Grant Williams makes a million threes. And then I get to my hotel and I load up the Suns Mavs game. I'm like, what?
1:30:20 Bill Simmons? And it's over.
1:30:21 Speaker 02 I don't even have to watch this. This is crazy. What the hell is going on? And the Warriors win the title and Draymond is really good. End of story.
1:30:29 Bill Simmons? Let's, uh, let's take a quick 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 Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun, sometimes earlier than expected, sometimes after blowing a 3-1 series lead, but what if you went to Cancun with Expedia save up to 30% when you bundle and save, you can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness,
1:31:11 Bill Simmons? though, hopefully your team doesn't go to Cancun, 123 Cancun, or if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save savings vary. All right, a couple more Draymond things. Then I want to talk quickly about Golden State, Houston. The generational defensive belt.
1:31:29 Bill Simmons? Which I'm not, I'm not going to subject you to all the names since Bill Russell. I did make a list.
1:31:35 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:31:36 Bill Simmons? But I think Draymond versus Rudy, basically for the post Kawhi era, which is about the moment he steps on Zaza's foot all the way through is the argument for the last eight years. I would say Draymond, there's some nerds out there that would, that would be resolute about Gobert and the Gobert rim protection stats. Gobert has more defensive player of the years.
1:32:01 Bill Simmons? I think he's had more season this season, probably success, but that's the argument for the last eight years. Dray, if you're going to pick one guy who has the belt, it's those two, I think.
1:32:13 Speaker 02 He's going to be the Shaq, Shaq is to MVPs what Draymond is to defensive player of the year. Or like on a larger scale, even Jordan to MVPs. Like, we're all going to look back at the career, be like, he only won one and these other guys won more than that. Like, he's a, it's sometimes it's like it's a regular season award. He misses time, he gets whatever, like he gets injured, the team is so good, it doesn't even matter. Gobert is playing 82 game, but we all know it goes back to something Draymond himself said. 62, 82 game player or 16 game player? He's a better 16 game player on defense alone.
1:32:48 Bill Simmons? You're just taking him in any postseason, you're always taking Draymond.
1:32:51 Speaker 02 He's a better 16 game defender than Rudy Gobert, 16 game, four series, four different kinds of opponents. He's better. And unfortunately for him, the belt is now going to be in San Antonio for a very long time.
1:33:05 Bill Simmons? So Steve Kerr said Draymond was the single best defensive player he's ever seen after game four. And he's been touting Draymond's defense a lot. He actually lobbied for him for defensive player of the year, which he doesn't, he's not a big award lobbier that Steve Kerr, but uh.
1:33:21 Bill Simmons? He played with Scottie Pippen and he played with Dennis Rodman.
1:33:25 Speaker 02 And Tim Duncan.
1:33:25 Bill Simmons? I was just surprised. And Tim Duncan. But I mean, Pippen.
1:33:30 Bill Simmons? That's a tough one. I would love to put like three drinks into Steve Kerr 10 years from now and he's not coaching Draymond anymore and actually get the actual answer for, is Draymond actually the best defensive player he's ever seen?
1:33:42 Speaker 02 It's all, it's all a matter of, I mean, the defense is still
1:33:48 Speaker 02 statistically sort of harder to parse than offense, right? So sometimes when you're at this level, it becomes a matter of taste, like Garnett should be in the conversation, Olajuwon, you know, whoever you, we can go through all the greatest defenders in NBA history. He's in the conversation. That's where Draymond Green is. Whether you think he's the best, the fifth best, the fourth best, the third best, whatever he, that's where he lives in this conversation.
1:34:09 Bill Simmons? Are you taunting me to do my belt lineage?
1:34:12 Speaker 02 No.
1:34:12 Bill Simmons? Feels like you are. All right, I'll rip through it quick. It was Draymond versus Rudy. So we're both going to say Draymond. Kawhi by himself.
1:34:23 Bill Simmons? By the way, I thought of you when I was at that Clipper game Saturday and Kawhi just took the ball from Jamal Murray.
1:34:27 Speaker 02 When he decided, hey, it's at half court. How about I just go take it?
1:34:30 Bill Simmons? I'm gonna go take the ball now. Jamal's like, wait, you can't take the ball. I said, no, I'm gonna actually take it.
1:34:35 Speaker 02 Thanks for, thanks for participating in my exercise, Mike. I'm just gonna take the ball.
1:34:39 Bill Simmons? Every time he does that, I think of you. I think Dwight Howard's in there for a while.
1:34:45 Bill Simmons? By default.
1:34:46 Speaker 02 I'd have to look back at who's contemporary with who, who's old, who's young, but he's got, certainly was there, many time defensive player of the year.
1:34:53 Bill Simmons? 08 KG, I think has the belt by himself. Before him, Ben Wallace. And then it's a three-headed battle for a while between Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, and Rasheed Wallace, who I think has been lost in history now, but Rasheed Wallace was just an awesome defensive player. When they decided to put him next to Ben Wallace, that, and people still seem to think that Laker series was like, whoa, that was weird. It's like Detroit killed them in that series. Anyway, would have them. Then there's like a GP versus Mutombo, mid to late 90s kind of argument.
1:35:30 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:35:30 Bill Simmons? Which
1:35:32 Bill Simmons? I'd probably, I don't even know where I land. I'd probably default toward GP for a little bit there.
1:35:36 Speaker 02 Some good playoff history in that one, too.
1:35:38 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:35:39 Speaker 02 Sonics Nuggets.
1:35:40 Bill Simmons? There's a Hakeem Robinson before that. Then we had
1:35:43 Speaker 02 I won't entertain Akeem Robinson. I won't entertain it.
1:35:46 Bill Simmons? I would pick Akeem, right?
1:35:47 Speaker 02 It's Akeem. I'm not entertaining.
1:35:49 Bill Simmons? But I'm just saying that Robinson won Defensive Player of the Year a couple of times, but he
1:35:53 Speaker 02 He's very, Admiral was incredible. He's a dream teamer. What happened in the playoffs in 1995? It like it just tried, the rest of it is irrelevant.
1:36:03 Bill Simmons? Hakeem also the block steal stuff. That was one in my book. I made up the word stocks because it was like, there was just nothing like this guy putting up basically like seven blocks and steals a game. Pippen versus Robyn was another one. And then, then it starts getting harder after that. But I did want to shout out Bobby Jones. Um, I have another Draymond thing for you really quick.
1:36:24 Bill Simmons? So
1:36:26 Bill Simmons? from 2015 through 2025, he did not average 10 points a game.
1:36:34 Bill Simmons? 9.6 points a game, 7.5 rebounds and 6.6 assists.
1:36:40 Speaker 02 Those are cumulative for those seasons?
1:36:42 Bill Simmons? Those are his per game averages for like 11 years. 46% field goal, 32% from three.
1:36:50 Bill Simmons? In the playoffs, that bumps up to basically 12, nine and six.
1:36:55 Bill Simmons? But I was like, wow, that's weird. I wonder if anyone has anything remotely that looks like that. So I rigged basketballreference.com. Who averaged nine points or less?
1:37:06 Speaker 02 You didn't go stat news? You didn't go stat news?
1:37:08 Bill Simmons? No, stat news. I don't try. Russell and I hate stat news. We don't.
1:37:11 Speaker 02 Alex Ovechkin.
1:37:15 Bill Simmons? Under nine points, over five assists and then rebounds, whatever.
1:37:22 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:37:24 Bill Simmons? Everyone else is a guard. It's like Jose Calderon, Avery Johnson, Muggsy Bogues, Dick Maguire, Nate McMillan, Eric Snow, Brevin Knight, TJ McConnell, Rory Sprow. This is like guys who played 600 games or more. And Draymond has way more rebounds than him, obviously. But there's like, you can't, even basketball reference is like, I don't know what to make of this. Like who are, I, I don't know. You got me.
1:37:47 Speaker 02 And not included in any of that search data is can defend every position on the floor, including seven foot centers. Which Avery Johnson or Jose Calderon.
1:37:57 Bill Simmons? I wonder if they should add like almost like in chess where you have in what's an Elo score for chess?
1:38:04 Bill Simmons? I almost wonder if basketball reference should just randomly assign Elo scores defensively for every player. Like Draymond would be like, what, like a 97?
1:38:12 Speaker 02 Whatever the highest is.
1:38:14 Bill Simmons? You give him 100?
1:38:16 Speaker 02 I don't know. Is that where Elo? I don't play.
1:38:18 Bill Simmons? I feel like Bill Russell has to be 100.
1:38:20 Speaker 02 Like, can we have multiple? We can only have one 100?
1:38:23 Bill Simmons? Yeah. I think Russell's the only 100.
1:38:26 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:38:28 Bill Simmons? Yeah. So that's, that's basically all my Draymond stuff. Other than, I don't know how much longer this goes. There's a weird, they've done a lot about this, this year, next year, the contracts are aligned. This is our last dance. I don't know if I necessarily believe that. But what's been cool is watching Butler and Draymond and that play yesterday was like, Draymond, like, they're gonna go to Shengun, I'm gonna stop him. And Jimmy's like, and I'm gonna get the rebound. And then Jimmy comes flying in. He probably has, what, like 10 pounds of Toradol shot in his ass at that point? And it's starting to wear off. And he comes flying in and gets the ultimate Jimmy Butler in traffic rebound, holds the ball, protects it, gets fouled. And he's like, that was my rebound. That was my rebound. Like the combo of those two guys, they're both insane.
1:39:13 Speaker 02 The rebound, well, Draymond does what he does. He stands up, Shengun.
1:39:19 Bill Simmons? Forces a 14 footer when it should have been a nine footer.
1:39:21 Speaker 02 You know exactly. He's done it a billion times. That's what he does. Jimmy Butler is 35 going on 36, injured. And even when not injured, is like a below the rim, old man kind of player now. And I mean, that is a compliment. He's smart. He cuts, he hits people, he knows what to do. But he's not a high flyer, never really was, but certainly is it now. That rebound had the feel, I watched it like five times this morning. It had the feel of, it had the feel of like, this is everything I have left in my body at the end of this game is pouring in to jumping as high as I can with as much force as I can. Because Steven Adams is under there and I know what Steven Adams is, is an offensive rebounder.
1:40:04 Speaker 02 It was one of those great athletic sports moments of like, digging deep in all the cliches we talked about. That rebound is like, he's not jumping that high again, probably for the entire rest of the playoffs, as long as Golden State goes on. That was like, this is everything I got. If this game goes to overtime, I'm gonna feel the pain of this jump for the rest of this game, but I gotta get this rebound.
1:40:25 Bill Simmons? Well, I thought the Rockets were gonna win last night. I wasn't expecting the Jalen Green stink bomb, but they did get a crazy Van Vliet game. But it came down to the fear, if you were taking the Rockets in this series, the fear was what's gonna happen late in games when both teams have to execute? How is this gonna play out? And it executed, it happened the way it happened. The reason I thought the Rockets were gonna win because I didn't think Steph was gonna have a big game. Cause they, he put out so much on Saturday night. I was like, well, they're not getting that again. And Butler's hurt. How are they gonna get to 100 points? I didn't realize Dillon Brooks was gonna talk shit to Butler and just activate
1:41:06 Bill Simmons? playoff Jimmy. And now it just, now it just feels like the Rockets are going sideways and we're just gonna wait for the honest trade now.
1:41:14 Speaker 02 Trade machine summer. This is a Draymond Green segment. Should we talk about that Draymond Green was like on the verge of getting ejected? I don't say he was on the verge of getting ejected in that game, but the technical, a flagrant, and the Tari Eason thing where he rolled over him and his foot hit his neck. Like, I, I'm watching that. I'm like, they could throw him out of the game for this. Like, I, he's gonna, it is maybe an accident. It looks like an accident. It can be plausibly explained away as an accident. But the thing about Draymond Green's accidents, and there are a lot of them, is that it never feels as if he's trying to calm the accident
1:41:57 Speaker 02 or restrain his limbs from moving in ways that will accelerate and worsen the accident. It's always like, my legs are doing this. You're in the way. My legs are gonna keep doing this. I'm not gonna try to stop my legs. My legs are doing what they're doing. And if your head's in the way, your head's in the way.
1:42:12 Bill Simmons? Right. And there's been other guys over the years like that too. Like, remember when Ron Artest just elbowed James Harden in the head? And basically knocked him out? And I don't think it was intentional, but I also think it was the same thing. It was like, hey, my elbow needed to go forward and that guy's head happened to be in the way and I had to do it. Some guys, Bowen, it was never an accident. I never felt like, it was maybe a partial accident, but he would kick his, what was that? He kicked somebody in the face running by a three that time. Remember?
1:42:41 Speaker 02 I can't remember who it was. He did.
1:42:43 Bill Simmons? Like, we kicked him right in the face.
1:42:46 Speaker 02 And they're reviewing the play and I'm like, it doesn't really, it, it looks mostly like an accident. It also doesn't really look good. He already has a technical. He's always seems to have a technical. And as you well know, Draymond Green with a technical is like a superhero. There's, he's impervious to technical number two for the most, he could do whatever he wants.
1:43:08 Bill Simmons? Draymond with five fouls is the other one. Like he had five fouls yesterday, felt like for an hour, and he's just doing the vertical, stopping everybody and never gets the sixth foul. It's pretty crazy.
1:43:19 Speaker 02 He's still, he's still a genius. He had a play earlier in this series. I don't remember who he was guarding, but somebody for the Rockets had the ball at the elbow and went to pass to somebody, Draymond. It was, it was Draymond's guy had the ball at the elbow and he went to pass to a cutter and Draymond like did the thing where he read his mind. And it was like, almost as if he was ahead of the pass. He starts drifting away from his own guy and the pass comes and it's essentially a pass to Draymond because Draymond has anticipated, out anticipated the guy who's actually initiating the action. And he passes the ball and Draymond's just there and it's like, what's this, what's this?
1:43:59 Speaker 02 He just like, is, it's not even just in sync with the ball. He's ahead of the ball. He still makes those plays every game.
1:44:05 Bill Simmons? Does that? And I noticed that every time I'm in person and Saturday was at another level is Jokic.
1:44:11 Speaker 02 Sam Hauser?
1:44:12 Bill Simmons? No, Jokic.
1:44:13 Speaker 02 Oh, well.
1:44:15 Bill Simmons? I just like to me, the there's so many litmus tests for how many, how much people are actually watching basketball. And one of them is if somebody tries to tell me Jokic is like a shitty defensive player. It's like, go fucking watch him in person, just blow up plays. Just be like, are you gonna do that? I'm gonna dive right as you're about to do that pass. Now you're jumping in the air because you thought you had that guy. And now you're like, just kind of throwing it over your head. He, he's spooky. How he can reach it. He had a pass after the game three, where they doubled him at the top, the top of the key. Chris Dunn was in the corner on Christian Brown. And he kind of leaked over and Jokic was facing the other way like this.
1:45:00 Bill Simmons? And Christian Brown is behind him this way. Chris Dunn comes over. He feels Chris Dunn and just whips the pass to Christian Brown. Like, if you watch it, you're like, how does, there's 10 seconds where you don't know he's there. How did you know he was there? No idea.
1:45:19 Speaker 02 That might be one of his, that is one of his signature passes. And I've watched dozens of them at this point. And sometimes I go back and I rewind it. And I'm like, let me try to find how he knew, time that he made eye contact, that his head was facing the direction of the player he ends up passing to. And sometimes you just can't find it. Like, there's a defensive rebound. He has the ball. He's looking over here. And then the pass comes, you're like, I don't, I don't really, I don't know if he ever saw him.
1:45:48 Bill Simmons? But that play was, he didn't know it was Chris Dunn who was coming over to double him. So he had to also know instinctively, Chris Dunn is coming over to double me, even though I can't see him. And then when he does that, it's like some fucking Star Wars shit when they put the helmet on Luke Skywalker. And they're like, Luke, just use the Force. Like, he can do that.
1:46:09 Speaker 02 Well, it's fitting that we're talking about Jokic's passing and Draymond's defense in the same breath, because that's about, that's about right.
1:46:16 Bill Simmons? I think this has been an awesome basketball round of, of games. And we don't even, we didn't even know what's gonna happen in these four that are about to happen. Quickly. Golden State, who do you think you think they'd much rather play the Lakers? Or kind of would rather play the Lakers? Or wouldn't really want to play either if you had to guess? Assuming they get there.
1:46:37 Speaker 02 We're definitely at the stage of the Western Conference playoffs where it's just, okay, well, that path sucks. That path sucks. That path really sucks. I would say, given the fact that J.J. Reddick just played the same five guys for an entire half of basketball and they looked gassed at the end and one of them is 40. And they don't have the Anthony Davis piece that kind of troubled the Warriors. I would say the Lakers are probably a better matchup. The Warriors would probably prefer to play the Lakers a little bit because just Minnesota's just big.
1:47:09 Bill Simmons? That's where I've landed too, especially from four weeks ago when they went head to head.
1:47:12 Speaker 02 Big, nasty, and I mean, but it's no picnic playing Luca. You look at Luca and LeBron, or like, I'm really picking that team. But I think, given the respective states of the teams, I think, yeah, I would pick, if I were the Warriors, I'd say, kind of rather play the Lakers.
1:47:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah, and plus there's the Edwards. How real is this? This was last year. So here it is. Anthony Edwards has joined the party. He's now a superstar. And this year, there's now this next step that might be happening. I don't want to jinx it.
1:47:42 Speaker 02 I think he's at, I think he's at the party.
1:47:44 Bill Simmons? He's at the party for you.
1:47:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, he's at the party.
1:47:47 Bill Simmons? If you're starting a franchise right now, want to do first text again? Because I think I saw this today. Would you, would you rather have Luca or Anthony Edwards next five years?
1:47:59 Bill Simmons? Because I think I'd rather have Edwards.
1:48:03 Bill Simmons? As crazy as that sounds. Yeah, next five years.
1:48:07 Speaker 02 I think I'd still take Luca.
1:48:09 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:48:11 Bill Simmons? Because you're getting.
1:48:11 Speaker 02 Great choice, by the way, can't lose.
1:48:13 Bill Simmons? With Luca, you're at least getting the, what if he shows up on a mission this year? Piece like Shaq for those three, four years with Shaq in the late 90s. Or it's like, what if he takes this seriously one season?
1:48:26 Bill Simmons? Now we're supposed to pretend that never happened.
1:48:29 Bill Simmons? Okay. And then no chance Lakers come back, kind of a chance, sort of a chance, or you feel like that was their desperation game?
1:48:35 Speaker 02 If you have home court for five and potentially seven, you got a chance. I would be surprised if they came back. I would be surprised if this got to seven. I would be surprised if it got to seven. I just think you gas out your team like that. You've sent a message to the team like, we got to win this game. You don't win it. Minnesota's hungry. They're young and they're fresh. I would be surprised if it got back to seven.
1:48:57 Bill Simmons? You know what they need to do? Hope that Anthony Edwards goes into I got this mode. Like they're going to probably win game five because they'll get every call. Game six, you hope for some hero ball from Edwards. You hope for the Tom Thibodeau doc. Game seven, 2010 final strategy of let's try to, let's try to use Edwards's desire to be the hero against him. And maybe just hope he makes some bad shots and kind of shoots them out of the game. I think.
1:49:24 Speaker 02 He also could just dunk you into pieces and end your season very quickly.
1:49:30 Bill Simmons? He is certainly unafraid. Zach Lowe, I was, we ran out of time. I was going to ask you to rank your favorite Ringer people, but we can do that the next time.
1:49:38 Speaker 02 Oh, that's a spicy one. Another, another time.
1:49:40 Bill Simmons? Yeah, another time. Podcast for you on Thursday.
1:49:43 Speaker 02 Yes, coming off, so coming off two good games Wednesday night.
1:49:46 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Good to see you, my friend.
1:49:47 Speaker 02 Always fun.
1:49:49 Bill Simmons? All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Goldsberry and Zach. Thanks to Eduardo and Gahow for helping behind the scenes. Don't forget about new rewatchables went up on Monday night. Someone watch over me. You can watch that on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel. You can watch all the stuff from this on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel or as a video podcast on Spotify. I'm going to be back on Thursday with more stuff, some basketball, maybe a little bit, uh, not basketball. We'll see. I'll see you in a couple of days.
1:50:28 Bill Simmons? Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in DC. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-887-897777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling helpline ma.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-8778-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy
1:51:12 Bill Simmons? Award winner Martin McDonagh, writer-director of The Banshees of Inisherin and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys, Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9. Only in theaters Friday. Get tickets now. This episode is brought to you by Core Power Protein Shakes. You know how we always talk about the little things that separate great athletes? Post-workout recovery is
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