A Magic Upset, a Lakers Surprise, Playoff Wemby, El Cheapo, Bill’s Award Flip, and Other Round 1 Notes With Zach Lowe

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Zach Lowe LIVE on Netflix after Trail Blazers vs. Spurs to recap all the NBA playoff Game 1s (0:32). Then, Bill explains why he changed his MVP vote, discusses what the eliminated play-in teams should do in the offseason, and much more (01:12:17). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Zach Lowe Producers: Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Chris Wohlers Brought to you by PayPal. Learn more at https://paypal.com/payin4 The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠⁠⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

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• 1:08Bill Simmons?

  Bill Simmons Podcast, we are live on Netflix, Sunday night. Zach Lowe is here.

• 1:15Bill Simmons?

  I don't know where to begin, but this was an awesome sports weekend because we had a two-day WrestleMania. I know you don't care about that. We had hockey started today. We had just a devastating Bruins collapse in Buffalo. First Buffalo home playoff game. I think first Buffalo playoff game in 15 years. And the Bruins just fell apart in seven minutes. And it was just pure delirium in Buffalo. And then we had 10 basketball games in the span of 52 hours, if you count the two play-ins. Do you get numb by the end of this? Because I feel like my brain's like a little scrambled by the time we got to the fourth game tonight.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Usually I do, but I'm feeling, I'm feeling crystal clear this weekend. I don't know. I don't know if it was the schedule. I don't know if it's actually like I slept last night pretty well, but I'm feeling good. I'm feeling less, I'm usually fried and I'm not fried right now.

• 2:05Bill Simmons?

  Well, we had, we had some blowouts with Chelt. Heading into the playoffs, everyone was thinking, this feels like chalk round one. This was like all the Ringer gambling guys were all like, what's going to be the weird series? What's going to be the upset? And the logical one seemed to be Houston Lakers.

• 2:23Bill Simmons?

  Do we trust that Luca is not going to be back for round one? Like Houston's weird and then all of a sudden KD gets scratched. So that series goes haywire. Then today Orlando Detroit. You and I, we were texting with a bunch of people today and you and I, you mentioned it first about Detroit, Orlando, something with Orlando, I don't know. You sniffed it out. How did Spock sniff this one out that Orlando is going to be the big upset?

• 2:49Speaker 01

  I mean Detroit, you know, the long layoff, Cade coming back from the collapsed lung. Orlando looked awesome against Charlotte in the last playoff game. And I, they just have oscillated between this like, we're dead, we're dying, break up the whole team to like, oh my God, this is the team that everyone thought we would be when our over 100 was 58 and a half. And some people like this idiot right here took the over. And I just, once they beat Charlotte like that, I was like, maybe they'll just carry this momentum a little bit further. I don't know what this means for the rest of this series, but super impressive start by them. And yeah, it's been such a weird, we've been ready to break up that team 25 different times. And here they are up 1-0 in the first round.

• 3:27Bill Simmons?

  Rock bottom on Sunday and then on Wednesday. On Sunday, they lose to the Maine Celtics. The G League Celtics basically beat them capped off by a Luca Garza designed Dirk Nowitzki in your face three that basically swings the playoffs, gives, gives Philly a home game in the plan. Then they go and they play that playing game on Wednesday and they're awful and they just stink. And the next day, there's this Tik Tok that somebody did about Palo. Did you see that?

• 4:00Speaker 01

  I did not.

• 4:01Bill Simmons?

  It was like top five worst plays of the plan. First honorable mention, here's Palo Bancaro. And then he would go to the next one and he'd be like, and then the former number one pick of the whatever draft. And each time it was a different intro, but it was just a series of terrible Palo plays. I don't have Tik Tok on my phone, but this got sent to me over and over again because it was on social. And it was basically Thursday was basically the Palo punching bag day. Everybody's like, that's it. Magic suck. It's all Palo's fault. They're going to fire Mosley, blah, blah, blah. And they killed Charlotte on Friday.

• 4:39Bill Simmons?

  Like they killed them and it was this defensive thing that they put on where it was like, holy shit, where'd this come from? It captured my attention. I didn't know if they'd be able to sustain it. The thing that was stunning about tonight, Zach, or today, I guess. They basically took Durin out of the game. I voted for him second team all NBA. He was like an afterthought. He might as well have been a backup center and they really bullied him and didn't let him get any of the pick and roll stuff and Pistons moved back to being the Cade centric team. That was our biggest fear with them in the playoffs. It's like Cade or bust. I don't know how they did it in two hours.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Worst case scenario for the Pistons, right? It's like, it's Cade and like who, anyone else going to create any offense? It's, we don't really know who to play down the stretch of games. Do we need to take a Sar Thompson out because of the spacing issues? Can we play Thompson and Durin together heavy minutes late in the game? Karis Levert played four minutes. Here comes Kevin Herter. It was like exactly the sort of nightmare scenario. Yeah. Jalen Durin had the one face up basket in the second half from the right wing. I think he spun and put a layup over Wendell Carter Jr. And I was like, oh, I haven't seen that like the entire game. That was the whole story of Cade's absence was Jalen Durin stepping up. And I think they barely, the Magic had a smart game plan to just take everybody else out of the game and make Cade do everything.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  And part of that was they switched that Cade Durin pick and roll over and over and over again. And Cade, and Cade beat it. He would beat Wendell Carter Jr. Off the dribble now and then. And then they just swarm him and say, hey, you gotta either shoot a contested shot or pass to one of these non shooters. What we're not giving you is Jalen Durin on the roll. Then the times that they tried to give it to him on the mismatch on the other end of that switch, they just swarmed off everybody else, deflected the pass. Suggs was everywhere. They just didn't get, let him get any easy buckets. They didn't let that pick and roll get rolling in a way that unlocked anyone else on the team. It was a nice, for a coach that we've all given a lot of flack to all year, deservedly so. Jamal mostly, it was a solid, solid game plan from him today.

• 6:39Bill Simmons?

  I thought they played like an A plus on Friday. They were really good today. I mean, first of all, they basically only played seven guys. Like guys eight, nine played, I don't know, seven, eight minutes, but they basically went with the seven man rotation. And those five guys, you know, Suggs has been, the minutes have been all over the place this year for him. Even in the playing game on, on Friday, I think he played 22 minutes, but he played 36 today. And really looked like the Suggs from the guy that basically got that giant contract. Just a two-way, all over the place, most annoying player possible, everywhere, hands touching everything. So they had that. Palo was way more in control.

• 7:24Bill Simmons?

  You know, we've seen this with him sometimes where he looks better in the playoffs than the regular season. I don't really understand that. Franz looked healthy. And Carter yet again, because he looked good Friday night, too. You watch Carter, you're like, all right, that, that's, there's something there. So you watch all of it together. I was thinking of the playoffs. I thought about this yesterday, watching Atlanta and the Knicks too. When you watch the two teams and you're like, if I didn't know anything, if I didn't know the seeds, records. Do these teams seem around the same level, right? And Atlanta seemed like a hair below the Knicks, but seemed like they could play with them. We're going to talk about that game later. This game, it was like, you wouldn't have known who the one seed was and who the eight seed was if you came out of a coma, right? If you just woke up, you missed six months of the season, you were like, who's the one seed? Was it Orlando?

• 8:09Bill Simmons?

  No, no, it was actually Detroit.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Well, Detroit, you know, all the things they do to exert their will and their physicality on everybody else don't work as well against Orlando. Cause Orlando's as big and strong and nasty as the Pistons are. And you said, you said a key word, which is health. Anthony Black is back and Franz Wagner is back. And like, maybe that's just part of what this is and why we didn't see this team together the whole year. When Suggs is in and out of the lineup, I've called him the sort of skeleton key of their team before. Their starting five has been good all year when healthy. They're just never healthy, but they played so goddamn hard on both ends of the floor. There was so much force, so much speed, so much decisiveness that part of me was like, and I mean this in a sort of backhanded way. Are they like the least accomplished flip the switch team in the history of the NBA?

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Have they been like waiting to play this hard all year and they just barely scrounged in by the eighth seed? Cause this was a completely different team than some of the, the, the bad lay-in egg games they've had.

• 9:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I thought Friday night, what they did to Charlotte, just, it wasn't just a 30-point blowout. Charlotte, over and over again, they weren't getting shots off in 24 seconds, or they were getting terrible shots. Like, they demolished an offense that was a top-five offense for most of the season, right? The last two-thirds. And then today, same thing. They took this play with Cade and Durin that's worked all year. That was like the bread and butter for this Pistons team, and they just blew it up. I was looking at the shooting for them. So they shot 30% from three in the Friday playing game. They shot 29% from three today. So you can't look at it if you're like, ah, it's a little fluky with Orlando. It's like, actually, it wasn't that fluky. Like, they kept, on Friday, Charlotte only

• 9:53Bill Simmons?

  had seven offensive rebounds. Today, Detroit only had six offensive rebounds. So basically, they're playing good defense. They're not giving up offensive rebounds. They're taking care of the ball. And you talk about the flip-the-switch stuff. To me, it's like, when you hit rock bottom, like they hit, I'm a big believer of this, especially in football, like teams trying to tell you who they are. I felt like they were trying to tell us who they were in that first playing game and in the Celtics game against the Maine Celtics, where it's like, we're ready, we're ready to go to, to the offseason. We're ready to go to Cancun.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  It was borderline 1-2-3 Cancun. Like, it was pretty bad.

• 10:31Bill Simmons?

  And for the most part, when I see that, I just quit on the team completely. So I can't even imagine what it's like to be an Orlando Magic fan right now. Because there's no way, after the Philly playing game, there's no way anyone could have believed in Orlando after those two games, right? So now, it's like, maybe that's what happened. They had to hit rock bottom. Maybe they had some great team meeting that we don't know about. But they're a completely different team, and, and I, I have to buy into it.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  I mean, they were flying on defense. How many Detroit possessions, even ones that ended up with baskets or drawn fouls, were went like haywire halfway through, though there's a loose ball, there's a deflection, Detroit picks it up and they reconfigure and everything's okay. But if they were like just flying around and on offense, like this has not been a good offensive team in quite a long time. They set real screens, they changed sides of the floor with decisiveness. They like they ran into the catch at full speed. They cut hard like they did everything with such decisiveness and force. And it wasn't like the most sophisticated pretty offense, but they executed their stuff with just vigor and force. And it's like, where has this been? Why have you not played like this the entire year? I don't understand. But if they play like this, this entire series, they absolutely have a chance to win it.

• 11:44Bill Simmons?

  They were, I think, plus 350 or plus 330, something like that to win the game today.

• 11:51Bill Simmons?

  For the series, Fanduel still has them plus 172.

• 11:56Bill Simmons?

  I think that's a mistake. I actually, to me, this is a 50 50 series now because if Orlando, now granted, maybe that's stupid because maybe in game two, they're just going to go back to being the Orlando from a week ago. But I do feel like the switch might have flipped. And here's the thing, Zach. We've, we saw this three years ago with Miami. Miami finished, they were 44 and 38 to 2023 Heat. They were 13 and 12 in their last 25 and they lost the first playing game. And we were like, it's over, they're done. Fuck it. Fuck, fuck the Heat.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  They were on the ropes in the second playing game.

• 12:36Bill Simmons?

  Right. So they win the second playing game and then they beat Milwaukee, the Knicks in Boston, all in order and made the finals again as an eight seed. So

• 12:48Bill Simmons?

  it's conceived, basically, there's a track record for this.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Well, there's one, there's one record of it.

• 12:54Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's for three years ago. It wasn't like it was in 1977.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  I just want to be clear. Are you positing that a Magic finals run?

• 13:00Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Is coming now? Okay. I was about, I was about to be a little.

• 13:03Bill Simmons?

  I'm not. I'm just saying. It seems inconceivable, but we just lived through this three years ago. The difference is that Heat team had actually accomplished some stuff and made the finals in 2020 and had Jimmy Butler, et cetera, et cetera. But this, to me, I wrote this down in my notes. This is a really good example why I think the one seeds in each conference, it should be 2-2-3 and not 2-2-1-1-1 or however we're doing it. There should be some sort of advantage for being the one seed. You look at the trade, they haven't had a meeting. I'm not making excuses for them because I didn't think they played well today. And I thought, I thought Orlando exposed real holes for them that we'll talk about in a second. But they didn't play a meaningful game for what, two and a half weeks?

• 13:47Bill Simmons?

  They had the one seed in the East locked up. Then they just had a week off. They're bringing Cade back in, trying to feel that out, and they really haven't played a game with that kind of intensity that meant something probably in a month. And meanwhile, Orlando has been in this groove of, they had to turn it up in Boston in that fourth quarter when they realized they were losing to the Maine Celtics. They lost. Philly was a playing game in front of a hostile crowd. Then Charlotte to get into the tournament. And then today, like they're, they're kind of in the groove, whereas Detroit isn't. So if I'm Detroit, I'm like, well, that kind of sucks. Like, where did, you know, weirdly, we're like at a disadvantage.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  I've actually come to disagree with you on the 2-2-3 format.

• 14:28Bill Simmons?

  Okay, let's hear it.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  If only because this, I agree that the number one seed should have a little bit more benefit to it than it does now. I think that might skew, I mean, I'd have to think more about it. I think that might skew it too much because the NBA is already the most predictable league in US professional sports. And extending the first round series from five to seven, two decades ago, sort of decreased the upset chances. Like in a seven game series, the best team slash healthiest team is likely going to win. I do, so I would keep the 2-3-2 or 2-2-1-1-1, however you want to do it. I do think that you should at least get to pick your first opponent. And I know the NBA scheduling people will be like, it's impossible. We can schedule an 82 game season with all these major seasons, Emirates Cup and all

• 15:10Speaker 01

  this stuff, but we just absolutely cannot do that one thing because it messes up our ability to schedule. The playoffs because this is a case where I think Detroit probably picks Philly instead of Orlando and it has an easier time and your Celtics then get Orlando. So I, I, I'm trying to split the difference a little bit, but I, by the way, I do agree with you. I don't think Detroit played very well today and they, they were like a little frazzled. And if you want to look at the frazzledness of it, like those plays where Palo was isolating on the wing. And they would load up their defense to him like shade to him and just forget. Other guys were just standing by the basket and just, oh, we could just give the ball to Jalen Dern, like very basic. Help the helper kind of stuff and they just let go. They just were like, I, they were a little.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Frazzled, I thought, and I think game two, they will not be as frazzled. Histories always suggest that a, a big home favorite that loses game one tends to route the other team in game two. So I'm expecting Detroit to even the series and then it all feels different, but we'll see.

• 16:10Bill Simmons?

  You became like a ringer gambling show host there.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 16:14Bill Simmons?

  Well, good. History, the history of game two. So one of the things with Detroit, we were worried about. They never did anything at the trade deadline.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Well, Kevin Herter was like their fourth best player tonight. They did something at least.

• 16:27Bill Simmons?

  That's my point. Instead of like going all in and trading some real capital and trying to get somebody and strengthening that spot. Kevin Herter was the answer. So Herter plays 18 minutes today. Ron Holland plays 10, Javante Green plays four, Levert plays four, Duncan Robinson plays 26. And that position, you know, they always had probably the worst guy in the floor compared to the five Orlando guys. So I, I thought that was, that was not great for them. And then the, you know, Tobias, five for 15 again. We've kind of seen this from Tobias and when the, when the lights get a little brighter, I thought he had a really good season for them, but he's got to do better.

• 17:09Bill Simmons?

  But this is not a great matchup for him. He's going against two forwards that are better than him.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  I thought he had a good playoffs last year too, against the Knicks. That was a good showing for him in terms of his toughness and his rising to the level. But it did feel, he was one of seven on threes. I think it felt like he was one of 15 on corner threes because they were all open. And it's like, he just got to knock down two or three more of them. And I, the other minutes thing I would look at, you mentioned you added them all off. A Sar Thompson also only 25 minutes. And this is the thing we've been harping on all year with the lack of shooting that the Pistons have is when it's go time. He, he, he might be the best perimeter defender in the entire NBA. And can you play him 35 minutes a game or is the spacing with him and Durin? And then they, they had Beef Stew and Durin playing together a little bit and that was a little clunky. Like is, how can we figure out the equation?

• 17:55Speaker 01

  And it's not good that in game 83, it's like, all right, I guess we're going to close crunch time with Jenkins and Herter and maybe Beef Stew for a little while and like two starters, one starter, three starters. Like, do we even know who to play right now? It's, that's, that makes me a little nervous.

• 18:10Bill Simmons?

  I'm glad you mentioned that because that was the last thing I wanted to talk about. This is a shocking game one collapse at home. And in crunch time, they had Jenkins and Cade playing together, which I bet they haven't done more than, how many times could they have actually probably done that this year? Finished games with those two?

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Finished, I don't know, but there's a decent sample size of minutes in there. They're plus 10 per 100 possessions or something and in a decent sample of minutes. But yeah, but, but again, it's a difference.

• 18:34Bill Simmons?

  Those two, Durin wasn't out there. Stewart was the center. Uh, Herter was out there. It was just, it was just odd. This is the number one seed. They almost won 60 games. I, I, listen, I was on texting with my dad for two days leading up to the weekend. Um, about who would we rather see? You know, Orlando or Philly? Who would you rather want for that seven, eight? And I was like, I don't want to see Orlando, even though they looked so bad in that Sunday game because they're physical. You know, there's cheap shop potential with them. I just think Philly with no Embiid just feels like an easier ride for us, right? And then Orlando looks like shit in that game. My dad's like, I told you we should have played Philly. And then today he flipped again. He was like, I, I told you Orlando would have been a problem.

• 19:19Bill Simmons?

  Like my dad can't remember, uh, what argument we've had. But Charlotte versus Orlando, when you see how teams were blowing up Charlotte, I'm sure Detroit's now looking at that like Khan was clearly not a hundred percent healthy. I'm sure Detroit's looking at that like, man, that could have been a lot easier of a series. We were way more physical than them.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  I hope Detroit is looking at none of that and just looking at themselves and looking at the standings and looking in the mirror and saying, let's just come kick the shit out of this team in the next game. We've won 60 whatever games. Like this isn't about them. It's not about Charlotte. It's not about who we could have played and wah, wah, wah. If we could pick our opponent, let's go out and kick some butt.

• 19:58Bill Simmons?

  I'm more concerned than you.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  I'm not unconcerned. I'm just like, let's like, if, let's take, if they win game two, the series starts to feel a little, you know, these swings go up and down. I'm not gonna go crazy after game one. I expect them to win game two. If they don't, then obviously it's full on panic time.

• 20:16Bill Simmons?

  I'm more concerned than you because I, like normally when we have an upset like that, it's like, oh, somebody shot 20 for 48 from three or, or the best guy on the other team got in foul trouble. There's some sort of dumb variable. This what, there was no dumb variable. Orlando just played way better than them and they were tougher than them and weren't afraid of them. In fact, they weren't afraid of them.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  And took 19 less free throws, by the way.

• 20:37Bill Simmons?

  Right. The fact that they weren't afraid and weren't surprised at all what was happening would be the thing that scared me. I think this is gonna be, I, I just can't believe Orlando 180'd us. And by the way, they might just 180'd us back. That's how Detroit gets back in the series. Orlando just turns into the team from 10 days ago. And they have some injury guys too. Like, I don't know if I trust Suggs to play, be healthy for two weeks. I don't know if I trust Franz. Who knows?

• 21:06Bill Simmons?

  The other one that we watched tonight was Spurs Portland.

• 21:10Bill Simmons?

  And, uh, you know, it wasn't surprising. San Antonio won pretty easily. The color coordinated sections.

• 21:19Bill Simmons?

  I have some thoughts.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  I, I loved it. You, you're gonna be a Grinch on this?

• 21:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yes, I am.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  What do you want? You, you just want, what do you want? Just one color all the way around?

• 21:34Bill Simmons?

  You've won five titles as a franchise. It's not the time for gimmicks. Act like you've been there before.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Every franchise does this though. They'd usually just do one color. Is it just the multicolors that's sticking in your craw?

• 21:47Bill Simmons?

  I felt like I was at a parade.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 21:50Bill Simmons?

  Every section was a different color. It's been seven years. They won five titles. They had Tim Duncan. They had one of the 10 best players of all time. Who is there at the game? Probably wondering why everybody was in a different section, wearing a different T-shirt.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  He wasn't wondering because they're the Fiesta colors. He was wearing the shirt.

• 22:07Bill Simmons?

  I get it.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  You're like Kramer at the A's walk. You don't want to wear the ribbon. You wanted, you wanted.

• 22:14Bill Simmons?

  This is one of our championship contenders. I don't know. Uh, Wemby.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  I just horrible take, just a horrible take.

• 22:22Bill Simmons?

  That's fine. I don't, I don't put the T-shirt on. I hate the T-shirts. I don't understand the T-shirts. I don't like when the Celtics do them. I just like old school basketball. I don't want to be dressed like everyone else in my section. We've lost our minds.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  You want no, you want like just the old school organ playing, no music, no songs.

• 22:42Bill Simmons?

  Yes, that sounds great. Old school organ sounds amazing. I like the sound of the, of the sneakers screeching. I'm just old. Uh, he did win five titles, so I don't know if he needed, needed gimmicks. Wemby.

• 22:58Bill Simmons?

  Just hasn't edged him. He really just seems like he wants to destroy everybody. It's a pretty great quality for the guy we're pinning our future of the league hopes on. Uh, very Jordan, Kobe. Everyone is my enemy. I'm not here to make friends. I really want to embarrass whoever I'm playing against. You can feel it tonight. Pretty good game. Had a couple of good stretches. Had a stretch in the fourth quarter where he's like, I'm on NBC. I want to put on a little show here. Uh, good times all around. I was impressed by Portland though. I thought they kind of hung around and got some punches in.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  They were frisky. Uh, I'm sure you were thrilled with Scoot's seven for 11 performance. He looked very calm, very collected. They just don't have enough offensive talent. They're a team that's geared toward uh, getting to the rim and they're facing a guy who's just not gonna let you get there unless you want to get embarrassed. And so they're gonna have to make more jump shots than they're capable of. They took 38 threes tonight, which for them is quite a lot. They made, they made 10. And a good first test for the Spurs, I thought, like a nice, physical, like gutty team who's not afraid. They're gonna throw some different defenses at you. They threw the different matchups at Wemby in different times. And then they played super small with Grant at center. It was just like a fun, like, all right, we're gonna, we're, we're not, we're not leaving a lot of cards in our back pocket for this one. We're gonna throw everything we have at you and try to win one game here.

• 24:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I think, I think game three of Portland will be a nice little mini test for them. Be a good crowd. Portland will be fired up. Uh, and I think Portland's pretty good, man. It's, it's hard to believe they're a seven seed. Cause I think if, like if we had done your draft. I don't know if they would have been the seventh team drafted for the if the one seed got to pick who they're playing and then the two seed did.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  I see.

• 24:44Bill Simmons?

  I think, would you, if you were San Antonio, would you have wanted to play Houston or Portland? You definitely would have wanted to play the Lakers if you didn't think Luca was playing.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Well, that but you're letting me pick anyone. I'm just, my draft is I just get to pick from the play in tournament. In which case I probably would have picked Phoenix over, over Portland. Based on how they're coming down the stretch and Phoenix just isn't healthy with Grayson Allen and Mark Williams and all that. But yeah, Portland is a pain in the ass. They're physical. They're tough. They have a lot of weird like sized personnel that allows them to do a lot of different stuff on defense. Scoot's making shots like their, the Thible has completely changed their defense since he got healthy. He's just a complete, a menace to society out there. They're just not fun to play against. You're going to field the Blazers.

• 25:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So Scoot was, how many turnovers did he have? Three?

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Three, you'll take that.

• 25:31Bill Simmons?

  Twenty seven minutes tonight?

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Signing up. One turnover in nine minutes. That's fine.

• 25:35Bill Simmons?

  Looked pretty explosive.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  He did.

• 25:37Bill Simmons?

  I'm going to talk to my business manager tomorrow. Make, make sure my position is still, still stable. One thing on this, there's a lot of stuff going on around the cheap Blazers owner. And I know you talked to people in the league about gossipy stuff like this from time to time. This guy has been a fascination of mine for a little while now. Culminating with the, the story about how he didn't want to do late checkouts for everybody. Couple of days ago and everybody had to check out.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  I forgot where that came out.

• 26:09Bill Simmons?

  Lobby. Uh, I forget who had it.

• 26:13Bill Simmons?

  So you had that today. The big story was that he didn't pay for the two way guys to go to the game.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, Sean Higgin had that.

• 26:21Bill Simmons?

  That, uh, the three two way guys, including Caleb Love, who actually like helped them out during the season and. You know, had like a pretty decent impact for them and they told all those guys to stay home. Then there's a lot of stuff that's been going around really for the last three weeks about that they low balled splitter, that they don't, that he has this theory that you shouldn't have to pay a lot of money for a coach. Maybe he's going to target somebody who will just be happy to take the job. This is a guy who just bought the team, who, Tom Dundon, who spent four point, I think two, five billion on it. And I guess spent all his money on the team and now, now wants to cut back on everything else. It's a pretty

• 27:04Bill Simmons?

  weird way to start your new ownership. I will say that.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Look, if I am a young, if I'm like a 34 year old high school basketball coach in the Portland area and I'm doing some really wacky stuff, like we're pressing every time, we're taking 75 threes, I'm scheduling a meeting. I want to get in there and be like, half a million bucks. I'll, I'll do it.

• 27:25Bill Simmons?

  I'll do it for 200K.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Look, look, look at all the crazy stuff that I'm doing with my team of guys. I don't even have a six footer on the team. We're doing crazy random stuff and give me, I'll, I'll do it. Hmm. Boy, will I be, will this make me like the smartest guy in sports, the most interesting guy in sports if I hire this guy?

• 27:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. He's like, I, I could kind of see it from his point after if he's has like, if you're having drinks with them one night and he's having cigars and he's telling you about his plans. He's like, hey, this whole thing about paying a lot of money for coaches. How come 12 of them get fired every year? And I have to pay this guy four million and this guy five. What, why wouldn't I just zag on that and just pay like a million? I'm going to fire the guy in three years anyway. You'd be like, okay, Tom Dundon, it's a good plan.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean,

• 28:14Bill Simmons?

  Go for it.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Remember the famous high school coach in Arkansas who never punted? He was like the first guy to never punt. If there's anybody in the Pacific Northwest doing something like that in basketball, get, get in a room with Tom Dundon right now because Tiago Splitter's done an awesome job. I think he should be the favorite to be the coach. I think, I wouldn't even mind if they just gave him the job right now. I don't know if they're going to offer him enough money to make it worth his while. It's just because there's going to be other jobs that open up and the rumors going around are interesting. But yeah, just the high school coaches in Portland, get out there.

• 28:44Bill Simmons?

  Why does it still say acting coach for Tiago Splitter?

• 28:49Bill Simmons?

  He's been the coach since game two. He's been the coach for six straight months and the other coach sold his house and got indicted.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Well, just in case, you know.

• 29:02Bill Simmons?

  Can we just call him the coach? Like, he's been the coach for.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Also, the Blazers are 42 and 40 with like, pretty weird personnel, a low offensive ceiling. Scoots missed a lot of the season. They've had injuries up and down. Drew Holliday's missed a lot of the season. Jeremy Grant, the Jeremy Grant time lord is just a walking 40 games of basketball. He was great tonight. And here they are with like, a real identity of defense and toughness and building around Denny Abdi as like, the point forward. And they play super hard. I just tonight, I mean, they're not leaving a lot of strategic cards on the table. They're trying a lot of different stuff and, and I think he's done a great job. And who else do you want to be the coach?

• 29:43Bill Simmons?

  Their picks, they have, they own, oh, their first goes to Chicago this year. And then they get some of these Milwaukee swaps, 28 and 30, they get swaps. They get Milwaukee's first in 29. They have some good assets. They're a pretty good salary cap situation, except for the Drew contract. And if I was a Portland fan, I'd feel good about all of this. But now, we just had El Cheapo took over the team. I don't think they've had their, they haven't figured out their arena thing yet. And this guy's like, you know, Donald Sterling had some good ideas, not the bad stuff. I'm just talking about the ownership stuff.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Don't go there. Don't go there now.

• 30:21Bill Simmons?

  The way he cut costs was pretty smart.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Nope. Um, El Cheapo.

• 30:27Bill Simmons?

  El Cheapo. By the way, Portland fans, feel free to take that.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Here's the bright line you cannot cross as an NBA owner. You want to nickel and dime the coach? Okay. Like, I don't think, doesn't seem great. You want to like, skimp around meals and all this stuff? Like, fans aren't really going to find that stuff out. What you can't do, and I don't think anyone has done it since, um, who, who was it that sold the pick? You cannot sell your first round pick. You can sell seconds for a couple million bucks. If you sell, if you trade your first round pick for cash, you should be kicked out of the league immediately.

• 30:59Bill Simmons?

  When was the last time that happened?

• 31:01Speaker 01

  It's been about 10 or 12 years, I think. And I'm blanking on which, which pick it was.

• 31:05Bill Simmons?

  Sarver was the most famous one. Remember that?

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:08Bill Simmons?

  He, he basically sold the Luol Deng pick for.

• 31:13Bill Simmons?

  It was like the seventh pick in the draft.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Well, and they dumped, they dumped all these picks to Seattle and trades that helps the Thunder become what the Thunder are like step.

• 31:22Bill Simmons?

  That was bonkers.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  The other thing, we're saying this, we're sort of making light of it, but I think as long time old, I'm old, you're old NBA fans, like this is a franchise that we actually care a lot about. The Blazers are an awesome franchise. They're up there all by themselves now without Seattle. They have a fun history. They have incredible fans. It's like, yeah, let's make sure we take care of this, this fan base.

• 31:45Bill Simmons?

  It's pretty brutal because you, but the thing I'd be worried about just in general with some of these teams is these teams have become so expensive that people are leveraging themselves to, you know, just to pull it off. And then they get it and now they're looking at it like, well, shit, we can cut here, we can cut here, we can cut here. And it's like, that's not how the NBA works. You, you gotta spend at least a modicum of stuff. Not cheaping out on a coach is insane. If that's like really the strategy, that's insane. Now with it, there's bad coaches every year. There's, there's bad hires. We've seen situations like the Suns paying three, four coaches at the same time. That's also insane. But

• 32:29Bill Simmons?

  to, to be like, this is like a strategic advantage. If we go this way and I'll be able to save 11. Coaching is the one place that there's no cap. This is just like a straightforward, you know, this is a luxury basically for your team. If you're gonna, if you're gonna cheap out on that, that's a bad sign.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Agree. And boy, are they up against a tough opponent in the San Antonio Spurs and Wemby, who just had four different highlights today that were outrageous.

• 32:59Bill Simmons?

  Including near the end when he almost dunked from, his head was behind the backboard basically. And then it looked like he was, it feels like he's really a threat to get seriously hurt by the backboard twice a game.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  He's very tall and he jumps and his limbs fly around, but that transition thing where he, he went around the back on Denny Avdia, then he hit him with the righty in and out dribble, then he spun back to his left and like, it wasn't even a dunk as much as it was just like, he jumped and his hands were in the basket. It was like, I don't even know, like, what am I supposed to do now? Well, how can I go on with the rest of my day when that happened?

• 33:34Bill Simmons?

  Well, I'm going to rule out Portland for Yanis. I know I mentioned that too a week ago. This, this guy doesn't even want to pay a coach. I'm pretty sure he's not gonna pay for Giannis and his two brothers to be on the team.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Can I shout out? No, I mean, I didn't, I didn't, I was, I was with you on the like, they could be a third team in a Giannis trade or a fourth team. I did not see Giannis.

• 33:54Bill Simmons?

  It would be funny if he traded for Giannis and then refused to fly Giannis' brothers to the playoff game. That would go well.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  How about just not even sign? Like, what about not signing them? I mean, the Bucks ended up, they had all the, all the brothers, Alex, Thanasis.

• 34:08Bill Simmons?

  There's a fourth brother though. They didn't go all in. They went, they went, they went mostly in, but there was still one last brother. I actually thought, what?

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Kostas head coach of the Blazers? Discount head coach?

• 34:23Bill Simmons?

  Oh, interesting. You just do Thanasis.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because Thanasis seems to be the one that Giannis is, like, kind of, that's his real conciliary. So you hire Thanasis? Yeah. Pretty fun. Okay, so if you had to pick, we're gonna talk about all the other games in a second after we do a break, but if you had to pick the upset heading into our break that we're about to take, would you go Houston or would you go Orlando? I mean, Lakers or Orlando, I should say.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  I, I just, I'm still parking the Houston Lakers thing over here because the injuries make it so weird. So I'm just like, I want to see more of the series before I really digest it. So I'll, I'll just say Orlando for now. Kudos, kudos to, uh, kudos to the Magic. Great showing the last couple of games.

• 35:09Bill Simmons?

  I really respect and appreciate what Adam Silver and the NBA did staggering out that Lakers-Houston series.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  When's game two? Wednesday?

• 35:19Bill Simmons?

  I, it's going until like July. I think, I think game seven is July 15th.

• 35:26Bill Simmons?

  It's just going and going and going. It's going on forever.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Well, the first round's always like that, though. There's always, this is, this is the time, you mentioned like Orlando has injury risks on their team. This is the round where it's like you get extra days off for Jalen Suggs and Franz Wagner, and if he were healthy, Joel Embiid, but alas.

• 35:41Bill Simmons?

  Well, so tomorrow we have Toronto, Cleveland, Atlanta, New York, Minnesota, Denver. Three really good ones. And then, uh, the, the Lakers play on Tuesday. So they push that one for the three days. And then the next one is

• 36:00Bill Simmons?

  Friday.

• 36:04Bill Simmons?

  Just classic. Love it.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  If the Mets-

• 36:06Bill Simmons?

  I would've done it too.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  If the Mets are still on a losing streak by game three of Lakers Rockets, I might-

• 36:14Bill Simmons?

  That might be it.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  I might be drinking on the Sunday podcast with you then at that point.

• 36:19Bill Simmons?

  That'll be really exciting.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, next Sunday, we'll be coming off,

• 36:24Bill Simmons?

  ironically, Lakers Houston, game four.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Great.

• 36:27Bill Simmons?

  That'll be next one. All right, we're gonna take a break. We're gonna come back and we have six other series that we have to dive into next. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. The NBA postseason is here and FanDuel knows the only thing better than watching your favorite team win is winning along with them. FanDuel, the best place to bet the teams, players, and plays during their playoff run. Build a same-game parlay or try live betting and jump in after tip-off. Don't forget with FanDuel, you get paid instantly when you win. Download the FanDuel Sportsbook app now and play your game. 21-plus select states or 18-plus DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by PayPal.

• 37:12Bill Simmons?

  We've seen some legendary athletes don the number four jersey. Now, I can't name names, but you guys know who I'm talking about. In fact, if you look at my studio, there's a framed picture of one of my favorite number fours. He played hockey. Anyway, you know what else is game-changing for? PayPal Pay in Four. No fees, no interest, no impact on your credit score, just the flexibility to pay the way that works for you. And it's available at millions of online stores. Pay in Four with PayPal. Subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com/payinfor. PayPal, Inc., NMLS 910457.

• 37:55Bill Simmons?

  All right, we're going to talk about the other six series. There's a lot of fun questions. We'll start with the West, where Lakers, Houston, Houston was a minus 900 favorite when the odds came out for this series and started steadily dropping. And then there was this mystery Kevin Durant injury that I didn't know about till yesterday. When did you find out about it?

• 38:14Speaker 01

  When it was reported, that's all. Yeah.

• 38:17Bill Simmons?

  You did a nice job of hiding it. And then, of course, you knew the Lakers were going to win, even though they're plus two and a half. LeBron had a classic game manager game. Luke Kennard's stock continues to rise. And more importantly, the Rockets just doing exactly what you would think they would do in this situation. Clogged toilet offense, just inexplicable. I don't know why they weren't pressuring more. I didn't understand really anything they did. I thought it was a worse Rockets loss than a better Lakers win, if that makes sense.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  A little bit of both. Definitely the least watchable of all the games so far. It was like, it made a, a rock fight is an insult to rock fights, but I just want to point out a couple of things. Do you know how hard it is to lose an NBA game? Where you take 93 shots and the other team takes 66 shots. You take the same number of free throws. So that's not the reason the other team is taking so, so more fewer official field goals than you. The other team takes 19 three pointers total in the year of our basketball gods 2026, and you get 21 offensive rebounds and you lose by nine. That's, that is mathematically improbable. And congratulations to the Houston Rockets for pulling it off.

• 39:31Bill Simmons?

  And felt like they were out of the game the whole fourth quarter, even though it was not a blowout. Also led to a text from my dad in the third quarter, Zach. Just, I hate the Lakers, was his text. He was just furious that it worked out this way. He thought we were going to get rid of them in the round one, and that's not how it's happening.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Well, tell your dad, tell your dad, buck up. Like, what's the downside? They get a little time to get healthy? Maybe they get a little frisky, a little interesting? I mean, do you want to watch this Rockets team play for two playoff rounds?

• 39:56Bill Simmons?

  I don't. Here's what I did tell my dad. I love that the Laker fans are getting sucked in here. So Luca gets hurt. It's like, we're done.

• 40:06Bill Simmons?

  And now yesterday, KD goes down. LeBron looks pretty spry with a week off. Ayton looked alive. I mean, alive is a bonus for him. And now they're like, man, if we could just, we get by Houston. Luca comes back. Luca versus SGA. He's had success against that team. I love that they're talking themselves into it. It's great. I love watching it from afar.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  You're, you're already gonna just rule out Phoenix's upset chances against the Thunder looking, looking ahead to the second round?

• 40:35Bill Simmons?

  I am gonna rule that out. I, uh, I'm gonna rule it out vociferously. I have some Houston questions for you since you're, uh, you're a smart breakdown basketball guy, dude. It's where you made your bones initially.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 40:48Bill Simmons?

  All right. Question number one about the Rockets. Why do they use Shangun like this? Why?

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Like, like how? Like just, just, hey, there's 11 on the shot clock and nothing has happened. Could you just dribble from 20 feet out? And maybe something good will happen like that?

• 41:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we're gonna try to use you like Denver uses Jokic, who's the best offensive player probably of this century. Can you just do an imitation of that? Why don't they put him near the basket? Why don't they have him posting up, drawing double teams? I don't understand anything with how they use him.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Well, also, um, like, uh, can you, can you do that, but also with no shooting around you at all? So that there's just no passing angle for you to go to. It's just traffic everywhere. Every kick out option is like, I mean, Amen Thompson took two corner threes last night where it was like, I guess this is just all we got. Like, I guess we just gotta take this one. I, you know, look, they're starting Reed Shepard, which is a good, he took a million threes last night. They just need to run that pick and roll combination more, especially when Durant comes back. That's their only like oxygen on offense other than transition, which the Lakers did an okay job at limiting. And offensive rebounding, which they got a lot of. And it's just like, sometimes it feels like that's just their offense is just throw it at the rim and we'll get it. And that's all they got. And it's just too many possessions where there's just no

• 42:05Speaker 01

  concept of shot clock spacing. There was one, I can't remember when it was, it was in the second half. Shangun and Reed Shepard ran an inverted pick and roll on the right side of the floor, which is a great idea. Like, that's a good idea. Your two best offensive players, your best shooter, like do it, do all that. Reed Shepard popped open, like screened and flared out. He was open. Except Shingun couldn't get him the ball because another defender, I think it was Vanderbilt, rotated kinda into the airspace where the pass might go. And the reason Vanderbilt could do that and leave the other side of the floor was that three Rockets players were almost like standing on top of each other in the left corner.

• 42:40Bill Simmons?

  They're clustered.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  And so, and so Shingun had nothing, nothing to do, but just keep dribbling. And there was still 12 on the shot clock and it was as if 12 was the same as two. And like, okay, I guess we can't do anything else. Shingun, just do something. And I don't even remember what happened, but it wasn't good.

• 42:55Bill Simmons?

  Out of all the playoff teams, they're the one that gets like the most, like Legler was doing the Rockets game where just a couple of moments where you just hear the disgust in the announcers' voices. Like, oh, I don't, I don't really know what, what was going on with the spacing in that play, Mike. So you have that. They're really tied to Thompson and I think Thompson's excellent. But I think you could also argue that with the state of the Lakers' offense without all their guys, maybe you should have more shooting and try to outscore them. And maybe at least give five minutes of Shingun surrounded by four shooters and just see what it looks like. I would throw that in. I don't know.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Do they have four shooters? Is that even a feasible lineup for them? I mean,

• 43:39Bill Simmons?

  Well, Jabari and Reed, can you, are there two more anywhere? Is it one of the holidays?

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Easton was seven for seven. They do have a holiday. It's Aaron Holiday. It just, you, you do have to remember, like Fred VanVliet, like the, the lack of guard play other than Reed Shepard on the team is astonishing. And Amen Thompson is not a point guard. He's just an Amen Thompson, which is great. That's what he should be for now. No VanVliet, no Durant. And I was thinking like, when you're, if you're Ime Udoka, your two best offensive players right now by far with Durant out are Reed and Shingun.

• 44:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Do I stagger them? Which is what he opted to do. And I think one of the reasons he opted to do that was if I put Shingun, one of the, one of the things that I was thinking about, maybe the reason why you wouldn't do that rather is if I put Shingun out there without Reed Shepard and without Kevin Durant, like what, who is running a pick and roll with him? Who is like opening up the office? They just have so, and, and Finney Smith has just given them absolutely nothing. He's supposed to be one of these shooters that you'd put out there in a lineup like that. They just don't have it unless they're gonna play guys that aren't playing.

• 44:44Bill Simmons?

  Why don't they run more high screens with Reed and Jabari was my next question? Or any sort of action with the two of them? It just seems like, I always watch Jabari and I go, I feel like there's more there. And I don't think the Rockets agree with me. And that's why they use them this way. But I personally feel like there's more there. Maybe I'm the one that's wrong, but I don't understand that either.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  Probably, I'm guessing if we went back and looked at the personnel, the Lakers would switch it. And so they just, that doesn't mean you give up on it, right? Like you can slip out of it. You can fake screen and flare away. There's ways to do something else when you know the team's going to switch it. I did think it was notable that both teams know that the other offense is going to hunt, respectively Reed Shepard and Luke Kennard. And both teams, I think very smartly, did not have those players guard each other because they're the only real dangerous shooters. I mean, not the only for the Lakers, but the dangerous shooters on the floor. So they put better defenders on there. So if you're going to put those guys in the action, guess what? We're going to switch as many as we can.

• 45:41Bill Simmons?

  Third question. So I would have gone, if it was me.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 45:46Bill Simmons?

  I would have gone into the series if I'm Houston. We don't have Kevin Durant. You know LeBron is going to try to do his LeBron game manager thing. And I thought he, he had a really fun game yesterday. A good throwback, kind of early 90s Magic Johnson type game. I just would have been like, hey, Amon Thompson. You're stuck to this guy for two and a half hours. Like if you're going to play, your only job is to make sure LeBron has a really rough two and a half hours and feels like he's 41 by the end of this game. And that's it. And I didn't feel like they did that either. I, between Smart and LeBron, I would just 94 feet it with everyone I have. Just put miles on them, make them work, you know?

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Well, the only time they were doing that is if you watch, if you go back and watch when Bronny was in the game, Ray Allen Ivy on Houston's bench was saying, press him, press him, press him.

• 46:32Bill Simmons?

  Cause he can't.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Every time. But it was interesting with LeBron, like they put a Kogi on him to start the game. And like a Kogi starting is a problem. It's just another guy that teams are going to ignore, even though he shot it well. And he's got some bulk to him. Anyone else, like LeBron kind of made Tariq Eason look not strong enough. And I think the same thing would happen to Amon Thompson, except he's a better athlete. He can get up vertically a little bit, but I think he would just overpower him and old man, put him under the basket. By the way, kudos to old man LeBron taking back to back hook shots late in the game.

• 47:03Bill Simmons?

  That was fun. I would take my chances with Thompson and just hope the young legs and the athletic ability would do it. We'll see. I mean, this would be a catastrophe for Houston. And I don't even know how they would go into the summer if they lose this series when they, there's no Luca and no Reeves. And this even, I know they lose KD right before and it's a little bit of a weird event, but they should still, come on. And if you, if you come out of this getting bounced at around one, to me, they've moved to the top of the panic playoff team list. I'm ready for a coach firing, I'm ready for a trade, I'm ready, they have some picks to move around. I'm ready for basically anything with them.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Well, and not only that, like if, if, if the Lakers are ever able to get those guys healthy, they become at least a more interesting second round opponent for Oklahoma City than this version of Houston. Now you could sit here and say, wait a second, uh, we have no Van Vliet and we have no Durant. Well, the other team has no Luca and no Reeves and they at least seemed like prepared for how to play without those guys a little bit. They have, they have LeBron who's a genius, I get it, but um, it just, the, the lack of just any idea of what to do was disturbing. Can I give LeBron kudos for another old man thing?

• 48:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Uh, really wonderful performance at, he's, he's allowed to do the thing where he, he shoots and he makes a basket and he thinks he gets fouled and he points at the ref. And the point is like when other players do that, it's a T because the point is, the point is like you specifically were supposed to be in the line of sight to call that foul. But he does it so politely, like he just sort of nods at the guy and the guy nods back and LeBron's like, okay, then he gets away with it. No one does anything. It was just very polite pointing back and forth multiple times in the game.

• 48:45Bill Simmons?

  So you think Jason Tatum should start doing that? Cause he does the sarcastic laugh shrug thing and they hate that.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  They hate, they usually hate the pointing because you're not only saying bad call, you're pointing out, you're pointing specifically to the one of the three that was supposed to make the call you think should have happened.

• 49:01Bill Simmons?

  My big question for this series, if KD, whether he comes back or not, if he's not a hundred percent KD, if he's a limited version of himself, whatever.

• 49:13Bill Simmons?

  What do you do if you're, what's your number one thing to do if you're the Rockets? Cause if you watched them all year, he played basically every game. I think he missed four, played 36 minutes a game. He brought the ball up for them most of the time, especially in the fourth quarter. They ran the whole offense through him and on the fly, I just feel like it has to be Shangoon at this point, but you pointed out earlier, if there are the shooters around him, you just collapse on him. I, what is it? Is it just cross your fingers and hope Reed Shepard turns into the third pick of the 2024 draft? What's the move?

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, Reed Shepard, he took, he took their kind of shots. Yeah. I think you just have to maximize the three of those guys. Um, they're like a good triangle of functional offense, like two guys who can handle the ball and pick and roll, a roller who can pass, you can invert it, you can post them, whatever. Those three guys, although the numbers are just good, not great with them on the floor, that's a roadmap to like, the ball can pop a little bit instead of just, just station to station. Everybody gets it, holds it and looks around for three seconds. By the way, total minutes played leaders for the season. Amen Thompson, Houston Rockets, one. Kevin Durant, Houston Rockets, two. Jabari Smith Jr., Houston Rockets, five. Ime Udoka is becoming like Tibbs 2.0 in, in like a lot of ways right now.

• 50:24Bill Simmons?

  He did this with the Celtics too, that year. He played those guys big minutes. I, listen, I thought their biggest mistake the whole year was Yankin, Shepard, up and down, out of the lineup, in and out. They, you never got a feel of, uh, you know, if they were just going to actually say, all right, dude, here are the car keys. Let's go. And clearly Udoka didn't love the defense and then was frustrated with them. But now they're in a situation where they actually need him. So you have the classic basketball move of, I know I yelled at you a lot and I benched you a few times, but hey, man, let's get past this. Let's move forward. Um, the LeBron piece of this, one last thing. You know, he shows up in 2018, weird first year.

• 51:07Bill Simmons?

  Kind of isn't even on the team the second half of the year.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Kind of like, I like where this is going. I like this. I like this take that's about to come.

• 51:13Bill Simmons?

  Second year.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  It's gonna hurt you a little bit, I think.

• 51:15Bill Simmons?

  Second year, it feels like LeBron's on the Lakers, but then COVID hits, bubble. Third year, seems good.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Well, you just, you just yada yada the NBA championship.

• 51:28Bill Simmons?

  Well, they didn't get to celebrate. I'm, I'm talking about, I'm going to the part of, did LeBron ever feel 100% like a Laker? Or did he feel like LeBron James, who was playing on the Lakers, right? Whereas like Kobe, Magic are like Lakers. And I always felt like there was a Kobe, I've talked about this before, a Kobe LeBron tension. There's a lot of Laker fans who are just like, I love Kobe. LeBron's not a real Laker like Kobe was. This whole run this way, it was one of the first times I felt like, ah, you know, LeBron's been on this team eight years. And they've kind of watched all these different versions of him. And the crowd and just the general atmosphere was kind of like, this is fucking awesome.

• 52:09Bill Simmons?

  I'm so glad LeBron James is on the team. I don't know. There was just something, there was a little bit of a tip last night that I, I don't know. Maybe I'm crazy. What do you think?

• 52:16Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's just undeniably impressive that last man standing is 41-year-old LeBron James. And that's not to say that, that's not to say that they're like, it's anyone's fault that Luca and Reeves are injured. They're just injured. And here's the sky. Okay. Hey, man, we thought the team kind of passed you by. You willingly in the last 30, 40 games of the season, took a backseat. And now we need you. We're calling on you again to summon everything that you have left in your LeBron number one option tank. Even if it might just be playing bully ball in the post and occasionally going out on a fast break. And he's like, yeah, I'll do it. How many minutes? You 38 tonight in game one? I'll give you 38, like whatever. And I'm not going to make big histrionics about it. I'm just going to come out and play and play really well on both ends of the floor.

• 52:56Bill Simmons?

  I think where we were in January and February versus where we are now, we're in a much better place with him. And, and just the Lakers, the eight years that he just spent, where it felt like it was going really badly there. As it was clearly like, man, can this just be Luca's team? Thanks for everything, LeBron. We're ready to move forward to.

• 53:14Bill Simmons?

  We kind of need you, buddy. And we've really liked how you've played the last two months. And this would be a nice little fitting. If you could, if you could just buy two weeks for us, Luca can come back. Pretty interesting stuff. I can't believe he's still doing it the way he's doing it, too. I think he looks the most athletic he's looked like in five, six years. And there's going to be a game before Luca comes back in this series. Where they're going to do, one of my favorite games he ever played was that game seven of 2018 in Boston. When he did the, he played the whole 48 minutes. And controlled the pace of that game. About as well as anybody has ever done it. Like Jordan in Utah in game six in 98 is the best I've ever seen it.

• 53:55Bill Simmons?

  Just, I, I need to do exactly this for us to have a chance and control every moment of this game. The way I'm doing it, or we're not going to win. And LeBron was like that, that game. And I wonder if there's a, he's not the same guy he was in 18, but I wonder if there's a little bit of a variation of that, that he can do in a Rockets game. Where it's just slow and, you know what I mean?

• 54:16Speaker 01

  There also could be still a game in him where the jumper is going and he's getting switches and he just makes like five of seven on step back threes from the left wing in his sweet spot, right? Like that game, like a little like lower lift and penetrating into the paint over and over again. Like he'll, you might have a game like that in him, too. I mean, would you, if, if you, I think I picked Houston in five. And this was before Durant, the Durant news came out, maybe six, I can't remember. Would you, what was your pick and what would you pick now?

• 54:44Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was a stay away. At gunpoint, I would have put Houston, I would have picked them in six or seven. But you knew that, you knew the Lakers were going to win one of the first three games. And you knew Houston was going to blow a stupid game. So I thought it would be three, two after six and figured Houston would win. I did not put any money on this series. I didn't put them in any parlay. Like to me, it was a complete stay away because I don't trust Houston. I haven't liked the way they've looked all year. I don't think they're well coached. I don't think the personnel of the team makes sense. And I just, I thought it was a blowable series, but I also didn't feel strong enough about the Lakers. I think LeBron gets credit too, for whatever Ayton is doing lately. Like JJ gets credit, a bunch of Lakers get credit.

• 55:28Bill Simmons?

  But Aiden looks relatively salvageable now and I laughed the entire summer and offseason. And we talked about it when we did the over unders with House like, oh, this is hilarious. They're talking themselves into eight and the Laker fans are like, hey, and, and I don't know. He's, when he tries, he's a functional center. I think he's like 10th or 11th in rebounds for the season or 12th, something like that. It's not, he's not terrible, I guess is my point. And I thought it was a ridiculous signing, so maybe I was wrong. I don't know.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  I, I was like one of the only people who thought this is going to work. And then it looked like it was very much not going to work. And by work, I kept saying by work, I mean like 16 and eight, 15 and eight. He ended up at 12 and a half and eight, but like he has good touch. He, he's never going to get fouled. He doesn't want, he just doesn't want to finish strong at the rim. He's going to spin away from it. He's got his foibles, but he has good touch and he's a decent passer. And if he just does this thing, just roll and make short jumpers, make floaters, make layups. He should walk in on a team like this to 15 and eight. And like they didn't do anything spectacular in game one. He just like made easy shots for a giant guy.

• 56:38Bill Simmons?

  Is Shengun Yanis as the focal points of a trade more or less realistic to you than it was a week ago?

• 56:45Speaker 01

  More for sure. I mean, if, if they melt down in this series, I think.

• 56:49Bill Simmons?

  I think, I think the stock has gone way up on that one.

• 56:52Speaker 02

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• 57:51Bill Simmons?

  Um, OKC Phoenix, which was a pretty catastrophic blowout in game one. Big question for you. Will Dillon Brooks make it out of this series alive? What happens as the ship starts going down? And he gets more and more frustrated. What is he capable of?

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Well, will he talk to the media if there's, if there's a conflagration? Remember he did, that was the whole thing. He got, he got into stuff and he was like, I don't want to talk to the media. I do, I do like, I, I mean, you would know this. Was there an over under for how many minutes into the series before he picks up a flagrant foul? We did not get to five. He picked up a flagrant foul immediately. At least I'll say this, like, he took 22 shots tonight. That OKC's defense and it just reminded you that as great as they are in the regular season, they hit the frenzy switch when the playoffs start. And it just is like, what are we even supposed to do? And when you get into that mode, what you end up doing is like, I guess Dillon Brooks is going to take 22 shots and most of them are going to be like contested leaning twos.

• 58:49Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  On the pick and roll, which is not what you want him to do. But yeah, it was like, uh, you know, they had their flagrants, dueling flagrants. Hartenstein got a very similar one and you know, it's, he'll get into some stuff and it's just, is Dort going to engage? Are we going to get like the Brooks Dort, uh, like.

• 59:04Bill Simmons?

  I'm waiting for it.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it could, it could happen, but.

• 59:06Bill Simmons?

  It's a little like in a hockey series when the two enforcers are just skating around. You're just kind of waiting for them to be on the ice together. Phoenix goes from beating Golden State on Friday night. Golden State looking old and creaky the whole game to then going into this OKC buzzsaw less than 48 hours later. I wrote this down.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 59:26Bill Simmons?

  I think Chet is clearly OKC's second best guy now, whereas last year was two A, two B with him and Williams. But, and I mean, best guy by, I think he is

• 59:38Bill Simmons?

  easily their second most important indispensable guy now. And when he's really good, like he was really good today. That's when they look the most unbeatable. So I was like, hmm, I wonder if the splits back this up. So there in the regular season, they're 56 and 13 when he played. In the 56 wins, he shot 57% and 38% from three. And in the losses, he shot 49% and 26% from three. And scored three more points a game in the wins. I mean, it's a small thing, but. I think when he's playing good and he's shooting threes and they're going in, it's kind of like, oh, well, now what do we do? You can't go small ball against them when they're, when he's playing well. And because I was trying to, I was watching them today, trying to think like, what would the Celtics do against this team?

• 1:00:23Bill Simmons?

  They'd probably try to go a little bigger, but ultimately end up with Tatum at the five and try to go a little smaller. But if Chet's playing well, can you even do that? So I don't know. To me, he's the clear number two now.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I, I get what you're saying. And I think a lot of that has to do with Jalen Williams having missed most of the season and a bunch of really good wings sort of emerging in his stead. That makes him feel more indispensable.

• 1:00:46Bill Simmons?

  They can cover up for him when he's not out in the same way they can't with Chet.

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  I, I do think his size, Jalen Williams' size on the wing and his two-way play and his ability to make, be a secondary creator is gonna, it merges more and more important. But the thing with Chet that is, I've said this before is like, you know, Phoenix is starting small against their double big lineup, which means a wing is going to be covering Chet. It was Dillon Brooks at points. It was Devin Booker at points. And, you know, he's not going to be the back down powerhouse guy against those guys. That's just not what he is, but he's really gotten better. And he was one really early in the game. I just face up, spin, rise up for a jump shot from 13 feet away that you can't touch. You're not even in my line of sight. He's really steady and good on that shot. And then you throw in the defense. By the way, that Shea block today, when he rotated over and got Igadaro at the rim.

• 1:01:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  I mean, I hate to be the guy that's like, that one thing is why he's the MVP. To me, that epitomizes why I give him the slightest edge over Joker in the MVP battle. It's like he's this, that is a sensational defensive play. And he's got one or two of those, like every single game. That was an incredible, incredible block.

• 1:01:53Bill Simmons?

  OKC has the 12th pick, thanks to the Clippers losing. And you haven't thrown yourself into this draft and don't normally do. It's a really weird draft because there's a top four of guys who all have all NBA potential. And I think if you said, how many of the top four will be in the all NBA? The over under were probably two and a half and I would go over. But then five through 12, there's a bunch of really good guys too. And most of them are guards. And usually when there's a cluster of guards like that in a row, not every team needs a guard.

• 1:02:26Bill Simmons?

  Which means one guard who you feel like should have been six or seven is all of a sudden available at 11 or 12. It's a little terrifying that their Golden State 11, OKC at 12 can get like major, major dudes. But the thing I was thinking, if you're them, would you try to move up? Is this the moment where you try to cash in the picks overload and some of the players you have and do the 150 cents for a dollar kind of trade and try to move up from 12 to the top four? Cause they have the assets, including they have 12th and 18th this year. They have a bunch of future picks. They have a pick swap with the Clippers next year. Doesn't look like they're getting that Utah pick this year. And they have a bunch of their own picks.

• 1:03:10Bill Simmons?

  They have some really good young players. Wallace could be on the table potentially. They could think about that, but would you, would you consider that? Or would it depend on how the season turned out?

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  And the target would be almost like, just like a top whatever pick in the draft. It's that almost restarts the salary clock in some ways. And that's, that's the sort of issue that they're going to be dealing with. Look, anything's possible for them. They for sure will and have looked at trades like that in prior drafts. They'll do it again, I'm sure. In this draft, and all you're doing is getting me very excited for my favorite event of the year, which is the lottery. And by the way.

• 1:03:44Bill Simmons?

  You're going again. This is your 15th straight year.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  You, um, I, you can't keep me out. You can't keep me out.

• 1:03:50Bill Simmons?

  You love sad GMs.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  If you, if the NBA ever tries to keep me out, I'm going like the Bobby Valentine in the dugout disguise. And yeah, no, I'm with Ernst and Young. It's just me, Mr. I'm Ernst. And by the way, top, their last two first round picks, Topich and Sorber, who everyone forgets, but they just got, have gotten, they haven't been able to play. They have these other two like first round picks just sitting there. Uh, it's, it's unbelievable.

• 1:04:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I was looking at the teams that could go in the top four, trying to figure out who would actually be receptive to a trade back to try to pick up a bunch of assets. It would be really hard for me to trade out of this top four. But if I was OKC, if they were trading up, I think the guy they would target, knowing nothing, um, just how prest he thinks would be Caleb Wilson, the North Carolina player who's probably going fourth, who I would describe, if you watch like a 12 minute, have I sent you the YouTube clips of him yet?

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 1:04:48Bill Simmons?

  I would describe his YouTube, here's the best possible version of him in a 12 minute clip. Shawn Kemp in the mid 90s cross with Chet.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:04:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but no three, can't shoot threes. But that kind of athleticism and rim protection and just like electric.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  You had to pick a son, you had to pick a sonics guy, huh?

• 1:05:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I did. I had to pick a sonics guy. But um, but I do wonder is this year they take a swing? And then the other question is, would J D be on the table or Wallace? But we'll find out.

• 1:05:24Bill Simmons?

  The only thing I had was Phoenix, I think they boosted Jalen Green's trade value enough in in that Golden State game and maybe even in this series that now you can think about, can we turn him and other stuff into, can we roll the dice with Ja Morant or something like that? Do we even want to do that?

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Or no.

• 1:05:43Bill Simmons?

  Do we even want to do that? But like somebody or Zion, would you, is there a roll the dice guy that you could use Jalen Green as the lure for and try to go with a higher upside who's not a guard? So probably their best three guys are guards.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  Zion's an interesting name. It was also interesting to me that Joe Dumars came out and just said, we're not trading him. Stop asking us. I'm like, I don't understand. It was like, it was like, why, remember, I think it was Chris Haynes tweeted like a month before the trade deadline. Hey, Pelicans just closed for business. They're not trading any of these guys. I'm like, wait, what? The trade deadline's in a month. Like, why? You're closed for business? Is this some bizarro, like very transparent? Actually, we're open for business if you make us a better offer. Why are you announcing all these things? But yeah, Jalen Green is a roller coaster. Like, the Suns are just at a massive talent deficit in this series, just in terms of shot creation and offense and shooting. They just don't, they just don't have enough. I'd be, I'd be mildly surprised if they won a game.

• 1:06:36Bill Simmons?

  It's got to burn Golden State a little bit because they couldn't even play two games in a row without looking, without Porzingis and Curry both looking like they had just played in a seven game series, even though they'd played one game on Wednesday night. But I'm sure they feel like.

• 1:06:52Bill Simmons?

  And we're probably, if we were healthy, we're probably better than that team. Um, OKC, Phoenix, would you go sweep?

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  I picked sweep. That was my official, my official pick was, uh, was OKC in four.

• 1:07:02Bill Simmons?

  My favorite bet, um, my favorite parlay bet, which I posted yesterday, was OKC and Phoenix to be end in four or five. And San Antonio and Portland to end in four or five, which combined was like even odds. I thought, I don't see any way either of those series goes to six. The West series, that is good.

• 1:07:22Bill Simmons?

  And I thought was the best game that we've seen of, uh, of the first six.

• 1:07:29Bill Simmons?

  Denver, Minnesota.

• 1:07:32Bill Simmons?

  I thought Minnesota played really well and they lost. So if you're Minnesota, I mean, the, the big thing for, for them is Edwards doesn't look 100% healthy.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  I think that's fair.

• 1:07:43Bill Simmons?

  Let's say he's, looks 90% healthy, but there's a little piece missing that, you know, I don't, I don't, there's the recklessness that he doesn't have because he's obviously not 100% healthy. I really liked how they played. I thought that was one of the best go bear games I've seen in a while. Thought he was excellent. Um, and I thought they went toe to toe with them the whole game. And I thought they really made Denver have to play well to beat them. Um, I thought that game was awesome. Like to me, these are two of the best seven teams in the league.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  It's a fun matchup. This is the Robert match of three playoff series. Everyone now knows that in the last three years, they've played 29 times. It's 15, 14 Denver. It's an awesome stat.

• 1:08:20Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Uh, I thought they played a decent game. I'm a little lower on, on how Minnesota played in game one than you are.

• 1:08:27Bill Simmons?

  What didn't you like?

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  I, there were, I, I thought Randall again had just an up and down game where a couple lapses on defense that I didn't love. Um, a couple.

• 1:08:35Bill Simmons?

  That's happening every Randall game though.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, they just, they weren't as clean defensively as they're going to need to be on some of, on some of Denver's best stuff. And it was just like, okay, by Ant's standards. I, I didn't think they played a good, I thought they played like a B, B minus game. Uh, I thought Denver also played pretty well. It was a gritty game. That was a gritty, like Denver had to dig that one out. It was not easy. Jokic had a bunch of turnovers early, including the one where he just rammed into Gobert like three times. Like, I'm just going again. I'm going again. Just lost the ball.

• 1:09:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Minnesota, Denver shot 10 for 36 from three.

• 1:09:10Bill Simmons?

  So that's the one thing if you're Denver, like we can do better than that. But I thought everything else, I don't know. I really liked that Denver team. I had, I thought the best, I don't know if they're gonna win the title, but I thought the best value bets heading into the playoffs were Denver, like Denver to make the finals, Denver to play the Celtics, Denver to play the Knicks, stuff like that. The case against them is that this road is gonna be so difficult. And I think Aaron Gordon now, I don't mind saying this, one weekend into the playoffs, Aaron Gordon now has become the number one, oh God, is he gonna get up? Is he okay? He's become that, he went down three times yesterday. And my fear with them is can you get 10 weeks out of Aaron Gordon?

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  I think that's everybody's fear. I've called his lower body the biggest X factor in the league this year because there's, even if they had Watson and not Aaron Gordon, they're just a completely different team when Aaron Gordon plays. The, the power and force that he brings on both ends of the floor, the vertical aspect, the chemistry with Jokic, like there's just, Peyton Watson does a lot of stuff really well. He does some stuff offensively that Aaron Gordon can't do quite as well. He guards point guards and, and smaller guards better than Aaron Gordon does at this point. He, he just, there's just no replacing what Aaron Gordon brings, the level of force and just monstrous offense and defense force that he brings. It's just, it, so we'll see. I mean, it's one game. He did go down a few times and that's my number one concern about them too. He's a long slog, man. It's a long

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  slog and like they're set up for, I mean, we'll see how this series goes, but like they don't, they don't have like a, hey, we might be able to wipe them out in four or five on the roadmap for them.

• 1:10:47Bill Simmons?

  And that's why I was higher on how Minnesota looked yesterday than you. Cause some of the other stuff they can fix as the series goes along. But I thought from a physicality standpoint, in a game one, we saw these game ones where somebody can, teams usually throw like a good quarter and a half. And then as third quarter, all of a sudden they're down 15. You're like, what happened? You know, that Cleveland game yesterday, I was like, what happened? It was a two-point game. Now Cleveland's up 18.

• 1:11:14Bill Simmons?

  I thought Minnesota knew what they wanted to do. Were really physical. I thought Gobert had a great plan against Joker. Joker still ended up, what do you have, like 25, 14, 11, something like that, but he really had to work for everything. They threw everybody at Murray. And I thought they were really, Randall was a nightmare for a lot of the, you know, some of the weird stuff that he was doing. But I liked the physicality he had with Gordon where he was like really trying to big boy enforcer him a little bit. I think my sense from them is they feel like we can be really physical with this team and maybe have an advantage with that. So from that, they accomplished it. I just don't know if Ant, I don't know if they can beat Denver if Ant's not 100%.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, they need him to be on par with Jokic. He's the best player in the series and he was good and he had, he had moments like he, he had, he made the right reads out of the pick and roll. Most times they put two on him and he had a couple of moments where one where he split, I think Jokic on the pick and roll and went up and made a lefty layup. That left the, the crew astonished. And then he had one where I like when they do this, when they, he had Aaron Gordon switched on him. And instead of running a second pick and roll or anything, they were just like, you know what? He can't stay in front of you. Just ISO. And he blew by him and I remember if he drew a foul or, or made a layup or, or both, but he had, he had moments, but, and they need Randall like what, just to play. They need Randall to be a legit, like this is a guy that was in the all NBA conversation for a couple of years, made a couple of NBA teams.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  And to your point about Gordon, anytime he has anybody on him other than Gordon, he's going to have to win that matchup, whether it's Spencer Jones or Cam Johnson, or even a smaller player. Like he's just like Gordon is a beast. The other guys, he should be able to move around and, and then start kicking the ball out a little bit.

• 1:12:57Bill Simmons?

  The other good thing from Minnesota, Ayo looked like he belonged in the series and was at the speed of it. And it's probably going to close for them. I thought it was interesting with Denver. Brown played 21 minutes, but was out there late and.

• 1:13:12Bill Simmons?

  Was pretty important down the stretch like they were using him as a ball handler and and leaning on him and which you know that's a guy they didn't have last year but so they played nine guys Valanciunas only played seven minutes and Jones played nine so they're really going seven and Joker played 40 it was it felt like sometimes in a series the game ones feel super important and other times they feel like a tester this one felt like Minnesota was going into it going we can steal this let's steal this let's steal game one so I'm excited for game two I have a confession for you okay um on Tuesday I did my award picks yeah and I did MVP

• 1:13:52Bill Simmons?

  and I did this long thing about how I couldn't believe I wasn't voted for Joker and SGA and I was trying to be fair and rational about it and SGA they won 10 more games they were the one seed and he was the best clutch player in the league and four straight 31-point seasons and but then I was like I just can't believe I'm not voting for Joker I he had the best offensive I've never seen an offensive season like that he's one of the best players and I just so anyway we ran it we cut it as a video and I watched it on social media and what I saw was a person who was confused and didn't have a lot of conviction in his choice and I was a little embarrassed by it I was like

• 1:14:36Bill Simmons?

  I'm doing gymnastics not to pick Jokic who is the best player in the league and is the most valuable to his team player in the league and instead I'm doing these mental gymnastics because SGA is on the on the best team and he's fucking awesome and look either guy could be the MVP it's and Wemby could have been the MVP it was an awesome thing so anyway because the league did their stupid appeal thing where they didn't tell us that we could even vote until Thursday I had three more days to think about it got the text on Friday send your picks in please from Mark

• 1:15:10Bill Simmons?

  I voted for Joker. I changed my pick.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  This is like.

• 1:15:14Bill Simmons?

  I did. I did a La La Land, no, I did a La La Land Moonlight. I changed my pick. I was like, what am I doing? How can I now vote for Joker? And, uh, and I feel, I, I feel not awesome about it because I thought SGA had an awesome year too, but I just think Joker is the best guy in the league. I think he means the most to his team.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  What a plot twist. He was dead the whole time. Unbelievable.

• 1:15:37Bill Simmons?

  I know. I know.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  The question is, did the play in, it just might be a little too, too close to home.

• 1:15:43Bill Simmons?

  No, because neither team was in the plan.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  No, no. Did, did the play in change your Rookie of the Year vote?

• 1:15:49Bill Simmons?

  It did not.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:15:51Bill Simmons?

  The plan did change my sixth man of the year vote because I was 50 50 with, I had Hockes over Kelton Johnson, but then Miami lost on Wednesday. And I was just like, I, I'm going to have the sixth man of the year for a team that couldn't even get to the last round of the playing game and I, I switched it. So that's the league's fault. They should have made us vote for the playing games.

• 1:16:14Bill Simmons?

  Kelton Johnson, a fine choice.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  Great choice.

• 1:16:16Bill Simmons?

  Very important guy on a 61 win team, leader of the clubhouse. I felt pretty good about that.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  You know, I vote, you know, I voted Cooper Flag, right? I don't have a ballot, but you know, I picked Cooper Flag. Am I going to get docked salary or anything?

• 1:16:28Bill Simmons?

  Cooper Flag's a great choice.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  Is my Uber rating going to go down mysteriously?

• 1:16:32Bill Simmons?

  We love, no, we love Cooper.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  4.72? Okay.

• 1:16:34Bill Simmons?

  No, we love Cooper Flag. Um, I thought that was, that was the thing. The arguments were great this year. I haven't thought Missoula Bickerstaff was a really good one. You know, the only one that was a no brainer was most improved.

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  And Defensive Player of the Year, once, once Wemby became eligible. Yeah. Missoula, the Missoula Bickerstaff argument is a no brainer to everyone. It is not, is, is a no brainer to Joe Missoula, who doesn't want even want the award. And I think should be mandated to throw it in the garbage if he gets it.

• 1:17:01Bill Simmons?

  Did a non campaign. So you did a pod after they announced the Luca and Cade were eligible. I got a great email from somebody.

• 1:17:11Bill Simmons?

  That was the best solution I've ever heard for this 65 game roll from a, from a listener named Gray McCoy.

• 1:17:19Bill Simmons?

  This is so obvious, I can't believe we didn't think of it. Cause how many pods have we done? Like 10? How did we not come up with this? Why can't the 65 game threshold be tiered?

• 1:17:32Bill Simmons?

  Why is it all or nothing? I would propose 65 games and up eligible for all awards. 62 games and up, 62 games eligible for second or third team all NBA. And 60 games eligible for third team all NBA.

• 1:17:49Bill Simmons?

  It's a great idea.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  This is not much different from my campaign from the second that they enacted this silly rule. That it should not apply to third team all NBA. Specifically because all NBA is what counts for the super max stuff. And third team, again, I've said this over and over again. I don't want to get stuck in a situation where I'm just throwing out names. Kevin Durant played 55 games, but Julius Randall played 66. And like, the whole world knows one guy's better than the other. But I guess I like, at least for third team all NBA. Let me put the guys who we all knew that season were the best guys. So not that different from that idea. I just, do we want more? How many, how, I'm gonna, how many charts am I gonna need? To figure out who's eligible for what award? Someone's gonna have to build a flow chart for me with these kind of proposals.

• 1:18:35Bill Simmons?

  Well, think about it this way. 65 and up, you're eligible. 62, that means you missed 20 games. And you probably shouldn't have been first team anyway. You missed one fourth of the season, you know? And then maybe third team, we could say it's 55 and up. But I like the idea of the tiers. I think it's smart.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  So Cade got to 64. I was gonna say, I thought Cade was at 62. He got.

• 1:18:57Bill Simmons?

  But I voted, so I put Cade on second team. Cause you know, I thought he, he, it was a battle with him and Jaylen Brown anyway. He was ahead of Jaylen Brown before he got hurt and then he missed four weeks. So I don't, I don't know. I didn't feel bad about that one.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  That's a fine, that's a defensible choice. That's probably what I would have done without looking at it in complete detail right now. But that's probably what I would have done.

• 1:19:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So the tier thing is good. I like the minutes thing too. I think if we're over 2,000 minutes, maybe you're at least eligible for second team. But I, they should experiment with that and, and, uh, and try to figure that out. All right. The three Eastern Conference series we did not cover.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:19:37Bill Simmons?

  And we could go fast. Boston, Philly. Philly hasn't beat Boston since 1982, which shouldn't stop their fans from chanting, "We want Boston" during the playing game. A mistake.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  No, no, stop.

• 1:19:48Bill Simmons?

  Nah, mistake.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  They want to get in the playoffs. That's what they want. Should they want, should they lose and say, "We want Detroit?" And risk it?

• 1:19:56Bill Simmons?

  I would have done a, I would have done a "See you Sunday" chant.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  You gotta be, you gotta be nicer to the Philly fans.

• 1:20:02Bill Simmons?

  I don't like the "We want Boston."

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  The Philly Boston.

• 1:20:04Bill Simmons?

  Don't go on my chalkboard.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  Okay. The Philly-Boston thing invented "Beat L.A." in the 80s. It was one fan base to the other team encouraging them. They're like, "Be a little nicer."

• 1:20:13Bill Simmons?

  I was there and I didn't like it when we did it.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:20:16Bill Simmons?

  It's like, what are we doing? Why are you telling these guys? Why are you supporting these guys?

• 1:20:23Bill Simmons?

  Tatum was the story from this first game.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:20:25Bill Simmons?

  From, uh, holy shit. His rebounding, he had 11 rebounds in this game.

• 1:20:32Bill Simmons?

  It just seems impossible, like, if you're looking at like props for these games, you're doing like same-game parlays and stuff, it kind of seems impossible for him not to get 10 rebounds. He's around the rim all the time. He looked awesome. Jalen had a bad first half and then came along in the second half. My dad went to the game and called me after giddy because he thought Jay, he thought Tatum just looked awesome.

• 1:20:54Bill Simmons?

  The only small subplot with the Celtics right now is Vucevic and whether, when we get to this next series, when he's going to play. He had a really, really, really awful second quarter stretch. And like, he was going for a dunk, lost the ball.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  I actually, I'm giving him points for that. That was entertaining in a game that didn't have a lot of entertainment. I like it.

• 1:21:18Bill Simmons?

  He doesn't grab rebounds anymore. He's always trying to tip rebounds. Like, he's just slow around the basket. I don't ever feel like his three-point shots are going in. Now, the thing is, he's rusty. He had a broken finger. You you need to see this series whether you can play him, but I really wonder is Garza just gonna be when they get to that next series, is it gonna be Garza time?

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  Maybe I have to go back and rewatch the game because I I kind of liked Vucevic's minutes today. I think this is a good matchup for him. I think this is the kind of bulky guys that they got him to play against and he had a couple contested box outs against Drummond, who's a bear. I thought his defense at the rim by his standards tonight was like pretty good. He got he just got big and vertical and there was that one no call. I think it was with Edgecombe that ran into him where it was I didn't mind the no call. There was one maxi shot that I think he just might have blocked around the rim. I thought by his standards, he played pretty good defense at the basket and that this is the kind of size matchup that that they got him for. But yeah, I agree. I mean, Garza's a better shooter. He's been very good all year and I think it'll be matchup to matchup. But I didn't I didn't mind Vuch's postseason debut.

• 1:22:22Bill Simmons?

  First half was bad. Second half was better and they have five, six days to figure it out. Philly couldn't make a shot. They're gonna have one of these two games, these first two games of Boston, you knew Philly was gonna throw some punches. So it'll probably be game two. They could still run after breaks. I think Paul George looks pretty good.

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  He does.

• 1:22:45Bill Simmons?

  Like, if you're talking about maybe trying to convince somebody to take him in a trade and attaching assets to it, I I don't think it's as inconceivable as it might have been in October.

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  You're just putting all these guys, all these teams after one game, you're just putting them right into the offseason. Just right, you're gone.

• 1:23:03Bill Simmons?

  I don't think it's a mystery that Philly would trade Paul George. Like, I'm not breaking news.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  It was very sad for me as someone who has been, you know, I this whole era of Philadelphia hinky on basketball is just the most bizarre era of any team in the NBA. It was sad that it's come to listening to the worst contract draft and it's just a one-two punch for Philly. Just just Embiid, Paul George picks one and two. It just made me a little sad for Philly fans.

• 1:23:31Bill Simmons?

  Thank God for Jakob Pertle because he might be crashing the party next year. Boston is in a great spot. My big question for this series was, was that just an absolute godsend that Orlando lost to Philly in that playing game? Because then you watch Orlando and Charlotte. Against Charlotte and all of a sudden they were the defensive beast that we thought they might be before the season and really physical and at the very least you're gonna have some bruises and you're gonna feel an Orlando series, which I'm not sure that's the case with Philly.

• 1:24:02Bill Simmons?

  I think that was a pretty good break that they got Philly instead of Orlando though.

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  I think we talked about this last week that, you know, you asked me who would you rather play and I said if Embiid's not playing Philly because it like Orlando now that they're healthy with Anthony Black and Franz Wagner back, they have, they can go seven deep in good players. It doesn't always mesh well. It's ugly. The coaching thing is a little bit of a mess, but they have an upside that I just don't think Philly can get to without Embiid.

• 1:24:29Bill Simmons?

  No, they even like you need like a 43-point maxi game and somebody else making seven threes to win in Boston, I think so.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  Well, four of 23, you're just DOA. You have no chance. Like that's what they shot from three today. The makes and the attempts, you just those two numbers, you have no shot.

• 1:24:46Bill Simmons?

  Toronto, Cleveland felt for the first half like huh, okay. And then Cleveland blew them out in the second half. Purdo looked awful. I guess the big question for me in this one is did round one break perfectly for Cleveland where you get to skip Atlanta and play Toronto. You hopefully get to play Detroit after a really physical knockdown, drag out Orlando series and then you're playing whoever's left with Celtics, Knicks, hoping that that's a knockdown drag out too. On paper, this played out perfectly. And then you have the Mitchell piece who I thought Mitchell was awesome yesterday. He was in

• 1:25:28Bill Simmons?

  the running for best guy of the weekend and you did this when we did our most intriguing draft. You took him first and you said like, This is the, there's gonna be the moment, it should probably be this year or around this year where if you're gonna elevate into that next level, it's, we're ready, it's time. He had that look yesterday. So I don't think they're gonna make the finals, but I will say it's broken nicely for them.

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  I also think it has broken nicely for them. Atlanta's better than Toronto and has a higher ceiling than Toronto does, particularly without Quickly. And they just, they just don't have enough juice offensively. I think their, their half-court offense actually produced at a rate that surprised me when I looked it up today because it just felt so hard. Everything felt so hard and they got no turnovers, no fast breaks. Like that's the stuff that they, that they feast on. But yeah, I think Atlanta, and I think Cleveland has a good, for a team that endured a lot of roster chaos throughout the season, I think they've figured out a lot of things about their rotation and when the two bigs should play together, when they shouldn't, who should play with whom, both small, big guards that should

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  go with other guards. They have, and, and part of that is that Strus has really rounded back into form. I think they've got, they've got some holes on the roster, like wing size, traditional wing defense and all that. But they at least, I think, have a good sense of what their identity is and what their rotation should look like. I think that really showed in the, in the first game. And nice, nice to get off to an easy, easy one for them.

• 1:26:55Bill Simmons?

  Strus is important. That guy's been in some big games over the years and as recently as six weeks ago, we weren't sure if we were gonna see him. I guess my big note on Toronto, which I just think, you know, I, I just don't think Toronto's a very good playoff team. I do feel like Ingram has a lot of advantages against them. And he only took nine free throw, nine field goals and 10 free throws yesterday, but only nine shots. And I thought Cleveland had a lot of trouble, whoever was guarding him. I just felt like he could get a shot against everybody. And I didn't really understand why they went away from him. So I bet we see more of him. RJ Barrett's gonna have to get downhill and get to the basket. There's some moves for them to make, but ultimately, I, do we know about Quickly?

• 1:27:39Bill Simmons?

  Cause they need like that wild card, you know, heat check guy and.

• 1:27:43Speaker 01

  He's been upgraded to questionable right now for game two is the last I saw and look without, I said this when previewing the series without him, that means we're going to see more Jamal Shad, uh, which is, which is good for their defense and bad for their offense as well as Shad shot the ball in, in, um, in game one because they do, they run a lot of like in pick and rolls with Scottie and the point guard, both directions and Shad is just treated like a non-threat to score. Teams just stay closer to Scottie. You're not going to get the ball to Scottie. Like take your floaters, whatever. Quickly at least is a threat all the time. He had an, he had a pretty good season, I thought. So I think they just need his, to, his, his wild card nature. The other one is like, you know, do they come to a point where

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  they start CMB over Pirtle and just say, we lose some size and we lose some rebounding, but we gain the ability to switch everything and CMB was, looked pretty ready for the playoffs.

• 1:28:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  And Pirtle, Pirtle looked not good on either end of the floor.

• 1:28:40Bill Simmons?

  I can't see Pirtle's plus minus, but I bet, I guess it was a zero.

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  Zero, plus zero. No, but I don't think, I don't think that, I don't think he looked, he didn't, he didn't contain the pick and roll on defense, which is what he's out there to do. And he brought another table on offense.

• 1:28:55Bill Simmons?

  And Grady Dick, I guess is just, what happened to him?

• 1:28:58Speaker 01

  Well, that's, I was actually thinking about that.

• 1:29:00Bill Simmons?

  He played two minutes yesterday.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  He got, he's lost, he hasn't been in the rotation for a month.

• 1:29:03Bill Simmons?

  No, I know. So he's just, that's it?

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, look, Jacoby Walters has played, um, has, has outplayed him and I thought is a good option for them defensively in this series. But if you're, if, if quickly can't go again and you're just like, we just need shooting, it would not be surprised, it would surprise me at all if they dusted him or even Jameson Battle off. Just like run around it. If you can make a few shots, we'll see what happens.

• 1:29:25Bill Simmons?

  I, I picked Mamu third in my sixth man of the year. He did not live up to it yesterday.

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  Hockes second? Do you go Hockes two at least?

• 1:29:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  Or did you take him off? Okay.

• 1:29:34Bill Simmons?

  I had Hockes two. I thought sixth man was really rough this year. I was even trying to talk myself into Jenkins on Detroit, but he didn't even average 10 points a game. But he was at least a conversation with how he finished the year.

• 1:29:50Speaker 01

  I think that the best bench guys, I, I thought Hockes and Kelton Johnson were both very good, but neither of them are like blowing you away as a candidate. And I think because, and it's because a lot of the best bench guys just played like 52 games in 1,200 minutes, like Caruso, A.J. Mitchell. I saw, I heard Stan Van Gundy say he voted for Mitchell Robinson just because game to game, that's his impact. Isaiah Stewart, just like, it's hard to give one of those guys an award when another guy's played like almost double the minutes and played pretty well.

• 1:30:18Bill Simmons?

  Toronto, Cleveland, did it make it nostalgic, did it make you nostalgic at all for NBA TV, what we used to have?

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  I'll tell you what it made me nostalgic for. That game, Toronto, Cleveland, that matchup, and then LeBron making the fadeaway from the left side of the floor and like looking at, out at the crowd being like, ooh, that was nice. It did make me nostalgic for that one game in Toronto. I was at that game where he was just like, you know what? I'm just going to clown the whole franchise. I'm going to clown the country. I'm going to clown the city. I'm clowning all of Canada. I'm just going to take one ridiculous, and they got increasingly more ridiculous. Like, how about from 23 feet? What if I took a turnaround fadeaway three and fell in Drake's lap on the sideline? Would that be funny? Let me try that one. It was just so humiliating. And those two events together, I did get a little Lebronto nostalgia.

• 1:31:07Bill Simmons?

  I got nostalgic for the bad NBA TV commercials, the half-hearted halftime studio show, just what we used to have. Speaking of TV, Amazon had all the games, all the play-in, and then the first three round one games. Really interesting thing I never considered. So, we went over, Friday night, went over to some friend's house, and I was like, I'm only going if they have the game on. They're like, no, no, we're gonna have the game on. It was my wife's friends, and my friends too, but we're gonna have drinks. Like, I need the game on. Okay, cool. Get to the game, it's like, oh, we forgot to put the game on. What channel is it? It's on Amazon.

• 1:31:50Bill Simmons?

  Took five minutes. Oh, Amazon. Wait, what? Do we watch anything on Amazon? And now it's like they're trying to figure out the Amazon and the Apple TV. They're logging in. And I was getting, I got a bunch of emails about this this weekend from people who were traveling, who were like at hotels or they're in bars and the bar didn't have it. It is this unintended consequence of the streaming era. I never really thought about until we got to the playoffs that we've just, as a society, we have to get together with the streaming revolution and make sure we're covered. As a society. And I'm talking friends of friends, friends that are casual sports fans that maybe don't care.

• 1:32:33Bill Simmons?

  But you know, like I'm coming over, hotels, sports bars, wherever you are.

• 1:32:39Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:32:39Bill Simmons?

  Like just, just make sure you're logged into Amazon and make sure you're logged into Peacock and just get your shit together, everybody. That's my little PSA.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  I don't have any issues with it, but I am a streaming oversubscriber. I just am like, we'll just have everything all the time and waste money. Because you know, like the smart people are like, well, I'm done with that show. Cancel Apple TV. I'm done with that show. I'll pick it up later. I'm just like, I just, let's just like, I just want to have everything all the time.

• 1:33:04Bill Simmons?

  Well, I got shut out of Amazon for one of the playing games. It was like, your account's using too many devices. I'm like, huh? So start, I went into the settings and I'm shutting down devices. And it turns out both my dad and my daughter were watching basketball on Amazon and glommed onto my account. And then my dad's like, well, I don't want to, I, I always jump on your things. I don't, why do I have to pay for the streamers when you have them? That's just the attitude of people 75 and up. I don't know why he can't pay for Amazon for $9 a month.

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  I think you just gotta kick your daughter off. That's all. Like you're the, but you're the boss.

• 1:33:40Bill Simmons?

  She's in charge of me 25 years from now when, um, you know, God only knows what's going to happen to me physically.

• 1:33:46Speaker 01

  So you think she'll hold, she'll hold it against you?

• 1:33:49Bill Simmons?

  You have the same thing with your daughter. Yeah. Someday they're in charge, in charge of us. I always want to like, do the right thing.

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• 1:34:55Bill Simmons?

  All right, quickly, can we run through the four teams with a case of what do you do? The four teams that got bounced from the plan?

• 1:35:03Speaker 01

  No Hawks-Nicks, we're just not gonna do Hawks-Nicks.

• 1:35:06Bill Simmons?

  Oh, we didn't do Hawks-Nicks?

• 1:35:08Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:35:09Bill Simmons?

  My bad.

• 1:35:10Speaker 01

  We don't have to.

• 1:35:11Bill Simmons?

  No, I really want to do Hawks-Nicks. It was in my notes and I just forgot to do it. My big question for you is, if Na gets going, is this a series?

• 1:35:19Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah, I think I picked Knicks in six.

• 1:35:23Bill Simmons?

  That's what I had.

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  I think the Knicks played, I think the Knicks played one of their better defensive games, if not one of their best defensive games of the season in game one. I was super impressed with them across the board. Atlanta didn't even shoot badly from three, they shot 38%. But yeah, I mean, Na, six of 17, Jalen Johnson, eight of 19. There's definitely some room on the table for them. I think, I think they'll, you know, like I would pick the Knicks to win game two and then Atlanta to win game three and then game four is where it gets a little, little spicy. You know who was not spicy in that game? Some pretty, I'm overwhelmed by all of this moments in two minutes for Zachary Ristic that I did not particularly enjoy for the Hawks.

• 1:36:01Bill Simmons?

  You didn't like his 0-for-3 and his miss of a two-foot layup and the realization of everyone yet again that they could have just taken Castle with the first pick?

• 1:36:11Speaker 01

  They played seven guys, basically.

• 1:36:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:14Speaker 01

  If you don't count Reese Sche and Mo Gay was one and played 11 minutes. So, you know, I thought the Knicks played really well in that game. If I'm a Knicks fan, I'm super encouraged by how they looked.

• 1:36:23Bill Simmons?

  If they had Castle instead of Reese Sche, would you think the Hawks were going to win the series?

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 1:36:29Bill Simmons?

  It's a pretty nasty team.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would. Yeah, I mean, if you.

• 1:36:33Bill Simmons?

  Can you imagine that?

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  That's a lot of defensive players to throw on the floor at once. It would make the Knicks live. So, I mean, we've seen Castle guard Brunson and Cat in the same game and guard them both pretty well. Be a pretty useful player.

• 1:36:43Bill Simmons?

  I had Castle first in that draft. I'm not always right, but.

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  Did you end up putting him a third team All-NBA?

• 1:36:49Bill Simmons?

  No, because Luca and Kade bumped him out. Yeah.

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, everyone, everyone got eligible.

• 1:36:53Bill Simmons?

  I put him first team all day. That was where, uh.

• 1:36:56Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:36:57Bill Simmons?

  That was where I moved. And I put Wallace, too. And I know I'm going to be in the minority on those votes, but I, I really think those two guys are absolute animals on defense.

• 1:37:05Speaker 01

  Who's going to argue strongly against their inclusion? They're awesome.

• 1:37:08Bill Simmons?

  You know what was a bummer? I had no place for Kamara. I couldn't.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  Neither did I.

• 1:37:12Bill Simmons?

  I couldn't find a spot for him and I kept like trying to, can I bump this guy? Uh, no. And I, I feel terrible.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  I know that hurts you as, as number one Portland Trailblazers fan. You've really, really repaired whatever was, whatever, if there was still leftover damage from your relationship with Portland fans from years and years ago, you've really gone out of your way, I think.

• 1:37:32Bill Simmons?

  What was the, I'm trying to remember, what did I do to Portland fans?

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  There were soccer, there were soccer mom jokes.

• 1:37:37Bill Simmons?

  Trades, yeah.

• 1:37:37Speaker 01

  That, that one.

• 1:37:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, soccer mom jokes. Forgot about that.

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  You've really mended fences. You and Justin Barry should get together and talk about his garden and everything else that's going on in Portland.

• 1:37:47Bill Simmons?

  Knicks, Atlanta is a really good series and I really wish Atlanta was playing Cleveland because I thought that, I think Atlanta could have beaten Cleveland. We'll see with Alexander Walker because, um, the Knicks are just so confident and comfortable in these fourth quarters. And it's the big fear if you're a Celtic fan. I think the Celtics have a better team and more talent.

• 1:38:08Bill Simmons?

  And yet they're gonna have to win these fourth quarters and the Knicks are really, really, really good, really confident and really comfortable the tighter the game gets. And I think it's really hard to win an MSG too, even despite, there was when they started to come back. And then the game's over and it got to eight and all of a sudden you could feel everybody with the Halliburton thought bubble at MSG.

• 1:38:33Speaker 01

  Aaron, is Aaron Neusmith in the building? Is Aaron Neusmith here?

• 1:38:37Bill Simmons?

  It got quiet for like a split second. The announcers missed it. I thought, I know Van Gundy was on your pod recently and so I'm not sucking up. I think he's been excellent this year with announcing.

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  He's awesome.

• 1:38:49Bill Simmons?

  And I think the key with him was he's just, he's a two man booth guy.

• 1:38:56Bill Simmons?

  Way better if it's just him and the play by play guy and he can just do his thing versus like having to share the ball. I thought, I thought he was all over, what was that? He did that game, right? He did?

• 1:39:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I thought he was all over that game and all the angles and like picking up stuff in the moment the same way we would if we were watching on the couch. Like, ooh, Reese a shade, yikes. Might not, might not be able to put him back in.

• 1:39:20Speaker 01

  And like, like Jeff, he's very good at translating like X's and O's stuff into quick TV friendly, like, oh, that's what's happening. Like in the last, one, the thing I'll, I'll watch in game two is, you know, Atlanta late in the game made the switch that I was sort of wondering when they would do it. They took a Kangu off Cat and put him on Josh Hart and put Dyson Daniels on Cat because Cat was just killing them with the spacing, his passing, the two man game with Brunson. And that meant they had to move CJ McCollum onto McHale Bridges. Like there's all these domino effects of just like, what do we do with Cat? Do we put our centers anywhere but Cat because he's making pick and pops? He's rolling to the rim and he's doing Cat stuff. So that would be, and that's the kind of thing that Stan sees that on possession one and in eight words can describe like why they're doing that.

• 1:40:04Bill Simmons?

  Right. Yeah, the Celtics are going to be in a weird spot in round two if, if that's the series because weird that Kada is, putting Kada against Robinson is just better. And I wonder if they're going to try to either go a little smaller against Towns or maybe try some Garza or like what they're going to do to try to. Use Towns against himself, basically. But they, the, the big switch the Celtics have for round two would be Tatum at the five with Brown, with a shooter and with the two guards. And then make Towns basically have to guard a shooter no matter where he is. But I thought that was a good next one.

• 1:40:43Speaker 01

  The NBA just released its award finalists. Do you want to, do you want to hear them or no? Do you care?

• 1:40:49Bill Simmons?

  Awards finalists for, well, we know what MVP is. How many are there? Three?

• 1:40:54Speaker 01

  Three in each category.

• 1:40:56Bill Simmons?

  So we can, who is the third for coach of the year?

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  Uh, coach of the year is not listed here.

• 1:41:02Bill Simmons?

  Um, so MVP was the three. Rookie of the year was edge con was third?

• 1:41:08Speaker 01

  Rookie, rookie of the year is also, uh, being announced, uh, later. We have six man most improved defensive player of the year and clutch player of the year. Those finalists have been announced.

• 1:41:18Bill Simmons?

  What was clutch? Who was the third guy?

• 1:41:19Speaker 01

  Three finalists are SGA, Anthony Edwards and Jamal Murray are the three finalists for clutch player of the year.

• 1:41:26Bill Simmons?

  No Brunson?

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  Brunson apparently snubbed if I'm reading my email from Mark Bressard correctly.

• 1:41:33Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:41:34Speaker 01

  Really good sign for Pistons fans. Asar Thompson is the third finalist in defensive player of the year along with Chet and Wemby.

• 1:41:40Bill Simmons?

  I voted for him.

• 1:41:42Speaker 01

  Uh, six man of the year, surprise third finalists. I, I would say, I would classify this as a surprise. Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kelton Johnson, Tim Hardaway Jr., the third finalist for six man of the year.

• 1:41:55Bill Simmons?

  Jesus.

• 1:41:56Speaker 01

  I want to know that.

• 1:41:58Bill Simmons?

  Let's play, what do you do really quick and then we'll go. Golden State, they have Curry at 62. They have Butler at 56.8 and Draymond at 27.7. So not a lot of flexibility there. Both of those last two are expirings. Um, Horford, Santos, Pods, Melton, Moody at 12.2 out for next year under contract. They have the full mid level. They have the 11th pick in the draft unless, unless.

• 1:42:25Bill Simmons?

  Unless they get a little lucky, they get a little Adam Silver fairy dust on the pick and they move up to top four, 10%.

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  I don't know what you're implying.

• 1:42:36Bill Simmons?

  10%. Well, just saying, if we're doing the, let's do a fantasy draft of who, if they did rig the lottery, who would, who would they rig the lottery for this year? Golden State would be the number one pick. Porzingis free agent, GP2 is a free agent. So my, what do you do here? If I can get LeBron and do the expendables, I draft a guard with the 11th pick. I, Fylon for them would be unbelievable, the Alabama guard, who's like just high IQ leader, defensive, but also can beat guys up to dribble. Burris, if they could somehow get him, would be amazing, the Arizona guy. Can I throw a Jimmy Butler, Moody in our 2027 first, top four protected

• 1:43:19Bill Simmons?

  for Sabonis and DeMar DeRozan trade at you?

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  No, you may not. I would, I would, I will not give you permission to do that.

• 1:43:26Bill Simmons?

  You don't, you were just rejecting it, but top of style?

• 1:43:28Speaker 01

  I'm rejecting the concept of it. I'm rejecting all of it.

• 1:43:31Bill Simmons?

  Two expiring contracts and my top four protected pick and I'll take Sabonis and DeRozan off your hands and you can do a full rebuild?

• 1:43:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:43:39Bill Simmons?

  No?

• 1:43:40Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:43:41Bill Simmons?

  Who says no?

• 1:43:43Speaker 01

  I say no. And the Warriors say no.

• 1:43:45Bill Simmons?

  The Warriors say no. Okay.

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  It's too, it's too much money. Let me look at Sabonis' contract.

• 1:43:50Bill Simmons?

  It's not as bad as you think. It's a couple more years. Yeah.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  I just don't know.

• 1:43:54Bill Simmons?

  DeRozan's expiring.

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  I just don't know what that's doing for me. Like, I've got to live in a world where I'm actually trying to give Steph Curry a chance to be 2-2 with the Thunder and the Spurs and the Nuggets next year in the second round. Like, that's, that's what I'm trying to do. Like, I need, I need to aim differently than that.

• 1:44:11Bill Simmons?

  Okay. So give me your solution. What are we doing?

• 1:44:14Speaker 01

  Well, I think, I think we're gonna do, see them do all the stuff that we think they're gonna do, which is, can we get LeBron? Is Kawhi Leonard potentially available? We know they've looked at him, but we have four first round picks to trade, more or less. And is, is that enough to get in the honest conversation? I'm not sure, but I think it's, it's all that because I just don't, you know, everyone's gonna construct their fantasy Curry deals and this and that. I just don't.

• 1:44:37Bill Simmons?

  They're not trading Curry.

• 1:44:38Speaker 01

  I don't see it happening. They also have a coach that was pretty open about like, hey, as we've been talking about for months now, like, I may not be here next year. And so that affects a lot of, they've got to figure that out. And, and, because if Steve Kerr is the coach. You've got to, as we've now learned, you probably should use that high draft pick on a player who's going to be able to function in Steve Kerr's system now and not do what they did with Kaminga over Franz Wagner.

• 1:45:06Bill Simmons?

  Or you trade that 11th pick.

• 1:45:09Speaker 01

  Or you do that.

• 1:45:11Bill Simmons?

  And you add a couple other picks, maybe try to get like a, like a Trey Murphy type.

• 1:45:17Speaker 01

  Sure. I mean, because that's our only goal, right? Our only goal is, hey, wouldn't it be awesome game five in San Antonio, it's 2-2 next year, just in the second round of the playoffs. In the first round, just like, just fun, fun for another year.

• 1:45:30Bill Simmons?

  Butler could be stretched, which I don't think they would do. 56.8, so you could stretch it out over five years. And I think it would cost them 11 million a year. I don't even know why they would do that because I don't think it would create enough cap space to do anything crazy. Probably better off having him as an expiring, or maybe they hope he comes back. The LeBron piece will be the fun part of this because I do like the idea of the old guy team and kind of leaning into that. Is Porzingis somebody you'd bring back?

• 1:46:02Speaker 01

  I think they'll look at it because I, I just think the market for him is going to be very cool based on his availability issues. So maybe it's a one-year deal, maybe it's a one plus one, the number's not too big. He does add, you could see glimpses of like, this makes sense. So shooting five, we've not really had this in a little while.

• 1:46:18Bill Simmons?

  And then, and then he was hurt on Friday. He was limping around and it was like, what happened? You played one game and you're already hurt?

• 1:46:25Speaker 01

  And then they got a Pajemski extension staring him in the face. Pajemski had a good year for them. I, I'm interested to see how those talks go.

• 1:46:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there's this new version of post last CBA of, yeah, we're actually not going to extend you. Let's just play it out, which has not gone well really in any situation that we had. It went poorly with Cam Thomas, although there are reasons for that. It went poorly with Kaminga. I've always wondered why you had to do the extension if you didn't want to, because all they become is eventually an unrestricted free agent and nobody ever has cap space. So I do think the teams have a little more leverage, which I've realized, but.

• 1:47:06Speaker 01

  Yes, agreed.

• 1:47:07Bill Simmons?

  It's weird. I like Sabonis for them and I know I'm in the minority and I know there's some people that are out on him and think he makes too much money. But if you're, if you're looking for the right guy to be with Draymond, one of the things for them is rebounding, right? I think he's high IQ and you could run offense through him and put him at the top of the key. I think he can post up. I think you can play him and Draymond together. I think he's expendable in Sacramento for a hundred reasons, including the fact that the rookie looked good for them, the rookie center and.

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  Maxime Renaud.

• 1:47:40Bill Simmons?

  Renaud, who can't guard anybody, like literally anybody. But at least you could talk yourself into.

• 1:47:46Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:47:46Bill Simmons?

  No, he does not play defense. He doesn't.

• 1:47:48Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:47:49Bill Simmons?

  It's bad.

• 1:47:50Speaker 01

  You gotta, you know, just be nice. Give the Kings a nice thing.

• 1:47:53Bill Simmons?

  He's a rookie.

• 1:47:54Speaker 01

  You know, his hair is flopping around. He's trying real hard. Let him, let him be.

• 1:47:58Bill Simmons?

  Well, this leads to the next one, which is the Clippers.

• 1:48:00Speaker 01

  Wait, can we just stop on Sabonis? Like Sabonis, I understand everything you're saying. Play the split game with him in the post, all the stuff that he does, but Sabonis plus Draymond plus Butler is like a lot of guys who no one's guarding.

• 1:48:14Bill Simmons?

  But Butler would have to be in the, in the Sabonis trade.

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  All right. So you're throwing him out?

• 1:48:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  Okay. Okay. Anyway, what was the next one?

• 1:48:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, Clippers, it's just, do we keep Kawhi for another year? It's too hard to predict what they're going to do because it all depends on this Indy pick. If they get five, six, seven, eight, nine, they're getting a blue chip guy. There's, this draft's awesome. They could get Acuff at five. They could get Burries. They could get Wogler, the Illinois kid. Them getting in that stretch probably means you could trade Kawhi or Garland. Or trade back and try to get more assets. Like it would just open up a lot of, like I was thinking if they got the fifth pick from Indiana, which I think the lowest Indiana can go is maybe sixth because they could drop four spots. That's it.

• 1:49:04Bill Simmons?

  So if they got the fifth pick and Dallas got eight, could they drop back three spots with Dallas? Cause Dallas would want the best guard. Take Burris, who would be perfect for them with Garland, because he's a two-guard, and get more assets from Dallas and then kind of be ready to roll. I think they would be thinking about stuff like that. They're probably one of the more creative front offices, right? That Zubac trade was really creative.

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  Creative? Is that the word you want to use?

• 1:49:30Bill Simmons?

  Oh, it's creative.

• 1:49:31Speaker 01

  Creative?

• 1:49:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they're creative. They're a little outside the box. But I could see them, if they got the fifth pick from Indiana, being... Oh, I see where you're going.

• 1:49:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. They're creative. Listen, they'd be creative in a lot of ways.

• 1:49:49Speaker 01

  There is a case to be... So it's a very interesting situation, right? Because again, for the next, whatever years, they don't control their pick, right? So they can't tank, or they can't reap the benefits of tanking anyway.

• 1:49:59Bill Simmons?

  So there's a swap next year with OKC. Somehow this Paul George trade, it's just never going to end. It goes on forever. It's like herpes.

• 1:50:07Speaker 01

  And Garland, you know, 42, 45 million the next two years in his prime. Like, you're kind of are designing a team that's living in a couple of different worlds. Like, you have Nierhauser, who's a good young center. You and I both like him. Matherin, I think, is like TBD if he's on the team next year. Did not finish the season well.

• 1:50:25Bill Simmons?

  He's an RFA, so they could just do basically the comingo to him next year.

• 1:50:30Speaker 01

  Well, he's not under... He's a straight free agent, though. He's a restricted free agent this summer. Oh, I see what you mean. They could just one-plus-one him or something. And then you could argue, like, even if they are kind of semi-designed to be competitive now, and Ballmer always wants to be competitive, and they don't control their pick. I mean, my choices with Kawhi are ride it out, extend him again. Or, like, is he... Did he just have the healthiest season he's ever going to have again?

• 1:51:00Bill Simmons?

  That's where I am.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  And do I need to move off him now?

• 1:51:03Bill Simmons?

  I'm trading him. The problem is, he knows where the bodies were buried, if bodies are buried.

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  Who knows?

• 1:51:11Bill Simmons?

  Who knows?

• 1:51:11Speaker 01

  The conversations that have taken place.

• 1:51:13Bill Simmons?

  Not accusing anyone in any direction. I'm just saying they've gone through a lot, them and Kawhi. Um, I would trade Kawhi. I don't think he's, he's for what he did. What was it his year 15 season?

• 1:51:24Speaker 01

  Something like that.

• 1:51:25Bill Simmons?

  2011 draft.

• 1:51:28Bill Simmons?

  He averaged 28 points a game and played 65 minute, uh, games. Um, um, if the Warriors are like, we still want Kawhi, I'd be like, great. Give us the 11th pick back. Let's go.

• 1:51:37Speaker 01

  Do you, did you have him a second or third team all NBA Kawhi?

• 1:51:41Bill Simmons?

  I had him second team.

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:42Bill Simmons?

  Um, so they have two variables here. One is that Indy pick. Is it going to be five or basically are they going to be picking five or six? Or does that roll over to 2031? And then are, is there going to be repercussions from the aspiration thing or not? And we still don't know. We still don't have a decision on that. So too hard to decide. But Kawhi for Butler with the Warriors throwing in a pick or more stuff does fit under the cap. Butler makes a little more than Kawhi, but you could do that.

• 1:52:13Speaker 01

  I think, I think the Clippers, if they ever got to this discussion where they were going to trade Kawhi or even think about it, and the teams that called on him are not really sure they were ever thinking about it at this past trade deadline. I think they would treat him not as, I, I think they would say he's an all NBA player. We want, we're not trading him for an injured player and one first round pick, even a good one. We want multiple first round picks and like, we want not quite a trove of everything because, because there, it's Kawhi and he's old and there's a lot of baggage, but I don't think they're going to sell like lowish on him.

• 1:52:45Bill Simmons?

  The other two teams are Miami and Charlotte. Charlotte's in a great spot and Charlotte, I don't think we need to belabor this one. They have the 14th pick. They have their own first and 27. They have a top two protected Dallas first and 27.

• 1:52:59Speaker 01

  Great Dallas.

• 1:53:00Bill Simmons?

  They have an unprotected Miami first and 27. Um, and some really good things all around. I think there's, they're kind of riding with LaMelo either way. I think he's there next year, even if it ended pretty weird. And they have Miller and Khan making a combined 25 million. They have Bridges as an expiring. They have Bridges, Williams and, and, uh, Grant Williams and Josh Green are basically like 52 million of expirings that could be used for a Yanis trade. By the way, Charlotte, a little closer to Greece.

• 1:53:34Bill Simmons?

  You're gonna make a face when I say this, but.

• 1:53:36Speaker 01

  I don't know. I just like the Greece proximity.

• 1:53:39Bill Simmons?

  That's a little closer. Just saying it's closer.

• 1:53:41Speaker 01

  It's on the East Coast.

• 1:53:43Bill Simmons?

  Well, then Miami is the other team that got bounced and they're just a no man's land team. They they got the 13th pick in the draft, but for the most part, I don't know. Norm Powell, I think that contract probably slid backwards as the year went along. They had Bam Hero and Wiggins for a combined 110 million.

• 1:54:01Bill Simmons?

  They had this Jovic extension that kicks in next year for 16.2 million. Good luck with that, guys. I wonder if these two teams are the answers to each other's problems.

• 1:54:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:54:15Bill Simmons?

  Is Bam Adebayo on the table?

• 1:54:20Bill Simmons?

  I could offer you Bridges and Grant Williams.

• 1:54:24Speaker 01

  He'd be so good there. Oh, my God.

• 1:54:26Bill Simmons?

  I could give you your 27 first back. Now you have it unprotected. You have all your firsts again. I could give you my 14th pick. I could give you that Dallas pick. I could give you a 2029 first. Here's everything I got. Give us Bam. And now I have Bam, Khan, Brandon Miller, LaMelo, and some role guys. Let's fucking go.

• 1:54:48Speaker 01

  Bam is from North Carolina and he has a family and friends that go to every Charlotte game.

• 1:54:55Bill Simmons?

  You like this.

• 1:54:56Speaker 01

  He'd be so good there. It's a come to Jesus moment for Miami, right? Because Bam's the captain. He's the last guy they want to trade. He's the personification of Heat culture and that's all real. They all love him. You saw how they reacted to his 83 point game, his mom being on the floor, all that stuff. But they are at a moment where they just can't deny anymore that this is all they are. They already didn't extend Hero and that, you know, just continues to be an ongoing thing.

• 1:55:24Speaker 01

  Jovic didn't pop. Ware's good, but the where Bam fit is always going to be.

• 1:55:28Bill Simmons?

  Ware's fine.

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  He's fine. Like, I'm not sure what he's gonna be, but I I just think that fit is gonna be a little clunky here and there all the time. Hockens is fine. Yakachunas looked good, but like, you're not, this core is not winning you anything. And they have to know that now. There's no hope for it.

• 1:55:42Bill Simmons?

  And you're in a conference with Detroit, Boston, the Knicks, Atlanta, who's gonna get a top 10 pick? Charlotte.

• 1:55:51Bill Simmons?

  You have Washington that might win the lottery, et cetera, et cetera. You from an asset standpoint, I'm starting to get really scared if I'm Miami.

• 1:55:59Speaker 01

  I love that you threw Washington and that was very nice of you. You're slandering Maxine Renault, but you're going to give the Wizards some props.

• 1:56:05Bill Simmons?

  Well, they might get, they might get the banter. Who knows? They're gonna get one of the best guys, right?

• 1:56:11Speaker 01

  But, but the other thing Miami has to know is like.

• 1:56:12Bill Simmons?

  Why are you defending the Kings? You called them the Hindenburg in October. Now, now you're like.

• 1:56:16Speaker 01

  I just, I, I.

• 1:56:17Bill Simmons?

  You feel bad? I mean, you feel bad.

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  I put, I've had Renault first team all rookies. So I'm just like, I might get, I might get his jersey or something. I don't know. I must be.

• 1:56:24Bill Simmons?

  Do you like him? Cause you could probably score 20 points on him if he was guarding you.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  My jumper is actually looking pretty good right now.

• 1:56:33Speaker 01

  That was me. The other, but the other thing for Miami is like, we all know who the best player that's potentially available this summer. Like the best, best guy, the blockbuster guy is Yanis, right? And we know that Miami has flirted with Yanis before. They were one of the teams that was in whatever was going on in February. But you also just have to ask yourself is, is if we get to the end of that and we get Yanis and everyone's going to be celebrating. Hey, we didn't get Dame. We didn't, well, we got Yanis and I'm left with Bam and Yanis and Davion Mitchell.

• 1:57:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. What am I? And also Bam and Yanis? What is that?

• 1:57:08Speaker 01

  So like, I don't know.

• 1:57:11Speaker 01

  And then the other path is no, we're just going to build it slow. We're going to do what we do. We're going to build it slow. We have a lottery pick. We're not going to do anything exuberant. We're, but then you're okay just being like a nice frisky team next year. I don't, I, I, I don't, I don't know what they're okay with and what their appetite for risky in either direction really is.

• 1:57:27Bill Simmons?

  Bam's going into year 10. He is going to turn 29 years old next season.

• 1:57:35Speaker 01

  He'd, he'd be so good in Charlotte. I'm so jealous that you thought of this.

• 1:57:38Bill Simmons?

  Yanis is four years older than him with even more miles because he came into the league sooner. And I think you could make the case for what the cost would be for Yanis and Bam's probably 80 cents of that, right?

• 1:57:52Bill Simmons?

  And Bam's younger and more durable and a better fit for Charlotte?

• 1:57:57Speaker 01

  I think less than 80 cents.

• 1:57:58Bill Simmons?

  Maybe 60 cents, whatever it is, but if I'm Charlotte, I would rather go for Bam with my young guys. Cause if I get Giannis, it's like now I'm beholden. I did all the work on this, you know, a few weeks ago on the pod about like some real historical concerns, like he's going to be able to stay in the court in the right ways. Whereas Bam, I know for at least year 10, 11, 12, 13, I should be good. At the very least, the next four, he'll be at the same 2010 level with the same excellent defense. And I don't know, I just think these two teams make sense as trade partners.

• 1:58:32Speaker 01

  There's also a Jaren Jackson Jr. Thing with Bam's contract where we all, well, I mean, I think I'm a little higher on Triple J than you are, but like everyone agrees Bam is a really good player. Like there's just no debate that Bam is really good. There is some debate about, oh, hey, it's 50, 50 million, 54, 57 player option. Like if I got good value, like I think, I think the Grizzlies got the best value they were going to get for Jaren Jackson Jr. On the contract that he's on. And Bam is like, is the three pointer real semi-real? Like if it doesn't, if it proves not super real, how is he going to age? Like, I think there's some chance that if you can turn that contract into similar return to what the Grizzlies got for Triple J, that it would, it would be, it would age as like a pretty good trade.

• 1:59:16Speaker 01

  I just know that Miami has it in him. He just means that much to, to what their franchise is.

• 1:59:23Bill Simmons?

  It's a tough one. This is the problem with the league. You don't want to be stuck in the middle, but you also want to have the guys that your fans can wear his jersey. And they play for the team for 15 to 20 years. But, you know, I look at like when the, when the Celtics cut the cord with Pierce and KG, which was just cold blooded, but it was the best thing they ever did, right? And Danny, out of anybody was always willing to think that way. And I think if the path is to nowhere, which I think it is for Miami, I think you really have to think about, how do we blow this up? The fact that Charlotte owns their pick to me makes this a lot easier. Cause then it's like, all right, we're throwing away one year, we're getting all these assets back. And we could at least talk ourselves into this.

• 2:00:06Speaker 01

  There's also the variable that if you're a team like, um, cause I think it's, it's a lottery protected pick next year, right?

• 2:00:13Bill Simmons?

  And then No, that happened this year. Next year, it's, I think it's free next year.

• 2:00:17Speaker 01

  I'd have to look. Um, there's also the, what do the lottery rules look like? Because if you're a team like Miami and you think the odds are just going to get severely flattened, which I think is the most likely outcome. You all of a sudden maybe don't mind as much if we are

• 2:00:32Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's a really good point.

• 2:00:33Speaker 01

  Or 42 win team because we, we like, there's not as much benefit of being super, like the middle has become more profitable. I think, I think all of these teams are grappling with how soon are these changes going to come? Because we need to start planning like the, these kinds of directional pivots.

• 2:00:50Bill Simmons?

  If I'm Charlotte, I feel great where I am. I have a lot of flexibility.

• 2:00:55Bill Simmons?

  I didn't like how the season ended. I don't think Khan was healthy. Orlando played the best game they played all year. There was a lot of things that went wrong. They took a big lead early.

• 2:01:05Bill Simmons?

  The big thing Charlotte has to figure out is where do we go with LaMelo? We're actually trying to win multiple playoff rounds and I don't know the answer. He does some perplexing stuff game to game that is fun during the regular. Is he an 82 game guy or a 16 to 20 game guy? Is what they need to decide with him. I thought he had just some head scratching, crazy moments in both games. That made me really, really wonder like, is this somebody you're giving the car keys to?

• 2:01:34Speaker 01

  Oh, stop making driving analogies with LaMelo. You're just walking into, you're walking into it.

• 2:01:38Bill Simmons?

  I am setting myself up. I did wonder like, did Khan's back get hurt? Cause I didn't have him adjust the seat, move it back a little bit. Maybe the seat was too high up. Maybe it was my fault.

• 2:01:49Speaker 01

  I just don't, look, LaMelo had a, you called it the drunkest game of the year. It was severely intoxicated and LaMelo's last 90 seconds was like a whirlwind of, I just don't even understand what's the day one. I just don't understand what's happening. Um, but Khan was not playing well. Miller was fine. Like their offense is just a different beast with LaMelo on the floor. He defended much better this year. He's only 24, he's only 24, like he's, he's still like entering his prime. I think his contract is fine. I think trading him would be. It just depends what you would get, but I it's it's hard like I'm not I'm not messing with this right now. If I'm Charlotte, I like these three guys together. I want to see more of it. I want to see LaMelo's growth continue. I'm not messing with it.

• 2:02:33Bill Simmons?

  I'm not messing with it either. I would have some concerns after those last two games. I would I would just be thinking about it all summer, like especially watching the playoffs and watching these four rounds and just certain things that have to happen if you're a really serious playoff team. Can you have that kind of volatility with your best guy who has the ball who's like, I'm just gonna take this 30 footer right now, even though there's 30 seconds left in the tour that game. I'm just gonna take it. It makes me nervous.

• 2:02:59Speaker 01

  The two of 16, the two of 16 from three or whatever it was in that Miami game was like a little and then the fouling hero, the turnover. It was a lot. It was absolutely a lot.

• 2:03:08Bill Simmons?

  All right, Zach Lowe, even though the Met season is in shambles, you're gonna be doing your podcast Tuesday morning and Thursday morning. Thanks to Michelob Ultra. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well. New rewatchable is coming on Monday, The Kindergarten Cop. You watched that one with your daughter yet? Too violent. Your wife doesn't like violence.

• 2:03:28Speaker 01

  I haven't. I remember being very fond of it, however many years ago it came out.

• 2:03:32Bill Simmons?

  It's tremendous.

• 2:03:33Speaker 01

  And I don't know what's in. I don't know what's in there. Like, there's gotta be stuff that's aged poorly, but maybe not. I don't know.

• 2:03:38Bill Simmons?

  And then Ghostbusters the week after.

• 2:03:40Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 2:03:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Turns out that was a successful movie that a lot of people have seen. So that's all coming. Anyway, I'll be back on on Tuesday. Zach, I will see you next Sunday. We'll have a lot more playoff clarification back then.

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 2:03:56Bill Simmons?

  All right, let's do it.

• 2:04:06Bill Simmons?

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• 2:04:43Speaker 03

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