The Luke Kornet Game and Tatum’s Road Back With David Jacoby. Plus, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by David Jacoby to react to the Celtics taking Game 5 against the Knicks and Jayson Tatum’s injury (3:42). Then, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert joins to discuss where the league is, Caitlin Clark, and much more (01:09:16). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: David Jacoby and Cathy Engelbert Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo Try Loom today, visit loom.com to get started The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  You're listening and watching the Bill Simmons Podcast presented by FanDuel, our friends, America's number one sportsbook, and they've made it easier than ever to get in on the action during an NBA playoff game, even after tip off. Just look for the live SGP tab on the FanDuel Sportsbook app and build your own bet slip, then sit back, relax, track the outcome of your parlay right in the app. And if you don't already have it, download the FanDuel app today to make every moment more. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available and listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Must be 21 plus and present in select states. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMER or visit rg-help.com.

• 0:44Bill Simmons?

  Coming up, the Celtics are still alive and we're going to talk some WNBA. Yeah, how about that podcast? It's all next. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. It's football season. Uber Eats is delivering deals every game day. This week, get 10 free boneless wings from Wingstop on qualifying orders. Game on, flavor on, Wingstop is here. So if your fantasy league is coming over for some in-person smack talk, order Wingstop on Uber Eats and get 10 boneless wings free. It's the perfect way to keep everyone fed tonight so you can focus on the game. No matter who scores big tonight, you'll score a great deal. Order now and get 10 boneless wings free from Wingstop only on Uber Eats. Offer valid from September 14th to September 27th and from November 2nd to November 16th.

• 1:28Bill Simmons?

  Order minimum before taxes and fees is required. See retailer's storefront for details. Taxes, fees and terms apply. Product availability varies by region. Exclusions may apply. See app for details. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network where I have a new rewatchables coming next Monday because it's still big ass 70's month. We did Death Wish this week. Next week, we're doing Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

• 1:56Bill Simmons?

  Steven Spielberg, 1977, huge movie, awesome movie. It's gonna be me and Sean and Chris Ryan. We also did a little thing for Ringer Movies about the Superman trailer. If you subscribe to the Ringer Movies YouTube channel, you can subscribe to the Bill Simmons YouTube channel as well, where I'm gonna be going live tomorrow night, Thursday, with Rob Mahoney after OKC Denver, game six. Four podcasts this week. It's that time of year, a lot of basketball going on. We didn't even get to talk with Dave Jacoby, who's coming up in a second, about where's Minnesota? Because that series was over the moment Steph Curry got hurt.

• 2:36Bill Simmons?

  Jimmy Butler, at this point in his career, was not able to win Golden State a game. No shots fired at Jimmy Butler. I just think he's at a slightly different stage of his career. And Minnesota is really, really good. So we'll talk about that. We'll talk about Minnesota versus whoever wins tomorrow night.

• 2:54Bill Simmons?

  With Rob Mahoney tomorrow night, we'll see if the Joker has one more great performance in him.

• 3:01Bill Simmons?

  Stay tuned. So that's tomorrow night. Today's podcast, talking to Dave Jacoby about Celtics Knicks, game five, the Tatum injury, the fallout, some thoughts after having a day to sit with it and the Knicks, the spot they're in, and a whole bunch of topics that came out of tonight, the Luke Corneck game. And then WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert came on to talk about the upcoming season, where the league is at, big picture. And I just wanted to pick her brain because the league is at a fascinating moment right now as it heads into almost its third decade. So that was a really fun conversation. We taped that on Monday. And before we get to the podcast, just wanted to remind everybody on FanDuel, I'm doing Taylor

• 3:42Bill Simmons?

  Fade every week, and we're gonna be doing it for Thursday night's OKC Denver game. And that is going to be a prop with Jokic, points, rebounds. I'm going over. I would advise you to tell me, but you can go check it out. They add a profit boost to it, though. So go check out the FanDuel Sportsbook app before the game on Thursday. Anyway, big podcast coming first, our friends from Pearl Jam.

• 4:32Bill Simmons?

  All right, recording this part of the podcast a little before 7 P T. Once upon a time, you knew him as the czar of reality TV and he ran all of the audio and video for Grantland, a job that many people have tried to take credit for, but I can promise you, he did it 100% himself.

• 4:50Bill Simmons?

  Now he is the host of The Mismatch, along with Chris Vernon, among many other things. My guy, Dave Jacoby is here. Die easy Knicks fan. I did book this before we knew the results of game five, just for the record.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  You're an asshole. It's, it's, I, this really could have gone two ways. I'm not really happy the way it went, to be honest with you. You know, I'm really not happy with the way it went.

• 5:14Bill Simmons?

  What did you think was gonna happen? Yeah, I mean, I guarantee you didn't think we would be calling this on the podcast title for this episode, the Luke Kornet game. But that was, that was the outcome.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Ex Nick, by the way, Westchester Nick legend.

• 5:28Bill Simmons?

  Right?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yes. There's, I remember hearing from Nick fans, be like, there's this guy in Westchester. He's like seven feet tall. He hits threes and he's got ball skills. I was like,

• 5:37Bill Simmons?

  That used to be his gimmick was the three-point shooting.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, he doesn't even shoot threes now. Yeah. But no, um, I do think the Knicks will eventually win the series, but I had a feeling they would lose this one. And now it just, I don't feel good about anything right now. Because now it's just like, you have to win game seven. My Knicks group chat, game six, you're right. My Knicks group chat has gone from, we need to trade for Giannis right around game three, to who do you think would be a better matchup in the finals, the Thunder or the Wolves, to must win game six in the Garden.

• 6:17Bill Simmons?

  There was no, no like four hours there of, are you guys worried about the Pacers at all? And then people reassuring each other, no, no, we're not worried about them at all.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  No, none of that.

• 6:29Bill Simmons?

  Okay, because the Pacers are really good.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Oh, the Pacers. Yes, the Pacers are really good. And also, the, you know, I revisited the Pacers Knicks series from last season. And I had to like, sort of freshen up on it because I remember game seven was such a big deal and everyone was hurt and OG tried to play. It's just like Brunson's hurt and no one was there. But like game one and game two, kind of like this series that came down to the end. And remember Carlisle got kicked out of a game. I forgot about that. And he's like, small market teams deserve fouls too. There's some chippiness. There was some real like, stuff there. It was a good series.

• 7:06Bill Simmons?

  It's gonna be worse if it's Pacers Knicks this year. It'll be even worse. And let's be honest, it's probably going to be Pacers. I'll just tell you my mindset. First of all, I was hearing, my dad was there. And it was a late arriving crowd because it was a seven o'clock start plus a shitload of traffic. And there were some Knicks fans because I think some Celtic fans after the Tatum injury were like, putting the tickets on. So you could hear the Knicks things. They show Shalameh at one point courtside. And I, and it turned into a not in our house. We can't let this happen. Every time you heard the Knicks three or some sort of good Knicks play in the first, you know, 40 minutes of the game, first like real time 40 minutes. And you could hear the loud Knicks fans. And it was like, this is

• 7:51Bill Simmons?

  would be really awful. If the Knicks like win this, their fans are celebrating. It cuts to the end, the wide shot, only the Knicks fans are left. Shalameh is pointing at people. I was like, I just, we gotta win this. It turned into Hoosiers and the Celtics rose to the challenge, Jacoby.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  They did. It was a good Celtics game. I mean, we'll talk about the basketball stuff in a second, but I, I do want to say, I heard that Shalameh listens to the podcasts and I'm very excited about that. I'm excited that he's supporting the Knicks. Bringing the Kardashian element wasn't my favorite thing to happen in game four.

• 8:28Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Like, I'm just gonna say, like,

• 8:32Speaker 01

  I love that you're here, Timothy Chalamet. I love your support of the Knicks. When he went to road games and sat next to Stiller behind the Pistons bench in Detroit, I was like, all right, I love this, you know, and the game day thing that he did.

• 8:44Bill Simmons?

  Like a real fan.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Yes, I was like, I love this. But it was when, when you, you bring a girlfriend, that's fine, but your girlfriend's sister, and then it becomes about them and their outfits. And you know, it's gonna sort of like make the press. I didn't love the Kardashian element that we saw.

• 8:59Bill Simmons?

  You remember, once upon a time, our guy Ben Affleck, oh, three range, Red Sox hat and won a World Series in over eight decades. And he brought J Lo, Yankee fan, grew up in the Bronx, literally called Jenny from the Bronx and brought her into the good Red Sox seats for Red Sox Yankees. And it was like, that was when the worm turned on Affleck for a little bit. Yes.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  It's like, it's like, it's your, it's your buddy that has a girlfriend who golfs. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like, I, it's like, oh, I'm so excited that, that your girlfriend golfs. Like, I'm, I'm saying that she's gonna be joining us, but it's gonna change the vibe. That's sort of how I felt about the Kardashians being at the Knicks game.

• 9:38Bill Simmons?

  We're not gonna have our buddy to have nine beers and he's throwing up behind the 10th hole and asking the caddy master for.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Afterwards, we're going straight home. Yeah. It's just like, all right. Yeah. I didn't love the Kardashian element, but like, I will say this is, um, the Celtics made appropriate adjustments and played good basketball tonight. And I love the way that they attacked the paint and just sort of like put the pressure on the Knicks. They did.

• 9:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, I kept, you know, from, from the moment Tatum's tragic injury happened, when we found out the results, and then I got some people in my life are like, is there a Ewing theory possibilities here? And just for the record, um, first of all, I love Jason Tatum. Second of all, not eligible because they won the title with him last year. The whole point of the Ewing theory is the team never won the title. Best player gets hurt and then the team rises to the occasion without him in some way. But that said, It did open the door for some stuff that has been pretty frustrating about this Celtics team where they all had to band together. They had to get a little more creative offensively. There was a lot more cutting. There was a lot more ball movement and some of the stuff

• 10:41Bill Simmons?

  that would handicap this team in the past where it was either Tatum or Brown with the ball, just dribbling, especially when they had a lead and the lead would start to fritter away. And then it just turned into one-on-one basketball. That never happened in this game because the guards were more involved. Kornet was cutting. The passing was really good. That was by far the best game they played in the playoffs, I think.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  I think so too. And it did help that Derrick White hit like seven threes to start the game.

• 11:07Bill Simmons?

  That always helps. When the guy's flame shooting out of Derrick White's ass was a bonus. But the Knicks had Josh Hart made more threes in a half hour than he made all playoffs.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  I will say that there is something to be said for you drive the car, I'll drive the car. You drive the car, I'll drive the car. But when you have, when you take the Tatum element out of the Celtics offense, it becomes a little bit more like I'm driving the car and I'll dictate how things are going to go and I'm going to spread the ball around. It's not my turn, your turn. It's my turn and then we're going to spread to role players. That's what the Knicks offense is with Brunson sort of at the helm. And I think that is what led to them playing this, this sort of more democratic offense. And you know, it also didn't hurt.

• 11:53Bill Simmons?

  I think that's the right word.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Derrick White hit all his stuff. Yeah.

• 11:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, they had to get more creative because Tatum becomes the security blanket that you can always rely on because he's, you know, can create a shot whenever he wants. But now, hey, Drew Holiday should probably post up a little bit more. Let's try a couple of those. Let's set picks for Derrick White. So there was some stuff that was happening that was some really good basketball. I also think this version of the Knicks, I think they have some good one-on-one defenders, but as a team defense thing, this has been a problem for them all year. They're usually against it. They were attacking Towns. They got Towns into foul trouble. Then uh.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  No, no, that's not true. That's not true. That's not true.

• 12:30Bill Simmons?

  Well, they did get towns in.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  They did not get towns in the foul trouble.

• 12:32Bill Simmons?

  They did.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Towns got himself in the foul trouble, dude. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? Carl, did you see what Carl, the foul on him? Like.

• 12:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, they did a good job of having players with the basketball near towns as he had spasms and ran into people.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  The first foul, he was setting a screen and again, none of these fouls affect the play. Like none of them do. He's setting a screen and then like it's an illegal screen. It wasn't even like around the ball. It wasn't even like the point of attack. And the second one, Porzingis is coming across the lane and he hits him like he's like a tight end checking a linebacker on the way. It's like, what are you doing? It's like, again, Carl, KP is not a threat. Like, why are you doing this in the middle of the lane? I don't understand these fouls. Then the third foul, he gets his shot blocked. And then he fouls the guy right, yeah, by Derrick, then he grabs Derrick White and throws him out of the way because he's embarrassed. He got his shot blocked.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  So when you say the Celtics put him in foul trouble, I say that is complete bullshit and not true. Carl Anthony Towns can't help himself, dude. He's got a real like mental problem. He's got like a mental block with this. And he goes through stretches where it seems like he's figured it out, but he hasn't. And I'm going to very quickly give you a, a quick analogy I gave on the mismatch, which was like, it's like a, a finance guy going to the strip club and going to the champagne room and getting roofied and, and spending $20,000 on his credit card. And then waking up the next day and realizing it. And then around four o'clock that day, going back to the same strip club the next night. Like, when are you going to learn, dude? Like, when are you going to learn?

• 14:12Bill Simmons?

  If you went back to the strip joint every night.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Five nights in a row is what Carl Anthony Towns did tonight.

• 14:18Bill Simmons?

  His body was developing, uh, developing a resistance to roofies. It was actually like, it was not working as well against him because he kept going back.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Carl Anthony Towns was getting fouls where he was challenging people that were driving to the basket, trying to score at the rim. I would be like, that's fine. But if you look at his fouls tonight, like the other one, it was under the hoop on a rebound. None of these are like on the ball plays at the rim or none of them are even questionable.

• 14:45Bill Simmons?

  Well, I had some Knicks fans in my life who were, I won't name them, who were very upset about Tony Brothers in the third quarter, just putting fouls on Brunson. I thought for the five fouls were like no brainer. You had to call him fouls. The one where he fouled Derrick White's elbow with his face, that's, I always have a problem with that call because I'm not sure where your face is supposed to go if somebody's diving into you. But ironically, the person who benefits the most from that call and the flip side of it is Jalen Brunson. Cause he gets a lot of fouls that way where he just lurches into guys and you know, your body can only do so many things when you're over six feet tall and standing up. The elbow's coming at your face, it's probably going to hit your face. You can't like do the matrix.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Well, also Brunson, and again, like I'm a Nick fan, but I'm objective about basketball. He put his chin like on his shoulder.

• 15:35Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Like you're putting your chin right there.

• 15:39Bill Simmons?

  But that was the only one that I thought was the shaky call. So there's some big picture Celtic stuff and then we could talk about the Knicks pieces. Actually, let's talk about the Knicks pieces first, just to mix it up. So the Knicks hasn't been the most fun 21st century, right? And finally, I think all of these different things have broken this year for them, including, unfortunately for the Celtics and for the NBA, but this Tatum injury is obviously a huge competitive advantage for the Knicks. The seas have parted. They were plus 700 before the series. They stole a couple of fourth quarters. I thought they played really well in the second half of game four, deserved to win. They get this break with the Tatum injury.

• 16:21Bill Simmons?

  Now they're heading into the final, finals of the East. If they win this, they don't have to play Cleveland. They get to play Indiana and get revenge on them. So everything's aligning and then they blow this game. And now we're going MSG on Friday and there's a lot of DNA now swimming in the, in the pool. There hasn't been a lot of happy memories the last 25 years and I just wonder.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  You can't say DNA swimming in the pool and happy not go bad, bad places.

• 16:51Bill Simmons?

  I'm sorry. My bad. I know that's, that was once a frequent point search of yours.

• 16:59Bill Simmons?

  But yeah, so the Celtics achieved their goal. They protected home court. Shalameh wasn't pointing at Knicks fans after the game. And now there's pressure on the Knicks who still have a better team. But at least now there's some pressure pushed the other way with that game seven in Boston looming, right?

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, I think the Knicks will win the series, but if I, do you think I'm going to sit here and not be doubtful and terrified of game six? With OG playing the way he did tonight and like.

• 17:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, what's going on with him?

• 17:30Speaker 01

  He's, he's been up and down. There was the stretch when Brunson was hurt where Bridges and OG were phenomenal. And it just felt like it's like low key felt like Brunson being out for that long was actually great for the Knicks. Because it gave Bridges and OG this time to score 20 points, 25 points, 30 points. And be a focus of the offense that would help them when they, you know, re-acclimated to the Brunson environment.

• 17:59Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  But right now, it just doesn't feel like it. It doesn't.

• 18:04Bill Simmons?

  Well, plus he was awesome in game one. I thought he was the best player on the court.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:10Bill Simmons?

  And then since then, we haven't seen it the same way. There was a couple of things. I thought the Celtics were doing a couple of things a little bit differently defensively. One is they just didn't, they were fine with Josh Hart taking threes until he made about five.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  He made them.

• 18:25Bill Simmons?

  Then, then they shifted their defense, but initially it was like, we're good with that. We're good with that. They really seems like they, they studied the tape of Bridges. What did Bridges end up with today? He was nine points today. He's four for 14. He's got that weird, it's like the guy you play pickup with all the time where they have this one shot. And then eventually you figure it out and you're like, fuck, why didn't I figure that out six months ago? He does this jump shot. It's like a hop step, 45 degree angle delivery shot. And, and White couldn't time it. And then finally this game, they started like timing the jumper a little bit better.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  What he does is whether he's moving to his right or left, or he's squared up to the hoop, he squares his shoulders to the hoop and he puts his hands up like he's throwing a soccer throw in pass. So the ball, and then he flicks his wrist to get it there. That's why he doesn't shoot threes that well.

• 19:14Bill Simmons?

  But he always bends back. He would, he would rather take a 10 foot shot than an eight foot shot from the same place where his feet are at. He's always going backwards. I think it was screwing up White. He couldn't gauge it.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  If you're over 43, he shoots like a double dribble character. Like the ball goes up and his arms go up and then he releases the ball with his wrists only. And once you figure that out, I don't, I don't think anyone can figure it out. I'm being honest with you. I think, I thought that he played so well in the fourth quarter of game four.

• 19:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they were just, they were more aware of it. It didn't seem like they were surprised by his offense in this game. And then, you know, the other one was, um, they were just really aggressive with Brunson. And, um, you know, they just, they fell asleep in game four. Like the reason he got going in the third quarter of game four is because their defense sucked. They fell asleep. They weren't, they lost them a couple of times. They just didn't do a good job. They did a good job today.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:08Bill Simmons?

  And it helped that he got six fouls in 10 minutes.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  He didn't get going in game four. Like he was absolutely on fire and took over the game. I thought that game four was one of my favorite basketball games I've ever seen. With Tatum and Brunson in the third quarter, just exchanging those punches was just, it was one of my favorite basketball games I've ever seen. You know what I mean? Like I like basketball before, like the Knicks, like that was such a great game. And it's too bad that Tatum was gone from it. But here's a question I have for you. Um, there was a point in game two, I think it was the start of the second half, when they just posted up Towns on the left block and he got in like that Carmelo spot, like 10, 12 feet from the basket. And they were just, they were obviously doing it. Like they, he would throw it in, throw it out. They were just, they were obviously doing it. And there's, there's no Celtic defender that can cover him with his back to the basket,

• 20:52Speaker 01

  13 feet from the basket. And they just never go back to it. I don't know why.

• 20:58Bill Simmons?

  Isn't that the story of Towns' career, though? It always seems like, like the Celtics guarded him with Drew Holiday a bunch of times today. And teams, teams just feel like they can get away with it because Towns is more comfortable 25 feet from the basket. But yeah, you're right. He torched Horford a couple of times in game two.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Horford, Towns, Brown, Tatum, it didn't, there's no one on the roster. Maybe look, maybe this new look.

• 21:22Bill Simmons?

  Right, well, you know what's interesting about him? He's a streaky low post scorer. Usually people are streaky three pointer, but he gets in like these grooves on the low post. When you watch it, you're like, how, how does he not average 40 a game? And then he just won't shoot another eight footer for a month.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  But it felt like a running back that was getting five yards a carry. I think it was game two. I think I'm pretty sure it was the very, the third quarter game two where this went to it like three plays in a row. And I said to myself, why don't you just do this until they stop it? Just do this until they stop it. And they never go back to it. And like the, why don't we see Brunson, Towns picking roles?

• 21:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm looking at, I'm looking at his shot chart. I mean, he didn't take that many shots, but yeah, he only took two threes. He took a shot at the key.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Cause he can't stop fucking fouling, Bill. Look at his foul chart. Dude, I'm telling you, all this five fouls had nothing to do with like affecting the play defensively. Nothing to do with it.

• 22:14Bill Simmons?

  Missoula did two things tonight that the Celtic fans have been calling for, for a while. One is he finally punted on Porzingis. Listen, Porzingis, huge part of last year's team. When he's healthy, he's a 20 point scorer. He's unicorny. I, we concede all that.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  He's corny.

• 22:32Bill Simmons?

  Well, he's unicorny too. And in this series and in this whole playoffs, and really since March, he's been, he's been zombie Porzingis. There's, he's been poor zombie. There's no other way to put it. And he's such a liability. They're playing these two big lineups that they're just getting annihilated on in the previous games. And then finally today, they punted on it. They started the second half with Kornet, which is what they should have done. And the irony of the Kornet piece, he's been a really good bench guy all year. He's been good in the home games. The crowd really likes him. I'm just telling you.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  I love Kornet.

• 23:05Bill Simmons?

  And they've played games, you know, they've been really careful because they kind of knew they were going to be the two seed for four months. And they've been, they would have games where they didn't play Tatum, they would have games where they didn't play Brown. And they had all these guys, these guys are all used to playing without one of the two stars. And Kornet was always like a big part of some of those games. So I can't say I was like shocked that he played that way. Seven blocks is shocking, but I was waiting for him to play more for a couple of games now.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  What, what I love about Kornet is he's a very self-aware basketball player. He never tries to do anything outside of his skillset. You'll never see him fucking dribble the ball. You know what I mean? You'll never see him pull up for three, even though he came up as like a 40% three-point shooter. Like he's just never doing anything that's outside of his role and his skillset. He just doesn't do it. He's not going to make negative plays. I'm not going to look it up, but I bet he has like four turnovers on the year. He just does what he's supposed to do. He knows his role.

• 24:07Bill Simmons?

  Well, in this game, he helped with the rebounding, which was the other big thing that changed. They just took the rebounding more seriously. Robinson was really good again.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  I have a theory.

• 24:18Bill Simmons?

  Robinson, he's had stretches during his career where you're like, why isn't this guy the next Bill Russell? Why is it, why aren't we talking about him like we talk about Russell, Chamberlain and Kareem? You'll catch him for four minutes and like, is this the best player in the NBA?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Well, I watch a lot of Mitch Robinson. I'm not a huge fan. He can't catch, number one, he cannot catch the ball. Number two, I will send you a link. There's a video of him playing like pickup against like regular humans. He looks like Kevin Durant, but taller and stronger. And I have a theory about Robinson. One of my favorite movies is The Prestige, right? You know, the big act at the end where they're like, how?

• 24:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  They're like, how do you, how do you do this? They're like, well, I've got like a drunken twin brother. There is another Mitch Robinson that they prestige onto the free throw line tonight. There is, who else? He was six for six, dude. Like, he, he couldn't even hit the net. He couldn't even hit the net.

• 25:13Bill Simmons?

  And they were all free throws that he was making the same way where they would hit the front of the rim, bounce over and go in like he was at a carnival?

• 25:19Speaker 01

  He prestige, they prestige Mitch Robinson tonight. There are two twin Mitch Robinsons.

• 25:24Bill Simmons?

  Can't rule it out.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  I didn't, I mean, I've never seen, but I've never seen, I've only seen one Mitch Robinson at a time.

• 25:30Bill Simmons?

  I'm still trying to figure out how Shalhoub got courtside.

• 25:34Bill Simmons?

  I have, I have more stuff to talk about with this game, but we gotta take a quick break. Hey, as you know, I like to create things. We worked with FanDuel on a new betting concept. We call it tail or fade. We've done it for a couple of weeks in a row. We hit last week. I make a player prop pick. You either get to decide to back it, which is a tail, or go against it, which is a fade. But either way, you get a 50% boost either on the over or the under. So if you check out FanDuel Sportsbook on Thursday for the OKC Denver game, what we did was, uh, we did Jokic. Points, rebounds, I think over 40 and a half. So if it's a combined thing, gets to 41.

• 26:18Bill Simmons?

  You win the bet and you win your little 50% profit boost on that bet. I'm going over on my guy Jokic. If you want to tail me, join me. If you want to go against me, fade me, whatever you want to do. I love when the customers ride with me. They won last week, by the way. Can't wait to make fun of those who fade me and lose. So for, uh, for Thursday, Jokic, 40 and a half over. Go check it out. And by the way, go to FanDuel.com/BS and you can download America's number one sportsbook. And you could bet on lots of stuff, not just tail or fading me, but you must be 21 plus and present in select states or 18 plus and present in DC. Opt-in required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wager amount.

• 27:03Bill Simmons?

  See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. This episode is brought to you by Loom by Atlassian. Some things are just. Unnecessary. We see players, I don't want to name them, but players who can't help getting a dumb flagrant, dumb foul, dumb technical at the worst possible times and you bang your head, your hand against your head and you go, why do they do that? Why is that so unnecessary? Why don't they get it at this point? Well, it's just as unnecessary as tedious business meetings. Good thing you can use Loom instead. Use Loom to simultaneously record both your screen and yourself to share a quick update,

• 27:46Bill Simmons?

  to provide feedback, to train a colleague, everything in between. Plus, add Loom AI to your meetings for instant written notes and recordings. Try Loom right now at loom.com. That is L-O-O-M dot com. So, obviously a pretty traumatic 48 hours for Celtic fans. Yesterday was just awful. Cause there was no news at all and even me, I couldn't, you know, I knew it wasn't great, but nobody, I mean, they just shut down. They didn't say anything. And the reason they did it was because they went and they immediately put him in the surgery. They just didn't want to say anything until they found out it was a successful surgery. But the longer it went on, you know, by one o'clock in the afternoon, my time, I'm on threads

• 28:30Bill Simmons?

  like, maybe it's not an Achilles. Maybe, maybe it's like he tore his plant, his plantar fasciitis muscle, whatever the fuck that thing is. Like, who knows? Maybe it wasn't, or maybe it's worse. Maybe he tore his Achilles and like ankle ligaments and it was like this catastrophic. And your mind just starts racing, then all of a sudden you find out what it is and start thinking big picture. I was Googling all the, you know, all the different comebacks. Kobe was eight months, came back, then got hurt three weeks later, which is why he only played six games that year. Durant was longer, but everybody felt like Durant could have come back for the playoffs and just didn't. But you start, your mind's just going everywhere.

• 29:14Bill Simmons?

  And there's that Jalen Brown piece of maybe with all the money that this team is doing, maybe they blow it up next year. Maybe this is the summer to trade Jalen Brown. What's he worth? You start going down rat road. What would people get for him? Is it worth it to trade him? Or could he carry the torch for a year until Tatum comes back in February?

• 29:36Bill Simmons?

  It's really split what he's worth with the Celtic fans that watch him every day. Cause the more you see somebody, they become like your spouse where you start thinking of all this stuff like, ah, that drives me crazy when they do that. You stop seeing.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Can't relate.

• 29:47Bill Simmons?

  You can't relate to that at all. I get it.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 29:50Bill Simmons?

  But he was really good tonight and to me, that's the reason not to trade him. Because I still feel like he's one of the 20 best guys in the league. What he did tonight is the case for like, don't blow it up. Maybe Tatum can be back in February. Maybe you only have to shave around the salary sides. Maybe you're a five, six, seven seed. Maybe Tatum rounds in the shape until April. Maybe Jalen Brown can hold this fort with the infrastructure, Missoula, and the fact that the East is gonna suck. You know, I, to me that, this game is gonna make me think of that this summer. What do you think?

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 30:28Bill Simmons?

  I laid a lot on you there. Sorry, bud.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no.

• 30:31Bill Simmons?

  Four minute, four minute first take intro.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  First of all, the people, the people that are listening to the, the Bill Simmons podcast wanna hear that. And I'm honored to be here to respond to it. And I will say that I also am prepared to ask you these questions.

• 30:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  I never really considered the Jalen Brown trade. I think you're too much in the weeds. I think the questions that need to be asked are, is Horford gone? Is Porzingis gone? Is White gone? Is Drew Holiday gone? Like those four players are not going to be.

• 31:00Bill Simmons?

  Wait, the only one who doesn't go. Wait, because White's contract is.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Are you sure?

• 31:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, for what his, for what his value is and his age and all the stuff he brings to the table, I think he's one of the 40 best guys in the league. If you're making a list, like when I do Ringer 100, he's always in the 40 to 45 range. For what he's making money wise, you have to keep him. Holiday's a little different.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Is contract taken into account when you, you need to make that list? Is contract taken into account?

• 31:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, his, his, he's under 30 million still.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  So here's my, here's my take on like the future of the Celtics is I think that Porzingis is gone, Holiday's gone.

• 31:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but Porzingis, they still have to get a contract back. It's not like they could just be like, here, take his contract.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Ew.

• 31:40Bill Simmons?

  Well, but you still have to get some sort of money back. You're not just wiping the slate. You're getting, you're taking back like Rui Hachimura or whoever it is.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  The, the PR people for the Celtics need to put out some sort of like, Porzingis has this thing that's gonna heal in two months and his trade value's gonna go up. But I will say this, I think it's a Peyton Pritchard play. I really think it's like, it's, it's. Pritchard is going to bridge this gap of scoring and playmaking and things that we lose with Tatum. He's that good. Like, I think next year becomes like a Brown, Pritchard.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's gonna be tough.

• 32:19Bill Simmons?

  17 points at 30 10 minutes. Yes.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  He's good.

• 32:23Bill Simmons?

  But they could patch it together with the infrastructure because this team plays really well together and they have a certain style slash system, you know.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  But here's a question I want to ask. Here's a question I want to ask you that people want to hear. What do the Celtics look like next season?

• 32:37Bill Simmons?

  I think either Porford, depending on if he wants to chase the title or just stay in Boston. One of the most beloved Celtics teammates slash veterans they've ever had in the history of the franchise. I'd be surprised if he was like, all right, I'll see you guys later. I'm going to play for Orlando. I guess he's going to be 40 next year. I don't, you know, you don't want to start just chasing stuff. He already won the title last year. It's not like he needs a ring. But I think it's probably Porzingis or Drew. That would be, that those would be, it would be one of those two. And Drew probably has a little more value based on what's happened to Porzingis at this point. Now, his contract's not great. He's got three years left after this, but the type of guy.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  But who's coming in?

• 33:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, you try to do it. So you're trying to get somebody with less money that you're shaving, you know, if they shaved $7 million off in a trade, it turns out it's like $70 million with all this repeater tax, all this. So that's, I think what they would be trying to do. There's like bigger trades. If you wanted to go nuts where it'd be like Jalen Brown and Drew Holiday to Houston and you get a bunch of stuff back, but you're taking $20 million less in salary and you're basically rebuilding while also.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Just won the championship.

• 33:52Bill Simmons?

  I know, but that's, that's why that stuff's not going to happen. I'm just saying like the, the big monster, if you were playing this as a video game and it wasn't human beings and real people, you'd be like, oh, I'll just do this and I'll just build the round table. They're not doing that. Especially the new owner. He's not going to want to come in and. And uh

• 34:11Speaker 01

  So it's a Drew Holiday.

• 34:12Bill Simmons?

  To save money.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Drew Holiday, 80 cents on the dollar, Porzingis, 25 cents on the dollar.

• 34:18Bill Simmons?

  Or it might, it might even be as simple as Sam Hauser gets traded this summer because a lot of teams could use a really good three-point shooter. He's not making it, shooter's not making a ton of money. And then you figure out in February where you are and whether you want to shave salary or not because Porzingis would be an expiring at that point, but I can't.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  I think the Celtics.

• 34:36Bill Simmons?

  I just can't believe we're having this conversation. It was inconceivable a week ago.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  It sucks. I mean, but, but they're gonna win a lot of games in the Eastern Conference with no Tatum.

• 34:46Bill Simmons?

  Jalen had 26 points, 12 assists and eight rebounds. And my fear for the game today was he can't dribble. And I just, I just thought the Knicks would be like smothering him and be like, this guy can't dribble. Let's go get him. But he was pretty comfortable running the offense and, um, and I thought, I just thought he did a good job. I thought he was patient. He only took 17 shots. My fear was he was gonna take like 30, but he didn't. And they were pretty democratic, as you said, with the, with the ball. So, you know, it's, the question is, was this a moral victory or something more? Did they figure out something in this game that they can take? So they figured out the cornet piece. Well, they figured out ball movement, the cornet piece, and just continue to hope Towns is a complete idiot.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  They figured out Porzingis sucks and Towns can't stop fouling people. That's what they figured out, like.

• 35:36Bill Simmons?

  But you and I figured out Porzingis couldn't play in this series two games ago.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Two games ago? I mean, has he had a good playoff game?

• 35:47Bill Simmons?

  What's, no, he isn't. The only time he's been good, there's been some decent defensive stuff where he's just had his arms up.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Oh, you mean the seven foot three guy put his arms in the air and that was good?

• 35:59Bill Simmons?

  Yes, but that, did I expect him to turn into Taco Fall? I did. I didn't realize that was gonna be his new role on this team.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Taco winter dude, Taco winter.

• 36:11Bill Simmons?

  Oh my God.

• 36:14Bill Simmons?

  This Jalen Brown piece, though.

• 36:17Bill Simmons?

  There's no way, right? Cause I want Tatum and Brown to retire together. I don't want them to trade Jalen Brown.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  No.

• 36:24Bill Simmons?

  And yet around the league, people are like, watch, Jalen's gonna be the one who goes. It's they're gonna blow it up.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  No.

• 36:29Bill Simmons?

  I just, I don't see it.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  That's not people around the league. That's people like us that are talking to microphones. It's just like fun to say, but why would they trade Jalen Brown? Jalen Brown's gonna be the engine that brings the train to the next station, to the next station, to the next station next year. And there's 82 stops. You know what I mean? Like, he is the engine of the train. He's going to drive it. And sometimes it's gonna be ugly. And sometimes it's gonna look great. But like, if you trade Jalen Brown, who do you get back that's gonna be like your go-to guy? It's gonna be better than him. That's gonna, this, like.

• 36:59Bill Simmons?

  I don't know.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  No. And he's on the same timeline as Tatum. You won a championship fucking 11 months ago. They won the championship. There's a parade, you know?

• 37:07Bill Simmons?

  I'm well aware.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Weeks ago.

• 37:10Bill Simmons?

  Can I, can I talk about Tatum's first eight seasons with you for a split second? Cause I continue to think he's incredibly underrated and it sadly took a major, major injury for people to go, oh man, that guy was really good. This is too bad. Yeah. I don't think anyone took more shit unnecessarily. All he did was get better every year and really give a shit.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  As long as you allow me to retort with how corny he is when you're done, go.

• 37:35Bill Simmons?

  Okay. There's been nine guys since the merger season who in their first eight seasons played over 20,000 minutes and scored 13,000 points or more, and then 3,000 rebounds or more and 2,000 assists or more. MJ, LeBron, Bird, Barkley, KD, Harden, Pierce, Tatum, and Mark Aguirre, weirdly.

• 37:57Bill Simmons?

  There's been 14 guys ever in their first eight seasons who played 100 plus playoff games and scored at least 15 points a game in those games. Bird, Tatum, Duncan, Kobe, Worthy, Kawhi, Jalen, Magic, Parker, McCo, Pippen, Manu, and Scott, and Byron Scott. And there's been 100 guys, there's been four guys who have played 100 playoff games in their first eight years and had 28 and four as their stats. 20 points a game, eight rebounds, four assists. LeBron, Wilt, Bird, Elgin, and Tatum. What was so interesting about his career from a historical standpoint was how much postseason.

• 38:33Bill Simmons?

  Mileage and success that he had. He's 72 playoff wins. He's just turned 27. It's so, like, Jordan didn't have nearly that many playoff wins by the time he was 27. Like, even, you know, LeBron didn't have 100 wins by the time he was 27. So he was amassing this career that one of the best things about it was the durability and the fact that year after year, he was playing into May and June potentially. And he was on a really good team in a good spot. And he was, I think, one of the three most durable guys of this century. Him and Giannis and LeBron, where it almost seemed like an accident if they even, like, sprained their ankle.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Him and LeBron, him and LeBron, taking Giannis out of that.

• 39:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, Giannis had, he had one where he, like, fell and, like, broke bone in his back and, you know, but for the most part.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Playoff availability, yeah, I know what you mean.

• 39:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. And in a minute, that's all gone. But I just, I just thought that first eight years he had was really crazy. I never thought about it until that injury.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  I will also say, to be nice about Tatum, different running mates throughout the runs.

• 39:37Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  There's like the Isaiah Thomas season, you know, there's the scary Terry season. There's just like a lot of different elements that he's always been the, the, the constant variable in the equation where everything else sort of changed and he still had this consistent output. Another thing I'll say, but nice about Tatum, not a lot of duds. You know, a lot of these star players, there's a couple of duds out there. You're like, oh, yeah, like, remember game two of the second round series where he was like, went four for 25? Like, he doesn't have those games. He has ups and downs, but he doesn't have, like, dud, dud games.

• 40:07Bill Simmons?

  And he'll always bring defense and rebounding and he'll help the game in other ways, even if his shot isn't going.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  And the thing, as a non, former Celtics fan, I will say, I loved Larry Bird growing up. And here's a question I have for you is, why can't I, like, connect to him as a person? Like, why do I think he's corny? Why do I think that he's inauthentic? Like, I was reminded by co-host of The Mismatch, Verno, when they won last year. There was that, like, clip together of him sort of, like, cosplaying all these other Kobe moments and, like, Kevin Garnett moments, like, like, why don't I connect to him as a person? I know nothing about his personality, other than the fact that he has a son named Deuce. Like, why do I think that he's corny and inauthentic? I'm asking you that question, not because I'm trying to accuse him of something or insult him. I just want you to put me on the couch and tell me why I feel that way.

• 40:56Bill Simmons?

  Well, so I would argue the Celtic fans feel the opposite. Like, he's a beloved Celtic. And I think the reason he's beloved is because all he does is like work his ass off, try to get better, be a good example. Doesn't, doesn't ever say anything controversial, doesn't ever get in any kind of trouble, obviously. And all he is is just additive in all of these different ways. And I think when you watch it day in and day out, that's what you notice when you're a fan of the team. I think if you're not a fan of the team and you're judging people by, are they interesting? Are they up and down? Can I have conversations about them? There's just not a lot of Tatum conversations, but like, he's not as nearly as good as Tim Duncan,

• 41:37Bill Simmons?

  who's one of the, I have him as the seventh best player ever, but Tim Duncan used to take a lot of the same shit. He wasn't as interesting as Kobe, remember? He wasn't as fun to watch as Steve Nash. He wasn't, he didn't care as much as KG. He wasn't as vocal. And there were always, every time he got compared to anybody, even now, all these ex-player podcasts, they always shit on Duncan or they, you know, go out of their way to talk about, oh no, Kobe was better. Kobe was way better. You know, but I just think some guys do that. You don't think?

• 42:08Speaker 01

  No, I think it's, I think it's, it kind of goes into like the ex-player pods where it's like, he's really good at basketball. Maybe he's not the best in the press conference. Maybe he's not going to make you laugh. You know what I mean? Like, maybe he's not Peyton Manning, he's going to host SNL, but like, we, that's not why we love him. We love him because he's a basketball player. So why do we knock him for not being a great personality?

• 42:30Bill Simmons?

  But did you think LeBron was like the most personable guy on the planet? The first eight, nine years of his career? This was even a knock on him during that time where people were like, I don't.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  I mean, I could do a 17-hour podcast about LeBron's personality. I don't even, I don't even know where to start and end with that.

• 42:46Bill Simmons?

  Nobody could get a handle on him for the first, almost, and really until like the second or third Miami years.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  I I don't, I don't know who LeBron James is, dude.

• 42:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's a whole other conversation.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Down that path. I don't want to start down that path.

• 42:59Bill Simmons?

  We always had like KG, Anthony Edwards. Those are the kind of players that people seem to gravitate to.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Yes, of course.

• 43:05Bill Simmons?

  Anthony Edwards is the best example.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, because all of that. And they're, and they're fucking awesome. And you want to hang out with them and they make you laugh and they're just, you're like, they're cool. They like, they sit at the lunch table that you are not allowed to sit at. That's where I like my professional athletes. I want my professional athletes to be at the table in the cafeteria that I'm scared to look at and I'm never allowed to sit at. You know what I mean? And I feel like Tatum's not there and I'm not knocking him for it. I'm just talking about it.

• 43:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, well, it's not the first time I've heard that. I think my argument for Tatum is he doesn't try to be anything he's not. You know, he's not trying, he doesn't want to host SNL and he doesn't want to be in an Adam Sandler movie. He doesn't want to do any of that stuff. He just wants to.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  25 and 10 and 6. Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do. Yeah.

• 43:48Bill Simmons?

  I mean, one of the things, some of the, some of the like little stealth combos I've had are just people worried about removing basketball from his life. How's he gonna handle the next four or five months? He's never had a major injury. He's been hooping basically since he was growing up in St. Louis. Everything is about like trying to get better, trying to get better, trying to catch people, trying to hit different levels and trying to be one of the 10 best players in the league, trying to be one of the best five, trying to win a title. Can I be the best player in the league? And not only is that chase over, but your body's been like really injured for the first time. How are you gonna handle that? You know, and I think the good thing for him is Kobe was his idol, which you mentioned before. But Kobe had the exact same injury and really documented

• 44:32Bill Simmons?

  what it was like to have that injury and how he fought back from it and how he, you know, the work starts now. How great do you want to be? And I don't know. He weirdly laid like the Bible for how to attack something like this for somebody like Tatum.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  There's two pieces of information that we got today that I found really telling and I found kind of like. Brought me into the Tatum psyche and circle, which I loved. One was Marcus Spears, not my favorite Marcus Spears swagu. I love the other Marcus Spears, but I love the football Marcus Spears so, so.

• 45:01Bill Simmons?

  You're talking about Marcus Spears as the basketball one?

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. The basketball one, he said that he spoke with Tatum's father, who's like coaching in Malaysia or whatever. And he, and he was allowed to talk about his conversation with his father about his conversation with Jason. And his father said to Jason Tatum, he said, your idol is Kobe Bryant. Your idol is Kobe Bryant. That's the path you wanted to go down, and this is part of the path. And that's not a, a direct quote, but I found that to be like, as a father, and you know, I thought that was like a really cool thing to say. And I'm really glad that Spears got that information to share with us. Another thing, I don't know if you heard this part of the broadcast is Reggie said he texted with Tatum. And he sort of like read the text on the broadcast.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  And I was sitting there, I felt it was like, I felt it like a violation of trust, but obviously Reggie texted him. And Tatum sort of sent this message to Celtics fans. And it was while they were like up by 20 at the end of the third quarter. And he was like, and I can't, I can't paraphrase, he just washed it, you know, 40 minutes ago. But he's, he's like, Jason Tibbs said, he can't wait to get back into the Celtic green. And he's going to show the fans how much that means to him. And as someone who sat on a pretty popular podcast 10 minutes ago and was like, I don't understand this guy. Don't get his personality and try to critique him in that way. Those two pieces of information getting into my brain was so fucking cool. You know what I mean? Like the idea that like his dad gave him this guidance when he said probably the worst day of his life.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  And that he texted Reggie, knowing it's going to get read on the broadcast in front of millions of people. That this message to Celtics fans about his appreciation of his, his position in the sport. I thought that was a really cool thing to hear today. When there's been so much information about how long the injury is going to take and what's it going to be like when he comes back? And what's the Celtics do with the roster? Like hearing that from him, I found touching.

• 46:50Bill Simmons?

  Well, he's one of those guys. Within the organization, absolutely beloved. Just, you know, you have a lot of different people over the years who could be the face of a franchise. And he's really embraced it, has embraced the relationships with the guys who used to be on the team, the former stars and just kind of gets it, gets, you know, he came in when he was 19 and just kind of gets that this is a slightly different franchise than the usual franchise that has a lot of history and, you know, a lot of baggage, good and bad. But it's, it's the bummer for this is it took him getting injured, I think, for people to appreciate. You know, people, especially in this day and age, you're picking apart, you're picking apart.

• 47:34Bill Simmons?

  This guy doesn't do this, this guy doesn't, you know, you know what he does? He was the fourth best guy in the league and he was still getting better. And he was playing probably the best all around game of his career in the game that he got hurt. And there was still room for him to get better and better. And now who knows if he hit that limit or not. Durant came back and I felt like he was just about where he left in that 21 playoffs against Milwaukee. Right?

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:58Bill Simmons?

  But like scoring wise, it felt like he came back. So that would be the hope and it seems like they caught it pretty early. But man, I, I was thinking it has to be one of the worst NBA injuries from a, from a hitting a guy at a certain point of his career and also what it meant to like a team, like Bill Walton hurting his foot, that probably changed the course of a couple of titles. It's been a couple of these.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  Derrick Rose.

• 48:23Bill Simmons?

  Derrick Rose is one where it felt like that was the team that was positioned to battle LeBron for the 2010s and then he's just gone. So we've had these Sampson in 86, when he fell and hurt his back, he was never really the same after that. There's been a few of these, but it's hard to remember like a first team WNBA guy just getting wiped out for not just the playoffs. Brendan Mariani, he wasn't as good as Tatum though. You know, like Tatum's been first team all NBA four years in a row. And one of the things that was was so amazing about him is it felt like he was indestructible. You just felt like just pencil him in for 39 minutes a game and he'll get 13 rebounds in every game. So it's a tough one. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech.

• 49:06Bill Simmons?

  Whether it's a pumpkin spice coffee that goes splat in your seat or a weekend tailgate that leaves your trunk full of gear and who knows what. You're going to want WeatherTech in your vehicle, whether you call it fall, autumn or spooky season. Whether the mess is your fault, the kids, the dogs or the weather's fault. You're going to want WeatherTech for American made floor liners and a cargo liner that laugh in the face of fall weather. Visit weatherTech.com today. This episode is brought to you by Workday. Guessing is for game shows, not your business, especially when your margin for error is zero. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance and IT with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission aware, giving you accuracy 24/7 and the ability to not just

• 49:50Bill Simmons?

  get work done, but get it done right. It's a new Workday. The only thing I can compare to is-

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Here's what your listeners want to know. Here's what your listeners want to know.

• 49:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  How's it been for you the last 48 hours? Like, what are you going through?

• 50:03Bill Simmons?

  I don't know.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Like, we've talked about what Jason Tatum's going through, but like, people listen to this podcast. They care about Bill Simmons. You know, it's the Bill Simmons podcast. Like, what have you been doing the last 48 hours?

• 50:11Bill Simmons?

  Yesterday was brutal.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  What happened? Take me through it.

• 50:15Bill Simmons?

  I was just farting around all day. I did a power walk. I was on Twitter. I was just basically refreshing Twitter, waiting for the word and checking my texts.

• 50:25Bill Simmons?

  Now, when you get older as a sports fan, it starts reminding you of things that happen. So the obvious one was the Brady ACL. That's the only other time I remember. And then when Cam Neely got hurt in the Pittsburgh series and then when I was in college, that was another one. But, but at that point, we didn't know he was going to change his career.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  What is the most intrusive thought that you had?

• 50:47Bill Simmons?

  Well, I think the Brady one was the worst one because that was when you just start thinking in terms of, all right, this is how long it's actually going to be versus when you're younger. And it's like, oh, it could be back in February. He'll be fine. But you're like, no, this is actually probably two years and the whole team might be different and maybe they missed their window. And then you start thinking about windows like.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Was there ever a part of you that was like, maybe next year it doesn't help us to win basketball games?

• 51:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I definitely had that thought. I don't know how you don't, especially with the financial stuff and the money.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  But they're so good.

• 51:20Bill Simmons?

  I know. Well, then you start thinking the window of like, from 22, 23, 24, 25, they make the finals in 22 and Curry just goes to another level and they're not ready yet. They lose. 23, they get to the game seven against Miami. I'll still, I'll always wonder what would have happened if Tatum doesn't sprain his ankle in the first 40 seconds of the game because I still feel like, I just thought he was going to be awesome in that game. 24, they win. This year, Cleveland gets bounced. They have a chance. Like, you know, but here's the other thing. The Knicks were about to go up 3-1 in that series with Tatum.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Anyway, they're winning anyway. Like as a Knicks fan, I kind of wish, I mean, I wish he never got hurt, but I feel like the Knicks win this series with Tatum not getting hurt. And that's a whole hypothetical. We don't have to go down. But one thing that I heard on this podcast from you.

• 52:09Bill Simmons?

  They might've won that. They might've won the key game of the series before, during the, right before he got hurt. It was already over. They were down 70.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  OG was getting that. OG was getting that loose ball. And he's going up nine. Yeah, it's like, and with Brunson, like, please, that's a win of 3-1. They're winning. But I was listening to this stupid podcast, driving back from upstate. Like, it was a pandemic. It might've been like, it's not the bubble. Maybe it was the bubble of the year after the bubble. And you were talking about the Celtics and just how like, fickle the windows are. You know what I mean? You were just talking about like, it was, I think it was, I think it was the, I can't remember if it was the bubble year or the year after the bubble. But you were talking during the playoffs around this time of year, just about like, hey, man, with these windows, like, you think you got a chance next year, but like, you really don't. Like this, like, sometimes it's a six month window, sometimes it's a two year window.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  And I think that this injury and this moment is just a good example of that. The Celtics are favorites to win the East, if not the championship. They're.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  They're the what number two seed, but we all like secretly know that the best team in the Eastern Conference.

• 53:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  And we're talking about repeat championships. And then this happens and we're talking about, should they win games next year or tank for a pick? Like, that's just how fragile these things are.

• 53:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I remember writing about it. OKC make the finals in 12. They do the Harden trade. Westbrook gets injured in 13. In 14, San Antonio beats, and then all of a sudden they get to the Klay Thompson game. Klay gets catches fire. They lose that in seven and they had this stretch of like, oh, that team's going to be in the finals the whole decade. And they won one finals game. The entire, like, the over under was probably 10 finals games. They won one.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  At least, at least there was a Klay Thompson game. As a Knicks fan, I'm gonna look back and be like, and then Luke Kornet came in for KP to start the second half.

• 54:04Bill Simmons?

  That's the thing.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  And he blocked seven shots and we couldn't stop him. He's got an alley-oop.

• 54:08Bill Simmons?

  And then the series slipped.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  It's like, yeah, I feel like it was Luke Kornet.

• 54:12Bill Simmons?

  But that's the thing, you talk about windows. I would say this is the window for the Knicks is almost more dramatic. They, the Celtics get nudged out of this potentially. Cleveland's out. You have Indiana now, and I think you have home court, right?

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, what do you think, dude?

• 54:30Bill Simmons?

  And then you just think like, all right, OKC, not afraid of them.

• 54:35Bill Simmons?

  Young team. Brunson versus SGA head to head. We could take that or whether it's Minnesota. But yeah, I mean, the Knicks have never had a window that looked as good as this. Even in 99, they, they had no chance in that Spurs series. You know, which they weren't ever winning that.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  That Heat series, dude. They, they won it.

• 54:55Bill Simmons?

  The one, the, the one what if, I mean, the obvious what if with the Rockets in 94, but the, the bigger what if for me is that 93 Bulls series. I, they were every bit as good as the 93 Bulls. And they were right there.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:06Bill Simmons?

  And that was in either or series and you could drive yourself crazy with that. This is an amazing chance for them.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  In the first round in 93, they beat the Pacers. 94, conference finals, they beat the Pacers. 95, second round, I know you know all this, but I just want to set this up as a potential Knicks Pacers series. Second round, the Pacers win in a game seven. That's, that's three, four, five. They go head to head. Ninety-eight, second round, the Pacers beat them again. Ninety-nine, the Knicks winning the conference finals. Like that, and then it's not just like last year. And then in 2000, the Pacers beat them. Like Pacers Knicks is not like, I think this is like, people hype up like Celtics Knicks as a rivalry, but they don't really meet in the postseason.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Like, I think if the Knicks have a rival, it is the Pacers.

• 56:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, which is so weird, but I mean, there was one of the first 30 for 30s was made about the Knicks Pacers mid 90s rivalry. It's a real, it's a real thing that exists. But by the way, it was a really good documentary.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Uh, who directed that? My guy, right?

• 56:13Bill Simmons?

  My guy, Dan Cloris.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Hicks versus Knicks, did they interview Jalen?

• 56:19Speaker 01

  They must have.

• 56:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Jalen's in that.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, he must be.

• 56:22Bill Simmons?

  TNT's Jalen Rose?

• 56:24Speaker 01

  TNT's Jalen Rose, killing it.

• 56:25Bill Simmons?

  Racing, racing Dwight Howard to the monitor?

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Dwight, Dwight's in slippers. What are you even doing? What are you even doing? Yeah. What are you doing Dwight? What do you, what do you, what are you doing Dwight?

• 56:34Bill Simmons?

  What are you doing there Dwight? About, about that question?

• 56:37Speaker 01

  And I think that I, again, like I revisited last year's Pacers Knicks series, and if there is a Pacers Knicks finals, it's Eastern Conference Finals, which I believe there will be. It's, it, it was a lot closer than I remember and OG getting hurt was huge. Brunson getting hurt, like it wasn't just.

• 56:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  I just feel like it's a good matchup and I've, and I've listened to your stupid pod and I know you're all Pacers all the time. And like all the basketball people are so excited about the Pacers, but I think the Knicks should be and will win that series if it comes down to it.

• 57:04Bill Simmons?

  FanDuel updated their Knicks Celtics odds.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Oh God.

• 57:09Bill Simmons?

  And the Knicks are now minus 270. They were, I think, minus 620 heading into today's game.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  The Celtics were minus 900 before the, uh, the series started.

• 57:17Bill Simmons?

  And this is the volatility of this for the playoffs. I mean, for the conference Knicks are plus 125 and Indiana is also plus 125.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  It's so I just think that I would hate that this goes down as like the series where Tatum got hurt because I really liked it as the series where the Knicks shit the bed in game one at home and shit the bed in game two at home and then DNA in the pool in game four. That was my favorite. That was my favorite part of the series.

• 57:41Bill Simmons?

  The DNA in the pool game? You know, well, what's crazy about game four, the Tatum injury puts a little bit of a black cloud over what would have been one of the great Knicks wins ever and still is.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  Oh, one of the great games, dude. One of the great games.

• 57:57Bill Simmons?

  But now, now you have this Friday night game six ticket in New York City, which I think will be the hardest Knicks ticket to get. Um, I don't even know when. I don't know if the demand for the 99 finals was even up there because it just feels like there's more Knicks fans now. There's two new generations of Knicks fans since 99. Um, everyone's going to want to be at this game and it's going to be an incredible game.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  I've got a couple of things on that. Um, one is I wanted to go to game four because we were doing the mismatch after the game and I was like, it'd be good for the show, whatever. And I was like, you know, I've, I've got some expendable money. I'll just do it. It was like $900 to sit like in the last row. I just couldn't bring myself. It's $900. Like I just can't. Like I've got children. Like I just can't do it. And another story I want to tell about game two is they have the watch party outside of the garden, right? They're kind of like, there's a plaza there, just like most places do, like beer garden in Milwaukee or whatever. And I was doing, um, the Spotify new fronts, shout to the sales Spotify people. And I did that event and it was right next to that watch party. And it was like the second quarter, I went to a bar by the garden and I had a couple

• 59:04Speaker 01

  beers and watched the game and they started to come back. And I was like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna see if they win and I'm gonna go to the watch party because you've seen the stuff on social from that area.

• 59:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  And I went there. And I was super excited about the energy from the Knicks fans and everything. But it was really a commentary on like the content creation generation. Because everyone was there with their phones out to create content for social.

• 59:32Bill Simmons?

  To show people that they were there.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  It was me too. I did the exact same thing. But it's not this, like, I remember me and Kevin Wilds went to Seventh Avenue outside the Riviera after the, um, the Red Sox beat the Yankees. And Seventh Avenue was shut down. It was all Red Sox fans. And we were all there together, just high fiving each other, being a big family. And it was before videos on the internet. So we weren't like capturing things with our phones. And again, I sound like an old guy or whatever, but like, when I went to this one, I was doing the same thing. It was just kind of like, who's got the best shot for my Instagram story? So you're looking, you're cruising the crowd, being like, who's the most excited? Who's got the best chance? Who can I film for this, this moment?

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  So I think that when you view it and you're not there, it's a very different experience than living it. You know what I mean?

• 1:00:22Bill Simmons?

  It'd be like if you were telling me that story right now and I was like, yeah.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  It's exactly what it was like. And it's kind of like, I get it. I'm guilty. I did it too. I'm not being critical. It was just like, it's just a different time. It's like when you go to a concert and people are just like filming the concert, like there's professional cameras. Like if you want to watch this later, you can do that. How about you just chill and watch it now?

• 1:00:43Bill Simmons?

  I'm always, I always find that amazing. You know, I go to a few basketball games and people will tape like the National Anthem. They'll record like the cheerleaders. They're like, yeah, cheerleaders.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  This is all being recorded by professionals.

• 1:00:59Bill Simmons?

  I was actually getting that the game for Clippers Nuggets, which Jokic played one of the best games I've seen in person in a long time. And there were a couple influencers sitting in front of us, just oblivious to it. And try, just hoping that the game would be close so they could tape the thing and then do this.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:17Bill Simmons?

  Um, and I'm just, I just wanted to like, just hit them over the head with a Coke can. It's just like, how can you not focus on this guy is one of the best basketball players of the last 30 years and he's like painting a masterpiece right now and you guys are fucking on Tik Tok. Yeah, get off our lawn, Jacoby.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  We sound like old guys and I get it, but it's like, I paid $1,000 to watch them do their thing, but you really paid $1,000 to like film yourself watching them do their thing for the people that are following you or whatever.

• 1:01:44Bill Simmons?

  And who's watching this video in 40 years? Like your kids are like, oh yeah, I'm still deleting dad's iCloud. He's at some Clipper game, just taking photos of the cheerleaders.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  We're putting out Instagram stories that literally disappears in 24 hours.

• 1:01:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  It disappears in 24 hours.

• 1:02:02Bill Simmons?

  Speaking of Jokic, I was so bummed. I just, I just love that guy. I was so bummed out last night. The first three plus quarters, that was unbelievable watching him do that to OKC where he's deciding every moment of every situation and just single-handedly dragging the Nuggets to the finish line. And then it just came down to Lou Dort made a couple of shots. Jalen Williams made a three that I never thought was going in and the Nuggets missed basically every open shot they took. And all of a sudden Nuggets were going home and they look like they're screwed.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  So I don't want to make this too reductive, right? But doesn't it just come down to a coach decides who we're going to leave open and whether or not that person makes the shot? You know what I mean? It's like very reductive. It's like, we're going to leave Lou Dort open. It's like, oh, Porter Jr., he's got a hurt shoulder, hasn't hit. We're going to leave him open. Porter Jr. in Westbrook, like it barely hit the rim in the fourth quarter.

• 1:02:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, with Russ, they're like, yo, did you see that Ramona story about Russ with the unnamed teammate? Let's leave him open. Porter's got one arm. Russ is pissed about the story. We'll leave him open. If that Peyton, Peyton Watson comes in, leave him open. Strother open. You're just pointing at guys that just are going to be open.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  And then the Jalen Williams one, it hit the front rim and the back rim went in. Like he looked a little surprised after it went into.

• 1:03:22Bill Simmons?

  If you had freeze frame that and it was the biggest shot of the game.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  Front rim.

• 1:03:28Bill Simmons?

  I would have said.

• 1:03:30Bill Simmons?

  10% odds. I didn't think I, you wouldn't, you could have talked to me into an air ball or it hits the side of the backboard before it hits the rim. I just thought no chance, but he's pretty good in that game. I still don't trust him.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  I think it's also worth mentioning the SGA three when they're up by three and he could, they go under the screen and he's just like, you motherfucker. I'm the MVP. You're gonna let me shoot this. And that one didn't touch the rim at all. That was pure. And that was a dagger. That was a night night shot. And the one thing I want to say about Jokic was I was so, when he had that offensive rebound, when he tipped it to himself to put it back in, he's like, you motherfuckers can't even hit a shot. I'm going to go down there and do everything. I'm just gonna do everything. I'm gonna make dinner.

• 1:04:14Bill Simmons?

  It's like when our wives get mad.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  Clean the dishes. I'm gonna make dinner. I'm gonna clean the dishes. I'm gonna put.

• 1:04:18Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you didn't clean up after we ate? I'll clean up. You start to hear dishes flying around.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  Exactly what's happening. He's just like, you know what? You're not an asset. The rest of you four are not an asset to me, but don't worry, I got this. And he almost did.

• 1:04:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the coach afterwards was talking about how, you know, I had to play a little Russian roulette there basically with the O K. So I just had to keep him out there and keep our fingers crossed. It's like, yeah, because what else were you gonna do? The, the moment he comes out, you're gonna be minus 10. The second he steps out of the game. It's weird. I felt that first of all, I thought that was the best playoff game. I think of the whole playoffs, just from a quality of play standpoint.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  Nick Celtics game four was.

• 1:04:58Bill Simmons?

  That was more exciting game. This was like exceptionally well played. Like the,

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  Execution.

• 1:05:06Bill Simmons?

  Defense, the execution was just went to a whole other level.

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, but when Westbrook has two airballs and Michael Porter Jr. has two airballs, it's hard for me to talk about like the execution.

• 1:05:15Bill Simmons?

  Thinking about all the stuff Jokic had to just see and deal with. It was like a quarterback just being blitzed every play, just trying to figure out what to do. So weirdly like, like I voted for him for MVP. I feel better that I voted for him after watching that game, but SGA was equally awesome down the stretch and showed all the reasons why if you voted for him, you'd feel good about that, right? He's got a good team, but when they really needed him, he made just about every play it felt like to help him. So it was weird to watch a game where both guys won. They had that moment where they kind of traded baskets for a second. And I was like, this is what a great MVP race that was because both of these guys are incredible. And Jokic is.

• 1:05:55Bill Simmons?

  There's just nobody like this. They, you know, I keep talking about in the pods that we're just, we're not going to see anything like this again for a while.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Well, one of the things I loved about that Jokic performance was the 48 hours between game four and game five was turnover to assist ratio and the worst he's ever shot from the field. It was this kind of like have the thunder solve the Jokic problem. And you've watched enough Jokic, you're like, okay, guys, we'll see if you've solved, people have been trying to solve the Jokic problem for three years now. Like there, you cannot solve the Jokic problem. It's like Matt Damon in Good Hunting and the chalkboard. It's like you cannot do it. It's impossible.

• 1:06:34Bill Simmons?

  You know, it's, he approaches basketball. It's like when you, when you watch golf and they talk about Scottie Scheffler, uh, 24th last week, fixed something in his swing. And he said he was leaning back a little bit on his drives and then he'll just rip a drive straight down the fairway. Like, oh yeah, I fixed his swing. Jokic is like doing that during a series where it's like Nikola Jokic, uh, didn't have a great game four. He noticed some things in the tape. He fixed his whatever. And then it's just like he's completely solved OKC, who's doing the same thing. But now instead of, instead of speeding him up, making him do things he doesn't want to do. He's just, he's just on it. Like he's got them on a fucking yo-yo. I, I thought, I just thought he was so awesome in that game. It's a much

• 1:07:19Bill Simmons?

  more fun series if Denver wins that game and we get to really see OKC with their backs to the wall.

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  Under pressure, yeah.

• 1:07:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's like, okay, guys, go to Denver. Let's see if you can win this one. Um, Cleveland was in this similar situation yesterday and they just cratered from it. They couldn't handle it. It was a full-fledged cratering.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  I think there's a good parallel there between Jokic and Mitchell where it's like, I'm standing on my head here, guys. I'm giving you 40 plus. You know what I mean? Like, I got, like Mitchell's hurt. He, and like, he didn't play great, but remember in the, in the, what was the fourth quarter? He had like three straight threes. He's just like, guys, like, I just need some help. Like Max Struce, like, do something. Like Michael Porter Jr., do, just, I'm not asking you to be superstars.

• 1:08:04Bill Simmons?

  Guys who are good in the regular season.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  Do something, guys. You know what I mean? And remember, I'm sure you remember the Celtic series last year was a similar thing with Mitchell. It was just like, again, there's guys out, Garland was out and you know, but like it's, it's just hard. You just, these guys need more help. They need more help.

• 1:08:19Bill Simmons?

  It happened to him in Utah too. I'm wondering, maybe it's him. Maybe it's not the sporting cast.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  No, I love Mitchell.

• 1:08:25Bill Simmons?

  Maybe he's just eating too much of the food in the fridge and everybody else is just hungry and forgets how to eat.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  I don't think that's how it works. But one of the things I love about Jokic is like my kids don't care about basketball at all. And they come into the room when I'm watching, I'm like, do you see that like slow kind of fat guy? Like that's the best basketball player on the planet. They're like, that guy.

• 1:08:45Bill Simmons?

  And it's not even close. He's definitely the best guy.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  It's like the best.

• 1:08:49Bill Simmons?

  We don't even argue about the city bar.

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  It's just like, they're like, that guy right there. I'm like, yeah, yeah. I'm like, watch, just watch. And he'll like do some slow weird stuff.

• 1:08:57Bill Simmons?

  The scratches on his arms?

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  I love it. I love it.

• 1:09:04Bill Simmons?

  All right. Jacobs, Friday night, we'll see with the Knicks. Perfect situation for them. I'm sure they're going to learn some things from this tape. I'm sure Luke Kornet's not going to do that again. I'm sure they're going to attack Jalen Brown a little differently, but still some pressure.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  I, I'm terrified.

• 1:09:23Bill Simmons?

  They've been down 14 plus in every single game of the series, including today.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  That's, that's, that's a fact that I can't dispute, but I feel really good about the Knicks chances on Friday night. Timothy Chalamet and his girlfriend will not let us lose.

• 1:09:36Bill Simmons?

  When is the mismatch taping?

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Mismatch tapes Thursday after that Thunder Nuggets game. And Verno has done a really good job of just really entrenching him in this, like the Thunder are too young and they need to go through their playoff scars and they can't. There's no way they can beat the Nuggets. They've been there before championship pedigree. And like, he's really, really rooted deep, deep down in this take in a way that I'm scared to do as someone who does this for a living. And I'm really proud of him, but it's going to be a fun pod afterwards because he's either going to be really, really right or really, really wrong.

• 1:10:09Bill Simmons?

  Well, there you go. He was really wrong about Memphis. He thought Memphis had a window. They never even bought the window.

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  No, you and you and him have something in common.

• 1:10:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  Is when you guys are wrong about a take, you go straight into excuse mode.

• 1:10:26Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 1:10:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. He learned from the master.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, you do this too. It's all, oh, it's because well, John Moran got hurt. I mean, I didn't know John Moran was gonna go down.

• 1:10:33Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:10:34Speaker 01

  I didn't know Steph Curry was gonna get hurt. It's always like, I'm right, but these extraneous circumstances created an environment in which I was wrong. It's not my fault. It's the world's fault.

• 1:10:43Bill Simmons?

  It's smart. It's a great way to play it.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  It's a good move.

• 1:10:46Bill Simmons?

  Dave Jacoby, we gotta do another rewatchables at some point, too. People are still bringing up Project X. It's one of the highlights of their lives. Yeah. All right. Good to see you, my friend.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Good to see you, too.

• 1:10:57Bill Simmons?

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

• 1:11:42Bill Simmons?

  Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2026. Ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry. Entry deadlines, prizes and details. All right, we're recording this on a Monday, but it's gonna run Wednesday. Kathy Engelbert is here, WNBA commissioner. Pretty exciting season coming ahead, including a new San Francisco. Expansion team. Um, as you know, my life with the WNBA has been complicated because I was not a fan for a long time. And then as the years passed, um, really started to get into it the last couple of years. And I, I don't think I'm alone in that, right? How many new fans or converted

• 1:12:27Bill Simmons?

  fans have drifted in the last couple of years that you've seen?

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely tens of millions. Um, so, uh, we were, you know, back when I joined, um, we were at the, you know, kind of on the outskirts of professional sports back in 2020. And then the pandemic, we held the season, um, in a bubble, uh, down at IMG Academy and then just raised some capital in, uh, early 2022, which gave confidence, I think, to our owners to start investing and build on the momentum. And then we got this amazing rookie class led by Katelyn Clark last year.

• 1:12:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:00Speaker 02

  So, uh, yeah, so, yes. And, and the quality of the game, Bill, has really advanced enormously since I certainly played the game when there was no Women's Professional Sports Basketball League. So, uh, I, I do take it with great responsibility that we are the longest tenured Women's Professional Sports League in the U.S. by double any other, but, you know, we've arrived for sure.

• 1:13:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it feels like when the whole Steph Curry era of how basketball, basketball got a little smaller, the shooting expanded out, there was more slash and kick stuff. And I think that's helped the league more than anything for WNBA. Like, when you go back and you look at the games from 2025 years ago, and they're resembling, you know, everybody had like big players and you're trying to post up and establish. And now, when you watch it, like, the, the, the pace of it's better, um, the skills better, like, I, I just, I, like, I went to a finals game and I was, like, blown away by, uh, by the quality of it. Um, and also, there's a bunch of good players. You're in, like, a really nice little talent boom here, right? And then you had this rookie class.

• 1:14:06Speaker 02

  You know, bringing Asia Wilson and Ife Sekaliar and just, um, you know, you know, to add into the rookie, and we have another great rookie class off of our draft this year, uh, with Paige Becker's and Kiki Iriofan and, I mean, Personalities like huge personalities too. So I think that's has arrived, but literally there's so much that we we're hitting this confluence in women's sports and the WNBA. We were kind of ahead of the curve in raising that capital back in 22. Now there's so much capital coming in and

• 1:14:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:34Speaker 02

  Partners and corporate partners and um, you know, it's led to kind of major investments on the player development side. So when you have build that confidence in a business model that's going to work and is sustainable, which is what I've been brought in to do. It's um, you you see the benefits of that, the returns of that. And then you see, you know, some a an athlete, a generational athlete like Caitlin. I analogize it to the Tiger Woods affecting golf.

• 1:14:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:00Speaker 02

  And just her followership and um, and then the rivalry she came in with against Angel Reese and LSU Iowa. Uh, and now Paige Becker's coming in from UConn off her championship. So, um, but we we had great players for many, many uh, decade for a couple of decades, but now I think with social media, with NIL, with them having brands when they come in and followership. And just the quality of the game. Um, I can't say enough about that, too.

• 1:15:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's the old school motto that uh, I'm sure we both grew up with where you'd watch the players in college for a couple of years. They would come to the NBA, you'd feel like you knew them, you know, like Ewing was at Georgetown for four years. It was like, I I knew that guy by the time he got to the Knicks. And the NBA, I think the one thing, not that the NBA is doing badly, but the one thing that they lost a little bit as the one and done era started. Was just not having these guys would come in and they would go to bad teams and, you know, for every Anthony Edwards, there would be other guys that might show up on a team, not make the playoffs for five years. You just didn't have the same connection. You have this advantage now that, I mean, that you're using college basketball as this

• 1:16:07Bill Simmons?

  amazing feeder system, you know, like when Juju got hurt during the tournament, it was like, ah, like. I was so excited to see if she, what, what team she, if she was going to come out for the draft, what team she might go for. But you just feel like a different connection. So Paige Becker's, I feel like she's been in college for, forever. Whereas like Cooper Flag was at Duke for six months.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's a, it's a very good point. And the other thing is the brands are seeing the value of these athletes staying in college because again, under our current CPA, you have to be 22 by the end of the calendar year in which you get drafted if you're in the US university system.

• 1:16:42Bill Simmons?

  Right. So Juju couldn't even come out. Yeah.

• 1:16:44Speaker 02

  She couldn't come out. She's only a sophomore. Right. So we wish her well. She's going to be an amazing player in the WNBA someday, but obviously had that injury during the tournament. But yeah, so I do think that brands get to know them, fans get to know them. They come out and they thrive in the W. I mean, as hard as and as competitive as the W is, they not only have a, a local and kind of regional brand like they have in college, but then they have a national and actually now a global brand. So I think it's kind of cool to watch that.

• 1:17:16Bill Simmons?

  Well, and then the number two pick in the draft, the YouTube clips were nuts. And it seemed like one of those things like, obviously Becker's going to go first. She's famous. Like you can build a franchise around her and she's excellent and she's won everywhere she's been. Then you have this French kid that when you watch, I did, I did a token YouTube deep dive on her. I was like, I'm not quite sure I've seen this before in women's basketball. So how do you like market somebody like that?

• 1:17:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. So Dominique Malunga is her name. She was drafted number two to the Seattle Storm. And our GMs are really smart. They're looking at the global talent pool. I think four of our top 12 picks this year were players born outside the United States. So including one that was in the, the university system from Australia. But it's incredible what Dominique, she, I mean, again, I, I met her at the draft, but we brought her over from France. But you know what she's doing effortlessly around her athleticism, dunking. So we'll see. She'll help lift Seattle. And we're going to have a lot of parity in the league this year, Bill. I mean, it's not just going to be two teams like it's been in the past or three. I think six, seven teams are really going to compete hard for the championship this year.

• 1:18:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. With her, like the dunking, everybody gets excited if a woman's put dunks. It's going back to like, you know, the eighties. The way she moves is just different. And to me, when I was watching, I was like, I don't know if I've seen a player navigate the court like this at this size. So that'll be fun. You know, you mentioned how the league's in this awesome place right now, right? You 13, you have the San Francisco team is going to be launching. I think you have Portland and Toronto coming down the road.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  Next year, Portland and Toronto.

• 1:18:56Bill Simmons?

  So that's gonna be 15?

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  15, yep. So we're looking at, I've kind of talked about getting to 16 by no later than the end of 28.

• 1:19:06Bill Simmons?

  So let's talk about that, though, because the history of when professional sports leagues grow and things start to get a little good, and then they start expansion for a couple, expanding because you get the expansion fees, there's interest, there's money in there. What's the, what's the right number of teams? Because for me, I, I, I don't think it should be more than 16. Like, I'm really hoping that you don't, all of a sudden, you're at 24 and you end up in a situation where the, the teams, you know, everybody just has one good player and that's it. Like, how, how do you know what the right number is?

• 1:19:41Speaker 02

  It's excellent timing to be talking about it because we do have so much interest from some great cities. And I, I knew when I joined the league, when technology's driving so much of your economy and you don't have a team in the Bay Area, San Francisco, that we needed to, to fix first. And then Toronto and Portland, and Toronto is such a great sports market. And after that Raptors win, when I was actually being courted to come into the WNBA, the Raptors won the NBA championship that year. And so I knew Toronto would be a great place, Portland, great place for women's sports. So you, I, I think you're right, Bill. You don't want to degrade the quality of the game by bringing in too many teams too fast. That's why people thought, like, my first thing I should have done is, when I came in, was expansion. And I said, no, we've got a lot of transformation of the business model, the economic model.

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  We got to build confidence in this league, bring investment into this league in capital, get our owners all on the same page. And so that's what we've done. And now it's time to expand, which you're going to see the Valkyries this year out in San Francisco.

• 1:20:38Bill Simmons?

  That's gonna be a home run. Yeah, they already, they like sold out right away, right?

• 1:20:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, they have, they have more season ticket holders than any team in the history of the WNBA. And what's really interesting, Bill, and this tells you about the W, less than 5% of those season ticket holders are Golden State Warriors season ticket holders, but they're owned by the same ownership group. They're gonna play in Chase Center. That's an amazing stat because we know that our, you know, we have such a great fan base. And it just brings in a whole new fan base, a whole new media market for us. Same with Toronto, having kind of the country of Canada. So, you know, more to come, but you're right. We're currently evaluating and really putting together an analysis of what the right numbers of teams are and when.

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  But we do have a huge amount of demand, low supply, high demand from some great cities that you would say would be a no brainer for WNBA teams.

• 1:21:32Bill Simmons?

  Low supply, high demand is a good thing. But yeah, you go back, you go back 60, 70 years with sports. This is how you get in trouble when you're like, hey, we're doing good. Let's grab some teams. So you had a year and a half ago, Portland and Golden State were the expansion teams. And I think it was like, what was it 50 million was the fee?

• 1:21:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, they varied. So Golden State was different than Toronto, which was different from Portland, which will be very different from team 16.

• 1:21:59Bill Simmons?

  But Portland was 50 and now the price is like 125 to get in.

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  Portland was a little higher than that.

• 1:22:05Bill Simmons?

  So it's already gone up two and a half times in a year and a half?

• 1:22:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's incredible what has happened. But if you just look at the revenue teams are building, there's going to be some valuations coming out from both Sportico and Forbes. In the next few months, I think that are going to show an enormous increase in the valuation of teams. Because revenue is, whether it's from gate, whether it's from corporate partnerships, whether it's from merch. You know, there's a lot of things that lead into a multiple on revenue and a confidence in the risk underlying that multiple.

• 1:22:35Bill Simmons?

  Being in the league?

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:22:37Bill Simmons?

  That always helps. I feel like, so you have 40 game season.

• 1:22:44Speaker 02

  Forty-four this year, so most effort.

• 1:22:45Bill Simmons?

  You bumped it up.

• 1:22:46Speaker 02

  Forty-four, we bumped it up. That's the max under the CBA, we can play 44. So last year it was hard to play that because it was an Olympic year and we had to break for the Olympics in the middle of our season. But this year, no international competition, we can comfortably play 44 without a footprint.

• 1:23:02Bill Simmons?

  Okay, so that's 22 home games and then the playoffs.

• 1:23:07Bill Simmons?

  You're looking at.

• 1:23:08Speaker 02

  Playoffs this year, we have a little evolution as well. The first round. So we're a three, five, seven now. First ever.

• 1:23:14Bill Simmons?

  You went seven? I missed that. Wow.

• 1:23:17Speaker 02

  Finals.

• 1:23:18Bill Simmons?

  That's exciting.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  Seven games. And Bill, you, you came to that Minnesota, New York game. Um, can you imagine that went? Full five games to overtime. Can you imagine if that has been a seven game? And that was one of my goals is to get our finals. The seven game series because sports leagues play seven game series like you're seeing in the, yeah, right now. So in game sevens are one of the most exciting things I think in sports. So we'll have seven games and even our first round now will be one, one, one instead of two, one. So everybody will get a home game that makes the playoffs. So yeah, we're evolving that with the footprint we have.

• 1:23:52Bill Simmons?

  All right. So before you took the job, you're looking back at the 2010s, which the WNBA was in such bad shape that Diana Taurasi, who's the best player in the history of the league, just decided to skip a season because it wasn't worth enough money for her. And she was making more money overseas and it seemed bleak. It seemed like a business that wasn't going to make it and that the NBA was basically subsidizing almost like a charity case. So what flips over the last eight years, other than Katelyn Clark? What are the big reasons? Cause but even before Katelyn came into the league, this was, this was happening. So style of play. What else do you think it was?

• 1:24:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. One of the things I looked at when I came in, I said, like, we need a strategy. We, we, we set, I do everything in threes, Bill. So I said, we got to be player first. Stakeholder success, including owners and players, et cetera, and fan engagement. We had to make it easier to be a fan. So we set off on this path, but that sat on the foundation called the game, which I thought had never been better. Both at college and into the WNBA, the brand, which was really strong. The organization, team and league, which were a total mess and we needed to transform and hire new capital. And then the ecosystem, I think media companies, corporate partners were less than 1% of all corporate partnership dollars in sports back in 2019. We're going to women's sports and less than 5% of all media coverage.

• 1:25:16Speaker 02

  Going to sports was going to women's sports. So what changed is this confluence that I was talking about of capital coming into the league, confidence building, valuations going up, higher demand, new facilities, better amenities. We did kind of what we called a historic CBA back in 2020. Now we're in another one and we'll do something transformational this year, but it's a confluence of all that and this popularity of the game. I mean, basketball is the number one team sport in the United States and it's two globally. So next to soccer. So it's really an amazing time to be in women's sports and then in women's basketball. So, but let's not. This has been really hard hardest. I mean, I spent 33 years before I came here in business.

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  This has been the hardest five years because we had to every rock we picked up, we had to transform something under it. And last year, my mantra was the bold will win, everything must change. And that was even before I knew Caitlin was even coming into the league. And then this year it's sustaining gains. So I always have a mantra every year, but we stick with this strategy. Player first, stakeholder success, fan engagement. We've hired engineers, social media. We had none of that. I had 12 people in the league when I joined and that we had no growth engine. And now we have 25 people driving growth at the league level. We had one marketing person when I joined. Now we have close to 30 marketing people. I hired a CMO who was a long term time Nike professional.

• 1:26:42Speaker 02

  So, I mean, it's just been a great lesson in you need financial capital, hire human capital, but you need the people to grow the business. So we were ready. I didn't know this was coming as quickly as it did. I thought we need three or four more years than what happened last year with sellout arenas and record breaking viewership. And look at our preseason this year, Bill. We just had like sold out college arenas. That was the other thing I wanted to, how do you get the NCAA viewer into the W viewership? Yeah. And one of the ways to go back to those college arenas like we did with, you know, going to Iowa and Notre Dame, LSU, and then Sabrina and the Liberty will be playing in Oregon. So leading into the tip of the season.

• 1:27:22Speaker 02

  So, um, yeah, it's, it's, you know, just every idea. We can be bold. We're a smaller league, smaller brand, but we can be bold and really bring, bring what our fans want. And we've been listening a lot.

• 1:27:35Bill Simmons?

  I would throw in two other things. One is the women's final four that Friday night on ESPN especially. That semifinals doubleheader. It felt like all this and it was doing well, but it felt like something shifted with that where that really became like a casual sports fan event, not just the real basketball fans, but everybody and all of a sudden that those games seemed to really matter. And then that becomes the feeder system. The other thing, you had a couple of owners that actually gave a shit and, and looked at, looked at their franchises and their place in the league as I, and tried to innovate. Like it seemed like the size with the, with the Liberty, like what Mark Davis did with Las Vegas with, uh, what did he do?

• 1:28:17Bill Simmons?

  Giveaway tickets for like three years to try to build, build support.

• 1:28:21Speaker 02

  They weren't given away, but they were cheap in the upper bowl.

• 1:28:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, but he was really trying to get people in the building to give a crap about it. And that seems like, you know, those are, those are, I think two of the sterling leaders of the league now, but it seems like, cause the owners really cared. So it's almost like a neighborhood where once people start fixing up their house, then everybody feels like they have to fix up their house.

• 1:28:45Speaker 02

  And I think also it was like the confidence, like when I came into the league, the owners of which the size were just joining the league, Mark wasn't in the league yet, MGM and the Aces, the owners were all in on something called a go big. So literally it was go big or go home. When I was interviewing for the role, go big or go home. So all the owners saw something in the future. It was just, let's chart a path, let's hire a commissioner, let's hire a great human capital to execute it. So I think that's when the size joined and Mark joined a few years later. Uh, and then they had, you know, Mark had a, uh, you know, before he got there, a couple of great drafts with an Asia Wilson and a Jackie Young and, um, you know, a few others, you know, Chelsea Gray came from LA and free agency.

• 1:29:27Speaker 02

  And so I think that helps and it helps when you have those star players, New York attracted Brandon Stewart and they had drafted Sabrina Nescu who had gotten hurt her rookie season in a bubble. So, um, and you know, to your point about the NCAA also in the final four that Friday night, I mean, those are the big games. Games of consequence, like how great is March Madness on both the men's and women's side?

• 1:29:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:48Speaker 02

  Those were the huge games of consequence and with that shorter season, so I would, I would argue a lot of our games are games of consequence even in the regular season. But then when we get into the playoffs, um, you're going to see a lot of competitiveness, competition, a lot of parity this year leading into our playoffs in September and October when we crown the champion.

• 1:30:07Bill Simmons?

  So you have the, the players union, there's going to be a CBA that you're going to have to negotiate with them. You have all this interest from all these people who either buying franchises already did and the prices have gone way up. But yet the business model hasn't been proven to be successful yet. So you're still investing in it, it's still growing. The attendance has gone way, way up the last couple of years. You're in this new meteorites deal where I think you at least tripled what you were making before. But you're only still doing 44 games a year plus the playoffs. Also you have, what's the, the, the thing you had where people, people bought in, they bought percentages of the teams. So you have like the syndicate that owns a piece of the league. What is that?

• 1:30:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, just in the league, not teams. This was the thing I referred to in February of 22.

• 1:30:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:55Speaker 02

  Because we had no capital to go hire people to affect a digital transformation, to hire social media, putting people, growth people.

• 1:31:00Bill Simmons?

  What percentage was that?

• 1:31:02Speaker 02

  So, um, well, first of all, uh, half of our existing teams invested in it.

• 1:31:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:08Speaker 02

  So it was 16% altogether, but about 6% of that were existing investment investors like the size. And the Seattle group and, um, Indiana, um, you know, Washington, Ted Leonsis. Um, so, so, so it was about 10% outside investors like Nike and Michael Dell and Condoleezza Rice and Swin Cash and Pau Gasol and, um, Baron Davis. So we opened it up to a broader group of diverse investors, Melody Hobbs and Gayle King. Like, we're really proud of what we did back then. Um, and, um, it served us well. I mean, we would not be where we are today, not even close without that capital and having deployed it.

• 1:31:48Speaker 02

  Again, so many different things, including, you know, marketing, including we launched our first ever in-season competition. We have our commissioner's cup well before the NBA did it. Has a nice little, you know, trial run for the NBA's Emirates Cup now. And again, we're just able to produce all of our preseason games. We weren't able to do that before. We just had this record-breaking game between the Indiana Fever and the Brazilian national team, a preseason game that averaged 1.3 million viewers on ESPN. And then our draft was the second most viewed ever, the most viewed compared to MLB and NHL in their history. So we're just, we're seeing the returns of that investment in a big way and the values of our teams going up.

• 1:32:32Speaker 02

  So that was, that capital raise, when you saw the people that came and invested, I think gave confidence to all of our owners to invest in their teams, which is driving their team values up. So I think it's, you know, a bit of a confidence builder and, you know, capital and valuation is all about confidence in the business and what you're building here. And, you know, to your question about the, or point about the media deal, we're not even done yet. So that was our tranche one media deal, which actually was much more than triple, five to six.

• 1:33:02Bill Simmons?

  What was, what was five to six times? Okay.

• 1:33:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's a, that was a 200 million AAV and we were going in with about 40. But well, by the time we're done with tranche two, because we still have plenty of inventory left to sell, hopefully we're aiming to be about 260 AAV over many years. And that's the other thing, when you, when you get a big piece of your revenue locked in at a huge number, I mean, this is actually pretty historic or is historic, largest media deal in the history of women's sports. And as we know, and you know better than anybody, Bill, the landscape's changing so quickly. Streamers are interested in us. They're interested in more year-round content partnering with the NBA. We can provide, we're the only two leagues that run counter that can provide over 320 days of live programming to a streamer.

• 1:33:50Speaker 02

  And so it was much more attractive to a Disney and Amazon and NBCU with Peacock for the W to be, to be part of this historic deal. So we're excited about that. Starts next year, next season. This year we're still under our old deals.

• 1:34:07Bill Simmons?

  So you took that investment. It's almost like a, like a startup business, thought they were a startup. Doing like a round, getting people to invest, no different than if you had like a AI company or something. People buy in, use that money, throw it back in the league in all these different ways and it actually paid off. The, the part that, so it's funny, like this has come full circle almost where a lot of the good stuff that was happening for WNBA the first 20 years solely happened because of the relationship with the NBA and basically Stern pushing it and being like, you have to show the NBA, it has to be on TV, like basically forcing the networks to take

• 1:34:46Bill Simmons?

  it as part of the NBA package. Now in this, in this last deal, I was watching from afar going, would they, would WNBA have been better off not being attached to the NBA at all? Would they have been better off of being on their own, like doing their own thing just entirely?

• 1:35:03Speaker 02

  It's a little bit of an unknown thing. We already had our own deals. We already had Amazon. We've had Amazon. This will be our fourth year with Amazon. We have Scripps Zion. We have CBS. Those are three deals the NBA doesn't have. So everyone just assumes it's just the NBA deal. It's not. But again, the beauty of going to market, at least for that first tranche of deals with the NBA is that 320 plus days of live program. We're the only two leagues that can do that here in the US and it paid huge dividends because otherwise we're a four and a half month season bill and it's not as interesting to a streamer who's on a subscription plan with their subscribers every month, right? But you need to provide year-round content and that's why that was advantage. I mean, obviously the NBA has been a huge supporter for a long time under David who launched the league,

• 1:35:46Speaker 02

  now Adam, obviously. And I sit on the NBA senior leadership team, which is helpful, you know, because we can, you know, play off one another and they've seen a huge now demand for the WNBA game and are always really helpful. We share some back office shared services, but again, we kind of, because of that capital raise, been able to hire a lot of people on our own and have our own sellers on that side of things. But yeah, I mean, it's a huge advantage. There's a reason why we're the longest tenured women's professional sports league, ready to enter season 29 and it's because, you know, we've had a big brother all along.

• 1:36:23Bill Simmons?

  Well, so how do you make sure you're not perceived as being too big yet? Because the next step for this is like charter plans for every team. Salary cap goes way up and things start happening financially that maybe don't.

• 1:36:39Bill Simmons?

  Capture where the league is economically. So you're the one in charge of balancing that, especially when you have a bunch of agents coming in, you have players who expect to be paid certain way. I've seen some of the quotes already from people who play for the league, who rightly want as much money as they could possibly make.

• 1:36:55Speaker 02

  And we want them to make as much money as they can make, but

• 1:36:59Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:36:59Speaker 02

  being in mind the economic model we've been building. And I would say, you know, five, six years ago, we were like an infant. You talked about it being viewed as a startup. We were like an infant in our economic model, not in the game.

• 1:37:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:12Speaker 02

  Our economic model. And now we like graduated to like a young adult. We kind of skipped our teen years and our tween years.

• 1:37:18Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:37:18Speaker 02

  And we graduated to a young adult, but we still have a lot of growth ahead of us. And it's not just the media deal driving growth, and that's going to drive significant increases in player pay. And you know, last year, we already did the charter program fully for all teams, for the whole season and playoffs. We had been chipping away each year. We did it initially for the finals, and we did it for all playoffs, commissioner's cup. And I felt because I knew kind of where we were trending on the media deal, that we would pay it forward and give the players charter last year.

• 1:37:49Bill Simmons?

  So everybody got chartered last year because two years ago, that was a big, that was a big catch.

• 1:37:54Speaker 02

  Everyone. We did it in between collective bargaining. So we

• 1:37:58Bill Simmons?

  Interesting.

• 1:37:58Speaker 02

  because I felt very confident in the fact that we could get to 2026 and the new media rights deals. And I knew where we were trending, that we would essentially pay it forward and do it sooner than the next collective bargaining cycle. So that's done. Our corporate partners has stepped up in a huge way. We just signed Ally Financial. They're going to do a Rivals Week. They're going to innovate inside the partnership. We have Google and Nike and Deloitte and AT&T and CarMax and so many others and American Express. So I mean, we're in such good shape, but we still have a lot of low hanging fruit growth global. I mean, Bill, if you ask me what's next, Cathy, after expansion and all this and CPA, it's global. I mean, there's, I mean, when I was at the State Department a couple of years ago, they

• 1:38:42Speaker 02

  said like, one of the number one requests they get from embassies is for women basketball players and the WM NBA to come to those embassies and show young girls that they can be professional athletes and leaders in their community. So there's so much upside.

• 1:38:56Bill Simmons?

  So do you think, could you see a world where there's almost like what they're talking about the NBA where there's a European version of the league and there's some sort of you WNBA season happens, that season happens. And then there's like a world finals. Is that like in play down the road?

• 1:39:11Speaker 02

  Obviously kind of tested Canada as our first outside the US. We love to play preseason games around the world. That's part of our plan. And whether that's in Europe, Asia, Africa, longer term, exposed cities on the list. There's a lot of cities that would like us to come and have an exhibition or a regular season game. This year we're playing our first ever regular season game outside the US in Vancouver. I know that might not sound like a big deal, but this is a regular season game that the Atlanta Dream will actually host the Seattle Storm up in Vancouver. And we've seen huge success selling out in Edmonton and Toronto on preseason games. So, um, so the sky's the limit globally. Um, we just want to make sure we have the right global footprint first.

• 1:39:54Speaker 02

  Nike just took Sabrina Inescu over to Asia. Uh, she went to China and Hong Kong, and I think the Philippines. Uh, and so, you know, that kind of, you remember Bill, what happened with the NBA when they brought Kobe there and Stephon Marbury? And we built huge businesses and eight and huge followership in Asia. And so I think we'll, um, you know, look at that playbook a little bit and make sure we're bringing our game to markets. I mean, we showed our games in India a couple of years ago and 24 million unique viewers watched our games in India. And we didn't have one player from India in the WNBA. So, um, lots of upside globally for us.

• 1:40:32Bill Simmons?

  So you have to figure out the CBA, what's the timeline for the next deal?

• 1:40:36Speaker 02

  The timeline is by the end of the year. Um, so I feel really good. We've already been having meetings. I feel really good that we'll get something transformational done together. And you know, the players will posture in the media, but as I said on draft night, we're not going to negotiate in the media. We're going to negotiate across the table and we're going to return as much as we possibly can. We're keeping in mind the financial viability of the league for many decades to come. And I think the players will want that too.

• 1:41:00Bill Simmons?

  All right. So here's my big nitpick. I hate that these games go against NFL on Sundays like huge.

• 1:41:08Speaker 02

  I heard that. I heard that you said that.

• 1:41:11Bill Simmons?

  I know. We've, I know we've discussed it.

• 1:41:13Speaker 02

  You know, I threw out that stat about the, about the Golden State Valkyries only having less than 5% of the fans that were, our season ticket holders that were Golden State Warrior fans. The actual, you know, look, the, the footprint is challenging. It's a Rubik's Cube, arena availability, broadcast windows. You gotta do May 8th, October. And I realize that goes into both the college football season. So we don't generally don't play on Saturdays. And it goes into the NFL season for sure, although we ironically get a weird pickup in viewership on Sundays.

• 1:41:45Bill Simmons?

  Well, so that was the counter. You guys actually did really well going against football. It was like this, almost like an alternative football audience that just crushed.

• 1:41:53Speaker 02

  People are home. If the one o'clock game, a lot of times we play at three o'clock Eastern. The one o'clock game's close to over by then or the score or whatever. People will turn on ABC or ESPN. We do really well on ABC because we have a more lifestyle viewer. And I think our crossover, we get a lot of fan data. That was the one thing though, when I came to the league, we had no, I go, who's our fan? And everybody looked at me like, what? So now again, we have data analysts and data scientists and, you know, fan acquisition and insight, like insight people who will take our fan data and give me insights off of that. And one of the insights was, I think that we only have 20% crossover with NFL fans. So only 20% of NFL fans are also WNBA fans. Now, we would like more of them. So we'll, we'll have our Taylor Swift someday, right?

• 1:42:38Speaker 02

  Because we skew a little more women than the men's needs to. And, and so, um, you know, I, I think we're working on ways to bring in more fans, whether it's from other men's professional sports or women's or whatever. But that, that was an aha when I saw we're only 20%. Yeah. It's like 60 some percent NBA fans are also WNBA fans. So, you know, so it's a much bigger percentage. So not to compete against the NBA or college basketball is more important to me. Then like, I don't even view it as competing against the NFL because we have a whole different fan base. But we get a little lift on those Sundays when we play games. I know a lot of people don't think so, but, but we do.

• 1:43:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, it's the other challenge seems to be you. You're basically like the matriarch of this family and you want all the kids to get shine in all these different ways, but then you've also stumbled into this phenomenon in Caitlyn. That's like a once a decade thing, like the last time it really happened in sports was probably Steph Curry in 2014, right? When the, when the Warriors thing really started taking off. And you could just feel the energy shift. I remember going to a Warriors game. The year that the year before the 73 win season. And just get in there early because I want to see media people and there were. People were in the arena just to in case he was still going to be there for warmups. I was like, ah, this is. This is like different. This has not happened for a while.

• 1:44:00Bill Simmons?

  Um, you have this now with Caitlyn. So how? How do you balance pushing her versus like making sure? Like Asia Wilson, her shoe just sold out in five minutes. So it's not like some of the other players aren't doing well. But how do you balance making sure you're not just too focused on her? But you also don't want to not focus on her not enough. You know what I mean?

• 1:44:20Speaker 02

  No, it is a balance, but she's a generational talent. No league is ever about one player. But in this case, Caitlyn brought tens of millions of new viewers into the W and there's no denying that impact. Um, not just in the WNBA, but the world of sports. Adam and I took all the time about like. She's the most popular athlete in America, you know? She went to an LPGA tournament for a pro-am on a Wednesday and it's like throngs of people were out there to watch her. You know, I was at the Masters last year when she was in the final four and you know, I counted like 19 Caitlin Clark shirts of people walking around the Masters. So.

• 1:44:53Bill Simmons?

  It's crazy. Like I, I said on a pod, I think she's the most popular under 30 team sport athlete we have. Now that Mahomes is 30, I think anyone under 30, I think she has anyone in any sport at this point, just from a recognizability.

• 1:45:07Speaker 02

  This turned 23, so she is hugely popular. But again, you do want to balance it because obviously it's all what happened with Juju Watkins, you know, getting hurt. You want to balance, making sure that you're also promoting your other stars like Anasia Wilson.

• 1:45:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:22Speaker 02

  Like a Breanna Stewart, Nafisa Collier killed it last year. I mean, she was the runner up MVP and the Defensive Player of the Year.

• 1:45:29Bill Simmons?

  I loved her. I thought she was awesome.

• 1:45:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and she's a great person.

• 1:45:33Bill Simmons?

  She could have gotten a couple of calls in the finals. I thought she could have gotten some superstar calls. So I was upset about that.

• 1:45:38Speaker 02

  She's a mom and a role model for so many. So, um, yeah, so I, I think again, um, that's why this year sustain and gain, sustain the momentum we had last year and gain even new, new viewers because if you look at, I mean, we're up triple digits in every category and every demographic and young people, old people, young girls and boys were having watch parties and watching our games. So it was incredible. So.

• 1:46:00Bill Simmons?

  How's the gambling? If the gambling comes, that's when you really know when the, when they, because I know like Fandel was saying, they actually had like real interest, especially as it went to the playoffs. So that's like a whole other, a whole other, like that's what you know you're doing. Okay.

• 1:46:16Speaker 02

  There already is a lot of legalized sports betting on the WBA. And, you know, one of the things last year on our tip off night, it happened to be a Tuesday night last year, not a Friday night because of the Olympic break and we had to push everything in. But we competed on ESPN two against the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs and out rated it. And Fandel said that handle on the W was the highest in the month of May last year of it, of any sport. So, um, it was incredible. So yeah, that, that's another, like, if you think about innovation, about watch and bet and bet and watch and why do people watch sports? They watch for rivalries. They watch for compelling content. And yeah, some of the sports betters watch because they bet the game.

• 1:46:56Bill Simmons?

  Katelyn, five plus threes with Indiana to win part of, yeah. That's, that's just where we are with some sports viewership at this point. Did you?

• 1:47:04Speaker 02

  But I know like I became an NFL fan because I have five brothers and I started playing fantasy football.

• 1:47:09Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:47:10Speaker 02

  And so I knew I had Tim Brown. I'll never forget it. And, you know, I had, this was way back. And so that, that caused me then to watch games. So same thing here. I think more people are coming to watch the game and from that, from that fan segment, we call it.

• 1:47:25Bill Simmons?

  So you're kind of stuck with your schedule now if going May, October. There's no way to go to 50 games. It's just too hard with the basketball playoffs.

• 1:47:33Speaker 02

  The problem is every other year, we have an international competition. So next year it'll be the FIBA World Cup. Then two years after that, we have LA 28, which we love. I mean, the Olympics are, I mean, the fact that the women won eight consecutive gold medals, the US Women's National Basketball Team. And they're going for their ninth all time record in LA is amazing. So we have to support those international competitions. Yeah, I can definitely see us going to 50. I don't know what it's collectively bargained. So right now the max is 44. And you know, the question is, do we want to go into November and crossover with the NBA and college basketball? And then, because there's not much, people don't understand, there's not much you can do on the front end. Because we love the college draft. We love the rookies, a lot of rookies.

• 1:48:17Bill Simmons?

  Well, you're also, you have the college season ends like April 4th.

• 1:48:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, we can't start it much earlier. I mean, again, in a year like last year, like Caitlyn gets, goes to the final game. Gets drafted the following Monday night, as in training camp, the following Sunday.

• 1:48:34Bill Simmons?

  She was luggage for the first month of the season. Like that was, that was pretty hard.

• 1:48:37Speaker 02

  Playing since she was four years old or whatever, and then did a break. So, so again, this year we had a little more time. We had like two and a half weeks between the draft and, and opening of training camp. But yeah, it's, it's a challenge on the front end. You can't move it too much forward if you want the rookies to come in, which we do because it's a great, it's a great feeder system for us, as you said. And then, so we'll look at the back end and how far can we go? And how many NFL and college football Saturdays can we go into? And we'll evaluate all that under, under the CBI.

• 1:49:09Bill Simmons?

  You know what's interesting? The WNBA is actually good for fantasy. You just made me think of that when you were talking before about the football fantasy. Because NBA fantasy stinks now because the season's too long. And all the injuries and guys going, it's just like, there's no rhyme or reason to it. And I was like an original, I was playing fantasy basketball in the 80s. WNBA is actually, because the shorter season works better. Now you got my brains turning.

• 1:49:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, ESPN does have a product. They have a fantasy league, women's, for the WNBA, women's basketball, it's called. Yeah. So they do have one, just I think the last two years or so.

• 1:49:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. All right. All right. Sounds like everything's going good.

• 1:49:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, Bill.

• 1:49:48Bill Simmons?

  Five years for you, four years, five years? What is it?

• 1:49:51Speaker 02

  Uh, it'll be six years in July. So the first year was all blur because it was COVID.

• 1:49:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:57Speaker 02

  We forget COVID was like, right? Yeah, right. You know, not that long ago, but seems like forever ago. So, uh, yeah, I feel like so the first year really during COVID, that's when I handed Asia Wilson her first MVP and now three time MVP with her own shoe. Oh, the other thing, Bill, that's been amazing to watch from where I sit is when I joined the league, not one player had a significant endorsement, uh, with a big brand. They, except for maybe their sneaker brand, but they weren't big. And now there's almost a commercial break in any major sport. We are not seeing a WNBA player in a commercial spot. It's pretty cool to watch, whether it's CarMax, whether it's AT&T, Delta now on the seat back on a Delta plane. They, they filmed a commercial with three of our players, uh, Stewie and Nekka Goumikei.

• 1:50:42Speaker 02

  And it's just incredible what brands have done to step up, uh, to support these players too. Individually, like we have league deals with them, but we also have, uh, they also have personal endorsements now. And so that's been a great part about the growth of the league. And, um, I always said if 80% of every household consumer purchasing decision in the U.S. is made or influenced by a woman, why wouldn't you endorse a WNBA player?

• 1:51:08Bill Simmons?

  They missed the boat with Tarasik because she's the best.

• 1:51:11Speaker 02

  I do.

• 1:51:11Bill Simmons?

  I can't believe they, she's the absolute best.

• 1:51:15Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, she's the goat and she got voted the goat in our 25 year.

• 1:51:18Bill Simmons?

  Also cool. Like she's, she's a great hang. She's just cool. Like I don't, I never understood that one.

• 1:51:22Speaker 02

  I know. And now I thank God, if I was the commissioner 20 years ago, would it be different? Yeah.

• 1:51:27Bill Simmons?

  She should have been more, uh, famous. I, I need a team this year. Last year I had the Lynx because I, I bet on them halfway through the season. Almost, almost pulled it off, but this year, because you know, Boston doesn't have a team yet.

• 1:51:41Bill Simmons?

  So I just.

• 1:51:41Speaker 02

  Look at, look at, look at Phoenix, look at Seattle, look at, obviously Indy has really.

• 1:51:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think I might bet, I might bandwagon it and just bet on the Fever to win the, win the title. Just jump right on there. But yeah, no, that's.

• 1:51:55Speaker 02

  He, our free agency this year, Bill, it's another thing that changed in the CBA. Our free agency was a lot better this year than I thought, but next year, fasten your seatbelt. 80% of the veterans in this league will be free agents.

• 1:52:07Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:52:08Speaker 02

  And we'll run two expansion drafts, so.

• 1:52:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, I noticed.

• 1:52:12Speaker 02

  One expansion draft, but for two teams. So it's gonna be, it's gonna be crazy. It's gonna be crazy. The 20, and that'll be our 30th season, Bill. So really looking forward to that.

• 1:52:23Bill Simmons?

  Well, congrats. You guys are in great shape. Thanks for coming on. I'm glad you're doing well. Don't, don't expand too fast.

• 1:52:31Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:52:32Bill Simmons?

  Settle the CBA thing. Keep the league going. All right. Good to see you. Thanks for coming on.

• 1:52:36Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Bill. Anytime at a game.

• 1:52:39Bill Simmons?

  All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo. Thanks to Cathy Engelbert for joining us. Thanks to my old friend Dave Jacoby. Love that guy. Great to have him aboard. And I'm gonna be back in 24 hours after OKC and Denver, game six. You can watch it live on YouTube on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. I'll see you in 24 hours.

• 1:53:14Bill Simmons?

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