Harden’s Moment, an NFL Schedule Glut, Owning the Jazz, and a Boston Sports Check-In—With Bryan Curtis, Bill’s Dad, and Ryan Smith

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons talks about five guys he’s observing for the two major Game 6 NBA playoff games on Friday night (3:54). Then, Bryan Curtis joins to discuss the current state of sports programming before Bill’s dad hops on to reflect on the Celtics’ playoff collapse and to check in on Boston sports (22:38). Finally, Jazz owner Ryan Smith joins the pod to talk about the second pick in the 2026 NBA draft, rebuilding the team, the growth of Utah, and much more (01:43:22). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Bryan Curtis, Bill’s dad, and Ryan Smith Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo Book a new kind of stay at HolidayInn.com The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit https://fanduel.com/playwithaplan to learn more about the resources and helplines 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm pro football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carried sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit MDDAllies.com to watch my story.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 1:36Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new rewatchables on Monday night. We did Tropic Thunder. We're doing comedies all month on Netflix. You go to Netflix, they have a million comedies. We've done a bunch of them on the rewatchables already, including Fletch, Along Came Polly, Ghostbusters, 48 Hours. The list goes on and on. And we've also done this month. We did Tropic Thunder. We did Ghostbusters. We did that last month. We did There's Something About Mary. And this Monday, we're doing Borat, which is an absolutely hilarious movie. I've watched it once. I have to watch it again before we record the episode. But

• 2:20Bill Simmons?

  Just laughing my ass off. This movie, it's 20 years old. It's still really funny and it's going to be Monday's rewatchable. So stay tuned for that. Uh, scheduling stuff this Sunday. So I'm recording this on Thursday. We don't know what's going to happen in the game sixes on Friday. Detroit and Cleveland and then, uh, San Antonio, Minnesota. Who knows? So on Sunday, we might be doing two podcasts with Zach Lowe. We might be doing a part one, part two after each game seven. We might be just be doing one after the game sevens, or if there's no game sevens and just the game one, we'll be doing one episode. But we're going to be live on Netflix and we'll, we'll let you know on social media what the, what the time is if you want to join us. I'm looking forward to that. We have an action packed

• 3:04Bill Simmons?

  podcast on this one. Coming up after the break, I want to talk about, uh, five guys that I'm looking at heading into, um, these game sixes that we have a double header on Friday night. Really, really interesting night of basketball. Brian Curtis is going to join us to talk about the NFL schedule released was today, but just in general, what the leagues are doing here with all of the games and, um, is there just too much sports? Are we heading there or is too much sports a good thing? We're going to talk it out. My dad finally decided to come on after boycotting, um, for a week and a half after the Celtics lost, but Boston sports is in shambles. So, um, had him come on and talk about it for 20 minutes. And then last but not least,

• 3:46Bill Simmons?

  Utah Jazz owner, Ryan Smith, who's never been on the podcast. Um, they finally got some luck with the lottery. His story is fascinating how he ended up, um, owning not just the, the Utah Jazz, but also the hockey team as well. And, uh, he hired the Aegis from Boston and, um, just a lot of stuff about what it's like to own an NBA team. So this is a long, fat, content filled podcast. It's all coming up next. We're going to take a break, bring in Pearl Japp, and then, uh, I'm going to talk about the NBA. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. It's been a wild playoff run, not over yet. FanDuel wants to bring you closer to the court to make all of that action come to life for you, the basketball fan.

• 4:28Bill Simmons?

  FanDuel, the best place to bet the teams, players, plays during NBA postseason. Build a same game parlay for a shot at a bigger payout, or try live betting and jump into the action right after tip off. Whatever you want. That's the whole point of live betting. Download the FanDuel Sportsbook app right now and play your game. 21 plus select states or 18 plus DC, Kentucky, Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut.

• 5:24Bill Simmons?

  All right, we have a game six doubleheader on Friday night. Really intriguing. Game six is always intriguing, but I think these two for different reasons. Can't wait to watch. I've already broke the news to my wife that that's what's going to be happening for us on a Friday night. Cavs minus three and a half at home to finish off Detroit. Minnesota getting four and a half points, trying to stay alive against San Antonio. And look, Minnesota looks like they're in trouble for different reasons than Cleveland. Looks like they have the upper hand against Detroit. Minnesota just looks like a talent issue, especially with Edwards not 100%. Cleveland, Detroit, this series has become more of a math problem

• 6:09Bill Simmons?

  where it just feels like Detroit's max is around 105 points. And if Cleveland could just get over that, they're going to win. Detroit in the playoffs, 14th in threes. They've only made 10 threes a game, 49% on twos, 13th. They have the fourth highest amount of turnovers. They're almost at 60 a game. And they're just running out of guys that they can put out there in crunch time that they can trust. So I think they're in the most trouble of these four teams, but I have five guys I'm watching on Friday night for different reasons in the two series. First one is Julius Randall, who was a huge reason I thought that the Timberwolves won game one and then has been a lightning rod ever since 13 and 13 for 39 and three losses.

• 6:49Bill Simmons?

  And has just looked really, really awful at times trying to challenge Wemby, trying to challenge what the Spurs are doing to him. And it's like Randall has these moments where you've like, I thought after game one, I was like, he's the key to the series. I'm not sure if the Spurs have guys to guard him. And then by the time you finish game five, you're like, can they play Randall? I mean, this is the story of his career. He's made multiple NBA teams. We're always questioning how good he is. And I guess this is just who he is. From a basketball standpoint, he's made next year, he makes 33 million, the year after he makes 36 million. So he's the most obvious trade candidate and he's a guy that when things start going against him, you can kind of see it.

• 7:28Bill Simmons?

  He wears his emotions. He wears the nobody believes in me kind of mask on his face and can get really frustrated. And on top of all of this, Towns has been great in the playoffs for the Knicks. So you have this trade that was, I thought, one of the more fun trades we had this decade. And the Knicks are clearly now winning the trade and Randall, DiFencho sadly is hurt out for the year, but Randall, the swing guy from Minnesota, and it might not even matter. He might be awesome in game six and it might not matter with San Antonio. But I'm watching him. If he's bad, I don't see a world where Minnesota can win when Edwards isn't 100%. On the flip side,

• 8:09Bill Simmons?

  I'm going to lump these two together as my second guy, Vassell and Champagny on San Antonio. They made five threes a game during the season and shot 38% combined. And I thought were pretty reliable. I always felt like their threes are going in. In the series, they're 21 for 63. Thirty-three percent basically. I mention this because Wemby and Fox and Harper have been a disaster from three in this series. They're all 27% or worse. Wemby, I think, is a better three-point shooter than that. Harper, what came in the league, wasn't supposed to be a three-point shooter. And Fox has kind of bounced around where there's, you watch certain games and you think, maybe he can make them. Other times, you never think they're going in. I mention all this because they lost game four. They were 6-for-26 from three.

• 8:53Bill Simmons?

  And if you're looking at, like, how does San Antonio blow game six? And how does this go back to San Antonio? Game seven. To me, forget the Minnesota piece. Forget how if Edwards is 90% healthy, 95% healthy. Forget how great Wemby is. Forget how awesome Dylan Harper has been as these playoffs went along. You can beat San Antonio simply if they miss threes. And I don't 100% trust their three-point shooting. So I'm specifically watching Vassal and Champagny because if they're making threes in the first half and Wemby's doing Wemby stuff and then Harper, like, San Antonio, that'll be it. It'll probably be like an 18-point win. But if the threes are starting to bounce around and they can't get into a rhythm,

• 9:37Bill Simmons?

  that's what I want if I'm a Minnesota fan. So you could say this about almost any NBA team, like, ah, if the threes don't go in, it's tough to beat them. San Antonio specifically, I don't totally trust their three-point shooting. And I think this is the Achilles heel of the team, the more I watch them. And if it goes south in a game six, and you go to a game seven, and I'm still nervous about your three-point shooting, and Minnesota comes in as the fuck you alpha dog, just trying to bully them and, you know, really test them, and all of a sudden, each guy's looking a little nervous taking those threes. That's the recipe for San Antonio blowing this series. I do not think that will happen. I would not bet on it. But it's a team that sometimes they'll be up 14, and all of a

• 10:22Bill Simmons?

  sudden, they start looking a little creaky because the threes start bouncing around. So we will see. All right. Cleveland-Detroit. I assume San Antonio's gonna beat Minnesota, and I would probably not bet on game six.

• 10:38Bill Simmons?

  I think Detroit's done. I think they they have slowly broken as this series has gone along. And even even game game five, which, you know, they played Paul Reed the entire fourth quarter and the entire overtime, I think, because my next guy on my list, Jalen Durin, has gone south to the point that they just decided he couldn't be out there. He's a 2011 guy during the season, 65%. He's a 10 and 8 guy in the playoffs, 50%. There's some stuff teams are doing to him in the playoffs that they, like we've talked about, they're just not guarding Thompson anymore. They're preventing Durin from rolling. But his confidence really seems gone around the basket, like these little flip shots that he used to make.

• 11:22Bill Simmons?

  I, again, I'll say for the 19th time, I voted for him second team all NBA. And he, I don't know what happened. I have a theory that I'll mention in a second. He also doesn't seem as explosive. There's a chance he might be hiding an injury, even watching the way he's running and stuff, who knows? But but compounded with Stewart is just been basically unplayable in this series. Jenkins, 21% from three. Now, he's playing crunch time and hasn't been making threes at all. Hollin can't shoot. Levert is a classic trick or treat guy. They can't find five guys to close games with. Robinson missed a game because he had back issues. I assume he's going to play game six, so they have to go Cade, Thompson, Robinson,

• 12:07Bill Simmons?

  Tobias and Durin, or B-ball Paul, as as long as they could possibly go. That Durin lineup is plus 10 in the playoffs. Every non-Cade lineup's a disaster. And it's like the old Doc Rivers theory of as a playoff series goes along, the number of guys you can trust in this series starts dwindling. And you started at eight and suddenly you're at seven, then you're at six, and Detroit just might be at four. The Durin, here's my theory. He's a restricted free agent this summer.

• 12:39Bill Simmons?

  And I think, especially after the season he had, you assumed he would be getting a max or close to it, like maybe something 40 million a year, maybe something close to that Jaren Jackson contract. But he doesn't have it yet. And now he's not playing well and teams have schemed him differently. And

• 12:54Bill Simmons?

  To me, this almost feels like, uh, like he's unraveling a little bit. I, this happened for different reasons to Antoine Walker and the Celtics played the Nets two years in a row in 02 and 03 and Kenny Martin, just for whatever reason, had Antoine solved. He just had, Antoine couldn't do anything against him. And I really think it changed Antoine's career. That and his free throw shooting went sideways, but, um, he just was never the same. And with Duren, I would assume that's not going to happen. He's 22 years old, but I always get really nervous when somebody goes full section A private pile on a playoff series, which is what's happening.

• 13:34Bill Simmons?

  Like him, him not playing in the fourth quarter in OT is just, I, I just couldn't believe it. And the guy that we're watching does not resemble the guy from the regular season. So is he going to bounce back in game six in Cleveland? Is this just going to get worse? I think you have to watch, we'll know in the first like six, seven minutes with him. The next guy, Max Struce, who single-handedly swung game five. A notorious trick or treat guy. He'll do this twice a series where he'll look awesome. I did like the way he was defending Cade. If he's not the trick or treat guy for them, then it has to be Merrill, I think. But I think it needs to be one of those two. They need like that little influx. Schroder's another one.

• 14:16Bill Simmons?

  Schroder, every year, nobody wants Schroder and then in a playoff series, you completely trust him. At some point, we'll figure it out with him. Struce, when he's going, I really like how Cleveland looks and, um, he fell into play. I've never liked him because he was on Miami and the Celtics would always play him and he always like, felt like he was killing the Celtics, even though you go back and look at the game logs, he didn't have like two good games in the series, which is what he does. Um, a reader named Ovi Jacob mentioned that, um, Struce, Struce is slowly morphing into the Macho Man Randy Savage. And ever since I got that email, every time I watch Struce, it feels like he's reimagined it to me. He really does kind of look like the Macho Man. Uh, I think you start talking to him, be like, oh yeah.

• 15:00Bill Simmons?

  But when you watch him in game six, just think of the Macho Man. It makes the Max Struce experience so much more fun. We'll see if he swings game six. Last guy has to be James Harden, has to be. Looked washed in game one and game two. Looked washed for the first, I would say 43 to 44 minutes of game three to the point that I didn't think he should be playing. And then huge game three ending. He was really good in game four, 11 assists, 24 points. And then he was their best guy in game five. He, um, him and Mobley. Mobley was really, really good. I thought too. I thought Mobley was really good the last two games actually, but Harden had 30 and, and you know, it's weird. On the one hand, he has 58 turnovers in the playoffs,

• 15:44Bill Simmons?

  22 in this series. And there's moments when he just looks old and Detroit's made him look old. And Asara Thompson looks like he's athletically at, you know, a different planet than 36-year-old James Harden at this point. By the way, I did not think that was a foul on Asara Thompson. That's a no call. You can't decide a game on that. Sorry. Um, but Harden, he's played 185 playoff games, which has to be, I didn't look this up, but it has to be like top five or top six ever. He hasn't made the conference finals in eight years. He made it in 11 and 12 with OKC. He made it in 15 with Houston in that crazy series where the Clippers should have beaten them in game six and Harden was on the bench as the Rockets came back. So he like barely gets credit for that one,

• 16:29Bill Simmons?

  for me. Um, 11 and 12, he was a sixth man in OKC in 2018 was the one where he carried a team to the conference finals. Um, and then ended up losing to Golden State in the famous three-point rock fight that Houston just couldn't make anything after Chris Paul got hurt. Um, and hasn't made it since. So we've been talking about his playoff legacy or lack thereof. Zach Lowe famously called him guard Karl Malone, which I don't even know who that was more insulting for, but, um, we've already litigated this. We've already, the, the jury came out, came back in with a verdict. His 2020s have been kind of secretly terrible and will get lost in the shuffle when we go through his career and you know, how, how great it was in a lot of ways, but the playoff

• 17:14Bill Simmons?

  stuff was bad. But last year died against Denver in game seven, like just really, really, really awful. And you can see it right away. 24 died in the last two Dallas games. 23 really died when he was on Philly in the last two Boston games. 22 Miami series did not end well for him. 21.

• 17:36Bill Simmons?

  The last two, the Brooklyn series against Milwaukee when he was hurt. Hold that thought. That's probably my favorite James Harden playoff performance until what we've been seeing with Cleveland. But in the 2020s, 22, 6 and 8 stats are fine, but we were there. We know what happens and you just can't trust them. The irony of this, how amazing would it be? If 36 year old James Harden went on like a heater right now? If it, if it basically starts with the end of game three and it runs through and he's just awesome for the rest of this Detroit series. And then goes into a Knicks series and becomes this, by the way, he's been in the Western Conference's entire career, except for that

• 18:18Bill Simmons?

  brief Brooklyn stint and that brief Philly stint somehow never avoided, uh, never ended up playing the Knicks. So at least I don't think he did. I don't remember James Harden playing Knicks. So James Harden in MSG, revamping his whole playoff legacy thing.

• 18:36Bill Simmons?

  Pretty fun. Or it could be pretty painful. I don't know. I, I was thinking about his greatest playoff moments though.

• 18:46Bill Simmons?

  You can think of the worst playoff moments and we could do that for an hour. And I was trying to think, what were the best ones? And honestly, nothing jumped to mind. And it, and my mind drifted to 2021 when he was hurt on that Nets team. And his greatest playoff moment was probably the, what Zach Lowe called the greatest theoretical playoff team ever. When him and Kyrie and Durant were all healthy, but then I really liked how he played in that Milwaukee series after he was hurt. I thought he was like heroic in game seven. Basically playing on one leg, doing everything he could to just try to set stuff up for them because he kind of had to play. And as crazy as that sounds, I think that was my favorite James Harden moment. All the other ones were kind of negative.

• 19:30Bill Simmons?

  He's in a situation right now with Mitchell where he can kind of drift back and forth and be impactful, but not impactful.

• 19:39Bill Simmons?

  And do a little seesaw thing with Mitchell, which they figured out for the most part. It's okay.

• 19:46Bill Simmons?

  But I like how this is lined up for them because they need Thompson to to defend Mitchell. They can't play one of their other defensive swings because then they just Detroit has no scoring at that point. I mean, you could argue, maybe they just go all defense and throw away the scoring because they can't shoot anyway. But if Thompson's shadowing Mitchell and he's around them, then you're going to have to let Harden do what he's going to do against pick a swing man on Detroit. So it's set up for him here. And then against the Knicks next round, they might be able to just try to hunt Brunson as much as they possibly can and or or pull Towns out. Harden won't be doing all his flopping stuff. This is kind of set up for James Harden to be like, you thought I

• 20:30Bill Simmons?

  was dead. I'm not. You thought you thought I was guard Karl Malone. Watch this. Do I think this will happen? I don't. I do not. But it's in play. It's better than he was on the Clippers where he had no chance to do anything. I have Harden career wise. I have in the mid 40s of my pyramid. I have him actually one spot higher than George Gervin. And I have him two spots behind Sam Jones and Walt Frazier, who were two of the best clutch players in the history of the league and especially his guards. And the irony of those two being on a list and then it dropping and then going to Gervin who, you know, I wrote about this in my book, but had a chance who's up

• 21:15Bill Simmons?

  3-1. I mean, it's crazy. Gervin didn't make the finals, but the bullet series for Gervin was is kind of his version of a James Harden didn't do quite enough when it mattered. And then Harden has a million of those. But who knows? Maybe maybe it's a better late than ever clutch situation for James Harden. Would I bet on this? I would not. We have no idea what to expect from James Harden. My prediction, I think Cleveland finishes. I think that I feel the same way that I felt about the Toronto Atlanta series. I think Detroit's going one direction and Cleveland has solved them in a lot of different ways. And the only way they don't win ironically is if James Harden completely sucks.

• 21:59Bill Simmons?

  I think they're going to finish off Detroit in game six. I don't really know what's going to happen in Spurs, Minnesota. I would almost go with Spurs win by double figures or Minnesota upsets them and wins. Watch the three-point shooting. These games are going to be great and I can't wait to know both watch about that. Watch both of them and then on Sunday, talk to Zach Lowe about what happened and where we're going in round three. We're going to take a break. We are going to come back with my friend, Brian Curtis. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. FanDuel giving you better payouts on same game parlays all NBA playoffs long. We're almost halfway through the NBA playoffs. We still have more ways to build and more value every time you play.

• 22:39Bill Simmons?

  Stack your picks for every game, every minute, every round, whatever you want from spreads to play player points to threes and more. Build it all into one same game parlay and go for bigger payouts. If you're betting same game parlays this NBA postseason, bet them on FanDuel. More options, better payouts, all NBA playoffs long. Head to FanDuel.com/BS to get started. FanDuel, official partner of the NBA. Play your game. 21 plus select states or 18 plus DC, Kentucky, Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Holiday Inn by IHG.

• 23:23Bill Simmons?

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• 24:09Bill Simmons?

  All right, the unbudsmen of my life is here. Brian Curtis taping this before the NFL schedule release. I'm sorry to pull you away from the anticipation of just staring in front of your computer, just waiting to see who the Cowboys were playing in Week 10. I never understood this day. I never, kudos to them for blowing it out. There's stuff I want to talk about that I've not through a scheduled day, but do you get scheduled day? What is this?

• 24:33Speaker 04

  It's terrible. It really is terrible. The one they had this week where we're leaking Week 2 Thursday Night Football.

• 24:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Why?

• 24:41Speaker 04

  Not Week 1, not Thanksgiving, not Christmas, Week 2. It's like, am I supposed to just schedule my life right now around Week 2 Thursday Night?

• 24:51Bill Simmons?

  Well, you already know who your favorite team is playing, road and home, before whatever. So I guess it's just for travel purposes, but leaking out all the international games and what their plan was for Thursday, Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, all that stuff, kind of defeats the purpose of scheduled day. That's not why we're here, though. I feel like there's a moment happening right now with professional sports and money and scheduling and trying to figure out how to justify all these giant media deals. And you can feel it happening in real time with college football, with the NBA, and with the NFL specifically. And the NFL now, they're going to have nine international games this year.

• 25:32Bill Simmons?

  They're pretty transparently discussing how the 18-week schedule is coming. You're seeing the owners just kind of leak that out. The season this year, we're starting Week 1. It starts late this year. We're starting September 9th on a Wednesday. First week, we go Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday, Monday. The playoffs don't start until January 16th, and the Super Bowl is on Valentine's Day. So they've just declared war on everybody's lives. And we love the NFL and we're addicted to it like it's a drug and we can't fight back. But is there a tipping point where there's just going to be too much?

• 26:07Speaker 04

  You know, remember that quote from the executive who said, we've reached peak TV 10 years ago?

• 26:13Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 26:13Speaker 04

  And it wasn't just about the quality of TV, it was about how much. This feels like peak sports TV. Except I don't know that we're quite there yet.

• 26:22Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 26:22Speaker 04

  As you mentioned, what's still out there? 18th NFL game, expansion, maybe in every league, certainly the NBA, but maybe also hockey, baseball, um, bigger TV deals, more, you know, more sports scheduled on days we never used to have sports. I, I just feel like there's more out there somehow, even though it feels like almost too much right now.

• 26:46Bill Simmons?

  You can feel it. And I've talked about this before with the UFC and WWE have been really smart about strategically picking these weekends that were kind of dead weekends. Last weekend, which seemed like it was going to be a little bit of a slower weekend because basketball had finally slowed down, hockey had finally slowed down. It was a little more manageable. It was the, the week after the Kentucky Derby and that's always a crazy first Saturday, Sunday. And yet last weekend had a pretty good UFC card. My son thought it was the best UFC card of the year. There was a WWE event that was being promoted all the time. This week has PGA tournament. It just feels like everybody's gotten better at both stretching out their schedules, but then also targeting dead weekends and then just kind of flooding us.

• 27:30Bill Simmons?

  And I'm, I'm, it's the first time I ever really remember feeling like I have trouble staying with everything. Like there's, there's just too much. Like I haven't really watched a lot of the NHL playoffs this year and I usually love the NHL playoffs. I just haven't been able to watch that much.

• 27:46Speaker 04

  I wanted to ask you about that because ever since I've known you, you'll text me on like a Tuesday night and it's like, are you watching this Pelicans game? The announcer did something crazy tonight.

• 27:54Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 27:54Speaker 04

  Wait, what? That's on?

• 27:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:56Speaker 04

  So I always feel like you're the highest consumption person I know.

• 27:58Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 27:59Speaker 04

  But you feel like you've reached your limit?

• 28:01Bill Simmons?

  Well, especially because all of the TV and movie stuff that's out there too. And then like Survivor 50 is really good this year. That's another 90 minutes that has now been thrown into, uh, into my week. But the, the combo of like the basketball with how they, how the college football seemed to just get longer and longer. And how January is now just absolutely loaded. And we kind of finally get a breath in February. I'm complaining about free sports, although I guess they're not free because we're paying for the streamers, but it feels like there's less breaths in the schedule. Whereas like even like when we started Grantland in 2011 and there was the NBA lockout and we were panicked. We were like, what the fuck are we going to talk about every week? What are we going to do?

• 28:45Bill Simmons?

  I remember when I was a kid, when they had the baseball lockout in 81 and then the other one in 94. And it just was like traumatic. It was, it was such a monkey wrench in the day to day life and there wasn't stuff to replace it. Now there's a million things to replace anything with. And I wonder if that's part of this is all the leagues and the sports feel pressure to constantly be in front of us. Does that make sense?

• 29:09Speaker 04

  It does. I mean, Thanksgiving Eve is the funny one for me. That when you and I were growing up, what was Thanksgiving Eve? The Survivor Series? It's a Thanksgiving Eve tradition. And that's not a sports night I'd really spent much time thinking about at all.

• 29:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 29:25Speaker 04

  The NFL schedule leak that just came out, Packers Rams, Thanksgiving Eve. And that's a funny one, right? Cause we know when the NFL came for Christmas Day, they wanted to stomp on the NBA. When they started programming those Saturdays in December with really good games, they wanted to stomp on the college football playoff. Who are they stomping on on Thanksgiving Eve?

• 29:46Bill Simmons?

  It's just attention, the attention economy.

• 29:49Speaker 04

  Goes to your point though. They just want to be in front of us on another night and get the money they can get because you open up a new window and somebody's going to pay for it.

• 29:58Bill Simmons?

  So everything crests with the NFL with this, this Thanksgiving thing, which you just brought up, this Wednesday night game that they'd never had. Three Thursday, Black Friday, Sunday and Monday. There's going to be five days out of six where we have NFL, including three on Thursday. So. Part of me wonders, is the NFL just trying to break up families and trying to get everybody divorced? I think that has to be asked.

• 30:26Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 30:26Bill Simmons?

  Is it more single, more single male sports fans may be better for the NFL? I don't know what they're thinking there, but the Wednesday night thing blew my mind because that's a pretty, you know, that's like when you're in college, you come back and you go out with your high school friends, right? When that's a day, usually people travel, like even we've, we've struggled with even trying to program that from a podcast standpoint. Cause you can see the audience goes down for those five days because everybody's traveling. Everyone's with family and people might watch football. That's it. And the NFL is like, we're doubling down. We feel like we can actually own this entire stretch. Family and us, those are your two options. And Wednesday night is just aggressive and part of it's Netflix. Netflix, it's great for them, right?

• 31:10Bill Simmons?

  They, they're like, they want these signature one-off events versus like having the, the week to week stuff. So they have the Wednesday night opening game in Australia. They have the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. That makes sense from a Netflix standpoint. I don't get it from an NFL standpoint, except for money and attention.

• 31:29Speaker 04

  Money and attention, which you can see, because all these games on Thanksgiving are bangers.

• 31:34Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 31:35Speaker 04

  Packers, Rams, Bears, Lions, Eagles, Cowboys, Chiefs, Bills. And then the Black Friday game is Broncos, Steelers. So you're not just trying to dominate a holiday when you have a captive audience. You're trying to post a huge number.

• 31:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 31:49Speaker 04

  Which really started last year. Remember they put Cowboys Chiefs on Thanksgiving? And what people forget is that game had more viewers than either of the conference championship games last year.

• 31:57Bill Simmons?

  Unbelievable.

• 31:58Speaker 04

  It was the highest rated non-Super Bowl game of the season.

• 32:01Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 32:02Speaker 04

  57 million people watched that game. So with the, it's almost just like you're, you know, shock and awe, trying to get fireworks. You know, you could put a crappy game on there and it would do very well because it's Thanksgiving. People are at home, they want to watch football. The NFL is not trying to do that anymore. They're just trying to completely dominate.

• 32:18Bill Simmons?

  Also really hard to figure out what's an awesome game. I talked to Gabe Spitzer at Netflix about this because he knew, you know, they, they obviously have at least some saying requests for what they could put in for the Christmas game, right? And when you, you, basically, the only thing you can have some sort of sense of is who's playing who. So it's like, if we really like the Patriots and we really like the Chargers, could we make that a request? And be like Patriots in LA against the Chargers, can that be our Christmas game? But how do you know? Like we have, like, would the Giants be a team you'd actually want to request for Christmas? Because they have a fourth place schedule, they have a new coach start, they might be really good. Maybe they're this year's Patriots.

• 33:03Bill Simmons?

  Or would you say, well, the Patriots were in the Super Bowl last year, let's get them. And then they have the year from hell and they're six and 11 by the time the game happens. So yeah, I look at these things and it's like, these games all look great. But the, the only one that's actually probably really reliable is Eagles Cowboys. Because I know those two teams hate each other. Is Mahomes even going to be in that Chiefs Bills game? How's his ACL stuff going to go? Are the Bills going to be good? What are they going to look like next year? I just, you don't know. So on paper, it looks great. But I understand

• 33:34Bill Simmons?

  the philosophy of the Packers, Rams, Bears, Lions. These are all like the signature teams in the league, right? We have 12 out of 32. They're not putting the Panthers.

• 33:44Speaker 04

  No.

• 33:45Bill Simmons?

  They're not, they're not rolling the dice with like

• 33:49Bill Simmons?

  the Raiders.

• 33:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. And you're also putting something that's a rivalry, no matter what.

• 33:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:54Speaker 04

  So you're not doing Cowboys Falcons.

• 33:56Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 33:57Speaker 04

  Cowboys Jaguars. Because that's like, you know, at the very least, it's going to be a division grudge match.

• 34:03Bill Simmons?

  All right. So let's say we're in the room, we're two of the owners.

• 34:07Bill Simmons?

  And we're worth a lot of money. The league is, has all these media deals in place. They've figured out this roundabout way of using the paramount thing. And the chance to be able to renew, to basically redo a bunch of their stuff at the end of the decade.

• 34:26Bill Simmons?

  Combined with the NFL Network selling to ESPN. So now they've just kind of moved some games around and made them worth more. It's like, yeah, we have these three double headers, Monday Night Football ESPN games. We're just gonna grab those three and we're gonna sell them the highest bidder. Netflix or YouTube, you guys tell us. We're gonna sell the opening night game. NBC, sorry, you don't have that anymore. Do you have a problem with that? Do you have a problem with that? What is NBC gonna say? Hey, that's not fair. What they're really doing is weakening the Sunday Fox and CBS games. They, they, they're getting destroyed from the one o'clock and the four o'clock on, or in our case, in the West Coast, the 10 o'clock and the 1:15, whatever they are. I think those games are gonna probably suck this year, right?

• 35:10Speaker 04

  I agree. And this is what happens with peak sports TV is you do hit the wall. There aren't, there just aren't that many good games. Now fantasy and gambling can make a bad game into a watchable game for some people, but there just aren't that many at the end of the day. Which is where you get to 18th game, where you get to expansion, right? Then they start to, the wheels start to go in motion. But you're right, man. If, if you're an NFL owner right now, just think about this. How far we've come from 1993, when Rupert Murdoch came in with crazy money? $400 million a year. $400 million a year. I remember talking to Jerry Jones one time and he was like, when they brought that offer in, he was sitting next to Pat Bowlen, the owner of the Broncos. And he goes, Brian, we were just kicking the shit out of ourselves under the table, just kicking each other with $400 million.

• 35:55Speaker 04

  This is amazing. Can you imagine now how many broken femurs there would be for all the money going around? Cause there's like, there's like three Ruperts right now. You know, you have so much crazy money because the streamers want in, they want more NFL. And the networks know that if they lose the NFL, they're, they're toast. They're gone.

• 36:14Bill Simmons?

  And then you have, you have streamers versus networks with two different. Agendas that are perfect for the NFL, right? If you're a network, you want the continuity of every Sunday I have a game. Every Sunday night I have a game. Mondays I have a game versus Netflix, YouTube, Amazon. They're like, we just want like impact. Amazon's a little better at the continuity stuff. Netflix didn't want to have a weekly game. They wanted to, you know, their schedule, the way it works is they want to populate their main screen with like, here's the biggest thing this week. So they only needed like three or four. YouTube, YouTube's the one I can't really figure out what they want. Cause they already have the Sunday ticket.

• 36:58Bill Simmons?

  And yeah, just having these one-off games like, like, does you, I don't even, does YouTube even, this almost seems like a vanity thing for YouTube. Like we're YouTube, watch this, we have NFL, but it's not like they need it. I think Netflix needs it a little bit.

• 37:12Speaker 04

  The streaming strategy is fascinating and also because they can always change their minds.

• 37:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:16Speaker 04

  The networks are like, as you say, we need Sunday football. We need these two time slots, or if you're NBC, we need the night game. We need that every week. That's like part of that's, that's what we have to have to keep this network alive. But if you're a streamer, you can be like, you know what? We're not interested in full seasons. Oh, wait, renegotiation's coming up. Hmm. Couple of years from now, we are interested in full seasons. It turns out because football's so popular.

• 37:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I would argue for Prime, having the Thursday night football has been really good for them.

• 37:44Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 37:44Bill Simmons?

  Um, and they've figured out their strategy with all their sports stuff is I think a little different than anyone, because a lot of it's ad-driven. They, I think eventually they're going to have a lot of product stuff down there that you're going to see over the next five, six years. They're going to figure out a way to integrate when you're on Prime. Oh, I like that ad. You click a button and all of a sudden I'm buying a pan or I'm buying Dave Chang's cooking something with some Momofuku sauce. I'm like, oh, that sauce looks good. And all of a sudden I'm ordering it. So they have like their own set of agendas. Netflix has the, we're the, we're, we're in front, we're the leaders. We just need to keep populating our stuff with one-off stuff, whether it's the Kevin Hart roast one week, or Stranger Things, or NFL.

• 38:28Speaker 04

  Elderly Mike Tyson.

• 38:29Bill Simmons?

  Right. Or the press box with Brian Curtis, like whatever it needs to be.

• 38:34Speaker 04

  We're still waiting on the call up on that one.

• 38:36Bill Simmons?

  It might be. I think they're waiting to see how many football games they're getting. YouTube, I don't understand their strategy. I don't, I can't really elaborate because I think sometimes, and you saw this with the Amazon, with the Masters. To me, that's a pure vanity move. They don't really need the first round or first two rounds of the Masters, right? But you get it. And now like all those higher up level suits are like, go into Augusta, we have the Masters. And now you, you, basically you're in this like secret society for you just get to go in, play the course, you get to warm around. I don't really understand YouTube. So what is YouTube? What do you think is motivating them?

• 39:17Speaker 04

  Well, I, I, I'm kind of with you. I don't know if they know what their strategy with sports is yet, but there's this great luxury at this point in history to not know.

• 39:27Speaker 04

  If you're Fox, you can't lose the NFL because then it's the Masked Singer and season 800 of The Simpsons and that's it, right? You're, you're toast.

• 39:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 39:35Speaker 04

  But if you're a streamer, you can play around with stuff. You know, what if we have old Mike Tyson come out and fight? What if we have Mayweather, Pacquiao? What if we have a guy climb a building?

• 39:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. Like you can play around and just sort of see what works. You know, you still have to hit numbers and all that kind of stuff, but like, I don't know. And to me, it's like, building a sports division is a big step up. Right? Dabbling in sports, saying, hey, let's go get Ian Eagle and let's go get Greg Olson and let's, you know, put together a little fantasy announcer booth and, you know, get one of the networks to produce a game for us. That's dabbling, right? That's a level. If you say, we want a sports division where we have people hired, working for us all the time, week after week of NFL program. That's a lot. It's a lot of money and it also takes a lot of talent and know-how. And you and I've seen this, you know, week after week, watching the NFL. Not every network is as good at that as others.

• 40:29Speaker 04

  So then you bring yourself under this microscope. Are we doing this right? Does our, do our games suck? Do our replays suck? Do our announcers suck? It's easier to dabble.

• 40:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And they're listening to all the media critics and podcasts like this, and that's where they're getting feedback from, basically. Cause they, they know not to trust social media and things like that. So it's, first of all, you could not listen to anything or you can be like, did we do that? Like when Amazon, when they had the outage during the, what was it? The last minute of, what was it? The playing game or, it was the playing game, right? It was Charlotte? And Amazon just disappeared for 20 seconds and everyone nuts like that's a catastrophic moment for for people running sports and Amazon. That's your worst case scenario.

• 41:14Speaker 04

  100%.

• 41:14Bill Simmons?

  But for the most part, I don't know, these it's it's pretty hard for an announcer to ruin a game. It's pretty hard for a production to ruin a game if you care about who's playing. And, you know, they can they can only do so much like NBC has thrown away the pregame and halftime shows for every sport they've covered for the last 20 years. Nobody really cares. Right. Like the basketball show now, I don't know what they're doing, but nobody cares. It doesn't matter. With the football piece. So if they add another week and it's clear they want to go now, I thought it was really notable that they pushed the Super

• 41:53Bill Simmons?

  Bowl all the way to February 14. The Super Bowl always without fail has been the first Sunday in February. And it's either February 1 through February 7 without fail.

• 42:06Speaker 04

  Single digits.

• 42:08Bill Simmons?

  No longer. Now we're at 14 and I almost feel like it's a feeler to see this is how it's going to work for us when we go to 18 weeks. What kind of number do we get if we if we push it back? And I don't know where this part ends either because think about this from the beginning. So they and they're also insisting on doing the preseason. So you're talking August all the way through February now. One, two, three, four, five. That's seven months. So seven month season. That seems crazy to me. Right?

• 42:39Speaker 04

  It does. It does. But if you were going to grow, wouldn't you grow into February?

• 42:45Bill Simmons?

  Right. Like staggered to the way I don't know. There's something about the way the schedule was set up where college started, people were kind of back from summer break and all that stuff. Kids went off, school started for little kids. Kids are in college and then the NFL would start. And now it seems like they're kind of conceding that territory to college football. And college football is the other one that like Indiana's first game last year was August 19. Their last game was January 19. It's a five month schedule, not counting all the practices. So you're showing up in Indiana in mid June and you're going all the way through the middle of January. That's insane.

• 43:24Speaker 04

  Week zero is like one of the concepts that makes me laugh about peak sports TV, which we got to in college football. We have week one, but before week one, we have week zero. Where there are games.

• 43:34Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 43:34Speaker 04

  It's like, but zero is not a week.

• 43:35Bill Simmons?

  They're not good games, so it doesn't count as a week, but it's week zero.

• 43:39Speaker 04

  Something to watch.

• 43:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 43:40Speaker 04

  But February to me, that's always been the dead zone of sports.

• 43:43Bill Simmons?

  Anymore.

• 43:43Speaker 04

  There's a famous quote where somebody asked a sports writer, why did you, why'd you quit? And it said, February, because there was anything to write about. So if you're the NFL, what if we stretch that another week? And we just keep going and bet that you're not going to want to watch regular season NBA as much as you're going to want to watch us.

• 43:58Bill Simmons?

  Right. February was always for, for the sports community, it was vacations. There was always conferences in February and early March. It was always kind of the time everybody reset and then March Madness would hit. Now March Madness is going to get longer. Like, what are they, what are they, didn't they add like another 14 teams or something? And they were about to?

• 44:17Speaker 04

  They did. Cause you know, six, 60 odd teams wasn't enough to pick a champion.

• 44:22Bill Simmons?

  This is one of the things I wanted to, to talk about.

• 44:27Bill Simmons?

  These different leagues are doing stuff that everybody is like, please don't do this. Like not only the fans, but the people that play and coach the sports are like, yeah, don't do this. And whoever's in charge is always like, nah, actually we're going to do it. Thanks for the input. Like the NBA, I think pretty consistently across the board, everybody is saying the season is too long. Kurt Goldsberger had a great piece for us today about all the leg injuries. And it's something him and I had been talking about behind the scenes for months about, is there a way to, to actually capture? Is, did something change? Cause you could see in the basketball reference minutes from 12, 13 years ago, like the league leaders and minutes versus the league leaders now.

• 45:12Bill Simmons?

  People are 500 minutes less. It doesn't make sense, but it does make sense when you watch how it's played, all the leg injuries. And I,

• 45:20Bill Simmons?

  Where are we going with all this stuff?

• 45:23Speaker 04

  The bet that's being made is that they will take the money and they will watch us roll our eyes and they'll say, you're gonna watch anyway. I know you're gonna watch. And let's, you and I could do a self audit about this, right?

• 45:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:37Speaker 04

  Did we need a seventh team from every conference for the NFL playoffs? Absolutely didn't. Those teams have sucked by and large, year after year. Did you not watch those games involving the 17?

• 45:46Bill Simmons?

  That was, that was one where I was like, you got me. I kinda like this. Yeah, I was, I, I, I wasn't against that idea. If they added two more teams, I think that's now a mistake.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  NBA play in game? I think you're pro, if I remember correctly?

• 46:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm pro.

• 46:04Speaker 04

  You're pro?

• 46:04Bill Simmons?

  I've enjoyed it.

• 46:05Speaker 04

  They bet that they could have teams that would often have a losing record or be right around 500 and they put them in the postseason that Bill Simmons would watch and you watched?

• 46:13Bill Simmons?

  NBA Cup, I watched. Am I a bad barometer though? Because I'm gonna watch anything.

• 46:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I'm just, what I think is like, what would the backlash look like?

• 46:24Speaker 04

  What if, you know, what would the NFL have to do to, to, to actually put a number on the scoreboard where like, whoa, people really hated that?

• 46:32Bill Simmons?

  This is a good question because somebody asked me this. What's the number for each sport that would make people go, what the fuck are you guys doing? Right? Which, so the NFL said, we're, we're gonna have a 20 game schedule next year. People would be like, what? You, no, no, no, no, no, we're tapping out. You can't do that. And I think for the NBA, just staying even is about as far as they can push it. Like if they went up to 90 games, I think honestly, people would revolt.

• 47:00Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 47:01Bill Simmons?

  I think that would be awful. College football, I don't know what the number is. Indiana played 16 games last year.

• 47:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:07Bill Simmons?

  Like think about that. That's, that's more than the 1972, as many as the 1972 Dolphins played.

• 47:14Speaker 04

  Oh my God. And somebody is, was at the University of Texas, you know, win an 11 game college football world.

• 47:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:20Speaker 04

  It feels like a ton, but I've watched every week of it.

• 47:23Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 47:23Speaker 04

  It's amazing and it's, it's, it's fun. Everybody's like, oh, this sucks. It's a new world. It's like, eh, I haven't reached that point yet.

• 47:30Bill Simmons?

  So you're good as you're good from late August all the way through January for college football.

• 47:34Speaker 04

  I mean, I'll tell you what, you know me, like I'll watch any football game. Starting Thursday, I'll watch all day Saturday and I'll watch all day Sunday, Sunday ticket. By Monday now, I'm dragging a lot.

• 47:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:45Speaker 04

  I'm just like Joe and Troy come on, I'm like, I'm not not watching this, but I feel like I'm dragging.

• 47:50Bill Simmons?

  You're worn out. That's what that first weekend of the NBA playoffs is like by like the eighth game. You're like, oof.

• 47:56Speaker 04

  I love this, I'm in, but I'm dr- this is, I'm tired.

• 48:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:01Speaker 04

  And I'll tell you what it is, is you know, you've heard all these people talk about how confusing the world is now with the streaming services and how hard it is to watch things. They're not wrong, but they also lack the historical perspective of you and I where it's like, it is also in certain ways easier to watch everything now.

• 48:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:19Speaker 04

  There are more college football games at the click of a button than there ever were when I was a kid.

• 48:23Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 48:23Speaker 04

  Even when I was in college. Like Texas used to have a pay-per-view game when I was in college. Like, here's one of our crappy games, let's just put it on pay-per-view if you didn't come to the stadium. Like, it is now, there are so much, it's easy to watch stuff. Now is it a pain in the ass to go from streamer to streamer and back and forth to television? Yeah, it is. It totally is. I understand that. But there's tons of stuff on. There's tons of stuff on without really trying to watch anything.

• 48:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, my life has spanned this entire kind of run we've had because I'm old enough to remember game six of the 1981 finals, taped late in Boston.

• 49:00Bill Simmons?

  This is the Celtics winning the title was not on live. And I was, I was in fifth or sixth grade and had to go to bed, then wake up for the game. My dad woke me up at 11:30 so we could watch the game to see what happened. The other choice would have been to just listen to it on the radio. But when you think about like all the NBA games that were lost over the years,

• 49:23Bill Simmons?

  they were NFL, I I've talked about this before, but it sucks so much to be an NFL fan if you were in a city. If you were like a Jets fan and you're living in New York City and they would do the thing where they would-

• 49:35Speaker 04

  Which sucks to begin with.

• 49:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, that sucks to begin with, but they would show Jets, Giants, you would only have two games. So be one and one and nothing can compete with the home team and that was it. You didn't get to watch any other teams. So you're really tied to the, uh, the little game breaks, the halftime stuff, the highlights, the ticker on the bottom. That was kind of all we had. So I look at the stuff now where we're arguing about it's really hard to find where every single game is on. Like, that's a decent problem to have. I think what's weird to me is like the Lakers playoff game the other night in LA was not on normal TV. And that's where that this goes back to the question of how much money is enough

• 50:20Bill Simmons?

  to actually make it less likely people are going to like your sport. Because there's just, LA is a huge city. It's got people of all kinds of backgrounds and there's people that just aren't going to pay for Peacock in LA. Right. That probably loved the Lakers that either had to go to somebody's house who had Peacock or just had to find out what happened afterwards. And that's where I think you lose the narrative a little bit. At the very least, like the games in the local cities, I feel like should be on normal TV.

• 50:51Speaker 04

  That reminds me of old school NFL when there'd be a Cowboys game when I was a kid that wasn't sold out by Friday. And you'd start to hear the sports radio thing. It's like, oh, should we get tickets? Cause we're not going to be able to watch the game.

• 51:03Bill Simmons?

  The home blackout.

• 51:04Speaker 04

  The home blackout, which is now, nobody even understands that concept. But back in the day, there'd be this thing, remember that? End of the week.

• 51:11Bill Simmons?

  Well, you have to explain this because there's probably people listening who don't even know what you're talking about.

• 51:14Speaker 04

  You had to sell out the game or it wouldn't been, it wasn't on on local television.

• 51:18Bill Simmons?

  So if you lived in Cincinnati and the Bengals were 10,000 tickets shy,

• 51:23Bill Simmons?

  the team would then have to decide whether they wanted to buy the 10,000 tickets themselves so their fans could see the game.

• 51:29Speaker 04

  They would give them to charity sometimes. That was, I remember that being a thing, but you'd start to hear this murmur late in the week. It's, is it time to go buy tickets?

• 51:37Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 51:37Speaker 04

  Cause otherwise we're not going to be able to see the game. Again, it's just like a totally different era of sports. But was that, was that the Laker game that was a $90 get in price? It was the cheapest Laker ticket of the season. Was that game four versus OKC? Do you see that?

• 51:52Bill Simmons?

  The, yeah, no, the one they got knocked out. Right. Well, that's happening now with World Cup. The tickets are starting to drop big time. Remember they priced it at all these crazy heights? And now it feels like the get in prices is gonna keep going down. World Cup is another thing. I mean, you could argue this is the craziest sports content year we've had.

• 52:15Bill Simmons?

  With football getting longer, adding, adding World Cup. When does Winter Olympics start?

• 52:22Speaker 04

  We, we did it.

• 52:26Bill Simmons?

  We did it. That's right.

• 52:27Speaker 04

  Bill, Bill, I got bad news.

• 52:30Bill Simmons?

  That shows you how much I watch.

• 52:32Speaker 04

  February 6th through 22nd.

• 52:35Speaker 04

  You might remember some hockey.

• 52:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I did watch the women's hockey and the men's hockey. That's, but honestly, that's how much sports I've watched. I don't, all this stuff is starting to blend together.

• 52:46Speaker 04

  Dude, I'm with you. I, I just feel like, I mean, I'm like, Mike, Mike, I feel like Mike Tirico. We're just like rushing off to call another huge event, right?

• 52:55Bill Simmons?

  The Hughes Brothers. It feels like it happened 10 years ago.

• 52:58Speaker 04

  It does. It is so much stuff.

• 53:00Bill Simmons?

  It was three months ago.

• 53:01Speaker 04

  It's so much stuff. And again, like, I think if you went to Young Bill and Young Brian, it'd be like, this is a dream. Because do you remember those nights where you'd be like, there's nothing on? I'd kill to watch a sport like that tonight.

• 53:12Bill Simmons?

  I'm starting to really have trouble, like, as I just proved with the Winter Olympics. The stuff is just going in one ear and out the other when you're watching it. And unless it's something I really have to focus on, which is basically for this podcast, NFL and basketball. I'm just finding like, like the baseball playoffs last year, which I watched a ton of. And now if you quiz me on what happened in the 25 playoffs, I'd be like, well, Dodgers played the Blue Jays. I remember that.

• 53:40Speaker 04

  Game seven.

• 53:40Bill Simmons?

  Who did the Blue Jays beat in the previous round?

• 53:43Speaker 04

  Starts to get iffy.

• 53:44Bill Simmons?

  I'm like, I, I don't know. I watched it. I never used to be like that.

• 53:49Speaker 04

  Mariners? Mariners? Blue Jays Mariners, I think.

• 53:52Bill Simmons?

  Mariners. That's who it was. It was the Mariners.

• 53:55Speaker 04

  If we, between the two of us, we can reconstruct the last six months of sports. We'd have to help each other.

• 53:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's like, I had Letterman on last week and one of the things I asked him was about, like, with the 6,000 shows, do you, you know, he did 6,000 shows across the board. Do they all start to blend in together after a while? It's like, yeah, I don't, you know, remember little pieces, but you don't remember it like the, like when Jimmy Kimmel goes on his show for the first time on Letterman's show, he remembers every moment of it. And I wonder with sports, the influx of it, if that's just gonna be what happens with our memories. Where there's so much content, there's so much go at that three months after the Winter Olympics, I couldn't remember if we had the Winter Olympics yet.

• 54:35Speaker 04

  And part of it's the media. It just, everything goes fast. I was looking at, for some reason, I went to ESPN.com's homepage, I'm not totally sure why, the other day, but I went to their homepage.

• 54:44Bill Simmons?

  Wow, what was that experience like?

• 54:46Speaker 04

  It was, it was different. Kind of, kind of like going to the old apartment building you, you know, lived in when you were a young, you know, young adult.

• 54:53Bill Simmons?

  They didn't have archives for their writers anymore. If you remember writing, like, you just have to hope they wrote something.

• 54:58Speaker 04

  It was like going to the old apartment, the apartment had been turned, it had been torn down.

• 55:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 55:02Speaker 04

  That's what it was like. But I can't remember this, it was, it was one of these, one of these sports stories that leaked out of your, your brain and mine, but some huge sports story the night before, and it just wasn't, it was barely on the homepage. And, and I don't even blame ESPN, it's just the world moves very fast now. You know, there's not the SI cover that comes out on Thursday, and you're like, okay.

• 55:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 55:20Speaker 04

  That was a week, that was what happened this week, right? Our, our brains are just, it's like, oh, there's something, there's a WWE thing tonight, what's up, what's going on, Ronda Rousey, and it's fighting tonight, okay. And you just sort of ping pong to the next thing.

• 55:34Bill Simmons?

  It can't, it couldn't have been this much slower 45 years ago.

• 55:38Speaker 04

  I think it was. I honestly, you know what, I don't think the, I think if you and I were like, a living agate page, it wasn't that slow, because there's just a lot, there was a lot going on, but we just couldn't watch it. We didn't have access to it. Not on a, not on a Tuesday night.

• 55:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, I wonder if part of this, so social media basically starts for what it looks like now, probably like 18 years ago, 2008, 2009 range.

• 56:05Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 56:07Bill Simmons?

  Before it was, we were in the bookmark economy. If I wanted to find out about anything, I had my whole slew of bookmarks. I had websites I went to, I had writers I liked, I had a couple of message boards for my favorite team, like the old school message boards. That was really it. And I would start my morning and I would just go through all the bookmarks. Now I just probably go to Twitter or I go to a couple of the Boston sports Reddit pages. And that's kind of what I do, but I'm like, I wish, I wish I, I wish I could actually go back to the old bookmark thing. But if you'd be bookmarking things that wouldn't even be able to know how to serve you the content correctly. And the ringer is kind of anomaly in that respect.

• 56:52Bill Simmons?

  You can go to our website still and see all the stuff we have. There's not a lot of places that are easy to do that now. Apple news is one that I always go to now every day and I always look to see, cause I, I subscribe to that. I get all the different websites and they, they do a pretty good job of curating what's going on. And that's like the closest I have to a bookmark experience now.

• 57:13Speaker 04

  I agree because if you're anywhere else, people, and again, we've, we've benefited from this being in the sports business. But like, everybody jumps on small things now.

• 57:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:23Speaker 04

  So it feels like nothing is, it feels like everything is big. You know, people are like, you know, I mean, just imagine like when we were, when we were young, Mel Kiper seemed like a lunatic. Because he cared that much about the NFL draft. And now he's a normie. Because there's every Twitter account you follow cares about the draft and is already caring about next year's draft, even though it just ended. And so just everything seems big, you know, it's just everything seems important. And then I think at the end of the day, nothing seems important or as important.

• 57:50Bill Simmons?

  Or everything seems big, but it's not like the, like for, for the Boston fans right now, the Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum, trying to interpret all of these little weird videos. I don't almost like, if we had this in 1982, this is all I would have done as a little kid is tried to figure out, wait, Mikail doesn't maybe like bird and just gone driven myself crazy. Now you can, you know, Jalen's done multiple Twitch streams. He just did some other interview. Tatum now just did an interview, then the people around them, then you have T Mac being able to dine on a weekend of pretending he hadn't talked to Jalen Brown when he obviously did. And, um, all of it's kind of meaningless. Like we're going to go through it now with Yanis over the next couple of weeks as people decide if he's going to get traded.

• 58:37Bill Simmons?

  And that's, that's another thing is like people trying to sift through the bullshit of the quote unquote information reporters. Is this actual information or is this, there an agenda behind this information? What, how do I, you know, in real time, you're trying to decipher it like a police detective.

• 58:54Speaker 04

  What are the next few weeks of LeBron gonna look like, speaking of which?

• 58:57Bill Simmons?

  We already started this week with the weird McMenamin story about he was upset that JJ Reddick got a game ball and he didn't. So he walked out of the locker room. It's like, what is this? You're 41. They already told you you're the third best guy in the team.

• 59:11Speaker 04

  It's like one last time, right? Like when they have the movies, you know, the action movie with all the elderly action stars. This just feels like we got one more in us.

• 59:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, this is what I've been pushing for with the Warriors for weeks, and I actually think has a real chance to happen, is LeBron going to the Warriors with Curry, with Draymond. They trade Butler's contract and a pick for Anthony Davis and they just do the old guy team and just go and sell out in every NBA city. And if you're LeBron, you have two choices. You either, and see, now we're doing a LeBron segment. You can't fucking resist. It's like heroin. But if you're LeBron, you either take the minimum and try to win a title, or you do the expendables in Golden State and you just have this two-year, you know, you're everywhere, you're a sellout everywhere, you're the biggest story wherever you go. And in a weird way, you've stolen some spotlight from OKC and San Antonio,

• 1:00:04Bill Simmons?

  who are the teams that are gonna win the titles the next couple of years. But you have something different. You're basically like in the Hulk Hogan after he gave up the title to the Ultimate Warrior, but he was still the biggest sellout that they had, but he didn't need the title. Or like what Andre the Giant was like. I think that's what's sitting there for LeBron. I think that's his only move left. But this goes back to the attention economy. If they do that, there'll just be stories that come out of that all the time, which is one of the reasons you would do it.

• 1:00:33Speaker 04

  You think LeBron's interested in the attention economy?

• 1:00:35Bill Simmons?

  I do. I do. I do think he is.

• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  Do you think Draymond Green's jokes would go over better with LeBron than they did with Charles Barkley?

• 1:00:44Bill Simmons?

  What'd you think of that? I know you talked about it, but tell my audience.

• 1:00:48Speaker 04

  Um, I just watched that moment. I'm like, is Draymond Green, is he, are we sure that, first of all, are we sure that he's good? Maybe we're past that as an announcer. But second of all, like to be a good announcer, I think you just have to have that ability to let people make fun of you a little bit. Do you have the ability to eat it? Charles Barkley has a great ability to eat it. Stephen A., I was saying this, when the Knicks lose to the Thunder in the finals here in a couple of weeks, Stephen A. is gonna come on there, hang his head on the show.

• 1:01:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Speaker 04

  4-0. I can't believe it. I was so excited. And he's gonna let himself be vulnerable. Can Draymond do that on television?

• 1:01:28Bill Simmons?

  There's that. And then there's also, as we've talked about many times, when you do those shows, it's professional wrestling and you have to sell the other person's moves.

• 1:01:36Speaker 04

  100%.

• 1:01:38Bill Simmons?

  And I don't know if he's a move seller.

• 1:01:40Speaker 04

  Hmm. You have to let the other guy get their stuff in.

• 1:01:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, like, there's a, there's a respectfulness that you have to have in that situation if you're him. Even though I thought Barkley definitely seemed to be provoking him a little bit, which I didn't think got enough, you know, he's basically just saying to his face, you guys are done, it's over, you know, and it probably, odds are Draymond Green is gonna handle that that well. But then he handles it the wrong way and comes back at him with something that wasn't even really factually accurate. And it was just awkward. You know, it's like exactly what you don't want when you're on those shows. Like you watch the Amazon show, which I think is the closest we have to a good show right now. There's a mutual respect with all those guys. They're not gonna hang each other out to dry. But in general, the inside the NBA piece is interesting because it's the

• 1:02:28Bill Simmons?

  first time they've really had backlash. And I don't know how much of it is fair and how much of it isn't fair. But they've also been in everybody's life for such a long time that it's kind of, this is an inevitable way that this could probably end. But that whole thing has felt off the whole year. I love that show. But the ESPN fit, some of the time that they have, the fact that they don't have the same time they had after the games, which is when I really thought that show was at the most important. And to me, like Shaq, Shaq is the biggest issue with the show. Like, it just doesn't see, it seems like he's there because it's fun to be on the show, but it doesn't seem like he follows basketball at, at a high enough level anymore. Like, he doesn't know who people like Baylor Shireman are, like.

• 1:03:12Bill Simmons?

  You're on a studio show covering a sport, you know, you, you have to, there has to be some sort of a modicum of following the, the game. So it just feels, it's like watching, a little like watching the Warriors ironically, where it feels like they're having trouble trying to reinvent themselves.

• 1:03:31Speaker 04

  It's an interesting experiment of can you take something that's so awesome in one place, that is Turner Network, and just transport it to the other place? Would it be the same?

• 1:03:41Bill Simmons?

  The answer is no.

• 1:03:42Speaker 04

  And the answer is no, kind of the same, same in a lot of ways.

• 1:03:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:46Speaker 04

  You know, when they were doing their obits the other night, that had, you know, that felt like Inside the NBA.

• 1:03:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Speaker 04

  They were talking about Ted Turner, that felt like Inside the NBA. But then there are moments where you're like, hmm, something just feels different.

• 1:03:58Bill Simmons?

  They have a chance to flip the narrative again these next couple of rounds, I think. I think, you know, the basketball's better, there's more of a spotlight on them. It'll be easier for somebody like Shaq, because there's only four teams left. He can just watch the game and figure out what happens.

• 1:04:14Speaker 04

  He knows the players.

• 1:04:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, he'll know who Shaquille O'Neal just Alexander is. But yeah, look, this is, this is what happens. One other thing I had for, for the schedule stuff before we go. So the NBA season, 82 games, six playing games, four playoff rounds. Conceivably, a playing team could play 114 games in a year. Cleveland and Detroit, we'll see what happens tomorrow night, but are on pace for 28 playoff games. So combined with the 82, that's puts you at 110. I can't remember what the record is, but I think the, I want to say like the, oh, maybe the 05 Spurs, somebody in the mid 2000s played like 108, 109 games, something crazy.

• 1:05:00Bill Simmons?

  There's no world in where the basketball.

• 1:05:04Bill Simmons?

  They'll scale back the schedule, I don't think.

• 1:05:06Speaker 04

  They're not giving money back.

• 1:05:08Bill Simmons?

  It's actually more likely they're gonna add teams.

• 1:05:12Speaker 04

  Yes, and create more inventory.

• 1:05:14Bill Simmons?

  Hockey's definitely adding more teams.

• 1:05:17Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:05:17Bill Simmons?

  The WNBA, to everybody's horror, is adding more teams, which people are just stupefied by. And then baseball might be adding more teams.

• 1:05:28Speaker 04

  Which was dead five minutes ago, and then now it's back. Yeah, I'm just, here's the thing, is whenever there's a playoff expansion, I always get a little nervous because you can never take it back.

• 1:05:39Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:05:40Speaker 04

  You know, we're talking about this with college football now, right? Are they gonna go to 16, are they gonna 24, you know, what's gonna happen there? And the thing is, I'm always like, I would be happy to experiment for a year and see how we feel about this, but the thing is, you can't do that. It will never come back because you'll get money and then you'll say, well, who wants to give money back?

• 1:05:55Bill Simmons?

  I'm trying to think, have they ever unwound?

• 1:05:59Bill Simmons?

  They really haven't. The only thing they've ever unwound was the 2-3-2 with the NBA Finals, going back to the 2-2-1-1-1, but that wasn't taking away games.

• 1:06:07Speaker 04

  It wasn't taking away games. And it just, it feels, everything means like, you know, wasn't that long ago that college football was two teams? That was, that was it, right? It was the, you had the bowls, but it was the BCS matched one and two, and that was it. And then you, bigger and bigger, and you can never go back. And that's the thing, in a just world, you'd be like, okay, we did too much. Let's just scale it back a little bit, but we know that would never happen.

• 1:06:31Bill Simmons?

  It's weird when everybody in the league seems to think the NBA should cut 10 games.

• 1:06:36Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:37Bill Simmons?

  And yet, there's no way they will.

• 1:06:38Speaker 04

  And the, and the players are cutting 10 games, it's just, they still play them, you know?

• 1:06:42Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:06:42Speaker 04

  Players just sit out.

• 1:06:43Bill Simmons?

  Well, the irony is, when they get NBA Europe going, I'm talking about that later in the podcast with Ryan Smith briefly, because the Utah Jazz owner was on, is coming on later. There's probably a world where if they can get, so I'm talking 25 years from now, if NBA Europe can get to the place it needs to get to, where we just have an actual world championship.

• 1:07:04Bill Simmons?

  Where they have the schedules kind of aligning and then it's like a best of three with the champion of the NBA and the champion of the, or they play it in October of the next year, however they do it. I just feel like if you, if you gave Adam Silver, if you got him drunk and gave him some truth serum, I would think he'd be like, this is what I'm really thinking. The actual world championship. Cause the league's in a crazy spot where most of the best young players are from not here. Which Perkins has been talking about on TVs, making, making it seem like we've lost our cars to Japan. We're losing, we're losing basketball. It's like, people are fine. Basketball's still good. I don't really care where the guys are from. But it is a little weird.

• 1:07:49Speaker 04

  So we'll get a world championship and then guess what? We'll have more games.

• 1:07:52Bill Simmons?

  And then I'll be like, should the world championship be three or five games? It should be seven. What about nine?

• 1:07:57Speaker 04

  I don't know. What, what month can we put it in?

• 1:08:01Bill Simmons?

  So it sounds like, to recap, you're not delighted by the NFL ads, but you'll also watch all the games every week, which is where I've, I've stand, I've stand. College football, you're okay with more football?

• 1:08:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, it did feel like a grind. I remember when Joel and I went to the national championship a couple of years ago for the Ringer and it was on a Monday, remember? And it would have been like a huge, I think it was a divisional round of the NFL, the day before. And I was like, and we, like Monday, we get to the stadium in Atlanta, we're looking at each other like, whoa, this is a lot. That was a national championship.

• 1:08:35Bill Simmons?

  NBA, you'd go lower.

• 1:08:37Speaker 04

  Lower.

• 1:08:40Bill Simmons?

  And then baseball, which is headed for a strike. I wonder where they're gonna end up.

• 1:08:46Speaker 04

  It feels like the season could easily be shorter.

• 1:08:49Bill Simmons?

  That's one where, especially with the pitcher injuries and how hard it is just to keep everyone healthy. It feels like 144 would be perfect, but then you throw away all the records. Yeah.

• 1:09:02Speaker 04

  And they lock, we all lock in the playoffs. Like, here we go.

• 1:09:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. You could, you, in baseball, it feels like you could actually make the baseball playoffs maybe even a little longer.

• 1:09:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, we'll see.

• 1:09:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. And again, I don't want, I don't want to go there because once we do that, we'll never, we'll never go back to the current, to the current stage, you know?

• 1:09:21Bill Simmons?

  The only one that I, I kind of like is the PGA where-

• 1:09:25Speaker 04

  Move to the spring?

• 1:09:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, just the PGA being like, you know what? We're doing some of this wrong. We got to have more West Coast stuff. We got to have more stuff in prime time. Let's like rethink some of the, some of our ideas, but the PGA is not going. We have more majors now. We're now having six. Like the PGA that having the four majors, I think has been really, I, I think like they have four anchors in their schedule that the casual fans like myself can just jump in and be like, oh, PGA is this weekend. Here we go. All right, Brian Curtis, how's it going with Joel Anderson?

• 1:09:57Speaker 04

  Love the guy.

• 1:09:58Bill Simmons?

  How's it going with Shoemaker?

• 1:10:00Speaker 04

  You know, I love the guy. I want both those guys. It's all Texans on the press box.

• 1:10:04Bill Simmons?

  Somehow I've been working with you and Shoemaker now for 15 years.

• 1:10:07Speaker 04

  You believe that?

• 1:10:08Bill Simmons?

  It's a long time. We're sending like our work relationship to the ninth grade in high school. That's how long we've all been together.

• 1:10:16Speaker 04

  In a couple of weeks, it'll be 10 years at the Ringer.

• 1:10:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I can't believe that.

• 1:10:21Speaker 04

  10 years. Together on this website.

• 1:10:24Bill Simmons?

  Unbelievable. All right, Brian Curtis, great to see you. Thanks for popping on.

• 1:10:28Speaker 04

  Thanks, Bill.

• 1:10:30Bill Simmons?

  And now it's time for today's with the assist segment presented by State Farm. Basketball, full unpredictable moments, big swings, clutch plays, last second finishes. You just never know around to round, but the one constant is having teammates you can rely on. And throughout NBA history, we've seen some unforgettable duos. Everybody, you can almost feel it through the decades. You got Kobe and Shaq in the 2000s. You have MJ and Pip in the 90s. You have Bird and McHale and Magic and Kareem in the 80s. You've gone through Towns and Havlicek in the 70s. The great duos, are we going to have one now in San Antonio? I think it's going to be Wemby and Harper are going to be when 50 years from now, we're

• 1:11:11Bill Simmons?

  talking about the great duos from the late 2020s, early 2030s. Maybe it's those guys. I would say the best duos in the 2020s. You'd either go Brown and Tatum, or you would go Jokic and Murray. I think for two players that just, just seem like they brought the best out of each other. Jokic and Murray in 2023, probably my favorite duo combo where it just, we felt like they might win title after title after watching them in the playoffs that year. Well, just like in basketball, life can throw unexpected moments your way. And guess what? That's where State Farm comes in. They've got easy to use digital tools like the State Farm app and Neighborhood State Farm Agents as well, when you want to talk to a real person.

• 1:11:55Bill Simmons?

  Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there with the assist. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state. It's football season and Uber Eats is delivering deals every single day. This week, buy a four piece signature chicken from Popeyes and get another one free on Uber Eats. When your watch party gets hungry, order in and keep everyone's attention where it matters on the game. Order a four piece signature chicken from Popeyes. Get another one free. No matter who scores big tonight, you'll score great deals on Uber Eats all season long because it's not football without food. It really isn't. Popeyes offer valid through November 1st. Add eligible menu item to order prior to checkout. Taxes, fees and terms apply. Product availability varies by region.

• 1:12:40Bill Simmons?

  Exclusions may apply. See app for details. This episode is brought to you by Carhartt. We spend a lot of time talking about football, the players, the coaches, the big plays, but there's a whole other team we rarely think about, the people who make the game possible, the workers building stadiums, paving parking lots, growing the grass, welding the goalposts, even making the footballs. They're committed to their craft and they're doing the work long before kickoff. Carhartt is proud to outfit those crews. So next time you're watching a game, take a second to appreciate the people behind it. Learn more at carhartt.com/jointhetraids. All right, people have been asking for him ever since the Celtics got eliminated. People thought you were too mad to come on. Then people thought maybe you're never coming on again.

• 1:13:25Bill Simmons?

  They didn't know where your head was at. The Patriots are falling apart. The Celtics fell apart. The Red Sox season is over and my dad is here. How are you feeling?

• 1:13:35Speaker 05

  Well, as you just described, I'd also include the Bruins. Not only losing, but not getting the Toronto draft pick. So I was trying to decide when you said I had to come on today, which sports team hat I was gonna wear.

• 1:13:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:51Speaker 05

  Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, or Red Sox? And I decided, I don't like any of them right now. So I'm wearing my Ruby's dad hat.

• 1:14:01Bill Simmons?

  Your dog Ruby.

• 1:14:02Speaker 05

  Ruby is our special needs puppy.

• 1:14:08Bill Simmons?

  She's had some trouble in year one. Who gave you that hat, just out of curiosity?

• 1:14:13Speaker 05

  Michelle, who walks Ruby and Winnie, yeah.

• 1:14:17Bill Simmons?

  Okay. All right, so Bruins, you sit down for the lottery. They have to go back from five to six to Maple Leafs.

• 1:14:23Speaker 05

  It's just one, just every year, every year, somebody jumps ahead. So what happens?

• 1:14:30Bill Simmons?

  They, Maple Leafs jump up, get the first pick and now that.

• 1:14:33Speaker 05

  Oh, my gosh, yes.

• 1:14:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:34Speaker 05

  And you and I were on a thread with our nephew, Brian. And so that, that was just the coup de grace on top of everything that's been happening to our sports teams.

• 1:14:45Bill Simmons?

  And now we have this, whatever's going on, Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum.

• 1:14:50Speaker 05

  Is Jalen Brown still on our team?

• 1:14:52Bill Simmons?

  Jalen Brown's still on the team. He was on the Jennifer Hudson Show this week, talking about stuff. And he's done some Twitch. He, he's out there.

• 1:15:02Speaker 05

  You know, I wish instead of going on the Jennifer Hudson Show, he was back in the gym dribbling and shooting free throws.

• 1:15:10Bill Simmons?

  Resting his body.

• 1:15:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:15:14Bill Simmons?

  So you went to game seven?

• 1:15:17Speaker 05

  I went to, I went to the four home games. We won game one, looked really good. And then I saw three terrible losses and including game seven.

• 1:15:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah. So what do you want to happen? Do you, would you, you're just talking as my dad, the, the Boston fan, Celtics fan. What do you, what do you want to happen? Do you want them to keep Tatum and Brown together? Or do you want to move Brown when his value's high?

• 1:15:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a hard, hard question, but.

• 1:15:49Speaker 05

  If the package was perfect for Jalen Brown, I would move him in a heartbeat. I don't know what that perfect package is. I'm just kind of tired of watching him. And, uh, you know.

• 1:16:05Bill Simmons?

  10 years, 10 years of watching his offensive game. You're, you're, you're good?

• 1:16:10Speaker 05

  Well, something I, I think, I don't know if the Philadelphia got it into the referees' ears, but I watched a tape of a couple of the games. Almost every time he goes in to make a shot, he pushes off.

• 1:16:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:25Speaker 05

  And they don't usually call it in the regular season, but it's apparent that he can't get his space unless he pushes. Whereas you see some of these other guys on other teams and, you know, they get to their space quickly and shoot quickly. But I'm worried he's turning 30.

• 1:16:43Speaker 05

  He's gonna, his athleticism is what has made him the star he is. He's been having difficulty now getting his jump shot off without pushing. He can't make three throws. He's a black hole in terms of the ball going into him and not moving.

• 1:16:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:59Speaker 05

  And he can't dribble. I, I don't understand after 10 years where he can't dribble, but.

• 1:17:04Bill Simmons?

  Well, I'm higher on him than you because.

• 1:17:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, I know you are. You've always been higher on him.

• 1:17:08Bill Simmons?

  Well, I always valued the durability. I always thought he played hard and gave a shit. And I think the more we step back from the season, I think it was pretty weird that Tatum just showed up with six weeks left and they had to figure out how to incorporate that. In real time, it was fun to watch, but it doesn't seem like they ever, they had these two styles and they talked about it. Jalen talked about it after game seven when he said, I felt like we were playing more like us in game seven. Well, why do you think that? Cause Tatum wasn't playing, cause you guys were pushing the ball, cause you had the ball more. But I do think fundamentally, you and I, you know, obviously the listeners aren't privy to our phone calls. We always talk about stylistically,

• 1:17:50Bill Simmons?

  Tatum likes to bring the ball up, take his time, figure out what he's gonna do. Whereas I think Jalen likes to move faster with the guards. And it's the first time I feel like maybe they just want two separate things on a basketball team.

• 1:18:02Speaker 05

  Well, it's an interesting point because I'd say for the first two thirds of Jalen, of Taysom coming back, he deferred to Brown.

• 1:18:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:13Speaker 05

  Brown was still the alpha dog in the offense. Tatum was more, a lot of time in the corner, the way he was as a rookie.

• 1:18:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:22Speaker 05

  And then when they got into the playoffs, it kind of switched and Missoula shortened the bench. And to be honest, I know you and I have talked about it. I don't want to see the Brown or Tatum bringing the ball up. I want to see a guard bringing the ball up.

• 1:18:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:37Speaker 05

  I don't want to see Tatum dribbling until there's nine seconds left and he does iso. And then I want to see Brown bringing it up and losing the ball over and over. I want to see White or Pritchard bringing the ball up and, you know, play Brown and or Tatum at the high post or, you know, move them around. We stop moving when those two guys bring the ball up.

• 1:18:59Bill Simmons?

  I say you, that one Twitter clip, somebody did a great job of pointing out what Philly was trying to do with.

• 1:19:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:05Bill Simmons?

  Jalen, where it was just basically like, fine, go one on one, knock yourself out. You'll make half of these, but we're not letting the three point shooters do anything. And they stayed home with everybody. And it was a lot of Jalen going against good defenders, trying to like bang against them and get his spot. And then it'll be the same thing with Tatum.

• 1:19:23Speaker 05

  It wasn't just that though. It really struck me after watching the Nick Philly series.

• 1:19:30Speaker 05

  I think Philly was really, really happy to see Tatum or Brown bring the ball up.

• 1:19:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:36Speaker 05

  When they went iso, Embiid just stood there. He wasn't moving around. He didn't have to move around. He wasn't wasting energy.

• 1:19:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:44Speaker 05

  We weren't tiring him out. In the fourth quarter, he was wide awake. And you watch the Knicks and it was a completely different way of attacking Embiid. They moved him all around and.

• 1:19:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they wanted him in pick and pops all the time where he had to let come out.

• 1:20:00Speaker 05

  And Tatum and Brown bringing the ball up. How many times did we have seven or eight seconds left and suddenly somebody had to take a shot? And Embiid again, never moved.

• 1:20:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, it's funny, they were doing that to us with Kada, the pick and pop stuff, or especially with Vucevic, just trying to get him where he'd have to jump out a second too late on a three pointer. And then the Celtics were never doing that to Embiid, which was just bizarre.

• 1:20:27Speaker 05

  Which, you know.

• 1:20:29Bill Simmons?

  Oh, boy, here we go. Did you put Joe back in second row?

• 1:20:34Speaker 05

  I'm not going there, but if Tatum and Brown consistently are bringing the ball up so that Embiid can just stand there and be lazy and rested, that's a coaching decision. That's a coaching strategy.

• 1:20:49Speaker 05

  If I'm the coach of the Celtics, I have Missoula, I have my guards bringing the ball up and I have the ball moving all around this and I have Embiid tired by the fourth quarter.

• 1:21:00Bill Simmons?

  Well, this goes to what I said, I said like last week about it felt like they treated that Philly series as kind of a tester for what they were going to do in round two and round three. Let's see, what do we have with Vucevic? What do we have when Tatum brings the ball up? What do we have if our bench's shorter? And they never took Philly seriously enough until it's too late? You and I were both struck by Stevens' press conference, which was riveting. And he seemed both pissed off that they lost to Philly. I think he knew that Philly wasn't that good, but also pointing out like he didn't even think we were that good. He made a point of pointing out the three and 11 against the best teams in the league.

• 1:21:43Bill Simmons?

  He brought up Shireman and Hugo, which Hugo, which I thought was notable and how important Hugo's going to be for them next year. Meanwhile, Hugo got buried after, after the trade deadline. So I don't know, I felt like they weren't a hundred percent aligned watching the press conference.

• 1:22:01Speaker 05

  I agree. I mean, you and I talked about it afterwards, that one of the great things about the regular season and how they overachieved, which was great because none of us expected 56 wins, was they used 10 or 11 people. They didn't tire out Brown and Tatum. They had wings coming off the bench over and over and running. You know, one thing about. Oh, you know, I'm not a real fan of Walsh, but boy, he runs his tail off.

• 1:22:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:31Speaker 05

  Hugo runs his tail off, Sherman runs his tail off. What happens when they're not, when they're sitting on the bench? Isolation again, we saw it except for the championship year. Every year for the past four years, isolation. But you bring those guys off the bench, they're moving all over and they're getting offensive rebounds.

• 1:22:51Bill Simmons?

  Right. And they're pressuring, like you saw what the Knicks did with Maxey for four games.

• 1:22:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:22:56Bill Simmons?

  Just chasing them around, using bridges on them. We had all the guys to do that, but.

• 1:23:00Speaker 05

  We had the guys to do that.

• 1:23:01Bill Simmons?

  It was a real, really bad coaching series. And I thought, I've said this, I thought Missoula was great there in the regular season. I just wonder, big picture, what did they learn from it? You know, the, the trade that they made to get under the luxury tax, getting rid of Simons, really did change the team. Because one of the things that made that team, the thing you and I liked was they always had two guards out there.

• 1:23:25Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:23:26Bill Simmons?

  And it was, it was two of the three at all times. And one of them was usually hot. And if two of them were hot, they're beating anybody. But usually you could get one of them going, Pritchard's trick or treat. White, the shooting was, was, you know, I just thought they put a lot of miles on him. I wonder like, about thinking about things they would have done differently. Would they have put less miles on White and Brown and not really cared what seed they got? Is that, I thought that was one of the lessons of the season is it doesn't really matter what seed you are. It matters how healthy your guys are in April.

• 1:23:59Speaker 05

  Right. Two thoughts on that. I can recall during the regular season, three or four games that we won because Simons got hot.

• 1:24:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:08Speaker 05

  Nobody, nobody else was hot. He came in, he got hot and he would play the whole fourth quarter. And you know, that trade made a huge difference, obviously, in terms of our depth at not just shooting guard, but a guard who could make a shot. You know, when our shots aren't falling and we don't have those subs in there grabbing offensive rebounds, we're just a static team.

• 1:24:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:32Speaker 05

  We're not moving.

• 1:24:34Bill Simmons?

  Well, do you feel like the window is, these NBA teams have these four year windows. This is a team that just lost in round one. You know, and it's this is a team that made the 22 finals and 24 finals. We thought they were going to make the finals last year and they had the crazy Knicks squad. Tatum gets hurt. And now you look at teams like OKC and San Antonio and they just seem so much better set up. You know, unless unless there's an awesome trade.

• 1:25:02Speaker 05

  Right, you know, and they do have some, they have a trade exception. They have the mid level, da, da, da. The other thing that struck me though, and you've just brought it up about seeding. In retrospect, I would have preferred to have been the fourth seed. I think, I think we matched up really well with Detroit.

• 1:25:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:22Speaker 05

  I think we matched up really well with Orlando and eight, you know, and, and the fifth seed as well. And we put a lot of miles on Brown to get to the second seed. And he just looked a little tired to me in the playoffs, playing all those minutes.

• 1:25:42Bill Simmons?

  Can I throw a trade at you that I've been thinking about?

• 1:25:45Speaker 05

  Does this involve anybody from Milwaukee?

• 1:25:47Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:25:48Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 1:25:49Bill Simmons?

  I'm starting to get nervous about the Yanis stuff.

• 1:25:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:25:53Bill Simmons?

  I keep thinking of that segment I did on my podcast a month or so ago about older big men and what the track record is for year 14 and on. And, you know, with Tatum and Brown, you always feel like with those two guys, you can build around them, figure out some sort of strategy and Jalen turns 30 next year. Tatum's younger than he is and that's like a five year window. Yanis, it might be two.

• 1:26:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 1:26:21Bill Simmons?

  And so now, now we're condensing this window where you're also going against OKC and San Antonio, who have all these young players and they have all the contracts staggered and the ability to add all of these pieces. It's like. You know, you have these lightning in a bottle seasons and I think we had one in 24. When we were able to get Porzingis and Drew. And everything kind of aligned. They spent a lot of money for that season. They, you know, the, the opponents fell in the right way. I think that's happened to the Knicks this season. Where.

• 1:26:51Speaker 05

  What you just said, the opponents fell the right way.

• 1:26:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:55Speaker 05

  Which didn't happen, you know, we faced a Philly team that if we played them three weeks ago, we would have swept them.

• 1:27:01Bill Simmons?

  We faced a Philly team that had one good week in them and we just happened to hit them that one week and then they died immediately. So I just, I wonder like.

• 1:27:12Bill Simmons?

  Is this the time to take a swing? And I keep thinking about New Orleans. And.

• 1:27:19Bill Simmons?

  Whether there's a way to, to get back Zion and Trey Murphy.

• 1:27:26Bill Simmons?

  With Jalen and some picks and whatever else needs to go in there and basically end up with Trey Murphy making half as much as Jalen. And then taking this enormous flyer on Zion.

• 1:27:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:27:37Bill Simmons?

  And trying to figure out. Can you put Zion? In, in a winning organization? With a different fan situation and, and what's there? And if nothing's there, you bail on it and now you're paying Trey Murphy. Half as much as Jalen. Like I wonder, I wonder if Stevens is thinking about stuff like that.

• 1:27:58Speaker 05

  Well, we both like Murphy.

• 1:28:00Bill Simmons?

  Well, all the smart teams like him.

• 1:28:02Speaker 05

  Yeah. Williamson is so injury prone. It's hard to, it's hard to know what you're really getting.

• 1:28:07Bill Simmons?

  He's almost like the contract to make it work because Jalen's going to make like 58 million, but I wonder. Because Brad is so outside the box with how he thinks about stuff.

• 1:28:16Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:28:17Bill Simmons?

  That I wonder if he's thinking.

• 1:28:20Bill Simmons?

  Giannis two-year window where I'm probably not winning the title anyway, or. Can I try to reconfigure this so I can have? You know, I gotta pay Pritchard. That's the other thing is they have to pay Pritchard 7 million this upcoming year and 7 million after free agent. He's a guy that's worth 20 plus.

• 1:28:38Bill Simmons?

  And do I need a center would be the other thing I'd be thinking of. Like if I'm trading Jalen, do I need a, a bigger guy? Like do I have to, should I think about Sabonis?

• 1:28:48Bill Simmons?

  Do I think about Sabonis and trying to get more Sacramento Kings first round picks that

• 1:28:54Speaker 05

  He's another guy though, that he hasn't finished the season in a couple of years.

• 1:28:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, well, they they shut him down this year. I'm just I'm just trying to think.

• 1:29:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:29:02Bill Simmons?

  How many centers are out there that could make an impact? Do they feel like they need a center? Vucevic thing obviously failed. It's it's.

• 1:29:12Speaker 05

  My guess is, well, you again, going back to the press conference, he's Stephen certainly intimated that there'd be changes.

• 1:29:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he wanted more. He wanted more stuff at the rim. He wanted a more conventional team. It felt like he was clearly tired of.

• 1:29:27Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:29:27Bill Simmons?

  The style that they played.

• 1:29:28Speaker 05

  After that press conference, I did look at different teams and different big men. Doesn't necessarily have to be a center, but a big man. I mean, Utah has a couple of people as an example. There are teams.

• 1:29:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:42Speaker 05

  That if Jalen was in the trade, I think you could get a big man and a wing back. And and I'm just not sure if Stevens is ready to trade Brown. He he flattered him in the press conference and a couple of days later in the newspaper. And maybe that's the kiss of death, but.

• 1:30:03Bill Simmons?

  I know, but that's I've always wanted to keep these guys together. This is everything that's happened the last few months is starting to make me wonder like, does Jalen just want his own team?

• 1:30:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:30:15Bill Simmons?

  And does?

• 1:30:17Speaker 05

  Well.

• 1:30:17Bill Simmons?

  I talked about this a week ago. It just feels like the body language seems to be heading that way, in my opinion.

• 1:30:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, you wonder. I mean, we sit so close to the bench. I always watch Tatum and Brown together. And it was it was weird with Tatum coming back with so little time left in the season. But it was even even weirder, you know, the we went to that game seven. Molly was able to go. We went to a bar first and we're sitting there and having a drink. And there's two Philadelphia fans sitting next to us. They have Philly gear on. And the guy says to the other guy, it's so great that Tatum's not playing. And I said, what did you say? He said, Tatum's not playing today. I was flabbergasted.

• 1:31:06Speaker 05

  Game seven, I just never expected he wouldn't give it, give it a shot, I guess. I, I didn't know he wasn't playing.

• 1:31:14Bill Simmons?

  But it's understandable considering he had a calf injury to the other calf that they pretended was a knee injury, but it was a calf injury.

• 1:31:21Speaker 05

  But did I have any confidence when I heard that?

• 1:31:23Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:31:23Speaker 05

  Not too much confidence, no.

• 1:31:26Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:31:26Speaker 05

  I mean, the, the reality is, I was there for game five, we're up three games to one. You win game five at home like you're supposed to, like all, like the other teams did.

• 1:31:37Bill Simmons?

  We're up 13 in game five, right.

• 1:31:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, Tatum doesn't get hurt in the game six, there is no game six. Would we have beaten the Knicks? I don't know. It would have been a fun series.

• 1:31:46Bill Simmons?

  The thing I will never understand is why they put all those minutes on Tatum. That has never been explained properly. I don't get it. I don't understand it. I don't understand the quotes he had after about, about his right leg still isn't a hundred percent the size of the left leg and just stuff where it's like, what? You told, you said you were recovered, you weren't recovered? Um, and if that was the case, then why wasn't he on a minutes limit? Why is Wemby on a minutes limit, but he's not? Why was, there's been a bunch of guys in the league who, like, Lamenta Ball, the whole year was the, under 30 minutes because they were trying to keep him healthy. Why were we putting minutes on him like that?

• 1:32:22Speaker 05

  I agree.

• 1:32:23Bill Simmons?

  If I was Chizam, that would be the, I would have like a meeting and be like, the fuck, why did we, why did that guy play 43 minutes in game five? What are we doing?

• 1:32:32Speaker 05

  Well, it seemed like there was such an impetus to get the second seed instead of the third seed, when in retrospect, we lost three games at home anyway. So it, did it matter? No. We were a better road team at times during the year.

• 1:32:47Bill Simmons?

  Whatever, something, there will be some major trade. I don't think you'll love watching Giannis, just for the record, if that's the trade. Not, not really your type of guy.

• 1:32:55Speaker 05

  No, I'm not saying that's the great, the greatest trade I, is, that's out there, but I certainly think they're going to explore, what can they get back from, for Jalen Brown? I don't see Tatum being the traded object.

• 1:33:10Bill Simmons?

  Red Sox, we don't need to talk about, it's disgusting what's happened.

• 1:33:14Speaker 05

  It, it's not just that, it's, it's frustrating, disgusting, unreal, that.

• 1:33:23Speaker 05

  The Fenway Group that has billions of dollars has become the cheapest franchise in the league with the highest prices to go to a game.

• 1:33:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:35Speaker 05

  It makes no sense. And, you know, I'm not going to a game this year. I'm revolting.

• 1:33:42Bill Simmons?

  And your son's rich and you're still not going. I mean, think about that.

• 1:33:47Speaker 05

  Well, look at third base. We have a guy hitting 162, who's five feet tall. I mean, it's just an abomination what the Fenway Group has done to the image of the Red Sox. They got their four championships and then they said, that's enough.

• 1:34:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they're like, well, you suckers are now just going to pay for tickets for the rest of your life.

• 1:34:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, and you can come in the eighth inning and sing Sweet Caroline and buy your pink hats and blue hats and we're going to make more money. It's a shame.

• 1:34:25Bill Simmons?

  It gets risky when you start playing that game of chicken with your fan base.

• 1:34:28Speaker 05

  I think it does.

• 1:34:30Bill Simmons?

  Especially in this era, you know, you're, if people are just like, well, if they don't care about the team, I'm not going to care either. We've seen, we've seen that happen in the early 80s a little bit and it happened a little bit in the 90s too, where you could feel, people are like, all right, is this how you're treating us? Then we'll go over here, you know, and there's three other teams and a bunch of other stuff to do.

• 1:34:54Speaker 05

  Well, you can go online now and get great seats anytime you want.

• 1:34:57Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:34:58Speaker 05

  That's a really shameful position that they've put the fan base in.

• 1:35:02Bill Simmons?

  And they also don't have the signature guy, which there's been years where they haven't, but they were, I think, putting all the eggs in the Roman Anthony basket and that has not gone well.

• 1:35:16Speaker 05

  Is he, is he fragile and injury prone? I don't know, but once again, he's hurt.

• 1:35:23Bill Simmons?

  All right, we've talked enough about the Red Sox. The Patriots are the other one. I know that's been the big topic.

• 1:35:29Speaker 05

  Well.

• 1:35:29Bill Simmons?

  The, the head coach has been the big dinner topic in New England now for five weeks.

• 1:35:34Speaker 05

  It's not just that. We've talked about this for 20 years. Every time things seem pretty good with the Patriot franchise, something happens. Whether it's Deflategate or Spygate or, you know, some scandal or the owner of the team in a, in a spa twice getting caught. Or it's just one thing after another. And this is just the latest. This is a really bad story up here.

• 1:36:03Speaker 05

  It's not going to go away. It seems to have legs, you know, as a week goes by and then there's a new photo or a new story. And, uh, and I feel badly. I, I really liked, loved the job the coach did last year. I thought he had the locker room, um, really all going in the same direction. The camaraderie was great. We overachieved. We didn't have a bad, we had a somewhat easy schedule, but we overachieved. And now here we are again. And nobody's talking about the players.

• 1:36:41Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:36:41Speaker 05

  The, the articles are about the coach.

• 1:36:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we would almost have been better off losing in Denver.

• 1:36:49Bill Simmons?

  It turns out Drake's hurt. The Vrabel thing doesn't happen. And then all the dialogue is about, can they, can they get back? Can they get there to the Super Bowl instead? I mean, they, they're going to trade for A.J. Brown on June 1st. It seems like, uh, almost a formality at this point, which would be the thing everyone talked about. I, the, and I've tried not to talk about the Vrabel thing that much because it's such a bummer of a story. And they, you know, every side has kids and it's just, I don't know, it makes me, it's a little unseemly, but, um. I wonder like how you become the way he coached the team where he's like the patriarch of this Patriots family and everything is about family and team and being there for

• 1:37:30Bill Simmons?

  people and hugging each guy as they come off the field. And now will that seem disingenuous as he's doing it this year?

• 1:37:37Speaker 05

  That's, that's, I think that's a really way, good way of phrasing the most important question that people up here are asking. What's it going to be like? Is he going to be in the hallway hugging everybody again? Are the players going to look at him a little bit differently?

• 1:37:55Bill Simmons?

  Or maybe, maybe they'll like him more. The coach is getting after it.

• 1:37:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's a, it's a sad story. You're talking two families and I don't know the details. I just know what I read. I just wish I wasn't reading any of it. I'm just looking forward to the season, waiting for the schedule to come out today. But that's not the top, yeah, that's not what's in the paper.

• 1:38:22Bill Simmons?

  So you care about the schedule? Brian Curtis and I just did a whole segment about this, that we think the schedule release day is ridiculous, but you like it?

• 1:38:29Speaker 05

  I haven't seen the schedule yet.

• 1:38:31Bill Simmons?

  No, but do you like it though? You like looking at it and being like, oh, we're playing?

• 1:38:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, I like, I like.

• 1:38:37Bill Simmons?

  You just love it.

• 1:38:37Speaker 05

  All right, that looks winnable. That's gonna be a tough game. Where's the bye? Yeah, I like all that stuff.

• 1:38:43Bill Simmons?

  We talked about, the reason I had Brian Curtis on was we talked about this content what we have now and how the football is adding these extra games and there's going to be a Wednesday night game before Thanksgiving and all this stuff.

• 1:38:53Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:38:54Bill Simmons?

  You've been watching sports the entire time I've known you, which is my whole life, whenever it's on. Do you feel like there's a difference now with the amount of sports that's on, or is it just harder to find?

• 1:39:06Speaker 05

  It's a little bit of an overload.

• 1:39:08Bill Simmons?

  So you feel the overload a little bit? Have you watched as much hockey playoffs as you usually watch?

• 1:39:13Speaker 05

  No. Well, that's not unusual. Once the Bruins got knocked out, I don't watch as much.

• 1:39:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but you would watch, like, you would watch to root against Montreal and you'd pick random players.

• 1:39:24Speaker 05

  I've watched a couple of Montreal games. I watched the Colorado game yesterday. But my heart's not in it. I like the Bruins team. I thought they overachieved. I like the new coach. We're a couple of players short. We don't have a first line center, dah dah. But I liked, I liked that we did as well as we did and. I have optimism for that team. They seem to have their act together.

• 1:39:52Bill Simmons?

  Wow, prudence. Number one in your rankings.

• 1:39:55Speaker 05

  Well, it's it's kind of weird, isn't it?

• 1:39:57Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna be back with the Pats. We still have Drake May. He's gonna be healthy this season. Their team's gonna be good. They have some good drafts. I'm gonna be I'm gonna be fired up by July.

• 1:40:07Speaker 05

  I am too. I'm gonna be fired up for the I just wish the focus was on the the draft picks, the movement of first year to second year players, progress, stuff like that. It's just not there right yet. Yet. Maybe it will be.

• 1:40:21Bill Simmons?

  You don't think he's gonna step down, do you?

• 1:40:26Speaker 05

  I don't know. Would I be 100% shocked? No.

• 1:40:29Bill Simmons?

  See, I wouldn't either, but I to me, like a leave of absence seems more realistic, like he comes back when real training camp starts or something. But he, you know, in the NFL, that's

• 1:40:44Bill Simmons?

  pretty massive for your coach to just not be around for two months. I don't know how they're gonna handle it. And the owner is 88 years old, 86 years old, whatever he is.

• 1:40:54Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:40:55Bill Simmons?

  So.

• 1:40:55Speaker 05

  Yeah. I I hope he doesn't step down. I wouldn't be surprised if he does step down. I don't. None of us know the whole story. I hope it isn't the story that the paper keeps printing, but I don't know.

• 1:41:11Bill Simmons?

  I love how you're so forgiving of Brable and yet you demoted Joe to the second row again.

• 1:41:17Speaker 05

  No, I didn't. I didn't demote Joe.

• 1:41:18Bill Simmons?

  You did. You demoted him.

• 1:41:20Speaker 05

  I never mentioned.

• 1:41:21Bill Simmons?

  I have texts. We said he's back in the second row. I've had it.

• 1:41:25Speaker 05

  Well, that's private text between you and me.

• 1:41:28Bill Simmons?

  You were done. You were so mad after the series. You wouldn't come on.

• 1:41:31Speaker 05

  I was mad, but.

• 1:41:32Bill Simmons?

  I couldn't even get you to come on today. You were still mad.

• 1:41:35Speaker 05

  And I'm not defending Brable, by the way.

• 1:41:39Bill Simmons?

  I know.

• 1:41:39Speaker 05

  I don't know the details, but it doesn't look good. And I I I'm not putting Joe in the second row, but I think he has a testing year coming up that will determine whether he's here next summer.

• 1:41:54Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:41:55Speaker 05

  Yeah. My mind.

• 1:41:57Bill Simmons?

  What TV shows are you watching?

• 1:42:00Speaker 05

  Uh, the three Chicago TV show. I watched the movie you recommended.

• 1:42:05Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Crime One Oh One. Yeah.

• 1:42:06Speaker 05

  Yeah. I still don't understand how they got, he got, the cop got the diamonds at the end.

• 1:42:11Bill Simmons?

  Spoiler.

• 1:42:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, you can't spoil the movie.

• 1:42:16Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:42:17Bill Simmons?

  So you like Crime One Oh One more than Rip? Or did you like Rip more than Crime One Oh One?

• 1:42:21Speaker 05

  I like Rip more.

• 1:42:22Bill Simmons?

  All right.

• 1:42:22Speaker 05

  I didn't quite understand either one of them at the end, but I'll have to watch it a second time. You know, I agree with you on the lead actor in Crime One Oh One. He was a little too passive.

• 1:42:34Bill Simmons?

  Chris Hemsworth. Yeah, I just didn't think he was good enough. That was my biggest issue with the movie. And I liked him in other stuff. Like, I thought he was great in Rush.

• 1:42:42Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:42:42Bill Simmons?

  I don't know what he was going for. Yeah, I don't know what his, what his plan was in One Oh One. I didn't get it. Was, he like intentionally was hard to figure out, and I didn't think it worked.

• 1:42:54Speaker 05

  I thought he, he just came across a little weak, uh, weakened personality, weakened demeanor.

• 1:43:01Bill Simmons?

  It would have been a great, like, early 2000s Russell Crowe during his proof of life era role. That was like what I needed from that. I needed like, just somebody at the peak of their powers, a little enigmatic, trying to figure out what they're thinking.

• 1:43:17Speaker 05

  That's a good, he would have been good before he gained 200 pounds, but he would have been good. Yeah.

• 1:43:22Bill Simmons?

  Did you see Project Hail Mary?

• 1:43:25Speaker 05

  No. What channel's that on?

• 1:43:27Bill Simmons?

  That was, it was a movie. It was with Brian Gossel. Yeah.

• 1:43:31Speaker 05

  I, I have not seen that yet.

• 1:43:32Bill Simmons?

  Biggest movie of the year? No?

• 1:43:33Speaker 05

  No. I wait for it to come on cable.

• 1:43:36Bill Simmons?

  It's on Amazon right now.

• 1:43:38Speaker 05

  Oh, it is?

• 1:43:38Bill Simmons?

  Or, yeah, it's on all those. You have to pay for it, but.

• 1:43:41Speaker 05

  Well.

• 1:43:42Bill Simmons?

  Charge it to me. Yeah, just put it to, just charge it to my bill. What other TV shows are you watching? You love The Madison.

• 1:43:49Speaker 05

  I, I like FBI. I like The Madison.

• 1:43:52Bill Simmons?

  What about the, what about the Yellowstone spinoffs? You're in on that one.

• 1:43:56Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, I mean, I like the, um.

• 1:44:00Bill Simmons?

  The US Marshals, you like that one?

• 1:44:03Speaker 05

  US Marshals, I like that one. I haven't, the other ones, I think, starts tomorrow night.

• 1:44:08Bill Simmons?

  You love the Madison, though.

• 1:44:10Speaker 05

  I like the Madison. I like the acting in the Madison. You and I talked about it last time. I couldn't stand the two daughters or the two grandkids.

• 1:44:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, two, two, two of your favorite actors, though. Kurt Russell, Michelle Pfeiffer.

• 1:44:22Speaker 05

  And then I understand there's a season two already coming.

• 1:44:25Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:44:26Speaker 05

  And a season three, I think, already.

• 1:44:28Bill Simmons?

  You're not watching Euphoria?

• 1:44:30Speaker 05

  No. It's not my...

• 1:44:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, please, please don't watch that one.

• 1:44:35Speaker 05

  As you say, when I want to do something, you're not the demographic.

• 1:44:40Bill Simmons?

  That one, I don't, I definitely don't think you'd like that. There was no new CBS shows this year? Boston Blue, You're Okay.

• 1:44:47Speaker 05

  No, no, no.

• 1:44:47Bill Simmons?

  You jumped out?

• 1:44:49Speaker 05

  I watch it, but it's poorly written. And, and, you know, I like, uh...

• 1:44:54Bill Simmons?

  Donny.

• 1:44:56Speaker 05

  I liked him in Blue Bloods because he had a, an edge to him. He's too nice a guy in the new one.

• 1:45:01Bill Simmons?

  But you never did The Pit. That was the shocking one to me. A hundred percent you would have liked The Pit. I don't get how you missed that one.

• 1:45:08Speaker 05

  I did two episodes and then got caught up in life and haven't been able to get back to it, so... Maybe this summer.

• 1:45:15Bill Simmons?

  All right. Well, keep us posted. All right, that, I thought you did okay. You weren't as angry about the Celtics as I thought.

• 1:45:23Speaker 05

  Well, it's a good thing we didn't do this two weeks ago, a week and a half ago.

• 1:45:26Bill Simmons?

  All right.

• 1:45:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:45:28Bill Simmons?

  All right, Dad. Enjoy all the sports this weekend. Do you have a PGA pick?

• 1:45:38Speaker 05

  Sheffley? Is that how you say his name?

• 1:45:40Bill Simmons?

  Scheffler?

• 1:45:41Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:45:42Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Schaflay. Xander Schaflay?

• 1:45:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:45:44Bill Simmons?

  We call him Xander.

• 1:45:46Speaker 05

  Oh, Xander. I like Xander.

• 1:45:48Bill Simmons?

  Xander, okay. There you go.

• 1:45:49Speaker 05

  It looks like, for me, Scheffler's been in a slump. His irons aren't doing so well, but.

• 1:45:55Bill Simmons?

  All right, we'll enjoy it. I'll text you over the weekend. We're gonna come back, take a break, come back with a Utah Jazz owner, Ryan Smith. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Whether it's a pumpkin spice coffee that goes splat in your seat, or a weekend tailgate that leaves your trunk full of gear and who knows what. You're gonna 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 gonna 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

• 1:46:36Bill Simmons?

  for HR, finance, and IT, with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission-aware, giving you accuracy 24/7 and the ability to not just get work done, but get it done right. It's a new Workday. All right, we're taping this late Wednesday afternoon, so if anything happens over the next 24 hours, don't blame us. Ryan Smith is here. He's the owner of the Utah Jazz, who finally had some luck in the lottery. What'd you do? What kind of tricks were you doing the week leading up? Were you like wearing the same shirt every day? What superstitions did you have?

• 1:47:10Speaker 06

  So I was incredibly superstitious, and so what I decided to do was not go to Chicago. I mean, I've been there, I've been in that lottery room twice, in the back room, or once in the back room, once kind of on the side, and then obviously last year with my wife on stage, actually, with all the kids sitting there, and man, that walk of shame, that walk of shame hurts. It stings for a really long time, and I was like, look, I'm 0 for 3 going to Chicago, I'm gonna stay home. And like, I sat at home, watched it with my family, did our usual Sunday church stuff, went, went, went and sat there, and like, I'm 1 for 1 doing that, so that's a lot better.

• 1:47:53Bill Simmons?

  Church, that might have been the key. Maybe that's what you have to do now, if you're ever back.

• 1:47:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:47:58Bill Simmons?

  I had, I said on the podcast, oh, go ahead. No, you go.

• 1:48:03Speaker 06

  We had a record attendance at church in Utah on Sunday.

• 1:48:07Bill Simmons?

  Well, they moved it to Sunday to the lottery. Usually it's Tuesday night. Um, I said on my podcast the other day, I thought they need to go back with the lottery. I don't like the representatives. I want the people in the room who have the most stake. Either give me all the owners or give me the GMs, like the people, because the most famous moments ever were Dave DeBusher winning the Patrick Ewing lottery and like, just like almost losing his mind or or Jerry West when he didn't get LeBron James that year in 2003. I want to see the weight of the lottery on the people who actually care the most. And we've gotten away from that.

• 1:48:40Speaker 06

  Or you're just twisted where you're looking at people for most of their life. Most of their life have kind of been able to put their thumb on the scale for things or be successful and they have no control over this.

• 1:48:51Bill Simmons?

  Yes, that's exactly what I want.

• 1:48:55Bill Simmons?

  All right. So walk me through the emotions. So you're supposed to be, what number? You were four, right?

• 1:49:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, we were, we won the, we won the coin flip with Sacramento.

• 1:49:09Bill Simmons?

  Not televised.

• 1:49:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, non televised, but we were four. And so, you know, you kind of, kind of hope in this draft. I mean, I think everyone was kind of had this. Could you stay top four? I mean, that was the discussion leading up or how would you do that? And then, you know, you know that our, our kind of floor is eight. And that's, that's kind of where you're thinking. And, you know, I was, I had to mentally tell myself, I'm perfectly fine at seven. It's great players all the way through and, you know, it was almost unbelievable for us. Like, I mean, first of all, when the envelope, here's what's crazy. Like, one of our camera guys came down and gave me the envelope. I just got this today, actually.

• 1:49:52Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:49:52Speaker 06

  And so when that, when that was pulled out, first of all, when Sacramento was pulled out, like my, my 13 year old lost his mind and just went down because he saw purple.

• 1:50:04Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:50:05Speaker 06

  And then the Jazz, you know, and then we got in the top four and then, you know, obviously Chicago, Memphis, and then it was.

• 1:50:14Bill Simmons?

  You've never, you've never moved up, right? This is the first time ever?

• 1:50:17Speaker 06

  Never, never, never. So the, the faith lottery system, I don't care who you are, is kind of sitting there. You're just like shaking your head a lot and it's, it's a crazy feeling. And I think, I think that, you know, I'm sure Sacramento has some of that feeling right now. I'm sure, you know, Brooklyn for sure. There, there's no way not to. There just really isn't. And it, if I'm a, if I'm a consumer of sports and entertainment or television or drama, like that's a pretty cool event, you know, because it, it's, you know, the pain. I mean, I, I had people show me videos of restaurants here in Utah, like erupting, the restaurant, the entire restaurant. And it's, it's pretty cool.

• 1:51:01Bill Simmons?

  So we had the opposite. I remember the worst Celtics one. Well, there are two bad ones. We had the 97 and 2007. So it was Duncan was the prize one year. And then it was Durant or Oden. It was either of them. Let's get one of the top two. And the Celtics got fifth that year. And it was the opposite of those videos where the people in the bars like, oh, it was like, you know, it was like a traumatic event. And you're just looking at the rest of it. Like, what did I just waste the last year for? Now you're out of the woods. Like you actually have the kind of team you want. You've had, you've been in some lotteries, you traded for Jaren Jackson. You have marketing still, you never got rid of him. Now you have a top two pick, you have Ace Bailey. Like this is, this was a three year odyssey to get to this point, basically.

• 1:51:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, especially taking over as a new owner, a new ownership group where we come in, it's probably not how you want to design, you know, your, your tenure when you start. But this is a little bit where you just trust the team you brought in. And you say, hey, where are we at? And what are your goals, honestly? Like our goals are win a championship in Utah. It's never happened as well. And I just don't think we're going to tiptoe into that. Right. I think that it's going to require a running start, a little bit of help. It's going to require, you know, a different, a different level of building than probably maybe what it takes to make the playoffs and even, even those groups that, you know, have done that in the past, just given our market, given our luck, given where things

• 1:52:30Speaker 06

  are. It's like, you know, you've got to start and, and that starts with, with our front office and our coaching and like how we're going to go through this. And we, we've been close. I mean, I took over that Donovan and Rudy team, um, you know, where, where Trey Mann destroyed us in the, in the corner there.

• 1:52:48Bill Simmons?

  I was there. Yeah.

• 1:52:49Speaker 06

  And the, it, it staples at the time. And man, that was a helpless feeling because it, that was kind of ours to have. And then, um, you know, kind of had to make some decisions after that. And so, um, you know, here we are. Like, I like where we're going. I like the assets that we have going forward. We have all of our picks, plus, plus, and a lot of young talent. And, um, and I honestly, I think every team's going to have to do this. You know, I think, I think, I think this is a lot of my point around the lottery reform and everything else is like, the way, we're going to have a certain number of teams that are going through the rebuild process and the rebuild experience and all have different

• 1:53:30Speaker 06

  sizes of markets. And, you know, I think as a league, which I love, we'll, we'll ask ourselves really hard questions around what do we want that rebuild experience to be?

• 1:53:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:40Speaker 06

  How long should it take?

• 1:53:41Bill Simmons?

  I've heard you use that word before. It's interesting because the other word is tanking, but it's really a rebuild because you, you're trying to get to a much higher place than you're in. You, you guys became the linchpins for this in February, which was really the first time all the tanking slash rebuild dialogue happened. And I was part of it. I definitely did one of the first podcasts being like, we, we've got to fix this. Like this is the earliest this has ever gone. But from your vantage point, like if I owned the Jazz. I don't know how you would do another strategy, especially when you're looking at San Antonio, who gets 2, 1, and 4 in three straight years. Now you watch them in the playoffs and all of those guys are awesome. And they're 20 and 21 and 22, the foundation of this 10-year contender.

• 1:54:27Bill Simmons?

  So if you see that, like, how do you not try to emulate that in some way? I don't know.

• 1:54:32Speaker 06

  Well, I think, first of all, I don't think there's an ownership group that wants to go through this, right? I think that's first of all. No one in the league wants to do this, especially, like, you look at our situation when we're, we're taking over, right? I mean, you want to do the opposite. Like, you want to go fast, you want to flex up, you want to show, you know, your fan base that, like, you got some juice and, like, naturally.

• 1:54:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:55Speaker 06

  And so when you come in and you're like, okay, let me tell you what we're gonna do. I know we got the All-Star game coming here this year, and we've been waiting on that. What we're gonna do is trade our two All-Stars. Probably not a popular spot to be, right?

• 1:55:09Speaker 06

  But you've got to have conviction, you've got to have alignment. And then, you know, you always start off with a retool, right? We're just gonna retool.

• 1:55:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:19Speaker 06

  And then it gets to a point, what you're seeing with a lot of teams, they're like, no, no, no, no. If we're gonna lay up in a weird way, like, don't lay up in the water. You know, if the water's 200 yards and we're gonna get on a three, like, like, we've gotta, we've gotta figure out how to, how to get out of this position and right or wrong. And I think you saw this with San Antonio, the decisions become pretty easy to, in the, in the top part of the draft.

• 1:55:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:46Speaker 06

  Right? You know, you, you're, you're, you're betting between some pretty amazing options there, you know, being in those draft rooms and kind of being on the other side. It gets a lot more challenging, or, you know, it's, it's challenging all the way across. But, you know, drafting eight, nine every year is a little harder.

• 1:56:05Bill Simmons?

  Well, I look at the situation you had when you took over. I don't know how much you want to say about it, but you had Mitch Gobert, you had the foundation of a team that was really consistently good, but had not done as well, maybe, as people were hoping in the playoffs, right? And it, I don't know if it had run its course, but it felt like it was hitting a little bit of a wall. And then you have a franchise guy who the rumors started immediately. He wants to go back to New York. He wants to go here. He wants to go there. And this is the conundrum of the league, right? You go through this process. You get a franchise guy, but then you also have free agency. You might not be able to keep the guy. Do you think there should be more mechanisms in place that favor the team when you've had somebody for, you know, five years, seven years, nine years?

• 1:56:50Bill Simmons?

  With the, like, could there be luxury tax stuff, like benefits you could get for just having stability?

• 1:56:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, look, this was all pretty new to me, right? I mean, my first day, we were kind of in the middle of the COVID and we had like two days to like, sign Don and Rudy or 30 days. It was that short window, if you remember. I remember having two days before Monday before we got to kind of go into it with Rudy. And I remember going up to his hotel room and being like, hey, bro, like, what do you care about? You know, and actually, that was like my first meeting ever. It was just him and I talking because we knew each other before. And, you know, there was, there was a process in going and sitting down with Don and, and going through all that. And, you know, I, I think you almost, from what I'm learning about these championship runs,

• 1:57:39Speaker 06

  it's a little, it's a little bit like you almost don't know what you need until you get on the track. And, you know, it's, it's like this, I gotta have a little more than the other team. So it's a little bit of a moving target. So, you know, running its course of a team, you'll see that this year, whatever will happen, the narrative will be around a couple of teams and get bounced out. They just don't have enough and, and they've got to bring more than the next group. The hard part is when you're already asked to sit down. And you're, you're over the cap, you know, like we were, we were into the tax. We'd given up a lot of picks for Conley. And so it's like, how deep do you want to cut into your future?

• 1:58:23Speaker 06

  When you've been bounced in the first round like three times.

• 1:58:26Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:58:27Speaker 06

  You know, and I think when Danny, when Danny originally came in, he, he and I had a lot of real honest conversations about that. And ultimately he's like, Hey, look, I've done this before. This is what we're doing. And Mike, is this how we're, we're going to think through this? And, you know, he had been coming from a place where he'd been knocking on that door with a really good team in Boston for some time. That he had kind of put together and then obviously the year he leaves, like they end up going back, re- adding one more piece. Almost you don't know what you got and it's just one more piece, then that didn't work and then one more piece. And, you know, having those assets to be able to do that is really important.

• 1:59:10Bill Simmons?

  The year he left or the year you stole him? I mean, let's be honest, you kept, you kept stealing Celtics people. You stole, you stole both ages, you stole Will Hardy. You're just going, just go back to the well with Boston, just keep taking our people.

• 1:59:23Speaker 06

  Brad doesn't answer my call.

• 1:59:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Brad, we tell Brad, Brad, your phone number is blocked on Brad's phone.

• 1:59:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, but, but I think the other thing is also, one of the things I do love, I'll just be honest and it's not to get on the OKC train. But one of the things I do love is just, I mean, with Joe Kitch in, in SGA is just how they haven't let the narrative come. Like they've been pretty forward thinking on both of those individuals about, no, I like this market. I want to be here, you know? You, you know, there's a lot of drama, there's a lot of narrative that comes out. Well, you're in a smaller market, you're in this or that, like it's loud enough for these players. You know, we see this in hockey, you know, so a lot of these players play the worst when they're in the biggest markets, you know? And I love the fact how they're embracing that market.

• 2:00:10Speaker 06

  There's nothing you can't do from OKC, there's nothing you can't do from Utah, there's nothing you can't do from Denver. There's nothing you can't do from these places. And I think that, you know, we, we've always had players who've had their best years in Utah, always. Growing up, like you look at Hornisek, you look at Boozer, you look at D Will, they'll all tell you after the fact, like I had my best years in Utah.

• 2:00:33Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:00:34Speaker 06

  Why is that?

• 2:00:35Bill Simmons?

  You know.

• 2:00:35Speaker 06

  It's because they could come get locked in, they could, they could actually, you know, do it in, in, you know, it's interesting because we're in such a global media market where instead of one or two voices, there's, everyone's got a voice, like, you know, and so it's, it's a little bit like we're playing in the United States or we're playing in Europe. Yeah, there's a difference there.

• 2:00:57Bill Simmons?

  Right. Well, you're, you're unique in two ways. One, well, a lot of ways, but you came in, you didn't have new owner syndrome because I always feel like when the new owner comes in, they feel like they have to do this crazy splashy move and, you know, shoot for the moon and try to improve the team. And that's usually when they get into trouble. You did the opposite. You had to basically start a rebuild. But then the other thing, you're, you are Utah, like you're from there, you, you, you belong to that whole area. You really invested in building up not sports, but just the culture, the mentality of what people, how people see Salt Lake, how people see the city and the state, which normally when people come in, like Chisholm, Chisholm bought the Celtics, was a huge Celtic fan,

• 2:01:40Bill Simmons?

  but also wasn't living there the last 20 years. Now he's back.

• 2:01:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:01:43Bill Simmons?

  You, you were a Utah guy. You even had chances to maybe get some other teams and you were fixated on, no, it has to be this team.

• 2:01:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, sure. So when we went through this process, like it was, I would, I mean, there's no secret. I was looking at Minnesota. I, I, you know, I'd sold my company to SAP. You know, I've come from tech, you know, spent my whole career in tech, didn't do one thing else. And everyone's like, well, what company are you going to start next? And I was like, you guys, I want to do hoops, play hoops every morning. I love going out to Boston and just hanging with the Angels and like watching hoops with them. And I'd go down to summer league and play golf with DA and like, uh, you know, I'd just sit next to him in the suite, watching players. And I was like, this is so fascinating. Like I'm such a junkie. And, and it was the only thing that intrigued me. And so when the opportunity came, you know, everyone would say, hey, what are you going to do? What's next? And

• 2:02:38Speaker 06

  it's like, no, I, you know, and I called Adam and said, hey, look, like I'm really interested in this. And, you know, for whatever reason, opportunity came to me on, on Minnesota and, you know,

• 2:02:50Speaker 06

  You know, the owner there, Glenn, was like, super nice, but was he gonna sell? Was he not gonna sell? He's kind of a little bit of a, seemed like the situation was a little runaway bride. Like, how's this gonna go? And so we had worked down to it and we were getting really down, almost to the doc level. Like, we were, we were drawing up docs and, you know, my wife was just like, what about our season tickets for the Jazz? And I was like, well, no, no, no, no, we'll, we'll, like Minneapolis, it's only two hours away. Like, we'll figure this out.

• 2:03:20Speaker 06

  And I think she knew how I'd kind of go all in on stuff and she's not gonna see me as much. And she was just like, I just love what the boys, like, we're Jazz fans. Like, this isn't gonna work. And then, like, you know, you know, when your partner's like, not feeling something, right? Like, like, I'm in day two and she's kind of not speaking. I'm like, all right, this isn't right. So I called Adam and I remember I was on the golf course. I pulled over in the trees in the cart and I was like, hey, look, man, I can't, I can't do this. And then I went back to the family who'd owned the Jazz forever and just said, hey, there's ever a chance I turn down something else, even if I could buy a little bit, like, if not, I'll just be the best sponsor you've ever had. Like, I'll do anything.

• 2:04:03Speaker 06

  And, you know, they called back like six months later and were like, hey, you still interested in that? And I was like, yeah, and a piece? Yeah, awesome. They're like, well, if we're gonna do a piece, we're gonna do the whole thing. I was like, what?

• 2:04:17Speaker 06

  And they're like, well, we need an offer. And I was like, I don't know what that looks like. And then ended up pulling up the Forbes valuation on my phone, ended up doing a deal. And then I was like, is this for real?

• 2:04:27Bill Simmons?

  The Forbes valuation? This isn't even accurate.

• 2:04:30Speaker 06

  Well, I, I don't know what you go off. It wasn't like today.

• 2:04:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:04:34Speaker 06

  Four years ago was very different, right?

• 2:04:35Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:04:36Speaker 06

  And then, and then, you know, I remember calling Adam and I said, well, we probably should talk to Adam. And Adam called and there was, we were all on the phone together. He said, hey, we're transitioning the team in Utah and this and that. And Adam called me back and was like, we were having another conversation. It was a little bit like.

• 2:04:54Speaker 06

  Hey, look, if you're lucky in life, you get to work in the NBA, work in sports. If you're really, really, really lucky, you can be a governor.

• 2:05:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:01Speaker 06

  It's like, no one gets the team they grew up sneaking into the arena and then

• 2:05:05Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:05:05Speaker 06

  they grew up cheering for, like, this is unheard of. And like, so it's not lost on me, but that's also a lot more weight. Like, I know what it's like to be a Jazz fan. Like, like, I had a funny one today. We were in the drive, I just got back from Chicago. We were in the combine interview and, you know, interviewing all the players. And I'm sitting there and, you know, in Austin and set all this up. It was phenomenal. Did a great job. And, um, but Cam Boozer's in there and I'm, you know, I asked one question because I didn't say much all the time. I was kind of auditing the class, but Carlos is also one of our scouts. And a little bit like, you know, Carlos could only take us to the Western Conference Finals. Like, what do you think you can do, right? And it, and that's the fandom coming out.

• 2:05:49Speaker 06

  Like, I know, I know the pain of not getting over the hump for Utah in so long. And being like, when I took over and, you know, one of the second or third most winningest franchise in the last 30 years without getting over the hump. It's kind of crazy. And so, you know, I think the lottery moment for every Jazz fans, every Jazz fan was like, boy, it's like, whatever, it's just nice to get a little luck. It's nice to feel, it's nice to have the lights shine a little bit. You know, and I think, I think there is a little bit, I mean, there's no way to not look at it the last couple of years and say, hey,

• 2:06:32Speaker 06

  there's a lucky part of our game, a little bit, right? And, you know, it's, but if you, if I look back at my career, like, I was extremely lucky. You know, and, you know, in tech and when you were born and the, and the timing and when I graduated, you know, college and where I went to work and what I almost went to go do, but didn't. Right? And so luck's a part of all of it.

• 2:06:58Bill Simmons?

  I didn't even think of the part that the lottery was in Chicago. The biggest nemesis of the Utah Jazz, the two finals in a row. And somehow, somehow Chicago gave, finally gave it back a little bit.

• 2:07:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:07:12Bill Simmons?

  Tiny bit.

• 2:07:13Speaker 06

  It's, it's, it's good. There's a lot of healing.

• 2:07:16Bill Simmons?

  Probably still a lot of healing left.

• 2:07:18Speaker 06

  Still, still today.

• 2:07:19Bill Simmons?

  And then the other weird thing about this ladder is there's a top four. And I actually really like the next couple of guys too, but I think there's pretty clearly a top four. And you guys have these indirect ties with two of the four, right? Where you have Boozer, who played for the Jazz for years, who had the best years of his career and is now involved with your team. And then AJ, who went to, got pulled out, went to prep school there, went to BYU. I know you guys are a little bit involved with the, you know, success of BYU. So you've probably gotten to know him a little bit, right?

• 2:07:53Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, I go to BYU is like a mile from my house. So like it's, it's kind of, it's my alma mater. It's where I went to school. It's where I play hoops three or four times a week. That's like part of why I live where I live. It's a little bit of like, you know, if you're going to live in Raleigh or whatever, you're right next to campus. Like I like the college town feel.

• 2:08:14Speaker 06

  And, you know, I also grew up here. It's weird. Like my parents, I was born in Eugene, Oregon. It's crazy. Danny and I were born in the same hospital, right? In Eugene.

• 2:08:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:23Speaker 06

  And my dad was, you know, there was four of five kids and he said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go from, you know, University of Oregon in the late seventies to BYU. You probably couldn't get two more polar opposite spots and moved us here. And, um, you know, he grew up in Washington state. My mother's from Palo Alto, California. And, you know, we kind of settled here and, you know, I started a business here. I met my wife here, like I have a lot that I've been given because of the state and everything else. And for me, it's not that, you know, I just went to school there. Like I, I grew up running those halls because my dad was a professor at BYU.

• 2:09:04Speaker 06

  And like, everyone thinks it's like, oh, you're just in charge of, or you just like to be with hoops and sports and that. No, it's like, like it would be really weird because I started Qualtrics really.

• 2:09:19Speaker 06

  You know, from an academic room.

• 2:09:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:23Speaker 06

  With my father, like at BYU, it'd be really weird if I wasn't all in on there and all in on Utah. It's a little bit of like that every time I go there reminds me, I feel like where I came from, you know?

• 2:09:35Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:09:36Speaker 06

  So, so it's cool that, you know, a potential top, top pick or wherever it ends up is like, is coming through here. And I'm sure all the Dukies feel the same way about Cam and, you know, it's kind of, it's kind of how it's gone. I mean, I, I get the amount of texts I get from everyone from Duke, like, and you know, there's a lot of them. Like, the decision's easy, like whatever it is, they're coming. So, and you got the BYU contingent. It's, it's like, there's a lot of drama around this and a lot of insight and narrative. And it's gonna be an interesting 40 couple of days here.

• 2:10:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, the Utah thing I think has evolved really this century, but from where we used to think like, I'm living in Boston. I know nothing. I'm just like, ah Mormons, BYU, Utah, snow, Sundance. That's like all you know. And it really feels like that shifted over the last, I would say 15 years. Now you have a hockey team and there's just feels more energy around Sundance. I think almost like peak now it's moving, is it move, where's it moving to Colorado?

• 2:10:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:10:43Bill Simmons?

  Eventually, but yeah, I'm sure you'll replace that with something, but in general,

• 2:10:48Bill Simmons?

  real energy around the city. And then you also have this weird stuff, like you have the, the stupid secret lives of Mormons show. There's Real Housewives show.

• 2:10:56Speaker 06

  That's right, right out of Central Casting.

• 2:10:58Bill Simmons?

  Right. So, so there's all these different things going on with Utah that just didn't exist 30 years ago. What's, what's fair and unfair about the Utah thing?

• 2:11:06Speaker 06

  So, so if you think about Utah, like most people aren't from here.

• 2:11:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:10Speaker 06

  Like I'll just say that, like, um, you know, you know, my dad's from Washington. You know, if I look at, you know, my, my mom's from California, um, my wife's from Las Vegas.

• 2:11:25Speaker 06

  There's not a better place for family life. There's just that.

• 2:11:30Speaker 06

  Like, I, I'm fortunate, I've got siblings all over, like, there's just something about Utah. I also think it's like, look, most states can only own one or two things authentically. Like, what do you actually own? Or are positioned as that, that no one else has?

• 2:11:48Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:11:50Speaker 06

  And, you know, as we, as we went through our jersey designs, have we gone through this? I've been asking myself and looked over the last couple of years, like Silicon Slopes, the tech community and the innovation in Utah were probably the number two innovative hub. And everyone's gonna be like, no, it's Austin, or no, it's, it was a time in 2018, I think we had as many startups or, or, you know, IPOs as New York City. Right? Like, you start looking at that and it's like, why? And, you know, people can say, do Utahns sell out too early when they get businesses? But if you look at what's come out of here from this next phase of influencers and how the world works and, you know,

• 2:12:33Speaker 06

  everyone has a different tie to folks. The amount of people that come in and, you know, ski here and visit here. I just saw pictures of Connor McDavid down in Southern Utah and the Amma, like, like, yeah, like, like, I saw that, like, but it's crazy who comes through here.

• 2:12:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:51Speaker 06

  And it's like, most time people vacation here. But, you know, I don't think we've done a very good job over the last 30 years, like branding ourselves.

• 2:13:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cuz you feel like a small market, but you're not.

• 2:13:02Speaker 06

  Yeah. Oh, there's, like, I, I said this on day one with the MBAs, there's nothing that we have in common with a small market. You go to our airport, you can jump on a plane and go to Paris, go direct to Hong Kong or, or Seoul, Korea. You can go to London, like, that's not a small market. You're not having to do connections, right? You've got a tech ecosystem that is insane. So if you come out here and get a job in tech, and it doesn't work out, you can get five other jobs in tech.

• 2:13:29Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:13:30Speaker 06

  Right. What, what we get branded for is because, you know, we don't have the urban living that most people associate with a big market.

• 2:13:41Speaker 06

  And that's because when you come to Utah, you actually kind of want to spread out. But we're the fastest growing, youngest demographic in the country. So what people also don't know is within Salt Lake City, within 90 miles, you've got 250,000 college kids. The most come out here, want to stay here. And so you, you always want to bet on youth. If you take Stanford and Cal and Caltech out of Silicon Valley, you kind of don't have Silicon Valley. Right? What makes Boston special and kind of rejuvenating all the time is that education system.

• 2:14:18Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:14:18Speaker 06

  And so I'm super long on cities and growth where there's always youth coming in. And then what they do. The key is, is, and I feel like it's, it's unique that we, my wife and I and our group, we're in a position to kind of take the, a little bit of the, the announcement or the, the baton of city building and community building. So right before I came here, I just announced a new health partnership for both of our teams. We're building this, we, we bought a mall, so 110 acre mall, right in South Salt Lake. And we just put our Utah Mammoth hockey team is two years old, the practice facility there.

• 2:15:04Speaker 06

  We've got a corporate offices there. And then we just announced a new practice facility that'll be done, you know, in September of next year for hoops all together, but with their own separate worlds. So we just announced within our mountain, a 60,000 square foot healthcare facility that services both, that's like super innovative and

• 2:15:30Speaker 06

  like this is part of like our responsibility now with these teams. And we're, we're actually doing the same thing downtown. We're creating this arena district right in front. We've got a live nation venue, got a major hotel going in that's five star. Like we're looking at this to be like, okay, what's everyone's experience when they do want to go to urban living? Cause I know the experiences when they come out is awesome. You know, it's absolutely awesome. I mean, you got guys like Jordan Clarkson was here. He loved living down south and kind of having a house spreading out like, and then you're 20 minutes from 25 minutes from seven ski resorts. We got the Olympics coming back. I mean, you know, so, so it's, it's where I choose to raise my kids. It's fun. But, you know, there's a couple

• 2:16:15Speaker 06

  of things we can authentically own. And it's like, come have the best years of your career, and come have the healthiest mentally here, because wellness is real. And go ahead.

• 2:16:26Bill Simmons?

  How many people own an NBA and NHL team in the same city?

• 2:16:31Speaker 06

  Within the same ownership group together?

• 2:16:36Bill Simmons?

  Just Denver?

• 2:16:37Speaker 06

  No. Yeah, you've got Denver.

• 2:16:39Bill Simmons?

  And then Dolan and then New York and New York.

• 2:16:42Speaker 06

  And you've got Toronto, which is kind of corporate owned, or however that is.

• 2:16:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:48Speaker 06

  And then you've got Leon's and what's going on in Washington.

• 2:16:51Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:16:52Speaker 06

  And we're all set up different, you know?

• 2:16:56Bill Simmons?

  But you are a maniac competitor. So now you have these two winter sports. So you have NHL and NBA happening simultaneously. Like, what happens to you at night?

• 2:17:09Speaker 06

  Well, so I prefer to have it like, if you're going to give me the heat, like, let's just do it all at once. Right?

• 2:17:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:15Speaker 06

  So we'll just go every other night. I've told my kids, like, you know, dad works the night shift. Like, it's what we do a little. And so like, we, I don't think anyone in our organization was acclimated the first year of like, we all knew hockey was coming.

• 2:17:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:33Speaker 06

  But I don't think we knew hockey was coming.

• 2:17:35Bill Simmons?

  What's the crossover with the organization? Because some people will have, you know, basically, somebody who's in control of everything, people will split it up both ways. How did you decide to attack it?

• 2:17:48Speaker 06

  So I think we looked around at all the different models and we're like, okay, none of this is for us. I believe when it comes to organizational structure, you build around people and you, you, you know, it's just gotta feel right.

• 2:18:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:03Speaker 06

  You know, I feel like a little bit, I kinda, you know, operating in tech, like, no one's evaluated or I would say innovated around organizational structure as much as tech has. Like, you know, some people have one direct report, some people have 20, the span of control, no titles, titles, open floor, like, like however you're, you're just controlling, you can't control how people think these days. It's much more around the environment. And so it took a step back and said, okay, how do we want this environment to work? And clearly I didn't know a whole lot about hockey. So we were fortunate that we have a great GM and Bill Armstrong, the cableber. And then Chris Armstrong, who was actually a great friend,

• 2:18:46Speaker 06

  Tony Finau is actually a golf agent, working, working in an agency, but was a hockey guy.

• 2:18:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:52Speaker 06

  And represented a lot of hockey guys. And, and, you know, he was a big part of the idea. So, so those two kinda work together on the hockey side. And, and Chris is a president, Bill's a GM. And, you know, they run that and report up to me. And then on the hoop side, which, which we can get into, um, you know, I've got Austin now as our president of all basketball. And then.

• 2:19:19Bill Simmons?

  You stole him too. That was another one.

• 2:19:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:19:21Bill Simmons?

  It's another, another Boston theft. That was your third one.

• 2:19:24Speaker 06

  Can I at least tell that story?

• 2:19:25Bill Simmons?

  You have three now.

• 2:19:27Speaker 06

  Yeah. Can I tell that story?

• 2:19:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:30Speaker 06

  I think it's important. So when Danny came over, you know, he didn't really wanna be the president of basketball because he'd already done that a long time. And, you know, I was more like, hey, what do you wanna do? It's media, like.

• 2:19:44Speaker 06

  He was actually super helpful in getting a team and then it just worked out.

• 2:19:48Bill Simmons?

  Well, wait, wait, wait. Going backwards though. You're friends with him a long time. You've been playing golf with him forever. Even when he stepped down from the Celtics, my shit detector was blinking hard. I was like, first of all, I don't think he's giving up. Second of all, that's his buddy that just got the jazz. I'm suspicious.

• 2:20:05Speaker 06

  But there was like a six month process and we're together. We're actually at the Hero. We're at Tiger Woods Golf Tournament. We're there with Tony. Fee now, and he's not working for anybody at the time and he won't tell me he's gonna come help me. Cause I don't think, I didn't think his wife and Michelle and their family, he was gonna move to Utah.

• 2:20:25Bill Simmons?

  Well, he had some health issues. He'd had a heart attack. I don't think, yeah.

• 2:20:29Speaker 06

  For sure. And, and he didn't want to go from being the president of basketball to being the president of basketball over here. He wasn't doing that.

• 2:20:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:36Speaker 06

  He wanted to kind of shift gears a little bit. But in one week, I watched him in December, like watched like six different games a night. I'm like, dude, you just watched like 30 basketball games from college to everything. And you don't even have a job, like who's paying you to do this? He's got the iPad, the laptop and the TV up. And I'm like, who? You just do this for fun now? I was like, you might as well get paid for it.

• 2:21:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:02Speaker 06

  Like, come over and help. And then that started a process and, you know, he really wanted, it came down to what do you want to do? He wanted to help scout. He wanted to help with coaching and help manage the players and didn't really want to deal with much more than that.

• 2:21:20Speaker 06

  So he helped me. We came over. We started this process. We got into it. And, you know, I just love working with Danny, but, you know, I was driving last year with my wife. And me and Danny were going somewhere. And she said, hey, what happens if something happens to you and Danny?

• 2:21:44Speaker 06

  And I was like, well, that's kind of weird. Like, well, what do I do? What do I do at the team? I was like, well, let me tell you what you do. You call Austin Age. And you tell him to come out, you're gonna run it because Austin's an absolute star.

• 2:21:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:57Speaker 06

  And I'd never had that conversation with Danny, ever. He would never push anything. He's like, he just, it never happened. And then she was like, well, does Austin know that? Because I just saw he was interviewing for this president job or something online like, are you, don't you think you should tell him?

• 2:22:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:18Speaker 06

  And I was like, it's actually a good idea. So I call Austin that day. It was right after the transaction. I said, hey, Austin,

• 2:22:26Speaker 06

  like, I, I don't know if you know this, but let me just explain the conversation I had with my wife. This is how I feel.

• 2:22:34Bill Simmons?

  You're my designated survivor. I need to tell you.

• 2:22:36Speaker 06

  This is, this is, this is how I feel. We've never had this conversation or anything like this, but this is how I feel. And so you need to know that. And if you're interviewing, because I heard a couple of other rumblings that someone was gonna grab him and I knew that if they sat down with him, it was gonna be very close they were gonna do it.

• 2:22:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:57Speaker 06

  Because you, you love that he's got the age background, but he's also his own guy. Like, and I said, you, you need to know that you come knock on my door. Well, he called me back and he's like,

• 2:23:12Speaker 06

  hey, if I'm gonna go, I wanna go now.

• 2:23:17Speaker 06

  And I was like, what? Okay.

• 2:23:22Speaker 06

  And by five o'clock that day, I had hired Austin as our president of basketball ops.

• 2:23:28Bill Simmons?

  But you didn't tell Danny yet?

• 2:23:30Speaker 06

  No, I didn't tell Danny.

• 2:23:33Speaker 06

  It had to work this way.

• 2:23:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:35Speaker 06

  I was like, there's no way I could talk to Danny. No way.

• 2:23:39Bill Simmons?

  Too weird.

• 2:23:39Speaker 06

  And to, it's just,

• 2:23:43Speaker 06

  it's just like, he would, he would like hammer me that, are you doing this because of me or this and that? Like, he's just that way. Like, he's, he's the hard math teacher.

• 2:23:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:53Speaker 06

  That's just the way, as competitive as he is himself, he's, he's that competitive with his kids to go out a little bit and, and do this. I mean, Austin coached in the G League and,

• 2:24:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:04Speaker 06

  But Austin, I, I knew Austin from BYU. He was a real, I wouldn't say he was unathletic, but he was a really smart point guard. Like, I, I knew his basketball makeup. I had watched his career go. And I was like, there's something different, but he's also, you know, he's also got that, you know, Boston. Organization, you know, is very disciplined, very open. I don't know what to say. It's almost, you know, East Coast educated type vibe, like with the age background, which is like a pretty cool combo. Um, and, and so then I was like, oh no, I've got to call Danny. And so I can't get a hold of Dan. So I'm like, someone told him.

• 2:24:49Bill Simmons?

  Oh, like he was mad at you? You thought he was like?

• 2:24:51Speaker 06

  I can't get, I thought he was because I normally get a hold of him, but it was like a three hour period where I couldn't get a hold of him. So I finally get a hold of him. I was like, DA, like, we've known each other for like 15 years. Like we built incredible trust together. And I think it's either going to be really good after this call, or you're going to be really mad at me. I just hired Austin as a president of basketball ops and you got to go figure out how to work for him.

• 2:25:21Speaker 06

  And it was, it was quiet for a second, but there was no one more happy.

• 2:25:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:25Speaker 06

  Than DA.

• 2:25:28Speaker 06

  And it's just been awesome. And so Austin's in charge. He's running the whole thing. But, you know, part of this is like for me, watching him and others and Austin go to work and, you know, knowing where to point DA, you know, I'm sitting in that, I'm sitting in that draft interview room and I'm looking over and there's, there's Will with championships and the pop pedigree today. Austin's got a ring. Avery Bradley's in there. He's got a ring. And I see DA with three rings and pretty much built the fourth. Like, I'm like, all right, this is, this is a championship. I like, I'm not going to know more than these people and I, you know,

• 2:26:11Speaker 06

  and I just need to, you know, make a couple of hard decisions a year or be a tiebreaker here.

• 2:26:16Bill Simmons?

  Well, the other thing with Danny is, he's basically, he's such an anomaly with the draft. First of all, you never know. I just know from all the Celtic stuff, nobody knows what he thinks until like the last week. That's why if there's any stories that come about, Utah likes this guy, Utah likes that guy. It's like, I promise they're not true. No, Danny's not even going to tell people it works.

• 2:26:36Speaker 06

  And I'll just tell you that I just rode back with him on the entire plane trying to debrief.

• 2:26:41Bill Simmons?

  Just trying to figure out what he thinks. He won't tell you.

• 2:26:44Speaker 06

  I've been through this three times. He does not want to influence. Danny's a true seeker. He really is. He doesn't lie. I'm sure he loves you. Like you call him and you're like, Danny, what do you think? He tells the truth, like in a weird way, you know, or he won't say anything like, or he'll, he'll look, he's not gonna lead something weird, but like Danny's point of view is going to be something that, and I, I believe him on this. I believe that he did not know, you know, he, he was drafting one in that, you know, in that famous Jason Tatum where he goes back to three and then Jalen going back to three. I honestly believe he did not know who he was gonna go take until right up to it.

• 2:27:23Speaker 06

  And the reason why is because I kinda got a read the day before the draft with Keonte, and then got a different read 10 minutes before the draft.

• 2:27:38Speaker 06

  And so what I'm really excited for is that Austin can turn to his left and have that, that as well. And, and Austin's, Austin's an incredible, incredible talent evaluator.

• 2:27:53Speaker 06

  Like, you know, sitting next to that guy your entire life, like you learn, you learn that side of it. Plus, you know, but he thinks for himself. And so that's, that's what you want. And then, you know, with Will, being able to have these guys talk to Will and Will's a unique coach, just awesome. And, you know, young and I'm excited to see what he can do.

• 2:28:16Bill Simmons?

  The, the whole lottery reform thing, were you, are you involved in any committees yet? Have you jumped on anything? Were you involved in the reform?

• 2:28:22Speaker 06

  I'm on the, I'm on the media committee. I'm on the planning committee and I, I'm on the social justice committee as well. And, um, you know, I think they've, they've actually done a really good job of regardless of the committee here of just like, they had a bunch of GM calls. They basically set up the hotline. You call us with your ideas. And, you know, our group has talked to the league and other people in the league, you know, four or five times. Just to say, hey, and, and the answer is always like, yeah, happy to schedule a call. I'd love to listen. Well, have you thought about this? You thought about that? So, you know, in, in some ways, it's a little bit like us naming the mammoth. Like we're putting it out to the, the fan boat, which brings a lot of input in,

• 2:29:07Speaker 06

  but it's within a tighter group and that's hard to decipher. But I think the league is looking at it all and saying, hey, we're all partners in this. We want to get it right. Let's make sure we understand every view. I'm empathetic to the rebuilding, but I think everyone's going to have to almost take a step back and say, hey, what's best for the product? It's not going to be perfect. And by the way,

• 2:29:37Speaker 06

  right or wrong, like luck's going to play a piece of this. And then what happens when you get the teams, the humans and the agents and all of that involved? Like it's all, it's all great until you get the people involved. Right? And like you see that with every CBA, like there's unintended consequences and this happens and, you know, um, you know, certain things trigger, but, um,

• 2:30:01Speaker 06

  I don't know.

• 2:30:02Bill Simmons?

  The only thing I really care about is that I don't think teams should, like what happened with the Spurs, I think they have to figure out three top four picks in a row, like little wrinkles like that. So you can't just basically, I know the odds are going to be stacked a little differently anyway, but, um, it just feels like having that much luck, three years in a, in a row, they can kind of litigate a little bit.

• 2:30:25Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so I think we'll come way more. I mean, there's stuff that's being reported on the side. There's stuff that's being reported on the other side of how to do this. But no, I think there's something like, is it, is it, I'll just speak for myself. Like I'd be okay now that we're the second pick, like, okay, great. You can't come in the top five next year. It solves a lot of problems.

• 2:30:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:44Speaker 06

  All right. The next thing is like, hey, if you just unrestrict the picks that are restricted, one through eight or one through seven, that also solves a lot of problems.

• 2:30:54Bill Simmons?

  I agree.

• 2:30:54Speaker 06

  Okay. And so I think, I think that that's fair. And it's like, okay, then draft well. But when, when you're a team, I, I'm also super empathetic to the teams that.

• 2:31:07Speaker 06

  Can't get out because we are such a star driven league and hockey.

• 2:31:13Speaker 06

  It's a little different. You're grabbing guys, you're developing them, you're putting them down in the minors. The, the reward for one ball or one spot in this sport is so high.

• 2:31:26Bill Simmons?

  Right. Well, they're in hockey, there's so much, in hockey, there's so much volatility, even with the stars. Like you see like Taylor Hall right now in Carolina. Where all the, like the Bruins had him, he was good. Like these guys can do this. Where in basketball, you have these fixed guys that year after year, you don't have the same volatility, I don't think.

• 2:31:46Speaker 06

  Or the young guys, it's very rare for a young guy in hockey to come in and make such immediate impact. Like there's like a celebration.

• 2:31:54Bill Simmons?

  Once every eight years.

• 2:31:55Speaker 06

  And then, you know, you look this year and you got VJ playing in the playoffs. You've got, I mean, that's, it's pretty impressive.

• 2:32:01Bill Simmons?

  Dylan Harper, all this stuff.

• 2:32:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, Dylan Harper, like it's, it's pretty impressive.

• 2:32:05Bill Simmons?

  Do you feel like you're part of a new, cause I remember we've had these generations with NBA owners. And in the mid 2000s, that all of a sudden you had Cuban comes in, Wick grows back on the Celtics and they're like these younger guys that came in and they were, you know, younger, they were more from the tech side. They were not trying to blow the league up a little bit, but maybe push the league in a different direction. And now it feels like we're heading that way again with some of the guys from your generation, like, you know, like the Charlotte owners and.

• 2:32:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:32:36Bill Simmons?

  Chism's coming in with the Celtics, like it feels like something generationally is shifting and I don't know what.

• 2:32:43Speaker 06

  A hundred percent. It's, it's really clear. I mean, you've, you've seen the, the asset class of sports become something that's super desirable. You're seeing also, you know, the groups of people coming in shift from family owned to more like, you know, kind of towers that have been stacked together.

• 2:33:02Bill Simmons?

  Like the Lakers, yeah.

• 2:33:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, ownership groups that come in and,

• 2:33:08Speaker 06

  you know, I also think the days of no one's, like let's just be honest, like in no other world would you acquire a business for the size of the price of what, you know, Portland did and turn it over to somebody. That would never happen anywhere in business.

• 2:33:24Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:33:25Speaker 06

  You'd never be like, okay, I'm paying this for this luxury brand. Okay, yeah, someone like I'll come see it next December. That that's unheard of. And so now with, you know, I don't know what's cause or effect, but like, as you look at the the risk people are taking to get in here, I think long gone are the days where the the principal or the main principal is not heavily involved.

• 2:33:57Speaker 06

  We're not going to see a day where a board's running it, a family office is just running it on the side. Those days are gone. They're gone in football. They're gone in everything else just because of of what it is. And actually, if someone's stretching this far to to acquire one of these, they they also really understand the community aspect of it as well.

• 2:34:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:17Speaker 06

  Because they they care about that as well. And so I think that we're just in a new world. And you've seen it like in our world, it's it's Patrick Duman, it's Ishbia, it's it's obviously, you know, Gabe and and everyone up in Charlotte with Rick and, you know, I think the wrestlers are are someone new and coming in and like, you look at you look at the involvement, not only just with their or what Dunn has done in Carolina and now like, like in a round and what they're building out, like, it's a decision to say, hey, I'm actually could probably do what I want. This is what I want to go do. And like, I want to be involved. Now, that's a tough balance

• 2:34:59Speaker 06

  as well. Because I I know enough. I'm look, I'm a Hooper. I play all the time. Like, I watch basketball. I'm a junkie. I watch every game. But like in this draft, for example, I I I'm going to say this, like, our families shouldn't want me drafting this person.

• 2:35:24Speaker 06

  Like when you've got the team with Austin and Danny and group like you should feel a lot more comfortable than with me.

• 2:35:31Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:35:32Speaker 06

  Now, I want to opine and like have a thing, but like how how involved you get is like you you got to be a little careful because you need to be involved enough to give the team air cover. Right? Because everything's not going to go well and you need to understand the body of work that people are putting in. But at the same time, that's what gives them air cover to be able to have a long tenure. I often find that when people are too far out of it or they don't live in market, they become really reactive with coaches and GMs and stuff like that. When you're in it every day, you know that, all right, I know you're doing all the right things, we just need a break.

• 2:36:16Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:36:18Speaker 06

  And I I learned this at Qualtrics just leading out, you know, when we opened up in Europe, like I was in every single detail in Europe and like going through and I remember my board coming to me going, you know what, let's pull the plug on Europe, it's going too slow, it's not working. I'm like, hold on, hold on, hold on, it's here, it's here. And then four quarters later, the thing pops. Or when we started shifting our model and it's like, hey, you know, this isn't working, it's super expensive. No, no, no, hold on. Everything's always taken longer than I thought.

• 2:36:45Bill Simmons?

  And if you weren't as heavily involved, you you might have been

• 2:36:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:36:48Bill Simmons?

  overrun by the board.

• 2:36:50Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so it's it's you got you got to have polar opposite emotions to be able to manage it. You got to be able to manage, I got to be over involved, but also let the team work.

• 2:37:00Bill Simmons?

  But like when they come to you with the Jaren Jackson trade, ultimately, you're you're stamping that one way or that like if you didn't want to do that, the trade's not happening.

• 2:37:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, for sure. If I don't want to do it, it's not happening.

• 2:37:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because you're taking on a big salary, you're giving up draft picks, like you're not going to be like, okay, I hate this, but I trust you guys. You at some point, you have to be a little on board.

• 2:37:24Speaker 06

  No, and they want to read me in, but in our organization, the way we're lined up, they want to call me and talk about it.

• 2:37:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:31Speaker 06

  But they also know that if Will, Danny and Austin, or Will, Austin and Danny are aligned, I'm gonna have a hard time saying, honestly, I'm gonna have a hard time really saying like, no, we shouldn't do that. And, cause I know that they've wrestled this thing down and thought through everything. Cause they attack it differently. No one's gonna get fired for, for the way they're thinking about this. And, you know, they know they can speak their mind. They know they can speak their mind with each other. And, you know, and then when we do something, I've got to be able to be like, all right, guys, like, put your hand in the middle. We're riding a dime with this thing.

• 2:38:09Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:38:10Speaker 06

  I'm cool. Like, the one thing I hate is like, um, you know, just this revisionist history. And in sports, it's all the time. Should've done this. We should've done that. No, you were in the decision room.

• 2:38:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:21Speaker 06

  Like, if we're, if we're doing this, no one's gonna say that. No one's gonna say we should've, or I didn't say that. Like, if you, if you wanna say it, speak up right now. But this, cause the second we pulled the trigger,

• 2:38:32Speaker 06

  it was your idea as much as it was anyone else's.

• 2:38:34Bill Simmons?

  Is it daunting?

• 2:38:35Speaker 06

  That's how we're rolling.

• 2:38:36Bill Simmons?

  Is it daunting to be in the West and watch these playoffs when you see San Antonio and OKC? In your conference, loaded with these guys, thinking like, Jesus, we don't just have one mountain. It's like two mountains next to each other that we have to climb here.

• 2:38:51Speaker 06

  No, I, I think, I don't think it's ever, you know, I don't, I definitely don't think it's more daunting than going up against 23 in 19, or, you know, 1997.

• 2:39:03Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:39:03Speaker 06

  Right?

• 2:39:06Speaker 06

  I think, I think that, you know, they, they're both in a pretty good spot. They are mountains to climb.

• 2:39:16Speaker 06

  I, I would argue that, you know, there's people out there that say we're right behind it with where we sit and everything that's going on and going forward.

• 2:39:23Bill Simmons?

  With the lottery, I think you're probably third with assets right now in the West. So I agree with that.

• 2:39:28Speaker 06

  But, but I don't think any, like,

• 2:39:33Speaker 06

  It just shows how competitive this is and like what you're shooting for like, you know, it is, it is what it is. And, you know, I know, you know, and D Wade's and, and our ownership group and like, and just talking to him and like knowing that history of what it's like and what you had to do and really asking about the grind. Like, it's pretty crazy to be able to turn to Danny and D Wade and be like, walk me through like, what you thought in, you know, March

• 2:40:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:03Speaker 06

  of this year when you guys won. And it was like, this was stressful. We didn't think this, this is who we were up against. We thought there was no way. They had smoked us that. Then you get into the, the moment. Then what happened? You know, it's like this changed or this changed or this is how it is. And, you know, that's, that's kind of where it's at.

• 2:40:24Bill Simmons?

  Those are two similar teams, right? The 06 Heat that Wade won the title with, and then the 08 Celtics that Danny won the title with, where in two years, there was the move, and then there was the move after the move. And then all of a sudden they're in the mix. It's like, whoa, we're here. Let's go. Like that, the 08 Celtics changed in nine months.

• 2:40:43Speaker 06

  Yeah. And then even, you know, the battle within the series.

• 2:40:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. There's that too. I'll be interested to see how you handle that. We haven't even seen that side of you yet. But you're in like a conference final, losing your mind on the, on the sidelines. Wade, I had another question for you about expansion.

• 2:41:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:41:05Bill Simmons?

  Which, it seems like it got floated out there.

• 2:41:10Bill Simmons?

  Adam has the two cities he seems to want to have. Be interested to see if they could get the money for those two teams. But then everybody has to vote on it. And you go from 30 to 32 teams, which is adding two teams to the league that you now have to beat. You're, you're losing media share.

• 2:41:26Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:41:28Bill Simmons?

  Do we have the right amount of teams? Like, where do you stand on this? Are you even allowed to talk about it?

• 2:41:34Speaker 06

  I mean, there's nothing I would say that I probably wouldn't say publicly or privately or whatever it is. I kinda, I'm a guy. I kinda have one story. This is it. And so, you know, I think you need to zoom out because, look, part of me is like Vegas is extremely close, right? It's extremely close to us. Yeah, very close. I mean, you might have seen the jersey exchange we did with the Vegas Knights. Everyone's like, oh, you were just trolling the Knights in the playoffs where you, you put out that you'll exchange a jersey, Vegas Knights jersey to a Mammoth jersey and people are lined up around the block. It's like, no, no, no, no. You, the world doesn't understand that like, you know,

• 2:42:17Speaker 06

  Southern Utah is 90 minutes from Vegas. Like, when we opened up with a Mammoth, like, the Knights were the hockey team.

• 2:42:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:25Speaker 06

  And so, on the selfish side, it's a little bit like, hey, that, that impacts our market a little more than probably most. And, you know, as you look in the West, you've already got some hills to climb, you know, two great markets, which I think they are, that are being floated. Like, I want to have to get to our ultimate goal. We don't want to make it harder. And so, I think there's a lot of people that could easily see or take that view of it, or take, hey, how much money are you gonna get? Or that's the view. But if you look at everything that Adam's doing, holistically, and if you look at where sports

• 2:43:05Speaker 06

  is, why I'm so bullish on the NBA? We're probably the only league that can have the reach and the impact globally that this sport provides. So, you look at that NBA logo, my sister-in-law's from Africa. She's from Zambia, who married my brother. And, right or wrong, what people think about NBA Africa, brands go over to Africa and it's really hard. It's really hard to translate over time. They end up into something different. But, you know, just being in draft interviews and seeing these kids have come over, like

• 2:43:47Speaker 06

  that NBA logo means something over there and it is the logo of basketball.

• 2:43:54Speaker 06

  And you go, you're looking at Europe. We focus on the teams or this or that, but if you fast forward 20 years and you say, okay, NBA Europe. You know, there's a league with a chance to actually have a view of all of sports. With that NBA logo, it's, it's pretty amazing. And if, if Seattle and, and Vegas are part of that bigger picture, like I'll do it. Like I'm a partner, like I think that's a great, or, or we'll have that discussion. But I, I look at it more holistically as not a seller of the NBA.

• 2:44:34Speaker 06

  It's more of like, holy cow, like we, we have a sport with a ball that has a great mobile viewing experience. Like one of the best. I can watch NBA games from my phone and I love it. Like our reach is insane. And by the way, people can have a team, people can pick it up. Like that's how I look at it globally and say, hey, how many users are we? You always hear those stats that, oh, Manchester City or Man U has 1.2 million fans. Like if you look at the NBA in that way, I'm grateful that we're making the investment now for Europe. Someone already made the investment in the W. Someone already made the investment in Africa.

• 2:45:19Speaker 06

  Because we, we truly have, you know, a, a world who, who wants that product. And I think that's, that's how I look at it. And that's a weird way, that's not a, can it just? So I think, I don't look at it just those two teams. I look at it as a global NBA brand, like where it can go. And you know, you can see being a part of Vegas and you know, it, it works.

• 2:45:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cause like financially, you'd be getting like, let's say it's 15 billion for both teams. You're getting a $500 million check to give up a, a small percentage of your media rights.

• 2:45:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't, I don't really.

• 2:45:57Bill Simmons?

  But that's not how you're looking at it.

• 2:45:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, not at all.

• 2:46:00Bill Simmons?

  It's like, I get it.

• 2:46:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, like it's holistic and you know, there's not many sports that could be doing what the NBA is doing.

• 2:46:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, well, you can see the NFL, they just announced their schedule. They have nine international games. They're clearly very wary of this.

• 2:46:13Speaker 06

  They're super aggressive.

• 2:46:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:15Speaker 06

  Super aggressive. They're like, hey, I want Christmas Day, I want this, I want that. Like, like all these leagues, I mean, we're all, like, you look at what's going on and I think that.

• 2:46:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:25Speaker 06

  We, we truly, I think Adam's vision's a lot bigger and I think they're doing a really good job with it.

• 2:46:30Bill Simmons?

  Last question. Walk me into that room of 30 really rich, successful people. It's the board of governors and you guys have to talk about stuff and argue about stuff. And you're just at this big giant table in some room and you're all, and you're all successful people who are used to getting your own way. The entire time and now you have to hash shit out. What is that room like? What was it like the first time you went in there?

• 2:46:57Speaker 06

  Um.

• 2:47:00Speaker 06

  I mean, it's, it's hard. It's a daunting task. I mean, you, you know, if I, if I take a step back and if I'm the league, it's like, okay. How do you have a room of 30 people who all have opinions, who are all going through something that are all trying to kill each other? That have to come in together and like, what do I do? Do I just? And there's a couple of camps that look differently. I'm fortunate to be a part of a different, a couple of different leagues and have like, do you just say, hey, here's a memo. Here's what we're discussing or do we actually care? And open it up for debate and let everyone speak their piece? And then try to make the most humane decision? Knowing that it's almost impossible.

• 2:47:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And you have people at different, you have the small market teams, you have the, I don't want to pay the luxury tax teams. You have the, I have a lot of money, I want to win the title, I don't care what that cost team. You have the people that generate a bunch of revenue, they don't want to share it with everybody. So there's agendas everywhere.

• 2:47:57Speaker 06

  Nothing's like one little quadrant.

• 2:48:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:00Speaker 06

  It's like vectors, like every issue is like seven quadrants.

• 2:48:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:06Speaker 06

  Right? There's never anything that's like one quadrant. And so it's really, it's really hard. So on that front, like I think going into these things, it's, it's in anything, if that was your board or anything else, like it's not. You know, probably the most productive way to have a meeting.

• 2:48:28Bill Simmons?

  But how else are you gonna do it? You kind of have to do it.

• 2:48:30Speaker 06

  But yeah, there's no, there's no way else to do it. And I think what our current setup is, I don't think there's anyone in that room that doesn't feel like they can go and give input and they're at least listened to. And that's, that's pretty hard to do.

• 2:48:45Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:48:46Speaker 06

  And so I, I would argue that, you know, whether it's Tom Dundon or whether it's, you know, even Jim Dolan or someone else, like, I feel like, you know, whether it's Mickey or like, they're able to, to do it in the capacity and the ability to add them to, to hear and maybe even feel that I see you is, it's a gift. And so I think that, you know, and look, I've been on someone that, I'll just be honest with you, I've been on the opposite side.

• 2:49:18Speaker 06

  Maybe even my point of view at the time, a couple of different ways, I've been fine, I've been doing that, like, in, like, I'm cool with how, I'm really cool with how we're, we're going and I'm even more bullish than ever on the NBA. And, and I'm excited to be doing this for a really, really long time.

• 2:49:37Bill Simmons?

  What's your fine, what's your fine total right now? You're down 500?

• 2:49:41Speaker 06

  I'm down more than that.

• 2:49:43Bill Simmons?

  How many, are you in seven figures yet?

• 2:49:45Speaker 06

  No, no, I'm not, I'm not human or, or Draymond level.

• 2:49:50Bill Simmons?

  All right, try to, try to keep that number below seven figures.

• 2:49:54Speaker 06

  No, it's, it's part of it. I mean, there's a process and I get it and, you know, it's just, it's just the tax.

• 2:50:03Bill Simmons?

  Um, congrats on everything. I think it's been cool to watch from afar. No, I mean, you're, you're from there and all of a sudden you own these two teams and they've become even better assets and staples of the community than they used to be and you have this whole thing going now. Hopefully you'll get some luck in the lottery, but that's the thing, you never know. You have these four guys at the top and it's like, pick seven might be the best guy in this draft.

• 2:50:27Speaker 06

  It is, it is such a, you know, and, and the funny thing is, is like,

• 2:50:34Speaker 06

  Like I, I, I remember Will the first day, a couple of years ago, he's like, okay, great. Everyone come. I don't care where you were drafted. I don't know what school you went to. I don't care anything. Like your life starts today, right? Like, like, once the season starts, no one, no one cares internally, like where you were drafted, how it was. Like you got veterans that have come in and in the second round and, you know, you look at the Rudy Gobert's, you look at the Jokic, it's like, it really has to do with like, who, who we're going to invest in and taking a 10 year view on this. And, um, I just feel really fortunate with the group that has chosen to do this with us. You know, starting with Austin and then Will and, um, and DA, obviously like, what a blessing to have that dude around.

• 2:51:17Bill Simmons?

  You know, I remember being at the 22 finals and they invited Danny to sit

• 2:51:24Bill Simmons?

  courtside with the Celtics owners for one of the games and Will Hardy was really just involved. Maybe it was 23, it was 22 or 23. When, when did you hire Will Hardy? Was it 23?

• 2:51:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think it was 23.

• 2:51:37Bill Simmons?

  Maybe it was the 23 playoffs, but I could see Danny looking at Will Hardy and watching how involved he was. And I said to my dad, oh no, Danny's studying Will Hardy. This is bad. Cause we knew Will Hardy, everybody loved Will Hardy, but I was like so not surprised when you hired Will Hardy.

• 2:51:55Speaker 06

  Well, people would ask and be like, he's like, I don't know. I like what that, I like what boss. But where was the youngest coach in the league at the time?

• 2:52:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he was great.

• 2:52:03Speaker 06

  We hired him and he's been.

• 2:52:05Bill Simmons?

  I'm glad he finally gets to go for wins now.

• 2:52:08Speaker 06

  He's an awesome partner. Like, and it's, it's, you know, it's funny, like Danny, Austin and I all golf with Will. You know, we're all golfers and you know, it's, it's fun. Like we can all just go play. And then the time the end of the round is, we have nothing else to talk about.

• 2:52:27Bill Simmons?

  Like a lot of business.

• 2:52:28Speaker 06

  All right. And like a lot of times they're managing me. I think it's like, hey, look, okay. Who's, whose job is it to go manage Ryan a little bit? And, you know, it's been good. We're super fortunate.

• 2:52:40Bill Simmons?

  All right. I'm happy for you. Congratulations. Congratulations on everything. Thank you for all the time. Look forward to seeing you. I want to come to Salt Lake for a game at some point. So.

• 2:52:47Speaker 06

  You should. It'll change your life.

• 2:52:49Bill Simmons?

  I'll let you know. Hang out with the Angels. Good to see you. Thank you.

• 2:52:51Speaker 06

  Let's go. Take care.

• 2:52:53Bill Simmons?

  All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Brian Curtis and Ryan Smith and my dad and Gahal and Eduardo. Again, we don't know the schedule for Sunday yet, so check out on social media. We're definitely going live on Netflix at some point. Will it be after game seven? Will it be after two game sevens? Will it be after just one game one? We don't know. We'll find out tomorrow night and you have a whole weekend to watch Bore App because that's going to be the next rewatchables on Monday. Enjoy the weekend. I will see you on Sunday or Sunday night.

• 2:53:43Bill Simmons?

  Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18 plus and present in DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MYRESSET. Call 888-797777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 877-8HOPENY, or text HOPENY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867. This episode is brought to you by 7Up. Okay, this one's a case for conspiracy bills. Let's bring them in. Ever noticed lemon is everywhere from lemon recipes to lemon-scented cleaning

• 2:54:28Bill Simmons?

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