The Red-Hot Knicks, OKC’s Beat-Up-Wemby Ploy, a Mini-Mailbag, and ‘Survivor 50’ | With Rob Mahoney, Jason Concepcion, and Mallory Rubin

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Rob Mahoney go LIVE on Netflix to react to Game 2 between the Cavs and Knicks before recapping Thunder-Spurs Game 2 and answering some mailbag questions (1:16). Then, Jason Concepcion and Mallory Rubin join to break down the ‘Survivor 50’ finale and recap their favorite parts of the season (01:07:07). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Rob Mahoney, Jason Concepcion, and Mallory Rubin Producers: Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Chris Wohlers Find the right talent with Hiring Pro at https://linkedin.com/simmons 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.

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Excitement is in the air. That's right. It's the start of NBA season. I can't wait to get together with friends, share some Michelob Ultras and watch Tip Off. Plus, as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting you closer to the action with experiences that make you feel like you're courtside to actual courtside tickets. Enter now for a chance to win at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2026. Ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes and details.

• 0:47Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. The conference finals finally is here. We are down to four teams. Take your note or go down, take your shot with FanDuel. Get closer to the action. And as you know, I've been telling you for years, FanDuel, the best place to bet the teams, players and plays during the NBA postseason. Build a same game parlay for a shot at a better payout. Or try live betting and jump into the action after Tip Off. Or just follow me and my picks because every once in a while I'll put them on social. Download the FanDuel Sportsbook app right now and play your game. 21-plus select states or 18-plus DC, Kentucky, Wyoming. Game prob call 1-800-GAMBLER or call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat. Connecticut.

• 1:57Bill Simmons?

  Bill Simmons Podcast live here on Netflix. Rob Mahoney is here, one of the stars of Euphoria, season three. I think you've done a great job. Coming up on this podcast, Rob and I are going to talk about. Knicks, Cavs, the Knicks are up 2-0. We're gonna talk some OKC-San Antonio. We're gonna do a mailbag and then a little bit later on, Jason Concepcion and Mallory Rubin together, talking Survivor 50, three hours last night on CBS. So that is the plan for tonight. All right, nine straight playoff wins for the Knicks. I'm gonna start here. We had some injuries in the game last night, San Antonio, OKC. I don't know, Harper, it seems like, might be back for game three, but definitely not 100%. And then J-Dub, who knows? Darren

• 2:38Bill Simmons?

  Fox, high ankle sprain. The Knicks have won nine straight playoff games. Is it fair to start thinking about the title if you're a Knicks fan at this point?

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Gah, I mean, now you're just daring them, right?

• 2:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  You don't want to get ahead of it. Here, let's, let's look at it this way. Josh Hart came out of game one with a ton of humility and was like, I understand, this isn't about me. I'm gonna do whatever the team needs me to do. I'm gonna accept my role in the series. And the basketball gods rewarded him with one of the shooting performances of his life. So if you're a Knicks fan, I would say, don't do anything that's gonna get you in trouble. Be responsible out there, including not looking too far ahead, even though it is very tempting right now.

• 3:15Bill Simmons?

  Take it one game at a time. But I will say this, I thought the winner of Spurs and, and Thunder was gonna be the winner of the 2026 title. The injuries are definitely gonna even things out, plus the fact that the Knicks have been on a heater. I was really impressed how they attacked Cleveland. Because at halftime, the Cavs hadn't shot that well, and yet it was a close game, which I always, I thought the Knicks were gonna win tonight. But it was a close game at halftime and it felt like the Cavs hadn't gotten going. And I was like, this is interesting. Hart took 12 shots in the first half. That's a bad sign. You don't want him to take the most shots of your team. Are the Cavs gonna make a run? And then all of a sudden, the Knicks went the other way. They went on an 18-0

• 3:59Bill Simmons?

  run in the, in the third quarter. Hart did end up taking the most shots, right?

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, a ton of shots. I mean,

• 4:06Bill Simmons?

  21.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  He took the most shots by any Nick not named Jalen Brunson at any point in these playoffs. So it was,

• 4:12Bill Simmons?

  Oh my god.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  And was dared to do it. And I have to say, is, do you think there's anything more satisfying for a role player? Than this than being dared to be a scorer when you don't have that reputation. You deliver in this huge way in this huge moment. And you get the satisfaction of winning. You get the satisfaction of scoring a bunch of points. You get the satisfaction of proving people wrong. And you get really the icing on the cake, just getting to rub it in constantly after every three, after every like drive. It's just gotta be a pretty sweet night for Josh Hart.

• 4:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's like a double middle finger.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Just let him fly.

• 4:42Bill Simmons?

  Really gonna give me this again? I'm making him. Josh Hart, I don't know if every playoff team has a guy like this, but Josh Hart is definitely the. If he's playing well, the Knicks seem pretty unstoppable guy. Right? We've seen this in playoff series. We saw this in some regular season games when he's going. They just suddenly look uh, pretty, pretty formidable. Um, I thought Brunson was outstanding tonight.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:07Bill Simmons?

  In, in a way like a better game than he played in game one, even though he went on that, you know, heroic heater down this stretch. Uh, I thought the game management tonight, you know, figuring out immediately what they're doing. He went back to his old Villanova running the show kind of ways. Um, they just dissected that, that trap at the top. They're playing four and three. I liked everything they did. I, I gotta say like, I gotta hand it to Mike Brown. I bet the Knicks were like really well coached in that game. I was impressed.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Really well coached for the last several weeks. I mean, they've just looked like a team that has answers to everything, that knows exactly when to pivot and how. And yeah, if you're looking at the box score for this game, it may feel like Jalen Brunson was under wraps. He was seeing a lot of pressure and you're right, he was so surgical about it. And I think a huge part of why the Knicks are here now and they feel as dominant as you mentioned up top is. They've reached this point of, of stability in their offense where no one feels like a specialist. Like Josh Hart can have a game like this that's explosive, but Mikal Bridges was doing everything offensively and was awesome. Cat is driving really responsibly and hitting threes and posting up. OG and Anoby can overwhelm like any defender in front of him at almost any time right now. They're just in such a comfortable place because all of these guys get to be dynamic.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  And that's a credit to Mike Brown, but it's also a credit to Jalen Brunson for understanding how to tap into everybody.

• 6:24Bill Simmons?

  And Bridges got going really since midway through that Atlanta series.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:28Bill Simmons?

  Where that trade seemed like a disaster, then it didn't seem like that bad of a disaster. Now it's like, hey, if they don't make that trade, maybe they don't win the finals. But I really like how he's playing. I thought he was really good in game one. And in general, like, you know, you have guys sacrificing all over the place on a team like this. But as you get closer, this is 10 playoff wins for them now, as you get closer to the ring, suddenly it doesn't matter. And that's why somebody like Josh Hart, it was a little embarrassing for him game one, but he's ready to go game two. There were a couple of other things that happened though. The Cavs bench was awful.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:03Bill Simmons?

  And I don't, so at home, whatever you're gonna get, whatever you're gonna get from your bench guys. But one of the things I liked about, so Merrill was one for eight, Struce was one for seven, Tyson was one for four.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Dean Wade one for three.

• 7:16Bill Simmons?

  Wade Harden was one for three, yeah.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  So combined, that's 12% for those guys.

• 7:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And Merrill, I thought it was interesting, they were, Legler noticed it. Legler was talking about it during the game, like that he, that he was getting a little hang doggy. And I was thinking about, you know, the half bang from being in game one with Merrill.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:35Bill Simmons?

  The bah, whatever that was, and that not going in, it felt like he carried that into this game. He's kind of like, I really thought he was becoming like a real playoff guy.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:46Bill Simmons?

  And like a guy that when he was open, you just felt like it was going in. And now that's felt like that's going sideways. They had to rely on Schroder, which has been fool's gold for what, 13 teams of the league at this point?

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Including this one. I mean, he hasn't been good for six straight games now. Like just really has not made an impact and they have to play him and he needs to handle the ball because otherwise Donovan Mitchell and James Harden are just gonna get run into the ground. So he has to be out there unfortunately.

• 8:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the, the things I didn't like about this Cavs team, when you just talked about could this team win three straight rounds? Can they guard people like Maxey and people like Brunson? Could they guard those kind of smaller scoring guards?

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:26Bill Simmons?

  They give up a lot of threes. Usually they're open. That's just kind of who they are defensively. They're a middle of the road defense team. You saw that today, too. And it just feels like the Knicks are starting to look like a bad matchup for them. The Knicks were asleep for the first three quarters of game one. But since then have been in control of the series. And I don't know what the moves are here for the Cavs, which I of course said after game one of OKC San Antonio. And then the move was just to go big and bully and grab and pull Wemby's arm for the four quarters.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Shockingly effective if you can get away with it.

• 8:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I'm not sure what the moves are here. Like even looking at the minutes, Allen played 28. And it was a minus 20. Mobley played 36. They were trying at one point, they had three guards with Tyson and Mobley. They were just trying all kinds of different things and they can never really land on anything. So what's the answer? What do they do?

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, the big question is, do you want to continue to guard Josh Hart like this? Like, do you want to try this again? Or do you have to go completely back to the drawing board in terms of the coverage? I asked this, and it may seem crazy after the game that Josh Hart just had. But it's like, if they aren't guarding him this way, they don't have a lot of defensive alternatives. Like, it's really hard to contain Jalen Brunson. It's really hard to keep James Harden from getting switched into that matchup as we saw in game one. When you don't have like a Jared Allen just kind of shadowing everything on the back line. And so they have to make a lot of hard defensive decisions. Offensively, I just think if your role players are shooting like this, you're gonna lose. Like, there's really not a lot you can do to adjust to that. To the point that, I mean, one of my favorite looks for the Cavs is Harden and Allen, and they put three shooters around them.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Usually it's Dean Wade, Max Strus, Sam Merrill, all three of those guys. It's often like as clean and easy as Cleveland's offense will ever look. They will rack up points for little bursts of time when that group is on the floor. But if three of those guys can't shoot, you're cooked. Like, it kind of is that simple. Those guys are gonna have to play better. They're gonna have to make some kind of adjustment defensively. I actually would not bail on leaving Josh Hart just yet because of that desperation, because of the lack of alternatives. I think they should make him prove it one more time before they really go back to the drawing board on it. But look, they were gonna be behind the eight ball in this series. The Knicks have played like a juggernaut. The Cavs have been great survivors. But it's not as if they have all of these options to toggle between.

• 10:46Bill Simmons?

  So the Hart decision.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:49Bill Simmons?

  Atkinson after the game and in the interviews yesterday was talking about he was doing some 1% thing, how hard the Brunson shots were, which I agreed with. I said that after the game. I thought the shot making was extraordinary by Brunson. There was only maybe two of those times where it really felt like Harden got cooked, but for the most part, those were really hard shots.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  But also guess what? He's Jalen Brunson and he hits a lot of really hard shots.

• 11:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but I, but I guess my question is, you seem like you're overreacting to the last eight minutes of the game and underreacting to the first 40.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:20Bill Simmons?

  And then they swing completely the other way and they're like, here's what we're gonna do. We leave, we leave Hart open. Once he starts making a couple, I'm getting rid of that strategy, especially at home. Like, I could see doing that in Cleveland, but it just felt like the more comfortable he was getting. You know, we see this sometimes with the Hacka Shack. Well, they'll start doing the Hacka Shack and then the guy will start making them.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:42Bill Simmons?

  And he almost gets in a groove with shooting them and then it's like, all right, stop. Like, he's in a groove now. I always thought with Hacka Shack, you should be doing it sporadically. Like, you do it, you don't do it, you do it. Like, you kind of keep the guy in the heels. I would have tried that with, almost treated this like a football game with Hart, where sometimes we leave him alone, sometimes we don't and just try to mix it up. I don't, I just didn't love this strategy. I have not loved the coaching in this series. And then there's the Mitchell piece too about, is he hurt? Is he not hurt? Because in the first quarter, they're showing us replays of him and it looks like he's dragging his leg. Then he's doing a Euro step. Like, what's going on with him?

• 12:16Speaker 01

  I think he's definitely hurt. I mean, even injured players can have athletic moments and we've seen some of those from Donovan Mitchell, but you'll see him just like absolutely chugging, working super hard just to run up the floor on some of these possessions. So I don't know what it is that's ailing him, but he's not his explosive best all the time. He is a, like, he's a great shooter and he's so strong and his footwork is so good. He's just gonna like by force of will be an impact player in a lot of these games, but I don't think he has it there all the time. And James Harden clearly doesn't have it there all the time. And this is maybe the critical flaw in the Cavs' design is with both of those guys playing that way, so much of what Jared Allen and Evan Mobley do offensively is drafting off of the attention that Donovan Mitchell and James Harden get. And that's

• 12:59Speaker 01

  why you saw like Evan Mobley put up 10 points in the first quarter of this game like it was nothing. Super easy.

• 13:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  All like with that, like playing within the flow of the game. Four points the rest of the way because the Knicks changed their defense a little bit, overreacted a little less, made these guys earn it. Also got out to Evan Mobley on some of his shots too, to take away the Josh Hart style open looks they were giving him. Jared Allen is kind of a similar thing. Like it's as soon as you contain the dribble penetration, those are not two bigs who are going to force it, who are going to put up a bunch of points unless they're working the offensive glass. And that evaporated for the, for the Cavs over the course of this game too.

• 13:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Allen and Mobley at halftime were 23 and 10.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 13:38Bill Simmons?

  That did not continue. And then Harden had 12 points at halftime. With about halfway through the fourth quarter, he still had 12 points.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:45Bill Simmons?

  And it was like, what? Oh, is he, is he out there? Uh, and then he had a couple, couple late, kind of after the game was decided. I don't know, Rob, I don't know what the move is. The Cavs have been better at home for the most part, even if they did have that game six stinker. I think the variable that's going to be different this time. You're going to have Knicks fans there. I don't know what the number is, but it's going to be more than you think. And the Knicks fans travel.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:12Bill Simmons?

  They seem to be everywhere. Cleveland is just close enough to like four different cities. Uh, there'll be secondary market stuff and I have a feeling there's going to be, I don't know, maybe 15, 20% there. So the energy is going to be a little different than maybe a Cleveland Detroit game. And then we'll see like, is Mitchell healthy? Are they going to do the same thing with Struce again? Is this just the next time? Like it's really starting to feel that way. With the, the Brunson, the way, you know, kind of flipping the, the gravity of that Halbert game a year ago.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:47Bill Simmons?

  And kind of, kind of resetting that. And then you see the celebrities, what a great ticket. I didn't realize, we talked about this when I did the pod two days ago. I thought the crowd seemed pretty great, but they also mute the microphones. There was a lot of good fan video that came out from the, from the 24 hours after the game with some of the different shots. And like, that crowd was like delirious and everybody who was there that I knew was like, that's the best crowd I've been in a while. And it just feels like that's, it's now you're down 2-0.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:16Bill Simmons?

  You have to win game five. You have to either sweep the Cleveland games and win game five in New York, or you have to win five and seven in New York. And I just don't see it with this Cavs team.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  It was gonna be difficult no matter what, but I, I wonder, you, you raised the point of the traveling fanbase. Is, is this one of the new inefficiencies in the league? Having the Eastern Conference like regional geography on your side where you can travel, having a fanbase with disposable income who's gonna make the trip to Cleveland. Can we get like, does Timothy Chalamet have like a super pack? Where he's just like funding buses, you know, let's, let's get people over there. I just think there's an opportunity here for any celebrity with some money to spend to really make an actual impact on the atmosphere of these games.

• 15:58Bill Simmons?

  We've started seeing this in baseball in the last 15 years first. And now it seems like it's trickled into basketball. It was certainly the case with the Celtics. Like they would play in these random cities like Phoenix, New Orleans. And it would be like 5,000 Celtic fans there. You could see with the Knicks, definitely. See it definitely with the Lakers. Like the general, the teams with the generational fans seem like they can take 15 to 25% of a stadium for big games. So we'll see.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Or 80% if it's Philly, apparently. It's.

• 16:26Bill Simmons?

  Right, or 80%.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  It can be brutal.

• 16:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was bad. Uh, so we have, the Knicks are down minus 820 on FanDuel.

• 16:34Bill Simmons?

  The Knicks sweep is plus 250.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  It's not gonna be a sweep. The Cavs are, I think they're too good for that.

• 16:42Bill Simmons?

  You sure?

• 16:43Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm sure, I feel sure that their supporting players.

• 16:46Bill Simmons?

  The Knicks have been lost in three weeks.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  They haven't. But here's the thing, it's like, in a game like this, you see the dominoes falling. Where Josh Hart shooting the way he does opens things up for Jalen Brunson, who then is attacking like more open coverage, spraying out to everybody. Everything is building on itself. And on the other side, Donovan Mitchell, who isn't moving super well, is now seeing multiple defenders in front of him every possession because no one around him can hit a shot. And the bigs are like trying to do the dirty work, but ultimately aren't attracting a lot of attention. If either of those things flips, right, Josh Hart makes a few fewer shots. If any Cavs role player starts hitting shots, then you see the dynamic and the balance of this game shift pretty dramatically with it. I just think we're gonna get one game where that's the case. Whether it's the classic role player shoot better at home type of influence,

• 17:31Speaker 01

  whether it is like a one game James Harden explosion, whatever that looks like. The Cavs are a team that when their backs are against the wall, have responded with some of the most impressive efforts of these playoffs. So I, I don't wanna write them off and say we're, we're headed quite down that darker road.

• 17:46Bill Simmons?

  Cavs and five, or Knicks and five is plus 190 and that would be my bet because I think you're right. I think there's gonna be a game where the role guys make shots.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:54Bill Simmons?

  Even tonight, I felt especially in the first half, I thought the Cavs were getting good shots. I liked the shots they're getting. They just weren't going in. They're getting open threes. They're getting good Mitchell shots. Mobley was doing whatever he wanted in that first six minutes. And I liked how they played. The results just weren't really there.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  No.

• 18:10Bill Simmons?

  Unfortunately. Um, Mike Brown for Tibbs, looking pretty good.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Huge upgrade, huge adjustment.

• 18:19Bill Simmons?

  The Bridges trade looking all right.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 18:21Bill Simmons?

  Towns trade, solid.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Back to a win?

• 18:24Bill Simmons?

  I mean, Shamet signing, pretty good. Like, there's been some good moves here.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  I'm not exaggerating when I say the Landry Shamet signing might be like a monumental move in retrospect for the Knicks. Like, his, his ability to give them important minutes to be a floor spacer. In game one, they go on that run because they have enough shooters to take Josh Hart off the floor. In game two, Josh Hart becomes one of those shooters, so it's not a problem. But the Knicks bench has been awesome. And it's been awesome because it's been cultivated over the course of the entire year in a way that, for all being honest about it, Tibbs would never.

• 18:55Bill Simmons?

  You're right. There should be a basketball reference or a cleaning the glass stat. Do I think it's going in?

• 19:03Bill Simmons?

  And Shamet, I, I think I was probably like 25% with him for most of his career. Now, now I think it's going in.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Who else is high on that list? Like, who else is disproportionately high on the belief versus the actual percentage?

• 19:17Bill Simmons?

  Well, in the, in the Spurs-Thunder series, I just think every Vassell shot's going in now. I think he might be 100.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  And it may.

• 19:25Bill Simmons?

  I don't know why. I just feel like, and Shem Penny's another one, even though he wasn't good in game two. I, I always feel like his shots are going in too, but Vassell right now is in a groove where it just doesn't seem like it matters if he's falling left, falling right, falling backwards, it's going in.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Catches it in the air, whatever. Like, he, he makes just like preposterous shots. I, I think those, those two guys are great. Devin Booker's another one of those guys for me who I'm always like, I feel like it's going in and then you look at the percentages and it's like mid, mid 30s from three. It's like a beautiful jumper, but it doesn't always hit.

• 19:55Bill Simmons?

  We have Pritchard as the best Celtic for this. Every time he misses.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Is that, is that not just you?

• 20:01Bill Simmons?

  No, I just can't, I'm always thinking it's going in with him. Like, I still haven't gotten over his corner three in the Gabe Sette with Philly thing. I still can't believe that didn't go in. All right, so we, let's move to Spurs-Thunder, because that's probably a more interesting series for a lot of reasons. A lot of talk about the physicality today.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 20:19Bill Simmons?

  So, there's two kinds of physicality. Right? I like the first kind of playoff physicality, let the big boys, big, big boys. The stuff that was happening in this game, and you could say from the other side, if you're an OKC fan, well, they're doing it to shade too. They're pulling him, grabbing him.

• 20:36Bill Simmons?

  They debuted like almost a new way to defend Wemby yesterday, and I'm going to be really interested to see how the league reacts to it over the course of the series. This is just new territory for us.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:46Bill Simmons?

  If you're just pulling his arms and pulling him off balance all the time, if you're pushing his shoulders down when he's jumping, which is all stuff Hartenstein was doing. I felt like Wemby got fouled 20. I don't have a dog in this race, I'm a Celtic fan. I don't really care who wins the series. But I also really enjoy watching Wemby, and yesterday was, I don't mind if he's getting knocked around. I thought Minnesota did a great job doing it. I thought the difference yesterday was like the pulling, the grabbing, the pushing, just stuff that just shouldn't be legal. And if you're going to be allowed to do all that stuff, OKC's going to win this series in five. So how did they react to game three?

• 21:24Speaker 01

  So I think this conversation depends on like who you're pointing the finger at. From the Thunder perspective, I think as a competitive team, if you are not seeing what you can get away with in literally every series you play that's competitive, you're not doing your job, so.

• 21:36Bill Simmons?

  I couldn't agree more wholeheartedly with that. They should have done what they did in game two. I agree that it was a good strategy.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  And I would say it's even incumbent on Isaiah Hartenstein in particular, who is desperate to find a way to stay on the floor in this series, to see what he can do to affect that matchup.

• 21:51Bill Simmons?

  And the answer was everything.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  The answer was, I mean, yes, it was, it was, you're right that some of those plays are like borderline dirty. Some of them are very physical. It's like walking a very delicate line of not just like what is legal, but what is like in good taste as a competitor sometimes.

• 22:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Great teams do that. Great teams have players who do that and can understand how to like toe it and without going over too much, but the refs have to call some of it. Like this is a case where you could put together a supercut of 15 to 20 different Isaiah Hartenstein plays that are questionable in all sorts of ways. And some of them have to be called. Some of them were, not enough of them. I don't even really see that as being Isaiah Hartenstein's fault. Like he is playing the game and playing his role in the way that honestly, the Thunder kind of require him to play it.

• 22:35Bill Simmons?

  I actually thought it was brilliant by him. And you could see him as the game was going on, be like, ow, I guess they're gonna just let me do this.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:43Bill Simmons?

  He was even, he was doing something that I've always wondered why guys didn't do more is pulling Wemby away from the basket on drives so that he, he basically to slow him up on the offensive rebound. Every time it felt like he was getting some sort of advantage. I thought, I honestly thought it was brilliant, but I also couldn't believe the refs allowed it because it was pretty blatant. It's not like you couldn't see what he was doing. And I think if Wemby, the only, the only thing he probably made a mistake on is he just should have had his arms up like this.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:12Bill Simmons?

  Because I think it just would have been more clear that Hartenstein was grabbing him on the, on the sides and stuff, but it was pretty effective. And I talked about this a couple of weeks ago. This is Kareem, this is his entire career.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:24Bill Simmons?

  Guys doing this to him, guys pushing him, guys elbowing him in the back, guys trying to provoke him. And Kareem, I think punched like five different guys. That one broke his, broke his hand on Kent Benson's face at one point.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:37Bill Simmons?

  Wemby's gotten mad once. But my guess is Hartenstein will not be able to get away with this stuff in game three. I am guessing these supercut was sent to the league today.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Again, that's, that's the Spurs job, right? It's like everyone is kind of needs to play their role in response to these things and figure out how to navigate them. I don't know that we had a player like this who's officiating is so unique. Maybe since Shaquille O'Neal, like is there anyone in that time in terms of bigs that that comes to mind for you?

• 24:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Shaq. Shaq, it just wasn't fair.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:08Bill Simmons?

  He could just get near the basket and he could just turn and dunk. And so they started to do, and I remember, this is where it was always tough for me to evaluate Shaq as like a top 15 guy, because on the one hand, I felt like he left stuff on the table. And that he would, he would always play himself into shape and, you know, there was really only one season where you're like that, he was fucking awesome from beginning 10, which was his MVP season. On the other hand, I don't think it was fun to be Shaq eight months a year with the way he was guarded.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  True.

• 24:37Bill Simmons?

  And they would pull on his arms and they would pull on his shoulders. And that's why he ended up having shoulder problems and I think with at least one of his shoulders. Over and over again, he's going, he's exploding to go up and they're just kind of grabbing and pulling him down. So I, I would say he was probably the last guy I can remember where it was a constant dialogue. And then some of the stuff the Pistons did to Jordan was probably the other big example. Other than that, before that, that people didn't play defense that way.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  And, and like LeBron has taken a lot of hits and a lot of kind of borderline hits over the course of his career, but it's totally different as a ball handler. I think this is where the Shaq Wemby comparison or Kareem, if you want to loop him in, these bigs who are off the ball, trying to establish position, trying to set screens, there's just so much space for the officials to kind of like turn their head ever so slightly and miss crucial contact, crucial fouls. It's a reason why bigs in the league in general on offense are just not officiated fairly. They are not given the benefit of the doubt that guards are. I had wondered if Wemby might be the exception that just because of his frame, like you were saying, if he puts his hands in the air, just like he's so thin and he moves so much. If you are someone like Isaiah Hartenstein kind of pulling him out of the way, is that

• 25:44Speaker 01

  enough of like a neon sign saying, hey, there is weird contact going here for the refs to finally pay attention to it? In game two, it wasn't like it just didn't draw enough attention in the way that apparently he needed to.

• 25:56Bill Simmons?

  The thing that I've, I just, I love watching Wemby. I really enjoy it. That's not like Chris Collinsworth. I love, I love Wemby. I love Dwyane Harper. I love Wemby. I really enjoy watching him. And one of the things I love, other than how competitive he is and being an alien, landing from UFO, all that stuff. I love that he doesn't bitch for calls. He really doesn't.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:19Bill Simmons?

  And he takes a lot of punishment and I just think he's used to it. I think this is the way people have defended him since he was 14. And I think he's done a, probably done a mental study because I think he puts a lot of thought into everything, probably as much as any young star we've ever had. And I think he's realized like, it's not worth it for me to be bitching all the time. I need to be bigger than this. I need to be the most physical, imposing guy in the, in the game, in the league. And if I'm just constantly bitching and yapping and complaining, that gets compromised. So he took it. But Mitch Johnson did not seem like he was enjoying it. It seemed like he was getting madder and madder and madder. And, and my guess is it won't be the case in game three.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Well, and they'll find ways to work around it, right? Like, one of the things you can do is because of Wemby's skillset, you can move him anywhere on the floor. You could run him through actions like a guard if you want to, and make Isaiah Harden shine, have to defend him that way, which is something he's not comfortable doing. I, I think the other part about the not complaining about fouls too, is Wemby, for as much as he gets hit and held and pushed, like, isn't one of these guys who is falling over all the time, even on his own shots, like a Joel Embiid style? I think it's become a really cool part of his game, not just because, you know, some of that's just going to turn people off, but you see some of the tip dunks that he gets now off of his own misses. And you're only there to do that because you're not falling, you're not leaning, you're not trying to bait out the contact. Like, he's moving downhill so much all the time now,

• 27:43Speaker 01

  that he's able to clean up and get just crazy plays with a kind of geometry that we're not really used to seeing from anybody else.

• 27:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Haas and I talked about it two days ago, just like how important that game one was for him, which we all had the same conversations. I thought SGA was great last night. I really thought he had a command of the flow of the game and when he should step in. And, and I just thought like, that's, that's why he won two straight MVPs, because the game's like yesterday.

• 28:12Bill Simmons?

  Wemby, the experience of watching Wemby, I don't remember feeling this way as a basketball fan since like those early 2013, 14, 15 Curry range where it was just like, I can't get enough of this because I've never seen it before. And with the Wemby, like yesterday, and it feels like every game, there's something different. Yesterday, it was just, he just had these crazy offensive rebound putbacks from weird angles. He must've had like five of them.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:40Bill Simmons?

  Where you're like, I don't understand how he got that. You almost wanted them to stop the game and replay it and tipping things from far away and, you know, being under the basket and reaching his octopus arm around. He probably didn't even really have that good of a game for him, but it felt like he was consistently impactful and all over the place. You know, the Fox thing and then losing Harper.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:01Bill Simmons?

  I feel bad for poor Castle with the 20 turnovers in two games, which I sincerely hope nobody hangs on him. He's not a true point guard. He's going against the scariest collection of defensive guards we've probably had this century. And, you know, he's been sloppy. There's a little bit of a Westbrook side with him. Early Westbrook.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:23Bill Simmons?

  The OKC from 08 to 2014, a little out of control, awesome one play. Definitely a few plays where like, oh no, why'd you do that? A tendency to be involved in the biggest play or one of the biggest plays of the game, and it might be a good thing, it might be a bad thing. And like Westbrook is one of the 15 and 20 best players in the league.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:44Bill Simmons?

  But it's just young and figuring it out in the fly. And Fox was just so helpful for him for just being, having, being the adult in the room. It's, I think it's just so much to ask for Castle to just kind of navigate that Thunder defense. Jesus.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  It's tough, but in the same way that with, you know, a younger Russell Westbrook and especially a prime Russell Westbrook, like what Harper gives you in terms of the fearlessness of his play, I will just take every day of the week.

• 30:09Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  And you take that and you try to harness it and try to rein it in like, okay, don't do these particular crazy things. Or in the case of this series, he's just like mishandling the ball sometimes. Like he's trying to go so quickly and so aggressively through all of those Oklahoma City defenders that he's just kind of like losing it.

• 30:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  I think that's going to be the reality if both Harper and Fox can't play like they just don't have alternatives like you can throw Jordan McLaughlin out there, but it's not really going to change a lot. You need the two ball handler approach, even just to get Wemby in good advantageous positions. And so it's like, it's not an accident that the fewer ball handlers were on the floor. Now it's hard to even get Wemby the ball. It's hard to get those like post entry passes to him. Everything just gets so much more complicated, but I, I trust that Castle will rein the turnovers in. Certainly over time, but even over the course of this series, like it just can't be this terrible all the time in terms of the volume.

• 31:00Bill Simmons?

  It's basically two a quarter. I remember in the, I think it was the 2012 finals, I wrote a piece about Westbrook about the, the concept of a 90 10 guy where the 90% is awesome. And that 10%, everybody's got the 10% that they're not really good at. They have some flaw. And with Westbrook, the 10% was so glaring, you always thought about it.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:20Bill Simmons?

  And Castle as a point guard, you can, you just are kind of aware of it. It's like, all right, his flaws, he's a little sloppy.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:27Bill Simmons?

  And now the, he has the ball all the time. I'm going to be thinking about this more that he's a little sloppy because he's 21 and he's going against Lou Dort and Caruso and um, who's the other guy they have that's

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Kason Wallace.

• 31:40Bill Simmons?

  Kason Wallace, I forgot about him.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  First team all defense, Kason Wallace.

• 31:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, first team, who just stands at midcourt, waited to pick your pocket.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  Brutal.

• 31:48Bill Simmons?

  And has done that to uh, done that to Castle at least once a game.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Well, so if, if Stephon Castle has a little bit of young Westbrook, is Dylan Harper like the most supercharged Eric Maynor we've ever seen of like, here's the like game managing, responsible guy behind him?

• 32:03Bill Simmons?

  He's alien Eric Maynor. I, I was so bummed when he got hurt.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  I know.

• 32:08Bill Simmons?

  Cause that was another great thing about this series. You're watching Harper in real time. I talked about this two days ago, that just like, this is the worst he's ever going to be. And he's doing this. I was thinking about, I really value when a, when a young point guard can rise to this. Cause even you think like, some of the best point guards we've had, Tony Parker in the 2003 playoffs.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:30Bill Simmons?

  By the end of that playoffs, he was so shaky that they were like, should they trade him for Kidd? Remember? It was like a whole thing.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 32:36Bill Simmons?

  Kidd's a free agent. Do they do a sign and trade? Would this be an upgrade to get Jason? Cause Parker was a young point guard and they didn't know if they could rely on him. Rondo was like that for the 08 Celtics. It was like, he was good one game, not good the next game. And for Harper to be as consistent and also impactful on both ends.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:55Bill Simmons?

  Pretty dumbfounding. It sounds like he's gonna play tomorrow is the word that I was hearing.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  I hope so. I mean, even if it's in a somewhat limited state, like they could really just use everything that he brings to the table. But when you think about those three core guys, Castle is having the most normal young player in the playoffs experience because of those walls he's running into. Harper, we really haven't seen the limits on it yet. He's still so smooth. Like, there, there was a play where before he left this game in game two, he's like driving one on one through Lou Dort, just like one diagonal step at a time. And Lou Dort is just constantly backpedaling and Dylan Harper, who again is 20 years old, just body bumps Lou Dort, a living fire hydrant out of the way for a basically uncontested layup. It's like,

• 33:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Nothing about that is normal. Nothing about Wemby's arc and his like first playoff foray is normal. Stephon Castle is looking mortal by comparison, but it's still awesome. And so if,

• 33:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  You just have to feel, we've said it so many times, but like the fact that the future of the franchise is anchored around those three guys in particular, it's just about as safe a bet as you could possibly make and as encouraging a sign in this first run as you could possibly get.

• 34:00Bill Simmons?

  I think they should win the series and I still think they're gonna win this series. But we'll see with Harper. If Harper's compromised, then that's gonna change the equation. Fox, the high ankle sprain. I, I never know what to believe with these anymore. Sometimes high ankle sprain is just like you're done for four weeks and then other times it's like, he can play. It would seem as a point guard, that would be not a great position to have a high ankle sprain.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Especially against the Thunder. Again, like there's defenses you don't want to go against with any limitation and you might have to, like if you're Harper or Fox, but it's not ideal.

• 34:31Bill Simmons?

  They're gonna be home for game three.

• 34:34Bill Simmons?

  My guess is Fox is gonna be a game time decision and play. I don't know this for a fact, but it's a home game. They're probably hoping they could split the first two in OKC and come back and then actually unleash Fox. And I don't know, I just feel like the J-Dub situation on the other side.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:53Bill Simmons?

  Which he really looked good in game one. And I tweeted this, that I thought game one, you know, there were casualties from playing 58 minutes at the pace that everybody played at. You knew, you knew something bad was gonna happen in game two. We had two injuries, right? I think Mitchell might have gotten hurt.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that looked a little shaky too.

• 35:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, something. But J-Dub now seems out. I guess he's gonna be out for a while. You could feel it with some of the lineups. They basically have to go, they can do the two bigs with some guards. Maybe Aaron Wiggins plays a little more. I don't know, what do you do? How do you replace the minutes?

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Well, this is where if the officiating changes around Isaiah Hartenstein and J-Dub isn't available to play, you're starting to see those, like that cascading effect become a real problem. Because then literally who guards Wemby? Like who are you throwing at him? We saw a little more of Chet on Wemby in game two, but he did okay, but he's not your first choice. If J-Dub can't play and Isaiah Hartenstein gets in, let's say foul trouble because of all the holding and grabbing and pushing he's been doing, we're either gonna get like 28 J-Will minutes or like 40 Alex Caruso minutes. Like it's, one of those two guys is gonna have to stretch really far in that matchup. And I don't know that either of them is fully ready for it. They both, you know, have things they can bring and try to make Wemby's life hard in particular and also can contribute on offense.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  But all of the matchups get very strange very quickly if J-Dub isn't out there. Like he really is the critical piece that makes a lot of this make sense for OKC.

• 36:20Bill Simmons?

  I actually like J-Will in this series.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  He's really good.

• 36:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I like his top of the, it's a little Luca Garza-ish, that little top of the key three. He's getting some Garza flashbacks.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Okay. Like J-Will cannot be experienced. Everything cannot be through the lens of Luca Garza. That can't be what we're doing.

• 36:37Bill Simmons?

  So little Garza-ish. No, but one of the things I like about him is he'll mix it up.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:44Bill Simmons?

  He got in a fight with, uh, Champagny's brother in the Washington game during the weekend.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 36:49Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if, I know if the other Champagny's holding against him, but he'll mix it up.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Is Justin showing up in the same way that, you know, the Thompson twins were showing up for each other?

• 36:57Bill Simmons?

  In the Morris's? Yeah.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  I mean, you got to, look, you gotta come to your brother's playoff game. I would think it's a requirement.

• 37:03Bill Simmons?

  I thought for sure a game two was gonna have some sort of altercation and I had like a Mad Libs of, I had Wemby, um, Castle, Dort and Jalen Williams, some, some combination of the four of them and maybe, maybe even some Kelly Olynyk if he had gotten some minutes. Um, but I still feel like, I feel like this series hasn't gotten chippy enough. It's been physical, but it hasn't been, we haven't gotten aggro yet. I think it could be Friday night.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  No, yeah.

• 37:30Bill Simmons?

  Friday night, little, little Spurs crowd having some spirits before the game.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:36Bill Simmons?

  A frisky crowd mad about the officiating game two. I, I think there's gonna be a vibe in that game.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  As they should be and as there should be. I'm looking at the FanDuel odds now and I'm seeing minus 500 for a Bismack Biyombo forearm shiver to some Thunder player. Do, I mean, would, would you take that one or what do you think the alternative is?

• 37:52Bill Simmons?

  I would love to see Bismack come in for two seconds. Olynyk has, there's, I think you could find like a two-minute video of him doing stuff in different playoff games. Most famously when he accidentally, uh, knocked Kevin Love's shoulder out of his socket.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:07Bill Simmons?

  That's a tough one.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Again, a lot of borderline physicality going on in the playoffs. I don't know how that, the lines of what is an accident can really be blurred pretty clearly.

• 38:16Bill Simmons?

  What do you think's gonna happen in this series?

• 38:18Speaker 01

  It is so injury dependent. I think if J-Dub is not able to play. God, it just, it really depends on how many ball handlers the Spurs have too. I am inclined to say if J-Dub doesn't play, the Spurs have the upper hand in it. That they, they've now taken a little, a little bit of a tilt in their favor. And I say that just because J-Dub is so important and because. We saw Shay like read everything so perfectly, both in terms of spraying out to other players, but also picking his spots on offense. That just gets so much harder when the Spurs have a chance to game plan for the reality that J-Dub isn't out there. And so you're going to have to rely a lot more on Alex Caruso being a real offensive player and a scoring threat all the time, which certainly was the case in game one, but isn't all the time.

• 39:01Bill Simmons?

  By the way, hasn't been consistently reliable throughout the course of his career. Even the playoffs last year, he's a little Josh Hardish hitter, hit or miss. There's games when he just, they're not going in.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Makes plays happen, but game one was literally like one of the best role player performances I've ever seen in my life. So that cannot be the expectation for who he's going to be. Also, A.J. Mitchell's kind of figuring out his way into the series if, as we alluded to, he's even healthy enough to go. So the next guys up for OKC after Shay without J-Dub, I think are really difficult. And that's in part because this is not a Chet offensive series. This is not a matchup he can be a dominant scorer in by basically any way. So he might have a game where he has 18, but it doesn't feel like 18 because he's like, he's not forcing the issue. He's not pushing. He's not attacking. It's just kind of like circumstantial baskets for him, I think.

• 39:49Bill Simmons?

  The series shifted. They were dead even a day ago. Now it's OKC minus 162. So I don't know if that means there's inside info. Jay will comes back. Awesome series, though. I mean, yesterday, other than how well SGA played, it wasn't like the prettiest basketball game, but it was dramatic and riveting. And I thought if you're San Antonio, I didn't feel like I played well. And I lost Harper midway through the game and I was still hanging around, hanging around, down two with like, what, three, four minutes left? And I really had to make OKC make some plays. And I thought SGA, you know, really did some good stuff. And more importantly, OKC has really now settled into the role as America's villain.

• 40:33Bill Simmons?

  I think they've embraced it. I think their fans, it's us against them for the fans. This happened to the Patriots with me. You have to buy in officially. And once you officially buy in, it's great. You're just like, everyone's against us. You're just, your middle fingers are out at all times. You're constantly, you know, taking everything personally. It's a great place to be. They should savor this and enjoy it.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  So if the Thunder are, to borrow your framing, a little Patriots-ish, does that endear them to you at all? Does their villainy make them a more appealing team to you?

• 41:04Bill Simmons?

  I just, I don't like the flapping. I just am not a fan.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:09Bill Simmons?

  I don't like it. I don't like when guys on other teams do it. I almost feel like the Thunder are the best at it. I, you know, there's theories that they practice it. Um, there's every game, there's 10 videos afterwards of, of different things that come out of it, but a part of the thing for me is I don't necessarily think they have to play that way. They're so talented. So I don't really fully understand it, why they bought into that style. It obviously works for them, but I, I just don't like it.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  I mean, there's the two conversations of like, how good are they? And clearly they're amazing. They're a championship team. They play to that standard at literally every night. And then there's the, how much do you enjoy watching them? And that really comes down to how much appetite you have for ignoring some of that stuff. I think if you, if you just pile up the 15% of most annoying behavior of basically any team, every team's got some stuff going on that's, that's, that really gets under your skin, whether it's, whether it's complaining to the officials, whether it's the shot selection, whether it is the flopping, it's just a matter of taste. And like for me, I'm willing to like overlook a lot of it because I really do like watching all the other stuff that the Thunder do at just like an AA plus level. So

• 42:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  That part is a payoff for me, but you, you can't just like write off somebody's experience if they say, oh, this is, this is a bad watch. This is annoying to watch. This is not what I like to spend time doing. You know, when I'm clocking out for my day and now I gotta like grind through Thunder tape because it feels like they're at the free throw line all the time. I get why that would be a chore, but they're also fucking good.

• 42:40Bill Simmons?

  It's not quite as bad as Luca complaining after every single call. Like to me, that's a 10 out of 10. I just hate that probably the most. Not everything can be a felony, but

• 42:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 42:50Bill Simmons?

  But fortunately we didn't have to worry about him for that long. Uh, some mailbag questions.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 42:55Bill Simmons?

  This is from Kevin. I'm writing this the day after Wemby's 41 and 24 against OKC. If it came out that Wemby actually was an alien, that he was legitimately not human at all. And we knew where to find more Wemby's like him out there. Would that affect your interest level in the NBA? I think it would for me if we didn't, if we had non-humans. But my point with that question is, somebody was convinced that it, Wemby might be an alien and crafted that and sent it in.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  That part is believable to me. The part that sent me over the top was that, oh, we can ascertain where he came from and find, find, you know, like, go to, go to the Avatar planet and pull more Wemby's down here and apply. Would it, would it affect our interest in the league? I mean, I think if there's a literal alien involved, how does that not affect your interest in the league? How does that not make it more interesting, whatever is happening?

• 43:48Bill Simmons?

  Would be, it would lead to amazing halftime shows and morning shows and think pieces.

• 43:54Bill Simmons?

  Have humans lost control of the NBA? That's coming up next.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  I mean, it's hard to be America first when you can't even be Earth first, you know? Like, just the, the talking heads would have a field day.

• 44:05Bill Simmons?

  Mike from St. Louis asks, is the Spurs backcourt of Castle and Harper the most exciting young backcourt since the Splash Brothers? What other young guard tandems got you hot and bothered like these guys? They're already the second and third best players in their team and they're 20 and 21 and in the Western Finals.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:21Bill Simmons?

  Really good question. Splash Brothers is a great example. That started to happen 2013 range. Curry was a little older, though. He was in his mid twenties at that point. He'd been in college for three years. I was trying to think, I thought more people would come to mind and it was really tough to think of two young guards in the same backcourt.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:39Bill Simmons?

  That were this fun to watch. The closest I could come was the Derrick Rose, Ben Gordon backcourt that the Bulls had for a split second in 2009. Remember that?

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 44:51Bill Simmons?

  So when Rose was a rookie, Gordon had that great playoff series against Boston and felt like he was the next Andrew Tony. And it was like, wow, what a backcourt. 10 more years and then Gordon left like the next year and went to Detroit and it was gone. But it's, it's pretty rare to have two young guards like this. We usually, it's usually it's two guards who can't play together, like a Jaden Ivy and a Cade and things like that.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Or a Stephen and Monte Ellis. It's like you gotta pick one at a certain point. The other guy is jettisoned into the next version of your team. I mean, even even if you expand it into veteran groups like this is so unique because these guys are so good and so young, but it's not as if there are just great guard guard combinations of any age that are this interesting. Like for me personally, Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper are like among my maybe top 10 to 15 most watchable players in the sport, period.

• 45:37Bill Simmons?

  I agree.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  And so like I am dialed in on every Spurs game I can get my hands on like especially a run like this has been so fun to watch when they're out there together or apart. I think it's really hard to compete with that. The only other young tandem I can think of in the league right now is, I mean, we do love LaMelo and Khan together. Like that is, that's a fun pairing for sure, but it's it's nowhere near.

• 45:57Bill Simmons?

  I feel like Khan's a forward too, don't you?

• 45:59Speaker 01

  I mean, I mean, it's like

• 46:00Bill Simmons?

  Sort of.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Him, him, Brandon Miller, like it's, it's all kind of a little fluid out there. Uh, but

• 46:06Bill Simmons?

  Well, when you're talking guards, like Chris Paul and Booker had that nice little Phoenix run.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 46:10Bill Simmons?

  That was really fun. We had, you go back to the seventies and eighties, you know, we had the, the best one was the Dennis Johnson, Gus Williams one that made the finals in two straight years. Those guys are both young. They're both in their mid twenties. So we've had, had something like that.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or, or young Parker and Ginobili might be, might be a good comp if you want to reach back a little bit. Both those guys were

• 46:30Bill Simmons?

  That's a great one.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  They were much wilder than these two. It was like two Steph Castles out there a lot of the time, but that can be fun, too.

• 46:36Bill Simmons?

  Nash and Finley was fun for a little bit there.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 46:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there's been some good ones. Um, this from Jeffrey. He listened to, uh, my Borat rewatchables and then the breakdown of, uh, game one of OKC. And Borat in that movie talks about having a romance explosion. And he wants to know what the current romantic explosion team is, the guys you would construct around your personal enjoyment. What would be the best? You just mentioned two of your favorite players.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 47:04Bill Simmons?

  So if you put a team that would actually make sense together of five guys, that would be your romance explosion team, what would it be?

• 47:11Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 47:12Bill Simmons?

  I can start as you think of it.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Please.

• 47:15Bill Simmons?

  I have Joker, Wemby and Steph as three of the five and then I'm just gonna work around them. So they're my three, my three favorite players to watch anyway.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 47:23Bill Simmons?

  And I was thinking healthy Halliburton. I assume we're having him healthy next year. And I get Steph and Halliburton who can both play with or without the ball and they can both cut. Joker, Wemby, who's my fifth in this scenario? Who's a shooter? That's fun to watch and play with. I almost just wanted to put Aaron Gordon in there because I put him in the dunker spot.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  I do love that.

• 47:43Bill Simmons?

  Some corner threes and then he could just set picks and do stuff. That was probably, that was probably, I have four. I couldn't get that, I couldn't get there with the fifth.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  But so are you, are you trying to win or are you just trying to have a romantic explosion?

• 48:00Bill Simmons?

  Just like, I love watching all these guys. I can't believe they're all playing together. I'm having a great time.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Yes. I think the, the like, collision of all that talent is kinda hard to write. Like in particular, the Steph Jokic, Wemby part. I love, I love watching Jokic. I love watching him dissect the game, but like Steph and Wemby are the important elements of that for me personally. And so like, I would start with those two. I want like really kinetic players between them. I want, I like Jalen Johnson types, like super fluid, can do a little bit of everything, but like, aren't being overtaxed in the way that the Hawks overtaxed him over the course of this year. But I feel like we need some defense, do we not? Like, I like watching.

• 48:41Bill Simmons?

  That's why I brought Aaron Gordon in.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Aaron Gordon's a great one. I, I think I almost might put Giannis in this group. Like, I really like watching.

• 48:47Bill Simmons?

  Giannis, he's alive!

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Giannis is alive, he's back, he's healthy, he's theoretically out of Milwaukee. I don't know where we are in this scenario. But Giannis of like, I don't have to be the superstar. I'm playing with these other guys and I can just be like the best defensive player in the world and also an aggressive, open court weapon at all times. That's a guy I want part of this formula.

• 49:08Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna give you my young guy romance explosion team.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 49:11Bill Simmons?

  Maxey, Harper, Khan, Flag, Klingon.

• 49:16Bill Simmons?

  Let's go.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Do you need a towel off?

• 49:19Bill Simmons?

  I let's go. I got Klingon protecting the rim. I got Khan spreading the floor. I got Maxi and Harper going up and down and I got Flag over here just doing Flag things.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  There's got to be. I say this with all due respect, there has to be a better guy than Donovan Klingon for this team. There has to be a better option.

• 49:36Bill Simmons?

  I just needed somebody who can play defense.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  I mean, is Chet off the board? Are we so down on Chet? We're just throwing him out?

• 49:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Chet would be pretty good. You're right. Chet's probably in there. I don't know. I'm having a tough moment with Chet.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  I mean, here's the thing. If you want pure watchability, just like enjoyment, watching that guy work, give me Moussa Diabate out there. Like the fights per 36 are going through the roof. The crazy rebounding, the like, he will make one pass and take one shot every game that is objectively insane. But I'm along the ride for all of that.

• 50:10Bill Simmons?

  Tyler sent a Yanis email, actually. Tyler J. Is it, so he, there was a rumor today about the Heat offering Hero, Ware, the 13th pick and two future firsts for Yanis. I forget who reported that. Gary Werfel?

• 50:26Bill Simmons?

  I think that Jerry Werfel? I think that's who it was.

• 50:30Bill Simmons?

  Tyler says, "In past off-seasons, I scoff at that. But isn't that pretty decent value with the new lottery rules, especially with Yanis' injury history? Couldn't they last? Couldn't the Heat be in the 4 to 10 range? I feel like firsts are a little more valuable now." Honestly, I felt the same way. I thought that was a lot. You know, Yanis, see, he have two really good years left, three. I've done a million podcast segments about this, I feel like. But I don't know who else is desperate enough to trade for him. It feels like the Heat is the only team.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  The Wolves, maybe?

• 51:03Bill Simmons?

  Maybe, but I don't, I'm not getting the same kind of picks from the Wolves because they've already traded all their picks.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  It would have to be a third team involved, for sure.

• 51:11Bill Simmons?

  McDaniel's kind of has to be in that trade and if then that changes the calculus of why the T-Wolves would do that. So I don't know. I don't know if the Bucks are doing better than that. That's one of those where I'd kind of be like. Do you want to call this in? Like, can I get a swap and we're good? Can I get a 2031 swap? Let's call it in.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  At some point, we need to do the full indexing of the complete range of offers that we have contemplated for Giannis over the course of this entire saga. Because at the beginning, the idea-

• 51:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this was a reject.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Hero wear and a couple of firsts for Giannis Antetokounmpo was just like-

• 51:44Bill Simmons?

  Hockes.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Hockes, too. Absolutely. But it would have been a nonstart. Like, that's maybe in the pile. Like, we're putting it in the roundup of deals for, you know, for the blog posts. But is anyone really taking that offer seriously? I think a couple of things have changed. For one, just literally everything happening in Milwaukee, but also the relative value of those firsts. Like, in this new era with-

• 52:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  The change lottery odds. It does, it shifts the calculus a little bit around teams like Miami in particular, as far as like, how bad they could possibly be. Like, they don't need to be fully bottoming out anymore for those picks to really be worth something.

• 52:18Bill Simmons?

  I think Giannis wants to go to Boston, and I'm not sure Boston wants Giannis. And I think that's the push and pull right now.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  What makes you think he wants to go to Boston?

• 52:27Bill Simmons?

  I just think he does.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  Aggregate it?

• 52:33Bill Simmons?

  I don't care.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  There's your social clip. There's your aggregated blog post. Let's just, let's just run with it.

• 52:40Bill Simmons?

  Think he wants to stay in the East. And I think a certain guy in the Celtics has the same shooting coach as him. And I think there's a lot of respect for the organization, and I just think that would be a team he would be interested in. But I also think Miami is another team he'd want to go to.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:57Bill Simmons?

  And by the way, the league's more fun if he goes to Miami. The league's more fun if Jalen and Jason stay together next year.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 53:05Bill Simmons?

  Giannis goes to Miami with Bam, and they just kind of figure it out, Heat culture style, and just salvage random guys from around the league, like the Davion Mitchell types. And all of a sudden, they're scary.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Plus with, like, the Pacers coming back, the Hawks a little bit better, maybe the Pistons find a way to add a piece or two. Like, the East could be a really deep conference next year, especially if Giannis goes somewhere that's actually kind of relevant.

• 53:29Bill Simmons?

  Don't forget House's Wizards.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Of course, the resurgent Wizards.

• 53:32Bill Simmons?

  The Trey and AD pick, high pick and roll with the Banza spreading out in the side.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  I genuinely can't wait, but I don't know if that says more about them or me.

• 53:41Bill Simmons?

  Tony Candelora wants to know, when we look back in this era of the NBA, will the Thunder end up being to the Wemby Spurs what the bad boy Pistons were to the Jordan Bulls? The Bulls had to mentally and physically overcome that big hurdle. The Spurs might have to do the same. The Pistons won back to back titles. Could this be history repeating itself? I hadn't thought of that, but I thought that was pretty interesting. The problem is in this scenario, I guess you, so the Spurs would have to be the 1990 Bulls in this scenario.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:12Bill Simmons?

  Which means they would, yeah, that's a pretty good one. Pretty realistic. I just think the difference is the Pistons were kind of on their last legs after the second title. Whereas OKC is young and has a big future ahead of them.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Well, narratively, I mean, you have the team that's kind of like testing him with physicality in the way that the Pistons did.

• 54:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  You have Wemby potentially having to overcome both that and them just competitively over the course of his first couple of years in the league. Not only though, does it feel different just because the Pistons were so much further along in age and experience than the Thunder are, but it would be like if that Pistons team were in place and they were a test for Jordan as they were, but they also just had like this other trove of young talented picks that was also in the pipeline so that they could be a totally different but equally competitive version of the Pistons for the next like eight years. Like the sustainability of the Thunder is the unique element. And so every other contender falls apart within like a pretty concentrated window. I think we have a lot of reason to believe that the Thunder will not do that. They'll have to change. They're gonna have to like draw a line somewhere.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  They might have to trade JDub at some point, loathe as they are to do it. But they just have so much to work with in a way that even the Pistons of that time did not.

• 55:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the funny thing about this conversation is OKC might win nine of the next 10 titles. And we'll be like, remember that 2026? And we thought that they were going to be a stopgap champ for the Spurs? And now they're challenging Bill Russell. One more Yanis thing from Victor. He mentioned, basically asking is there's, if Yanis goes to Miami, the zombie Heat, does he turn into a zombie Greek freak? And does that get scary?

• 55:48Speaker 01

  No.

• 55:49Bill Simmons?

  If he goes to Miami, does does he now become zombie honest?

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:53Bill Simmons?

  And get the heat juice poured on him and now is it's 2021 again, basically.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  Is that how it works? They just pour heat juice on people?

• 56:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they pour heat juice on people.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  I mean, the logic of the zombie says like, as long as he gets bitten by somebody down there, as long as like a piece of a brain is eaten, then he becomes zombie honest. But what does zombie honest even mean?

• 56:12Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. It's like a Game of Thrones, White Walker thing, like he'd come back stronger. Yeah. Ethan wants to know, he's a big Knicks fan.

• 56:22Bill Simmons?

  If the Knicks won the championship with Brunson as their best player, considering all the discourse about how you can't win a championship with Brunson as a small guard as your best player.

• 56:32Bill Simmons?

  What are other sports equivalents of that? And he mentions, this is an NFL thing, not your total forte, but if Lamar Jackson won the championship. And there's this whole narrative about you can't win with a like a quarterback who runs and moves around as much as Lamar.

• 56:48Bill Simmons?

  I don't think the Knicks are going to win the championship this year, but I think if they did, there would be, it would be a reckoning for a lot of things we thought about the type of teams that could win a title.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 56:59Bill Simmons?

  Not, not building a team through the lottery.

• 57:04Bill Simmons?

  Pinning your hopes on a guy who after four seasons was averaging 11 points a game career. And I think he got what, like 104 million for four years? And it was like a polarizing contract, remember? Some people are like, whoa, that's Jalen Brunson, that's way too much. Where were you on that? I was, I was more bullish on it.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  I think if you were watching.

• 57:24Bill Simmons?

  I didn't think he'd be this, but I was like, how else are you going to get? I thought he was a proven playoff guy, at least.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I think if you were watching that Dallas team, even before like the breakout against the Jazz that he had in that playoffs, all of the signs were there that he was a good, at least like plus starting level point guard. I thought maybe he would be the kind of guy who like makes some All-Star teams, maybe has like a Kemba Walker kind of career. This has been a totally different thing.

• 57:46Bill Simmons?

  No, this, this makes no sense. It's up there with Kawhi is really the only other example of somebody's first four years. Not remotely looking like their next four years.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:56Bill Simmons?

  Right? And it's just like a double leap.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  And he's so good at all the things that small guards are not supposed to be good at. Like for as much as people wring their hands around that idea, he gets in the lane and finishes and maneuvers around people in a way that we rarely, rarely see and maybe have never seen from anybody else. So I, I like this idea though of kind of like puncturing the common logic around what a champion can look like. And I think you're right about the construction of the Knicks. Not only did they not build through the draft, they didn't even really build their free agency either, like all of these guys that got by trade. And so, yeah.

• 58:26Bill Simmons?

  And even Randall was a free agent signing, who then they turned into Towns somehow.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  And on the other side of this, I mean, we're just coming off of a year where a really young team thunder, a really young thunder team won the title. And if the Spurs managed to get out of the series, maybe even a younger Spurs team manages to win the title. So the conventional wisdom that like, you have to have experience, you have to have all these things gets thrown out the window. I don't know what the requirements would be anymore, other than you need the superstars. And clearly in this era, you need a lot of depth just to survive this sort of run.

• 58:55Bill Simmons?

  Jordan Mulaney in LA wants to know if Wemby could pull a Jerry West in the Western Conference Finals where OKC wins the series, but Wemby wins Western Conference MVP. I hadn't thought of that. I am on the record, I always think it should come from a winning team. I don't know how you're the MVP of a team that lost, but this could be a really good test case. If Wemby finishes 27, 17 and four blocks a game or whatever, and, and his plus minus is crazy out of whack and they lose in seven by three points. But I, I personally think it should be a winning team.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  If he has three more games that look like game one, I think he probably should win. And that's even if Shea looks amazing, right? It's even if, even.

• 59:37Bill Simmons?

  So you would vote for it?

• 59:39Speaker 01

  I mean, you have, you have to see it in context. You have to understand what's happening. It's like, it's not just about the numbers, but how much you are shaping and impacting the game. I don't think anybody affected game one in the way that Victor Weben Yama affected game one. And they could lose the series and that could still be the case, especially if they're down all these other guys and they don't have the ball handling and they just kind of fall apart. But he is the one constant. I don't see a reason you can't vote for that.

• 1:00:03Bill Simmons?

  I think the one thing that's definitely happened. He's the best player in the league now. I don't think that's arguable anymore. The impact that he has and watching him go up a level in the playoffs. I just think, I think this is kind of a rap. As great as SGA is, it's just what we're watching from Wemby. We haven't seen it. John K. wanted to know, is Wemby the greatest threat we've seen to challenge Bill Russell's crown for most NBA championships, which is 11?

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  I don't think that's happening.

• 1:00:31Bill Simmons?

  I don't think it's happening, A. And B, we've been here before with like, honestly Shaq and Kobe felt like they were gonna win every, every title in the 2000s, right? When Wade and LeBron and Bosch all got together.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Not one, not two.

• 1:00:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it like 7-8 seemed realistic. So we've been in this spot a few times. I don't, I would say winning 11. The difference here is if he's 22 and his best teammates are 21 and 20, the kind of runway they're gonna have skipping all the steps of like, you know, Jordan didn't win a title till year eight.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:03Bill Simmons?

  You know, Wemby might win a title in year three for all we know.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  I feel like it's much more likely that we look up 10 years from now and Wemby, Wemby and the Spurs won four and Shay and the Thunder won three. And it was just kind of like a back and forth between them for supremacy during this time, but.

• 1:01:17Bill Simmons?

  Celtics Lakers in the 80s. So Lakers won five, Celtics won three.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:01:22Bill Simmons?

  It easily could have been 5-3 the other way. Um, last one from Brian from Philly. He said, uh, this is one of those series, everybody seems to agree whoever wins the West will win the title. He wants to know, how many other times has that happened where the finals, where the series before the finals felt like the finals? So I went through this Warriors Rockets 2018.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01:49Bill Simmons?

  Suns Spurs 2007, the Robert Horry shoving Nash into the, into the thing. It felt, it felt like whoever won that series was gonna win the title and the Cavs are waiting. Um, Lakers Kings 2002, I think was a good one. The Nets were the, in the finals, either team has been them.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  I mean, couldn't all three of those, like all of the championships in the Laker three-peat probably would qualify at some point with some series they played or another in the West?

• 1:02:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the problem is in 2001, they killed everybody. So I don't even think we thought there was this, they were just destroying. That was the second best team in the century. Lakers Blazers in 2000 was the other one.

• 1:02:27Bill Simmons?

  That felt like, uh, in Indiana, I thought was a good team that year. I actually, and that series is a lot closer than I think it gets credit for now. If you go back and you watch game four and game six, it's a really, really good series. But I think those were, uh, those were the four. Oh, and then one other, this is from BS weirdly, um, that wants to know why the Knicks keep rolling out all these ex-players that also have all this baggage from Knicks past, whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Marbury, Starks, Ewing, et cetera, et cetera. Larry Johnson, Sprewell. Is, it's like the ghosts of Knicks past, not in a good way, but the MSG has come to accept them? Are you pro? Are you con? Where are you in this?

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  I think we should honor our history. I think if, you know, not-

• 1:03:12Bill Simmons?

  That's how I feel as well.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Like, what's the problem? Certainly with honoring those, like, if Patrick Ewing wants to come watch the game, you're gonna turn your nose up at Patrick Ewing? And I'm here for the Big Ten. I loved the ceremony they had earlier this season where they brought out like 60 guys, like Ron Baker, come celebrate with Knicks legends. I think, once a Nick, always a Nick is a genuinely cool thing in a league that feels so transactional and so mercenary sometimes. Like, let's care about playing in a place, and let's care about players and athletes that have relationships to a city and to a fanbase. I don't think any of us need to be too cynical for that.

• 1:03:45Bill Simmons?

  Rob Mahoney, I completely agree. I kinda like, it's a little weird. It took a while to get used to it, but I like it. Because I think that's, when you're a franchise that has generations-

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:55Bill Simmons?

  I think you should embrace the generations. And they've done a good job of, kind of the celebrities, of the people that have been coming for a while get priority for the seats. I saw Fat Joe was courtside today.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:04:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Um, but then all the other Knicks guys from the 90s and 2000s, I don't know, I kinda like it.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  I do like it.

• 1:04:12Bill Simmons?

  I always liked when the Celtics, even in the 80s and 90s, when they would bring the guys from, anytime a guy from the 60s or 70s was in the house, it was like, oh, oh my god. It's, it's who, Don Nelson, wow. Um, but it is fun.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  If you're the Knicks, it's just every game. My one note, I don't know when Patrick Ewing entered his like newsboy cap era, uh, but I do have mixed feelings about that. And maybe it just comes for all of us.

• 1:04:37Bill Simmons?

  Feels like he's, I don't know, tinkering with stuff.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:41Bill Simmons?

  Maybe new stylist?

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  Him, John Travolta, like, it's, it's a weird year for like berets and alternative hats.

• 1:04:48Bill Simmons?

  Travolta might have ended the beret.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  You think so?

• 1:04:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think, I think, I think he killed the beret a couple nights ago. So you're doing Euphoria, you're doing it with Joanne on the Prestige TV pod.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  I am in fact, and we're doing-

• 1:05:00Bill Simmons?

  How many episodes left?

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  Two episodes left, and we're actually going to be going live to YouTube for both of those episodes. So come hang out with us on Sunday nights.

• 1:05:08Bill Simmons?

  What's it, Ringer TV? It's the YouTube channel?

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  Ringer TV. If you're not dialed in on the NBA that night, come watch Euphoria with us.

• 1:05:14Bill Simmons?

  My daughter was on my pod the other day and said the, the season seems to be revolving around Sydney Sweeney and her boobs. And she's hoping that they will gravitate away from that in the final two episodes, was her review.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  I don't know how locked in you've been, Bill, but they literally destroyed a skyscraper.

• 1:05:29Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I'm, I've been watching it. Yeah, they did a Godzilla with her boobs.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  Just wanted to make sure, you know, when that happened, I sent you like an urgent Slack alert just to make sure it was on your desk, but I'm glad you're there.

• 1:05:40Bill Simmons?

  By the way, I haven't been to Slack in eight years.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Maybe that's why.

• 1:05:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm always available on text though for you, Rob Mahoney.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  I appreciate that.

• 1:05:46Bill Simmons?

  All right, Ringer NBA, Prestige TV, and I don't know when I'm going to see you again. There'll be some sort of live thing we'll have to do during the series because I think Spurs-Thunder will go at least six.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  I certainly hope so. Hopefully there's enough like live bodies by the end of the series.

• 1:06:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. All right. Thanks, Rob Mahoney. We're going to take a break, come back with Malley Rubin and old friend Jason Guseciano next. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel, our friends. FanDuel giving you better payouts on same game parlays on the NBA playoffs all season long. More ways to build, more value every time you play. Stack your picks your way for every game, every matchup, every moment. Spreads, player points, threes, parlays, whatever you want. Build it into one same game parlay. Go for much bigger payouts. So if you're betting same game parlays this NBA postseason, why wouldn't you do it on FanDuel? I have no idea. More options, better payouts, all NBA playoffs long. Head to FanDuel.com/BS to get started.

• 1:06:47Bill Simmons?

  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 LinkedIn. For small businesses, guess what? Every hire matters. Luckily, there's LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Great name.

• 1:07:14Bill Simmons?

  It's designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates. And guess what? Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting jobs to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered screening interviews. And its conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language. Hire right the first time. Why not just do it the first time? Get started by posting your first job for free at LinkedIn.com/Simmons. That's me. That's LinkedIn.com/Simmons. Terms and conditions apply. Survivor 53 hour finale last night. Jason Concepcion is here. Malley Rubin is here. You might remember them once upon a time back in the 1900s.

• 1:07:58Bill Simmons?

  We had a little podcast called Binge Mode about a show called Game of Thrones way, way back when. But here's what's uniting us right now. We all love Survivor. I had a big comeback this year. You guys have been in from the ground for. And it was an action-packed season finale. Where do you want to start, Jason?

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh. I'll start with the winner because I thought Aubrey, deserving winner. Absolutely deserving winner. I've, I've never necessarily gravitated to her game. I thought the, the season where she came very close to winning, but Michelle won, Kao Rong. You know, I could see she played really well down the stretch, but I think that the criticism that her social game was not necessarily as on point as it needed to be to win that game is, is correct. And ultimately, the fact that she was able to get to, to get to the position to win

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  the last immunity necklace without Jonathan, Joe, or Rizzo realizing that she's the biggest threat to win the game. Yeah. Is proof positive that she deserves to win and that she altered her game enough to, to win under very challenging circumstances. I mean, it, it seems like a $2 million mistake to choose to boot Tiffany over Aubrey, certainly for Joe. And but shouts to Aubrey, just a real, a great, great run. She played it in that kind of new era way where she stayed in the middle, stayed in the cut,

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  and then flowered late to kind of take the reins. And again, still managed to stay off of people's radar. Just a wonderful performance. Have to hand it to her.

• 1:09:53Bill Simmons?

  Mal?

• 1:09:54Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah, I really agree. And I think like season 50, first of all, what a treat to be here with you both today to talk about this genuinely really memorable finale. And season 50 was supposed to be a lot of things, right? Not a lot of shows go for 50 seasons and 25 years. And one of the things that it was supposed to be, and I think when the initial cast list came out and there was this wide swath of players from the middle seasons missing, it was like, isn't this supposed to be a celebration of the eras? And it ended up being that in a lot of satisfying and surprising ways. And I think because of that core intention and the level of just adoration that every member of the cast brings to Survivor, like maybe we'll talk at some point about the celebrity twists across the season, which worked, which didn't.

• 1:10:36Speaker 03

  The true celebrity at the heart of Survivor, I've said this before, is Survivor. And so a player like Aubrey was always going to win this season, I think. A player who has the deep-seated trauma from injustices of Survivor's past and the ability to, in Aubrey's case, I thought beautifully and quite effectively articulate that at Final Tribal, a player like Sarie Godtier was never going to get to the end. There are very few other members of the cast who would have actually taken her and followed through on that pledge. I think Ozzy might have, probably nobody else would have, right? And a player like Joe was never going to get the votes. I actually think Rizzo is like a great player, and I hope we get to talk about him, but he was also never going to get the votes because the other players have never watched him play.

• 1:11:18Speaker 03

  They don't understand what his Survivor history is, but they do understand Aubrey's. And so I think Aubrey always was a leader in the clubhouse for like most likely to win the season, and I think she really played well. The underdog story almost always hits at Final Tribal, and she was able to back it up with like actual savvy gameplay and a real narrative. So I think she's a worthy winner as well.

• 1:11:40Bill Simmons?

  Is it time for me to have a zag?

• 1:11:42Speaker 03

  Do it.

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  Please zag, please zag.

• 1:11:45Bill Simmons?

  This is why I stopped watching the show.

• 1:11:47Speaker 03

  Oh, come on.

• 1:11:49Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, this is why I stopped, like 20 seasons in. I just had it with, with how they systematically get rid of all the most interesting, most talented, best looking people during the course of the show. And what do we end up with? Oh, the middle. This is the new strategy. Oh, you mean the people that were smart enough to realize this person's a bigger threat? Let's get them out. This person's a bigger threat. This, I, I just, I thought she was so unimpressive and the only reason she won was because 10 other people were way more captivating and way more of a threat. And she just kind of waited until the end. It was like watching a cockroach.

• 1:12:27Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  Go, yeah, please, you, you first.

• 1:12:30Speaker 03

  I want to agree and disagree. I, Jason, I know we feel the same way about this because one of the things that like got me through COVID was us texting about Jesse during JCC. This has been a real problem in the new era where like, I think genuinely it is difficult, if not impossible, for the best player in the season to win. And this is something that Jason and I have like agonized over for years. Jesse was one of the players I was shocked not to see in the season 50 cast. He was easily one of the most dominant players in recent memory. And the fact that he was not only not able to win, but not make it to the point where he could have tried to win was, I think, and I know Jason, you agree, an indictment of the structure of the game. So broadly, Bill, I think your critique of like, can the best player win is valid inside of this phase of Survivor, a show that I love and like basically can't live without.

• 1:13:15Speaker 03

  That said, I don't think that's the case for Aubrey. I don't actually think Aubrey is a player who falls into that mold. I don't think that Aubrey is one of these.

• 1:13:24Bill Simmons?

  What, what did she fall into? Not charismatic, doesn't win challenges, nobody really trusted her. And everybody kept her around because they all were stupid enough to think if she got to the end, they were going to beat her. That was the only reason she won.

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  I'll say this, I think it is very telling that over four appearances on the Survivor television program, the first time she won an immunity is the first time she won the title. And

• 1:13:52Bill Simmons?

  In immunity, she bought the set for her and practiced it. She practiced it on her own.

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  Anybody could do that.

• 1:13:58Speaker 03

  Good for her, prep her.

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  Semotion's been the final, Semotion's been the final challenge for, I can't even remember how long it's been.

• 1:14:04Speaker 03

  Everyone else is complacent and lazy. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  Everybody knows, and yes, there was a vote, but it's like, everybody should put their chip on, it's gonna be Semotion, because everybody knows it's gonna be Semotion, everybody loves Semotion, everybody could have done that. And I'll just say, like, I love Sarie, she dominates the game when she's in there.

• 1:14:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  Absolute mastermind, the likes of which, we will never see that level of strategic and social play, maybe again. If she could win a challenge one time, I mean, her threat, she could maybe win this game, because that's, you need the complete package. And I, I want to say that I agree with you, Bill, that specifically in New Era, there have been champions.

• 1:14:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  Gabler. Who came out of, literally came out of nowhere, you're like, what? Erica to a degree, where the editing has not caught up with the way the game is played today, where people stay in the middle, they stay below the surface, and then they burst out late. And I think that that is a production issue that the show needs to figure out, in order to drive these narratives stronger. That said, I thought they did a good job with that this season, I really think they did.

• 1:15:16Speaker 03

  Oh, I think if anything, they tipped it.

• 1:15:19Bill Simmons?

  We all thought she was gonna get, make the final three, just from the edit.

• 1:15:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:22Bill Simmons?

  Once, once she was crying during the mac and cheese, I was like, alright, here we go.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  When Jonathan, when Jonathan put his tongue in the rice, I'm like, he's not winning. That you don't, that's not a champions edit.

• 1:15:35Speaker 03

  Oh, man, I think, Bill, like, you, you invoke the word cockroach, and I would just posit. That that is part of the point. Outlast is one of the core tenants of Survivor. And like, I think that there are, and, and this is actually, I think this is a healthy debate, because part of what's fun about Survivor is just like the players have different styles and approaches. Fans of the show have different things they're looking for in a champion and different things they gravitate toward in a player who they form an attachment to. I like all sorts of different Survivor players. Like, I actually think Jonathan played an amazing season, you know? And I, obviously quite different from Aubrey. And one of the things that was super fun about the back half of the season was that brief moment where they were like, should we work together? Literally no one at home or on this beach would ever have anticipated that Aubrey and

• 1:16:20Speaker 03

  Jonathan would work together. And it was like riveting, right? Even for a moment. I think that the challenge beast is like a form of Survivor dominant, dominance. I think that the social strategist, the tactician, the intuiter, right? All of these things are different. I think that there is something undeniably impressive, though, about just being able to move vote to vote and not, because I don't think, I just don't think it's-

• 1:16:43Bill Simmons?

  By not being impressive?

• 1:16:44Speaker 03

  No, but that's the thing. That's what I pushed back on.

• 1:16:46Bill Simmons?

  We don't have to vote her out yet, because she's, there's no way she's gonna win. That was their special talent.

• 1:16:50Speaker 02

  She controlled the Aussie vote, which Joe basically confirmed at final. She had the better, she had the better ability to make her case, which people forget about that part of it. Like, she told a story at the end about why she should win. And it resonated.

• 1:17:08Bill Simmons?

  Right, that's what my wife said at the end. She was like, because we thought Jonathan had the best quote unquote on paper game. He couldn't communicate why he played the best game. And you could feel him dying in real time during the tribal council, because, and, and I think there was more there maybe in the edit. It didn't seem like people liked him. It was interesting to me that all the women, it seemed like, except for Stephanie. Didn't vote for Jonathan?

• 1:17:35Speaker 03

  No, Stephanie and Chris, he both voted for Jonathan and they were the most vociferous in his defense.

• 1:17:39Bill Simmons?

  But how many women didn't vote for him though?

• 1:17:41Speaker 03

  Well, it was eight to three, right?

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  To the point where Tiffany had to say, is there a question in this monologue?

• 1:17:46Speaker 03

  Incredible moment. I mean, Stephanie, that was like, that was just weird.

• 1:17:51Bill Simmons?

  Well, she has him covered up for him too, in one of the biggest episodes where

• 1:17:55Speaker 03

  Bizarre.

• 1:17:55Bill Simmons?

  All she had to do was throw him under the bus and she probably would have escaped and she didn't. And then she was like, well, I, I was trying to do right by him or whatever she said. I thought that was weird.

• 1:18:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, that's like an adjustment Jonathan can make. Jonathan will play again. There's no question. Right? And I thought one of the cool thing, like when Jonathan played his first season, everybody talks about Ozzy as the jungle boy. There has never been a more physically dominant, single season performance than Jonathan's first season. It was astonishing. He was like Thor. It was crazy. The fact that in between his appearances, he said, I'm going to study at the knee of Boston Rob and really work to improve my game. Is impressive. So now he will, I have no doubt, make another adjustment. There's no question, Bill, that he's thinking the exact same thing. Like I sat there and the relationships I needed didn't pan out. And I wasn't able to articulate my case too. And I actually think Jonathan did a pretty good job across the season of like,

• 1:18:48Speaker 03

  saying what he needed to at tribal council or in a conversation with somebody when he was trying to move a vote. But certainly Aubrey did too. And I think that like Aubrey got by because she wasn't the biggest threat. There were, for weeks now, she's been a target. Weeks. So I just don't think that's accurate. Was she always the biggest threat?

• 1:19:04Bill Simmons?

  Which they got rid of Suri because they thought she was the biggest threat. They got rid of Tiffany over Aubrey.

• 1:19:12Speaker 03

  Because they were afraid Tiffany would win the next immunity and that they wouldn't be able to control the outcome then.

• 1:19:17Bill Simmons?

  But this goes back to my, this goes back to my celebration of the middle and that, this is why this show is frustrating to me. It really is a microcosm of real life. This is what big companies are like. This is what ESPN was like. Middle level managers who just figure out how to go under the radar. Don't really make noise either way and just kind of strategically survive until other people flame out. And that's the show. And this is why I stopped watching it. Cause it's frustrating to me.

• 1:19:45Speaker 02

  I, I, I will disagree with you in the sense that the middle era of this show, certainly up to Winners at War was let the players play and very aggressively so. Fewer advantages.

• 1:20:00Speaker 02

  Huge alliances, big rivalries, big characters making big moves. It has turned into, and I think you're framing it a lot more aggressively than I would, that kind of game in the new era with too many advantages and people playing the middle. That said, I think, I'm gonna critique it through your take through the lens of Jonathan. I think Jonathan made a tactically sound decision that I have a great chance to win the final immunities and my only real threat in that regard is Tiffany. And so I need her out so I can win that and then we get out Aubrey and then we move on.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  Not realizing that you might not get that chance, and I think it was an ego move.

• 1:20:47Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 1:20:49Speaker 02

  And the issue is, people who play, as much as Jonathan has grown, he's still, I think, thinks of himself as like a challenge player, a physical player. He's always talking about like, "They only see me as the big guy." I mean, you're talking about how much you're the big guy. And he looked at the game through the lens of challenge beast, Tiffany's gotta go, not looking at the full picture. What are the conversations that are happening when you're not looking? Who has relationships on that jury right now? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Who's having conversations that you're not aware of? Who's been involved in votes? Who hasn't had a vote cast against them? And you've gotta look at that whole picture and Jonathan's not there yet.

• 1:21:31Speaker 02

  Rizzo, who I love, is certainly not there yet, though I think we'll see him again.

• 1:21:35Speaker 03

  Oh my God, no question.

• 1:21:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but hold on, with the strategy piece, and this is why Jonathan lost. So Rizzo has an idol that they never flush out, ever.

• 1:21:44Speaker 03

  Two seasons in a row, yeah.

• 1:21:46Speaker 02

  Terrible.

• 1:21:46Speaker 03

  Incredible.

• 1:21:47Bill Simmons?

  Suri has, they know that...

• 1:21:51Bill Simmons?

  She's never winning a challenge. She's just not. That's her fatal flaw. It's like Mitchell Robinson's free throw shooting. Like you can do hack a, hack a three, put her on the free throw line. She's gonna go one and two. You have to keep her to the final five. They got rid of her a week too early. That was your week to either get rid of either Aubrey or Tiffany. I, I forget who had the immunity at that time.

• 1:22:11Speaker 02

  I think that was.

• 1:22:12Bill Simmons?

  You keep Suri until the final, he's like, we gotta get her out. We gotta get her out. It's like, just do it when there's five left or do it when there's four left. What challenge is she winning? There's no way. She's already proven she's been last or if you're doing advanced metrics on it, she's last or second to last in every challenge you're doing. So why do you have to get rid of her before the final four? I, I just don't understand that. They're in the island all day talking about nothing. This is like all I would talk about. You'd just be planning out 40 scenarios. Like this never dawned on them?

• 1:22:41Speaker 03

  I've had this, this exact discussion with like, I, I think this is a popular take, you know, in the wake of when specifically Suri was voted out. And I, I think that you're undeniably right that if you just look at the, the probabilities, like if you just look at the likelihood of certain outcomes, you can't argue against the case you just made. There's, there's no, there actually is no counter argument. However, the infinitesimal scenario, however small the likelihood is that some challenge emerges and like frankly, I think that production puts a challenge in front of them that is suited to Suri because they so badly want Suri to win. You can't be the person who made the single biggest mistake in Survivor history, which was to allow Suri to get to the final.

• 1:23:26Bill Simmons?

  Wait, do it with five left then. You get rid of Rizzo and his idol. I, I don't know. I just didn't agree with that.

• 1:23:32Speaker 03

  And I think also taking Suri out is a resume move for people because she's such a beloved player. So they all wanted to be able to say, I'm the one who finally got Suri, the goat, out of the game. And that's like too tantalizing of an elixir to pass on, I think.

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree. I, I think Jonathan had a chance and his chance was get Aubrey out when you had the chance. That was it. Period. And then lean on your strength as a challenge beast to say, I can beat Tiffany. Why are you, why are you running from the smoke? Why are you running from challenging Tiffany head up in the final immunity challenge? Like, take her on. Don't be afraid of that. That's what you're good at. You don't get Aubrey out.

• 1:24:15Bill Simmons?

  I love Tiffany. I was really rooting for her. I thought she had a great season.

• 1:24:22Bill Simmons?

  I understand why you'd want to get her out, but I also don't feel like she had the same connections. And part of that, I mean, you guys have been watching the show the whole time. I watched, I don't know, the first 20, first 25, I can't remember, and then I faded off. The part that was different for me than maybe you guys is the history of these people on the shows was such a big part of how everybody perceived who they should vote for, who is in control. They were using the past. It was like, why Riz couldn't win because he hasn't tasted his blood enough, or whatever stupid reason it was. And I was just watching, like, who's playing the best game this year? And to me, like, I thought Jonathan and Tiffany were way better. And I actually thought Riz was better than Aubrey, too.

• 1:25:03Bill Simmons?

  But then everybody was pulling in the past, and you were so close against Michelle. And I was like, I didn't see that season. I don't even know what that means. I'm just judging you by this year, when you were just in the middle, doing nothing for most of the season.

• 1:25:16Speaker 02

  I'll say that I think that there is, there's active activity on the island, playing the game, making moves, etc. And then there's this passive ability to read the game. And I think that is what this middle play that Aubrey displayed shows. I think Tiffany had an ability to read the game. What she was missing was an ability to rally people to get Aubrey out. She saw it. Aubrey is the threat. We need to do this. But she couldn't build those connections to make it happen. And

• 1:25:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, she was annoyed by people. That's how I would be in this game. I would just start to get annoyed by like six, seven people. I can't help it.

• 1:25:54Speaker 02

  Very much the same. But that, reading the game, I think is the thing that is both

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  The most amorphous, hard to visualize as a, as a audience member because you have that omniscient view. You can see everything. You know what's happening basically on the island from 30,000 feet above. And it's also what makes the game so frustrating. I think, you know, Jonathan didn't do press after the, after the finale. And I think, and if you watched him, the other podcasts have noted this, other, other people have watched the finale, he had like a big dip in his lip. I think just chewing, you know, trying

• 1:26:34Speaker 03

  He looked very unhappy still.

• 1:26:35Speaker 02

  I think he thought he won. And I think

• 1:26:38Bill Simmons?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:26:39Speaker 02

  He must have thought he won. And he, and I think he thinks, I think he realizes he made a $2 million mistake.

• 1:26:47Speaker 03

  I think he's known for a full year or plus, because that's how long ago this was filmed, that he didn't win. And he has spent every day stewing on and anticipating this moment of public regret and embarrassment.

• 1:26:58Speaker 02

  That's, that's what I mean. I think he thought in the moment that he thought he won.

• 1:27:01Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. It was like, yes, it's been a year.

• 1:27:04Bill Simmons?

  The prediction markets had Aubrey at like 36% before the show even started, which I didn't, I didn't know any of this till last night. And then heading into this final episode, she was the prohibitive favorite.

• 1:27:16Speaker 03

  That's not surprising to me, just because even though they had not actually read the votes, much like before the game, you know, the Zoom alliance, all of the, you're not supposed to pregame, but they do, they form alliances, they talk. Similarly, you know, everyone's like, who'd you vote for? Who'd you vote for? And

• 1:27:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:29Speaker 03

  It's NDAs are not enough. People know that at some point word gets out and then it travels. I, I did not know that about the markets and Aubrey, but I think the edit, frankly, from episode one, made it pretty clear that Aubrey was going to make it far because there was, we had these kind of two phases of the edit. The first one, you know, like Christian was the player I was, Tyson, Tyson, host of Ringer, excellent Ringer podcast, The Pod has Spoken. If you were, if you were listening to this and have not checked out The Pod has Spoken, check it out. It's, if you love Survivor, it's a fantastic podcast. Tyson is the best. He's my favorite Survivor player ever. One of my most recent new favorites is Christian from David versus Goliath, right?

• 1:28:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:05Speaker 03

  Christian is, I was, when the cast list for season 50 came out, I was just overjoyed that we were going to get to see Christian play again. Christian was so prominent in the early episodes that I was like, Fuck. There's literally no chance Christian is winning this season because they wouldn't be devoting this much time to him in the early episodes.

• 1:28:21Bill Simmons?

  And Ozzy was the other one that waited so much time.

• 1:28:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. So Aubrey was in that interesting spot where there was, it was so conspicuous in episode one, centering this feud between Genevieve and Aubrey that did end up bearing fruit and being really meaningful in the inane blood moon episode, but had no consequence early on in terms of being featured as prominently as it was. So it's like, they're telling us this is going to matter for a reason. And then we get to the middle of like the surging, I'm an underdog, right? Okay, I won't make the same mistakes I have in the past. People start targeting Aubrey. Then they start talking about how Aubrey has a good story. Oh, Tiff's making some good points. I think this has been, again, I love Survivor. There's like the mini version of it where you're watching a challenge and the, literally the scoring, the music of the scene changes right

• 1:29:08Speaker 03

  before the outcome of the, the challenge. You're like, I guess I know who's about to hit this shot and win. Why do they do this?

• 1:29:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:14Speaker 03

  They tipped the edit. There was a period a few years ago where they worked more actively, I think, to obscure the outcome and how they edit the show because so many people were on to it. There were a couple candidates, I guess, in how this season was edited. I think Jonathan was one of them as well, where it was like the way he's being edited, you, you did really believe he was going to get pretty far.

• 1:29:33Bill Simmons?

  Tiffany was the opposite.

• 1:29:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:35Bill Simmons?

  I didn't think they spent enough time on her and meanwhile, she was cranking out challenges.

• 1:29:39Speaker 02

  The only finalist, the only final five contestant with a no confessional episode.

• 1:29:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:29:46Speaker 02

  And so I think they really, they really overcorrected on Tiffany's edit in particular. Sorry.

• 1:29:54Speaker 03

  Tiff is great. She'll win at some point.

• 1:29:57Speaker 02

  She will win.

• 1:29:57Speaker 03

  So will Rizzo.

• 1:29:59Bill Simmons?

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• 1:30:44Bill Simmons?

  you need a plan that fits your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you. So they can help personalize coverage for your life and for your budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Did you think there were too many gimmicks this season?

• 1:31:00Speaker 03

  No question, no question.

• 1:31:03Speaker 02

  Not only too many gimmicks, but too many game breaking destructive gimmicks. It's one thing to have like Blood Moon and it was like a name. It didn't really matter. But then you have like the Jimmy Fallon one turn, which was basically

• 1:31:19Speaker 03

  outrageous.

• 1:31:20Speaker 02

  Put a gun in Christian's hand and tell him he has to shoot himself. Like it's, there was no chance he came back from that.

• 1:31:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:28Speaker 02

  And

• 1:31:30Speaker 02

  too many of the advantages were like that. The Billie Eilish boomerang, which

• 1:31:35Speaker 02

  it's notable to me how many longtime Survivor watchers and Survivor contestants turned Survivor content creators have continuously been like, oh, um, Rizzo should give the, no, he can't. It's the boomer, he has to keep it.

• 1:31:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:31:54Speaker 02

  And that mechanic alone is just dumb. We want to see players make deals. We want to see players be active, not get locked in these boxes and too many of the gimmicks.

• 1:32:05Bill Simmons?

  They gamified it.

• 1:32:06Speaker 02

  They randomized the game too much.

• 1:32:08Speaker 03

  That's it.

• 1:32:09Speaker 02

  I think they're just too prohibitively dangerous to the person who gets them.

• 1:32:16Speaker 03

  I could not possibly agree more. I think, again, the true celebrity in Survivor season 50 is Survivor. So let's center the gameplay. Now, I think like the shock of the century to me is that the Mr. Beast thing, which I had been dreading, given how prominently it had been teased in the trailers, was like kind of amazing, actually. And Devens at the center of just a, that, so it's, I think two things. One, when Jeff is talking about the Blood Moon and how iconic and historic it's going to be. And that's why we're here to make this historic moment. It's like that, there are That's not how a historic iconic Survivor moment happens by you saying out loud it's about to happen. It happens organically and authentically because of the decisions that the players make. And the Blood Moon robbed the players of the ability to make decisions based on their play

• 1:33:00Speaker 03

  to that point by artificially dividing them into groups that were too small. Do the pod of spoken crew talked about this a lot at the time, but do a 17 person tribal that would have actually been historic. Now, the Mr. Beast thing worked out because

• 1:33:13Speaker 02

  Because it came up.

• 1:33:14Speaker 03

  It came up, it came up, right, Beast? And like, they got the 2 million, great. But it allowed Devens to behave fearlessly and boldly, which is his game. It was an amplifier for how he already plays. And I think it revealed everybody else's collective cowardice because they let him do it, which was demented. How could nobody else stand up and say, I'm gonna do this instead? The Jimmy Fallon thing I will take to my grave, both because of my affection for Christian, but also because, to your point, Jay, it deprived a player who we love to watch operate of the ability to operate at all. It violates a sacred Survivor tenet, which is the one thing you will never have to do on the island is write down your own name. So right away,

• 1:33:57Speaker 03

  I'm out. But it's just, once you go back and you have to read that out loud and say that and then do it, there's literally nothing you can do to save yourself at that point. And then what are all of the alliances and the gamesmanship for? Genevieve, who I think is a great player, found two idols and got voted out because the game didn't allow either of them to make it back to her in time because of that artificial division of the structure. So like, I think the moments that heightened gameplay and centered it and allowed the decisions that the players had made to that point and wanted to make in the future to be at the four, including like fire making, right? Like the blowing, Jeff revealing that, which I'm sure we'll talk about was like astonishing, but the fact that two players

• 1:34:38Speaker 03

  who had lost fire before were facing off in fire. I was like, my jaw was on the floor. I'm like, I can't, this is actually poetic. This is like, this is mythic. This is what Survivor is. Jimmy Fallon coming in or like a 25 minute

• 1:34:53Speaker 03

  Spearfishing aside, with a Survivor superfan, I'm like, I'm a Survivor superfan. I didn't get to go do that. Why do I need to watch this? You know, the moments that moved me the most this season were like Ozzy crying about his father. And I was like, I did not expect to feel this way about an Ozzy scene, but I'm like bowled over by this and really moved.

• 1:35:09Bill Simmons?

  How many times did you cry, though?

• 1:35:11Speaker 03

  Um, I was genuinely affected by that Ozzy moment. And even something really like, you know, like Joe and Devens having just this very authentic connection about, that would really touch me. The moment that got me the most this season, not even close, won't surprise Jason, who knows about my Colby obsession, to hear this, but like, Colby being voted out. It got me because it's like, not just because he's just insanely hot and always has been, and I'm one of my formative crushes, and I was sad not to get to see him, but like, that's a moment that only season 50 of Survivor can give us, which is like, this person you watched grow up on your TV, sit there, the guy used to be a hot shot, challenge beast,

• 1:35:51Speaker 03

  dominant, beloved, like poster boy, heartthrob, then he comes back, he can't get it done. He doesn't handle it well, you know, then that's the third time. And like, to be there after 24 years, in his 50s, as like the fatherly figure, and sit there with that like humility and humbleness and grace, I was just like, this is actually kind of amazing to me to have watched this person move through the phases of his life. And to see the way it impacted the other players around him who were in tears, having to send him home, knowing he would probably not be back. I was like, this is why I'm watching a season 50. This is amazing.

• 1:36:23Bill Simmons?

  Also, one of the top 15 people that were more charismatic this season than the winner, Aubrey.

• 1:36:29Speaker 02

  I mean, I will say that I don't disagree that

• 1:36:33Speaker 03

  Oh, God.

• 1:36:34Speaker 02

  She's not oozing charisma by any sense.

• 1:36:37Bill Simmons?

  What were your favorite Aubrey moments during the season?

• 1:36:39Speaker 02

  Your mileage may vary. Well, I love the Genevieve feud, but that's one of those editing decisions where, you know, from my perspective, it was, they gazed at each other across the beach and then hated each other, and no explanation. I want to know what happened, and they should have made more.

• 1:37:01Speaker 02

  A hay out of whatever that was because it seemed so deeply felt that both of them were just simply not gonna work with each other after whatever happened on that beach. But that was, that was great. I, that's the stuff I love is these petty rivalries, alliances based on, on.

• 1:37:20Bill Simmons?

  Based on nothing?

• 1:37:21Speaker 02

  Basically, you know, just like vibing with somebody.

• 1:37:23Bill Simmons?

  We had a good walk to go take a poop together.

• 1:37:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:37:27Bill Simmons?

  Can I give you my Mr. Beast impression?

• 1:37:29Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:37:30Bill Simmons?

  On the show?

• 1:37:31Speaker 03

  Please.

• 1:37:34Speaker 02

  Bigger teeth, whiter.

• 1:37:38Bill Simmons?

  Did somebody tell him like, hey, you're probably gonna be nervous out there. Just smile like you're a serial killer for the entire time you're out there. That's one note. Um, my most disappointing moment was when Christian turned on Mike White, who had befriended him and even brought him to the White Lotus thing. And I, I do feel like, I feel like Christian worked a long con on Mike White, who loves this show and should know better.

• 1:38:00Speaker 02

  Oh, come on.

• 1:38:00Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I'm telling you, I, I do.

• 1:38:02Speaker 02

  First of all.

• 1:38:03Bill Simmons?

  I think Mike White was like, this is my guy right here. Meanwhile, Christian did the full fucking Scarface double cross on him.

• 1:38:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:38:11Bill Simmons?

  I'm telling you.

• 1:38:12Speaker 02

  Is, is anybody working a longer con than Michael White?

• 1:38:16Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's the thing, he got out con.

• 1:38:18Speaker 02

  Multiple survivor players into the White Lotus universe?

• 1:38:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and he got out con.

• 1:38:25Speaker 02

  Who co-hosted the official podcast with Mr. Probes and who's, who dangles these appearances in White Lotus as, as boons for being in his orbit. I think Mike, I think Mike was trying to do the exact thing to Christian that Christian did to him, only Christian got there first. And honestly, Christian had to, he had to do it at that moment.

• 1:38:48Bill Simmons?

  Mike White, another more charismatic contestant than Aubrey.

• 1:38:51Speaker 02

  Very true.

• 1:38:52Bill Simmons?

  Let's add him to the list.

• 1:38:53Speaker 03

  That was, like, so Christian and Mike played together, right? They were on, and that is my favorite season of Survivor. David, if anyone's like, what old season should I check out? I mean, there are a ton. Heroes versus villains, blood versus water. I mean, there are a million. Yeah, all the Tony seasons, Winners of War, they're fantastic. But like, David versus Goliath is a fantastic standalone season and a lot of those characters have been a part of Survivor lore moving forward. Christian was, on the one hand, right to identify that, like, people were looking at them. And Mike was too, too willing to say, like, my David versus Goliath guys are my guys. Like, let's do it. Christian, realizing that was a threat, was right. I think that there was no, literally no chance that anyone who was playing this

• 1:39:35Speaker 03

  season was gonna give bazillionaire Mike White $2 million in prize money. So, like, I don't think he needed to be eliminated in that sense.

• 1:39:43Bill Simmons?

  No, keep him in the final five.

• 1:39:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, he is a very compelling and artful director of decisions. And I thought the way that he, like, with a laser beam to the heart,

• 1:39:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:54Speaker 03

  picked at that scab, at that Gabby wound for Christian.

• 1:39:58Speaker 02

  That was a mistake.

• 1:39:59Speaker 03

  Holy shit. Like, that was riveting to watch. And Christian was like, not again.

• 1:40:03Speaker 02

  The context there is, Christian and Gabby had a, what seemed like a rock side alliance.

• 1:40:11Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:40:11Speaker 02

  Bordering on perhaps a mutual crush. Like, it was, it was,

• 1:40:16Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:40:17Speaker 02

  It was powerful television. And at a crucial moment, she turns on him. He survives it, but ultimately, it does wound his, his campaign going forward. And it was a big, big moment. And for Mike to put his finger on that, I thought was, I thought it was too soon for that kind of move. And I will add this. I think Mike's other mistake, if you could call that, he came in too shredded.

• 1:40:44Speaker 03

  The abs.

• 1:40:45Bill Simmons?

  Keep your shirt on. Yeah.

• 1:40:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, keep your shirt on.

• 1:40:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:48Speaker 02

  Don't, don't be like, I've been working with the guy who, you know, gets the Hemsworths ready for the cinematic universe to, to prepare for this. It's, it's telling too much.

• 1:40:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:59Bill Simmons?

  He had to go.

• 1:41:00Speaker 03

  Agreed.

• 1:41:02Bill Simmons?

  We didn't talk about Joe yet.

• 1:41:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:04Bill Simmons?

  Joe with the goose egg in the final three?

• 1:41:07Speaker 03

  Very rough. He has not done well in the finals twice, which is really tough.

• 1:41:12Bill Simmons?

  And Sarie just drive by shot him with the Joe, the Joe-tation, whatever she said. That was just an unbelievable throat slit.

• 1:41:22Speaker 03

  That was so, so, so good.

• 1:41:23Bill Simmons?

  Joe, every, Joe probably it should have been a red flag for him that everybody was so delighted to never talk about him, never vote him out and just keep him going.

• 1:41:31Speaker 03

  Happy to take him to the end.

• 1:41:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Everybody saw him the same way.

• 1:41:35Speaker 02

  I think Joe showed good growth towards the end of this season, recognizing that his honor and integrity kind of gameplay is one, very old fashioned and two, just is not a way to, to, to win the game, to go far in the game, to be a threat to win the game on any level. That, that said, he, he brought it up in the final tribal council, talking about how he, he added some layers to his gameplay. And that's the part that didn't resonate with me at all. I did not feel that Joe meaningfully, here's the thing. Joe, as a Survivor player, thinks he's playing the honesty and integrity game. And to a certain extent, he is with, in, in relation to everybody else.

• 1:42:19Speaker 02

  He's also lying and playing Survivor early, but not recognizing it. And then later, when he's saying, oh, I had to add these lies to his game, he, where?

• 1:42:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:29Speaker 02

  You didn't.

• 1:42:29Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:42:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I didn't remember. I didn't remember that either. My wife and I were like, what, did Joe do a double cross that we forget?

• 1:42:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think he was like trying to basically reposition something like saying to coach, coach, one of, as always, one of the most bankable experiences in this, in this unpredictable world is that watching coach on Survivor will be the highlight of a lifetime.

• 1:42:51Bill Simmons?

  Another one more charismatic than Aubrey. I'll just keep listing them.

• 1:42:54Speaker 03

  He is such an incredible character. I just can't like, I just, I never, I personally never tire of it. But saying to, to coach, I will never write your name down. And then we get the, the pairs elimination, which was like, again, an example of, I thought, a much better twist than some of the ones that were touted in the ti, in the moment of being like a huge twist. It's like, actually interesting to pair people and then you have to vote out two people at once.

• 1:43:15Bill Simmons?

  I like that.

• 1:43:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was really good. Now, I think that Joe is, Joe is a little bit of a like, every person inside of them has two wolves, right? Like for me personally, because as Jason knows, watching Joe a couple of seasons ago with Eva. Was like one of the most emotional and moving and deeply, I think genuinely deeply affecting experiences in the history of Survivor.

• 1:43:38Speaker 02

  It was, it was, it was blockbuster television to the point that I am convinced production tinkered with the challenges to keep Joe in the game for two or three extra episodes when they realized he couldn't do a puzzle.

• 1:43:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's entirely possible. It was just beautiful to watch that, I thought, like sincerely.

• 1:43:56Speaker 02

  Yes, it was.

• 1:43:57Speaker 03

  That said, Joe going back to camp after like Devens gives us one of the most authentically incredible moments in Survivor history, and Joe says to everybody, has the fucking gall to say to everybody, "That was disgusting. Wasn't appropriate." I'm like, dude, what game do you think you're playing? This is Survivor. Now, I think people try to play their version of Survivor is fine, and if you want to do the honor integrity alliance, like, it's not personally for me. I like watching people stab each other in the back and cut each other's throats and then try to justify why the person they did that to should give them a million dollars. Like, that's amazing. But if you want to try to do it differently, that's your prerogative. That's actually fine. Don't say you can't

• 1:44:39Speaker 03

  believe that other people are doing the thing that everybody is there to watch them do.

• 1:44:44Bill Simmons?

  The whole point of the show.

• 1:44:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's just bizarre. Yeah.

• 1:44:47Bill Simmons?

  Why else do we have it? Um, who is the one, if we, if we reset this season and just start it over again, who was the one that got voted out a little earlier, Jason, that you feel like, man, it just, almost like a sports series where it's like, oh, man, if they didn't hit that three in game one, we probably could have won that one?

• 1:45:07Speaker 02

  I think there are several, but I'm gonna go with Genevieve. I think Genevieve is one of the most dynamic players we've seen in the new era.

• 1:45:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:17Speaker 02

  In her previous season, had this ability to scramble from the bottom against adverse situations, hold fast to...

• 1:45:28Speaker 02

  Toxic allies as meat shields in a way that showed a level of of ability to read the game that I think and read the middle game that I think is uncommon. And she's very smart, very tactical, and I think that's why Aubrey had to get her out immediately. Immediately.

• 1:45:46Bill Simmons?

  Another charismatic one.

• 1:45:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think Genevieve is a great pick for that. I have, I have two nominees. One is very quick because it was, it was injury. So there's not much to talk about, but Kyle, I think would have gone incredibly far, incredibly far in the game. And he's one of the more impressive winners in recent memory. And I would actually be fascinated, Bill, for you to go back and watch his season, given your overall feeling about kind of like biding your time as a strategy. Because the way he did it, I thought, I was like, you should be like in MI6. Like it was, it was just unbelievable. And I think you would really have respected his game and wanted to watch him play this season. But I think maybe the, the spirit of your question, the better answer is since Jay took Genevieve, Charlie? Because this was just a bizarre self-immolation that didn't need to happen.

• 1:46:32Speaker 03

  And I think it was like, kind of interesting to watch, given that it was very genuinely born out of his personal trauma from Maria. Charlie's a really good player. Like he did incredibly well in his season. He had an alliance that took him very far. And his ally, as we know, even if you didn't see his season, you know from watching this season, his number one didn't vote for him. And he has just never gotten over it. Like it's, it's a sincere, sincere wound he carries. And he just completely misread the Rizzo thing and allowed that, this, this misread, this misperception that Rizzo was Maria and had done to his ally, what Maria had done to him to, he imploded his own game because of like the wrong read on someone he hadn't watched play.

• 1:47:15Speaker 03

  And I think whether like you let your own personal trauma or baggage lead you to a certain, certain decision is like very human. And that's interesting to watch, but I wish Charlie had just been like, all I know is what people are saying out loud. And why would Rizzo in any way tell us the truth about what happened? I shouldn't let this be the arbiter of the decisions that I make. It just was so strange, the hold it had on him. And I wish we had gotten to watch him play a little longer because he's a, I think he's quite a capable player.

• 1:47:43Bill Simmons?

  Jason, um, can you, I know it's, it just happened. So you probably need more time to reflect, but what do you think, what do you think, Riz? What do you think this final three meant to the Albanian community?

• 1:47:56Speaker 02

  Well, I, I was saying when, you know, Rizzo was talking about how important this is, the Albanian community, that first of all, they have Dua Lipa, so they're good. I think the Albanian community at large is

• 1:48:08Bill Simmons?

  They're feeling great these days.

• 1:48:09Speaker 02

  Doing okay. You know, Action Bronson, Granite Jacca, former Arsenal player, like there's, we're doing okay.

• 1:48:16Bill Simmons?

  Reruns are taken on TNT. They're doing good.

• 1:48:19Speaker 02

  They're doing well. I, I think Rizzo, listen, Rizzo's got a lot of potential. I think we'll see him again. I think he maybe overrates his own game to a degree. He, he needed to control a vote. If you're never going to be able to win a challenge, you need to swing a vote somewhere down the line. And he was just, I think, a little too passive and made the, ultimately cut his allies off at the knees way too soon. He needed to skate through, I think, one more vote with Sarri and Ozzy.

• 1:48:51Bill Simmons?

  I thought he needed to, don't you think he needed to flip when there was like six left and do a new alliance with, with Tiff and Sarri?

• 1:48:58Speaker 02

  I mean, that's a move too. Yeah, I mean, that's a move too.

• 1:49:01Bill Simmons?

  Cause he was, he was drawn dead in the one he was in, I think. He was always going to be the third guy in that group.

• 1:49:07Speaker 02

  Here's where I'll disagree. I think that there's two ways to do it, and both are very strong historically.

• 1:49:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:13Speaker 02

  One way is you have one, only one, number one ally, and you say, you and me, we're going to the end, and whatever happens there, happens. Or you flip at some point. Both of those work really well, but, you know, I think, there, there's so many examples of, you need that one ally, you just need the one. And I thought that Rizzo had gone too far down the road

• 1:49:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:40Speaker 02

  with Sarri, to not hold on to her for at least one more till you get back together. I mean, like, till you get back together and you get to do it.

• 1:49:49Bill Simmons?

  But Sarri had like four people like that. That was one of the great things about her game, is everybody felt like they were her number one. And meanwhile, you know, Sarri was getting around.

• 1:49:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, that's part of her, her just magic is the ability to just win everybody to her cause and really truly steer and direct the outcome.

• 1:50:08Bill Simmons?

  She's like CR. It's like if CR was on Survivor, CR just floats in the different groups.

• 1:50:13Speaker 02

  I think he'd do very well.

• 1:50:14Speaker 03

  He'd do great. He'd do great.

• 1:50:16Speaker 02

  Except for the pat, he need the nicotine. Could they be able to airdrop him the nicotine?

• 1:50:20Bill Simmons?

  I think CR, I think CR would get double crossed and it would be like one of the most devastating moments in Survivor history. People would just be.

• 1:50:27Speaker 03

  Too trusting?

• 1:50:28Bill Simmons?

  People would just be out of, yeah, too trusting. Too nice of a guy.

• 1:50:31Speaker 03

  Beloved by all, warm, open heart, and then just absolutely eviscerated when he least expects it.

• 1:50:38Bill Simmons?

  That's the whole point of the show.

• 1:50:39Speaker 03

  Would be great TV.

• 1:50:40Bill Simmons?

  I really liked Rizzo, though. I enjoyed him and I think he was actually, you know, I, I wonder like, should you hold back during the early tribal councils? Because if you're just, like, he's somebody who could have like a podcast, like, he's just like, on the more eloquent side of those things. So I think as he's like, just very like, for two minutes, just laying out like some big picture angle on the show, they had to have been thinking like, I don't want to be in the final three with this guy. He's going to be able to explain his case the best.

• 1:51:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, definitely. Yeah, like, he is able to not only succinctly and clearly say the thing that needs to be said, but he does it with, with, as he would say, some cinema, right? Like, he makes it really compelling and dramatic. He draws the eye. Rizzo is, is one of my favorite recent players, and I think that, my sense, Jay, I'm curious if you agree with us from 49, I think this is a pretty widely shared experience, very similar to like what Colby went through in real time on season 50, where the first couple of episodes, you're like, what's going on with this guy? Like, this is really a lot. And then you just fall in love with him and it's so, it's so fun to watch him play. And I think like, in general, I think a problem with the recent seasons of Survivor is that the players are way too self-aware.

• 1:51:53Speaker 03

  They're all super fans, they're obsessed with the game, they all think they're Survivor scholars, and so they're not only constantly like, I'm the best, I know exactly how to do this because I've crunched the tape for my entire life. I, and I think the part of it that's fun is they're awed by the experience when you have a season like this where like, you can watch Rizzo pull coach aside and say, to a player he idolizes and grew up watching, we don't slay dragons at camp, we do it at tribal. Like, it was incredible. And I think watching the way that he navigated his interactions with these people he idolizes was genuinely impressive.

• 1:52:29Speaker 03

  But he transcends, I think, like a little bit of a flaw with the current game because most of the players who are obsessives are too... There was a season, a few seasons ago, I can't remember which one it was, where like, I think six of the players were podcasters or in the media. And it's like, they're just too hyper-aware of what their image is gonna be and how they're gonna play as TV characters in addition to as like Survivor players. And I would love, obviously, we're not getting that, because the tease for 51, which I have to be honest, I could barely follow and did not understand. Like, the open era explanation of like, all the advantages and everything that's ever happened in the game is in the mix. I'm like, I'm not really totally like, following how this is gonna work.

• 1:53:05Bill Simmons?

  More twists, more adventure.

• 1:53:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. We need the opposite. We need a clean slate.

• 1:53:08Speaker 02

  I completely agree. Yeah. It seems like, I mean, this is just a guess, you know, but it seems like maybe they're gonna try and do a One World type of situation. So, Bill, One World was, there were no two camps, there were no two tribes, everybody was just on the same beach. That is kind of interesting to me, if they're gonna do that. But I agree with Mal. Like, let the players play. Take out some of these randomizing elements that have been introduced lately. I think that there was, now, maybe Jeff has data that backs up that people actually love this stuff. And in which case, fine. That said, for me, as a person who's been watching a long time, there is like, an ideal that crested in Survivor,

• 1:53:49Speaker 02

  I would say, like, around David's versus Elias, Melania's Gen X, when it was like, a minimum of advantages and idols. And you knew that when an idol left, it was coming back. That was very predictable, and it allowed players to just play.

• 1:54:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:54:05Speaker 02

  And now, I think you're looking over your shoulder, you're wondering, if I pick up this advantage, how is it gonna harm me? There's just too many things that take the players out of the experience, in ways that I think, I think...

• 1:54:18Bill Simmons?

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• 1:55:31Speaker 02

  Hurt the game.

• 1:55:32Bill Simmons?

  Did you, did you both miss having an actual reunion special where we learned more stuff about bad blood between people? And did people regret stuff? And because I know Jeff Probst is on the record as like he didn't really like those things anymore. I kind of enjoy them. I almost wish like they had done a one hour and just put it on Paramount or something. If they could have put it in the three hour window. I like seeing the bad blood and I like learning more about how people felt about the show. I thought it was weird they punted on that.

• 1:56:01Speaker 03

  I always like when Jeff asks like if this person had been at the end instead, who would have voted for them and they raised their hands and the person who made, in, in, in this case, it didn't happen this way because Aubrey made the right decision to choose to take Joe, but plenty of, plenty of players who have made a decision about who to choose to have next, them have made the wrong decision and that person is one. And it's like something they think about until the day they die, right? And then Jeff asks, would you have, and then it's like just a, it's an unbelievable thing to watch those hands go up in the air. Um, so I missed that specifically, but of course, if that had happened, Bill, if we had just gotten the true like reunion hour at the end, what we would not have gotten.

• 1:56:37Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 1:56:38Speaker 03

  Was Moonlight La La Land all over again, one of the most. Bad shit, what the fuck just happened, live TV moments in the history of pop culture? Like, I'm not, I don't think we're overstating it to say that Jeff spoiling fire making, Jeff bringing out Rizzo and saying, at the final four.

• 1:56:59Bill Simmons?

  It was weird when Rizzo came out. It's like, this is unorthodox. Why, he's still in the game.

• 1:57:03Speaker 03

  What happened?

• 1:57:04Speaker 02

  Rizzo was like, what am I doing out here? He tried to kind of like roll with it, you know, until Jeff was, at the end was like, okay, go sit down and then realized like, oh, you spoiled it.

• 1:57:15Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:57:16Bill Simmons?

  So Jeff's explanation, which I watched this morning on one of the morning shows was that, and this part makes sense. He's not watching the shows that's happening because he's already seen it. He's probably been involved with the editing, probably like, no, no, do use camera two. I don't like that angle of me for that one. He's doing all that. So he's seen it. And he's prepping and he's getting the live stuff ready and it's hard to host a live show. As I've said many times, it's hard to host. So I empathize with him.

• 1:57:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:43Bill Simmons?

  He clearly either got bad information from a producer.

• 1:57:47Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 1:57:48Bill Simmons?

  Or, or got discombobulated. I would go with the bad information. Because you're doing a three hour show, you're live, you're going from here to there. There's a possibility, and I would say this as an older guy who had two brain farts already this year in the podcast. There's a possibility he just brain farted and forgot that they hadn't shown the Rizzo thing yet. And now retroactively is like, oh, they told me. I don't know. What do you think? Is it brain fart or producer mistake, Jason?

• 1:58:17Speaker 02

  Having been around TV and live productions enough, that is a mistake that is structural. Fifteen people made that mistake. There is a director and a segment producer who, it might be that Jeff was like, okay, now let's bring on Rizzo, brain fart. But then, like five to 10 other people need to just be like, okay, I guess we'll make this mistake right now.

• 1:58:42Bill Simmons?

  Doesn't he have an ear button in his ear? Like Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, don't, don't spoil the fire. Don't spoil the fire. Nothing?

• 1:58:47Speaker 02

  Or somebody come running down the aisle and go like this. It's, it should not have happened. And it happened because a whole. Load-bearing part of the production collapsed, not just Jeff. There's no way it's just his fault.

• 1:59:03Speaker 03

  Yes, I think, you know, they decorate camp and particularly tribal council on these sets with like a lot of specific touches, right? You know, there'll be shields or phoenixes. Sometimes there are skulls. And I would encourage everyone who's a part of this production to get a scan of their skull committed to the public record so that we can look at the future seasons of Survivor for every skull that is part of the set deck and make sure that the people who did this were not murdered by Jeff Probst, because this is not something that should have happened. And we were texting in real time because, first of all, I don't think it's possible

• 1:59:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because we're all watching this in real time on the West Coast.

• 1:59:40Speaker 03

  Yes, I don't think it's possible that there's a explanation of like, he was gonna bring Rizzo out and just the mistake was simply saying, go sit down, you become the final member of the jury, which obviously was astonishing when he said that out loud, because then it was undeniable what had happened. And then the hush that fell over the room, Jeff saying, wait, what just happened? My heart was like seizing, watching it. The fact that Rizzo came out at all, once that happens, no matter what Jeff says from there, they have fucked it up. Because why is Rizzo out there? It is, yeah, exactly. So I think then it has to be just the sequencing and the fact that that happened at all before that segment had aired is just a colossal mistake. The thing that we were texting about was like, why didn't they? Because it's aired live on the East Coast, it's done. There's nothing you can do about it.

• 2:00:24Speaker 03

  So everyone will know, and that's like really a shame. However, we were texting like, why did they not edit this out of the West Coast airing?

• 2:00:32Bill Simmons?

  And Paramount the next day.

• 2:00:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:34Bill Simmons?

  Just take it out of everything.

• 2:00:35Speaker 03

  Baffled by that until I kept watching and saw that the answer was clear, which was that Jeff then went on to reference it five times from there. So you couldn't have edited it out because the rest of the show wouldn't have made sense. And I give Jeff huge credit for that because this was like, I mean, the fact that it's like what all the articles are about and it's like the lead of every conversation today is such a huge bummer.

• 2:01:00Bill Simmons?

  Oh, but wait a second, next week. Did they intend to do this intentionally?

• 2:01:05Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Get the news cycle going, get the news cycle going. But like, oh my God, I think there is something. This is the spin that I put on it if I'm Jeff. Survivor is a game about humanity and overcoming failure and mistakes. And so there is something so meta about it in the season where Jeff put himself into a challenge and then bombed and had to say, boy, I really like have more respect for what you guys are all doing out there, that Jeff basically didn't say the right thing in his version of Final Tribal. And it's like a huge story that people are going to be talking about. Now Jeff can have his version of that moment after basically like 25 years of elite, elite work at something that's super hard.

• 2:01:48Bill Simmons?

  People, people were mad, Jason. This angered people.

• 2:01:51Speaker 02

  I mean, I get it. I mean, he did spoil a huge part of it. But again, not his fault alone. It can't be. He's not running the cameras. He's not bringing Rizzo from the green room to the, to the stage door. There's a million things, other moving parts that are happening that had to fail to let that happen.

• 2:02:12Bill Simmons?

  Big winner. Rizzo. Cause he was just pathetic in the fire, the fire challenge. And nobody remembers now because it was the approach mistake. Guy's practicing all day and he can't even get a spark.

• 2:02:23Speaker 03

  Brutal.

• 2:02:24Bill Simmons?

  First, first two time loser in fire. That's another one of my controversial takes. I, I don't love the fire. I don't love it as a decider. I just feel like it's become, it's too important of a thing in the show's legacy. I get it in the early days, but in the early days, they did a lot of things different. Remember in the early days, each person would walk in front of the three people left and it was almost like they were a defense attorney, just ripping everyone apart before.

• 2:02:51Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 2:02:52Speaker 03

  Sue?

• 2:02:52Bill Simmons?

  Why did they get away from that?

• 2:02:53Speaker 03

  Fire, I wouldn't spit on you?

• 2:02:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Why did they get away from that?

• 2:02:56Speaker 02

  Sneaking the rap.

• 2:02:57Bill Simmons?

  I used to love when they would get up and walk and they would have a whole thing prepared. They don't do that anymore.

• 2:03:03Speaker 02

  Fire is, has become more, much more important post like season 38, when Rick Devens was notably eliminated after Chris Underwood came off of the edge of extinction and had the brilliant idea, really truly like revolutionary Survivor idea that.

• 2:03:26Speaker 02

  I've been out of the game for so long, the way to prove that I'm in it to win it is I will put myself in fire and say,

• 2:03:32Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:03:33Speaker 02

  Come challenge me, I will win. And he won and he ended up winning the season. That is, that organically became such a moment that now it's basically part of the show.

• 2:03:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:03:44Speaker 02

  I agree, I'm on the fence about it. I think sometimes it's very compelling, other times not. I would like to see Jeff move fire earlier.

• 2:03:52Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:03:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:53Speaker 02

  To win. Surprise people with it. Yeah.

• 2:03:55Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting. Huh.

• 2:03:57Bill Simmons?

  Um, we do a Game of Thrones Survivor of all the characters who wins.

• 2:04:04Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh.

• 2:04:05Speaker 03

  You know, we

• 2:04:06Bill Simmons?

  Joffrey, Joffrey voted out early.

• 2:04:09Speaker 02

  Joffrey's, Joffrey's, Joffrey's number one.

• 2:04:11Speaker 03

  Joffrey just kills somebody in the middle of the challenge.

• 2:04:14Speaker 02

  Because he's so crazy.

• 2:04:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's like, we can win if I can get Joffrey to the final three.

• 2:04:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:20Bill Simmons?

  Little, Littlefinger thinks he's gonna win, but around like six, seven left, I think he gets shanked.

• 2:04:26Speaker 03

  Littlefinger's a classic overconfident, you know, irrational confidence guy and survivor for sure. So just had this debate and I made the case for Arya and Joe talked me into Tyrion, which I think is probably a pretty good answer be, especially aligned with the canon of the show where like Tyrion makes it through basically everything he makes, needs to make it through. And then at the end says, basically in Final Tribal, like inexplicable things and everyone's like, sounds good, you know? So I think Joe's case for Tyrion is a strong one. Yeah.

• 2:04:57Bill Simmons?

  That's pretty good. I like that.

• 2:04:59Speaker 02

  I like that one as well. I would say also Varus, um, because he's got a great story. You know, he's got the personal, you've got to be able to weaponize your personal trauma at some point during the show.

• 2:05:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:05:13Speaker 02

  And who can do that? A tactical player, strategic tactical player who can do that can win. But I also agree. I think Tyrion is.

• 2:05:19Bill Simmons?

  I think Margaery makes the final four.

• 2:05:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:23Bill Simmons?

  Really good, but gets a lot of flirt relationships going with multiple cast members who feel like they might have a chance after the filming, but they don't.

• 2:05:30Speaker 03

  A showman, so potential showman?

• 2:05:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I think she's working that.

• 2:05:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, can't have a Targaryen out there. They take their torch and they just light people on fire. That's not gonna work, you know?

• 2:05:39Bill Simmons?

  Who is the one Brienne and Tarth? I think she gets to the final five, too.

• 2:05:43Speaker 03

  Well, that's a great one, too, because you have Brienne and Jaime out there. It's like an alliance no one really saw coming. Podrick would do well. I think Podrick would do really well.

• 2:05:51Speaker 02

  Quite well.

• 2:05:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:05:52Speaker 02

  Oh, man, Jaime Brienne as a, as an alliance. Talk about like a showman, so will they, won't they? That would be gangbusters, the kind of thing that Jeff could not stop talking about at the finale.

• 2:06:03Speaker 03

  And then Jaime has to make his Cersei or Brienne choice at the end and we're all like, no!

• 2:06:07Speaker 02

  Too good.

• 2:06:08Bill Simmons?

  Well, the other thing is they're used to really malodorous people from Game of Thrones being the 1300s. There was not allowed deodorant back then.

• 2:06:16Speaker 03

  I wanted to ask you guys that.

• 2:06:18Bill Simmons?

  For months.

• 2:06:19Speaker 03

  They brought the family, you know, it's always emotional when the family members come out, but this is later than we usually get to see this. These guys stink. Like, they are rank.

• 2:06:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you don't even wanna, it's, it's like a fist bump from a couple of feet away, right?

• 2:06:31Speaker 03

  The brothers, the mom and daughter, okay, but Joe's wife? I could, I'm sorry, I'm just gonna be honest. I was watching this and I was like, if Adam had made it to the final three of season 50 of Survivor and I was brought out on a boat, I would not lovingly embrace him and tell him, just own your game. I would be like, can you, can you like eat a coconut or something? Like, can we, can we freshen up a little bit?

• 2:06:52Bill Simmons?

  I brought some gum.

• 2:06:53Speaker 03

  This is like really tough.

• 2:06:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, probably, the game probably blows out everyone's nostrils after like six weeks, right?

• 2:06:59Speaker 03

  You become nose blind.

• 2:07:01Bill Simmons?

  Because Probst, at one point, he hugs Sarie after something and he was like, whoa. He did one of those. And you forget like how gaming, because it's like, what, 90 degrees every day? And they're just wearing the same shirt for six weeks?

• 2:07:14Speaker 02

  They used to be a lot dirtier, too. I mean, they're filthy now for sure.

• 2:07:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:19Speaker 02

  But they used to be. So disgustingly dirty that it was absolutely notable, sleeping in rat-filled caves. It's really like toned down from what it used to be on the hygiene front.

• 2:07:33Bill Simmons?

  I miss it. I miss those days. Yeah, there must be real reasons for that. All right, we just won an hour. Did we hit everything? I think we did.

• 2:07:40Speaker 03

  Hmm, it's just a shame that Suri didn't get to win the season. Just say that one more time.

• 2:07:45Speaker 02

  Oh, I'll just, I said it on the pod of spoken, and I believe this. I, I wish she could have been on a season that was a mix of newcomers and veterans. Much like Boston Rob's season, which no disrespect to Boston Rob, he's an absolute legend in the game. Legend, legend, legend. But it was him and Russell. He got Russell out early and a bunch of newcomers. And then it was just like target dummies to the win.

• 2:08:12Speaker 02

  That's legit, but I wish we would have seen Suri really work her magic against

• 2:08:18Speaker 02

  more newcomer players, not just the best of the best.

• 2:08:21Bill Simmons?

  Have they ever done like over 40? The entire cast is over 40 or over 50, anything like that, like a senior Survivor almost?

• 2:08:29Speaker 03

  Golden Bachelor, but for Survivor, golden.

• 2:08:32Bill Simmons?

  Wouldn't Senior Survivor like crush? You know, just do like a little mini season of like 14 people, but then you get Colby, you get all these people anyway. And you don't have to worry about the challenges being as dangerous.

• 2:08:43Speaker 02

  I'm way in.

• 2:08:44Speaker 03

  They can also brand it a little more like kindly, like something about wisdom, right? You know, the wisdom of the years, like they don't have to be like you fuckers are old. But I do think that they have started casting way too young, like the bulk of the cast now each season is really, really young.

• 2:09:01Bill Simmons?

  Two generations of Survivor.

• 2:09:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I think it's like cool when people who have lived a lot of life are out there. So that would be, that would be great. I would love that.

• 2:09:09Bill Simmons?

  Maybe that would be what inspires my wife to finally go on. I've been pushing for forever.

• 2:09:14Speaker 03

  She would do, she would fucking kill.

• 2:09:16Bill Simmons?

  No, her new thing was like, she was like, I just wouldn't be able to, she'd win probably three, four challenges. But she would also probably kill Jeff. Cause the narration of him during the challenges, she'd be like, Jeff, shut the fuck up. I'm trying to.

• 2:09:30Speaker 03

  That's why you never quit on Survivor, Carrie.

• 2:09:32Bill Simmons?

  And there's Carrie Simmons with it.

• 2:09:34Speaker 03

  Dig deep.

• 2:09:35Bill Simmons?

  She's like, Jeff, shut up. I'm trying to do this. I'm trying to do a puzzle. Stop talking.

• 2:09:40Bill Simmons?

  He really dialed it up in general this year, I felt like. I it it felt like, uh, I don't know, he was locked in, which made the reunion thing so funny that he fucked that up. Well, we'll see, we'll see how many people either get fired or murdered.

• 2:09:53Speaker 03

  I hope they're all fake.

• 2:09:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:09:55Bill Simmons?

  Mallory, when are you going on Wait a Second?

• 2:09:58Speaker 03

  You know, I, uh, I can't say I'm like up on all the conspiracy theories.

• 2:10:02Bill Simmons?

  There's gotta be one conspiracy you care about.

• 2:10:04Speaker 02

  Whatever one you've got gestating, the door is open, of course.

• 2:10:07Bill Simmons?

  You don't care about scuba divers and the Maldives?

• 2:10:10Speaker 03

  You know, I have been served a couple Instagram reels about that. I will say, I don't know if it has any connection to Survivor and the amount of like beautiful, like ocean visuals in my, in my Instagram algorithm right now in general. But, uh, I'll, uh, uh, I'll give it some thought. I'll see what if the if the production team of the live Survivor season 50, uh, the special mysteriously disappears. Count me in.

• 2:10:34Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 2:10:35Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 2:10:35Speaker 03

  I'll be tracking it with interest.

• 2:10:37Bill Simmons?

  It could it be like the with the scientists, when the scientists started disappearing one at a time? How many are we up to, like eight?

• 2:10:44Speaker 02

  I think it's 11 or 12, I think we're up to.

• 2:10:47Bill Simmons?

  God. Unbelievable. I might have to come on soon because I have a whole NBA thing.

• 2:10:54Speaker 02

  Oh, please.

• 2:10:54Bill Simmons?

  We can do NBA on Wait a Second, right?

• 2:10:56Speaker 02

  Absolutely. We sports, sports conspiracies or?

• 2:10:59Bill Simmons?

  I have a really hardcore, like I might have to get dressed up as Conspiracy Bill, the whole thing.

• 2:11:04Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:11:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's like one of those. Yeah, it's one of those.

• 2:11:07Speaker 02

  Okay, well, yeah.

• 2:11:08Speaker 03

  Incredible.

• 2:11:09Speaker 02

  Door is open anytime.

• 2:11:11Bill Simmons?

  All right.

• 2:11:11Speaker 02

  And we've got the Zodiac Killer also waiting for you as well.

• 2:11:13Bill Simmons?

  I know, I just gotta do it. Once, once we get through the NBA third round, I'm gonna really dive into Zodiac and we'll be ready. All right, you can watch and listen to Mallory and House of Bar. You can watch and listen to Jason on Wait a Second. Great to see you both. It was fun to see you on the same screen.

• 2:11:30Speaker 03

  An absolute delight.

• 2:11:32Bill Simmons?

  Thanks, guys.

• 2:11:32Speaker 02

  All of you.

• 2:11:33Speaker 03

  Bye, guys.

• 2:11:35Bill Simmons?

  All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Mahoney. Thanks to Jason and Mallory. Thanks to Gahan Eduardo as well. Don't forget to watch Animal House this weekend because that is gonna be the next rewatchable on, uh, on Monday. Get ready for that one. Enjoy the weekend. I'm gonna be live on Netflix Sunday night after the basketball game, which is going to be game four. Spurs, Thunder. I hope, I hope we have enough guys left on each team for an awesome game. Anyway, enjoy the weekend. I'll see you on Sunday night. 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. Get them a problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESSET.

• 2:12:18Bill Simmons?

  Call 888-797-7777 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 Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh, writer-director of The Banshees of Inisherin and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter

• 2:13:03Bill Simmons?

  Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys, Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters November 6th. Get tickets now.

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