An NBA Mailbag, Belichick’s Snub, Pats Disrespect, and Half-Baked Ideas With Zach Lowe, Kevin Wildes, and Joe House

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Zach Lowe dive into a mailbag to answer some NBA questions from the listeners (2:22). Then, Kevin Wildes and Joe House come on to talk about the Patriots and Super Bowl LX before ending with Half-Baked Ideas (35:13). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Zach Lowe, Kevin Wildes, and Joe House Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠⁠⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Sony Pictures Classics. A perfect crime film, says The Daily Beast. John Tortore gives a career best performance. Don't miss the acclaimed new thriller, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. Tortore stars as an aging master pickpocket, whose latest score puts him in the crosshairs of a ruthless crime family. It's also starring Giancarlo Esposito, Tatiana Maslany, Will Price, and our guy, Steve Buscemi. See the film that The LA Times calls instantly classic, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, now playing in theaters nationwide.

• 0:41Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook. We are also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network, where the rewatchables recently moved to Netflix while staying on Spotify as a video podcast. And it's all over the place on other platforms, but you can also get it on Netflix. We did Zodiac on Monday. We have Wild Things, which is a movie that's on Netflix right now. That's coming next Monday. And if you want to know everything that's happening with this podcast or the rewatchables or any other podcasts we're doing on Netflix, all you have to do is find the podcast and click on My List and just add the podcast. And then every time we have a new one, it'll pop up on Netflix, like this one is about to.

• 1:24Bill Simmons?

  Coming up, Zach Lowe is here because he was recording his podcast in this very studio. So I grabbed him and we did a little mailbag at the top about the NBA. And then old friend Kevin Wilds joined me and Joe House. We talked about this Patriots, Nobody Believes in Us run that is apparently happening now, Super Bowl stuff, Belichick. And then we did Half Baked Ideas and it was very fun. And I had a great time and I got to talk about coffee for long, long stretches. So that is all coming up. We're going to take a break, Pearl Jam, and then Zach Lowe. The Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by FanDuel. Playoff mode is on. FanDuel's got it all. Same game parlays, quick bets for jumping in live,

• 2:06Bill Simmons?

  offers to boost your winnings every game day. You do not want to miss out on the playoff action, the remaining playoff action we have on FanDuel. Download the FanDuel app or head to FanDuel.com/BS to get started. 21 plus and present in select states or 18 plus and present in DC, Kentucky or Wyoming. Game prompt, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit RG-help.com, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut.

• 2:58Bill Simmons?

  All right, Zach Lowe is here. He actually used my studio for his podcast, The Zach Lowe Show, today.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  I didn't break in.

• 3:04Bill Simmons?

  And then you're gonna be on Amazon tonight. So I was like, well, you're here. Let's do some mailbag questions. You and I watched Rockets Spurs last night and Castle was the one, I know you probably talked about it on your pod, but Castle was the one taking it to Durant in a really unusual way. I was trying to, we were trying to think last night, like, all the times we've seen somebody do that to Durant. Wasn't like he was doing it for two hours, but there was a moment in the fourth quarter when he turned it up. And just in general, how comfortable the Spurs seemed against the Rockets. Now no Steven Adams. Now Van Vliet obviously gone. And then on the other side, you have very comfortable against OKC. Yet I don't think the Spurs are gonna make the finals, do you? Yet they're

• 3:48Bill Simmons?

  comfortable against the two teams I'd want to be comfortable against, other than Denver.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think they could. I would still slot them behind Oklahoma City and Denver, assuming Denver gets healthy. I think they could. I just, to win all those playoff series in a row is hard, but they're legit. Really good. I mean, last night was a very good Dylan Harper game. He's kind of been in a slump for a while. So like when everything clicks, they can beat anybody, but it's hard for young, mostly inexperienced teams to click like that every single game in the playoffs.

• 4:19Bill Simmons?

  Could be like in OKC two years ago where there's a lot of we're ready, but there's also some we're not quite ready. I give you my theory about Calvin Johnson being the electric socket guy.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  I like that guy. I like that theory.

• 4:29Bill Simmons?

  Every once in a while, a team has a guy that the other teammates love so much. When he does well, it just supercharges the team and I feel like he's one of those guys. And Yanis, who you talked about in your pod as well, but we just feel like this is a holding pattern now.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  I get ready anytime in the next week. Just get your phone, keep your phone alerts on, or it could drag again into the summer. Who knows?

• 4:52Bill Simmons?

  I got a couple of emails about this because I'm going to do some mailbag questions with you and I'll, I'll just, I can't even find the one I want to use, but there was a couple of versions of the same thing. Miami can only trade two picks because they have this weird 2027 situation.

• 5:08Bill Simmons?

  Why couldn't a team just trade them another pick that could substitute and make it so that they could actually do the four first? We don't see it that often, but it does feel like there's some chicanery in play that they could do.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  That could happen. Like what was it last year? Phoenix traded one of their unprotected picks for three picks from Utah.

• 5:28Bill Simmons?

  To give them more flexibility.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  And, and so like you could, you could, Bobby Marks mentioned that, you can see that.

• 5:33Bill Simmons?

  Cause it feels like Miami and Golden State are the two that would have the urgency to maybe try to jump in now before it gets to the summer. And Miami's problem is the picks. Golden State's problem is they don't really have the interesting player to put in there. Now, I could argue Miami, I don't know if Tyler Hero is interesting either, but maybe Ware is. Does Bam need to be in that trade?

• 5:54Speaker 01

  He's not gonna be in that trade. I don't think so.

• 5:56Bill Simmons?

  What if I'm Milwaukee? I'm like, cool. I'm glad you want Giannis. Let's talk about Bam. Well, we're not trading Bam. Okay. Good luck with everything. Thanks.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  I mean, look, I don't, I don't think Bam makes a ton of sense for Milwaukee if they pivot into a rebuild unless they think they can then flip Bam for other stuff, which is easier said than done when your contract is as big as his is. Same with Kat.

• 6:19Bill Simmons?

  I wonder if we could all lead to my dream of having Bam, Monk and Fox on the same team again.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 6:25Bill Simmons?

  It's been one of my, one of my like deepest, stupidest NBA dreams is just to get those three. Yeah, they had the tough loss in the tournament. Get those guys back. All right. Here we go.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Wow. That's, I didn't know that about you, that you had.

• 6:35Bill Simmons?

  I've always, it's, you know, I have some dreams. Mailbag.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  I, I have no idea what's coming. We could, this could go, just to make clear.

• 6:42Bill Simmons?

  This is your worst nightmare, being completely unprepped.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  I'm free.

• 6:45Bill Simmons?

  Well, this is true. Yeah. Well, you're fresh off, confidence boost. We taped a rewatchables with you yesterday. Not even gonna say what the movie was.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  It's fun.

• 6:54Bill Simmons?

  It's lurking. So now you, you going on Amazon tonight? I'm catching you at a good time. Paul Peters writes, we've always heard about.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  I said Paul Pierce for a second.

• 7:02Bill Simmons?

  Paul Peters. We've always heard about the first team to get 100 as a marker for likelihood to win the game with the current scoring influx is a time to rethink the benchmark. I agree with this. I think Lawler's Law is dead. So what's the number?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  I think, first of all, I think you have to just, Lawler's Law is so good.

• 7:18Bill Simmons?

  But I've just, let's bump it.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  But, but you have to just, every time a team crosses 100, you have to just hat tip Ralph Lawler, who's just the best.

• 7:27Bill Simmons?

  So does it stay Lawler's Law at 100 and then we give somebody else?

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Lawler's Law is always gonna be 100 and then the new benchmark.

• 7:33Bill Simmons?

  It's not a law though.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  It's just.

• 7:35Bill Simmons?

  Getting the team scorer, everybody's scoring 120 points a game.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  I understand. I'm just saying it's Lawler's, I mean, we can get Ralph Lawler on the pod and ask him what he thinks about this, if we should amend, if there should be a Lawler corollary.

• 7:48Bill Simmons?

  He's like, I'm good to, I'm good if we move it to 110. I guess what's the number?

• 7:51Speaker 01

  I think it's gotta be 115. I did this, I didn't, without researching, 120 seems a tick high, 110 seems a tick low. I'm gonna go 115.

• 7:59Bill Simmons?

  Every single team in the league, I think, is averaging. At least like 113, 114, except for maybe like one.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  So 115 might be too low. Well, I'm going 115.

• 8:09Bill Simmons?

  Cause think about when he did Lawler's Law in the hundreds.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Oh, it's pretty good. Yeah.

• 8:13Bill Simmons?

  Teams were averaging like 94, 95 a game. So if you got to 100, it was like, oh yeah, we're winning. We're at 100. So I think it's at least 115.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  But what do we name it? Do we, your, your point is do we read, do we just amend Lawler's Law? Or do we have Lawler's Law in a new law?

• 8:27Bill Simmons?

  I think Lawler would have to.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  He gets to weigh in.

• 8:30Bill Simmons?

  Have a press conference.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  He gets to weigh in.

• 8:33Bill Simmons?

  It's like, thank you for, for your consideration this time. I'd like to now amend this to 115. And we're like, good, Lawler's Law, new.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Maybe I'm in rewatchables mode, but we just have an aside on Ralph Lawler.

• 8:45Bill Simmons?

  What is it?

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Opening scene of Drive is one of my, Drive is that the Ryan Gosling movie?

• 8:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  One of my all time favorite scenes in any movie. And I just love that he's listening to a Clippers game and not a Lakers game. Like, it's just such a great touch of like, this guy is a Clippers fan? Like, is like.

• 9:03Bill Simmons?

  Probably written by a Boston guy. Trey from Scottsdale.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 9:07Bill Simmons?

  He says, I've been seeing the Warriors front office get a lot of shit across fan pages for how they couldn't extend the window. And I'm unsure how that could have happened. Was there a trade staring them in the face they couldn't make? Was there a player they passed on for someone else? Sometimes windows close with a slow steady decline. This one had an uptick in the middle, so it feels different. Of course, if they get Giannis in a week, this is moot.

• 9:30Bill Simmons?

  It's the two drafts I think people point to and then not trading the picks. Not trading Kaminga or even Wiseman during the one and a half years who probably had value. Just not springing into action with assets the way if like LeBron had been on that team instead of Curry, I think LeBron would have pressured that team. What are we doing? I'm running out of time. You've got to turn these guys into something. They did the opposite. They tried to do the two timelines. The only trade I've heard of that pretty confident is true is that they could have turned Kaminga into a Caruso around the time of Giddy. I don't know if it was during the February before the Giddy trade or that summer. But it was, that was Kaminga's value for a while. It was in that.

• 10:13Bill Simmons?

  Teams that would trade a really good role player for a young up and coming guy. But did you hear anything else? Like, what else could they have done?

• 10:20Speaker 01

  They were definitely in on Caruso. I'd have to go back and dig into the.

• 10:25Bill Simmons?

  Dig into your notes, your Zodiac notes?

• 10:27Speaker 01

  My Zodiac. But this is like, I've had this conversation with Warriors higher ups several times, including several times in the last few weeks, like was, what's the missed opportunity? And like, I wrote this to ESPN, like they, they floated the number too big. They tried to see what they could get for it and.

• 10:45Bill Simmons?

  It's COVID, nobody wanted to trade.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  And it was like, you know, like, could they have gotten in like the Bradley Beal sweepstakes or the Ben Simmons sweepstakes? I mean, are those things changing your life as a team? They tried to get Siakam, they tried to get Ananobi, they were in, like they had the Markkinen, Paul George thing that they were trying to do. I think that one's instructive because

• 11:06Speaker 01

  like they didn't have enough to get both of them. And then Paul George had a little say in that himself because it was, it was like a lot of balls in play. But like, could they have traded everything for Lowry Markkinen? Maybe it's like everything, like Kaminga, Pajewski, like four picks, whatever. But if you trade everything for one guy and he's, what's Lowry Markkinen, the 22nd best player in the NBA? 18th best player, 27th best player?

• 11:30Bill Simmons?

  Title contender.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying. So yeah, I, I don't know that there was the, the move or moves that are out there other than how your life changes if you get the Wiseman pick right and what that trade.

• 11:42Bill Simmons?

  I can't hang in a, I think that COVID draft, everybody was wrong.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Just like.

• 11:45Bill Simmons?

  The next draft, we can kill them on. They had these two awesome picks and they both times picked the wrong guy. And that's, and I, we both know they were split in the draft room for who to take. They took Kaminga over Franz Wagner and they took Moody over Trey Murphy. And there was, might've even been some Shingun buzz in there. And they just, they went over two. I think the biggest thing you can kick them on, because drafts, whatever, there's, you can always go one way or the other. The pool extension's the worst thing they did in the five years. That was the most indefensible one because they didn't take care of Draymond. So they took care of Poole. They did, they had the Draymond thing looming that they didn't really do anything with. And I like, could your daughter have figured out that that was going to be a problem?

• 12:28Bill Simmons?

  Like, how young of a child do you have to be to figure out this is probably going to go badly that you did this?

• 12:34Speaker 01

  And yet you yourself last night were remarking on how Jordan Poole hurt the Celtics, your beloved Celtics.

• 12:38Bill Simmons?

  Killed them in the finals. But they didn't need to sign him for $30 million a year when they did. They could have waited. He could have been a trade asset. They could have seen if this was real or not. They could have maybe used him in February. I think that was the biggest mistake they made. And that's the one I think they can get Ding done. Tom Adelaide in South Australia.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:58Bill Simmons?

  Who's the guy you don't want to see come playoffs? For me, it's Kawhi. If he's healthy, he can win a series or two with that Clippers lineup. I assume he doesn't mean Jokic or SGA, probably like next level.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna say Jokic, but I guess we can't say that.

• 13:12Bill Simmons?

  But hold that because this leads to the next question. This is from Jameson Drake. It's a Clippers related question.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Jameson Drake.

• 13:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. My favorite thing every NBA season is the Clippers roller coaster that the media goes on. There reaches a point in the middle of every season where the media fully buys into the Clippers and the way they're playing. This is an obvious case of amnesia. They will inevitably lose the series in the playoffs that they shouldn't for three reasons. One, they're the Clippers. Two.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Did you write this email?

• 13:42Bill Simmons?

  I didn't write this. James Harden always disappears when it matters most. And three, you cannot count on Kawhi's health. On the roller coaster, is this the peak of Clippers hype right now?

• 13:53Speaker 01

  We're getting, we're getting close. I mean, eight, like 16 and three, 17 and three in their last 20.

• 13:59Bill Simmons?

  Almost at the top before we're about to have the fun part.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  The shoe drops soon. I, I mean, history would say like, are you buying it? You said they were the second best team in the West going into the playoffs last year.

• 14:09Bill Simmons?

  The Kawhi thing, I don't. Last year was my last time ever trusting a Harden team in the playoffs because watching him not look at the rim for the first half of game seven, that was my never again moment. Never again.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Did you pick them in that series?

• 14:23Bill Simmons?

  It's like Tom, Tom Hanks in Castaway when he gets mad at Wilson and then he finds him in the water. He's like, never again.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Is he mad at Wilson?

• 14:31Bill Simmons?

  Well, he got mad at Wilson. He thought Wilson was talking back to him. Wilson was a volleyball.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  I understand, but I just remember Wilson falling off the, oh, I thought he fell off the raft. That's right. He throws him off and then he corrects it immediately.

• 14:42Bill Simmons?

  Never again. That was me with James Harden, watching him.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  I can't believe that you were still holding out.

• 14:48Bill Simmons?

  I thought they were really good, but I made the.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  They were really good.

• 14:52Bill Simmons?

  My weakness as an evaluator is if I see a game in person, I overrate the game in my head later. Like if I actually see the matchup and I catch one team on an awesome night and the other team on not a good night, I, my brain can't properly calibrate that. So I'm like, the Clippers, they play awesome against OKC and, and you just kind of get carried away with that. With that said, I thought they really could have beaten Denver in that series and Denver, it took everything they had, everything.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  And yet it ended in exactly the way.

• 15:21Bill Simmons?

  And yet it ended the Clippers way. So we agree it's close to the hype, but not totally. All right. Next question from Randy.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Randy.

• 15:29Bill Simmons?

  If the owner of the Brooklyn Nets offered you a six-year contract to be the GM position of the Nets with all powers of decision-making, would you take the job? You can continue all podcasting. That would go great. And are even encouraged. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Or, and are even encouraged to regularly talk about life as a GM on your podcast. However, you'll be judged for life based on your success or failure as a GM. Here's the key question. Is there any NBA team you would not accept this offer from? I think both of us would probably take, gee, like we could be talked into GM jobs.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  It was a six-year contract?

• 16:00Bill Simmons?

  Six-year contract.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  I'm not taking a six-year contract ever.

• 16:03Bill Simmons?

  Not even to be a GM?

• 16:04Speaker 01

  The only reason I would take a contract to be a GM is for the money and then it would have to be a two or three-year contract. That's it. Unless I intentionally get, am I serving all six years no matter what or can I get myself fired?

• 16:15Bill Simmons?

  You could just emulate some of the GMs we've had the last 25 years.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  But I want all my money. I want all my money.

• 16:23Bill Simmons?

  You'll get all your money. It's a six-year guaranteed deal.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  I don't think being a GM is fun. I actually don't think it's fun. I don't think GMs really like their jobs unless their team is awesome and they have a chance to win the championship. People think the GMs are like, like the idea that you could continue podcasting while being a GM is insane. It's not possible. It's a 24/7 job and not as much of it as anyone thinks, not nearly as much as like scratching out trade ideas on the whiteboard and calling Daryl. I mean, there's some of that, calling Daryl Morey. There's also just so much of like, oh, this is the agent of my 15th guy calling to complain about shit and like this assistant coach wants to take a job over there and I gotta put out that fire. It's just, it's, it's not, it's not, you don't see your family, you're traveling all the time. It's not worth

• 17:08Speaker 01

  it. I'm out. I'm out unless it's a three-year contract and I get paid a lot of money.

• 17:12Bill Simmons?

  I would only take one job if it was the, to help run the expansion Seattle Supersonics. That'd be it. I'd, I love the Celtics too much to want to take another job.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  I think you would damage the Celtics. I think it would just, I think it would go badly.

• 17:27Bill Simmons?

  No, I couldn't take the Celtics. I would never do that. Cause if you fail running your favorite team, how do you, where do you go from there?

• 17:33Speaker 01

  This is, this is what we're hoping doesn't happen with David Sterns for the Mets.

• 17:37Bill Simmons?

  But, well, true. But Seattle, the chance to like be on the ground floor with that and basically try to do a Presti, I'd at least have the combo.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Here's another one. I've had this conversation with a few would be or currently are in demand, like big team executives. Someone has to save the Bulls. Some like-

• 17:59Bill Simmons?

  I have a question about this.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Like you're talking about like you'd be a hero in Seattle if you revived the Sonics. If ownership would ever just get out of the way, whoever saves the Bulls, it's like a hero. You revive the brand, one of the brand name franchises in all of sports. It's just been more, so that one I would consider.

• 18:18Bill Simmons?

  So destitute Bulls fan Shane wrote in.

• 18:22Bill Simmons?

  I have less of a question, more of a plea. We desperately need the national media to start coming down on Jerry Reinsdorf the way they do on the other bad owners, Reinsdorf. I don't think everyone is aware of the magnitude of Bulls fans desperation. It took so long to hire, to fire Gar Forman and John Paxson. Bulls fans raised $8,000 in a GoFundMe to put up a billboard that said, "Fire Gar Pax." Six years later, we hate this front office even more. Reinsdorf allegedly once advised another GM in baseball to always finish second because it keeps the fans wanting more. I never heard that story. This guy sucks. The Bulls suck. The White Sox suck. Oh, and we have to pay extra to watch them lose on a private streaming service. Seems not happy.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Wow. Yeah. This is Chicago Bulls, man.

• 19:08Bill Simmons?

  Every Bulls fan I know, or even peripherally know, feels exactly the same as that guy. Everyone hates the Bulls front office.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're the most unhappy fan base. Sacramento's fan base is just beaten down to the point of like, I can't even summon rage anymore. The Bulls fan base is the angriest.

• 19:26Bill Simmons?

  Sacramento's the most damaged. Like, you could, you could probably do a pretty good documentary about how dark it is for them.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Was he quite, he didn't have a question?

• 19:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, Randy, well, his, the Chicago fans question was, why don't we hammer them? Randy's question was, is there any NBA team you would not accept this offer from? Like, assuming both of us wanted to be GMs, is there a team we'd cross out? I thought the same thing you did at Sacramento. And I, I would also not accept New Orleans.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  No, I would do Sacramento. I would do Sacramento. I would do, I would do Sacramento, but I would negotiate in my contract. I'm allowed to write a tell-all book after I get fired.

• 20:05Bill Simmons?

  That'd make more than the money?

• 20:06Speaker 01

  That, that'll do it.

• 20:08Bill Simmons?

  I can't imagine running the Kings. And you, you're like, working on a trade for two days, and then like, Vivek comes in with whoever like, his right-hand person is at the time that he inexplicably listens to. And they're just, and you lay out the trade, and they're just like, nah, we don't like it. What about trading for Zach Levine? Should we do that?

• 20:28Speaker 01

  What about the, what about the Bulls? Should we just get all the Bulls, the former Bulls, and try to make that work?

• 20:33Bill Simmons?

  They should just trade rosters. A quick one from Brett W.

• 20:39Bill Simmons?

  Here's one. Porzingis is traded at the deadline. He's waived by a new team at the buyout deadline. And then the Celtics sign him on a minimum, send him to Germany for some treatment. And he's miraculously healthy enough to give them 20 minutes a game off the bench during the playoffs. And Tatum is back as well. Possible? Question mark. I did get excited when I read this. Because if Atlanta does make a big move and Porzingis ostensibly is in it, it's probably to a team that then waves Porzingis, I would guess, and allows them to buy a contender. And at that point, the Lakers probably come flying in, I would guess.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Do you have any faith that he's gonna play?

• 21:15Bill Simmons?

  I don't. But if it's like a minimum last two months of the season, you gotta think about it.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  You and I were talking about this last night, how I sound like an old man sometimes now, talking to NBA people who are like, well, Anthony Davis should get traded here and Jeremy Grant gets traded here. I'm like, they never play. Like, I sound like my dad. Like, he doesn't play basketball.

• 21:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  He doesn't play. I want my players to play.

• 21:36Bill Simmons?

  Get sort of getting close to that Yanis point. Talked about that with legs on Tuesday. I don't, are you playing 75 games? Another one is Cam Johnson. Great guy. Everybody loves Cam Johnson. Can you get on the basketball court? How many games are you gonna play?

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Jalen Suggs.

• 21:52Bill Simmons?

  These guys in these 40 to 65. Yeah, some, honestly, some guys are more durable than others. We were talking about Jalen last night. I literally can't remember a Jalen injury.

• 22:04Bill Simmons?

  Like, do you?

• 22:04Speaker 01

  And I, when you said that, I said, knock on wood, because people said the same thing about Tatum right up until.

• 22:10Bill Simmons?

  Right. But two of the more durable young guys we've had, but they also really take care of their bodies. This is a good one from, I don't know how to say this, because it's an international name, J N N E. So maybe Yan, Johnny.

• 22:27Bill Simmons?

  East vs. West All-Star Game. Winning conference has home court for the finals. The coaches and players would care. The counterargument should be that team records are the fairest way to determine home court. But is it? Conferences have different schedules. They're imbalanced. Would this work?

• 22:46Speaker 01

  No. Didn't baseball tried this, right? And just immediately was like, this is not a good idea.

• 22:52Bill Simmons?

  I don't think it would work either, but um. But you know what would work? Just getting rid of the All-Star game.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  God, I'm out.

• 22:58Bill Simmons?

  Twenty years of ideas of how to save the All-Star game. Maybe the idea is to just not have it.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  I'm officially just out of the conversation. It's not gonna happen.

• 23:06Bill Simmons?

  I don't wanna go. I don't wanna watch it. They don't care. They're gonna have it every year.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  My only contribution would be twelve, tw- if you wanna expand it to thirteen, fourteen, five, just east-west. Just scrap all this other shit. Have a forty-eight minute game. I can't even, if people ask me. If fans, actual fans are like, hey, how's the All-Star game working this year? I'm like, oh, it's interesting you ask. So first, we split them up into international for versus US, but there's two US teams and one international team. Then Team A plays Team B in a game? No, a quarter. And then Team B plays Team C. Oh, in another game? No, it's the second quarter of the game. Then the third, I'm like, I'm just, if, if this is what we're doing, like.

• 23:46Bill Simmons?

  It is a great point. If you can't, if it takes more than a sentence to explain something, it's a bad idea.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, is there like, if there's a loser's bracket within the game? It's like, let's just call it a day.

• 23:56Bill Simmons?

  I give up. I'll probably go this year, cuz it's in LA. So we missed this last night. Cleveland Lakers, after Jaren Tyson said in the post-game Lakers interview that this is Donovan Mitchell's city now. The look on Mitchell's face was the same as Vito Corleone when Sonny talks out of turn during the Lotta meeting.

• 24:16Bill Simmons?

  I have a set of weakness for my young teammates and I spoiled them, as you could see. They talk when they should listen. But it is funny that.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  What a quick email into the mailbag.

• 24:26Bill Simmons?

  Well, there's a freeze frame picture of him saying that and then Mitchell like.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  It's good cuz he's taller than, Jalen Tyson's taller than Mitchell. So Mitchell's like. So Jalen, did you see Jalen Tyson issued an apology? For real.

• 24:39Bill Simmons?

  For that.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  He clarified afterwards, like, I wasn't trying to step on anyone's toes or disrespect anybody.

• 24:44Bill Simmons?

  Funny.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  It's like, we can't even have any fun? Like, we gotta apologize for that?

• 24:47Bill Simmons?

  Opinions anymore.

• 24:50Bill Simmons?

  Bill H. For any trade combo, you always hear things like, Team X can trade two first-rounders today after the draft. They can trade four cuz step being rolling and all that stuff. My question is, could teams have a handshake agreement to trade a pick later? I'll trade you Cat and Bridges for Giannis right now. And on draft night, I'll trade you three first-rounders for Gary Trent. Is this legal? And why wouldn't it be? What would they do if this happened?

• 25:17Bill Simmons?

  They do a trade, they just keep everything else quiet. And then the night before the draft, three first rounders for Gary Trent. And they're like, was that related to the Yanis trade? Like, not as far as you know.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Just love Gary Trent. Been trying to get him for years.

• 25:32Bill Simmons?

  We just, we.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Two first rounders wouldn't get it done.

• 25:34Bill Simmons?

  Yanis really wanted him. But what would they do? Would they block it?

• 25:38Speaker 01

  It's a great question. There would definitely be an uproar from the other teams.

• 25:43Bill Simmons?

  Considering they can't figure out what to do with the Terry Rozier contract as a trade.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  It's similar, it's not similar, but like, I don't know. If there's a pre-existing agreement that can be documented in any way, seize the cell phones, you know?

• 25:57Bill Simmons?

  That would have to be.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  It's probably against the rules.

• 25:59Bill Simmons?

  Almost like Breaking Bad, like a remote location where they, where there's like, almost like a desert where they're like drilling for oil and you'd have to just meet out there. Not bring your cell phones.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  I always wonder, what was I watching where there was a meeting like that? Oh, one battle after another.

• 26:15Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  How much time do people have? I just gotta drive. Or, I mean, is, are those places just so accessible? Like, oh, it's 30 minutes, I'll just be in the middle of nowhere.

• 26:23Bill Simmons?

  California, you just go towards like San Bernardino and you could find a lot of.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  45 minutes?

• 26:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, 45 minutes.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:30Bill Simmons?

  John from Georgia, last question.

• 26:34Bill Simmons?

  I have a theory that the NBA's top brass engineers the draft as some sort of market correction in terms of karma. Prime examples, Pelicans getting the number one pick in the AD draft after the Benson family buys the franchise. You could also throw in Kyrie, the Kyrie Cavs pick the year after LeBron left.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Of course, I thought that was coming in the email.

• 26:53Bill Simmons?

  He said the Mavs securing the number one pick in the Cooper Flag Draft after trading Luka.

• 26:58Bill Simmons?

  Obviously, this is, this is spurious. If this theory holds this year.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:05Bill Simmons?

  I'm curious who you think has the best case for the number one pick in the 26 draft? Based on all the times we've, this has happened and we've gone huh. So who would that be this year? Would it be Milwaukee trading Giannis and then somehow getting the number one pick?

• 27:21Speaker 01

  I'm a little confused by the definition of, of like, what kind of karma is it?

• 27:25Bill Simmons?

  Just some sort of like-

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Because Dallas didn't, I don't, Dallas like was not, should not have been rewarded or-

• 27:33Bill Simmons?

  I don't think that's the case for that one.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  That they should have had bad karma.

• 27:36Bill Simmons?

  But the case for that one is the league's like, holy shit, we have to save basketball on Dallas. Like they might actually move out of Dallas if we don't throw them a bone. There's been a few of these. There was the Zion Williamson one was another one. Where it's like, oh, interesting that that team won.

• 27:54Bill Simmons?

  And maybe the karma team isn't there yet.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  I'll tell you who, how about this?

• 27:58Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you got one?

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Well, I mean-

• 28:01Bill Simmons?

  I'm excited.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  I'm going good karma. I'm going like, like no, no team who's sitting guys left and right for fake reasons.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  No team who's been, uh, like just incompetent for a long time, like Washington or the Kings.

• 28:19Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Tough to rule that out.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm just ruling them out. How about Charlotte gets the number one pick?

• 28:27Bill Simmons?

  So Charlotte, when I, I used to do the lottery karma rankings and Charlotte would be the number one candidate this year. Cause they've tried hard all year, probably not making the playoffs.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Could, could, they're not far from the play in now if they get in the play in.

• 28:39Bill Simmons?

  But that's not this question.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:41Bill Simmons?

  This question is the league, is either trying to send a message or trying to do somebody a solid.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:47Bill Simmons?

  And I think the answer is OKC getting the number one pick from the Clippers.

• 28:52Bill Simmons?

  As the aspiration penalty to the Clippers.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  That's really good.

• 28:59Bill Simmons?

  It's like, we couldn't find anything, but- And then on the side of OKC gets AJ DeBansa, whoever they get. Darren Peterson, I'm cooling on based on the Ben Simmons. I'm not positive you like basketball because you're not playing basketball. What's going on with you?

• 29:15Speaker 01

  So this relates to my, one of my rules if I'm the commissioner.

• 29:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  If you've traded a pick outright- You should still have to be on the lottery dais with like the the team you've traded it to. You have to sit next to them.

• 29:30Bill Simmons?

  Oh, for the humiliation? Like Cersei doing the shame walk?

• 29:33Speaker 01

  You should still have to be out there.

• 29:35Bill Simmons?

  Last question, because I got this a bunch. Last question, be on the last questions. People keep asking me would the Warriors actually trade Steph if it was that bleak? And he wanted it. And also anecdotally, people ask me this too. Because everybody loves Steph. Nobody wants to see him in the Kobe last four years with the Lakers. Just kind of lottery death spiral. Nobody wants that. And maybe he just wants to stay and he doesn't care and he's got a great house and that's where he wants to live. But do you think if he went to them and said, you know what, I actually want to chase a title? Is it just off limits? Would they do like, how would that play out?

• 30:12Speaker 01

  I think you would. I think that's the only way it could ever happen. And I think even in that case, you would have to be completely publicly transparent about it. Like Steph would have to give a press conference where he talked about, look, I love Golden State. I just have two more years left. I want to try for a ring and like Mike Dunleavy Jr. would have to be at the press conference. Like, we didn't really want to do this, but this is like, we love this guy. We love each other. This is all done out of love. And that's the only, it's the only way I can see it happening because but like, like.

• 30:43Bill Simmons?

  Well, can I give you a scenario?

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 30:45Bill Simmons?

  Let's say Charlotte does stumble into a top three pick on top of the team they have. And two years from now, they're OKC in 2023 range. And the Warriors, it's just dark. And Steph's like, you know, it'd be cool if I could just.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Go home.

• 30:58Bill Simmons?

  Go home, join this. And everybody's like, yeah, that would be pretty cool. I, the reason I don't think.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  And then the mellow goes to Golden State and they kind of undo, undo the Wiseman pick.

• 31:08Bill Simmons?

  Or he gets bought out, whatever they have to do it to make it easier.

• 31:13Bill Simmons?

  The reason I don't think it'll happen is I do think we're in a Kobe Dirk scenario with this. Dirk was never leaving Dallas. There was no scenario he didn't want to. And he won his title.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Well, I was gonna say like we, you're looking back on the end of the Kobe years as being disappointing, wasted, et cetera. But then you can't do that. I'm not saying you, but you can't do that. And then also say, well, how cool it is that he's a one team? Player and like same with Dirk and like you can't, you can't have both. Like sometimes this is just how it is. And if like, I think one team players are kind of rare and cool. I think it's cool that Devin Booker has publicly said like, I want to be a one, a one team guy. It's hard to have both.

• 31:54Bill Simmons?

  It'd be funny if Tatum and Jalen both said that and the Celtics were like,

• 31:59Bill Simmons?

  yeah. Sounds great.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 32:03Bill Simmons?

  No, I just, I hope they're both one team guys. I love those guys.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:06Bill Simmons?

  Conflicting reports about Tatum this week. I, I would like to say for the record, I still think he's playing this year and I feel really confident about that. Unless there is a setback, which I don't think there's been.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  I hope there's not a setback and I hope, well, can they make the finals without him? Can they make, make the finals? You're closing the door on them making the finals.

• 32:24Bill Simmons?

  I don't think they have enough.

• 32:26Bill Simmons?

  You saw last night, we're watching that Atlanta game. Like there's, if their threes aren't going in and they're playing the right kind of team, like literally 20 teams in the league could beat them.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  I think they could, I think the East is so bad that I can't slam the door on it.

• 32:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  A, their health has been perfect, which tends to regress at some point. And B, I do, I do think their margin for error is like nothing, like nothing.

• 32:48Bill Simmons?

  You know who's going to tell us the answer to this? The Celtics. Because if they keep Simons versus trading him will be the answer. If they try to trade Simons just for somebody who makes less money and it makes the team worse, we have our answer.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true.

• 33:02Bill Simmons?

  Cause Simons has been important to them, but also, as I've said many times, if they could turn him into Malik Monk.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Why do you want, why do you want Malik Monk? What is your Malik Monk thing?

• 33:13Bill Simmons?

  Well, first of all, you're not allowed on the island.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  I don't want to be on the island. I'm not even sure I turned my boat around. He's fine. Like Malik Monk's fine.

• 33:20Bill Simmons?

  26 years old or 27. He's either 26, 27.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  How old is Simons?

• 33:23Bill Simmons?

  40% shooter every year. Well, he's making 18 million and Simons is making 27. And I still feel like he's a guy in big games that I trust. We saw it and I, that guy's still sitting there. He's just on the worst, dumbest basketball franchise we have. That guy is still exists.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree.

• 33:41Bill Simmons?

  By the way, that's somebody I would go for the Lakers.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  They had him.

• 33:45Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  He rehabilitated.

• 33:46Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah. Maybe he wouldn't want to go back. But I just think, I think that dude, he's gonna go to a team. I'm telling you, he's gonna go to a contender and people be like, oh shit, he's really good. I totally forgot.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  You gotta de-kings him. I wonder if there's like a machine that you have to like step in.

• 34:01Bill Simmons?

  It's like the Silkwood shower?

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, a bunch of lasers hit you and it's like have to get the kings out of your soul. And then you can play again.

• 34:08Bill Simmons?

  Remember the movie Silkwood with Beryl Streep?

• 34:10Speaker 01

  I never saw it.

• 34:10Bill Simmons?

  She got contaminated, but it was like a nuclear reactor site and had to do the Silkwood shower. And it was like this like chemical shower you had to take. Maybe that's what has to happen.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go.

• 34:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. All right. Zach LaF, see you on Amazon tonight.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Boom.

• 34:23Bill Simmons?

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• 35:09Bill Simmons?

  Put him together with BSD. That's plus 182. And that is the one that I like. So there you go. That's fanduel.com/BS and you can opt into the profit boost and get ready for this weekend's matchups. You must be 21 plus, present in select states or 18 plus and present in DC, Kentucky, Wyoming. Opt-in required. Bonus issued as non-deductible profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration, max wager amount. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut.

• 35:49Bill Simmons?

  All right. Thursday afternoon, the K man Kevin Wilds is here in the fanciest setup he's ever had. He's on the set of his show. Joe House is here as always on Thursdays. I am wearing my authentic Tony Simmons jersey that I bought in 1998. House knew me back then because we've known each other for almost 40 years. Drove to the Patriots Pro Shop because they drafted a second round receiver named Tony Simmons. And I'd always wanted the Patriots to have a receiver named Simmons so I could have Simmons on the back of the jersey. And it turned out to be a bust. And this jersey's been in my attic for a while, but I'm bringing it back K

• 36:30Bill Simmons?

  man because the nobody believes in us Pats are back. Nobody's picking us. Nobody thinks we're gonna win. Belichick's getting snubbed from the Super Bowl. We're underdogs. Joe House thinks Sam Darnold's gonna run amok. We're back, baby. We're so back. I'm wearing retro jerseys. I didn't know what year it is. Is it 2026? Is it 1998? I don't even know.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  I need to ask Wilds. I'm not sure this is a great idea. You pulled out a jersey, nobody believed in Tony Simmons, and with good reason. So you pull out that jersey for the nobody believes in this game?

• 37:06Bill Simmons?

  Guess what jersey I wore a lot during the 2001 season? Tony Simmons, right here. There was some good luck in this jersey. Wild, your thoughts?

• 37:17Speaker 03

  Bill and House's relationship goes back so far that the concept of a personalized jersey that you can get delivered to your home in Anchorage, Alaska in 22 hours. If you wanted a personalized jersey, you had to scout.

• 37:40Speaker 03

  The newspapers of the NFL draft predictions in a hope there was a coincidence of your last name lined up with your favorite team and the fact that it worked for you is fantastic.

• 37:55Bill Simmons?

  And.

• 37:55Speaker 03

  It's so much easier now.

• 37:57Bill Simmons?

  And when it happened, I had to drive an hour to Foxborough to buy it at the pro shop because that was the only place I could get it specially made and then do it. And else I had no money.

• 38:08Speaker 03

  Just love it.

• 38:09Bill Simmons?

  Um, but yeah, those were the, those were the days. Anyway, uh, Wilds, why don't you stand by here while House disparages the New England Patriots and says why they don't have a chance on Sunday. Go ahead.

• 38:19Speaker 03

  We're no good.

• 38:19Bill Simmons?

  God, you have the floor. No, I know you don't think we're gonna win.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  Positively not, not doing that.

• 38:23Bill Simmons?

  We go ahead.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  I do want to call to mind amongst this group that we, we have done this. This is a reunion of sorts. Now, Wilds and I haven't seen each other. You know, I admire from afar, uh, his, his daily television, um, turn. It's wonderful. First things first, all of the best takes.

• 38:43Bill Simmons?

  Me too. Um, we've even, we've even talked ourselves into liking Nick Wright. That's how much we love you.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  He's great.

• 38:49Bill Simmons?

  Nick Wright, I'm in. I'm in. Had a great podcast with him a couple of months ago. I liked it. Yeah, it's great.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  The only question nobody's ever asked Nick Wright, has anybody ever asked him why he won't just get a haircut?

• 39:00Bill Simmons?

  This is his look.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  It looks cool.

• 39:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it looks cool.

• 39:03Speaker 03

  It's a look.

• 39:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's his look.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Is it?

• 39:05Bill Simmons?

  It's his look.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 39:07Speaker 03

  House. Everybody can't have my haircut.

• 39:09Bill Simmons?

  House, you were compared a week ago to like you were in the backup band of an early nineties boys band with thou for you wore on last week's podcast. That was an email I got.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Well, that's great.

• 39:21Bill Simmons?

  Share that with you.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  I have no regrets.

• 39:23Bill Simmons?

  I'm where, I'm a guy in my mid 50s wearing a game worn, not even a game worn, authentic Pat's jersey. I'm not here to comment either.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  It's not a, I mean.

• 39:34Bill Simmons?

  So what did we do in Indianapolis? We did half baked?

• 39:38Speaker 02

  We did, we did, but the, the, the true highlight of that, one of the highlights, there were many highlights because Wilds came in and he was firing as, as is always the case. But you chose during that show to share with Wilds and I how proud you were that you possessed a Starbucks card, like the Starbucks reward card. You remember this, Wild?

• 40:00Bill Simmons?

  This was like a half hour. We talked about this for a half hour.

• 40:04Bill Simmons?

  That every time I got a Starbucks, I was one step closer to a free iced coffee.

• 40:11Bill Simmons?

  And you guys were dumbfounded by this.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  No, it wasn't a loyalty card, Bill.

• 40:17Bill Simmons?

  What do you mean?

• 40:19Speaker 03

  You were just getting the card just to carry the card because you liked giving a gift to yourself. There was no loyalty component to it.

• 40:27Bill Simmons?

  I did that as well. Yeah, you're right. I forgot about that. Yeah.

• 40:32Speaker 03

  I forgot about that.

• 40:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I had like a $50 card. Yeah.

• 40:37Speaker 03

  Jonathan Kraft was on that podcast, too. Shout out to Patriots.

• 40:41Bill Simmons?

  That's right. That's right. And by the way, this is one of the topics I had. That was the last time I went to a Patriots Super Bowl.

• 40:49Bill Simmons?

  I sat with Jamie Horowitz, AKA Suit.

• 40:53Bill Simmons?

  We were supposed to get our revenge to the Super Bowl, the Giants' home and catch game. The Giants, listen, I'm fine with losing the home and catch game. The second Giants team never should have beaten that Pats team in a million years. Didn't even play well. And we somehow lost anyway. And it was like leaving your own murder scene for 45 minutes. The problem with the Super Bowl, if you go and your team loses, you also can't get out. And you're just trapped when half the fans are happy for the other team. I was just recognizable enough that I was getting a lot of, hey Simmons, how'd that one work out? I wanted to fight everybody. And I was just like, I'm never going again. And I haven't, I've been to Super Bowls just now with the Pats. So people are asking me, hey, you going down? When are you going to get there?

• 41:37Bill Simmons?

  I'm like, I'm not going. I'm going to be watching on my couch. I'm going to have my son with me and my dog. And I'll do a podcast after, but I don't want to go to the game because I'm really scarred from the two Giants games. Do you think this is fair, Wilds?

• 41:53Speaker 03

  We were favored in both of those Giants games.

• 41:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, well, heavily favored.

• 41:58Speaker 03

  The letdown was even harder.

• 41:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:00Speaker 03

  But now that we're four and a half point underdogs, we're supposed to lose. Now, the letdown would still hurt, but, but the world thinks we're going to lose. I think it's worth, worth the risk to go because the high is going to be extra high this year. Here's a, I'll, I'll fire back a question to you, Bill. Out of our six championship rings.

• 42:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:22Speaker 03

  Where would this one rank if we pull it off?

• 42:25Bill Simmons?

  Wilds and I say we in our like we're on the team house, just in case you're wondering.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Of course, of course you do.

• 42:31Bill Simmons?

  Nothing will ever be 2001. And I would rank the Deflategate Super Bowl number two for me. The.

• 42:40Speaker 03

  That's fair.

• 42:40Bill Simmons?

  The, just all the shit Brady took that week and then being able to beat Seattle and come back. And also like honestly, there was a little bit of some curse stuff lingering. That Spygate had put a curse on the Patriots and that's why we'd had bad luck and we weren't going to win again. So that one, I'd have number two. This, this might be three. If they did this.

• 43:01Speaker 03

  Really?

• 43:03Speaker 02

  It has to be high up there.

• 43:04Bill Simmons?

  It just, we were dead. We were like, we were the freaking Browns. It was over. We were the Jets. We were, we were the Raiders. Like there was no hope. There was nothing. You don't agree with this, Wilds?

• 43:18Speaker 03

  No, I, I, I agree. I.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  It might be two for me.

• 43:23Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:25Bill Simmons?

  So you have 0-1 first?

• 43:26Speaker 03

  And there's.

• 43:28Bill Simmons?

  0-1 first.

• 43:30Speaker 03

  16, just the game against the 28-3.

• 43:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 43:34Speaker 03

  It's on its own island.

• 43:37Speaker 03

  But I can also make an argument because I was an adult for all of these, but I wasn't a father.

• 43:44Bill Simmons?

  Ah.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  Or like a father, you know, that this is the first one that my kids are super into the Patriots.

• 43:49Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 43:51Speaker 03

  This has a opportunity to be one.

• 43:54Bill Simmons?

  I think that's fair. I completely agree.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  It's also Drake May's first, potentially.

• 44:02Bill Simmons?

  Could be Drake May's first.

• 44:03Speaker 03

  The way you're talking, House. I love that.

• 44:05Bill Simmons?

  As if we didn't have enough obstacles.

• 44:07Speaker 03

  First.

• 44:08Bill Simmons?

  Wow, as if we didn't have enough obstacles. Now it's like Drake May's shoulder limited in practice today updates. And we have Dr. David Chow breaking down in slow motion, Drake May hitting the turf and all of these things I was not expecting on Sunday night. I don't like any of it.

• 44:25Speaker 03

  Question. A little bit of gamesmanship?

• 44:29Bill Simmons?

  I certainly felt that way with the Stafford back stuff before the year that threw off House and I when

• 44:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:34Bill Simmons?

  We went to bed on the Rams to, right, House? We just got immediately scared off with the old guy with the bad back thing.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, except I think they were telling the truth. I don't think it was gamesmanship for the Rams. I think they were genuinely concerned about Stafford's back.

• 44:47Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  They had nothing to gain going into week one, like, oh, we're gonna rope a dope our week one opponent.

• 44:53Bill Simmons?

  Darnold, are we sure there's something wrong with his oblique?

• 44:58Speaker 02

  See, that one I like. I like this. This is conspiracy bill territory.

• 45:01Bill Simmons?

  He looked fine winging the ball around. Threw for 340 yards. I never know what to believe. We found out Josh Allen had a broken foot today.

• 45:12Bill Simmons?

  Like, they're supposed to release this stuff.

• 45:13Speaker 03

  I was on Josh Allen's broken foot. His foot hurt for weeks and all of a sudden he's on crutches in a walking boot.

• 45:20Bill Simmons?

  Right, but they're supposed to report this stuff. That's the rules.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  He ran for 66 yards against the Broncos.

• 45:27Bill Simmons?

  Well, he said, I would still be able to, if, if push came to shove, I could play right now. I've just played through whatever. It's kind of exactly the opposite of certain NBA players. Yeah.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  He's a hero. Love that guy.

• 45:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, like, I don't, I don't feel like, uh, I'm trying to think, who's the NBA player who would say the opposite of that, House?

• 45:47Speaker 02

  Zion Williamson.

• 45:48Bill Simmons?

  Zion Williamson, yeah. Um, all right. So the kids thing, you're buying that house that, that, when you can share it with your kids when they become fans? Cause I remember Ben and I watched the 28 to 3. Whole family watched the comeback and that made a little extra special that I had the next generation there.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  Yep. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely.

• 46:06Bill Simmons?

  See, House, you're never gonna know because you're, the, nothing with the Wizards will

• 46:12Bill Simmons?

  ever happen with you and James.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  The Washington Football Team was in the national, the NFC Championship game last year.

• 46:17Bill Simmons?

  Did your son care, though?

• 46:18Speaker 03

  Then you fired everybody.

• 46:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you fired everybody.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  Well, everything went weird. It was all weird this season.

• 46:24Bill Simmons?

  Fired everybody.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  And by the way, that can happen.

• 46:26Bill Simmons?

  So Wild.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Be prepared.

• 46:27Bill Simmons?

  As, as a, a long time take person, long time follower, um, I've been surprised, not only is everybody picking the Seahawks, it feels like, but now people, now it's becoming like Evel Knievel. Now I can jump this canyon with the picks. I think Stephen A. said he thought they were gonna lose 60 to nothing? Was the thing said this week, they might lose 60 to nothing, but we're doing that.

• 46:50Speaker 02

  He toned it down today. He walked it all the way back today.

• 46:54Bill Simmons?

  Cam Newton was comparing to Trent Dilfer or Drake May? I don't know what, Drake May idolized Cam Newton. Why is he doing this? It's like his hero.

• 47:06Speaker 03

  Okay. I, I wanna, I wanna have a solution to this Cam stuff.

• 47:12Bill Simmons?

  Great.

• 47:13Speaker 03

  Because I think it literally personally hurts Drake May's feelings. It's his childhood hero. He went to the Super Bowl. He's got Panther stuff.

• 47:24Speaker 03

  It also hurts my feelings as a guy who loved Cam and appreciated everything he did in that COVID year. He moved. He was like by himself.

• 47:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:35Speaker 03

  He was in a new system and he made that post Brady era interesting, pre Mac Jones.

• 47:43Bill Simmons?

  So here's what I want to say to Cam Newton. I hope this is nice and really nice for you to even call it interesting. It was interesting.

• 47:50Speaker 03

  We were close. We had a few fumbles.

• 47:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:53Speaker 03

  But it was good. We didn't immediately stink.

• 47:55Bill Simmons?

  I enjoyed it.

• 47:56Speaker 03

  Okay. Here's my take on Cam. And I hope this gets to Cam.

• 48:02Speaker 03

  Cam, if we win the Super Bowl and if Drake May plays well in the Super Bowl, you had a part in that.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  Josh McDaniels

• 48:15Speaker 03

  made all of his bones in the Super Bowls with Tom Brady, who could not move mobily. God bless Tom Brady, but he's not a running quarterback.

• 48:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:25Speaker 03

  The one year Josh worked with Cam, 592 yards, 12 touchdowns, 55 first downs. This first year with Drake and Josh, 450 yards, four touchdowns, 38 first downs. To the point where the bootleg against the Broncos, I started to, I'm like, did Josh get that from Cam? Josh was not a guy who designed running quarter scrambles or sneaks or anything. He never did that with Brady. That's you, Cam. You are responsible for Drake's greatness, not just when he was a kid, but the fact that you put this into the playbook for the Patriots.

• 49:04Bill Simmons?

  Right. You're winning.

• 49:05Speaker 03

  We win, you win, Cam Newton.

• 49:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he gets the W.

• 49:09Speaker 03

  We want you at the parade.

• 49:10Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 49:13Bill Simmons?

  House, what do you think of this?

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Who was the terrible quarterback for the Raiders when McDaniel was the head coach?

• 49:20Bill Simmons?

  I mean, which one? He had a few of them.

• 49:22Speaker 03

  I think it did the car.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  I feel like he might have.

• 49:24Speaker 03

  Their car.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  It undercut some of what we're talking about here.

• 49:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the thing with the thing. I just don't get it. I get why people have to do these stances and do whatever, but Drake May was really good this year. You can't compare him to these quarterbacks that were kind of were along for the ride. I also, the weather thing, I, this is another thing that I've been arguing with people about. I don't know if you feel like you're Jon Snow defending the wall here with the Patriots, but it's fine. If you think they're going to lose a game, I get it. Seattle's really good, but they haven't played a normal weather game in like a month. And Stafford was in Chicago, that game that went into overtime that they almost lost and they won 20 to 17. They scored 17 points in four quarters and then got a field goal in OT.

• 50:14Bill Simmons?

  They didn't look like the Rams at all. Puka, I think, had 55 yards. They didn't really have any explosive plays and Stafford looked creaky for most of the game. And afterwards, everyone was like, man, really tough weather game. The weather really affected both teams. This has been the entire Patriots playoff run. They haven't played a normal game yet. And even if San Francisco is like 55 degrees and not raining. It's the biggest win, the pass a bad weather wise, in over a month. So I don't know. Does that sound like an excuse to you, House?

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, the weather for, for the Chargers and the Texans games was like regular New England weather.

• 50:52Bill Simmons?

  No, Texans game was, was freezing, was freezing.

• 50:55Speaker 03

  Texans game was cold and rainy snow.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  That's New England. But that's what happens up there.

• 51:00Bill Simmons?

  It sucked.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  We're saying that those, all those players, because of how new they are and the system, none of them are acclimated to what New England weather. That's, it doesn't confer.

• 51:09Speaker 03

  No, it's just when you compare Stafford and Darnold's performance with a guy who's playing in a blizzard.

• 51:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and look, Drake missed a lot of throws and I don't know what was going on with his shoulder. I thought that was the worst throwing game he's had since the Vegas game. But he made some stuff happen with his legs. He put together a 10 minute drive that effectively gave them the lead for good. And I, I just don't think, I didn't think he was good by his standards, but we've seen a lot of quarterbacks kind of be up and down like that. The problem is the next game, Darnold and Stafford were both awesome. You know, and then you watch that first game, then you watch the second game, you're like, oh my God. There's also the Sam Darnold piece that I think people have just slept on. Right? The Patriots, I would say, is it fair to say kind of ended his Jets career? That was the tipping point, right? Is that fair?

• 52:01Speaker 03

  It's a, the, the I C ghost game.

• 52:06Bill Simmons?

  Unrecoverable.

• 52:07Speaker 03

  Probably hurt, hurt his career more than was fair. More than I think the NFL Films team realized when they just had a, a random soundbite. You know, they're not trying to hurt people's careers. But that one just, it was so, he was actually penalized, Bill, for being creative.

• 52:29Bill Simmons?

  For being thoughtful about his circumstance. But he's.

• 52:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, just because he was a good writer.

• 52:35Bill Simmons?

  So the sports movie version of this is, well, now he gets to exercise the ghosts and play the Patriots again. His career's come full circle. The Patriot fan side of me is like, it's fucking Sam Darnold. We're still, we're still paying interest on that guy from when we, when we owned him a couple of years ago. And I'm trying to talk about some of that. House, what's your case for Seattle just easily winning this game and covering? Cause I feel like you're leaning that way.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  I don't think anything's going to be easy. The case is they have the number one by DVOA pass defense and they will put pressure on Drake May. And the pressure that they're able to put on him, they're super fast in the middle. They'll take the middle of the field away. It's not like the Patriots possess absolute burners on, on the outside. So the case would be that they put May under so much pressure. It's the version of what we saw with, with, with the Texans, except for the, the, Seattle will not be giving New England the ball on the 30 yard line, you know, five consecutive possessions.

• 53:38Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  So that, that's the case.

• 53:41Bill Simmons?

  All right, Seattle's not gonna be home. Neutral field. I think both teams are really good. I think the Pats are better than people realize, and I think Seattle is cruising on the fumes of those first two games, especially. Like, I go back to Week 18, I was saying this to Mina. Mina and I, we're getting along.

• 53:59Bill Simmons?

  It's, you know, it's, it's, it's a little bit of a tap dance, but it's fine. But I was saying, like, Week 18, Seattle was favored by one and a half at home against the Niners, right? In a must-win game for the win seed. They beat San Francisco, they beat them again. Then they, they squeezed by the Rams. And now they're being treated like a different team by the oddsmakers. I, I personally think this line should be two and a half. I don't think it should be four and a half. I think it should be two and a half. And it seems like there's an extra two points in here because there's Seattle, there's some Seattle steam. You know what I mean, Wouts? They have some steam. They're the team.

• 54:37Speaker 03

  We pulled a graphic. We pulled a graphic today. The last seven teams that were favored by four or more. Two and seven outright, and none of them covered.

• 54:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I, I'm trying not to get too excited about it, but I really do feel like we're back. I mean, when you go back to 1773, guys. Who was the first place that really stood up to the British? Boston. 1775 Revolutionary War, watch the Ken Burns documentary. Who really put their foot down? Kicked the British the fuck out, Boston.

• 55:18Bill Simmons?

  And ever since then, go all the way through. All the "nobody believes in us" stuff. You go to "Gem in the Town," you can go all the way through. It's, it's the DNA. But the title's kind of shifted it, where Boston won a lot, and then you lose that because, but now, now being the underdog, the disparaged underdog, I feel like the Pats are back.

• 55:38Speaker 03

  Can I say something and ask, because I think you're gonna have a visceral reaction to this.

• 55:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, let's hear it.

• 55:46Speaker 03

  As a fan of Sport House.

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 55:51Speaker 03

  Kind of rooting for Sam Darnold. As I disembodied my Patriots fan.

• 55:56Bill Simmons?

  Removing the Pats fan. Yeah.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  It's a one, it's a one of a kind. Well, no, I understand. It's a one of a kind story. We really don't have anybody we can point to in our NFL experience that has a career like this. Not only is, do we have the redemption arc that was the Vikings season last year. I mean, he really transformed that Vikings organization, put them on the precipice of being like, you know, a potential run for them. Their defense is so good and they had all those skill players. But, um, you know, he went and replicated that with a whole nother team, a whole nother situation, a brand new offensive coordinator and skill players that, that everybody at the

• 56:41Speaker 02

  beginning of the season, like, they were question marks because, you know, they kicked out DK Metcalf, they let the other receiver go. And, you know, it was, yeah, Lockett, right. But we came in with a bunch of question marks with Seattle team and all he did was kick ass and take names all season, Kevin Wilds.

• 56:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, the other thing is, I forgot this. This is a pretty unusual from a Super Bowl odds standpoint because everybody's so good at doing odds now. You don't really get a lot of future value, right? And there is ironically Fox Sports had this tweet, top 10 longest preseason odds to win the Super Bowl since 1977. The 99 Rams were famously 150 to 1, 150 to 1. The 01 Patriots were 60 to 1. And the 81 Niners were 50 to 1, right? You have the Patriots and the Patriots were 80 to 1 before the season. The Seahawks were 60 to 1. Either outcome would be the second biggest future odd

• 57:41Bill Simmons?

  that we've had since 1977, which that house, that's not supposed to happen anymore. We do these over unders. And I remember I love Seattle, but their over under was eight and a half. I don't, I wouldn't have picked them to win the Super Bowl. I wouldn't have picked the Patriots either. It was another team I liked, but this is pretty crazy. But it goes back to a pretty nutty season. Do you think the Belichick stuff is good for the Patriots or it's a non-factor?

• 58:03Speaker 03

  I don't think it's a major factor.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  I don't think it's a minor factor. I don't think it's a little factor, House.

• 58:15Speaker 03

  But the Patriots legacies in the building of being discredited, doubted and disrespected. Not nothing.

• 58:28Speaker 02

  I'm just so happy. I'm just so glad it happened this week because if it happened next week as the lead into the game, like people would be losing their minds. Thank God we're going to dispense with this and the stupid Hall of Fame is going to change the rules, right? Isn't that the way we're leaning now? The dummies will fix it because it's like, well, we made up the stupid rule that led to this result. They certainly can make up, can fix the stupid rule and just usher the man in for God's sake.

• 58:56Bill Simmons?

  I mean, the Football Hall of Fame especially, as you know, I hate all Hall Fames and in 2009, wrote an entire book devoted to blowing up the Basketball Hall of Fame and starting over and making a pyramid. All of these Hall Fames have been screwed up. I always, the football-

• 59:11Speaker 03

  Did you want to actually make a real pyramid? Was that the-

• 59:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 59:15Speaker 03

  Was that the-

• 59:16Bill Simmons?

  Five levels.

• 59:17Speaker 03

  You didn't have architectural draw-

• 59:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was a pyramid and the top level was the Pantheon. Yeah.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  You can't see me, but I'm making-

• 59:26Bill Simmons?

  Where do you think Nick Wright got Mahomes Mountain from? The fucking Hall of Fame Pyramid? You could tell him I said it.

• 59:35Speaker 03

  Doesn't it kind of look like a pyramid now?

• 59:39Bill Simmons?

  What do you mean? The Hall of Fame? Well, the concept of the pyramid-

• 59:43Speaker 03

  Physical building, I-

• 59:43Bill Simmons?

  The concept was you go to the Hall of Fame and as you go up each level and this original person who had this idea was my buddy Gus's dad, Wally Ramsey, one of my great English teachers of all time. It was the concept is you go up and you go up to another floor and now the players are getting better. And then by the time you get to the top floor, it's like the best of the best. And that's the whole concept. It's really good. It's really good.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  Not a half baked idea, a fully baked idea.

• 1:00:13Bill Simmons?

  That was a great one. So, and then the basement had all the people that couldn't make it, but all had their little stories, like the people, the comments, the drug guys, all that stuff. Anyway, the Pro Football Hall of Fame guys- I always felt like they were the most annoying because it was like 50 people and they carried themselves like a fucking sorority, like a fraternity at Harvard where it's like when in social network where Mark Zuckerberg and his roommate are trying to get into that fraternity. It's like, oh, we made the second round and these douchebags and like put a robe on. We all hate all that stuff, right? That's basically the NFL Hall of Fame, how they do it. It's 50 guys. You're not allowed to talk. We argue about it in the room. Let's get the fuck

• 1:00:55Bill Simmons?

  out of here. Whatever your process has led to the best coach in the history of the league, not making the Hall of Fame, the first thing. And I never get mad about this stuff. And this actually made me mad. Like, at some point, there should be a shit detector part.

• 1:01:08Speaker 03

  I got mad at a visceral level.

• 1:01:10Bill Simmons?

  It was like everyone got mad. It made Belichick a sympathetic figure, which was like impossible. What were the odds of that? That was 80 to one, like the fucking Patriots.

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  House, it was probably a win for him in the end.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  Oh, an amazing win. Are you kidding? An 11 out of 10. Speaking of redemption arcs, we're all gonna go into this, this coming summer. And he has a free out yet to preserve his, his legacy. Is he gonna go back to stupid North Carolina and try and do that again? Is he really gonna go do that?

• 1:01:39Speaker 03

  The team's gonna be great. I'm buying stock.

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  It doesn't make any sense, especially with, with the gift that he's just been given. He's just been giving an immense, unexpected, uh, windfall lottery ticket here with this, with this outrageous, uh, Hall of Fame nonsense. Just ride on off into the sunset with this.

• 1:01:59Bill Simmons?

  Wilds, would you, if Buffalo out of nowhere announced, we've hired our new coach and it's Bill Belichick, how would your feelings have been? The first, walk me through your first 30 seconds of that.

• 1:02:12Speaker 03

  First thought, total fear.

• 1:02:16Bill Simmons?

  That's what, that's exactly what my first thought would have been as well. I would have been like, fuck.

• 1:02:20Speaker 03

  Second thought, bring it on.

• 1:02:27Speaker 03

  Third thought, a practical, who are the assistants? Who's the OC?

• 1:02:33Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:02:34Speaker 03

  And I think he's lost his fat, like without Josh or, you know, the whole Matt Patricia's OC thing, I feel a little bit calm.

• 1:02:42Bill Simmons?

  So you'd eventually calm down from it. Okay. Well, let me ask you, what would your thoughts have been, House?

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  I want to ask you guys this. There are still two teams that need quarterbacks. I mean, need a head coach. What if Tom Brady hires Belichick to be the head coach of the Raiders? After all of this?

• 1:02:57Bill Simmons?

  It seems like that they're getting Clint Kubiak. I think that's.

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  That is what makes a ton of sense, by the way. He's, he's a total badass. But Arizona, Arizona is so irrelevant and, and has done nothing but cover itself with the opposite of glory with the way it's conducted its, its affairs. Why not one last run for the old man in the year that he was, you know,

• 1:03:18Bill Simmons?

  Turn it down.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  Undeservedly. Exactly. Exactly. One more, one more time.

• 1:03:23Bill Simmons?

  So I was thinking the Browns and then they hired Todd Monkin. And you're like, that's a team that definitely should have hired Belichick. Like really? You're going to hire that guy? They didn't like they, they had Jim Schwartz, who's I think worked with Belichick in the past, but at that, if I'm hiring Todd Monkin, I'm just hiring Belichick instead and let him figure out Shador Sanders and just, he comes back to Cleveland.

• 1:03:48Speaker 03

  Like Cleveland Browns starter jacket.

• 1:03:50Speaker 02

  That's pretty good. That's pretty good. There's lots of light there.

• 1:03:53Bill Simmons?

  We have unfinished business here. They took the team away. Yeah.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  That's right. It's pretty good.

• 1:03:58Bill Simmons?

  But I think he's, I think he's smart enough to know I have to go where the quarterback is. Like that's basically what Vrabel did. Vrabel was in all the mix for these jobs last year. And he was like, I'd.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  That, that only makes sense if, if, if it really matters. Like, well, he's not going to go in and, and immediately transform a situation. Bill Belichick at this point?

• 1:04:20Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm saying if you're him, you want a quarterback. I'm just, and I would feel that way if it was me and I was an NFL coach. Like I'm not going anywhere that doesn't have a quarterback. Who's my quarterback? It's like, keep your fingers crossed.

• 1:04:32Speaker 03

  That's why I like the Signetti to the Raiders. I know he's kind of poured cold water on it, but I love that idea of the coach, college combo. A little Jamar Chase, Joe Burrow action.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  Be really sexy.

• 1:04:46Bill Simmons?

  Um, let's take a break and then we're gonna do half baked ideas with wilds unless there's any more 98 Patriots stuff you guys want to do. Are we done? Want to talk about the team? Nothing? Okay. All right. We'll take a break. Hey, there's a massive fight coming this Saturday interim lightweight title on the line. FanDuel wants to make sure you're all locked in. They're hooking up everybody with 30% profit boost for Fight Night parlays and SGP's. The perfect way to boost your winnings. My favorite BSD fighting Dan Hooker. I'm in. Let's throw him minus 340 money line with Diego Lopez to get his revenge against Volkanovski. That's plus 118. You put those two together,

• 1:05:28Bill Simmons?

  plus 182 and you can add the little profit boost to that and you're ready to roll. While you watch Saturday night, go ahead and place your bets on FanDuel Sportsbook. FanDuel, play your game. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Whether it's a pumpkin spice coffee that goes splat in your seat or a weekend tailgate that leaves your trunk full of gear and who knows what, you're gonna want WeatherTech in your vehicle. Whether you call it fall, autumn, or spooky season, whether the mess is your fault, the kids, the dogs, or the weather's fault, you're gonna want WeatherTech for American-made floor liners and a cargo liner that laugh in the face of fall weather. Visit weatherTech.com today. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Excitement is in the air. That's right.

• 1:06:10Bill Simmons?

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• 1:06:55Bill Simmons?

  perfect, I could watch a game and then go out to dinner vibe. And the Meta Pant? That's my number one, I need to look like I tried option. Get 20% off your first purchase at viori.com/simmons and discover the versatility of Viori clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. All right. So ever since I've had a podcast, which dates back to 2007, the worldwide leader ESPN, Kevin Wilds would come on and do half baked ideas. I did one on Dave Chang's show.

• 1:07:27Bill Simmons?

  I went on Dave Chang's show and gave him my idea for a restaurant that only accepts credit card roulette and forces the customers to play credit card roulette with each other. And then they videotape everything and they cut it into social video to promote the restaurant. That might've been a fully baked idea. I don't even know if that was a half baked idea, but I was really proud of that.

• 1:07:47Speaker 03

  It was almost too good.

• 1:07:48Bill Simmons?

  It was too good. I probably should've figured out how to screw that up somehow. Anyway, Wilds, usually you have like two big ones and two smaller ones. So what do you got?

• 1:07:59Speaker 03

  All right. So I'll start with a big one and we'll do four total. And since House is here and I'll piggyback off of your restaurant idea.

• 1:08:11Speaker 03

  Went out to dinner. I said, ooh, let's get a seafood tower. Love the seafood tower.

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  You know, you got your oysters, you got your clams, you got your shrimp. It's great, but I'm always thinking about the food, you know?

• 1:08:26Bill Simmons?

  Can I just tell you, nobody, nobody loves the seafood tower more than Joe House, like probably on the planet?

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  This is an amazing start, Wilds.

• 1:08:36Speaker 03

  Perfect. The guy I'm with says, ah, you know, I don't want the little clams, which are the junior varsity kids table of the seafood tower. They're kind of gross. Like eh.

• 1:08:50Speaker 03

  He says, let's just get this one. It's called the tableau.

• 1:08:56Speaker 03

  I should've had red alarms going off in my mind.

• 1:09:01Speaker 03

  The waiter brings over a bowl

• 1:09:06Speaker 03

  of seafood. It was a disaster. It had no altitude, House.

• 1:09:15Speaker 03

  So I'm thinking, oh, it's very obvious. I always thought the shrimp and the lobster tail was the star of the show. It's not. It's obviously the height. And I know that's right in front of me, but I needed to be punched in the face with it. Then I'm thinking, you know what? I need more towers in my life, period. Just off the top of your head house. I'm gonna say a waffle tower. Wow, is there a breakfast bar? No, there's our waffle tower over there. Oh, you want a Cobb salad? Do you want it in a bowl? Do you want it in a tower? We got lettuce, we got your bacon here, we got your blue cheese. And as it goes up and up, however tall, you got the bacon bits up top. Anything can have a tower option.

• 1:09:53Speaker 02

  It works so well. It's an incredible concept. Let's, we, we, this is the second restaurant. We're opening two new restaurants. This is the group right here. We have the credit card roulette, and we'll have to come up with a clever name for it. But the name of the restaurant is the tower. And everything you order comes in.

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  Too many towers.

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and

• 1:10:15Speaker 03

  Too many towers.

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  The Burger Tower is immediately the number one for me, right? You can have, you know, like, uh, uh, regular American cheeseburgers at the bottom, and you're climbing all the way up to your most decadent, however funky, you know, whatever you want to have on it. You want to have, uh, uh, you know, foie gras, and, and your fanciest cheeses on the, on the top burger. Could be a lobster burger. This is a, it's, it's an incredible concept.

• 1:10:41Speaker 03

  Well, could you have I've also studied the tape on this, Bill. And I'm like, I gotta self scout. Am I underplaying the value of crushed ice and tiny things of Tabasco? It's on the board. Well, part of my head immediately went to, could the tower also only accept credit card roulette? You just merged the two ideas. It's a one plus one equals three.

• 1:11:10Bill Simmons?

  I mean, you could obviously do that. So I was trying to think with towers. So like sometimes when you'll do, I don't know, when you're at somebody's house and they have that they're making cheeseburgers. And then they have the extra plate that has like lettuce, tomato and onions. And then there's like another plate with the cheeses. The cheeseburger tower would be kind of be perfect for this, right? Cause you would have the burgers at the bottom and then it would go up and then the top, as House said, would have all of the cool extra things. Why, why is it seafood is the one that works the best with this house? Like, could you, could you do like a pasta tower?

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  The, the, the ice definitely plays a role because it, it's visually stimulating. It, it, the, the temperature change when it comes to the table, it, it changes the gravity of the table. And it's so visually appealing. Um, and, and it's so interesting. The, the, the, um, the variance you get between what a shrimp looks like, what an oyster looks like. Even the clams, the clams have, oh, is this a clam or is it an oyster? Well, it's a, it's a little smaller. Okay. I got it.

• 1:12:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  Um, you know, some, some folks will take a tiny bit of a, do a tiny hamachi. And kind of like, you know, put some sliced stuff on a tiny plate and slide it like, there's all kinds of room for, for, uh, for, for creativity with this. So.

• 1:12:31Bill Simmons?

  The sushi tower. So that's a great one. Sushi tower is a great one. Cause you could have different levels. Yeah.

• 1:12:41Speaker 03

  I've worked at a few restaurants. I've never worked at a place that sold or offered seafood towers. But if you, if you get a diet coke, I feel like it's out of bounds to ask, hey, I know you've got seafood towers on the menu. Can I have the crushed ice from the tower in my diet coke? I think I would be shut down. I was like, no, that ice is for the tower exclusively. We can't start handing out this ice all over the place. Then the tower is not special.

• 1:13:13Bill Simmons?

  We built the

• 1:13:14Speaker 03

  Two different things, ice. They got two ice machines back there.

• 1:13:16Bill Simmons?

  This reminds me, we built this little bar.

• 1:13:20Bill Simmons?

  In the, in the back of my house that had an ice cube machine that has the big ass cubes. Not just the crushed ice, but like those big fat ones.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  Love those.

• 1:13:30Bill Simmons?

  You say overrated. I present to you.

• 1:13:33Speaker 03

  They're like bocce ball ice?

• 1:13:35Bill Simmons?

  No, they're just like big ass ice cubes.

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  Square cubes.

• 1:13:38Bill Simmons?

  The joy of people's faces when they're offered a big cube. You can't really put a price on it, including Joe House.

• 1:13:44Speaker 02

  Have my hand up.

• 1:13:45Speaker 03

  Just one cube?

• 1:13:46Bill Simmons?

  People like, although sometimes it'll be like the two big cubes. Be like, look, look at these two big cubes in my glass. I feel like so.

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  To confess.

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  A chomp on the ice.

• 1:13:55Bill Simmons?

  Oh, no.

• 1:13:55Speaker 02

  I have something to confess.

• 1:13:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  For Christmas this year, my wife, she says, it's impossible to shop for you. Give me something. So I gave her three or four things. One of the things that I asked for, for my wife for Christmas this year was square ice cubes. Because there is, you can make them and, and Bill has a machine that makes them. There, there is, there used to be in Washington DC. I don't know if it's, the place still exists. Kind of a, a, a curated ice, like a, a, a, a place where you could go to buy because there's a machine that will make the perfect ice. Obviously I'm going to get a lot of feedback from people saying, you just pour some water into a tray and the shape of, of that giant ice cube, but no.

• 1:14:43Bill Simmons?

  No, I don't want to do work.

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  So she ordered ice that was delivered to my house and that was made by this machine in, in the perfect shape that I like. And I can put four of those cubes in my giant 30 ounce water. And, and that's what I drink.

• 1:15:00Bill Simmons?

  Get on board. Get on board with the ice, Wels.

• 1:15:03Speaker 03

  Paul, and you're getting, I didn't realize that, that you're ordering the ice.

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:08Speaker 03

  Just the packaging and the styrofoam alone.

• 1:15:10Speaker 02

  Sure. Yes.

• 1:15:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's good for the environment is what they tell us.

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  I thought that she would go to the local place and, and she did not go to the local place and it may not even exist any longer. Instead she did order it and it was shipped here.

• 1:15:26Speaker 02

  The shipping costs greatly exceeded the cost of the ice.

• 1:15:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know about. I can't go sign that.

• 1:15:32Speaker 02

  I'm not recommending that.

• 1:15:35Speaker 03

  I have, I have another one.

• 1:15:37Bill Simmons?

  Go.

• 1:15:38Speaker 03

  It's similar restaurant themed. You know those Cosmo places? I think it's called Cosmo, maybe. It's, it's like an IMAX for sporting events.

• 1:15:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:15:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. There's one in LA.

• 1:15:51Speaker 03

  It might not be called Cosmo.

• 1:15:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there's one in LA and people go and it's like the giant screen. They feel like they're at the game.

• 1:15:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. And you're, it's like you're there, right? It's cool. So combine that with a video I saw of a Packers fan who was watching his game outside in his Packers jersey through the window. And his wife was like, what are you doing? He's like, if they're cold, I want to be cold. I'm like, this guy knows what it's about. And me and Billy went to the Texans game because part of it's we wanted to be miserable.

• 1:16:25Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:16:25Speaker 03

  With the players. We're like, we're in it. We're all one.

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  So a bar. If you can't be like the Packers guy in Green Bay, but like for LA fans of the Patriots. Oh man, it's a disaster in Denver, or it's terrible in Foxborough. Coming in this place, get out your old North Face. It's freezing. It's raining in here. It's a disaster.

• 1:16:49Bill Simmons?

  A bar that controls the elements.

• 1:16:52Speaker 03

  But if the elements are the, of your favorite home team and you can be different places. The Patriots are playing in Miami. It's hot as hell down here. My gosh darn it.

• 1:17:01Bill Simmons?

  Right. It's like 98 degrees in the bar.

• 1:17:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's a great, you want to go see the Bears game? Get your jacket.

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  Sounds like it's more expensive than shipping in ice.

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  I mean, how can you get it cold enough?

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  How do you make it as cold as Chicago was?

• 1:17:19Speaker 03

  Hockey, it gets cold in those places.

• 1:17:22Bill Simmons?

  I like that idea too.

• 1:17:24Speaker 03

  Place and make pockets of it hot.

• 1:17:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:17:26Bill Simmons?

  I think it's one of those ideas that it would take a while to build the restaurant and get all the elements right. I think there would be a lot of PR when it launched and I think people would go for about three weeks. And then.

• 1:17:38Speaker 02

  Does it have a name?

• 1:17:39Bill Simmons?

  Oh. In the elements?

• 1:17:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, elements, something.

• 1:17:43Bill Simmons?

  Elemental?

• 1:17:46Bill Simmons?

  The elements. I'm going over the elements.

• 1:17:49Speaker 02

  It's pretty good.

• 1:17:52Bill Simmons?

  He's eating, see.

• 1:17:53Speaker 03

  It's getting cold in here.

• 1:17:58Bill Simmons?

  What's your next one?

• 1:18:04Speaker 03

  I got, this is viewer submitted, Micah Adams.

• 1:18:08Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:18:08Speaker 03

  Worked with.

• 1:18:09Bill Simmons?

  I remember Micah Adams.

• 1:18:10Speaker 03

  Sent me.

• 1:18:10Bill Simmons?

  Big research guy.

• 1:18:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's a great guy.

• 1:18:12Bill Simmons?

  Good guy.

• 1:18:13Speaker 03

  Sent me a full paragraph for a half baked idea and I didn't ask him if I could use this, but I assume you'd be cool with it.

• 1:18:22Speaker 03

  I'll just read it verbatim.

• 1:18:23Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:18:25Speaker 03

  You're gonna be in immediately.

• 1:18:28Speaker 03

  NBA Royal Rumble.

• 1:18:31Speaker 03

  It's either one on one or knockout, but not just current players. Bring out retired guys, college players, whatever you want. The fans have no clue who comes out next. Thirty names, a king of the hill survivor. But stealing the idea of the Royal Rumble where dudes just sprint out of the tunnel. There's a belt and everything. Tell me that's not the best All-Star Saturday event. That's a free half big idea. Thumbs up. Crushed it.

• 1:18:57Bill Simmons?

  So, alright, so two guys are out there and what do they play to like three?

• 1:19:04Speaker 03

  Play to one.

• 1:19:04Bill Simmons?

  I think so.

• 1:19:05Speaker 03

  Play to one. Play to one.

• 1:19:07Bill Simmons?

  So the guy who comes out.

• 1:19:08Speaker 03

  No, it's like.

• 1:19:10Bill Simmons?

  The guy who comes out has the ball.

• 1:19:12Speaker 03

  Have you played tennis, king of the court? You have to get. The person who stays on gets one, but the person entering needs to score two.

• 1:19:20Bill Simmons?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:19:21Speaker 03

  Because by the time you're, you know, so it gives you an advantage if you've played 10 games.

• 1:19:24Bill Simmons?

  Okay. I'm so glad you said tennis, king of the court and not pickleball, king of the court, because I just want to end of the podcast if you said pickleball. I'm glad you used the sport where we use athleticism.

• 1:19:34Speaker 03

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:19:35Bill Simmons?

  The, the, uh, alright, so two guys come out. It's Anthony Edwards and Zion.

• 1:19:44Bill Simmons?

  Anthony Edwards wins. He's king of the court. Now, Khan Canipple runs out.

• 1:19:48Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:19:49Bill Simmons?

  And he's got to score two baskets before, but if Edwards scores one basket, he stays on. Khan Canipple has to leave. He's got to score two times in a row.

• 1:19:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, guess who else come, then guess who comes out next?

• 1:20:01Bill Simmons?

  Hakeem Olajuwon.

• 1:20:03Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 1:20:07Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my God, it's Angel Reese's music. What is she doing here? She's number five.

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  Why not?

• 1:20:13Bill Simmons?

  My God.

• 1:20:14Speaker 02

  Let her play Dennis Rodman.

• 1:20:16Bill Simmons?

  Christian Laettner? Christian Laettner?

• 1:20:19Speaker 02

  That's, that's a pretty good one.

• 1:20:21Speaker 03

  Oh, no, the, and the music is so good. Oh, you just hear like the Bulls music? What's going on? Steve Kerr? Like, what the heck? Steve Kerr? I thought we're Game Jordan.

• 1:20:33Speaker 02

  They play, that's right. They play the famous Bulls music and Steve Kerr comes out. Jed Bushma comes out.

• 1:20:39Bill Simmons?

  And then number 30 is LeBron and everyone gets mad that they rigged it? Of course he's number 30. Of course. They just wanted LeBron to win. And then we talk conspiracies. This all sounds great.

• 1:20:49Speaker 03

  You don't know guys are injured and you have all like, oh, is Kyrie gonna be available for All-Star? Oh, here he comes.

• 1:20:57Bill Simmons?

  Can I tweak this a tiny bit?

• 1:21:00Bill Simmons?

  All due respect to Mike Adams. It's a two on two. So it's a tag team Royal Rumble, basically. So you'd have 30 names. I guess four into 30 doesn't work. Maybe it's 28, maybe it's 32. It's eight teams.

• 1:21:16Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:21:17Bill Simmons?

  And you have like, it goes a little longer. So it basically like, if you score, if you get to five, you stay, are ones and how are we dealing with ones and twos on this though, House?

• 1:21:28Speaker 02

  Well, do you choose your teammate is my first question?

• 1:21:32Bill Simmons?

  No, because you want the surprise of the rumble. That's the best thing with the rumble.

• 1:21:35Speaker 02

  Good, good, good.

• 1:21:37Bill Simmons?

  But it, but if you played to 11 with twos and threes.

• 1:21:40Speaker 02

  No, no, no, too much basketball.

• 1:21:42Bill Simmons?

  So you'd have to play seven?

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  I, I'm fine.

• 1:21:46Speaker 03

  But then I need people coming in and out, Bill.

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Ones, will you play one, one point or two points?

• 1:21:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, right. So it's singles. Okay.

• 1:21:55Speaker 02

  Keep it.

• 1:21:56Bill Simmons?

  I really like it.

• 1:21:57Speaker 02

  It's phenomenal.

• 1:21:58Speaker 03

  Here's the other thing. It's a timer like the Royal Rumble. If you guys are playing hard defense or people miss, tough luck. Here comes Kevin Durant. Oh, my God, why? There's three guys on the court now. Durant, boom, put backs.

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  Everybody's gone except for Durant.

• 1:22:15Bill Simmons?

  Best part would be like, here's number 27, who's it's gonna be? My God, it's Anthony Davis. He's running out. Oh, he pulled a calf. He's not gonna be able to play. This episode is brought to you by Workday. Guessing is for game shows, not your business, especially when your margin for error is zero. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance and IT with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission aware, giving you accuracy 24/7 and the ability to not just get work done, but get it done right. It's a new Workday. All right, quick break. This episode is brought to you by Fire TV. You ever sit down, ready to watch the game, only to search and scroll endlessly? If so, you need Fire TV.

• 1:23:00Bill Simmons?

  It shows you are live games from your favorite teams all in one place, right on the home screen. No more searching, just sit down and turn on Fire TV. Separate subscriptions may be required. Feature and content availability may vary.

• 1:23:15Bill Simmons?

  Sometimes the greatest financial victories aren't the huge flashy contracts, but the mid-level moves that maximize your cap space. Just like TaxAct helps you get a great return by finding every deduction, even the small ones, to minimize your refund. And Great Returns presented by TaxAct, we look back at the best decisions GMs have made to land an inexpensive player who paid huge dividends down the stretch and owners that have seen their team valuation skyrocket. So I always think of the Warriors with this in the mid 2010s with the combination of having Curry on this amazing contract that somehow wasn't a max contract, even though he was a two-time MVP, having Draymond Green as a second round pick,

• 1:23:59Bill Simmons?

  and then anticipating the cap spike that was coming in the summer of 2016, which allowed them to let Harrison Barnes go and then sign Kevin Durant. And all of a sudden, they had Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala, all on the same team. I mean, hard to think of a better great return than that. It ended up winning them two titles in a row. Great Returns presented by TaxAct. This tax season, simplify your moves, maximize your refund. Visit taxact.com to learn more. Conditions apply. See taxact.com for details. All right, what's your next one, Wilds?

• 1:24:38Speaker 03

  All right, hold on, I gotta go back to it. What do I got here? This is a dumb one, but I already got this one shot down by Greg Jennings, but this is a good idea. I don't care.

• 1:24:50Speaker 03

  There was a point where Drake May was in shotgun to buy him some time because our offensive line was a little bit porous. And I also thought Justin Herbert could have done this. You guys need to take a deeper shotgun snap to buy some time.

• 1:25:08Speaker 03

  Combine that with Caleb, who ran back 26 yards from the line of scrimmage to make a largely normal play.

• 1:25:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:18Speaker 03

  Made me think the pocket needs to be deeper. Our center is out. A long snapper is in.

• 1:25:29Speaker 03

  I'm taking the snap 15 yards back. I buy myself two extra seconds. I can look around. It's a revolutionary idea. I don't know if the league is ready to hear about this. But once I saw Caleb run 26 yards back, and he needed four yards, he's like, this is the best way for me to get four yards. I want to go back 26 yards. But if he had a long snapper, he would just have it there, chilling.

• 1:25:52Bill Simmons?

  So the problem would be the snap would have to be pretty on target for like 16 yards?

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  But every time a long snapper snaps to a punter, it has to be on target. Like, it's not often the case that the punter is like running all over the world, you know? The punters have to jump. They have to move in response to the ball. But most of the NFL quarterbacks can move in response to the ball. They can see it coming. There's enough time to adjust.

• 1:26:23Bill Simmons?

  I have a small half-baked idea. I was thinking about icing the kicker when teams ice the kicker at home before a big field goal, right? Call timeout, give the guy two minutes, two and a half minutes to think about it. I was thinking about this during, for some reason, my wife and I were watching Bohemian Rhapsody, the Queen movie, and was thinking about We Are The Champions. It was such a brilliant song by them, and I don't think it was the intention of the song. When they made it, I think they wanted like a big arena song, but I don't think they realized it would be played in sports for the rest of their life. Like, it's perfect. And I think we've even talked in the past about how we don't create enough songs at first sports moments. There should be an icing the kicker song.

• 1:27:10Bill Simmons?

  Some band should create it and it should be ominous and dark and it should like fuck the kicker up. It's almost like, like what like David Fincher, like a song he would have put in seven in the last 30 minutes. And it's just blaring in the thing and the whole crowd is chanting like, "Your career will never be the same." And just like singing these lyrics that are just like infecting the guy's head right before he kicks it. Really dark, almost like Creep Radiohead, right? You hear Creep and it's like, man, that's a pretty dark song. What's the Ice in the Kicker dark song that would fuck with the guy?

• 1:27:49Speaker 03

  Can I tweak this house and do it to you?

• 1:27:51Bill Simmons?

  Please, let's tweak it.

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  I'm listening, I'm listening.

• 1:27:52Speaker 03

  Everyone's trying to figure out how to use AI and it's a lot of data, right? Oh, run this data through the AI. But you also have AI taking these, you know, deep fakes. Oh, it's not, we, we have-

• 1:28:09Bill Simmons?

  Deep fake video on the video screen?

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 1:28:13Speaker 03

  Of him missing it.

• 1:28:14Speaker 02

  Don't-

• 1:28:15Speaker 03

  And the crowd's celebrating and he's sad.

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  That's a relief.

• 1:28:18Speaker 03

  And he fakes up his teammates being like, "Oh, no." And then privately saying like, "I never believed in him."

• 1:28:25Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:28:26Speaker 03

  He's on the bus home.

• 1:28:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I love this.

• 1:28:28Speaker 03

  His, his wife's like,

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  I, I'm-

• 1:28:32Speaker 03

  We gotta sell the house.

• 1:28:33Speaker 02

  I'm genuinely relieved because I thought-

• 1:28:35Speaker 03

  It's like a for sale sign in front of the house.

• 1:28:37Speaker 02

  Simmons was, was pushing us in a dark direction and then you, you said AI and deep fake and then I started thinking of like really dark things that you could put on a screen.

• 1:28:47Bill Simmons?

  No, not, no.

• 1:28:47Speaker 02

  To mess with somebody like, the parents are hostages. Look, your parents, your, your parents are hostages right now. Not that dark.

• 1:28:55Speaker 03

  It's an ethical AI.

• 1:28:57Speaker 02

  Ethical AI, very good.

• 1:28:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, it won't even be-

• 1:28:59Speaker 02

  Yes. Great job.

• 1:29:00Bill Simmons?

  I have, I've been doing mailbags. People have been sending great emails. Nick had sent them to bs podcast 33 at gmail.com. David Haynes.

• 1:29:09Speaker 03

  I love that mailbags are back, by the way.

• 1:29:11Bill Simmons?

  Mailbags are back. Well, it's when the emails are good, mailbags can come back.

• 1:29:15Speaker 02

  They shouldn't have gone anywhere.

• 1:29:16Bill Simmons?

  I know, it's my fault.

• 1:29:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know why.

• 1:29:18Bill Simmons?

  It's my fault. You know, we all can't bat a hundred, bat a thousand.

• 1:29:23Speaker 02

  A hundred or a thousand.

• 1:29:24Speaker 03

  It's like McDonald's, like I'm gonna take Happy Meals off the menu for a few years.

• 1:29:28Bill Simmons?

  They'll do that sometimes.

• 1:29:31Bill Simmons?

  We all can't bat 100. How did I come up with that? David Haynes.

• 1:29:35Speaker 03

  100 not good.

• 1:29:37Bill Simmons?

  Here's his pitch. You love your new child, but don't you miss the nightlife of the city, cozying up to the bar for the 1pm games? Maybe you loved attending a matinee before you had a little one? Well, with the baby weight, you don't have to give up the former pleasures of your social life. You can leave your child at home, enjoy hours free of your child without any worry of them getting into the pantry, calling over stairs, or really getting beyond the one to two foot radius where he left them. The baby weight is a weighted diaper that strengthens the will and the physique of your child. They won't go far, but you can.

• 1:30:12Bill Simmons?

  I thought, obviously, not a great half baked idea, but I really admired how fucking crazy it is. Wait, you're at the bar? Hold on, let me get the baby weight.

• 1:30:26Speaker 02

  I don't understand. Is it to restrain the baby?

• 1:30:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think it's almost like a, it's like a, like almost like a weight harness.

• 1:30:34Speaker 02

  Well, you could also just take a 25 pound weight and handcuff them to the weight. Is that, I mean, what's the difference?

• 1:30:41Bill Simmons?

  I would say that was not even a half baked idea. It bummed out Wilds.

• 1:30:45Speaker 03

  No, that doesn't, that wouldn't, that wouldn't, that wouldn't make it through our censors.

• 1:30:49Bill Simmons?

  Didn't make it?

• 1:30:50Speaker 02

  That's not ethical AI.

• 1:30:51Bill Simmons?

  What was the last one you had?

• 1:30:52Speaker 03

  Final one. You guys will like this one.

• 1:30:54Bill Simmons?

  Baby weight, we can recover from baby weight. He spelled it W A I T, which I.

• 1:31:00Speaker 02

  Pretty good. The best.

• 1:31:03Speaker 03

  That was the genesis of it.

• 1:31:04Bill Simmons?

  Baby weight.

• 1:31:05Speaker 03

  He's like, I'm backed into that one. Bill, when Sean Payton went for it on fourth down, instead of kicking the field goal and making it 14-0 Broncos.

• 1:31:18Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 1:31:19Speaker 03

  And you saw that they were coming out and the field goal unit was staying on the sideline. Were you happy or nervous?

• 1:31:27Bill Simmons?

  I have text threads.

• 1:31:31Bill Simmons?

  Praying that they were gonna go for it.

• 1:31:34Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:31:37Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was our only chance.

• 1:31:39Speaker 02

  It's static.

• 1:31:40Bill Simmons?

  Please go for this.

• 1:31:41Speaker 02

  Beyond belief.

• 1:31:42Bill Simmons?

  Cause even if they got it, it wouldn't have necessarily been a touchdown. They would have been like first and goal from the eight. Wasn't even guaranteeing them anything.

• 1:31:48Speaker 03

  And if we, and if we stopped it, which we did, that will be the momentum to.

• 1:31:54Bill Simmons?

  And I thought we could stop them. It's Jared Stidham.

• 1:31:58Bill Simmons?

  Please go for this.

• 1:31:59Speaker 03

  We're locked in.

• 1:32:02Speaker 03

  As part of your analytics team. For an NFL, NBA, baseball, if you want to pull a pitcher, should you leave them in? You have one super fan of every opponent you play on your schedule. And you've got them watching the game in your building. But they're hooked up like a F1 racer. And they're seeing their heart rate and they're measuring sweat. And your data guys can figure out like, oh, hey, before you make this call, Peyton, we've got three Patriots fans sequestered away. And I just saw their dopamine shoot up till 99.

• 1:32:46Speaker 03

  Call a timeout and get the field goal kicker on. Let's see what happens. Oh, it just dropped.

• 1:32:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:51Speaker 03

  They don't want you to kick the field goal. They want you to go for it.

• 1:32:54Bill Simmons?

  But the fans of the other team wouldn't want to participate in this because they wouldn't want to affect the outcome negatively.

• 1:33:02Bill Simmons?

  I mean, what really should happen?

• 1:33:03Speaker 03

  What?

• 1:33:04Speaker 02

  I don't understand.

• 1:33:05Bill Simmons?

  See, you, you couldn't kidnap the Patriot fans to study their dopamine because they wouldn't want to help the other team.

• 1:33:12Speaker 03

  No, it's, but we're looking at like pupils dilating. You can't, it's, it's, you're not just saying, I want you to go for it. This is, you're hooked up to a machine like.

• 1:33:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I still have to choose to be, I still have to choose to be hooked up to the machine. Right?

• 1:33:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, but what, what?

• 1:33:28Speaker 03

  Paid a handsome salary.

• 1:33:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, what, or, or they give you seats.

• 1:33:32Bill Simmons?

  I'm helping Sean Payton. I'm not putting the machine on.

• 1:33:34Speaker 03

  Now you're a Patriots fan. You're getting paid for it.

• 1:33:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's $20,000 and you get seats right on the, the midfield, 10 rows up and all the, the nachos and beer.

• 1:33:45Bill Simmons?

  That's my price for helping the Broncos?

• 1:33:47Speaker 02

  Well, that's that would be my price. I mean, I

• 1:33:50Speaker 03

  Watching the game.

• 1:33:51Bill Simmons?

  See, I think it would be the technology of a camera from far away could zoom in and study the pupils of the fans in attendance.

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:33:58Bill Simmons?

  Unwittingly, they're participating. And you and you have everybody miked and you hear the Patriots fans going, I hope they go for it. I hope they go for it. And that's how you do it. There's something here, though. I do feel like nobody knows. There's no more honest reaction in sports than people rooting for their own team instinctively being like, I hope this happens, or I hope this doesn't happen. I would still take 100 times out of 100 over the analytic charts. And I like analytics and I've obviously used them a lot with stuff, but that was a perfect example of misreading the situation because no Patriots fan wanted them to go up 10-0 when we're in bad weather and there's snow coming and it was just like, this is a disaster if they go up 10-0. Please go for this.

• 1:34:42Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:34:42Bill Simmons?

  14-0, 10-0. I don't even think it mattered.

• 1:34:48Speaker 03

  That's a perfect idea. That's perfect.

• 1:34:50Bill Simmons?

  How's do you have any golf half baked ideas for us?

• 1:34:53Speaker 02

  No, no, I didn't come in prepared. I didn't even know that this was going to be the thing. There's most of golf is half baked ideas. That's the thing. Like, go, go look at golf gadgets. Like, a very simple Google, you will will send back to you 15,000 ways of improving your swing, improving your posture, improving, you know, every aspect. And remember, golf has three different kinds of techniques that you have to be good at. You have to be good at driving the ball. You have to be good at hitting irons, more than that, chipping the ball, putting. So every one of those activities, those disciplines, has 10,000 suggestions for getting better at them.

• 1:35:33Bill Simmons?

  I have a

• 1:35:34Speaker 02

  They're all half baked.

• 1:35:34Bill Simmons?

  I have one small one. First of all, SNL had a sketch about making fun of Spotify rap. Then it was your Postmates wrapped of all their, all your orders and you just got them all delivered of everything you've ordered on Postmates or Uber Eats, any delivery app.

• 1:35:50Speaker 02

  I already look at my DoorDash orders.

• 1:35:52Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was a great idea.

• 1:35:53Speaker 02

  For pleasure, for pleasure.

• 1:35:55Bill Simmons?

  Everything in there and it's just like, how I did in 2025. I thought that was great. Can we talk about? So people, if you have dogs, like some people have dog walkers, some people walk their own dogs, some people have help if they have work. Why don't we have Postmates dog walkers?

• 1:36:14Bill Simmons?

  Like 9:30 at night, Murph's just has too much energy. And I'm like, oh, man, Murph probably needs to go out and walk around, but I'm in, I'm wearing pajamas. I want to watch this Clippers game. I don't, I don't feel like taking them out. I'm gonna go outside. And I dialogue.

• 1:36:32Speaker 03

  But certainly not at the level that it should.

• 1:36:34Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:36:34Bill Simmons?

  Postmates dog, I call in and somebody just shows up, walks the dog 20 minutes, the same way they would deliver food.

• 1:36:42Speaker 02

  I love this and DoorDash, at least in my area, now has expanded to where you can order stuff, right? You can order running shoes. You can order a, a, a computer mouse.

• 1:36:55Bill Simmons?

  They're basically like a personal assistant.

• 1:36:57Speaker 02

  If that's it. So there's, you add to the menu of things that, that are available. DoorDash, Uber Eats, whatever, Postmates, a personal assistant that, that is also available. This person will be at your, your residence in 30 minutes.

• 1:37:14Bill Simmons?

  And maybe they have a bunch of people in the neighborhood. So they had, they have like 15 people that they're kind of on call for, like doctors. Feels like that this is where we're all heading. We're just never going to leave our house is where we're going.

• 1:37:26Speaker 03

  That's the thing. Convenience is the enemy. I, it is a good idea. You could probably tie it into an exercise app too. It's like, hey, get your steps up and do it with a dog.

• 1:37:40Speaker 02

  Well, let me ask this. Wilds, we just went through an enormous snowstorm here on the East Coast. I know you got walloped. Did you shovel your own walk?

• 1:37:51Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I definitely, he definitely did. Yeah, there's no, Wilds is a self-starter.

• 1:37:57Speaker 03

  I, I like doing it.

• 1:37:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Wilds, it's written in his will.

• 1:38:00Speaker 02

  I get that. I, I like it for when it's about two inches and, and you know, it, it takes a half hour to do one portion of, of one walkway. I, there's no chance for what Washington DC received, the DMV received, which was, uh, five inches, five, six inches of snow. And then hours and hours of sleet on top of that snow that made the snow weigh each shovel full 214 pounds. I mean, I might be exaggerating, but. I waited until Monday, you know, all the snow was done Sunday night. I waited until midday Monday and I went into my Task Rabbit.

• 1:38:42Speaker 02

  And found couple enterprising young fellows like come on, cause, cause you know, we don't have any more Wilds or Simmons, kids that come to the door and say, hey, can we show up? We walk for 20. I was one of those.

• 1:38:55Bill Simmons?

  I was gonna tell my kids, like, hey, there's money to be made out there today.

• 1:39:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:02Bill Simmons?

  Society's different. Like, we did the Zodiac rewatchables on Monday and there's a scene in Zodiac when the guy's flashing his lights behind the lady who's got the kid in the car played by Only Sky. And she pulls over and he's like, hey, your back tire's loose. Let me fix it. And she's like, sure, thank you. And then he loosens the tire even more so it comes off because he basically wants to kidnap her. People were just way more trusting and friendly back then. We've lost that. Nobody would shovel your house now. We're all afraid of the guy coming behind you flashing his lights. That's the problem.

• 1:39:32Speaker 03

  You know what? House, next time call me, I'll get on the Amtrak, I'll do it.

• 1:39:36Speaker 02

  I appreciate it.

• 1:39:36Bill Simmons?

  I like it.

• 1:39:37Speaker 02

  Thank you, Wilds. I do appreciate that.

• 1:39:39Bill Simmons?

  House and Wilds, before you go, I had one last tiny, I don't even know if this is a half baked idea, but it's about my son. It's almost like a parent corner. My son started drinking coffee.

• 1:39:51Speaker 03

  Love it.

• 1:39:52Bill Simmons?

  Happened about two months ago.

• 1:39:56Bill Simmons?

  I'd never tried it before, never really understood it. And just decided at some point, you know, he said, they have like the, those zins, they have all these different things, those little nicotine things, like not for him. Wanted some sort of a little caffeine boost. That was a big soda guy, but finally had a coffee and was like, this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. I had a coffee in the morning.

• 1:40:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't think he needs it per se.

• 1:40:23Bill Simmons?

  Well, cause I had leftover coffee, had it in the morning. Had a great day at school.

• 1:40:31Bill Simmons?

  And he's like, I can't believe you didn't tell me how great coffee is. And I was like, well, you saw me and mom drinking it. You know how much I care about it. We, we make it every day. It's like my favorite thing of the day. Like, I don't know what you were missing. You've been here the whole time. It's like, yeah, but you still, you didn't tell me. So now he's really into coffee. Today he made a coffee and made a little in the espresso machine, little espresso to top it off. And I'm wondering, here's my half baked idea. Should I just do PSAs for people for, for where we used to do the don't do drugs for when we were kids in high school? Do I do PSAs about how great coffee is for, uh, high school use? People like eighth grade and up. Hey, it's Bill Simmons. I want to tell you about something called coffee. It changed my life. I have it twice a day.

• 1:41:16Bill Simmons?

  It's really great. Do you feel a little sluggish at school during the mornings? I have an idea for you. Coffee.

• 1:41:25Speaker 03

  I felt like drinking coffee in high school felt like you were an adult.

• 1:41:33Bill Simmons?

  It was validation.

• 1:41:35Speaker 03

  Well, you're carrying it around like you and the teacher is like, yeah, I hear you. Like, I got a coffee too. I'm at Dunkin' Donuts. It's, it's fantastic. It's, it's, it's the best drug.

• 1:41:46Speaker 02

  How old are your kids now?

• 1:41:48Bill Simmons?

  Hi, I'm Joe House. Every afternoon I have a Trenta iced coffee.

• 1:41:52Speaker 02

  Well, that's true.

• 1:41:53Bill Simmons?

  And they add an espresso shot to it. And I'm able to do podcasts for three hours at a time. Please try coffee.

• 1:42:00Speaker 03

  Are they teenagers? Thirteen and 11. And when Russell comes down, I ask him like, hey, I'm drinking coffee. I'm like, hey, do you want a coffee? And he says, no, obviously he's 13.

• 1:42:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:14Speaker 03

  But I ask him every day, waiting for the day where it's going to be like a field of dreams moment. It's like, hey dad.

• 1:42:24Speaker 03

  Can I have a coffee?

• 1:42:26Bill Simmons?

  Age sixteen. If I could do it over again, I would have started Ben at sixteen. I'd have been like, son.

• 1:42:31Speaker 02

  That's my question.

• 1:42:32Bill Simmons?

  You're sixteen, you can drive. I have to choose a coffee.

• 1:42:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:36Bill Simmons?

  The other day, we went to see my mom on Saturday and we were driving back and Ben's like, looks at me and goes, Starbucks drive through? I almost started sobbing tears of joy. I was like, this is, I've never felt closer to you in eighteen years.

• 1:42:51Speaker 02

  It's appropriate. He is college age and it is part of the college experience. And that's like really where you experiment, you find your thing. I mean, the coffee experience is so much more sophisticated now than what we grew up with. You know, what we had available to us. It was, it was purely a matter of function. Yeah. When we were in college. It was not like, this is delicious. You know, it was like, I need this for fuel. I need this to.

• 1:43:20Bill Simmons?

  No, it's like putting gas in your car. Cause on the Zodiac pod, I said, one of the most nineteen seventies thing about the movie is, somebody comes over to somebody's house and the cop has to wake up and his wife goes, let me make some Folgers. And I said, that's the most nineteen seventies thing that instead of saying coffee, she said Folgers. And then I got some emails from people like, you're a snob. They still make Folgers. Like, why?

• 1:43:45Speaker 03

  Folgers keep pumping.

• 1:43:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And I don't, I personally don't drink Folgers because I'm a coffee snob. I like to buy like really douchey, sixteen dollar bags. Like we get stuff from Miltaus from Hawaii sometimes because I like the coda.

• 1:43:58Speaker 02

  Well, you don't have to confess all that. You could just say.

• 1:44:00Bill Simmons?

  I'm just telling you, I really like coffee. I enjoy getting like.

• 1:44:04Speaker 02

  We go full douche.

• 1:44:05Bill Simmons?

  I like, I'm going full douche. I like trying different coffees. I like trying different beans. And Folgers just seemed like that was like what you bought in a store fifty years ago, but apparently it's still being made.

• 1:44:17Speaker 03

  I'll, I'll drink coffee as a drink.

• 1:44:22Speaker 03

  And deal with the caffeine, deal with the caffeine, even though I know it's bad. Nine o'clock, want espresso after dinner? Oh, do I want to be up till three in the morning? Yes.

• 1:44:34Speaker 02

  Well, that's times I will get a decaf because I love the warm, I love the smell of it. I love how reassuring it is.

• 1:44:44Speaker 03

  Is though, I don't think it's.

• 1:44:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:44:47Bill Simmons?

  I don't really have a lot of vices.

• 1:44:48Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:44:50Bill Simmons?

  I like to give up on football. But I'm not like one of those, oh, I got this great $300 bottle of scotch. You guys got to try it, but I really do like coffee. And also like when my wife makes it, she never made, I'm always like a little off. Like, I feel like I'm like an F1 car. I need like my engine needs to be perfectly calibrated. You can't not too much coffee, too much caffeine. I feel a little off, not enough caffeine. My head hurts like I kind of know what my engine is. Do you guys feel that way with coffee? No, am I the only one like this?

• 1:45:22Speaker 03

  Supposedly the guy who gave up coffee, was it Michael Pollan? Who's written all those like?

• 1:45:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, Poland.

• 1:45:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, he gave up coffee and his like

• 1:45:35Speaker 03

  brain started to try to get him to places where there was coffee. Like you need to go run this errand, but his brain was telling him to go over there.

• 1:45:44Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 1:45:44Speaker 03

  Because there was coffee. So he gives up coffee for 30 days. And the question he was discussing was, is his normal self caffeinated?

• 1:45:54Speaker 03

  When your normal self is actually not caffeinated, right? Your normal self is your normal self, but I view my normal self as caffeinated. But it's not true. I'm actually on a stimulant.

• 1:46:06Bill Simmons?

  Is it a stimulant or is it just a drug of the gods?

• 1:46:14Speaker 02

  It can be both, can't it?

• 1:46:16Speaker 03

  It's the best drug.

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  We don't have to choose.

• 1:46:18Speaker 03

  Everyone's like, we gotta legalize this.

• 1:46:20Bill Simmons?

  I gave up sugar in my coffee right after Christmas and I missed it for two days. Now I don't miss it at all. If anything, I makes me taste the coffee even better. I know, I know. House is like, he's blacker than black with the coffee.

• 1:46:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't put anything in it.

• 1:46:36Bill Simmons?

  He pours tar in his coffee to make it blacker.

• 1:46:39Speaker 03

  So the other thing that this hole in was talking about, he quit for 30 days. And he said that first taste of coffee was.

• 1:46:48Bill Simmons?

  Didn't taste good.

• 1:46:49Speaker 03

  Out of this world.

• 1:46:50Bill Simmons?

  Oh, out of this world.

• 1:46:51Speaker 02

  This world. That's right. Exactly. That's right.

• 1:46:54Speaker 03

  To the point where I was like, the way he was describing, I'm like, should I quit coffee just to hit that high? Cause I'm now I'm drinking coffee and it's not hitting, you know, I gotta.

• 1:47:05Bill Simmons?

  I feel like if I was.

• 1:47:06Speaker 03

  Built up too much of a tolerance.

• 1:47:07Speaker 02

  Thirty, there's a half baked idea in here.

• 1:47:10Bill Simmons?

  If I was Tom Hanks in Cast Away.

• 1:47:13Bill Simmons?

  The coffee thing would be a top three thing I'd be the most upset about on the island. Like no humans, not knowing what sports is going on or with any of my film is alive. And then what the fuck am I gonna do about coffee? Is there, can I find a cocoa bean on this island?

• 1:47:32Speaker 02

  He would want that before.

• 1:47:34Bill Simmons?

  Other people would have been looking for food. I'd be walking around like, is there coffee? Wait, does that look like I could grind that? With some rocks?

• 1:47:42Speaker 02

  I can grind that.

• 1:47:44Bill Simmons?

  Then I'd figure out how to spearfish and maybe, maybe wean myself off. But I really love coffee. Anyway. Wilds, thanks for hanging around. Just for, for people.

• 1:47:52Speaker 03

  Thank you guys.

• 1:47:53Bill Simmons?

  Wilds had to hear an echo in his ear the entire time. So he's probably like half insane at this point.

• 1:47:58Speaker 02

  The poor guy.

• 1:47:59Bill Simmons?

  All right, House.

• 1:48:00Speaker 02

  Way to fight through it.

• 1:48:01Bill Simmons?

  Great to see you as always. I'll see you on Tuesday. We'll do some, uh, we'll do some Super Bowl stuff. Don't forget about.

• 1:48:05Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 1:48:06Bill Simmons?

  Wilds on First Things First with Nick Wright and Broussard.

• 1:48:09Speaker 03

  Every day, three o'clock.

• 1:48:10Speaker 02

  Did he?

• 1:48:10Speaker 03

  Every day.

• 1:48:11Bill Simmons?

  How much talking is there with Nick Wright? Cause he was like such a fucking pompous Chiefs fan there for a while. Like, oh, the AFC runs through us. And guess what? It doesn't and your coach is old.

• 1:48:22Speaker 03

  You know, I've, I've, at some point, Nick is gonna get mad at me for how pompous I've been. I'm gonna pull a line from that old, like, drug commercial. It was like a PSA. It's like,

• 1:48:36Speaker 03

  you know where I learned this from? I learned it from you.

• 1:48:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:38Speaker 03

  I learned it from watching you.

• 1:48:41Bill Simmons?

  I remember that commercial.

• 1:48:43Speaker 02

  That's a great one. Let's dig that up.

• 1:48:46Bill Simmons?

  Kevin Wilds, thank you. Thanks, House.

• 1:48:48Speaker 03

  All right. See you, guys.

• 1:48:49Speaker 02

  Thanks, fellas.

• 1:48:50Bill Simmons?

  All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Zach. Thanks to House. Thanks to Wilds. Thanks to Eduardo and Gahow as well. Don't forget rewatchable Zodiac was last week. It's up. You can also find Wild Things is coming Monday night, and you can watch that on Netflix over the weekend. Enjoy the weekend. I'm gonna be back on Sunday night at 5:00 PM PT, 8:00 PM ET, live on Netflix. We're going to be doing our special Super Bowl props episode that we've been doing since the 2000s. Like, I'm not kidding. That's how long we've been doing it, live on Netflix, and you'll be able to hear that wherever you get this podcast, including on Spotify, I hope. Anyway, enjoy the weekend. See you Sunday.

• 1:49:45Bill Simmons?

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• 1:50:17Bill Simmons?

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• 1:51:00Bill Simmons?

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• 1:51:28Speaker 02

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