Russell Westbrook’s One-of-One Career With Kirk Goldsberry, Plus College Football and Coaches With Van Lathan and Chris Ryan

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Kirk Goldsberry to take a deep dive into Russell Westbrook’s unique career. Then, CR and Van Lathan join the pod to talk college football before diving into a deeper conversation about coaching. (0:00) Intro (3:44) Russell Westbrook’s career (01:24:50) College football and coaching Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Kirk Goldsberry, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo Start the season strong with the Kickoff Bundle. Available now. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit https://fanduel.com/playwithaplan to learn more about the resources and helplines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by PayPal. The holiday rush is coming and you can get ahead of it with PayPal. Shop your favorite online stores with PayPal this season like eBay for collectibles, Fanatics for teen gear, Walmart for tech. Check out the flexibility to pay now or pay later and split your payments with Pay in four with no interest, no late fees. Shop now with PayPal. Paying for subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com slash paying for PayPal, Inc., NMLS 910457.

• 0:39Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. We put up two rewatchables last week. We did the Italian Job, we did About Last Night, and then on Monday, we have the re-speed. We are doing speed again. We did it. It was a really, really good episode. Me, Sean Fantasy and Chris Ryan, the OGs. We did this, we did speed very early on in the rewatchables run. So now we did it again with way, way, way more categories. And that is coming for you on Monday. I'm not sure if I'm gonna have two more podcasts or three this week. I'm gonna have at least one, possibly two. So stay tuned. And then after this week, gonna go hard into football. I've been very careful this year.

• 1:23Bill Simmons?

  I've been trying not to do too much NFL before we got close to the season. Cause I felt like I did too many segments last year and I basically gave you all my takes for the season before I did the preview with Sal. So Sal and I talked about it and Sal and those guys are breaking down on Ringer Wise Guys, which you can watch now on YouTube and Twitch and Spotify. They've been breaking down division by division and Sal has been hosting it and steering it, but being very careful about giving too much away. So when we do our giant extravaganza on Thursday, the 27th, a two-parter AFC, NFC, I'll hopefully have some very fresh, I have some hot NFL takes this year. I'm really trying to save them for, toward the end of August.

• 2:06Bill Simmons?

  So on this podcast, Russell Westbrook retired. I had to break out the old book of basketball pyramid breakdown format that we did for a few guys, if you remember in 2000. You can find all of those, by the way, in the Book of Basketball podcast feed. Wanted to deep dive on Russell Westbrook's career. The strangest career of any top 100 guy ever. And we're gonna explain all the reasons, good and bad, why. I'm probably a little more of a defender than most of Russ, but he is so much fun to talk about. So Kirk and I did a bunch of that. And then I had Van and Chris when they were here the other day. We talked about coaching and a whole bunch of college football stuff. And after we did rewatchables, we just kinda kept the cameras on and went. So I was saving that for the Sunday pod. So that is gonna be the podcast.

• 2:50Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna take a break, Pearl Jam, and then Kirk Goldsberry and I on the career of Russell Westbrook. This episode is brought to you by one of my best friends in life, NFL Sunday Ticket. Man, I missed it. Kickoff's coming. Yeah, we're getting close. We're within a month. With NFL Sunday Ticket and YouTube TV, you get every game, every Sunday, all in one place and it's magnificent. And there's no other way to follow the NFL season. I'm so mad I didn't get YouTube TV until a couple of years ago because it's the best. New users, that might include you, can get NFL Sunday Ticket for eight payments of just $30 a month. You heard me correctly.

• 3:32Bill Simmons?

  New users pay $240 or eight, eight non-cancelable payments of $30 a month. First charge at purchase. Availability varies with NFL Sunday Ticket for out of market games and YouTube TV for local and national games. YouTube TV required. Terms, restrictions and embargoes apply. Commercial use excluded. No refunds.

• 4:18Bill Simmons?

  All right, Kirk Goldsberry is here, my old Grantland teammate. There's nothing going on. It's mid-August. There's some baseball stuff that hasn't really gotten interesting yet. There's football preseason. We had a basketball event that happened and it was not the basketball Hall of Fame. Russell Westbrook surprisingly retired. And I figured this would be a good time to dust off my old book of basketball gimmick. But before we do that, break down Westbrook's career, before we do that, is there any NBA thing that interests you right now or is this full hibernation mode for you?

• 4:50Speaker 01

  No, I have an idea for you, coming off of your podcast, but I think we should save it for the end. Let's do Russ, dude.

• 4:56Bill Simmons?

  Okay, let's dive into Russ. You're gonna save your thoughts until we get going. I'm gonna use the book of basketball format that I used when I did this and I think 2019, 2020. I'm gonna read something at the top. Now, I wrote this in 2012. It was a piece of a column, but I was amazed how it has held up for Westbrook, who retired last week, who played 18 years in the NBA and who I think it's fair to say was probably the most discussed, argued about player of the entire Grantland Ringer era. Grantland formed June 2011. I think people had the most takes one way or the other. He spawned the most arguments. He bridged the advanced metrics era as it started to grow. We're gonna go all into that.

• 5:39Bill Simmons?

  But this is what I wrote after game four of the 2012 finals, which Oklahoma City lost. They fell behind Miami three games to one, if you remember. Westbrook did not have a good game three. Was awesome in game four, was 20 for 32, was all over the place and just was one of the more electric losing finals performances we had the last 20 years. This is a piece of the column I wrote. He's been the most polarizing player of the 2012 finals. No small feat, considering the second most polarizing basketball player of all time happens to play for the other team. Interesting there Kirk, cause I had LeBron as second most polarizing at the time. No longer in the top 20. I don't feel like he's polarizing at all, right?

• 6:21Speaker 01

  No, people forget that LeBron James was the most hated athlete in America when he first got to Miami. I swear to God. They gave me an interview for him in 2013, in part because people hated LeBron James when he went or took his talents to Miami, for sure.

• 6:36Bill Simmons?

  So much, is he ever gonna, is it ever gonna happen for him? Does he have it inside him? So he was second at the time I wrote that. Will, will always be the first most polarizing basketball player of all time. Anyway, Westbrook's detractors don't ever expect him to find the right balance between competitive and reckless. They believe he's a shooting guard masquerading as a point guard, like a better version of Steve Francis, that he takes too many shots away from the more efficient Kevin Durant, that Oklahoma City cannot win the title until they swap him out for a true point guard, parentheses, say Rajon Rondo. This was another conversation we're having in 2011. Do they need more of a pure point guard to set up KD?

• 7:16Bill Simmons?

  Westbrook's defenders accept his faults because they're a small part of the greater good. He brings so many unique things to the table, fills the stat sheet in so many different ways, competes so freaking hard every game and remains such a good natured teammate, they're fine with any collateral damage. The 2012 Zombie Sonics, this is when I used to call them the Zombie Sonics, made the finals partly because they're relentlessly young and relentlessly athletic. That's Westbrook in a nutshell. You love those teams, right? Those 2012?

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Well, I was a Spurs fan and that Spurs team they beat was one of his crowning achievements. Remember how hot that Spurs team was? They won 20 some games into the playoffs and were, were two games up in that series. And then Harden, Westbrook and Durant, Baca, put them away. Yeah, that was a crazy team, yeah.

• 8:07Bill Simmons?

  All right. Here's the rest of what I wrote. In game three, a semi-neutered Westbrook carefully tiptoed through the first two and a half quarters, ratcheted things up after Durant's fourth foul, played poorly and earned a conspicuous, conspicuous quote, rest from Scott Brooks. That was a dangerous moment for Oklahoma City, not just for this series, but long-term, something that ESPN's Jeff Van Gundy caught while announcing the game.

• 8:34Bill Simmons?

  Remember when Jeff Van Gundy used to be on basketball games, Miss State. When Van Gundy coached in Houston, he came to regret how he handled Francis, a similarly explosive guard who struggled with his competitiveness, reckless calibration. Instead of embracing the electric qualities that made Francis special, he steered Francis toward being more of a pure point guard, inadvertently compromising his game. You didn't need a translator to figure out why Van Gundy brought this up during game three of the 2012 finals. Now, time for a name drop. I actually ran into Van Gundy outside a Miami hotel on Monday night, one day before the biggest game of Westbrook's young life. He used to stay at the Mandarin Oriental. Yeah. Or ESPN things. It was great. One of the nicest hotels.

• 9:17Bill Simmons?

  I brought up his Francis comparison and threw out one of my harebrained theories at him. The 10% theory. Even the best NBA players have holes. In a best case scenario, they're tapping into about 90% of their total potential. With the holes representing the other 10%. We can either dwell in the 90% or we could dwell in the 10%. And some holes are less glaring than others. Do you believe in this theory just in general for stars? Everybody has a 10%?

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, everybody has a flaw. Everybody, even LeBron James.

• 9:49Bill Simmons?

  Well, I wrote, for instance, Larry Bird's biggest hole was his inability to defend quicker forwards without help. Same for Dirk Nowitzki. You could hide that specific hole on the right team with the right coaches, the right teammates, and even the right matchups. But something like Rajon Rondo's shaky jump shot or the Botox face that afflicted Karl Malone in crunch time. Well, there's this case of the 10% flashing like a neon sign. Again, some holes are more glaring than others, but everyone has holes. What Kirk Goldberg just said. On Oklahoma City, it's tougher to see Kevin Durant's 10%. He's not strong enough yet to prevent defenders like Shane Battier from hounding him 25 feet from the basket and denying him the ball. And he's not a consistently good enough defender yet. Now, he got to fix that, right?

• 10:32Bill Simmons?

  I feel like he got better at both those things. It's easier to see that than Wes or harder to see that than Westbrook's 10%. His recklessness, which permeates everything he does, good and bad. You notice when Westbrook shoots 27 times. You notice when he bricks an ill-fated three in a huge spot. And you notice when he's bowling someone over for a charge because he thought he could dunk over three guys. And still, as I mentioned to Van Gundy, Westbrook does so many positive things that those 10% plays are something of a tax for the overall Westbrook package, right? Van Gundy agreed wholeheartedly. He believed Oklahoma City needed to win or lose this series in their own terms,

• 11:14Bill Simmons?

  not some idealistic, media-driven belief about how they should be playing. Westbrook will never be John Stockton. It ain't happening. We both wanted to see Westbrook be Westbrook again. One of the league's most fearless competitors, someone who brings a ton of things to the table and takes a few things off, too. Now, I wrote that in June 2012. And that became his career. He took some stuff off. He brought a ton of stuff on. He never totally figured it out. He never won a title. That was the only finals game he won in game three. Never got back. And yet, I think now, as the years pass, and especially as a bench guy, Kirk, the last few years, where he was never the right fit on the right team as a bench guy. He came close a couple of times.

• 11:59Bill Simmons?

  But the flaw, the 10% started to feel like a 30%. I still, I'm going to give you my pyramid ranking lately. I still feel like he's one of the top 60 players ever. I also don't think there's ever been a career like it, like it. So let's start there. Is there another guy you think in the top 75, top 100 that remotely resembles this bizarre Russell Westbrook career?

• 12:20Speaker 01

  I mean, I yield to you, but when you talk about the triple-doubles, two names immediately come to mind, right? Is Oscar and Magic. Magic is on a whole different level, in my opinion, as one of the greatest players of all time, the greatest point guard of all time, in my opinion, if it's not Stephen Curry. I think I'd still give it to Magic, call me crazy, but the combination of the counting stats, the triple-double for the whole season, won an MVP, two scoring titles, an assist title, I believe. I mean, just from a counting stats perspective, it's, it's an all-time great, great run. And the other thing is, like, who would have thought when you're writing that column in 2012, Bill Simmons? That was the only time we'd see this dude in the finals.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  It's almost like the Spurs team we're watching in 2026. If you would have said, oh, that was the only time Dylan Harper made the finals or Stephon Castle or Victor Wembanyama. We had, we had that team pegged like we have the Spurs team pegged. They were going to be around for a long time. But ultimately, statistically, he's a very unique player. And I'm sure there's a lot we'll get into with the advanced stuff. But the stats we have that allow us to compare apples to apples back to Oscar Robertson, that's the, that's the comp I'd land at.

• 13:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's, I tweeted this out today. There's only three players ever that have done 25,000 points, 7,000 rebounds, and 7,000 assists in their career. And it's him and Oscar and LeBron. But then if you go backwards, they're also the only guys who have done this with 20,000 points, 7,000 rebounds, 7,000 assists. If you drop it to six and six, the number goes to eight. But that's how like rare the career totals are. And I think the counting stats, I think he's going to be a really hard guy to figure out 50 years from now when people are just trying to study clips and basketball reference. He played 18 years, nine All-Star. He was the 2017 MVP, as you mentioned. Top four MVP three times. Second first-team All-NBA twice.

• 14:20Bill Simmons?

  Fifth, five times second All-NBA and second third, including that Houston season, which I forgot. He made third-team of All-NBA in the lockout season. He was the second-best guy in a finals runner-up. In those 2012 playoffs, 23, 5, and 6, 28% from three in 37 games, which will be a recurring theme for this pod. His four-year peak was 27, 9, and 10. Triple-double three straight years. In the 14 and 16 playoffs, which were the other two times OKC came really close, he was 26, 7, and 10 assists for 37 games, 30% from three.

• 15:00Bill Simmons?

  And after KD left, he lost nine of his last 11 playoff series. So I'll start here. The big question, after everything we laid out. Would you have wanted to play on his team? Now, the answer is mostly yes, but it's a really interesting question because that's one of the number-one ways I was trying to measure all these dudes against each other way back when. Like, this is why it's unfair to use stats with Duncan because everyone from his era loved the guy, loved being his teammate. He didn't care about counting stats. He just wanted to win. He won 72% of his games. I don't think they ever had a season where they had below 60 winning percentage with him. And it didn't matter who was on his team. The team just won and won and won.

• 15:45Bill Simmons?

  Would you want to be on Russell Westbrook's team?

• 15:47Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I know that sounds harsh. You and I have talked about this for years, but the egalitarianism that sort of evolved with, with Popovich's Spurs and then Kerr's Warriors that really made the game beautiful and free-flowing throughout the 2010s. That was the style that captivated me. And then there's the tension with other teammates. Obviously, I'm not an NBA player, but you look at some of the teammates, including LeBron James, pretty recently, that were like, eh, I don't think so.

• 16:20Bill Simmons?

  Durant definitely was, has to be at least one of the reasons Durant went to OKC, right?

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Two of the, yeah. Yeah, two of the greatest players of my lifetime were like, I can walk away from this relationship.

• 16:32Bill Simmons?

  Also, Harden played with him, too. And that was another one where he was like, I think I'm good.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  What would your answer be to that question, Bill Simmons?

• 16:40Bill Simmons?

  I think there's two different things. First of all, would, would I want to play on his team? I think I would have in the first eight, nine years, even though he would have been frustrating at times. But because, here's where he gets in-house, watched him for a year in Washington and is like one of the last Russ defenders. Westbrook played so fucking hard all the time.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:01Bill Simmons?

  That I don't know how you would have wanted to play with somebody like that day to day. Now, the question is, could you win a title with that? You know, you, I'm sure there was at least a small piece of the Tatum-Brown thing and Brown leaving that Tatum, after nine years, maybe, maybe he was good with playing with Jalen Brown. Like, I'm, I'm sure the longer you play with somebody, you start getting more and more annoyed by certain things. But the competitiveness that he had and the relentlessness and the fact that he was basically, he could play 80 games, 40 minutes a game in the playoffs. He was balls to the wall. He never seemed to get tired, ever. I think I could have talked myself into it. The bigger question is, if you're a GM or somebody running a team.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:45Bill Simmons?

  Would this have been one of the two guys you would want to build around for 15 years? And I think it's really interesting that in the later part of his career, when OKC got good again, and he's beloved in OKC, and Presti loved him and defended him the most. There was a world where he could have brought him in in '24, '25, '26, and they didn't. So that, now that's role-player Russ. It's a different version of him, but it's, it's also not nothing, right?

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's great. That's right up there with the KD, the LeBron. There's a lot of smoke there. I will say this, because Russ is ultimately a hard player to pin down. You already said he's enigmatic. But I will say this as a ticket-purchasing spectator of pro basketball. This dude is electric. One of the few guys, if you're watching a game in person or even on TV, you can just tell this guy's intensity is higher than anybody else in the game. And that was entertainment. Ultimately, pro basketball is a ridiculous form of entertainment where we have to pay $1,000 sometimes to go see these games.

• 18:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  He gave you your money's worth. And I, I think that we can't forget that. Like, he was a spectacle. It wasn't always smart. It wasn't always analytically correct. But to your point about his competitiveness, his ferocity, you wrote beautifully in your 50 Shades of Westbrook column about his transition energy, like just going vertically, attacking the teeth of a defense. You got your money's worth. He was a hell of a fun guy to watch play hoops.

• 19:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I wrote, so the MVP season, which we'll get into a bunch, but I wrote this about a month before the end of the season. His night-to-night relentlessness was unlike anything that's ever happened in the league. Who played harder for six straight months than Russell Westbrook just did? Did you ever see Russ get tired? Did you see him sweat? Did you see him breathing heavily? Have you ever seen a basketball star with a bottomless stamina tank? This wasn't an MVP season. This was performance art. Russell Westbrook gave more shits than anyone in the history of shits. And I think, I think that's accurate. And that's why, like, I enjoyed the MVP season, as crazy as it was. And I almost think the answer with the GM is like, if he's my number two.

• 19:58Bill Simmons?

  I might be able to win a title, right? Okay, so he almost did. And they were right there in 14, they were right there in 16, very close. And I don't think he was the reason they didn't win. I don't, I also don't think he pushed them the other way either. But if I had to have a 49 win team where he was the only, where I could only have one good player. There's only a handful of guys who could have carried a team like that. And, and that was kind of his superpower and why he's so tough to evaluate. Cause he's on that like Kobe, LeBron, the best guys who could have been like, I am just dragging these guys to 48 wins. He could do it if he wanted to.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  There's only like two guys who've shot 40 plus times in a playoff game since 2010, and it's him both times.

• 20:43Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  He would put you, uh, put the team on his shoulders and just go. And I love, he grew up watching Kobe, right? And that late era Kobe, you could see that in his game like, fuck, fuck it, I'm doing it myself. Like this defiance, which is another word that always comes up with him, is this just defiant attitude, like I will, I will win this game. And like I said, that's where I rest. There, there was no player in the mid 2010s, pre Curry, that I was more excited to just watch play basketball. Forget the analytics for a little bit, just to be around it. It was a show and that's, that's really what this business is about.

• 21:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, his greatest strength was also his biggest weakness, which is he really always thought he was the best guy on the court.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:31Bill Simmons?

  Always. And it didn't matter who was on there. And by the way, the other players kind of regarded him as like, that dude's all over the map, but that guy's pretty good, man. Athletically, there was a moment, I remember writing about it at the time, the lockout era, that lockout, weird lockout season, the 66 game season, when this new wave of young talent was just really starting to arrive, right? Rose was there, uh, Rose, Westbrook, Chris Paul, Durant. And Harden, you could see the seeds for Kawhi, there was something there. But this was this whole generation of athletes that had now arrived. And the guards specifically were like, we've never seen this before.

• 22:10Bill Simmons?

  Like I've never seen Westbrook and Rose, I've never seen guards this athletic, who could go to the basket like this, who played this hard. To the point that you feared for their safety, Rose ended up getting hurt. Westbrook never really did, except for the Patrick Beverley one, that was bad.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, he had some knee injuries, you know, that Patrick Beverley play. Yeah, he had a bunch of knee procedures. I don't think that was, was as bad, obviously, as what happened to Derek, uh, in, in that same era. But yeah, he put a lot of force on those knees. It's amazing that he played as long as he did. What is this bill, an 18 year run?

• 22:42Bill Simmons?

  It's honestly one of the great athletes. Like I, I feel like what sport would he not have been awesome at? I mean, he reminds me of Iverson. Like if he played football, would he have been like an incredible linebacker? Or a safety, like what would he been?

• 22:54Speaker 01

  One of my descriptions was like, this was like Bo Jackson playing basketball, right? Like that's how crazy of an athlete he was. And like you think about Bo and Monday night football, doing these crazy 90 yard runs and then breaking the bat over his knee and baseball. That's what I, it felt like the Bo Nows version of basketball. Just a complete spectacle. And again, to give him his flowers, 18 years playing that hard, so regularly too. In a league that has Kawhi, Paul George, Joel Embiid, like this guy was reliably going to be there. In his prime as, as a, as a producing player.

• 23:31Bill Simmons?

  Even played hard in the All-Star game. This episode is brought to you by EA Sports Madden NFL 27. I was playing Madden when you guys weren't even born yet. Take your love for the game further. This franchise is powered by the all new Persona engine. That sounds interesting. So it's your league to run. Hmm. Build it the way you want with a reactive league shaping every decision you'll have to make. And if you want the full experience, there's the kickoff bundle. Please don't tell my son, fine, tell him. Which has both college football 27 and Madden NFL 27 standard editions. From campus legend to NFL superstar, make your rise with the kickoff bundle. Learn more at EA.com.

• 24:13Bill Simmons?

  Rated E for everyone with mild lyrics, users interact and in-game purchases. Includes random items, conditions and restrictions apply. Scan QR code for more info. All right. Five things you need to know about Westbrook. Number one,

• 24:30Bill Simmons?

  I wrote this in 2012. I'll be interested to see if we would add it, or 2016, 17, I wrote this. In my lifetime, I have seen only four other basketball players turn one-on-three fast breaks into layups whenever they wanted. Young Barkley, young Derrick Rose, Jordan and LeBron. Now Russ would be the fifth. Is there anybody since I wrote that in the last decade who would go in that list? I was thinking about it. I'm sure we're going to miss somebody, but.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Maybe like prime Yannis, who would just.

• 24:59Bill Simmons?

  The one-on-threes, that's good. All right, let's add Yannis.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Truck and finish over somebody. But yeah, that's a, that's a pretty great list.

• 25:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Barkley was always my favorite. I mean, I'll defend Barkley to death, but that was always the best thing about seeing him in person. You get the rebound and be like, just going. Russ would be like, I'm fucking going. You better get out of my way or you're taking a knee in your chest. So that's one. Second thing you need to know, if you did the two man championship belt through the course of NBA history, which I've done, I think him and KD have it in 2014. Cause I think LeBron and Wade together, 11, 12, 13, they win the title. And in 14, I think those, that combo together was the best too. 2015, Durant got hurt. 2016, it's, it's Curry than anybody, basically.

• 25:48Bill Simmons?

  Curry and Klay, pick anyone with Curry. But they did have the belt there and we're going to talk about that playoffs more. Peak guards last 20 years, just talking about peaks.

• 26:01Bill Simmons?

  Curry, Kobe, Wade, SGA, Harden. There's five that were better than Russ. CP3, Nash, Brunson. Do you consider Luca guard?

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, definitely.

• 26:14Bill Simmons?

  That's nine. Russ is probably 10th. I don't think I missed anyone I went through, but um, he, the peak Russ, I think was one of the 10 best guards of the last 20 years, but I think he's 10th. All, I think all five, all nine of those guys, I think could have been the best guy on a title team or close, right? And I'm not sure Russ could have, Russ never won a playoff series after KD left, uh, as the best guy. So I think that's a fair list.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  I think that's fair.

• 26:44Bill Simmons?

  2016, uh, 2011 in the 16 playoffs, third thing you need to know.

• 26:50Bill Simmons?

  76 playoff games.

• 26:53Bill Simmons?

  They won 10 series in Oklahoma City, they made the finals. During that stretch, 25 points, six, uh, six rebounds, eight assists. 29% from three.

• 27:06Bill Simmons?

  And the bad ones were they blew the 3-1 lead to Golden State.

• 27:11Bill Simmons?

  He, the Klay game, it wasn't great down the stretch with him, but Durant, I almost feel like Durant gets a little more blame on at least the last two games. 2012 finals, game five, four for 20 field goal. And then, uh, that series I felt like was after Miami won game four, I think we knew that was probably over. And then, uh, 2014, game six, Western Conference Finals against the Spurs, eight for 23, seven turnovers. So there were a couple of moments where he could have changed the legacy a little bit and did not. But I'm going to slightly hold it against him, not too much.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  One of the, the notes on the 2012 finals, game four, you wrote about in that column. His, he, there's a jump ball at the end, the Thunder are down three, there's 14 seconds left. Chalmers gets the ball, the shot clock's at five. They just need to stop him and then they'll have a chance to tie. And in that moment, Russ, brain fart, fouls Chalmers unnecessarily, but sends him to the line that ices the game. So it's still his best, like big playoff performance in my opinion, but it also ends in like sort of a quintessential frustrating Westbrook outcome, where he makes like a brain fart at the end and in crunch time in 2012, game four.

• 28:27Bill Simmons?

  And that's what I built the column around, which was, he was already the polar as a guy of the series. Cause how he played in game three. Game four had put together the most electric 47 minutes possible. And then made the brain fart and it was the complete experience. And it's like, this guy's clearly a really important basketball player. And you kind of saw everything in the same game. Every, everywhere this career could go, it all happened. 2011, they beat Denver in my, in Memphis in playoff series. In game 70 and a triple double against Memphis. They lost to Dallas. 2012 swept Dallas, beat the Lakers, beat the Spurs. 2013 was when he got hurt. And we're going to go into that later. 2014, beat Memphis in seven.

• 29:12Bill Simmons?

  He had a 27, 10, 16 in the game seven in the running for best one. Beat the Clippers 4-2. And we'll talk about game five in a second. Lost to the Spurs 4-2. And then in 2016. Beat Dallas, beat San Antonio in six. 25, 7, 11 for the series. That was where Tony Parker was officially too old.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  It was Tim's last game.

• 29:35Bill Simmons?

  And Tim Duncan, and it was Aldridge was there, but it was kind of a between the two errors. And then they lost to Golden State. He was seven for 21 in game seven. So that was the run. That's the closest he's come. The fifth thing you need to know. He was the most dissected Grantland Ringer era player of the last 15 years. Remember Fantasy wrote, Fantasy wrote a, what was this piece called? Against Russ?

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude. We all had think pieces.

• 30:03Bill Simmons?

  We had, everyone had their one or two. Anyone who wrote basketball for us had at least one think piece. You started, you started working for Grantland. Second half of our Grantland run, which was only four years. But as the advanced metrics and the shot charts was coming. And was there a better shot chart than Russ?

• 30:21Speaker 01

  No, he was one of these guys was like, wait a second. When you look at it this way, uh, this guy's not actually that good at scoring the basketball. His shot charts were, were always just eye popping. That era's shot charts, sort of the anti all-stars were always him and Josh Smith. Uh, and I had to make a lot of those charts.

• 30:39Bill Simmons?

  Monte Ellis was another one.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Monte Ellis, yes.

• 30:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. What's going on with this guy? Yeah, there was some shot charters. A lot of the post, some of the post-up centers never fared that well.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 30:51Bill Simmons?

  But yeah, that first era, the shot charts are like, wow, that guy misses everything when he takes a three on the left. And, you know, and eventually the, the players, I think, got smarter and smarter at how to look at that stuff.

• 31:03Bill Simmons?

  All right. The eternal argument, this is a new category for book of basketball. The 2017 MVP season, whether he deserved it or not. Zach Lowe and I have been talking about this for 10 years. Three people, I wrote a huge column at the end of the year. I picked Harden. Zach picked Kawhi. Russ ended up winning.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 31:23Bill Simmons?

  And one basically because of this awesome Denver game he had. That everybody was on the fence and then he played his best possible game on a Sunday. And it really kind of kicked it off. But where, where did you stand on the three? Do you remember?

• 31:36Speaker 01

  I was a employee of the San Antonio Spurs and a very big Kawhi Leonard advocate. As an analyst though, I mean Harden, looking back 10 years ago, like that was just an incredible. The Dantoni Harden era was just a earth shattering analytics sort of extravaganza. So I think Harden, I'd be on team Harden in this one as much as I love the Spurs and Kawhi.

• 31:58Bill Simmons?

  I was really torn and you can feel it in the stuff I wrote back then and said on pods like,

• 32:05Bill Simmons?

  I hated his, I hated what OKC was doing basketball wise. I hated it. So again, it stands against everything I like.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:13Bill Simmons?

  It was one guy doing everything. Everybody else kind of standing around hoping that they'd have a chance to shoot or have a play run for them. But for the most part, we're just supposed to, you know, be the supporting actors in the Russell Westbrook one man show. And I hated it, but I also loved how hard he played. And it was like hard not to get swept up in it. Like I wasn't against the MVP vote. I wrote, a couple of things I wrote. Statistically, Westbrook is the biggest ball hog of all time. He's taken the delicate framework of a successful basketball team. Five players working together, sharing the ball, making each other better. And he's throwing it out the window. He's fueling a Thunder team that's the complete opposite of the 77 Blazers, 86 Celtics, 05 Suns and 15 Warriors.

• 32:58Bill Simmons?

  He treats his teammates like stage prop.

• 33:01Bill Simmons?

  And then I wrote, OKC's best night tonight chance meant serving the NBA's version of in and outs menu. You can only order Russell Westbrook. They serve Westbrook burgers with fries, sodas and milkshakes. Get the Westbrook burger lettuce wrapped animal style. Just know you're getting Westbrook. Don't ask for anything else. He took 370 more shots than anyone else that season. He missed 14 shots a game. He shattered the usage rate record, almost 42%. And then had a 57.3% assistant percentage rate, which was the highest ever. And, um, and then I wrote at the end, I loved watching Westbrook this season. I loved it. I never thought I'd see a big O try, try triple double sequel again and blah, blah, blah.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know if we'll see that 40, that 42% usage rate ever eclipsed again, Bill. And the other thing that I think is fascinating is Harden was sort of doing a version of this in Houston. And I look at these two guys as like biblical brothers, like almost this Cain and Abel. They, they grew up together in Los Angeles. I think Westbrook almost goes to Arizona State, ends up at UCLA as this unheralded freshman, and then ends up becoming a, a top, top pick in the NBA. Had the chip on his shoulder the whole time.

• 34:12Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  But yeah, both of them were sort of spamming over and over again. The, the same kind of basketball, but in Dantoni Harden world, it was efficient. So the analytics community was okay with it. And then in OKC, it was just like, there were a lot of nine of 24 nights. 11 of 32 from the field. And the passing wasn't always there. But it was, it was crazy to watch. And, and I don't think we'll ever see a player with a usage rate of 42 or higher. I just can't see that ever happening again.

• 34:44Bill Simmons?

  They somehow won 47 games. They had the 15th ranked offense.

• 34:52Bill Simmons?

  Houston had the second ranked offense that year. Harden was doing a lot of the same, you know, had the ball all the time stuff, but did not have close to the same assist percentage. And you could argue was making guys better. And that was the thing, as you look back, I even wrote this at the time. Why wasn't Steven Adams as devastating in OKC as the Capella and Nene Harold trio was for Houston? Why wasn't Oladipo better on a much better team? Why the dump here in Alisoa? Why such a wasted rookie year for Demontas Sabonis? Everyone acts like Russ is playing with the Washington Generals. He has two top three lottery picks and three other lottery picks in the playing rotation. And his cancer was there as well.

• 35:35Bill Simmons?

  And now as the years pass, like they make the trade for Paul George and Sabonis and Oladipo immediately took off the moment they got away from Russ.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:44Bill Simmons?

  So I don't think history has judged it that awesome, but, um, you know, Harden just had way more success playing the same style. I think now, wouldn't you say that if, if that's the MVP season happened in 2026? I don't think there's any way Russ wins.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  No, that's right. And that's, that's again, his, his career coincides with this analytical awakening, this perimeter style. Revolution that starts with Harden and Curry, just, just finding efficiency in cool new ways. So you're exactly right. I think all the stuff that Jalen Brown was going through, that would have been times 10. People would have been like the number two offense in the league. The discourse has just changed. It's updated for better or for worse. Efficiency is king now.

• 36:31Bill Simmons?

  Although you could argue it hasn't changed because the Celtics had the number two offense and everyone used advanced analytics against Jalen Brown. I think with, I think with Houston versus OKC in 17, the fact that Houston's offense was so good that year. I think would have meant more if we under, it was almost like we were the OJ jurors, not totally understanding the DNA evidence yet.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:52Bill Simmons?

  Now, looking back, when I looked at the per 100 possession, all that stuff. And I was like, Houston's offense was just clearly better, but his supporting cast. I think was fairly even to.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Brian Anderson, Eric Gordon.

• 37:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  I forget if it was Capella or Montrez Harrell.

• 37:09Bill Simmons?

  Nene and Harold.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. He got those, some of those big men paid. So like you can look at the contracts downstream of the Harden experiences versus downstream of the Westbrook experience and see that James actually got these dudes paid. But yeah, that, that Rockets team, because we played them in the playoffs that year in San Antonio, they were terrifying. Remember that's the, the series that Harden disappeared in, in the game back in Houston. Manu blocked, um, James Harden from the back in the game in San Antonio. But that team was terrifying. And I believe they beat OKC in the first round of that playoffs in 2017 too. And, and Harden outplayed Westbrook ultimate like now I wish we could vote for the MVP now sort of situation.

• 37:54Bill Simmons?

  It was a classic. Sometimes that happens.

• 37:59Bill Simmons?

  I have a defining game section. I knew what I had in my, I was interested though. I'm gonna work, this section's gonna be brought to you by ChatGPT. The Bill Simmons Podcast AI sponsor. And ChatGPT work helped me figure this out. I asked them, what was Russell Westbrook's defining game? What do you think the answer was?

• 38:22Speaker 01

  For me, it should be game six of the 2016 NBA Western Conference Finals.

• 38:28Bill Simmons?

  The Klay game, okay.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:32Bill Simmons?

  ChatGPT disagreed. It's response, if you mean the single game that best defines Russell Westbrook's career, I'd pick April 9th, 2017, Thunder versus Nuggets. The line, 50 points, 16 rebounds, 10 assists, and a 36-foot buzzer beating three to win 106-105. Now, that was a pretty good answer because that was the game that won him the MVP. We were all on the fence. That game happened on a Sunday, I think it was on national TV. And Russ was in 50, 16, and 10, and a 36 footer to win it. I think it was home. And after that game, everyone's like, all right, I give up. And he grabbed a lot of votes with that game. It's interesting that that was a regular season game that, that they suggested.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:16Bill Simmons?

  Not a play.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  I don't know, are we doing sliding doors later?

• 39:18Bill Simmons?

  We're doing a whole bunch of them, yeah. Anyway, thanks to ChatGPT work, help you work even harder. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Try ChatGPT work today, available to plus and pro plans. Now, we're going to what's aged the best. I mentioned that 26-6.

• 39:39Bill Simmons?

  Like he, his career, he averaged 26 and 6. 700-plus games, only nine guys have done that. LeBron, Jordan, Harden, Bird, Jokic, Drexler, Giannis, Westbrook, and Rick Barry. And then I mentioned that other stat too, the 20K points, 6K rebounds, 6K assists.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:00Bill Simmons?

  So I have that. And then the other what's aged the best, the counting stats have aged great for him. Young OKC and romanticizing that team. I know John, our friend Jonathan Abrams has a new book that he wrote that's coming out pretty soon about that OKC era. And that team, like I just, I look back at the 2012 finals and that 11 playoffs and just watching these guys that we all liked and not knowing what was gonna be ahead of them. And, and then of course, it didn't turn out the way we all thought for a variety of reasons. But I was going back and watching some of the clips of them in the 2012 finals, when they beat the Lakers in 2011, and just how athletic and awesome that team was. I was like, I think that's aged pretty nicely now.

• 40:45Bill Simmons?

  As like the what-if team of that decade.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. I still have a picture in my office of the three of those guys together. Cause I can't believe it's real, like the three MVPs, all babies in that league together. Again, like the Spurs sort of right now feel kinda like that, but that's really rare. For me, it is, he, after he was, I think, announcing his retirement, he, he claimed he was the best rebounding guard of all time.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  And I think he's got a claim to that, Bill, and you're the historian here. But I did a little research and the player tracking areas far and away has the most rebounds of anybody who plays the guard position. James Harden is up there, Josh Hart is up there, Luka Doncic, if he's a guard.

• 41:29Bill Simmons?

  Oscar, Oscar has to be up there.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think that's gonna age really well. I think, you know, rebounds, they're not as sexy. People overlook them all the time analytically. But as a defending guard, if you can come in and grab the board and get that stop for your team, and he had that as well as anybody.

• 41:51Bill Simmons?

  I always liked that about Kobe, who was, you know, like a five or six a game rebounder normally, but in a big game, he'd go get them.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:59Bill Simmons?

  You know, and the, Westbrook was so quick to the ball at all times. I think, you know, there's definitely some padded stat stuff with the MVP season. And they would be, I mean, this is stuff that happened. I don't think it's a conspiracy, like Adams would box his guy out so Russ could come in and get foul shot rebounds. And I think OKC was kinda understood if there's any foul shot rebound, it goes to Russ. And little stuff like that. But just day to day, week to week, game to game, season to season, like he was just so quick, just grabbing boards. I think, I think he probably is.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  That's incredible.

• 42:36Bill Simmons?

  I think that's a good way to put it. That, and then the, what did we say, six guys ever, one-on-three fast breaks by themselves? I think were his two things. All right, biggest what-if sliding doors moment.

• 42:50Bill Simmons?

  It's crazy, cause I have three.

• 42:53Bill Simmons?

  We didn't talk about this, how many do you have?

• 42:55Speaker 01

  I have one solid one, I sort of spoiled it earlier. And we can frame it either as the 2016, those two games together, or the Klay game. But after, okay, so fast forward, we know Durant goes to Golden State after Cleveland beats Golden State. If OKC holds on, they're up eight points going into the fourth quarter of game six. They're up three points with a few minutes left in game six. Obviously Klay does his thing.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  If they can just win that game, Bill Simmons, they win the Western Conference, though they would have ended Tim Duncan's career in the second round. They would have beaten that Golden State team in the Western Finals. And then I'd ask you, do you think they would have beaten that Cleveland team? I think they would have been favorites.

• 43:45Bill Simmons?

  They would have so much confidence coming out of those two wins.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  And that for me is the clear sliding doors moment. We, we already said he played one finals, that would have been a second one. I think they would have at least had a puncher's chance of winning it, maybe even been the favorites. Does Durant leave even if they make the finals and beat Golden State? So for me, it's that.

• 44:08Bill Simmons?

  I had three, and that was my number one. Almost like in hockey, it's my number one star of the game. I went to game five when they were up 3-1 in the series, and they just sucked. And Durant was bad, like those three Durant games were not good. And I think, I don't know, I still don't know what happened on those last three, but and the crowd got into it and they beat them. But I still felt like they were gonna go back to OKC and finish it because it was clear Curry wasn't 100%. And OKC had, it was very similar in so many different ways to the Pats in '07 with the streak. And the pressure, week to week of that streak. I just felt like the Warriors seemed like worn out.

• 44:51Bill Simmons?

  Playoffs, finals, the year before they win the title, that's a 100-game run. Then they start the next season, Steve Kerr misses the first two months. Then you have the 25-game winning streak, which became a real thing. And then they're going for 73 wins the whole time, and that, or 70 wins they get. What was the Bulls, the Bulls were 72 and 10? Yeah, so they need a 73. And they're going for that when they should have been, and I just thought it took them out. And I thought they were going back to OKC and it was done. Klay goes nuts. And they still had a chance to win. And it's, we did a podcast about it in the Book of Basketball feed a while ago. It's an amazing, amazing rewatch. You're watching, you're watching history change over the course of 20 minutes.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's an incredible rewatch. First of all, the guys all look like babies, which is crazy. But then you look at the play-by-play and it is not kind to Russell Westbrook down the stretch.

• 45:46Bill Simmons?

  It's not good.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Three turnovers in the definitive two-minute stretch of the game. He blows a layup, he's forcing it. Durant, by the way, to your earlier point, took some bad shots early in the clock. And then you go to Steve Kerr's side of the court and these guys are poised, the ball is moving, it's finding open shooters, and it is, it was history defining. So for me, it's a clear number one. What are your other sliding doors moments, though?

• 46:13Bill Simmons?

  Well, with that what-if thing, if they do win, I don't know what happens to Durant if they lose the finals to Cleveland.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:23Bill Simmons?

  Cause now it's like, all right, now I'm gonna go to Golden State who I just beat? That feels weird. I guess it was weird that he went there after getting beat by them. Maybe he goes there anyway. If they win the finals, does he leave?

• 46:34Speaker 01

  You can't.

• 46:34Bill Simmons?

  You can't leave at that point. You're gonna win the NBA title and then go?

• 46:39Speaker 01

  He probably would have been finals MVP. I would have guessed, right? How many times have we seen a finals MVP? I mean, Kawhi in Toronto, I guess, but that was a weird situation. Um, so how many times do we see a finals MVP? Just be like, I'm out of here. That's summer.

• 46:52Bill Simmons?

  It would have been a great battle. Um, yeah, that's the number one. My, my number two was the Harden trade, obviously. I don't, now, maybe the Harden trade plays out. We always romanticize that at Grant Lane and, you know, it was one of the worst trades of all time. Maybe after two years, that team falls apart anyway, right? And maybe that, maybe Harden's just not happy being like, like, I'm not Manu Ginobili. I should have my own team and maybe

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:17Bill Simmons?

  that falls apart, but at least I could have traded him for more than they, uh, traded for him at the time. But that's, we talk about, he never got back to the finals. That's one of the reasons. Cause the Harden trade, which still never made sense, cause it was a $4 million difference.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you get Kevin Martin in there and it's just, they're still really good. They were still a contender for years to come. But then what happens? James Harden becomes the best offensive player in the league, arguably, multiple seasons in a league that has Steph Curry in his prime. And that was, you traded him for Kevin Martin?

• 47:50Bill Simmons?

  Jeremy Lamb and the Adams pick that ended up being the trade. But like, you look at 13 and 14, and that leads to my third would have with Beverly taking out his knee in the playoff game, game two. Uh, they're playing Memphis. They had a real chance even after that trade of just winning the title that year anyway. If you go back and look at the records and the stats, um, both of those, KD and Russ were two of the best six or seven guys in the league that year.

• 48:17Bill Simmons?

  San Antonio had that 2012. It was such like a punch in the face that they, you know, and they kind of rallied back, but they weren't, I don't think anybody thought they were the favorites come out of the West. I think people were maybe thinking more like OKC or the Clips. The Warriors weren't ready yet. Um, but Beverly in one of the cheaper plays of the last 20 years.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Awful.

• 48:39Bill Simmons?

  Really like just a shit play. Um, and hurts Westbrook and knocks him out. So, you know, they have that. They have 12. They have, uh, you know, they didn't get, it's been swept under the rug. It was one of the last stern era moments, but the officiating in the finals, in the 2012 finals is a disgrace. It's like, I don't think they got a 50 50 call for five games. 2013, uh, Beverly hurts Westbrook.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:06Bill Simmons?

  2014, which we're going to get to in a second, um, was probably their best chance. And then the Klay game, you know, and it just never happens.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  It's hard to come out of the West. LeBron James, as he retreats back to the Eastern Conference, learn that over the last, after, after the last eight years in LA. I mean, you have Popovich, Duncan, Ginobili in one corner. Then you have this curve, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson juggernaut, obviously the Dantoni stuff in Houston. Uh, it was, it was really hard for that Thunder team to get even to the finals, uh, with these other juggernauts in their way.

• 49:45Bill Simmons?

  What's age the worst? We mentioned a few of them already. I mean, one of them, he played with Durant for the first eight, they, they coincided for eight years, including Durant's MVP season and, um, half of Durant's prime, basically. He played with James Harden in Houston when Harden was still one of the best offensive players in the league. And it got very close a couple of times. Played with LeBron and AD and the Lakers. He played with Paul George on the Thunder in 2018 and then, uh, and 2019. And then he played with Joker. He's played with some really good players.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 50:24Bill Simmons?

  One finals win ever is tough for somebody who's supposed to be in the top 60.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  And Zach Levine that last year, don't forget him.

• 50:31Bill Simmons?

  Right. And Bradley Beal. He was, Joe House rooted for him for a year. That counts.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  That was actually one of the cool Westbrook seasons, right? So he, what I always say is 2010s, he's an icon. He's like an eight, nine time All-Star in the 2010s. That year in Houston, people forget the pandemic comes and just destroys America and the whole world of basketball, obviously. And, and he had figured it out with Dantoni. They were playing the small ball thing in early 2020. Go look at Westbrook's numbers. He was actually a very efficient small ball center and, and Dantoni had found out how to use him. He'd stopped taking threes and jumpers and just

• 51:08Bill Simmons?

  Third team All NBA Kirk.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that weird pandemic.

• 51:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. You remember what happened?

• 51:15Speaker 01

  No, because of the pandemic.

• 51:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I barely remember this either. As, as I've said over and over again, I don't remember anything from 2020, but, um,

• 51:25Bill Simmons?

  they played the Lakers in the playoffs and guess what wasn't working was Russell Westbrook as the small ball center against AD and LeBron. When AD was, AD playing about as well as he's ever played. And then they had other guys to bring in and all of a sudden that strategy was not working the same way. Um, it, it was a gimmick. I think they felt like they had taken,

• 51:48Bill Simmons?

  the Chris Paul piece as far as it could go. I'll still never understand Daryl making that trade, but.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  That's a great, that's a great point. That's a crazy.

• 51:57Bill Simmons?

  I still want to know who made that trade. That's one of the craziest trades ever. More would say the worst. We mentioned the advanced stats. Did you have more advanced stat stuff for him?

• 52:06Speaker 01

  Well, I have that for what's age the worst. For me, as the shot chart guy, it's clearly the shooting behavior, the shooting numbers. A few stats here jump off the page, Bill. In the player tracking era, he has taken the fourth most shots of everybody in the last 13 season. He has the lowest scoring efficiency of the top 50. Uh, he's taken the 24th most threes in that player tracking area. Again, that's 13 seasons. He has the lowest three point percentage in the entire top 50 of that group. For me, the most frustrating thing for him and the thing that's aged the worst is his stubborn insistence on this jump shot.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Uh, that, that it should have never been a big part of his game. He was the best attack guard of his era at times.

• 52:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  And when he would rise up as, as somebody who game planned against him, when he would rise up for a jumper, I can tell you, everybody in the organization on the other side was like, thank you. Thank you for doing that. Because I don't want you to get anywhere near the paint or the cup and get fouled. Please take that jump shot.

• 53:11Bill Simmons?

  That was something I wrote about, one of the rest pieces I wrote about the smart teams versus the dumb teams, how they defended them. And the smart teams would basically wall him off. They'd go under on every screen.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:23Bill Simmons?

  They would push him toward shooting between 20 and 25 feet and they were delighted when he did it, right? And then on fast breaks, they made sure they got back. So just make sure you, if they, if we miss, we have to get back or he's just going all the way down. And the dumber teams didn't think the same way and he would get a lot of easy ones, but the, the smart teams were like, please shoot. I mean, I had for a what's age the worst, his three point shooting, he played 135 career playoff games. What do you think he shot from three? Career playoffs?

• 53:53Speaker 01

  It's huge. Well, I know he's a career regular.

• 53:56Bill Simmons?

  Let me ask you this. Do you think he was under 30 or over 30%?

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Is this the Mendoza line for modern NBA, the modern NBA?

• 54:02Bill Simmons?

  Under, over 30%?

• 54:03Speaker 01

  I've got, I'll say under because yeah, there's a lot of bad shooting games in those playoffs.

• 54:09Bill Simmons?

  It's perfect. He was 29.9%.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  So that's the Mendoza line.

• 54:14Bill Simmons?

  He missed 70% of his threes. And if you were rooting for him or betting against him and he was taking a three, you never thought it was going in and you were happy that he did it.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  But here's the thing, dude, one, one layer on that. If he only shot good shots in rhythm behind the arc, it would have been 33, 34. It would have been passable.

• 54:35Bill Simmons?

  Right. It was the heat check threes. Right.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  One a game. It's like, what are you doing, dude? Like, what are you doing? There's 16 on the shot clock. Like, what are you doing? Um, so that's it. That's for me, what age the worst is always going to be that, that kind of thing.

• 54:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Balls to the wall. Russ from 2017 to 2026, won two playoff series, lost nine. 2019 Rockets, 2025 Nuggets were his wins. And he was 19, seven and six during that stretch. It's almost like the second part of his career. 38% field goal. He played for OKC, Houston, Washington, both LA teams, Denver and Sacramento over a seven year span.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  He, he turned into Phil Niekro there at the end.

• 55:18Bill Simmons?

  Everyone thought, everyone got excited for him for two months and then, but this was role player. Russ was never going to be a thing that made sense.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  No, the Denver year was sort of intriguing. I think that was the last stand of can we see him off the ball and Joker making him look good. But then again, the advanced stuff, just Denver was a much better team when he was nowhere near the basketball court that year, 24, 25.

• 55:43Bill Simmons?

  And then I mentioned from a what's age the worst, OKC just not wanting to double down on him.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Great point.

• 55:50Bill Simmons?

  We're just like, sorry.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, yeah, like, so how many guys can you think of off the top of your head that would come back for this upcoming season? Cause it seemed like he did not want to retire until he didn't have a choice. There's so many of these guys that would come back for this one year in that beloved uniform and just, you know, sit at the end of the bench and, and, and help the, the younger guys, but that was not an option. I think that's a great point.

• 56:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. If you're a bench player, you're basically, you're cooking at a restaurant once a week, making a good meal, but not cooking every day. And if you're an awesome chef, you could cook every day and carry a restaurant. And Russ was somewhere between an awesome chef and a diner chef. And it's like, you, you'd want to go to the Russ diner, right? Every night, like the milkshakes are really good. I probably shouldn't have this patty melt.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. The service, the servers might be a little rude sometimes.

• 56:43Bill Simmons?

  You're not winning the James Beard Award with the rush at the, too early, too late, or just right is the next category. So what would you go for, for here? I was surprised by my answer.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  I have an obvious answer here.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  I think he's clearly too late. I think he would have gotten away with a lot of the stuff that like, I'm sorry, the shot chart and the analysts and all this stuff was, it was the worst for him. Like you think of Antoine Walker or Allen Iverson, or even Kobe to some extent, like they got away with some things that would not have flown just 10 years later. And that's when Russell, I think he got caught in the game, began a little smarter analytically, a little more thorough. And so for me, if he had done this in the eighties, nineties, or even the, the first part of the, the 2000s, he would have been incredible and beloved.

• 57:34Bill Simmons?

  2008 draft for him?

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:37Bill Simmons?

  I went 12 years too late. I think if he was in the Kobe draft and he got to play during like, when the, when the scoring was really down, when we had less good players.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  Yes, that's right.

• 57:49Bill Simmons?

  Like Jared Stackhouse averaged 30 a game one year. Like during that era, I think he would have been unbelievable. We would have been like, oh my God.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  That's such a great point. Plus you weren't expected to shoot threes, right?

• 57:58Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  So he wouldn't have been able, he wouldn't have been, the culture of the three-point shot didn't even exist.

• 58:03Bill Simmons?

  We were not picking apart those Iverson seasons when he had, you know, the big usage rate and was shooting 38% every playoff series. We didn't care.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  No, the pre-moneyball NBA, he would have been, he would have been a huge all-star, scoring champion. This guy would have been great. You got to go see Westbrook. It might not have won, but I think it would have escaped some of that sort of scrutiny, that nasty, nerdy scrutiny that, that I think will always be part of the Westbrook experience.

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• 59:54Bill Simmons?

  Sorry, guys. That leads to nerd corner.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 59:58Bill Simmons?

  I sent this to you already. I wrote in that 2017 piece, I, there's still time to do this. If we created a stat called the Westbrook and just added usage rate and assistant percentage together, assist percentage, just those two things, assist rate, assist percentage, usage rate together. Westbrook in the MVP season was a 99. His usage rate was 41.7 and his assist percentage was an all-time record. It was like 57.2. To put that in perspective, the next guy in the list was 2017 Harden at 84.7. 2018 Russ was

• 1:00:39Bill Simmons?

  83.9. 09 Chris Paul, 82. 2016 Russ, 81.2. 2018 Harden, 81.2. And then 80 and down is a little more realistic. I love the fact that he almost got to 100. So if you made the Westbrook a stat, like he literally peaks at the highest version stat with a 99.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:00Bill Simmons?

  The fact that that's 15% higher than anyone who's ever played basketball is fucking bonkers to me.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think I texted you back, this is ball hog over replacement or something. It's just like, this is the most heliocentric, shout out Seth Partnow for, for that term. It's when, when, when, when the hero ball got slightly more educated, it became heliocentric basketball. And that Westbrook season is the epitome of that spam this over and over and over again. And to your point, would I want to play with him? Heard you say this before. I feel like I'm a prop. I feel like I'm standing around. Oh, but every once in a while, here comes a brilliant pass to the corner and you better make the three because that's the only touch you're getting for the next 13 minutes.

• 1:01:42Bill Simmons?

  And that's the problem. Like Joker was an 80.7 this last season. But was doing too much. And by the way, that team didn't make, didn't make round three of the playoffs.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:01:54Bill Simmons?

  When you play this way, Trey Young was an 80.1 in 2022. When you're that reliant on one guy, there's just no success for it. If you're trying to actually win four straight playoff rounds.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  And just for context.

• 1:02:05Bill Simmons?

  Over and over again, does not work.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  The Brunson Westbrook comparison is really interesting to me just because of contemporary sort of recency bias with, with Brunson. But like, his usage in the playoffs bill was 32 or 33, I forget. And it felt like he was, he was doing everything for the Knicks down the stretch and all of the important games. For Russ to be a full 10 points above that for an entire season is diabolical work.

• 1:02:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. If you go to, I'm on Brunson's basketball reference right now. He was, in the playoffs, 32.6%. And his assist percentage was 27.7%.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was a good basketball team. And OG and then Obie won a game for them. And when it mattered, and you know, Towns was great and Bridges and Hart were a part of it. To your point, I think it's like, it's always going to be this beautiful sport where the guys come together and become something greater than the sum of the individual parts. And when you're playing that heliocentric style, it feels like that cohesion never really materializes.

• 1:03:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Shay, what was Shay? Shay is probably the closest to getting away with this, but even he was 32% usage, 35.8 assists in the playoffs. And the year they won the title was 32.9 and 30.6. So I think that's, it's around there that seems like the red area. You go back and you look at Bird and Magic in the eighties and their usage rate is like 24. You know, it just was inconceivable. Somebody would have the ball that much. And it's one of the things.

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 1:03:40Bill Simmons?

  We've overreacted. Like what happens in baseball with these walks and, walks and home runs and no other outcome. Was he one of one is the next question.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  That's, yeah. And this is where I come back to pro Westbrook. Like again, this is an absurd business where we watch other men play basketball. And he was my favorite player to just watch. It wasn't my, my favorite player analytically by any means.

• 1:04:06Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's just like, if you were, if you were at a game for two hours with your friends, like this is one of the five guys on earth that you'd want to watch do this thing. And he, like, you brought it up a few times, man. This guy was on the floor. He was in the crowd. He was attacking the stanchion before the game.

• 1:04:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  Ultimately, his legacy is part just entertainer. And in a league where you don't always get that with some of the other star players. So I, I think he's one of one. And I'll always remember that, like just the entertaining aspect of watching Westbrook play hoops.

• 1:04:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And seeing him in person, the way he carried himself, which was like Iverson carried himself that way. KG, there's only a couple of guys that just, you're like, man, game hasn't even started yet. That guy's fucking crazy. Guy looks like he's like about to go to war. And it'd be like game 52 against a 20 and 30 Clipper team. Some things I wrote about Westbrook, he's basically Jim Brown 50 years later with basketball shorts on. There was a column where I wrote, I just compared him to Teen Wolf and a poison movie character who uses so much of her brain that she becomes a robot and turns invisible. That was another column. I wrote the homicidally competitive, competitive legacy baton since

• 1:05:20Bill Simmons?

  1990. MJ, Iverson, Garnett, Kobe, then Westbrook, nobody else in the NBA gives even half as much of a shit as Russ does. Like you actually fear for his safety. I called him a tirelessly energetic freak maniac lunatic who just chugged 120 ounces of coffee. And then I wrote, only Westbrook makes you feel like you're watching a WWE star sprint into a crowded Royal Rumble ring and immediately start clearing it out. He needs his own entrance music. These are just, this is the Russell Westbrook legacy. He's a fucking lunatic. And it was great. I loved it.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  I have no notes on that one. That's perfectly said.

• 1:06:00Bill Simmons?

  Unintentional comedy wrinkle was the way he dealt with the media was my answer for this. Basically didn't like, any media members would look through them and pass them. If you've ever been on the other end of Russell Westbrook noticing you, realizing who you were, and then just kind of looking through your forehead. It's quite an experience.

• 1:06:21Bill Simmons?

  And yet was like, just had no time for it. And yet, all the people that played for him, except for a select few, were all like, this guy's the greatest guy on the planet. I fucking love Russell Westbrook. Like you could see when he retired, was just an awesome teammate, had no time for anybody else. But his media interactions, I think were the funniest thing about him.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  Oh, I had to interview him once for Grantland, 2014, 15, near the end. And man, he did not want to be around me. And it was tough. He was, and I respected him for it. But there I was in Oklahoma. And it was tough. The other unintentional comedy thing, I think that Bear's mentioning is, I'm not sure, this is not my department, maybe Wesley Morris, who probably did a think piece on this exact thing for us back in the day. Some of the fashion stuff.

• 1:07:09Bill Simmons?

  Before a game. I, I feel like he, he, he was the Bill Russell of, of bringing it to another era, the, the walk into the arena.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  And some of that shit looked as good as anything I've ever seen in my life. But then again, nobody cares about my taste, Bill Simmons. But some of them, I'm not sure are going to age very well and dare I say, might be funny for other people to look at.

• 1:07:31Bill Simmons?

  Oh, he was always pushing the envelope. And you'd be like, what the, what is he wearing? Wearing, but half the time it was cool, half the time it was just, you didn't know what was going on, but yeah.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  And he could pull that shit off more than like Kyle Kuzma who tried to, he, he had swagger walking through those tunnels in ways that like, everybody has to respect. He was one of the coolest men in America there in the 2010s and like, respect for trying, but man, that's tough to pull off some of those looks.

• 1:07:58Bill Simmons?

  He had that swagger in college. I was really into that draft and Westbrook was my sleeper in that whole draft. I don't say that as like, oh, I had Russ broken, but he really was like, I was like, I love this guy. I don't know what he is, but he's going to be an awesome pro. But I thought he was going to be like the 17th pick in the draft. Like I thought it was going to be one of those post lottery.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:20Bill Simmons?

  Oh my God, you get this guy like he's going to be like a cross, like Tony Allen on defense, but like a great, I never saw what was going to happen. And then during the course of basically March Madness through the draft, he started going up and he kept going up. And he got all the way to fourth and it, and I was like, I love this guy. I don't think he should go fourth. But part of it was the swagger and the athleticism because he had it that one year UCLA.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  And again, drafted by one of the smartest draft personnel guys the league seen in a long time and Sam Presti. But I would say Kevin Love always struck me with this story, like when they were both at UCLA, I think Kevin Love was a freshman and Russ was a sophomore. And Kevin was this hot shit, like All-American and, and Russell was like a local.

• 1:09:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  Barely made UCLA because Jordan Farmar left for the 2006 draft, so they had a slot. And when he got to the first practice, Kevin Love was like, oh my God, I'm not even the best player on this team. And that, at that time was like this unknown kid from LA, this three star recruit.

• 1:09:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  Uh, and, and Kevin was just like, holy shit, this guy is great.

• 1:09:29Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  And then, yeah, a year later, he's the, um, the number four pick in the draft. I think Kevin Love was, was number one. Was that the same draft?

• 1:09:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was OJ Mayo, Kevin Love. I think Kevin Love might've gone fifth.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  Oh, did he go fifth?

• 1:09:42Bill Simmons?

  Or third. He was, it was, yeah, it was one of, was that, wasn't Kevin Love in that draft? He was.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  I don't, he just, yeah, he just looked like Dick in the box era guy at that time. Kevin Love, the chin strap. That's all I remember.

• 1:09:53Bill Simmons?

  Kevin Love was another one. Now he was, I don't know how many more pounds than ended up being as a pro.

• 1:10:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Kevin Love was fifth, OJ Mayo, third, Michael Beasley, second. I mean, Miami passed on Russell Westbrook and Kevin Love in that draft, but.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 1:10:11Bill Simmons?

  But Kevin Love always had the rebounding where you're just like, that guy's, that guy is a guaranteed awesome rebounder in the pros. I don't care what else happens. And then Westbrook had the athleticism. We were like, worst case scenario, that guy's going to be one of the best athletes in every game he plays.

• 1:10:26Bill Simmons?

  All right, we're wrapping up with defining playoff moment. We mentioned the 2012 game four finals. To me, in a good way, it's the 2014 Clippers, OKC game five, the Chris Paul collapse.

• 1:10:44Bill Simmons?

  Series title two, it's in OKC. OKC's down 10188 with four minutes left. I would highly encourage people to go and watch this on YouTube again. They're down seven with 49 seconds left, call timeout. KD hits a crazy three over Big Baby.

• 1:10:59Bill Simmons?

  Clippers come down, for some reason Jamal Crawford's like, I got this and misses a shot. OKC gets it. Long pass down to Durant. Now it's a two point game. And by the way, that was Westbrook with the rebound football pass to Durant. Two point game. Chris Paul gets the ball bringing in and Westbrook goes in to do whatever. And Westbrook, Chris Paul's trying to get the foul, but like, I don't say the biggest fuck up of his career. And what, and Russ ends up stealing the ball, goes out of bounds, but it's OKC ball. And then Chris Paul fouls Russ on the three. He makes all three free throws. And then Chris Paul misses to lose the game, but uh, really clutch free throws, clutch steal, uh, clutch pass rebound.

• 1:11:44Bill Simmons?

  But if you just watch that game, you're like, all right, there's a game when, uh, and then he flipped it and that was kind of, the Clippers never got that close again.

• 1:11:52Bill Simmons?

  Did not come up in Doc's Hall of Fame speech. I don't think, I think if anyone brought that game up to him, he would have turned into jelly.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  JJ Reddick too. Yeah. I think that, that's, it's interesting. When I think of Russell, he's defined by this, this incredible explosive, frenetic energy.

• 1:12:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  And when he was able to channel it, Bill, in moments like that, it was the coolest thing in the NBA for a number of years. But when he was unable to control it, even in the form of his jump shot, the power he would explode off the ground with, I think was too much to have the touch that Kevin Durant had or Stephen Curry had. He was just too explosive. And I think that's what cost him a lot of times was just his inability to control his own explosiveness.

• 1:12:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  Um, whether it's mental explosiveness or physical, but in that moment, I thought he put it all together as a defender and just made the play of the game.

• 1:12:46Bill Simmons?

  It was like a guy who only drove one way in the highway.

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:51Bill Simmons?

  That was it. He was great if you want to go 88, 88 to 100 miles an hour. And try to get to one place to another, but then if you actually had to do a little more driving, it got a little dicey. Overrated, underrated, properly rated.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  How's he rated, Bill? You're, you're the guy here. How is he rated?

• 1:13:12Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, this is the toughest one I think you could have and one of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast. I think he's a whiff overrated.

• 1:13:22Bill Simmons?

  But I also think he might be a little underrated too, because we have so many years now of the different stage of his career, Westbrook, that kind of people forget now. You know, I hate to do the hashtag people forget, but people do forget. You know, it's just like, like NBA TV was running game four of the 2008 finals when the Celtics came back against the Lakers.

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:46Bill Simmons?

  And Paul Pierce is just guarding Kobe that whole game. Paul Pierce could guard LeBron and Kobe and was in big games against those dudes and big series and beat those guys, right?

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:13:55Bill Simmons?

  And then years later, he has that quote where he's like, I was better, you know, I was right there with Dwyane Wade and people are like, what? That's crazy. It's like. All right. It's actually, you know, I think Wade had a better career, have him higher in the pyramid, but it's not insane to think Paul Pierce, all the stuff he could do and the way he got better in big games. And all the different types of guys he could guard and how malleable he was with teammates. Like Paul Pierce was really good, but people just kind of forgot. And I wonder if that's happened with Westbrook a little bit.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  I was watching that too. I mean, speak to August, there's nothing on.

• 1:14:27Bill Simmons?

  Right, nothing on.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  That comeback and I watched Paul like attack the teeth of the defense on one side and then guard Kobe on the other side. And well deserved finals MVP in 2008 for the truth there. Look, as the analytics guy, I think the classic response here is he's overrated. But I asked you where he's rated. I know we'll get to your, your pyramid ranking, but.

• 1:14:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  You know, there are two Russell Westbrooks. There is the moment he gets traded from the Thunder, leaves the Thunder. The, the nine years before that, he is a perennial all-star. He's putting up crazy stats. They're always making deep runs in the playoffs. He won an MVP and two scoring championships and assist championship. If we're talking about that portion of this man's career. You know, maybe he's underrated because of what followed in the 2020s. He becomes this journeyman. Like it never works in Houston or really Washington, obviously Denver, Sacramento, Lakers, Clippers. There is that, and I think that is the, the exact right answer.

• 1:15:33Bill Simmons?

  But the Lakers thing really hurt him too with the not being able to fit in at all with AD and LeBron, which I think LeBron shared some culpability in, but it was just such a bad fit.

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:15:43Bill Simmons?

  Instead of the 90 10 thing, it felt like 50 50.

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  And he's an LA kid and he needed that to work. And if it had worked, it would have been the perfect way. And that's the last thing I had on him. Jason Kidd was Russell Westbrook at one point and sort of aged gracefully into this, okay, I'm Dirk's second banana here. Or even third banana in some cases and started to be able to shoot and changed his game. And, and if I would be hard on.

• 1:16:13Bill Simmons?

  It led to a title, by the way. And he became, he was probably the second best guy on that Mavs team.

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So if Jay Kidd were the, with the, with the Westbrook in LA, I think he would have found a way to be like, all right, let me just figure out how to contribute here and get out. And, and there, there's a fair criticism of the second half of his career. He was again, too defiant to sort of slide into that tertiary or, or later role stage, uh, in his career.

• 1:16:37Bill Simmons?

  It's a great point. I, Jay Kidd's the perfect example. Also Jay Kidd was good enough to lead a team to the finals, right?

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, but not quite get over.

• 1:16:47Bill Simmons?

  And you think like, all right, who was the second best teammate? It wasn't anybody better or worse than, you know, some of Russ's best stuff. And so anyway, I have, and I have Kade Webb, I have him ahead of Westbrook. I have Westbrook in the pyramid. I have him 58.

• 1:17:03Bill Simmons?

  So top 60, I have him just ahead of some, like the Busher and Hal Greer and Cunningham and Elvin Hayes, like these guys who were really good. I couldn't put him ahead of Nate Thurmond.

• 1:17:20Bill Simmons?

  Now, everybody's listening to this like, what the fuck's going on? Nate Thurman? What part of the podcast is this?

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  Hey, I'm just hoping you don't ask me any Nate Thurman questions.

• 1:17:27Bill Simmons?

  I have a lot of hot, Nate Thurman's like the lost great center of the 60s and 70s. Just got completely boned over on the all MBAs because he's going against Wilt and Russell and Kareem and Willis Reed. It's like a disaster, but was really good. Clyde Drexler, I have slightly ahead of him. Wes Unseld, Gary Payton, Paul Pierce and Patrick Ewing. Who, these are all level two for me. That's like, those are the last guys on level two. And I think Russ is right in that area and probably behind the last few I mentioned, but around 58.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  Some of the guards you mentioned, I could, I could have quibbles with Payton. And who was the other guard in that list?

• 1:18:08Bill Simmons?

  Clyde Drexler.

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  Drexler, yeah, I think, I bet there's a bunch of people in OKC like now being like, what the hell are you talking about, dude? Like, this is an MVP. He won the scoring champion.

• 1:18:17Bill Simmons?

  Clyde Drexler, second MVP in 92. Top 5 MVP twice. Second best guy on a champion team, right? We saw him in the

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  Twice.

• 1:18:25Bill Simmons?

  Second, he goes to the Rockets. They win the title, he's the second best guy. I don't know if Russ, if Russ goes to the team 95 Rockets, I don't know if. And then he was the best player in two finals runners ups where he was the best guy.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  Well, it's dream team and

• 1:18:38Bill Simmons?

  And dream team.

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  And Houston. Like, he was an incredible college player, too. And I don't know if that matters in the, in the pyramid or not.

• 1:18:45Bill Simmons?

  For me, it's like the playoff, the playoff ceiling has to factor in with this.

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:50Bill Simmons?

  Westbrook got to play with one of the best 20 to 25 guys ever in Durant. And was only able to win one finals game with him. But he basically won the lottery at Durant. If you're picking any forward other than LeBron to play with for the last 20 years, you're probably picking Durant. So I think, you know, it's hard. We've had 80 years of players. Like, you're one of the 60 best players ever. That's a real achievement, you know? And, but I do think the playoff success is where it falls apart a little. Anyway, Kirk Goldsberry, that was wonderful. Did you have anything else before we go? I know it's dead for NBA.

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  Well, I'm working on this new idea. I need to run it by you. I think the age of player empowerment is dead. I think we are now referencing your previous podcast, In the Age of Owner Empowerment. And I, I wanted to test this idea out with you. Starting with players like Victor Weminyama, taking less money. That is crazy. LeBron James, I think his decision in 2010 sort of starts player empowerment for, for, for, for some cases. And then going to Philly for 4 million. I think the second apron itself is proof that the owners really won this latest negotiation, the media deals, expansion, NBA Europe. But this is my, my, my, my take. I'm working on this piece for The Ringer.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  I wanted to get you in on it. Do you think it's fair to classify 2026 as the age of, of owner empowerment in the NBA?

• 1:20:17Bill Simmons?

  Are you saying owners have more power or they become more of a wild card?

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  I think I'm saying

• 1:20:25Bill Simmons?

  I think owners have the same power they've had. I think the difference is the intentions of an owner feels like it's starting to shift.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  Well, I think that's part of it. I feel like the teams are financial instruments now more than ever before. I think there were these heirloom investments, these community heirlooms that dudes would, you know, you would, if you were a rich guy and you owned a basketball team 20 years ago, you would get made fun of. There's these great Mark Cuban quotes where he's like, I bought the Mavs in the late 90s at 200 some million dollars. 15 years later, nobody would buy the New Orleans team for that same price. The valuations had stayed the same. And now we're at 12 and a half billion. And I think more and more of these people, I, so I, to answer your question, I think the intent of the owners has changed. The, this, I think the type of human being that's owning these teams has changed.

• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  And I think it's trickling all the way into the league. And that's sort of what I'm getting at with this concept.

• 1:21:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's weird because it's not like owners, wherever, you know, kind of the ideal.

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  You don't want them to be the face of the league.

• 1:21:32Bill Simmons?

  Person for a basketball franchise, they would be hit or miss, right? You'd have some people that were jackasses or they got left the team. There are a couple other people like that really cared or rich people that felt like, Mickey Arison of Miami is a good example, right? That guy's rich, but also really loves owning the Miami Heat and wants to be part of it. Peter Holt was like this for, for the Spurs. Like, there's, we've had some good ones. Dr. Bus was like that.

• 1:21:58Bill Simmons?

  And I don't, I don't think that era is over. Even like the guy who bought the Celtics, Chisholm, really grew up with the team, loves the team. He also, I think, made a pretty good purchase because you could argue for whatever they got. That, that looks great. So there's still a couple of people coming in that seem like they have good intentions. I don't, the, the part that's weird to me is if you're going to spend this much money on teams, you're gonna want to make money back. You're not, you know, you're gonna have to, you've spent so much, you can't then also lose money in the team, right? So the CBA is in their favor now. But ultimately, they're just gonna, like, the expansion is a good example.

• 1:22:41Bill Simmons?

  They're all gonna go for it because it's an extra 500 million a team. NBA Europe, WNBA expansion, any way they can carve the cat to have more, carve the cat? Why did I say carve the cat?

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:22:53Bill Simmons?

  I'm like the obsession. I'm like the obsession lady. Any way they can carve the pie for more money?

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  Grow the pie, yeah.

• 1:23:01Bill Simmons?

  Whatever, however you want to say it. It feels like they're now, everything is on the table. How do we make more money? That's all we care about. And that's, I think you're right. So I don't know if that's empowerment. It's more like, there's a, there's a word, I don't know what the word is. It's, it's, it, it could, the word I want to use is corrosive.

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a culture shift in sort of the identity of the league. And I think it's an allegory to what's happening in America to some extent, but we don't need to get into that. As it relates to the economics of, of the NBA, I think it's a fascinating moment. And, you know, it explains a lot of the bigger trends, like Brunson taking less, Karl-Anthony Towns, the second apron. Like, it trickles all the way down into the things that we do really care about as NBA fans. So I think it's interesting, whether you're talking about the Portland Trail Blazers or the LA Lakers. It seems like we're talking about owners a lot more than I would like to. And I like basketball.

• 1:24:01Bill Simmons?

  The Portland one was concerning because he bought the team, but clearly just because he wanted to grab a team. Now, we've had this in the past, but it was always because it was a good deal. Like, Perrin bought the Grizzlies because it was like, wow, that's all you're asking? A-Rod and, and Lori bought the T-Wolves because Luntaro was willing to sell it to them for 1.5 billion. They were smart enough to figure out how to structure it.

• 1:24:24Bill Simmons?

  But now we're getting into like, what are the Bulls worth? Apparently, there's this guy who bought a piece of the Bulls who has, he's the one that if they sell the Bulls, he has, very similar to Mark Walter with the Lakers. If the Bulls get sold, he's got first dibs on it. But you could argue the Bulls are a $10 billion team now. And that's probably the next one people will be circling.

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, when, now when you have billions of dollars at stake, like even the, the guy or the Celtics guy is like, oh, I could, I just bought this for six. Like, I could sell this for 10 tomorrow? Like, this is, it's a crazy delta.

• 1:24:55Bill Simmons?

  And the part that I don't even really fully understand, because I, this is not my world, but the tax advantages you get makes all of them want to continue to park their money in teams. Because you can just write off all of these losses and do all this chicanery with the numbers to make it, to make it worth. And it helps out your whole portfolio. And that's how they look at it now.

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  I guess I'll end with this. I liked when NBA discourse was about arguing about Russell Westbrook as opposed to talking about the whims of the billionaire class.

• 1:25:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, well, this Lakers thing's nuts. Like, even since I did the stuff about it on my podcast the other day, we found so much more. Like, it really feels like this is now veering toward, could this be in the Madoff area? Could this be in the, you know, Ivan Boski era? Is something like genuinely illegal happening? Was it happening this whole time? And I don't really understand that world. Like, Katie Baker wrote a great piece about it. There's been some good coverage on it. But if it turns out that this guy, Mark Walter, was really playing a show game, basically.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, taking your life insurance fund.

• 1:26:01Bill Simmons?

  What does that could mean for the Dodgers? Yeah. But basically stealing from people's grandparents to pay for sports teams.

• 1:26:08Bill Simmons?

  Anyway, kind of sobering, sobering way to end a really good, really good podcast segment, Kirk Goldsberry.

• 1:26:14Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me on, Bill.

• 1:26:15Bill Simmons?

  We should mention where there's a big Austin extravaganza that I'm not going to be able to go to, but we're, when is that, in October?

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  October 23rd.

• 1:26:22Bill Simmons?

  UT, Spurs, Sports Summit.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, Spurs are playing the Rockets. Katie back on campus. Then we have Ole Miss playing UT, Manning Fest. And then we have F1. So we're going to get Brian Curtis and Van Lathan out here at least, and maybe you, but you're going to the East Coast.

• 1:26:38Bill Simmons?

  Van Lathan's always available. Yeah, I can't, but we'll, we'll send some good Ringer people. Good to see you, Kirk Goldsberry. Hope you're enjoying the summer. We're gonna take a break and, and come back with Van and Chris.

• 1:26:48Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 1:27:42Bill Simmons?

  All right, we did rewatchables today and we thought we'd do 15 minutes on sports stuff because Vane Lathan is here and Chris Ryan is here. Vane, you want to talk college football?

• 1:27:49Speaker 05

  Let's do it.

• 1:27:50Bill Simmons?

  You were one of the hosts of The Ringer Tailgate, the best show on The Ringer?

• 1:27:53Speaker 05

  One of the best shows ever.

• 1:27:54Speaker 06

  Ever?

• 1:27:55Bill Simmons?

  I'm locked in on UCLA. I have the over on six and a half wins and seven F wins.

• 1:28:00Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:28:01Bill Simmons?

  I'm all in. My guy Chesney is there. What are the big storylines, though? Give us the top three. Casual college football fans, what should we care about?

• 1:28:09Speaker 05

  Casual college football fans. You know, there are not a lot of huge storylines really going into the season, obviously.

• 1:28:14Bill Simmons?

  Can I guess?

• 1:28:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, guess some of the top.

• 1:28:17Bill Simmons?

  You want to guess?

• 1:28:18Speaker 06

  Well, is the number one storyline, all the macro changes happening to the administration of the sport, NIL? Who's in trouble for what? Whether they'll break off and start super leagues?

• 1:28:29Bill Simmons?

  That sounds depressing. That's the number one storyline?

• 1:28:33Speaker 05

  I mean, to me, you have, if inside of college football, some storylines are Lincoln Riley at USC. This be a prove it year for him, whether or not you think that it is or not. Obviously, Lane Kiffin at LSU.

• 1:28:44Bill Simmons?

  I would say USC versus UCLA potentially being revived.

• 1:28:48Speaker 06

  That's a somewhat.

• 1:28:49Bill Simmons?

  That sounds like a fun storyline.

• 1:28:50Speaker 06

  Storyline for you.

• 1:28:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, not, no one really, that's one of, to me.

• 1:28:53Bill Simmons?

  Nationally, nobody cares.

• 1:28:55Speaker 05

  Nationally, nobody cares. But most of the storylines in college football have had to do with like the Brendan Sorsby situation, the conversation about gambling in college football, the the congressional involvement in college football, say college sports act, Nick Saban and some of the things that he's been saying about the actual future of how the sport is organized.

• 1:29:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we've been talking about that for years. College football is always going to be a complete fucking mess. Who are the best quarterbacks?

• 1:29:24Speaker 05

  The best quarterbacks are Arch Manning, maybe.

• 1:29:27Bill Simmons?

  See, I would say Arch Manning being really good and potentially winning a national championship would be the number one story.

• 1:29:32Speaker 05

  Ted Chambly.

• 1:29:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:29:34Speaker 05

  San at Ohio State.

• 1:29:36Speaker 06

  Dante in Oregon.

• 1:29:37Speaker 05

  Dante Moore at Oregon.

• 1:29:39Bill Simmons?

  Who's nice. These guys all stuck around instead of going to the NFL.

• 1:29:42Speaker 06

  Because they get paid as much to be there.

• 1:29:44Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:29:44Bill Simmons?

  Who go in the NFL and gotten their shit kicked out of them.

• 1:29:45Speaker 05

  I mean, to be real with you, the NIL has completely changed, like the need for a player to leave before they're ready to go. Right now, you can stay until maybe you're overcooked a little bit and get as much money out of the NIL, then go try it in the NFL.

• 1:30:01Bill Simmons?

  That would happen to Dante Moore, right? In the old days, he just would have come out, he wouldn't have been ready.

• 1:30:05Speaker 06

  He would have been on the Jets.

• 1:30:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and he just would have gotten their shit kicked out of him.

• 1:30:09Speaker 06

  Do you think that Indiana is like perfectly designed to be the closest thing you can have to a dynasty in this era? Or do you think like we're in a parody period and it's going to be a different champ every year?

• 1:30:23Speaker 05

  I think we'll see this year. They have Hoover coming in from TCU, who was an excellent quarterback. And so if they can make another run, I think people will begin to believe in the sustainability of the Indiana model. Now, I should say that even the year before, they went crazy and legitimately were one of the most dominant teams in college football. They were a great team that went very, very far, but people still kind of didn't believe until they saw them like Python Alabama and just legitimately squeezed the life out of some of these other teams. But after they've lost a little bit of something and everybody now is going to be giving them their best shot, I think this year is kind of the year where we'll see the long lasting dominance, if it exists, with Indiana.

• 1:31:03Bill Simmons?

  You know who else that lost? Jesus. He was looking over Indiana, Mendoza.

• 1:31:09Speaker 05

  It's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:12Speaker 05

  Yeah. I think they're going to be a really good team, but I'll tell you what, any national media person that still doesn't believe and talk shit on them and what they're doing, you do it at your own peril because they've just been kicking blue bloods' ass, spilling blue blood all over college football for about two years now.

• 1:31:28Bill Simmons?

  Good coach.

• 1:31:29Speaker 05

  Excellent coach.

• 1:31:30Bill Simmons?

  Good program, good chemistry and camaraderie.

• 1:31:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:31:33Bill Simmons?

  The Purdue athletic director. He's getting a bear trap trying to talk shit. I'm fainted. Ohio State is the favorite, but Notre Dame is the number two favorite, and then CR's Ducks are third.

• 1:31:45Speaker 06

  CR's Ducks. Got some Oregon merch while I was up in Oregon this week.

• 1:31:49Speaker 05

  You love them.

• 1:31:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:31:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:31:50Speaker 06

  I like, I like Dan Lanning. I feel like he and I could hang out.

• 1:31:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, I could trade Zins. Yeah, I just really like, I like everything about Oregon, like the merch, the the colors, the pageantry, the way they play.

• 1:32:05Speaker 05

  I think the thing about Dan Lanning is this.

• 1:32:08Speaker 06

  Got to win the big one.

• 1:32:08Speaker 05

  Everybody knows he's a good coach.

• 1:32:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:32:11Speaker 05

  But do people know yet that he is a great coach? And he's like had that team in position and really actually even changed their mental makeup. Like they, you had Chip Kelly out there and he was playing a style of ball at Oregon that was quick and nasty and you couldn't really prepare for it. Lanning has instituted something different there. With an edge and they play super physical and all of that stuff, but he's still got to win some big games.

• 1:32:38Speaker 06

  And he lost his OC and his DC.

• 1:32:40Speaker 05

  Right. So he's, he's got to win some big games.

• 1:32:41Bill Simmons?

  I always wonder what happens with coaches when they have it for a second and then they, they just lose it. Chip Kelly had it for like

• 1:32:48Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:32:49Bill Simmons?

  three, four years, right?

• 1:32:50Speaker 05

  No, he had it for a long time.

• 1:32:51Bill Simmons?

  No, but I'm saying like when he, he was the hottest commodity for an NFL team to hire and it was like, oh, this guy, he's going to be like offensive Belichick.

• 1:32:57Speaker 06

  The beginning of that.

• 1:32:58Bill Simmons?

  Now he's like, he just got fired as the Raiders offensive coordinator 10 games into the season.

• 1:33:03Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:33:03Bill Simmons?

  Like, how do you just lose the edge with that?

• 1:33:07Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, the, the question is, does that scheme work in the NFL?

• 1:33:10Bill Simmons?

  Or is that what it is? It was all scheme and once the, once defenses figured it out. And that happened a little bit with Buddy Ryan, right? This Buddy Ryan had this groundbreaking defense and then at some point in the mid 90s, it shifted. And then he wasn't groundbreaking anymore. It's almost like a director.

• 1:33:25Speaker 06

  He had one move.

• 1:33:26Bill Simmons?

  A couple, yeah, it's like a director who can have three good movies and then can't sustain it.

• 1:33:30Speaker 06

  I hate it, but it's what Belichick was good at, was like reinventing what he did.

• 1:33:33Bill Simmons?

  Adapting and reinventing.

• 1:33:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, and it's like to watch the Randy Moss Patriots versus the Patriots that first won the Super Bowl, you're like, this is a completely different team. This is completely different, like philosophy that they're executing out there.

• 1:33:45Bill Simmons?

  That was my favorite Belichick quality, was that he was amorphous to whatever his talent was. He was like, oh, we're good at this. I'll do it this way this year. Which I don't think a lot of coaches like, here's my scheme. I got to fit my guys into mine. This is how we do stuff and those are the guys that always get in trouble.

• 1:34:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, well, there's some college, there's different aspects of the game, right? There's like disparity in talent that exists not just from conference to conference, but like even within a team.

• 1:34:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:16Speaker 05

  You can have a team with an incredible blue chip ratio, but still, you got to fill some of those places with guys that weren't like exactly four or five, especially now. Right? And so for him to go as fast as he was going, to take advantages of some of the stuff that he was doing schematically, that's just probably easier to do in the Pac 12 than it is in the NFC East.

• 1:34:37Bill Simmons?

  Well, how many coaches would you say like, oh, that guy's good? We're just like blind. Everybody would agree with it, like the score or not. We're, like, you said Dan Lanning. I think most people would be like, oh, yeah, that guy's good.

• 1:34:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, Kirby's good.

• 1:34:50Speaker 05

  Kirby's good.

• 1:34:50Bill Simmons?

  Indiana coach. Oh, that guy's good.

• 1:34:52Speaker 06

  Signetti's good.

• 1:34:52Bill Simmons?

  Lane Kiffin's at that point now, right?

• 1:34:54Speaker 05

  Lane Kiffin is definitely a guy who, right away, think about somebody in a different thing that like he legitimately raises the floor of whatever it is that you have, a floor raiser, a true floor raiser. Lane Kiffin is going to do that. If you, Lane Kiffin runs the type of offense and the type of program to where if you start off and you're a five win team, you're going to every year be now a nine win team. The question with Lane Kiffin still is can you be a 14 or 15 win team? Because like, as, as deep of a run as Ole Miss made last year, I don't know, the, the question with Lane is the same as Dan Lanning.

• 1:35:33Speaker 05

  Like Lane Kiffin still has yet to take a team and get them over the hump to a national championship. And if he wants to be mentioned in the same vein as the rest of these guys, he's got to find a place to do that. And if he doesn't do it at LSU, I think his national reputation will diminish a lot.

• 1:35:49Speaker 06

  OC at like Miami Dolphins.

• 1:35:51Speaker 05

  It's going to be tough, yeah.

• 1:35:52Bill Simmons?

  That's like we have NBA players like that, right? You can take it around two.

• 1:35:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:35:56Bill Simmons?

  Maybe even, you can sniff round three.

• 1:35:58Speaker 06

  Want to say something after that?

• 1:36:00Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:36:00Speaker 06

  Okay, I thought you were, I thought that was an NBA thing.

• 1:36:02Bill Simmons?

  We're not throwing daggers here. It's August.

• 1:36:04Speaker 05

  Or you have, you have guys that can get you to the finals as the number one guy. They can get you to the finals as the number one guy.

• 1:36:10Bill Simmons?

  Not that many guys.

• 1:36:12Speaker 05

  I mean.

• 1:36:12Bill Simmons?

  They can get to the conference finals, but I think, like, there's Donovan Mitchell can get you to round two or round three.

• 1:36:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:36:18Bill Simmons?

  But has been unable to get people to round four. Harden, unable.

• 1:36:22Speaker 05

  But just think about it like this, like Jimmy Butler.

• 1:36:25Bill Simmons?

  Jimmy Butler.

• 1:36:25Speaker 05

  Jimmy Butler can get you to the NBA finals.

• 1:36:29Bill Simmons?

  That's why he's so tough to rank historically.

• 1:36:31Speaker 05

  That's why it's difficult that Jimmy Butler can get you to the NBA finals.

• 1:36:34Bill Simmons?

  I have him 100th.

• 1:36:36Speaker 06

  Do you?

• 1:36:36Bill Simmons?

  My pyramid, my revised pyramid that I've spent the whole summer working on for really no reason.

• 1:36:42Bill Simmons?

  Because my kids are all the one I got me.

• 1:36:43Speaker 06

  100th all time.

• 1:36:45Bill Simmons?

  I have him 100th because of the two finals. I really value those.

• 1:36:50Speaker 05

  That he got to.

• 1:36:50Bill Simmons?

  He was the best guy on two teams that made the finals.

• 1:36:53Speaker 05

  Made to the finals, right?

• 1:36:54Bill Simmons?

  It's the hardest thing to do.

• 1:36:55Speaker 05

  And they were, those teams, when they got there, they actually kind of made you believe like, can they pull this off? There's no.

• 1:37:02Bill Simmons?

  And he also dragon slayered some teams.

• 1:37:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, he beat some teams that he had no business beating.

• 1:37:06Bill Simmons?

  Giannis, when Giannis was good and, you know, he took down a really good Celtics team that won the title the next year.

• 1:37:12Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:37:12Speaker 05

  Right. So there are coaches that are like that.

• 1:37:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:15Speaker 05

  That, that perennially can get you there.

• 1:37:18Bill Simmons?

  So is it less than 10?

• 1:37:21Speaker 05

  Of like elite coaches in college football right now?

• 1:37:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that everybody agrees that guy's good.

• 1:37:25Speaker 05

  Well.

• 1:37:26Bill Simmons?

  Is it eight?

• 1:37:27Speaker 06

  There's a lot of guys that.

• 1:37:28Speaker 05

  There's Marcus Freeman at, at Notre Dame.

• 1:37:30Bill Simmons?

  There's another one.

• 1:37:30Speaker 05

  There's Steve Sarkisian at Texas.

• 1:37:32Bill Simmons?

  Ohio State guy's another one.

• 1:37:33Speaker 06

  Ryan Day.

• 1:37:34Speaker 05

  There's Ryan Day at Ohio. All, everybody knows that these guys are badasses. But they have, even amongst those guys, there's still people that are waiting. There's some people that have had better days, like, like a Dabo Sweeney, who at one point was at the top of the elite coaches, like a Nick Saban slayer.

• 1:37:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:50Speaker 05

  Right? And there are some guys that are past that. Some guys like Freeman who are still marching towards having that type of reputation, but you know that they're great coaches. And then some guys like Kirby who are like retooling.

• 1:38:03Bill Simmons?

  But I think the, I think, but of all of them what?

• 1:38:05Speaker 05

  Of all of them, there are about five dudes that if you have them year in, year out, you're competing for a national championship.

• 1:38:12Bill Simmons?

  I think the NFL is six.

• 1:38:14Speaker 06

  Let's hear it.

• 1:38:16Bill Simmons?

  I think McDonald is in there now for what Seattle did. Seattle literally could have won every game last year. And I think whatever he was doing, he seemed that, he, he has to be in the discussion.

• 1:38:25Speaker 05

  John McVay.

• 1:38:26Bill Simmons?

  McVay.

• 1:38:27Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:38:27Bill Simmons?

  I think Sean Payton. I think Shanahan.

• 1:38:32Bill Simmons?

  Ben Johnson, I think, is there now.

• 1:38:35Speaker 06

  Would you say Sirianni?

• 1:38:37Bill Simmons?

  I wouldn't. I would have, I would have Rabel as the.

• 1:38:39Speaker 05

  This is so interesting.

• 1:38:40Bill Simmons?

  I would have Rabel as the sixth one because he's had success on two teams with pretty flawed teams.

• 1:38:46Speaker 06

  Two families.

• 1:38:51Speaker 05

  He's a very versatile coach. He can succeed in his own house, on the road, and at home. Somebody say he's better on the road.

• 1:38:58Bill Simmons?

  If there's an NFL meetings, maybe he'll know a good B and B two hours away.

• 1:39:03Speaker 06

  Are there like, it's like a hot springs around here you guys happen to know?

• 1:39:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, thinking about going up with some friends.

• 1:39:08Speaker 06

  Sort of like a high hedge, though.

• 1:39:09Bill Simmons?

  You know what's interesting about that list? I don't know if Jim Harbaugh, neither Harbaugh is on my list for the top six. Jim Harbaugh, I think we want to be in the list, but he hasn't been the results. I think Andy's off. I think he's too old now. I thought that Chiefs, that Chiefs season last year was such a mess. I don't know how.

• 1:39:28Speaker 05

  Can I ask you guys a question just about Sirianni? We've talked about this before. So I'm fascinated with why he's so poorly regarded with the amount of success that the Eagles have had.

• 1:39:41Bill Simmons?

  Because I think they have so much talent. It's almost like people think they win despite him.

• 1:39:46Speaker 06

  And the GM has the mystique that is usually reserved for the coach. So like, everybody is sort of like, Howie season, trust Howie, Howie knows what he's doing, like, watch what Howie did here. And it just, all of the credit winds up going to him, it goes to Fangio, and it's all dependent on like, who's the OC? If it's Kellen Moore, then we're great. If it's Kevin Patula, we're bad. Everybody's losing their mind about Sean Mannion right now. But it's not unlike the way people look at Jalen Hurts, where it's like, well, this guy has won a Super Bowl, been to a Super Bowl. Outside of that, they're always, with the exception of that real detonation season, consistently very good. But gets no like, kind of like, hot talk show respect, kind of.

• 1:40:29Bill Simmons?

  Well, wouldn't you say, wouldn't you say the key thing is? If you wouldn't be shocked if the guy got fired after the season, I don't think you can be in the top six.

• 1:40:37Speaker 06

  Right, but like, you've got Ben Johnson in there, and it's like, Ben Johnson hasn't done anything compared to Sirianni.

• 1:40:43Bill Simmons?

  I just think he's, I just think he's gonna be there for a while. I feel the best about him.

• 1:40:48Speaker 05

  What is the Green Bay coach again? I forget his name for some reason.

• 1:40:50Speaker 06

  Uh, LaFleur.

• 1:40:51Speaker 05

  LaFleur. I think he's a better coach than Ben Johnson. I think he's, I think he's.

• 1:40:55Bill Simmons?

  I don't know, I thought LaFleur was gonna get fired after the playoffs last year.

• 1:40:57Speaker 05

  I understand that, but like, to have him Ben Johnson on the list, other than a coach that's won a Super Bowl and played for another one. And by the way, say something about the Jalen Hurts thing, is that Jalen Hurts not only got there, but played phenomenally in those Super Bowl games. He really played good, and I think that the fact that that team has been able to maximize, not all the time, not all the time. He's not swinging it around all the time, like, making no look throws and all of that stuff. But they've been able to maximize their personnel and play in a way that's distinct and unique to who they have, shows that they're really well coached.

• 1:41:27Bill Simmons?

  I just thought what Ben Johnson did last year was outrageous. I mean, that team, his quarterback, he had to almost teach him on the fly how to be a consistent kind of guy who could actually take somebody.

• 1:41:37Speaker 05

  Give him some structure, yeah.

• 1:41:38Bill Simmons?

  He had a bunch of young players, he had to take over a whole new organization. When you can take over a franchise that's just been run like shit, and in nine, that's what Vrabel did too, and in nine months, just fix it? I think that's like the hardest thing to do. Sirianni was inheriting a really good infrastructure, a great front office, and a ton of talent.

• 1:41:56Speaker 06

  Well, I mean, he was inheriting a Super Bowl winning team that had decayed, came in and revitalized it. And I think because he was like, a little bit more of a younger, fresher voice that was about like, more being a CEO. Whereas Doug Peterson, I think, had a little bit more control. Although Nick's system, this has been always the issue, is Nick has an offensive system that I think he likes to implement. And OCs that come in, either fully adopt it or like, add their wrinkles to it. And this has been the time, I think, I think, conditional on Nick's keeping his job, they were like, you have to basically give Mannion the keys.

• 1:42:32Bill Simmons?

  Well, you're an Eagles fan. Do you think he's a good coach? Like, I would fight for Vrabel for the death unless we were talking about husband of the year.

• 1:42:40Speaker 06

  I would not fight Nick Sirianni to the death.

• 1:42:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, and we had this conversation at Core Week one time. Core Week, we love to hang out and have conversations. And I'm, I just.

• 1:42:49Bill Simmons?

  Core Week.

• 1:42:50Speaker 05

  I love Core Week.

• 1:42:51Bill Simmons?

  Dan loves Core Week.

• 1:42:51Speaker 05

  I love.

• 1:42:52Bill Simmons?

  Dan loves that multiple ringer people are just together.

• 1:42:54Speaker 05

  I just love a room full of ringer people.

• 1:42:56Speaker 06

  Can I run calls, but in real life?

• 1:42:58Speaker 05

  Like, to talk to stuff about. I just, I don't understand the Sirianni thing. I understand like, being frustrated with the way the team, and particularly Jalen Hurts has played at times. Especially in this era of like, you know, so much being on the quarterback and all of that stuff. But he's been so successful, and they've been perennially in contention. I just kind of don't get it. Even the Jim Harbaugh thing that you could, that you could bring up. So if you look at Jim Harbaugh, the success that he's had as a coach in the last 20 years.

• 1:43:29Bill Simmons?

  San Francisco, Michigan, Chargers.

• 1:43:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, you could argue that like, there are very few peers there. He's won a national championship at Michigan. He's had, forget about what he did at Stanford as well, to have Stanford as an elite, upper echelon team. Then he goes to the 49ers, has them in the Super Bowl, they do not win, but he continues to have success. Right away, not only are you a good team with Jim Harbaugh, you have the chance to be a great team.

• 1:43:56Bill Simmons?

  You have your 10-win credibility, basically.

• 1:43:58Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 1:43:58Speaker 06

  I like this exercise. Can I put you on the spot and ask you who the NBA coaches would be?

• 1:44:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'd have to, let me get my standings.

• 1:44:07Speaker 06

  Because I think in a lot of these sports, I'll vamp while you look.

• 1:44:12Bill Simmons?

  Okay, I'm ready.

• 1:44:13Speaker 06

  You're seeing like, a rise of the technocratic coach, who's like, I'm very good at one specific thing. Or I'm very good as like, a vibes guy, but they're, the idea of a coach being bigger than the team, I think is going away in a lot of different sports.

• 1:44:27Speaker 05

  I agree. It would be hard for it to go away in college football.

• 1:44:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, but even in college football, it's like, the guys that get jobs now are like, I know, I know Chesney and these dudes, but like, it seems like it's like Eric Morrison, Will Stein. And it's like, do you have a playbook? And if you do, we'll pay the premium and give you the head coaching job, just so that we don't have to get a new OC every year.

• 1:44:47Speaker 05

  But I'll say this though, I agree with that, but at some point in college football,

• 1:44:53Speaker 05

  you, just the personality of your program just has to be your head coach. This is the reason why they've been making fun of me on Tailgate, because of the twinkle. The twinkle that I saw in Chesney's eye. I did not want to agree with Bill about this. I hate agreeing with Bill.

• 1:45:08Speaker 06

  But you were like, at the practice.

• 1:45:09Speaker 05

  I was there, and I watched the way people responded to him in the building.

• 1:45:14Bill Simmons?

  Leader of men.

• 1:45:14Speaker 05

  I watched the way they talked about UCLA football legitimately while we were there. They were tearing at the practice, practice field, doing new stuff, and I just, it'd be difficult not to believe in it. You know, before, you know who Harbaugh reminds me of? Jim Harbaugh? He's like a football coach, he's like the Larry Brown of like, football coaches. Like, the Larry Brown of it. Now, he didn't, he hasn't gotten over the top in professional football yet. But like, if you have Larry Brown like, coaching your team, automatically, your team is going to pull it together.

• 1:45:48Speaker 06

  Until they fucking hate him.

• 1:45:49Speaker 05

  Until they, see, that's the same shit, though, with Harbaugh. That's the same thing.

• 1:45:54Bill Simmons?

  This is why basketball is so different. Because like, Mike Brown just won with the Knicks. Mike Brown failed on like, four of their teams, right? So I think there's this cluster of coaches, that if you gave them the right team, they could make the final four and maybe even win the title. I think it's a bunch of them. No, I think Spo's on a different level, because no matter what his team is, the team's successful. And they've overachieved in these crazy ways.

• 1:46:20Speaker 05

  He culture.

• 1:46:21Bill Simmons?

  I also think coaching LeBron and Wade and Bosch those first couple of years was like, the single hardest thing any coach did the last 15 years. Where it's like, if this doesn't work out, I'm getting fired. And I don't have buy-in from these guys, because they've decided, everything on this team, I have to win these guys over. You remember, there was a lot of battling in that first season, and even the second season. I just thought the way he navigated that was pretty special. I think Dagnall's really good.

• 1:46:47Speaker 06

  Yes, but in my mind.

• 1:46:48Bill Simmons?

  I think Chris Finch is good.

• 1:46:50Speaker 06

  Dagnall is like, that kind of like, technocrat coach that I'm thinking of, where it's like, emerges out of a system. Presti is the man, the wizard, everything is kind of like, top to bottom, you're here. And I think he's very, very good, I'm just saying, like.

• 1:47:05Bill Simmons?

  He's good, he had a really hard roster to keep everyone happy, and he was able to do it, which I think in the NBA is the hardest thing to do. But Missoula, I think, has been an amazing regular season coach. And they've blown three playoff series in the last four years, where they were huge favorites.

• 1:47:19Speaker 05

  You're up and down on him sometimes, it seems like. Like, sometimes you're completely bottomed on him.

• 1:47:23Bill Simmons?

  I thought the Philly series last year was one of the worst losses anyone's had. Yeah, I mean, you know that, like, Embiid didn't even play there. Embiid didn't even, it was ridiculous. How did they lose to Philly?

• 1:47:39Bill Simmons?

  When you look back at that series, you're like, how the fuck did we in a million years win that?

• 1:47:43Speaker 06

  You guys looked and they were, they were just like, we need Paul George. The Celtics were just like, we gotta get PG out of there.

• 1:47:48Bill Simmons?

  He's probably the best forward in this series.

• 1:47:49Speaker 05

  Who are the, who are the other coaches? So Missoula?

• 1:47:53Bill Simmons?

  I mean, that's really it. Cause then everybody else is, I think Steve Kerr is still really good.

• 1:47:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, there are guys who have done a lot, but like Ty, Ty Lou and Steve Kerr.

• 1:48:03Bill Simmons?

  I would say Charles Lee is probably my favorite younger one.

• 1:48:06Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:48:06Bill Simmons?

  I thought the stuff they did last year with the team they had and how weird the team was.

• 1:48:11Speaker 05

  Catch, catch some of them.

• 1:48:12Bill Simmons?

  And maybe, maybe Nurse.

• 1:48:14Speaker 06

  Really?

• 1:48:15Bill Simmons?

  I, I thought him, I thought he completely out coached Missoula. He's won a title, right? He's made conference finals and you know, he might be a little better, but I, I don't know. There's probably like three or four, and then there's like another five or six. But how many, how many guys could have won with the Knicks last year? Right?

• 1:48:32Speaker 06

  Well, I don't know. I mean like.

• 1:48:34Bill Simmons?

  You need to be a defensive kind of, kind of presence guy. You also need to have the ability to stand up to Towns.

• 1:48:42Speaker 06

  You have to ride the storm. But that team hated each other for like part of last season and you know.

• 1:48:47Bill Simmons?

  So he navigated that. So he gets credit for that, but I wouldn't have thought he could have done that a year ago.

• 1:48:51Speaker 05

  At the same time, it felt, it also feels like he allowed in a very unique way for that team to take on its own personality. And he injected a belief system into the team.

• 1:49:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, Finch does that with the Timberwolves too.

• 1:49:04Speaker 05

  Like he injected a belief system into them.

• 1:49:06Bill Simmons?

  Finch is a good one. Cause that's a really hard team to coach. You have like real flaws.

• 1:49:10Speaker 05

  This is something else about, uh, Brown to me is it also seemed like to me that the success of the Knicks, had as much to do with his journey as a basketball coach to where

• 1:49:23Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:49:24Speaker 05

  he got to that point in his career where he had had some high profile failures, been through some stuff. And he understood just how to hold on enough and let go enough and believe and still believe.

• 1:49:36Speaker 06

  Would Doc and the Celtics be kind of a comp for Mike Brown?

• 1:49:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but even the Doc thing was rocky because he was playing, he just didn't want to play young guys.

• 1:49:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:49:47Bill Simmons?

  Right? Mike Brown was way more willing to embrace the bench. Doc eventually, the, the corner turned when he started playing the younger guys and trusting Rondo. Hey, it's interesting talking to different people around the league who they respect as great coaches. Like when Atkinson got fired by Brooklyn. And you know, the people around the league were like, that's fucking crazy. This guy's a good coach. And the kind of the litmus test of like, does everybody else think the guy's a good coach? And did the owner fuck that up? Then there's other cases where like Budenholzer was a good coach until he wasn't.

• 1:50:19Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:50:20Bill Simmons?

  You know, and I think that happens sometimes in college football and pro football too. Sometimes the guys have it for five, six years and then it's just gone.

• 1:50:27Speaker 05

  I'm gonna ask you a real casual question. Let's say you're sitting down with somebody that doesn't follow NBA basketball at all. What makes a good coach? Cause in college football, I absolutely know what makes a good coach. Right? In college football, I absolutely know, you can tell when a guy like both on the field, what it is that you're doing, but also when a guy has the presence and the institutional integrity to define a program. That's like, to me, the top thing that makes a college football coach.

• 1:50:57Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:50:58Speaker 05

  But for NBA, for the NBA, a game that is so, analytics are so important to it. Sometimes like, I don't even know if casuals know what makes a good coach.

• 1:51:05Speaker 06

  I think it's different, like regular season coaching and playoff coaching is definitely different. Just like regular, regular season basketball and playoff basketball.

• 1:51:11Bill Simmons?

  And what your team's objectives are, how you manage, like maybe my star portal only wants to play 55 to 60 games. How to manage that? I think NFL coaches by far is still the most important. Like if you get one of the six or seven real guys, that's your, a 10 to 12 win team a year if you have talent. Right? Like when we had Belichick, it really didn't matter who was on the team. With Belichick and Brady, we were probably going to win like 12 to 14 games. But then as he got older, you could kind of see the team decaying. Special teams started going, right? He started missing drafts. There were these things that, these kind of red flags.

• 1:51:47Speaker 05

  And then he's just like.

• 1:51:48Bill Simmons?

  In basketball, you just get fired if it doesn't work out for one year. Right? You have, you have like Anthony Edwards is your superstar and you

• 1:51:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:51:55Bill Simmons?

  losing round one, you're just getting fired. Right? They're always gonna pick the players. It's just how it goes.

• 1:52:00Speaker 06

  You could be like Taylor Jenkins, red hot, Memphis is the future.

• 1:52:04Bill Simmons?

  Taylor Jenkins, great example.

• 1:52:05Speaker 06

  And then fired and gone. Yeah.

• 1:52:06Bill Simmons?

  Eme, if Houston's a mess this year, he'll get fired.

• 1:52:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:52:09Bill Simmons?

  But the, the lifespan of the NBA coaches are nuts. It's like four years is a long time. Who did they say was the third? Isn't Missoula like the third longest coach?

• 1:52:18Speaker 06

  It's something crazy like that.

• 1:52:21Speaker 06

  Will Hardy's a good coach, right?

• 1:52:22Bill Simmons?

  My, Will Hardy's good. My question is, how do you motivate these dudes? When we get to like, these guys are making 70 million a year.

• 1:52:30Speaker 06

  Well, what's the difference between that and making 30 a year? Like, I mean, like, do you think they're?

• 1:52:33Speaker 05

  You still making?

• 1:52:34Speaker 06

  I understand generational wealth, but like, I just mean like, are you saying, it's not like they were underpaid.

• 1:52:39Bill Simmons?

  I'm saying when you have a team, you have a team that has a star, they can't trade the star who's making a shitload of money. And he's not going anywhere. And if he doesn't get along with his coach, the coach is losing that every time.

• 1:52:50Speaker 05

  So I, so this is my thing. I think the league is so star dependent. That a lot of this is just, this coach, the coaches are tethered to these guys. And if these guys have bad dispositions, you're just not gonna win a lot. You're not gonna win at the highest level. It's just, it's just going to be tough. If you get a Yanis or a Jokic, who for whatever reason has all of this talent, but also is addicted to competition and want to be the best, you just end up going further than if you have some of these other guys. Some of these other guys that can be weird, mercurial, destroy a team. A lot of that is just based in how these superstars look at themselves. And you can, you can build around it. You can coach, but you can't, some of it, you're, you're handcuffed to it.

• 1:53:32Speaker 06

  Also, I don't know, man. I mean, we're starting to see now once a year, a top 15 NBA player get traded. And it, in an inexplicable way sometimes. So if you could trade Luka and you can trade Jalen and these guys are all like, I don't want to go in the second apron and I don't want 50% or 60% of my salary cap wrapped up in two guys, choose one. But I mean, I don't know, maybe the coach will take on a greater precedence, you know?

• 1:53:56Speaker 05

  I look, I'm a Laker fan. I love Luka, right? Love Luka. Love watching Luka play and all of that stuff, but if you're coaching Luka, if you're coaching Luka, that must be an interesting spot to be in. Because your team is always going to be just relevant enough for you to get blamed for the fact that he doesn't always play in a way that, I mean, Luka is, is a phenomenal player. But he, he's gonna keep you just relevant enough to be incredibly criticized. But having Luka does not necessarily mean that you are going to win a championship.

• 1:54:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And you also have to build your team around all of his strengths and weaknesses.

• 1:54:34Speaker 05

  In order to have the type of success, he has to have a team that is just tailored for him. So it's an interesting spot to be in. And as, as we talk about like superstar players in the league, there are very few guys in the league that if you have this guy, that you can put scraps around him and you're going to the finals.

• 1:54:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's what, I think Halliburton's like that. I think you can build any type of team around him. Right? I think Tatum is like that too. These guys who, they can kind of be whatever. They can fill these different spots. Why, why'd you look at each other? Tatum's made two finals and.

• 1:55:08Speaker 05

  Well, let's see it, let's see it happen now.

• 1:55:10Bill Simmons?

  He's really good. I, I think.

• 1:55:12Speaker 06

  I'm not saying he's, I was actually reacting to Halliburton. That's funny.

• 1:55:15Bill Simmons?

  My point is there's guys that are easier to build around than other guys. Lucas.

• 1:55:18Speaker 05

  I think Halliburton is more that guy than Tatum. I think Hal, I think the way Hallie plays and all of this stuff, I think if you have him.

• 1:55:26Bill Simmons?

  I think Maxi's like that. I mean, I, I really think like, he is so well respected around the league. He's just an awesome guy.

• 1:55:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:55:33Bill Simmons?

  And coaches like Doc is like his biggest evangelist. Doc hasn't coached him for three years, but everybody loves Maxi. And you have that, that, and he's easy to play with. Needs the ball, doesn't need the ball. You know, that, those are the best guys, I think, to build around.

• 1:55:49Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:55:49Bill Simmons?

  Luka is like, okay, we need a, we need a rim runner who can protect him on defense.

• 1:55:55Speaker 05

  You need a rim runner.

• 1:55:55Bill Simmons?

  We need a second creator.

• 1:55:57Speaker 05

  But you also need a long player.

• 1:55:57Bill Simmons?

  I don't need a point guard because my point guard can't have the ball a lot. I need like Quinn Grimes type guys.

• 1:56:02Speaker 06

  But when I hurt my hamstring and I'm gone for three to five weeks, I'm gonna need a point guard.

• 1:56:07Bill Simmons?

  Then I need Austin Reeves.

• 1:56:08Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:56:08Speaker 05

  Right. Now I will say that when firing on like, Luka has taken a team to the finals. And like,

• 1:56:15Bill Simmons?

  He did.

• 1:56:16Speaker 05

  Like, and a lot of his issues were kind of like.

• 1:56:18Bill Simmons?

  Cause Luka's great. That's, that's the problem with others. He's fucking awesome.

• 1:56:20Speaker 05

  He's a phenomenal basketball player.

• 1:56:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:22Speaker 05

  Yeah. Like at times you go, this is not only the best guy in the league, like this guy doesn't seem like he has any offensive weaknesses whatsoever. It feels like.

• 1:56:31Bill Simmons?

  And then he fouls out at the biggest game of the year with five minutes left. And you're like, oh Jesus.

• 1:56:35Speaker 05

  You watch him.

• 1:56:36Bill Simmons?

  What the fuck?

• 1:56:37Speaker 05

  I just want, man, if like, I just want Luka to have five straight possessions of just missing the shot and just getting back. Just trying to make it a habit. Just miss the shot and get it back.

• 1:56:47Bill Simmons?

  I think by the time he hit 30, you are who you are.

• 1:56:49Speaker 06

  If you haven't earned that by now, he's like, guess what? That doesn't matter. Yeah.

• 1:56:52Bill Simmons?

  It's like, Embiid's not gonna suddenly be in awesome shape this year. He's just, he is who he is.

• 1:56:57Speaker 06

  We're, we're monitoring it.

• 1:56:58Bill Simmons?

  You working on it?

• 1:56:59Speaker 06

  His, his weight's looking pretty good actually.

• 1:57:01Bill Simmons?

  Have you done the, you think you're better than me with LeBron helicoptering in every time?

• 1:57:06Speaker 06

  I'm totally.

• 1:57:07Bill Simmons?

  You don't live in Philly, LeBron?

• 1:57:08Speaker 06

  I'm totally fine with it.

• 1:57:10Bill Simmons?

  I thought Jalen, genius move going right to the hood, doing his press conference. Yeah. He sniffed that out.

• 1:57:15Speaker 06

  Rec center.

• 1:57:16Speaker 05

  What you mean?

• 1:57:17Bill Simmons?

  He's like, I'm gonna be a man of, Jalen's like, I'm gonna be a man of the people. He went, that's where he did his press conference.

• 1:57:22Speaker 05

  He cares about people legitimately.

• 1:57:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:57:24Speaker 05

  But he legitimately cares.

• 1:57:25Bill Simmons?

  He's like, I'm going to buy into the city of Philly and I'm going to go.

• 1:57:28Speaker 06

  He did not go to like a Wells Fargo branded frigging like.

• 1:57:32Speaker 05

  Because that's who he actually is. Watch. They're gonna be good.

• 1:57:37Bill Simmons?

  They're gonna be good. They're gonna be good. There's no scenario where they're not good.

• 1:57:40Speaker 05

  They're, they're gonna be good. I think they, I think everyone knows that they're gonna be good. I think they're gonna be better than people even think that they're gonna be.

• 1:57:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's, it's injury and age dependent.

• 1:57:50Speaker 05

  We'll see.

• 1:57:50Bill Simmons?

  So over under for them is 50, which seems fair.

• 1:57:52Speaker 05

  A couple of injuries might actually help them.

• 1:57:54Bill Simmons?

  I would think they're a 55 because I think they can win games when they don't have Embiid or LeBron.

• 1:57:59Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:57:59Bill Simmons?

  They could just have the, the other three guys.

• 1:58:01Speaker 06

  Maxi, BJ and Jalen.

• 1:58:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I think they can win games of the, you could play like, I don't know, somebody shitty, Washington.

• 1:58:09Bill Simmons?

  You beat Washington with those three guys, just doing everything. And then save the big guns for bigger games. Should be a fun season. Thanks, guys.

• 1:58:17Speaker 05

  It annoys you.

• 1:58:18Bill Simmons?

  What?

• 1:58:19Speaker 05

  I just, before we get to the Philly thing, like, like, just be honest. It annoys you. You're annoyed.

• 1:58:25Bill Simmons?

  I really like Jalen. I don't like that he's gonna be on Philly. Philly's our rival. That's the team we hate the most.

• 1:58:29Speaker 06

  They asked him about whether he was gonna have a chip on his shoulder about Boston and he was like, we'll see.

• 1:58:34Speaker 05

  That means yes.

• 1:58:36Speaker 05

  Boy, I tell you what, let me tell you what. Cause the one thing I give him more credit, and you've said this before, is you can get like, kind of scatterbrained performances for him, but you never get one when he feels challenged. When there's a guy on the other side that he feels like, I want to prove that I'm better than this guy, he goes crazy. Man, oh, man, oh, man. Is he going to have prove it games against Jason Tatum?

• 1:59:03Bill Simmons?

  That's what I did this on the mailbag with House. Philly has these five teams where every game against the five teams is gonna be awesome.

• 1:59:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:59:10Bill Simmons?

  Cleveland, Miami, Boston.

• 1:59:12Speaker 06

  LA.

• 1:59:13Bill Simmons?

  The Knicks. No, and then the one other team in the East, Toronto.

• 1:59:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:59:18Bill Simmons?

  All teams that have real history with LeBron or Jalen, or you know, there's some sort of rivalry. But um, I, the fact that Tatum and Brown have not talked since the trade to me was like dumbfounding.

• 1:59:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:59:32Bill Simmons?

  Like, I don't expect these guys to be buddies, but.

• 1:59:36Speaker 06

  They didn't, and then that's your answer.

• 1:59:38Bill Simmons?

  They didn't do like a five minute call?

• 1:59:39Speaker 06

  But that might be your answer as to why they're not playing together anymore.

• 1:59:42Bill Simmons?

  Oh, it's definitely the answer, CR. That's how bad it got. Like, if you, we worked together 15 years.

• 1:59:50Speaker 05

  Oh, Bill, don't do this, because I would be forced to start podding. You don't want me to actually pod. You don't want me to, you understand it.

• 2:00:01Speaker 06

  You, you, you haven't put speed up yet, right?

• 2:00:05Bill Simmons?

  Did you? Spotify had traded CR, and CR does the press conference with like, Amazon.

• 2:00:12Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:00:13Bill Simmons?

  And they're like, CR, have you talked to Billy yet?

• 2:00:15Speaker 06

  It's me and Jeff Bezos in southwest Philly at a rec center.

• 2:00:20Bill Simmons?

  You talked to Billy yet? No, haven't talked to him.

• 2:00:22Speaker 06

  Nah.

• 2:00:22Bill Simmons?

  Like, that's fucking weird. These guys won a title together two years ago. They haven't talked?

• 2:00:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:00:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:28Speaker 06

  What's our title?

• 2:00:28Bill Simmons?

  I'm still waiting for the now they tell us, and I don't know if we're ever getting it, but.

• 2:00:32Speaker 05

  The Town Podcast.

• 2:00:33Speaker 06

  The Town Podcast.

• 2:00:34Speaker 05

  That's the title.

• 2:00:36Bill Simmons?

  Thanks, guys.

• 2:00:36Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 2:00:38Bill Simmons?

  All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Kirk, thanks to Van and CR, thanks to Eduardo and Gahal as well. I will see you at least one more time during the week on this feed. Um, and then rewatchables is gonna be Monday with speed. So, uh, enjoy the rest of the day. I'll see you midweek.

• 2:01:15Bill Simmons?

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