The Knicks Land a Haymaker, With Doc Rivers. Plus, a Mini-Mailbag, the End of 'Euphoria,' and a Movies Resurgence With Joanna Robinson and Chris Ryan.

Join The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Doc Rivers LIVE on Netflix to recap the Knicks' Game 1 win over the Spurs in the NBA Finals (01:15). Then, Bill does a mini-mailbag (51:40) before being joined by Chris Ryan and Joanna Robinson to give their thoughts on the ‘Euphoria’ finale, whether it stuck the landing, as well as the state of TV and movies (1:21:20). Hosts: Bill SimmonsGuests: Doc Rivers, Chris Ryan, and Joanna RobinsonProducers: Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, Tucker Tashjian, and Chris Wohlers Brought to you by PayPal. Learn more at paypal.com Give No Quits. Shop at your Local Duluth Trading Company Store or Online 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.

• 0:06Bill Simmons?

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• 2:17Bill Simmons?

  All right. The Bill Simmons Podcast. We are live on Netflix. Special guest, my friend Doc Rivers is here after just an incredible,

• 2:26Bill Simmons?

  dramatic, wasn't the best played game. The stats weren't awesome, but a lot of twists and turns. The Knicks pull it out. And I think we thought the same thing with about three, four minutes left. One team looked like they kind of knew what they were doing. And the other team looked like the playoff experience, youth stuff was starting to creep in. I didn't like the shots I got. I didn't, I just didn't like anything. And the Knicks just went into Knicks mode.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know though, Bill, if it was youth, uh, uh, as far as at the end of the game, uh, I would say this, at the end of the game, if you told anyone, at least me, uh, before the game, it's going to come down to a single possession game, you're going to favor the Knicks because the Knicks know exactly what they're doing. They're giving the ball to Brunson and they're going to play off Brunson. Uh, San Antonio in any game down the stretch, you're not sure yet because that's where they are young. They haven't, uh, the two man game with Fox and Wimby is usually the play. They actually ran it. Fox got a wide open shot that would have tied the game, if you remember.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Um, and he missed that shot and then he followed up with a foul on, uh, I think Bridges where Bridges had nothing that. So those back to back plays, there are three plays that changed the game to me. The offensive rebound, uh, that Brunson got and then got to three. The missed shot by Fox where he would have tied the game up. Then Fox followed that up where he bailed Bridges out with a foul. Uh, that's a seven point swing in a game, uh, and San Antonio couldn't recover. Then the turnover, uh, by Wimby was the final nail.

• 4:04Bill Simmons?

  And then Brunson with the moon ball. Yeah. So it, San Antonio takes the lead 95, 94 and the two Wimby free throws. And then that whole sequence happens.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:13Bill Simmons?

  Fox, Fox made that shot in game seven against OKC. In this game, I think him and Wimby combined were, um, seven for 27. Not great.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, Fox is one of the most clutch players in the NBA over the last three years down the stretch of the game. He really hasn't been, other than game seven Oklahoma. That's their go to play. And, you know, we know what the Knicks are gonna do, and we pretty much know what San Antonio is gonna do. They're gonna go to the two man game. You remember they lost that game to Oklahoma where Fox wasn't there. They didn't have anything down the stretch to go to. Well, they went to it. Fox got his shot, like, in the paint. Perfect look for him, misses it. And then, you know, the Knicks are gonna play Brunson ball from there on. So I just think it came down to little things. Couple

• 5:01Speaker 02

  of things I was surprised by. And I was wrong, but I was really surprised by Wimby guarding Towns to start the game. I was shocked by that. I was positive that Wimby would be on Hart. Campani or anyone else would be on Towns. And the reason is that allows Wimby to stay in the paint more. If you look at the beginning of the third quarter, the Spurs did that. And I actually turned to my son Spencer and I said, huh, maybe the Spurs are playing cat and mouse. Maybe that's what they wanted to do all along. But instead, they waited until the second half. And it had some impact. They got out to a quick

• 5:42Speaker 02

  lead to begin to go to the third. They really never went back to that coverage, you know? And Hart didn't play his normal big minutes. I think he played 26, 27 minutes. So Mike Brown, I gotta tell you, coached his butt off tonight. He really did that. I never also thought that Wimby would be guarded by Caron Anthony Towns.

• 6:03Bill Simmons?

  Successfully. Yeah, you thought it'd be a foul machine.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Well, I thought it'd be fouls, and I thought it'd be Ananobe. Ananobe, I think, this year has the best plus minus in the NBA versus Wimby defensively. So I thought they would go to that, and they never even went to it. They didn't. So when you look at the Knicks, they still have that in their bag to go to. I thought Caron Anthony Towns played the game of his life. He was, he was amazing. You know, my son Spencer turned to me and said, wow, Minnesota traded Caron Anthony Towns.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  And you know, last year, no one was actually saying that, you know, because Carl was up and down, but I tell you, man, uh, second half of this season, he's been absolutely unbelievable. And again, Mike Brown has put him in a right spot to be successful. You got to give Mike a lot of credit.

• 6:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I had three heroes. Brunson, obviously. I think he had 19 in the second half. Hart had 15 rebounds and six assists in 26 minutes. And then I thought Towns took it to Wemby. I thought it was a stalemate at worst between them. Uh, not just statistically, but didn't seem afraid of him. Went by him a bunch of times. That was the big thing. I had the numbers wrong on Wemby and Fox. They were nine for 34 combined and San Antonio only had two threes in the second half and they didn't shoot well. We'll go into some of the stuff they can do.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:30Bill Simmons?

  We, we can't lose sight of the biggest moment of this game that happened in the second quarter when somebody, I forget who it was, crashed into Brunson's knee.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it looked bad. You know, I didn't think it was bad. Honestly, when I saw it, I thought it hurt and, and you know what I mean by that? I thought that was a scare because his knee didn't go all the way in. So I honestly, I was sitting there. I said, he's okay. He just scared the hell out of him.

• 7:56Bill Simmons?

  And then he didn't seem okay. Every Knicks fan in my life is like, are you serious? We just won 11 in a row. We're in the finals. This is our guy. He's going to get hurt in the first half of a game. He goes into the tunnel and it's just pure panic. And then in an hour and a half, it flips and he's the hero of the game.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  His ankle gets stepped on. I mean, this dude, uh, he is just so tough. The move he made late where he took the hit, got bumped. Give San Antonio credit. They did it all. The entire Oklahoma series where they stay down, they take the bump and then you have to try to play through that. And Brunson makes that shot. Uh, it's, it, it just was a perfect moment for Brunson.

• 8:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, explain this to me with Brunson. SGA looked so uncomfortable against this Spurs team and all the guards. And Brunson looked like within a half, he had solved it in the second half and he was getting, I actually thought he could add more points. He missed a couple of shots that he usually made. Is it because that the Knicks had better three-point shooting or better spacing? Like, what is it? What was the difference to them and OKC?

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Well, you just hit on one thing. They have way better spacing. All right. So, and they do a great job with their cuts and their spacing. That's number one. Number two, there was one time where he got in the paint and you could see Wimby wanted to help. But Carlton, his hand kind of floats out to the corner, to the three. Well, in the Oklahoma series, Wimby got to stay in the paint. He really never left the paint. It was almost like they decided if Caruso and those guys can make enough threes, we'll lose the game. We don't think they can. And they were right at the end of the day. So.

• 9:32Bill Simmons?

  Barely, because Caruso and Wallace made like half the corner threes. Ultimately, it didn't matter because Chet didn't make anything.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, and Caruso was amazing in that series. And so, you know, New York, first of all, the one thing you gotta give heart, he knows before the game that that's who they are going to put him on or they're going to try to help off of him. He is a great cutter. He's always in a dunker spot. And that's why you remind me of Rondo in rebounding.

• 10:00Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, when we put Rondo in the dunker spot a ton, why? Because when he didn't have the ball, if you didn't guard him, he rebounded the ball. And it allowed Rondo to have a free run at the glass. If you watch Hart, there's no one blocking him out. He's just going to rebound. He has a free lane right to go rebound because no one's guarding him. And he takes advantage of it. He's one of the great rebounders in our league at his size.

• 10:26Bill Simmons?

  Well, and then on the flip side, Vassell, Champagny, Harper and Castle, I think they had like 30 rebounds combined with six minutes left in the game. They were crashing the boards. San Antonio had 14 offensive rebounds. And really, it came down, they just couldn't make shots. And if I'm, I actually, they had two timeouts with like three minutes left. And we both had the same thought of like, they don't look right. Feels like this is, maybe like, reset this. Wimby looked tired. I don't know if he shot as wide in the first half or what happened, but I don't know what the answer is.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  I'll take you to the first half. Wendy looks sped up tonight. It looks like they're speeding them up tonight. I think he had six or seven turnovers, Bill. A lot of them were putting the ball on the floor. I would know, you know, we have all kinds of stats, analytical stats with a team. And one of the things I would look at first is how many dribbles did he have? I know that sounds crazy, but it felt like he dribbled the ball way more than usual. The other thing is time of possession. How often did he hold the ball and have the ball in his hands? It looked like way more than usual. And so I think that played right into the Knicks' hands. I think they would take that. Harper was phenomenal to me. He played great, played normal. It's funny. He just

• 11:42Speaker 02

  goes out and plays and nothing kind of affects him. The two other guards, the three guards from San Antonio didn't have their best game. That's going to happen. That could be first game jitters. That could be all kinds of things. They'll play better. But the Knicks will play better, too. I thought Ananobi, down the stretch, he started playing well, but I thought he was struggling most of the game. He knows save the bench, the game for the Knicks on the bench. That little sucker, Alvarado.

• 12:11Bill Simmons?

  In the first half, yeah, he had really big minutes for them.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  He played great. And Sham, you know, I'm just, I mean, I coached Sham and I'm just so proud of him. And by the way he plays it out, like you couldn't keep Sham on the floor five years ago, three years ago. Defensively, he couldn't guard anybody. And that kid has worked his tail off and he competes defensively. And the other thing now is, he's always been a great shooter, but if he missed a couple, he would never keep shooting. And now he does. That's maturity. That's growing up. That's going through all the stuff. And he's doing that. I thought their bench gave them a huge lift tonight.

• 12:51Bill Simmons?

  He was, he was out there with like four minutes left in the Bridges spot. And then they brought Bridges back in. But I was surprised how late he was in the game.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. So Bridges will play better. He didn't have a great game offensively, but I thought Bridges had a phenomenal game defensively. You know, it's so funny that Bridges gets so much criticism, but he does so many things. And it, you know, everyone just equates scoring to if you play well. And we all know, there's so many other things you can do. And Bridges does those things every night.

• 13:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. If I'm Wemby, what am I learning from that game?

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Patience, you know, to me, he tempo, thought he went too quick at times. I think they're gonna put him on a post a little bit more, but not much more. The two man game with him and Fox, there's something there. They just didn't get anything out of it. The 45 set, which I think we started it when I was with the Clippers with Chris Paul. You remember that's where the 45 set actually came from. They are the best that I've ever seen in it.

• 13:57Bill Simmons?

  Explain what the 45 set is.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  45 set is the four and the five and use it. They use a guard way up top. That double flat screen where a guard goes downhill, Wimby Rose, shooter in the backside, shooter in the corner. They run it as well as anybody I've ever seen and they ran it three or four times early in the game and it was successful and they got away from it. So you're gonna see that way more the next in game, in game two on Friday.

• 14:24Bill Simmons?

  I wonder what they do about Harper because I thought, I actually thought he was their best player in that game. They took him out with a little over four minutes left when it was close. And then they lost the lead and I didn't really like, you know, any of the offense they had, except for that Fox nine footer that he missed. But I wonder if Harper, I wonder if he has reached a point where you can't take him off. He just has to finish the games for you because he can create his own shot.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  He can, but the other guards can as well. I have to say that. I think there's gonna be game for us gonna come down between him and Champagny. You know, the other guards, because of their defense, their rebounding, their athleticism, you keep them on the floor, but that makes them really small. That's one of the things I kept saying, Bill, I told you this, the Knicks are big. The Knicks, they're big, they're big at every spot. I guess Brunson is considered small, but we call him big body Brunson. Hart plays like a five and Ananobe is huge, Bridges is long, Towns is long. They're a big basketball team and so even though the Spurs guards did way better than I thought they would on the offensive glass.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  I think size matters. It does when Victor's around, but it also does because of all the Nick players with size and I thought it mattered tonight.

• 15:41Bill Simmons?

  I wonder, what do you think the Knicks' strategy was going into that game? Because it felt like they wanted to turn into a track meet early and kind of discombobulate the Spurs and knock them out of whatever rhythm they were in the last game. And then I thought down the stretch, you could see it wore down the Spurs and it felt like the Knicks were like gaining strength almost. And do you think that was the strategy or was it just the outcome?

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do. I think it's funny. I heard people said halftime, slow it down. I said, don't slow this game down. This is great for the Knicks. The one thing they were doing, they were trying to get up the floor before Wemby could get there. They were trying, that same thing Oklahoma tried, except for Oklahoma kept losing their ball handlers. All they had was Shay left, you know? But the Knicks, they pass the ball forward, they attack early, they spread the floor. And it also didn't allow Wemby to get into his spot. Wemby loves being in the dunker spot defensively. But when they go in transition early and early attack, you saw Wemby out by the three-point line a lot tonight. San Antonio cannot like that. So that absolutely was part of their game plan.

• 16:44Bill Simmons?

  I had a bunch of Knicks fans in my life who were texting me during the game being like, I liked Wemby until tonight, now I hate his guts. I'm tired of this. He's flopping around, like he gets every call. It's so funny how you root against a guy for an hour and you're like, I'm out, I hate this guy.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, everyone flops around now. You know, it's just so funny. I think it was Castle, they asked him and they were trying to get him to say something about Shay. He looked at the guy and says, uh, everyone flops. That's just, you know, it's funny, it's not taught, it's players work on it. But it's not taught really, players just work on it. I thought Bronson flopped and Tuck, Caron and Towns flopped every bit as much as Wemby did. But that's just part of the game.

• 17:31Bill Simmons?

  I like it. We're getting a lot of animosity.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  I love that, yeah.

• 17:35Bill Simmons?

  With the Towns thing, you said that at the top about how Minnesota traded him. With that said, I never ever in a million years thought that he had this in him. And he's been doing it now for a month, right? The way he played today, there was almost like a cerebralness about what he's doing offensively. He's kind of staying away from the dumb fouls for the most part. Like some of the stuff, like the quick attacks on Wemby is exactly what he had to do. Like before Wemby gets set, he was just trying to beat him and he was physical with him.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  He's playing smart.

• 18:05Bill Simmons?

  I just loved how he played.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  He's playing smart. He's not losing his composure. Those are things that he always would do in the past. He's staying out of foul trouble. He may be their best passer at times. And the biggest thing he's doing that no one talks about is his rebounding. He is a great rebounder, a great rebound, great offensive rebounder. So he's done a lot of things that we didn't know he can ever do. And the other thing is, and I've said, I've said this since we won in 2008. Bill, when you hear about teams and they all say it, you improve each round. And teams that don't go deep never understand that. Players who have never gone deep, they never understand.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  It's not necessarily individual improvement. It's team improvement. And the Knicks in the first round may have been, you could say, maybe gettable. You know, in the second round, you know, they got it going. That after that Atlanta meeting or whatever they had, they have come together. Like when you watch them play, there was a timeout in this game where you heard Karan Toney Towns talking.

• 19:17Bill Simmons?

  I saw that. That was unbelievable.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  That was six weeks ago. He wouldn't have said it and no one would have listened. You know, but that's part of the growth that teams go through. Each round you get better, you get closer, you trust more, you let go of all the individual crap. You know, all the numbers chasing and you just start playing, you know, and you play the right way. Alvarado, think about, I always, I love Alvarado in this example. He comes from New Orleans where he played a ton of minutes. And now he played two minutes, five minutes, six minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. He doesn't care. He just wants to help the team win. And you can see that throughout the Knick team. You can see that throughout the Spurs team.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  These are two teams that have grown each round and they have, they both have come to this. Like team unity thing and it's really helped the Knicks because we never thought the Knicks could get there and they're there. They are absolutely there.

• 20:16Bill Simmons?

  I forgot to say that this segment is brought to you by New Era, which makes a bunch of great caps, all kinds of things. So that what you just mentioned about the selflessness, I remember we did a podcast during the 24 finals. We were talking about the Celtics when they were, I think they had won game three against Dallas and you were excited about it because you were like, I see it. They get it. They understand what this last level is about. It's not about the stats anymore. It's about looking out for each other, just, just trying to win whatever it takes. You don't care about your minutes. You don't look at the stat sheet. It feels like the Knicks have gotten there and I thought, I thought San Antonio was going to win this series and maybe they just suck tonight and maybe they will. But the fact that the Knicks

• 21:01Bill Simmons?

  were able to carry that three rounds inferior competition to now this stage tonight and it's the same thing. It, it gives you hope if you're a Knicks fan, I would say.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  Well, I, I, this is, I've been asked, because I'm always asked, who's going to win the series? And today I was golfing. I bet I was asked it 50 times, Bill, and my same answer is, I don't know. Uh, this one, usually you kind of have a, this one is too close to call. Um, and you know, if you're a Knicks fan, you feel great, obviously. Uh, the big thing is if they do lose another game, but they come back with the next game, you know? Uh, and you know, now game two is the biggest game of the finals, uh, for San Antonio. They can't go down 0-2. Uh, they just can't. I guess they can. We've seen teams come back, but,

• 21:50Speaker 02

  uh, you know, it's just so interesting. Yeah, this, the guard play, it's the guard play. That's the key for San Antonio. They did not have great guard play and their guards have been dominant in the playoffs. They've been dominant. They didn't, they usually have good guard play by one or two and then maybe two, no, all their guards didn't play well, other than Harper. Harper was the only guard that played great tonight.

• 22:16Bill Simmons?

  I thought one of the things they weren't really a hundred percent doing tonight was just attacking the rim all the time, which is what they learned to do against OKC. Just gotta go. Don't, don't even think twice. Just go, go, go, go attack.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Bigger guys. Uh, I bet, uh, if you sit back and count the drives that they were bumped off on. Like it, it was amazing. Even Brunson had one. Uh, I think Fox had him beat, but he bumped him off path. Uh, and then nobody does it as better as, as, as good as anyone. Bridges does. Hart is phenomenal at it. So they took a lot of the hits, uh, from San Antonio and kind of veered them outside to the paint. Uh, I thought that was really affected by New York. I thought New York's, uh, penetration defense was phenomenal. I thought they guarded the ball and took hits, held their ground, didn't back up, didn't flop defensively. They, they held their ground tonight, uh, and their size mattered again.

• 23:13Bill Simmons?

  When you played them this season, did you see this in them?

• 23:16Speaker 02

  No, no. Um, I did say early, they're the best team in the East when you go individual, just.

• 23:23Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  If you just count, yeah, if you just counted the numbers, you thought best team in the East. Um, and going into the playoffs, I did pick them to, to win the East, uh, before the playoffs started. Uh, but I just thought they would out talent people. They're out teaming people now. Uh, and when you put that talent together and now the way they're playing, they're a really good basketball team and they're hard to beat.

• 23:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Cause I remember when this happened with the 08 Celtics. Now granted, they won way more regular season games, but then the first two rounds were choppy, two, seven game series. And then it really wasn't until near the end of the Detroit series and then you could see something shifted.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:02Bill Simmons?

  Do you remember that? Like what game was that? When it just like, just something was different.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  I thought it was the game in Detroit after we lost. You remember we lost our first home game was against the Pistons. Uh, and I think it was game two and we went right back in Detroit and won. I thought from that point on, we were, we had, you know, been made, you know, I love using that term like in, you know, Godfather, we were made finally, like this team is, I thought that team played together all the time, but you remember going into playoffs, I made that comment, I'm really worried, we have not been tested, we hadn't lost two games in a row all year.

• 24:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  We hadn't, we hadn't gone through anything and it just felt too easy. And that really concerned me. And so those two games, Atlanta game seven wasn't much of a game, but that Cleveland game seven, that kind of made us. And then the turnaround and then Detroit, the defending champs come in and they pop us right away and we have to respond. I thought those are the things and the Knicks have been going through stuff all year. So they're different. They've gone through all stuff all year, turmoil, chemistry problems, road problems, guys were unhappy. They get to the first round, a lot of that is still going on. Atlanta takes it to them, they have their meeting and it all goes away. Since then, they've been playing right throughout and it's been amazing to watch.

• 25:24Bill Simmons?

  So is that the first recorded meeting in NBA history that actually worked?

• 25:28Speaker 02

  That actually worked, yeah. Because I don't think it was a call of meeting like, you know, it just, from what I hear, the meeting just kind of happened. It wasn't one of those things like, we're going to have a player meeting, which every coach is like, oh God, or we're going to have a coach, we want to have a team meeting, where every coach says, oh God.

• 25:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  I gotta tell you, Bill, I've been a player in these meetings and I've been a coach in these meetings and a lot of them go haywire. I was in San Antonio as a player and some of, we were down 0-2 to the Houston Rockets, right? Way back in the, in the Western Finals. And I think it was David Robinson or someone or Moses Malone. I'm going to use him because there's all kinds of stuff in this meeting. The first part of the meeting, Greg Popovich is talking. Now, Bob Hill was our coach and Dennis Rodman, when Pop finishes, Dennis Rodman says, who's listening to you? You're not the coach. This is, this is the meeting.

• 26:34Bill Simmons?

  You're right.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  And Pop goes back at Dennis. Then Moses starts talking and Avery Johnson, Moses, I love you, but your time has passed and we're not, we're not going to read your press clippings anymore.

• 26:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Then Avery goes after David Robinson. I mean, the meeting was a disaster. It was a disaster. Having said that, we didn't go to Houston and win game three and four. So you just never know. But.

• 26:59Bill Simmons?

  So when you have those meetings, most of the time it's guys screaming at each other. Very rarely does it turn into a very productive group therapy session like in an Apple TV show or something.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Well, sometimes, sometimes you have phenomenal meetings. I will say there's been some good ones. But there's usually at some point, a player you didn't expect to say something, says something that pisses off the entire locker room or another player. Now those two guys got a beef and it's all falling apart. That's usually what happens. It happens a lot. Yeah.

• 27:33Bill Simmons?

  So when they were trying to put together, I talked about this a few pods ago, like Wes and Leon trying to put this team together.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:40Bill Simmons?

  And the motto is the oh, four Pistons, where it's like, we don't, we're not going to luck into a top three lottery pick, but we can kind of smartly, we can build around Brunson. He could be like our Billups, basically, and, and we could just kind of patch together different guys and we'll have wings that can play defense and Towns will be our big guy. Do you see that when you watch them? Do you see the comparison? I mean, they're completely different teams, but.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Two different teams because that Pistons team, anyone could have a big night. If you remember that where uh for the most part Brunson is their go to guy.

• 28:15Bill Simmons?

  Thirty one shots tonight.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's the guy and and Detroit played more team ball, more movement. So I a different team. Detroit was probably was a way better defensive team. Uh, I think New York's a better offensive team in some ways, but um, listen, when you look at the two teams, two teams couldn't be built any differently. The Spurs have done it basically through the draft. Uh, Fox is the only guy that you can make a case that they traded for. They they they signed some some low budget uh free agencies that have turned out great for them. But other than that, it's been Fox, right? Uh, where the Knicks, uh, I asked my son Spencer, who on a Knicks team was drafted by the Knicks that plays? There's only one.

• 29:02Bill Simmons?

  It's Mitchell Robinson, right?

• 29:05Speaker 02

  That's it. Yeah, that's it. Everybody else they traded for, they signed in free agency. So you gotta give Leon those guys a lot of credit. They they they got the right pieces. Um, they they did. I thought the Villanova thing was smart as much as people want to knock it uh because it did create a team. It did create unity and that was good. Um, no one, and I don't care if Leon or anyone, no one thought Brunson would be this good. Uh, and I really liked him, you know, because people forget what he did uh to Phoenix.

• 29:39Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  In that series like it was, it wasn't just the Luca show. It was a Luca Brunson show.

• 29:44Bill Simmons?

  And he did it to Utah too for a couple of games. Like he did have moments.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Well, the Utah series, remember, uh, I think Luca misses the game.

• 29:52Bill Simmons?

  He does.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  And and he just takes over. So he showed that he could do it. No one thought he could do it full time every night and be this clutch. Uh, so give New York credit. They signed him. What I think they did better is once they realized what they had, they built around it. Um, and I don't want to take shots at anybody, but I will say this. Um, they are a lot of front office guys that can go out and get the stars. There's very few of them to can then build a team into a championship team. That's what you have to do. You can go out and get these names, but can you make the other moves? You know, you look at Danny Ainge, he's done it a ton. Brad Brad Stevenson's done it.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  You know, Sam Presti, you know, it took him a while. You think about all the talent that Sam Presti had and and he finally kind of figured it out like, all right, we got the stars. All right, now I gotta go get Hartenstein. I gotta go get Caruso. I gotta go to, get some of these role players because that's what's gonna win the game for us. San Antonio, we don't even know who their role players are yet because they're so young. All their guards are so good. We don't even know who can be the next star. Could be Harper, could be Castle. I mean, there's so many guys, but the Knicks, give them credit. Hart is a role player. That's who he is. He actually knows who he is. Bridges is a role player. That's who he is. He actually knows he is. Robinson's a role player.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  And then the the Carl Anthony Towns trade was humongous. And at the time, I don't think anyone knew if it was a good trade or not, but it's turned out to be the game changer for them.

• 31:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was one of those. It was really hard to have a hard opinion on that trade.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:38Bill Simmons?

  You could see it from both sides being a disaster or I just I remember being like, I understand why they did it. I don't know if I like it. I understand the logic.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  The logic was perfect. One of them was because the way he shoots to to take a big outside of the paint and let Brunson work and then give Brunson more space. So that absolutely is happening. It happened tonight.

• 32:03Bill Simmons?

  And they needed a center because the league barely has any centers.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:07Bill Simmons?

  Um, you know, you talk about the team building part and you just came from Milwaukee. They went the opposite way where they had Giannis and they were like, we, we gotta get another star for Giannis and they traded basically all their future stuff for Dame and tried to put them together as as the combo, which I think is the old school model. Do you think like with the way that uh this new CBA? And the second apron penalties and it feels like it feels like the depth and having a bunch of guys in that like seven to 15 million dollar range is going to be more important than that second star.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I think, and it depends on who the first star is, you know, if you have a Shea, if you have a Bronson, yeah, you can get away with having a lot of other players and, you know, Williams is better than just a lot of other players who's injured, but.

• 32:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, maybe two, maybe the two guys and then you have a bunch of smaller.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  Two and a half.

• 32:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  No, what happened in Milwaukee is they got old quick and their star wasn't, you know, he was the young one. Everyone else got old really quickly. Uh, you know, I think if they could redo that trade, they still do it, but they would probably keep Drew. I thought, uh, from what I heard, they didn't think Drew and Dane could play together. And what they didn't realize later is no, they needed Drew to protect him defensively from everybody else. So, uh, the thought I actually thought was right. Uh, the execution of the rest of the part probably didn't work out. Now, moving forward, all these teams have to be very careful. Like if you, if you, your number one guy is your number one guy. Uh, but your number two, three, four, five, you better, with the cap and the apron, it's so much harder,

• 33:43Speaker 02

  Bill. The three, the three star thing is gone. Like, we know that, uh, just contractually, you can't do it. The, the two star thing, uh, is still alive. Uh, but you can make a case having a superstar, you know, a Shea and four really good players, uh, may be better.

• 34:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Cause the Seltzer in that situation now with Tatum and Brown. I think Tatum has the, I think he has the third biggest contract per year next year and Brown has seventh. So two of the top seven. I don't know. I don't know how sustainable that is for the rest of the decade. How do you put a team around that, especially when you're watching a series like this where both teams go nine deep? You know, Cornet, who we didn't talk about.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  Boy.

• 34:29Bill Simmons?

  He came in at one point. I think Cornet's a good backup center, but now it's got the point. As soon as Wemby comes out of the game, all the players in the other team are like, just you can see the hop in their step that he's gone for four minutes.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, but there's no player in the history. Uh, maybe Will back in the day, you know, and I'm being honest and Shaq a little bit. But, uh, I mean, listen, when Wemby walks off the floor, I don't care who you are. I, I think there's high school kids running right when Wemby walks off the floor and they're yelling, drive the ball now.

• 35:01Bill Simmons?

  Right, right. Do it.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Because, because it was, it was so obvious. The Spurs, I think they get the nine point lead. They sub him out and it was like the Knicks just attacked the basket immediately. And so, you know.

• 35:16Bill Simmons?

  It was 63-50.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:18Bill Simmons?

  He goes out and by the time he comes back in, it's 67-61, the Knicks are back in the game.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  They're back in the game and Brunson got it going.

• 35:27Bill Simmons?

  Brunson got it.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you needed, you, you had two things going at the same time.

• 35:32Bill Simmons?

  You know what else was going, by the way, the, I, I had multiple Knicks fans friends there. They said it was like 15% Knicks fans.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  It was more than I thought it could be.

• 35:42Bill Simmons?

  I was surprised. Yeah, that's for game one.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  San Antonio, people don't sell tickets. Well, clearly they do. Uh, but the Knicks fans have been impressive. They, they really have been. You gotta like Joel Embiid makes that ridiculous speech. You know, after they, after they beat the Celtics about, you know, I'll pay for the tickets. And the Knicks, it was almost like the Knicks fans took that personal. What? We're gonna buy the whole arena out. I mean.

• 36:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, how dare you?

• 36:10Speaker 02

  With the Knicks fans in Philadelphia was unbelievable.

• 36:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was crazy. Uh, you played for them a long time ago.

• 36:19Bill Simmons?

  Got injured, but you were involved with that team that came the closest they've ever been. And that was 32 years ago. But.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  I should have been active.

• 36:32Bill Simmons?

  Well, yeah, you told that story on another pod that we did about how they should have activated you for the last two rounds.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:39Bill Simmons?

  Now, this is 53 years. I've been saying, I think this is the biggest title that anybody can have right now. Unless maybe the Bills, but the problem is the Knicks have, you know, six generations of fans and they're the biggest city.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  It's not even close. I know that sounds funny because we're comparing football and basketball.

• 36:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  It's like the Cubs winning.

• 37:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  You know, it, it really is in a lot of ways. If the Knicks can win this, uh, they've been through, first of all, they went through a lot of bad basketball. It's not like they've been knocking on the championship door.

• 37:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, they went through a lot of bad basketball, uh, and then they've kind of built this team, Leon and, uh, you, you gotta just give them all the credit in the world. It kind of, uh, uh, M M West, they, they put this team together piece by piece. And now they're in it and they're going to be in it for a long time. This is not a fluke. This team's going to be good. They're going to be good for a long time. Contractually, they're set up really well overall. So, yeah, um, yeah, I can't, I can't think of another team, uh, with size of city and haven't won it. Uh, that this would be any bigger. This, this isn't as big as it gets.

• 37:50Bill Simmons?

  This century, Red Sox and Cubs were the two big ones.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Right. That's exactly right. The Red Sox, uh, and the Cubs were the two that, that they had to remove it from. And then, and then they got them. So now it's the Knicks.

• 38:03Bill Simmons?

  Well, we talked about the chess match of the series. So the Knicks come out and do two things maybe San Antonio wasn't expecting. Having Towns guard Wemby and just playing super fast and seeing if they could discombobulate them.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  I think they knew that. I think San Antonio.

• 38:19Bill Simmons?

  You think they're ready for that?

• 38:20Speaker 02

  Pace. Yeah.

• 38:21Bill Simmons?

  All right. So now we go to game two and San Antonio is like, okay, they're going to have Wemby. Do you zag now? If you're the Knicks, I'm like, no, actually, I'm not going to have Wemby, uh, uh, Towns on Wemby this game. I'm going to put OG on him right away. I'm going to do this.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  No, I, sometimes you overthink things.

• 38:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  That's in their back pocket. They still have that. Uh, I, I, if Towns had gotten a quick foul, I guarantee you they would have switched and then they'll be on him right away. They didn't have to do it. All right. Uh, that was one. Two, uh, I would be very surprised to see Wemby guarding Karl-Anthony Towns. Um, I just think it puts Wemby out of help. And without the help, uh, I think it really hurts San Antonio. It also takes Wemby away from the glass. And so even though Towns or Hart will have free run to the glass, you still got a seven, six alien standing on there and just swiping every rebound.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  So I think those are the two biggest changes, uh, that you'll see.

• 39:27Bill Simmons?

  I had two mail back questions for you quickly. First one is from Jeremy in Portland. Is the NBA experiencing the greatest parody era? In the history of the league, this year will be eight champions in eight years. Half the league will have made the finals in the last 10 years. Do you think this is a fluke? COVID's part of that? Or do you think this is just what the league is now?

• 39:48Speaker 02

  I think this is what the league, I think this is what collective bargaining and what they wanted. Um, you know, it doesn't allow the big markets to just outspend like the Dodgers, you know?

• 39:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  It, it's, it doesn't allow for that. Now it's going to come down to, uh, in my opinion, GMs didn't know how to build real teams. I really do. I think, you know, coaches get fired all the time, right? Uh, I think this is the era of GMs, you better do your job. Uh, you all got the same type of money. You got to draft right. Uh, you have to trade right. And more importantly, you have to sign right. I think this is also the era that most stars stay home. You're not going to see a whole bunch of movement anymore. It's not going to be a bunch of guys just leaving their team. I think you'll see more of the stars staying at home. Number one, they can make more money.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  And number two, teams can build around them. So it's going to come down to, yeah, we know you can get us Kevin Durant. Well, we know you can get James Harden, but what, how do you build around that? Uh, how do you put enough pieces around that? And so I think that's going to be the biggest change. Now, we'll say this. Mid-season, Bill. Everyone said there's a dynasty and it's in Oklahoma. And we've been proven once again.

• 41:06Bill Simmons?

  Right. There are no dynasties.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  There are no dynasties. Winning is, people, when I hear people talk about, well, they've just got to win a title. People have no idea how hard it is to win. Everything has to go right for you. You gotta get lucky at times. You gotta stay healthy. You gotta make big shots. Someone you don't know on your team has to make, and they all have to get along and buy in. It just takes, it takes so much to win. And that's what I mean by you better build the right guys on that team. And it's gotta be one through 15. And I think that's the biggest difference.

• 41:45Bill Simmons?

  Can you, can you talk about how different it is now with all the two-way guys? And how much, having a bigger roster, how do you manage that?

• 41:53Speaker 02

  I think that's hurt in some ways. I think the smart teams, San Antonio, or give them a, give a great example. Okay, yeah, they still have all their two-way guys, but they thought it was smart enough to get some vets, some older vets on their team. Cornet and Harrison Barnes.

• 42:13Bill Simmons?

  Olenek.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Olenek, like, that's a smart move. Now, those could be two ways. And I think a lot of the teams wouldn't sign those guys, Bill, and those are the teams that aren't winning. I'm telling you, you need a couple of those guys at the back of your bench. I always saw in Boston, we had the stars and then we had the older guys. And it kind of boxed in the young guys. They had nowhere to go but to listen, you know, and I think that's really important on teams. So, but it's harder now. You have these two-way guys. It's making the league younger and younger and younger. It's what it's doing. I do like it, but if you are one of those teams that have a chance to win,

• 42:57Speaker 02

  you may have to give up one of those two ways to sign a veteran on your team, a good veteran, not a guy that just wants to talk and can't play, can't do anything. Those, these guys are important and all the teams have, all the good teams do.

• 43:10Bill Simmons?

  Right. That's how like guys like Pat Connaughton, Olenek, these guys end up hanging, Joe Ingles, these guys end up hanging around for two extra years. Cause they're not going to be. Talking to a teammate, one, two, and three about, oh, I should be playing.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:24Bill Simmons?

  I don't know why I'm not in.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Think about what Charlotte did. Charlotte has had a chemistry, uh, culture problem. Uh, they brought him back.

• 43:33Bill Simmons?

  Forever.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Forever, right?

• 43:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  Uh, you remember they cut back, counted him for one day? And went back and re-signed him because they knew he's not gonna play, but he's good. Now, that doesn't last. That probably won't even last next year. They'll probably have to go get someone else. But those type of guys are invaluable. Coaches, in the old days, you know, when I first started coaching, you would always put someone at the end of your bench that you knew had your back. I remember Monty Williams, when I was in Orlando, I just assigned Monty, you know, middle or late to his career, but I knew Monty was gonna be loyal. Uh, that's what teams, uh, coaches did that all the time. Not, not as much anymore. You actually need guys that are just great team guys now.

• 44:15Bill Simmons?

  Um, I got a lot of emails wondering if the Chet Holmgren series against Wemby had parallels to Ben Simmons in the infamous Atlanta Hawks series that you coached.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  No, completely different.

• 44:26Bill Simmons?

  Chet's fine? Okay.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  I, I just, yeah.

• 44:30Bill Simmons?

  There was, like, he did not wanna look at the rim anymore in game seven. I was getting flashbacks.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, first of all, I didn't get it a lot either. Uh, but you're right. You're right. Like, he was out, he just was out playing. It was clear, like, this is why I like Wemby. It was so funny. I love Chet, too, but this is why I love Wemby. Wemby, for whatever reason, he takes Chet personal. Like,

• 44:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  Chet's the greatest guy, and so is Wemby, but, you know, Wemby will never, he can't stand him. Wendy sees him and he goes right after him, and it's so obvious. Um,

• 45:06Bill Simmons?

  Well, you had, that was Zach Randolph and Blake Griffin, remember?

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh, yeah. Same thing, same thing.

• 45:11Bill Simmons?

  Zach Randolph, for some reason, hated Blake Griffin, and every time he saw him, he just wanted to go at him.

• 45:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and it's so interesting, cuz, oh, all they did, somebody compared them.

• 45:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  And, and for whatever reason, Wendy has Michael Jordan. That's what I call him. He's Michael Jordan guys. Like, you know, if, if you compared anything to Michael. You had to deal with Michael and that's what it is. But listen, Chet's still one of the top four or five best defenders at his size in the league. He's still an all defensive guy. He's going to be a better offensive team, a player. Oklahoma had two guys out in this series and they should not overreact, nor will they unless they got a great deal.

• 45:55Bill Simmons?

  That was the last question I had from you from Eli in Chicago, talking about the check, the check game seven. And he said, can you imagine what your podcast would have been like after Scottie Pippen's migraine game in the 90 Eastern Conference Finals when the Bulls lost to the Bad Boys? You would have had topics like, can MJ win without a real number two? Who can they get for Pippen? Can Phil find five guys to trust? And I do wonder like this culture we're in now, you know, we, when we were, when you were in the league in the beginning, like Magic sucked in the 84 finals, right? Pippen had the migraine game. Like people worthy had the 84 finals when he threw the pass to Henderson for the steal and teams would lose and they would just move on. Isaiah.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  Turns the ball over. The game's over. Turns the ball over and flips the series. You know, when we were in with the Clippers, Chris Paul had two of the worst minutes in the history of the game, right? Against Oklahoma.

• 46:49Bill Simmons?

  Oklahoma City, yeah.

• 46:50Speaker 02

  That game's over with. You know, can you imagine if it was a podcast during those times? I mean, that's all we would talk about. And all those players, for the most part, recovered and had great careers, you know, Benson would be the exception to the rule.

• 47:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because this was, you only have one champion every year. You have 30 teams. There's going to be some ups and downs. Sometimes it's not going to be your year. You're going to have bad luck. You're going to have Jalen Williams get hurt. You're going to have Chick get psyched out in this series. It's a tough one though, because they are.

• 47:22Speaker 02

  It's not going to be your year. Like if you really thought about it, like if championship is the only thing, then most of the time it's not going to be your year. And a lot of times you go into the season knowing if that's the bar, this is not our year. Like if you're honest. Now, when you have a shot at it, then you go after it. I've been fortunate. I've had some teams that, you know, you can make the case, had a chance, maybe not when you look back on them, but at least we were trying to get it. But even that, you know, I coached 20, what, five years?

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Five times, six times, seven times. You know, it's not that many chances that you get unless you're on one of those teams that you win young and everybody stays and you get a chance to coach a star over and over and over again. Phil Jackson has had that. Steve Kerr's had that. Pop has done it really in three iterations, really two. I mean, because you got to combine the David Robinson, Tim Duncan, but then to Nobley and Tim Duncan. They're all with Duncan though. You can make a case. They're all were Duncan related. And now, you know, this is where, like, I love Pop, right? This is where, where bothers me the most. And that bothers me because I love Mitch

• 48:41Speaker 02

  is that Pop probably was thinking about retiring, right? And then he's like, oh my gosh, I got this guy. I got.

• 48:49Bill Simmons?

  I hit the jackpot. Yeah.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  I hit the jackpot again. And then it kind of gets taken away from, uh, that's really sad to me. For whatever reason, I don't know why it's sad to me, but it's really sad to me.

• 49:03Bill Simmons?

  Well, you mentioned Steve Kerr and, and how lucky you are to be able to get to coach somebody for most of their career, their entire career. He's just never leaving Steph. It's become clear. I think he might just move into Steph's, Steph's guest room or something. He never wants to leave that guy.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Listen, but you, you think about the multiple winning guys. Michael, stone blooded killer, a great guy, kind of great glue guy team wise in a tough way. Tim Duncan, come on, you, you can't have like a better guy, a better leader of a team. And Steph, you can't have a better leader, you know, as, as much as, you know, I love LeBron, KD and all these guys, that part of it, they really did not have, you know, or, or, or I don't know if they didn't have it, but Steph is just. He's so coachable. All those guys are coachable. Michael Jordan, as crazy and tough

• 50:02Speaker 02

  as he was, the one thing you always heard about him, he respect coaching. Like, he really did. I think it came from Dean. I think Dean kind of embedded that in him. Tim Duncan clearly did. And Steph clearly does. And it's easy to build around guys like that, you know. And none of those teams have you ever heard Tim Duncan. Have you ever heard Tim Duncan say, this is my team? Have you ever heard Steph? This is my team. Think about Steph went and got KD, didn't care less. You never heard him say, I'm on my

• 50:42Speaker 02

  team. This is my team, you know. And Michael didn't have to say it. But I do think that kind of stuff matters.

• 50:52Bill Simmons?

  Well, you talk about Michael, Curry, and Duncan, and then I think Wemby and Brunson are both like this too, which is ironic. They're playing the finals, but they're like, I'm here. I'm with you guys to the bitter end. Build around me. I'll be the leader. I'm gonna stick up for everybody else, but I'm not gonna leverage anything. I'm not gonna go to the papers. And I'm just, I trust you to build the right team around.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Never gonna hear them whispers, you know, rumors. They're just not going to do that. And that's part of what I mean about character. I mean, that's so important on teams, especially winning teams.

• 51:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. All right, Doc Rivers. Well, I'm gonna make you come back at least one more time during the finals. How's our guy Larry David doing? Is he all right?

• 51:32Speaker 02

  He's in a happy mood right now.

• 51:34Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  He made it through game one. He's actually going to the Garden, which I'm shocked by, but he's gonna do it. But we do know, if things aren't going well by what this third quarter, he will absolutely leave.

• 51:48Bill Simmons?

  All right. Thanks, Doc. We're gonna take a break, come back with a little mailbag. Thank you.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Take care.

• 51:52Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. It's all come down to this. Who do you think will be wearing the ring at the end of the NBA Finals? Make your call with FanDuel. Right now, new customers can hit the court with $350 in bonus bets guaranteed after betting $5 for seven straight days. FanDuel, the best place to bet all your favorite players during the finals. Bet on their baskets and boards, but the same game parlay for a chance at a bigger payout. Bet futures, do whatever you want to do. Visit FanDuel.com/BS to get started. 21-plus select states or 18-plus DC. Kentucky or Wyoming, restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com.

• 52:33Bill Simmons?

  Gambling problem? Call 1-887-977777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Sony Pictures Classics. A perfect crime film, says The Daily Beast. John Tortore gives a career-best performance. Don't miss the acclaimed new thriller, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. Tortore stars as an aging master pickpocket, whose latest score puts him in the crosshairs of a ruthless crime family. It's also starring Giancarlo Esposito, Tatiana Maslany, Will Price, and our guy, Steve Buscemi. See the film that the LA Times calls instantly classic. The Only Living Pickpocket in New York opens in theaters October 23rd in New York and Los Angeles nationwide October 30th.

• 53:19Bill Simmons?

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• 53:43Bill Simmons?

  All right, I'm gonna do a little solo mailbag. Got a lot of good mailbag questions. You can email us as always at [email protected]. The most emails I got, two subjects. One was Steven Spielberg coming on and doing 2001: A Space Odyssey and the rewatchables. Just a lot of questions. Surprise that that was a surprise guest that we did not tip off. And also, I think everybody thought it was a pretty amazing podcast, myself included. The biggest question was, what was he like? What was it like to sit there for two hours with him? And here's what I would say. One thing I've learned over the years, when you're with or in the presence of somebody who's really great at what they do, no matter what it is,

• 54:28Bill Simmons?

  there's gonna be a joy and a passion and a love for whatever their expertise is that they can't hide. And it really is one of the reasons that they're so good at what they do. And you can see with Spielberg, greatest living director, probably the greatest director we've ever had. And just loves movies, just loves talking about them, loves the whole process of them. The stories he was telling about the set, how he does, you know, how he interacts with different actors, depending on what their methods are. Just a huge student of it. And I don't know, after spending two hours with him and just seeing how much fun he was having with us and with the format and just discussing the movie, it just, the whole thing made sense. Like, yeah, of course he's the best director.

• 55:12Bill Simmons?

  This is how much he loves movies. This is his life. This is what he's devoted it to. So that's the thing, that would be the big takeaway for me. Especially if somebody comes in, they haven't been, you know, over at the studio in my house. They don't really know what's gonna happen. And he just like completely bought in and was so excited to talk about the movie with us. So that was really cool. The other subject, people were wondering why I didn't seem more excited about the A.J. Brown trade when I did the podcast with Max Kellerman on Tuesday.

• 55:43Bill Simmons?

  So he's definitely one of the five or six best receivers in the league and he's going to be 29 when the season starts. So you figure they'll get three, four seasons out of him. Ideally, when he'll be awesome. Two would be a worst case scenario. It's a little like trading for Yanis where it's like you know you're probably going to get two really good seasons after that. You don't know. The salary stuff is pretty easy. He's in the high twenties. You don't have all of these crazy bonuses that you get if you're just signing a guy. The reason I didn't seem more excited about it is I'm not positive why his production dipped the last couple of years. And there's been a lot of good dialogue and a lot of good stats about this, about when he was at Tennessee, he was over the

• 56:26Bill Simmons?

  middle a lot more. At Philly, he wasn't. They basically just used him on the sides. And yet all the stuff with the man to man stats with him, he's like, either he's the best receiver or one of the best receivers are just getting open and just being able to catch balls and traffic, everything. So the question for me is like, did he just kind of lose the will to live as a receiver by like 5%, especially last year after they won the Super Bowl? Because he wasn't being used in the way that he would have loved. And ultimately, these guys have to be inherently selfish to be great at receiver. And he's just like, I'm here. I'm a race car. I'm in the driveway. Please use me. Take me on the highway. You're not taking me on the highway enough. My engine needs to rev. And

• 57:10Bill Simmons?

  he's just going to come to the Patriots and the Patriots are going to use him that way. And it'll be Moss in 2007 all over again. Or do you get a little worried that the Eagles, who have always been a step ahead of everybody really for the last nine, 10 years, who seem like they're selling high on a guy that they traded a first round pick for, rode for a few years, got a Super Bowl out, then traded him for another first round pick? How much did they know? Did they think he was heading toward a different phase of his career? I'm old enough to remember a lot of different receiver trades of guys in their late twenties, early thirties who were awesome, might be awesome again, and you just don't know. I think the Patriots had to do it. I wish they would have had to been able to put a protection on that 2020 pick, but ultimately, the reason they didn't win the

• 57:55Bill Simmons?

  Super Bowl last year and got kind of killed in the big game wasn't just because they didn't have an awesome receiver, it was because they couldn't block. And to me, with the tougher schedule and all the things that are happening this season with the Super Bowl hangover, and not knowing if Drake May is 100%, I'm glad we're gonna have guys who can get open, and we're gonna have big play guys, and we might have a guy who's gonna have 150 targets and 1,500 yards receiving and 15 touchdowns, and he's just gonna be awesome. But if they can't block, none of it's gonna matter. So I'm a little more worried about that. Anyway, I was, I'm probably like 70, 30. 70 optimistic, 30 a little suspicious why we were able to

• 58:38Bill Simmons?

  just grab one of the five or six best receivers in the league for a pick two years from now. That's why I was a little tempered. Anyway, some mailbag questions. Got a lot of questions, or a lot of answers from different readers about Zach and I wondering what to call the Wemby box in one. And everyone was saying, just call it Area 51. Adam from Toronto said, call it what's in the box after seven. But Kyle T. wanted to call it the French press, thought that was fun. But the one, Dan from Seattle was the first one that sent it, and there were a couple more after. This is the best one. Vic in a Box. Dan from Seattle

• 59:22Bill Simmons?

  wrote, Vic in a Box, and boom goes the dynamite. Perfect. Vic in a Box is great. It's an homage to, I think Dick in the Box was 20 years ago, that SNL thing, but I love Vic in a Box, and I'm gonna be calling that from now on. So if they do it against the Knicks, you could just say, look, oh, they're playing Vic in a Box. Steven got this email a few times, too, and I should have, and I'm about to apologize. Steven from San Francisco, listening to the Kellerman Pod, wants to make sure he's not taking crazy pills, because we talked about the best crowd killers. And never mentioned a guy named Steph Curry. The greatest shooter ever. The second that got brought up, I like many others immediately thought of the OKC game winner in 16

• 1:00:07Bill Simmons?

  or the 2022 finals, game four, game six. What am I missing with the definition of crowd killer and how was he omitted? Well, obviously Steph would have been there. We kind of stumbled into that conversation. There was not a lot of thought put into the post 2010 guys, obviously, because we didn't include Steph Curry. That conversation started, just to remind you, it was what I wrote about Walt Frazier in my basketball book in 2009. And I wrote, I'm too young to remember watching Clyde live, but he was a legendary crowd killer by all accounts. In my basketball watching lifetime, only seven guys were crowd killers. Jordan, Bird, Kobe, Bernard, Isaiah, Andrew, Tony, and strangely enough, Vinny Johnson. So those are my seven. All right, so I actually went in, I looked through basketball reference, I looked through all the scores.

• 1:00:51Bill Simmons?

  I really wanted to make sure I didn't miss anybody. And I also want to explain the definition of a crowd killer because there's been a bunch of guys we've had in the last 15 years that have had moments that would have been added to that list, like most famously LeBron game six, 2012 in the East. LeBron, Durant, Kyrie, Kawhi, Dame, even James Harden. They've all had crowd killer moments, but I think the crowd killer thing is it's a little different because it's a recognizable heat check, but there's an inevitability to it. And that's what we were talking about with Brunson, like in that Cleveland game. They're down 22 and he makes a couple and the inevitability kicks in like, oh, boy, I've been here before. I think Edwards can get here.

• 1:01:35Bill Simmons?

  He's not there yet on this list. I think he can get there. I would, he would be a draft pick for me and I think SGA is like 95% there. And the thing that probably kills him with this is the fouls and the flopping. And sometimes the crowd is so mad at some of the calls that they're not being killed because they're actually engaged because they're mad at SGA. So he doesn't really 100% fit, but maybe he'll get in there. So for the last 15 years, I had initially Jordan, Bird, Kobe, Bernard, Isaiah, Tony, Vinny Johnson. From the last 15 years, you have to add Steph and you have to add Brunson. There's one other guy, though. I think Wemby has to be added.

• 1:02:16Bill Simmons?

  Even though he's 22 and even though his whole career is ahead of him and who knows, this might be the peak, but the combo of him on defense and then him when he gets going on offense. And his ability to make 30 foot threes like he did in game one of the OKC series. I think Wemby, Wemby might be the 10th. He might be the only center. It's funny, Embiid had had a couple of crowd killer moments, but we've never seen him do it. It didn't really matter. But Wemby, I think when Wemby is kind of starting to levitate above the game, the crowd gets psyched out in a real noticeable way that you could feel. So that would be the 10th. Jonathan C. writes, is there any country that had a worst eight sports months than Canada?

• 1:02:59Bill Simmons?

  Blue Jays, one out from World Series champs. The Bills flame out. I like that Canada claims the Bills. They should. They lose to their biggest rival in OT in men's and women's Olympic hockey. Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, all missed the playoffs. Montreal makes the Eastern finals and loses to the former Hartford Whalers. SGA becomes one of the most maligned players in the league and loses in game seven. He's still going. We have no Canadians in golf or tennis making an impact and no MMA guys. He's still going. Bret Hart came off awful in the Hogan documentary. And then he said, Sami Zayn seems lost lately. Help us out, Bill.

• 1:03:41Bill Simmons?

  Jamal Murray just said he wasn't playing for the 2028 Canadian team. That was another thing that came out. The Maple Leafs won the lottery? That's all I got. SGA won the title last year. He's gonna be, he's already probably one of the best 30 guards, 30 porters of all time. I don't know. Could be worse. You gotta figure out the hockey thing, though. Not, not, not winning a cups since 93 when it's your national sport is pretty embarrassing. There's gotta be a lot of soul searching going there. I got a lot of emails about this. I'll just read three. Alastair in the Blue Mountains of Australia. That's how far this, this theory has trickled. What if game seven was the Ben Simmons game of Chet's career? And he put in parentheses, professional fisherman Ben Simmons, not my son Ben Simmons.

• 1:04:27Bill Simmons?

  Chris from Philadelphia said Chris's Spurs series or Chet's Spurs series reminds me of when Ben Simmons' career ended against the 2011 Hawks and how he completely imploded. I look back at the box score from game seven and Simmons went two for four from the field. He did have 13 assists, but still, maybe this ends with a Chet versus Simmons best master classic in 2035. Want to hear your thoughts? And then the last one I got on this was from MJ from Milwaukee. My comp from Chet is Rocky and Rocky three facing Wemby is Klay Thompson. I think I made that joke. He was scared. He didn't want any part of him too fast. Hasn't said anything like this. Wemby basically said, don't get this suckadose statue. Give him guts. My question, who's going to be Chet's Apollo? Who's going to take him to the gym and find his quickness?

• 1:05:12Bill Simmons?

  Who's going to race him on the beach, hug him uncomfortably? There is no tomorrow. It's from MJ from Milwaukee. I don't think that person exists. Here's the thing, this is, you know, a couple of OKC fans emailed about this too. And I hadn't thought of it about the, when OKC lost to Dallas, the first time they made a playoff run in 2024, when Dallas made the finals. And Dallas guarded Chet a little bit similarly where he's a slow release three point guy. So you can kind of play off him and then dive back at him, which is what the Spurs were doing. And I think his real Achilles heel, other than he's in the same league as a seven foot

• 1:05:54Bill Simmons?

  six UFO, is that he's got to figure out how to have a quicker release on those corner threes because he's a good three point shooter. I still like Chet. I'm not going to get psyched out by that series. We talked about this in the, on one of the pods recently. There's been a lot of great players that have sucked in the playoffs and he's at his age and what we've seen from him so far and the fact that they've already won a title with him. I'm not quitting on Chet. With that said, I still want to know who says no to a Chet to the Clippers for the fifth pick trade because the Clippers do have cap space and that would give them the foundation of Chet and Garland and Kawhi Leonard. And then they could kind of patch around the sides.

• 1:06:37Bill Simmons?

  They've been really good at finding like mid level free agents and veteran guys. One trade I thought of, Clippers get Chet and a future Kings first. So they move back two spots. Kings get the fifth pick so they can take Akoff, who I think is going to go fifth. OKC gets the seventh pick from the Clippers. And then they take Mara, the Michigan center. And that's their Chet replacement along with Hartenstein. They save a bunch of, they would save 30 plus million dollars with Chet versus a seventh pick, Hartenstein, the whole thing. So I kinda like that one. Plus, the Clippers could pick up a future Kings asset and still get Chet.

• 1:07:19Bill Simmons?

  That's around the range. I don't think top four is a Chet range, but I think five to seven could be a Chet range. But as I said multiple times already, it is not Presti's history, or it's just never something we've seen. He's not a panic trade guy and he's not a, oh, God, we gotta do something guy. He's a continuity guy. Andrew, speaking of fake trades, Andrew said, it's not just the finals. It's fake trade season. You should come up with at least one fake trade for every podcast episode until free agency starts. Well, we are doing a lot of episodes this month. Or rank your favorite five fake trades every Sunday night with Zach. More fake trades exclamation point. I don't have a question.

• 1:08:03Bill Simmons?

  If we ranked our favorite fake trades every Sunday night with Zach, he would spend way too much time on that and probably have to be hospitalized, but I'm not against it. Okay, June 3rd, 2016, my favorite fake trades right now. One of them is a Celtics one that I've kinda been hinting at for the last couple of weeks on this podcast. I keep mentioning Murphy on the Pelicans as a possible Celtics piece. And the reason is because if the Celtics decide, we already won a title with the Jays, we don't want to pay both of these guys. Right now, they're two of the top seven contracts in the league. And not just by length of the deal, by what their price tag is just for the 2026-27 season.

• 1:08:46Bill Simmons?

  And if they decide that's not sustainable in this current era, we have to figure out how to turn Jalen Brown into multiple pieces and a cheaper guy. Trey Murphy makes 25 million, which is 30 million less than Jalen Brown. Here's the trade. The Celtics would get Trey Murphy, Missy, the young center who I like, Herb Jones, and Cam Johnson from the Nuggets. Stay with me. Plus a 20-30 Pelican swap.

• 1:09:15Bill Simmons?

  And pick 26 from Denver, which they would have to do after the draft because Denver's not allowed to trade their first round pick. New Orleans gets Jalen Brown. Denver gets Sam Hauser and pick 40 in the trade. So then the Celtics would have too many swing men and then they could flip Herb Jones for something else. The other thing about Cam Johnson, they could put him in their giant trade exception they get, but I think if the Celtics trade Jalen, I don't think it's going to be for Giannis. I think it's going to be a trade like this. Multiple pieces, more flexibility, guys that would lead to one extra move after this. And I think that's what they're thinking. I also think they could separately just trade Sam Hauser for Cam Johnson and put him in

• 1:09:57Bill Simmons?

  that trade exception and get pick 26 and try to have pick 26 and 27 in the draft. Then see if you can move up into the teams with those two picks. I mentioned Denver the other day and a bunch of Nuggets fans, Nuggets media members are mad. Bring it on. I stand by what I said. Hey, Denver, you're rich. I know about the second apron tax. I know about that, all that shit, but they could just not pick up the Valanciunas contract for this year and then figure out how to trade Cam Johnson for less and sign Peyton Watson. And by the way, I don't think Peyton Watson's getting as much money as everybody thinks. I don't know where his 20 million a year is coming from. We saw the guy play well for like five weeks and he got hurt, six weeks, eight weeks.

• 1:10:38Bill Simmons?

  I can't remember what it was, but I don't think, I don't, I think that's the range of guys that everybody is scared of right now. 17 to 22 million where you're overpaying, like basically exactly what happened to the Nuggets last year with Christian Brown, who I think was hurt last year. But, but if I'm Denver, I'm not picking up Valanciunas and I'm trying to downgrade with Cam Johnson. And if I'm the Celtics and I can turn Sam Hauser into Cam Johnson, and then if, if it is time to trade Jalen Brown, who knows? My instinct is still that they're going to keep these guys, but if you could turn Sam Hauser into Cam Johnson, do it, especially because he's an expiring at 23 million. That gives you flexibility of February.

• 1:11:21Bill Simmons?

  I think everything the Celtics are going to do this summer is going to be about flexibility. They have a lot of young players that they like. They have two giant contracts. They don't have really any of the in-between stuff. They have the Pritchard extension coming. Anyway, that's my first trade. Second one, Portland gets Giannis and all his brothers. I think there's only two. Milwaukee gets Jeremy Grant scoot, all their picks swaps back. Portland has, I think, two firsts and a swap, something like that. Plus another first and another swap and Portland gets Giannis. Listen, we've talked about this trade before. I'm not breaking new ground here. And I don't know if Giannis wants to go to Portland. I'd heard he wants to be in the East Coast. That's too far for him and who knows if he wants to play for El Chepo.

• 1:12:05Bill Simmons?

  The Blazers owner who's already on a media tour trying to claim that he's not El Chepo. Plus Carolina is in the Stanley Cup Finals. So he's like, look, my El Chepo stuff works. If Portland can figure out how to get Giannis without really giving up anything in their core and being able to put him with Drew Holiday and Klingon and Kamara and, and most importantly, Denny. And I, I just think that's like, that's a better situation for him than Miami trading basically everything they have except Bam Adebayo and all their picks and just ending up with Bam and Giannis and trying to figure it out. That's the most fun. I'd love to see Giannis on that team reunited with Dame reunited with Drew Holiday.

• 1:12:48Bill Simmons?

  The other one would be Paulo Freire on us straight up. And I don't know who has to throw in more for that, but as we mentioned a few pods ago, Orlando hired Giannis' old assistant in Milwaukee, Sean Sweeney, who is the all time, I can't believe you're not from Massachusetts, Massachusetts guy in the NBA, Sean Sweeney. But Paulo Freire makes a ton of sense for everybody. The last one, Washington gets Jimmy Butler and a Golden State 27 first unprotected. Golden State gets Anthony Davis, followed, followed by the Warriors signing LeBron James. And we officially had the expendables again.

• 1:13:30Bill Simmons?

  We have Anthony Davis, we have LeBron, we have Draymond, we have Steph Curry. By the way, they can get Jimmy Butler back thanks to this stupid Mike Conley rule that we, nobody ever knew about where Mike Conley got traded by Minnesota to, I think, Washington or Chicago somewhere, then got traded again and waived. And all of a sudden Minnesota was gonna, was able to pick them up. So maybe they could end up picking them back up in February, but I'm all in. I, I, listen, I've been driving this Golden State bandwagon. I also think there's real smoke and I think there's some fire with LeBron going to Golden State. I think it's his best option, especially when you look at San Antonio and you look at OKC. The young cores they have, how good their players are and what the kind of the ceiling

• 1:14:12Bill Simmons?

  of those teams are compared to any other situation LeBron could be in, you're better off doing the All-Star team. And the tour with Steph and the puncher's chance of maybe all of these old guys together could do some magic in the playoffs one last time. They'd sell out every arena. Everybody would be in on it. I still love that idea. Nat in Oakland says, hey, Bill, I know you like a good title defense. What do you make of the Thunder's honor level in their title defense? And how does it make their 25 title look? I think the parallels, the 2015 and 16 Warriors. The 16 run proved the 2015 team was legit. I completely agree. I've talked about this a lot. Title defenses are really important to me. I wrote about it in my book.

• 1:14:55Bill Simmons?

  It's the biggest thing you can ding the 83 Sixers on. They lost in five to a really weird Nets team in 1984. And I just, I feel like when you win the title, you gotta defend it in some way. You have to have a little bit of pride. 87 Celtics being the best example of this. The team's just breaking down like an army platoon and there's still somebody who'll make the finals. I would give OKC's defense an 8.5. The Jalen Williams thing, the further we get away from it, losing your second best guy. I was trying to think like, is there another example of anyone in this century who lost their second best guy and won the title? No. They went 75 and 22 this year. Eight of their losses came against the Spurs.

• 1:15:37Bill Simmons?

  They went 71 and 14 against everyone who was in the Spurs this year. And they went 155 and 35 in two years. So I thought that was an awesome title defense. Plus they turned into villains. What else do you want? And now they have the Eye of the Tiger for next year. We have a great Chet subplot. Maybe he goes to Australia, hikes the outback, grows a beard, grows a bigger beard. He has a beard, big bushier beard. Noah from Conway, South Carolina said, massive Spurs fan here. My question is, when be the first true non-U.S.A. face of the league? Has Shay or Jokic ever truly been the face? Has the media or the fans truly ever accepted them? He mentions Hakeem, he mentions Dirk, Nash.

• 1:16:21Bill Simmons?

  Even as USA has fallen behind in the best in the league conversation, it feels like Jokic, Giannis and Shay have not got ass in their seats like Wemby. Thoughts? I hate the face of the league.

• 1:16:33Bill Simmons?

  I said multiple times, I don't like it. I think it's stupid. People act like we always have to have one. It's kind of, it's the mountain in the league they have to climb if you want to win the title, that people are just thinking about at all times is how I would think about it. And in football, you know, it's Brady forever, and then it just became Mahomes. And it was like, if you get by Mahomes, that was almost as big of an achievement as winning the title. So I think that's a piece of it combined with the mom test of, does my mom know who this player is? Does your mom know who this player is? Does anyone who doesn't follow sports know who the player is? Are they bringing in casual fans? And is just there a general recognition of the person?

• 1:17:15Bill Simmons?

  And we have just not had this since LeBron and Curry, and we definitely have it now with Wemby. And this is what I said all along. You know it when you see it. You can't force it. You can't say, oh, it's Grant Hill. Ah, it's SGA. You just can't. You know it when you see it. Jokic was 90% there, but never totally got there. He doesn't resonate like Wemby did. LeBron was that guy from 2011 to 16. Curry and the Warriors collectively from the second part of that decade. Kobe and Shaq together, MJ, Bird and Magic simultaneously, Kareem. You know it when you see it. And Wemby has it right now. No matter what happens in this finals. Next year, when we go into the next season, we'll be talking about Wemby and the Spurs, who can beat them?

• 1:17:57Bill Simmons?

  And also Wemby, Wemby, Wemby, Wemby. And he will sell out every arena he's in. He will get the biggest ratings and that's what happens. Josh S. wants to know if Knicks win the title this year, is this the most improbable NBA championship? When compared to where everything stood at the start of the playoffs? They completely revamped their offense halfway through a playoff series. Their best player is four foot seven. I think he's taller than that. And it's the fucking New York Knicks. Given where we were six weeks ago, this would be the most improbable championship if they pulled it out. So they were six to one to win the East before the playoffs. I gave, I tweeted out some picks before the playoffs and one of the,

• 1:18:38Bill Simmons?

  long shot picks was Brunson to be the Eastern Conference MVP was plus 650. And I think they were six to one to win the East. That obviously flipped. So for improbable championships, 22 Warriors, the 2011 Dallas, 1977 Blazers.

• 1:19:01Bill Simmons?

  The 1978 Sonics making the finals, they didn't win, but that was incredibly improbable, as was the 20 and 23 Heat's, but they didn't, neither of those teams won either. The 75 Warriors was pretty improbable, and then the 69 Celtics are the big ones. But this, I think the parallels to this one would be the 2011 Mavericks, where, very similar to the Mavericks, where it felt like they hit rock bottom in the first series, and the Mavericks had Portland, and then there was multiple times when it just felt like they didn't have a chance, then they even get to the finals, they're 2-1 underdogs. So, I would say the 2011 Dallas. The 22 Warriors, it was, always felt like if they could just stay healthy and figure out their shit.

• 1:19:46Bill Simmons?

  Pudles with Boston and Milwaukee, Milwaukee had Middleton banged up, Boston never been there before, and there was always a sense like if Golden State could just get there, that they could sneak it out. Dallas, especially when they're down 15 in game two after having lost game one, that was improbable, as the finals was happening, it seemed improbable. Zach Hoag said, he mentioned how, "I've always had a theory that championships and success come in bunches for cities." Is France having that moment right now? France, who's already won a World Cup final, or made the World Cup final last two years, and they've won one. PSG's now won back-to-back Champions League. French swimmer Marchand, not very familiar with his work, but he's apparently shattering Michael Phelps' world records.

• 1:20:28Bill Simmons?

  The French rugby team has won a couple championships, big deal in Europe, sure. Wemby's down in the NBA Finals, you could make Casey's the best player in the NBA. So Zach asks, "Why not hammer France to win the World Cup with the Spurs to win the NBA Finals and just bet on the summer of France?" Now, you're seeing this after game one of the finals. That was plus 770 before the finals. I already had Spurs money, I threw some more on that. I like that one, "The year of France." So this is something I didn't realize until after I did the podcast with Max. Game six of the finals is on Tuesday, June 16th, and that same day, France is playing in New Jersey at the Giant Football Stadium.

• 1:21:11Bill Simmons?

  They have a World Cup game at 12, and then potentially game six with the Knicks would be that night, and people could be like, "Could you try to go to both?" It's so crazy that France would be playing in the same night that Wemby could potentially be clinching his first NBA championship that I almost feel like it's destined to happen. I really do. I was thinking about when I, in 1994, I went, my buddy Jim Grady was living in Porchester with my friend Camp, and I went up there and we were supposed to watch game five of Knicks Rockets, and that was the night of the OJ car chase. And it just was like this crazy night that has been immortalized in multiple TV shows and

• 1:21:53Bill Simmons?

  documentaries, and they're doing split screens. And it was definitely one of those, I remember where I was when I watched this game and this whole car chase thing. I do wonder if that June 16th is going to be kind of a crazy day like that with the double France thing. Just something, some sort of signature French moment. Plus 770. We'll see if that one hits. We're going to take a break. We're going to come back and we're going to talk about TV shows and TV versus movies and a little seesaw that's starting to shift. And also, we're going to talk about Euphoria and the season finale of that show, series finale now. We're going to talk with Joanna Robinson and Chris Ryan, and that is next, right after this break.

• 1:22:36Bill Simmons?

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• 1:23:21Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun? Sometimes earlier than expected, sometimes after Blowing a three one series lead, but what if you went to Cancun with Expedia? Save up to 30% when you bundle and save. You can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness, though, hopefully your team doesn't go to Cancun. One, two, three Cancun. Or if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save savings vary. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. And whether it's a flea flicker or a tush push, you need a plan that fits your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you. So they can help personalize coverage for your life and for your budget.

• 1:24:06Bill Simmons?

  Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. I'll come. All right, I'm here with Joanna Robinson, Chris Ryan. We just did a rewatchables taping, so I kept them around to talk a little pop culture. Euphoria was last night. Series for now, it sounds like.

• 1:24:20Speaker 03

  Oh, they confirmed it.

• 1:24:23Bill Simmons?

  One of my least liked seasons of television I've had.

• 1:24:27Speaker 03

  I've never gotten so many all caps texts from you.

• 1:24:30Bill Simmons?

  I was furious.

• 1:24:32Speaker 03

  Hatred.

• 1:24:32Bill Simmons?

  I really hated it.

• 1:24:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:34Bill Simmons?

  And I hate shitting on TV. These things are hard to make. There's a million actors and our expectations, but there's certain seasons. There was a Dexter season, I remember that I was just like, I'm never fucking watching this show again.

• 1:24:46Speaker 04

  Did you keep watching it?

• 1:24:47Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:24:49Speaker 03

  You were out before the end of Dexter?

• 1:24:51Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:24:51Speaker 04

  Did you do that on Lost? Did you ever freak out on Lost?

• 1:24:54Bill Simmons?

  I didn't like the last season of Lost, but that show had built up so much goodwill for me. Euphoria, it goes away for years.

• 1:25:02Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:25:02Bill Simmons?

  Comes back and has three of the biggest under 35 actors that we have and just fumbles it. So I was, it was an F minus for me, but what did you think?

• 1:25:11Speaker 03

  It was like a C. I would say for me, I think there's some stuff in the finale that was really, really good. But I'm baffled by the way in which this season and this finale especially got bogged down in this like, there's this Nazi cohort and then there's Alamo and his bad guys. And so there's like two big shootout sequences that take up a lot of this episode. 30 minutes into the finale and we're still like shooting Nazis. And I'm just like. What about all these characters we spent all these years with? Like Hunter Schafer plays Jules is barely in this finale. Like, you know, Cassie and Maddie are kind of in the finale. It was just really confusing to me.

• 1:25:51Speaker 03

  I understand the impulse and it's okay to want to sort of try to try something new with your show. Like, we've reinvented ourselves for this season, but you still have these legacy characters that have been there from the beginning. So to not give them a conclusive story or more airtime in the final episode was absolutely insane to me.

• 1:26:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was probably a lot warmer on it than you guys were. The addiction stuff really worked for me. I thought the Zendaya Coleman Domingo like relationship was amazing.

• 1:26:20Speaker 03

  Very good.

• 1:26:21Speaker 04

  And I'll say what I've kind of been like trumpeting the whole year with this show with Andy is I was just never bored. And so much TV bores me, you know, like so much to the time I'm like, oh, I can see where this is going. Or I know what's going to happen now is like this XYZ is going to kind of play out. And when she, I guess, obviously spoilers for this episode of Euphoria, I mean finale. But when she passes away at like the 40 minute mark and there's still another hour. I was like, oh, are we going to spend an hour kind of remembering Rue and doing the funeral? And then it turns into fucking taxi driver? I was like, well, I didn't see this coming, you know, like I kind of thought maybe Ali would sacrifice himself for Rue in some way.

• 1:27:00Speaker 04

  But it was such a like a weird, dark fantasy of like the vengeance that probably people who lose people to addiction feel like they want to take out.

• 1:27:11Speaker 04

  And it was just, I mean, you could, you could say a lot of it, but it was very unique. So I'm probably more in the B zone if you're F and she's C. I'm, I'm a little bit higher on it, but just because I was like, this, this never, this never was dull to me.

• 1:27:24Speaker 03

  Well, that's why I wasn't sure until HBO confirmed it after we recorded our finale discussion, but that they confirmed that this is the final season. But I wasn't sure that it would be not, I mean, Jacob Elordi and Zendaya would no longer be on the show. But you have plenty of other people and people are talking about it every week.

• 1:27:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:42Speaker 03

  And that's hard to find in this TV landscape. So I was a little surprised that HBO didn't try to squeeze another season out of Sam Levinson.

• 1:27:50Speaker 04

  It feels like they were probably good.

• 1:27:54Speaker 03

  I'm just saying.

• 1:27:54Bill Simmons?

  Cause now you have this idol season that was pretty crazy and super expensive. I'm sure this season was not not expensive with probably better bang for the buck.

• 1:28:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think this season was also marred by like the strikes and COVID and stuff like that. So it sounds like it went through a couple of different like whole creative reimaginings.

• 1:28:10Speaker 03

  Plus they lost an actor.

• 1:28:11Speaker 04

  And then they lost an actor.

• 1:28:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:28:12Bill Simmons?

  Lost an actor and they also were cursed by never having their best actors all in the same scene.

• 1:28:17Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:28:18Bill Simmons?

  For different reasons, I think for shooting schedules, but.

• 1:28:21Speaker 03

  Personal reasons.

• 1:28:21Bill Simmons?

  I really does seem like Zendaya and Siddy Sweeney did not want to be in a scene together. Which I think hurts the show. It was just, it felt very disjointed to me. I didn't like the Alordi stuff at all. I didn't understand it.

• 1:28:33Speaker 03

  Nate shouldn't have been in this season.

• 1:28:35Bill Simmons?

  Like what the fuck was the point of that?

• 1:28:36Speaker 03

  Nate shouldn't have been in this season at all.

• 1:28:38Bill Simmons?

  He just shouldn't have, or should have died in the fir-, if you're gonna use it now, just kill him in the first episode.

• 1:28:42Speaker 03

  If the whole point of him is to create this, well, the whole point of him is to say, we have Jacob Alordi on our show in 2026, right?

• 1:28:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:28:50Speaker 03

  So that's why you keep Alordi around. But for plot reasons, you really just needed Cassie to be in debt. And so he could have died in the, they could have had the wedding and he died in like the first episode.

• 1:29:00Speaker 04

  But that's, that stuff kinda hardly gets interrogated in the finale. Like that was one of the, my problems with it is that like this sort of chain reaction from Rue tells Lexi that she's a DEA agent, DEA informant.

• 1:29:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:12Speaker 04

  And then Lexi tells Maddie and Maddie tells Alamo. Alamo seems like probably would have found out either way, but like, there's no reckoning with like Maddie being like, I can't believe like, this is what happened to Rue, like.

• 1:29:25Speaker 03

  Does she even know that she's the reason? And that was, that was, that really bothered me because I know you're not like a huge Maddie slash Alexa Demi fan, but I really love that character. And I think she's one of the smarter characters on the show. And so for her to just casually drop this DEA information in front of Alamo, I thought was like a bizarrely stupid move. To not then have any ramifications at all for that character, like emotionally is very strange.

• 1:29:52Speaker 04

  I mean, this is. Like a show that did something in an incredible way that TV shows rarely do anyway anymore, which is like mint stars. Like when you think about the fact that like that there's that shot of Zendaya, like the young Zendaya when she's having her flashback. I'm like, wow, she was a kid when she started this show. And like, so for them to have this lightning in a bottle with three performers, especially Lordy Sweeney and Zendaya, and to kind of have it wind up where it winds up, I guess it does feel a little bit like a wasted opportunity, but it's not surprising that, you know, like, given their schedules and stuff like that, it is disappointing, but it's not surprising that there are not more scenes together. But I just don't think some,

• 1:30:36Speaker 04

  like Andy was just saying this today on the pod, like, I don't think like anything like this is ever gonna happen again, where you have this amount of like talent.

• 1:30:43Bill Simmons?

  So that's why I give it the F minus. I don't think it was an F minus show, but I think they had the opportunity to do something really special with the people they had. And I just don't think they pulled it off. And I

• 1:30:54Speaker 03

  You don't think heated rivalry is headed that way? You don't think off campus is headed that way?

• 1:30:57Speaker 04

  Maybe.

• 1:30:58Bill Simmons?

  I don't know what they tried to do with Sydney Sweeney this season. She seemed to enjoy it.

• 1:31:02Speaker 03

  She seemed to love it. And I'm so curious what you thought of it.

• 1:31:05Bill Simmons?

  Were they mocking what people think is the perception of her? Or was he mocking her without her knowing she was being mocked?

• 1:31:12Speaker 04

  I think it was the former.

• 1:31:14Speaker 03

  I don't, I feel like it was a little column A, a little column B. Like, I think there was just like a little bit of Sydney Sweeney not being entirely in on the joke, but her being somewhat in on the joke.

• 1:31:26Bill Simmons?

  That's how I felt. So my daughter, who loved this show, and that's a big part of like her generation.

• 1:31:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:32Bill Simmons?

  And she liked this finale, but she likes everything because she really liked Rue and the Coleman Domingo character.

• 1:31:40Speaker 04

  Zoe had the theory that like, I don't think Rue's gonna die because she's the narrator.

• 1:31:44Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:31:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:45Bill Simmons?

  And she thought that he would die and then she would take his place. And so they flipped it. But I guess the problem with Levinson is also the best thing about him. He can make anything look good and entertaining. Right? So this turns into like a Western. We have like a whole Nazi shootout.

• 1:32:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:02Bill Simmons?

  And it's all of it's really well done and well filmed and just interesting. And then you kind of think about it after you're like, what the fuck just happened? Why was that?

• 1:32:11Speaker 03

  I'm just not emotionally invested.

• 1:32:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Why, why did I just spend an hour, 45 minutes watching that? And if that was a movie, would that have been a good use of my time? I don't know. I disagree with you on one thing, though. I was pretty bored.

• 1:32:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:24Bill Simmons?

  Through multiple stretches yesterday. I just was like, what the fuck?

• 1:32:27Speaker 03

  The Nazi shootout, I thought was like unbearably long and this like the Lori suicide, when I'm just sort of like, I don't care about this character.

• 1:32:33Bill Simmons?

  I didn't care about anybody in that house.

• 1:32:35Speaker 04

  When it, so when I say that, I mean, even when I would be like, this is the third time they've had this conversation or the fourth time the scene has happened. Visually, I would be like,

• 1:32:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:45Speaker 04

  There's something that popped, like even the shootout and the Nazi, like I thought the tunnel sequence was cool. I thought the last of sequence was cool. Like there's stuff where I was like, holy shit. Like, nobody really makes Westerns like this right now.

• 1:32:56Speaker 03

  Well, and as two people who are like podcasting about it week to week, like there was always something to talk about. And people were talking about it. And in this like, you know, attention economy, like the fact that people were engaged at all, even if they were angrily engaged. I mean, I don't know if that's a negative message to send, but like, there's something important.

• 1:33:15Speaker 04

  Provocative about it.

• 1:33:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, important about that.

• 1:33:17Bill Simmons?

  I guess the bigger issue is can any show end in a way that satisfies some fit basis?

• 1:33:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. Hacks finale rules also happened this week.

• 1:33:25Speaker 04

  When did the two specials come out?

• 1:33:28Speaker 03

  Uh, what year?

• 1:33:29Speaker 04

  No, I mean, like, was it between one and two?

• 1:33:30Speaker 03

  One and two.

• 1:33:31Speaker 04

  Yeah. So like between one and two, they did these two specials. One was about Jules and one's about Ollie and Rue. And I was, I remember thinking back about those, like just after watching last night and being like, man, like, I wonder if it would have worked better if it was like three of these weird.

• 1:33:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:50Speaker 04

  I'm gonna do a Nate movie. I'm gonna do a Cassie movie and then I'm gonna do the Ollie and Rue movie. And we'll put it all together and it'll be like a six to eight week special event of like wrapping up the Euphoria storyline. Yeah, like but like to your point, I wonder if there was holding out hope of like, well, maybe we'll do more. Maybe like in five years we'll come back and they'll be like, they'll all be older then. And maybe I can do the Rue as a private detective story then and all this stuff that had been kicked around as ideas.

• 1:34:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:22Bill Simmons?

  Too much time passed and I think.

• 1:34:25Speaker 03

  That was a huge problem.

• 1:34:26Bill Simmons?

  I think it's really hard to figure out how to land the plane correctly when you're also trying to land the plane on this is five years after the last time you've seen all these people.

• 1:34:34Speaker 03

  And I do, I mean, like, you know, would I rather had season three of Euphoria rather than the idol? Yes, but I do, I mean, we can't underestimate the impact that losing Angus Cloud had on this entire crew and this creator and stuff like that. So like I can understand that while still not enjoying the end product of what we got.

• 1:34:55Bill Simmons?

  Is this better if it's just a five year reunion for high school? And we don't go completely over the top and make this like the absolute craziest. I mean, there were scenes this season where it's like, you're trying to set the record for the craziest scene that's been on HBO five different times.

• 1:35:11Speaker 03

  It's like the dildo limit.

• 1:35:13Bill Simmons?

  Would it almost have been better scaling it back the other way and trying to make the show a little more normal when it wasn't?

• 1:35:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's almost distracting at points because like when Ollie is doing his vengeance tour and you're like, wow, I'm really engaged. This guy's got his military uniform on. This is like rolling thunder. It's happening.

• 1:35:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:29Speaker 04

  But then you've got like fake Brazilian butt lifts like walking across the screen every second. And I know it's set in a strip club, so it like works, but.

• 1:35:37Bill Simmons?

  There's no strip club in the world like that.

• 1:35:38Speaker 04

  But it's also just like, dude, fucking concentrate, like, like tell the story that's right in front of you rather than making sure I see four snakes and two butts.

• 1:35:48Speaker 03

  You have one of your main characters in the show, Maddie, here in this shootout, but she might as well have not been there. She was a piece of furniture. So weird.

• 1:35:55Speaker 04

  You liked the Hacks finale a lot?

• 1:35:56Speaker 03

  I loved the Hacks finale. Yeah.

• 1:35:58Speaker 04

  I did. I liked it and it was also, but it was interesting. Did you watch Hacks at all?

• 1:36:03Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:36:04Speaker 04

  Something happens at Hacks where they like kind of get up to the edge of something very, very, you know, like unexpected and impactful happening. And they back off of it at the last second, probably for the best for like in terms of people's enjoyment of it, but I'm glad. I'm glad that with with Euphoria, they were like, this is what happens to people who dance too close to the sun a little bit.

• 1:36:27Speaker 03

  But also, I would say with the Hacks Mall, and I guess we're talking around it, like, they don't say it's not gonna happen.

• 1:36:32Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:36:32Speaker 03

  It's just not happening in this episode.

• 1:36:34Speaker 04

  In this episode, yeah, right.

• 1:36:35Bill Simmons?

  TV's in a weird spot right now, even though we're all watching a ton of it.

• 1:36:39Speaker 03

  This year is very, the back half of this year is very strange. I don't know, like, I don't know what.

• 1:36:44Bill Simmons?

  I think the whole year's been weird because one of the weirdest things that's happened is we thought TV had taken over from movies. And now movies is having this huge renaissance because they're actually making movies about original IP.

• 1:36:56Speaker 03

  Sean just heard you across town.

• 1:36:57Bill Simmons?

  I know, sorry, Sean. Conversationally.

• 1:37:01Speaker 04

  He and Steven Spielberg clinking espresso.

• 1:37:05Bill Simmons?

  Conversationally, I think more and more people are doing the. Have you seen Obsession? It's the way it used to be. I don't know why we had to die for 10 years. And I don't think it was, you know, I know this is, we've done so many pods and different things about this, but I really just think everybody got lazy for a long time. And then it finally started not making money. And then it's like, well, maybe we need to find new stories. It's like, yeah, motherfuckers.

• 1:37:31Speaker 03

  Oh, in terms of movies, yeah.

• 1:37:33Bill Simmons?

  Covid definitely fucked it up and knocked it backwards. Maybe this all would have happened three years sooner. But movies just feel a little more vibrant than TV right now. Like, if I see another fucking Apple show, and I've watched most of them, where it's three actors I've known a few times from different things.

• 1:37:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:37:50Bill Simmons?

  And there's a murder, and one of them died, and now we go backwards. And like, how many fucking times can you make that show?

• 1:37:55Speaker 03

  Are you excited for Cape Fear?

• 1:37:57Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm not gonna watch Cape Fear.

• 1:37:59Speaker 03

  Widows Bay, we're loving Widows Bay. The Pit.

• 1:38:03Bill Simmons?

  Couldn't get there.

• 1:38:04Speaker 03

  The Pit, were you into the Pit?

• 1:38:05Bill Simmons?

  The Pit was the last one. Yeah, I love The Pit. The Pit was the, you know, because I was sending you a text about.

• 1:38:09Speaker 03

  I do know.

• 1:38:11Bill Simmons?

  The Pit was. So and now people are gonna rip the pit off. And then we're gonna get a lot of like every hour and a day.

• 1:38:19Speaker 03

  But the pit was just ripping, you know.

• 1:38:24Speaker 03

  The Michael Crandall State. But the pit is just doing old school television.

• 1:38:30Speaker 04

  There's something about they got, I think that collectively and you could do a Matt Bellany conversation about moving away from networks and into streaming services and why like different priorities change. But there was something about the golden age of television that basically raised Joe and Joe and I as as people who talk about this stuff where it was like Breaking Bad and Sopranos and some of these shows, even if maybe there had been a feature script at its origin story ever, felt like a new and different way of telling stories. And then when you have this gold rush and talent rush into TV, but it's like, yeah,

• 1:39:12Speaker 04

  guess what, Nicole Kidman's gonna be on this, but she can only shoot for like four weeks. So can we do all of her scenes in three sets? And they have to be like before we know what the end of the show is or I'm not even talking about her specific show, but I feel like more and more you can see the scenes.

• 1:39:27Bill Simmons?

  Schedule reliant.

• 1:39:28Speaker 04

  Of of shows where you're like, oh, did that, did they actually not have like the ending or what like what happened here?

• 1:39:34Speaker 03

  And that and also it's connected to what Bill was saying about sort of this, I the way in which IP or superheroes or whatever you however you care to put it took over movies. And all those like mid level original idea of movies became like drawn out limited series. Cause that's the only place you could tell those stories.

• 1:39:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:52Speaker 03

  But you didn't have enough story there. So then you just get this like really thin sort of diluted version of what would have been a good like, you know, just movies for adults movie and and.

• 1:40:04Speaker 03

  People could tell you get tired of the time. A lot of those Apple shows that you're talking about are just stretched out movies that people can't get made as movies. And so they're taking them to.

• 1:40:14Bill Simmons?

  And you make more money if you stretch it out.

• 1:40:15Speaker 04

  There's also something behavioral going on and I recognize it in myself where I get like three episodes into a show and I'm like, that's pretty good, but I think I'm good.

• 1:40:24Speaker 03

  I got it.

• 1:40:25Speaker 04

  You know what I mean?

• 1:40:25Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my God. You make it three?

• 1:40:27Speaker 04

  But you know what I mean?

• 1:40:27Bill Simmons?

  I'm like an episode and a half and I'm like, I think I'm out.

• 1:40:30Speaker 04

  You're like kind of cruising through a Netflix or an Apple or an Amazon show and you're like, I think I got it. You know, like, I think, I think that this is like, kind of.

• 1:40:38Speaker 03

  Did you do any more boroughs after we talked about it?

• 1:40:40Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:40:41Speaker 03

  I think I got it.

• 1:40:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:40:42Speaker 03

  I agree with you.

• 1:40:42Speaker 04

  That's a good example. Legends is like a great show on Netflix. I was like, I gotta finish this, but there's something daunting, especially if like, you know, like you said, like movies have kind of had this, a little bit of a revival of like, we gotta go out and see Backrooms like the weekend it comes out because it feels like that's.

• 1:40:58Speaker 03

  People are talking about it.

• 1:40:59Speaker 04

  Really like a huge.

• 1:41:00Bill Simmons?

  I couldn't believe it. I mean, we live in LA, obviously, where everybody loves going to the movies. And we have great apps now where you can see how many seats are available and things like that. And so I was thinking about making my wife go to see Backrooms last night. And looked in the morning and there were a bunch of seats left on like the 10 o'clock. You know, they, it was, by the time it got to two o'clock, like everything was gone. It was like sold out. It was like, holy shit. And was talking to my son about it because he, him and his friends, my son's 18, they love going to movies, obviously. But I do think a big piece of this, other than the original IP thing, people were COVID stuck kind of in their house for a while, not being able to go out as much. And then that started

• 1:41:44Bill Simmons?

  to slowly shift away. And then now it's back to normal. And now people are looking for excuses to go out again, that I don't feel like was there a few years ago for a variety of reasons.

• 1:41:55Speaker 04

  They've also now, they're learning that. And they just announced that Obsession was supposed to come out this week on paid video and demand.

• 1:42:02Bill Simmons?

  Couldn't believe it. They delayed it.

• 1:42:02Speaker 04

  And now they're delaying it for like another 30 days or 40 days. And the exact opposite is happening with TV where it's like. There's four or five shows a year that are big deals that are weekly and everything else is like these binge drops that it's either were you a psycho and you watched it on Friday or have you watched it over the course of two months?

• 1:42:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:23Speaker 04

  And you gotta finish it, but you haven't yet. And Joe and I are both huge fans of Widows Bay. One of the reasons why it's been kind of like this cool little show is that you can kind of feel it gain momentum.

• 1:42:36Speaker 03

  The same thing happened with The Pit.

• 1:42:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:42:37Speaker 03

  In his first season of The Pit, watching, audiences need time to find these things. And if Widows Bay had been a binge jump, you wouldn't have this like as the audience grows and then week to week and Widows Bay is a little bit of a theory show.

• 1:42:49Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:42:49Speaker 03

  Like people get to trade theories and get really invested. And I've just like always been anti binge. It is very antisocial. And like what you're talking about in terms of this like post COVID thing is a social experience. When you go to a movie and you sit in a dark room with people and you laugh or you cry or whatever it is, you are feeling something with people around you. And we're in a psychological space, societal space right now where people feel so isolated. People feel like they can't connect or agree on anything. And if you have this communal experience, TV can be that if it comes out week to week and if everyone's watching the same thing, which is so hard to capture.

• 1:43:26Bill Simmons?

  Happening with sports, sporting events too.

• 1:43:28Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 1:43:28Bill Simmons?

  Like sports is completely back and attendance is doing great in all these different places.

• 1:43:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:43:32Bill Simmons?

  Cause people like being around other people.

• 1:43:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:43:36Bill Simmons?

  The binge thing, we've been talking about it on this podcast forever. I just don't like it.

• 1:43:43Speaker 03

  It's horrible.

• 1:43:44Bill Simmons?

  But I'm for selfish reasons.

• 1:43:46Speaker 03

  I'm always.

• 1:43:46Bill Simmons?

  Dating back to Grantland.

• 1:43:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:43:48Bill Simmons?

  It's like, it's just bad. Stranger Things was bad for us, the way the schedule was. If they had spread it out, it would have been better for us. So I'm being selfish about it, but I just think the ability to dive into a show every week, wonder what just happened, what's gonna happen next is, I think that's how people want to watch shows.

• 1:44:05Speaker 04

  These networks aren't stupid. If, if they thought there was more money or more interest in it being a week to week, I'm sure they would do it. I do think it's a little bit of like an us problem where it's like, we like to talk about these things. We like to talk about these things episodically. I'm bummed out that the last season of The Bear is gonna go up on like a Thursday night. You know what I mean? I'm bummed out that-

• 1:44:27Speaker 03

  The Bear has been a confusing case the entire run because like its first season was a binge dump. But once it was such a huge thing, we were confused every year.

• 1:44:34Bill Simmons?

  Should've been two a week.

• 1:44:35Speaker 03

  And well, and FX is like, we've got the numbers that support that this is the model for us. But like, it's, it's more of an instant gratification versus a long-term investment thing. But I'm sure the numbers prove that if you binge drop something, you know, um, you will get more eyeballs on it immediately. But in terms of like building a Widows Bay audience or building a pit audience, like there's longer term benefits. Come Emmy season, come all these other things in terms of its endurance. Yeah, it's an us covering shows problem, but I also think it's like an impatience. Um, and, and that anxiety, that insecurity that a lot of like studios and streamers are experiencing.

• 1:45:13Speaker 04

  I only like superficially follow this stuff, but I am very much aware that there's usually like a huge flood of shows right around now, the previous few weeks, because people are trying to get in under the Emmys nomination.

• 1:45:27Bill Simmons?

  And the summer.

• 1:45:27Speaker 04

  And to me, that's a lot of like, uh, you know, maybe bigger stars doing TV who are like, if I'm doing this, I want to be up for an Emmy.

• 1:45:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:36Speaker 04

  Don't put me out in August and have, make people try to remember me next spring.

• 1:45:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:40Speaker 04

  And I don't know if there's that many shows that it came out in the last couple of weeks that I would be like, this is so good. I wish it had a better runway or had a better window. But they were putting out way too much shit in like a six week period.

• 1:45:55Speaker 03

  You're right.

• 1:45:56Speaker 04

  Because they're like, we have to get this up to run an F Y C campaign, to get an Emmy nomination, to satisfy the talent relations that we have and do whatever. And I do think it's like, kind of now blinding people to like, be like, it just seems like five shows just pop up on Peacock every week and I don't know, know what to do about that. And I, I think that like-

• 1:46:15Bill Simmons?

  Five shows where somebody gets kidnapped.

• 1:46:17Speaker 04

  Well, or just like do the HBO thing.

• 1:46:19Speaker 03

  Finale, the hacks finale. There were like a ton of finales.

• 1:46:22Speaker 04

  But do the HBO thing where you have two shows on at once and you promote them and you like build conversation about them and then hand the baton off to the next two shows. It just doesn't make any sense.

• 1:46:31Speaker 03

  Because when you're thinking about, I do think a lot about the F Y C stuff. And when you think about what they're running, like task is a huge thing they're running and they didn't run that in the classic Emmys window, you know? But it is, it week to week built an audience was a huge thing for them.

• 1:46:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the one other thing with the binge that I think gets lost is we always talk about how it's bad for us, it's bad for discussing. I also find when you binge a show, I just don't watch it as carefully.

• 1:46:57Speaker 03

  No, of course not.

• 1:46:57Bill Simmons?

  Especially, it's like, oh, bang out four episodes. Like, I watched those seasons of The Bear and they all just are kind of lumped together because I don't feel like I watched them the way I would normally watch them if it was just spread out.

• 1:47:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:12Bill Simmons?

  Like even Euphoria, which drove me crazy, it was at least once a week and I actually watched it and it was

• 1:47:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:18Bill Simmons?

  something that I was concentrating on. If I was trying to binge that, it would have been a nightmare.

• 1:47:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:23Speaker 04

  I remember the bear thing that was jumped out at me was like that first season, you're right. It had almost like a Stranger Things kind of thing where it went from like, have you seen the show The Bear?

• 1:47:31Speaker 03

  I remember you slacking me and you're like, have you seen this bear thing?

• 1:47:34Speaker 04

  And it's like, no, now I have watched The Bear like in five hours, you know?

• 1:47:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:39Speaker 04

  And it was the second season, and I think I had screener, so it wasn't like a personal thing, but I remember being like, oh, man, it sucks that not everyone is going to watch the Christmas dinner episode at the same time.

• 1:47:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:52Speaker 04

  You know?

• 1:47:52Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:47:53Speaker 04

  And that there's going to be prepackaged articles going out about how did The Bear do that episode? And you're like, I would love for everybody to be like, oh, it's bear night, it's Wednesday night. And it's like, holy shit, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jon Bernthal are in this episode? Like, and Bob Odenkirk, like?

• 1:48:06Bill Simmons?

  Some of the best shows ever benefited from that more than anything. I mean, Thrones certainly, Sopranos, which I still doesn't know, but, uh, but Lost.

• 1:48:16Speaker 04

  Me too.

• 1:48:17Bill Simmons?

  Think about Lost now would have been 10 episodes a season. It would have been a binge show. And it just like-

• 1:48:23Speaker 03

  It's a completely different animal.

• 1:48:24Bill Simmons?

  When Jack says we have to go back, it just would have been trapped during the season long binge and everybody would have experienced it at different times and it wouldn't have the impact.

• 1:48:32Speaker 03

  I was thinking with the pit, I was thinking so much about this idea of water cooler culture and water cooler conversation and, and the way in which shows like Lost or The Sopranos or Mad Men or whatever, to a lesser degree, like- That idea of the water cooler i- is so rare and and it's it feels so good when people when everyone's watching something together. When everyone's watching task and like we can see it with podcast numbers when people are like dialed into a show.

• 1:49:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:02Speaker 03

  And then people want to text me and talk, you know, people want to text me on that night while they're watching it and they're like, holy shit, I can't believe this happened or like, why did Robbie do this or you know?

• 1:49:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:10Speaker 03

  What's who's the secret warrant on Widows Bay, you know? And that's just that's better for our culture.

• 1:49:16Bill Simmons?

  When I was working for Jimmy's show, we came in on the Monday when Sopranos was running. And so we all the writers, we'd all get together with Jimmy and we'd try to figure out like act one and we'd all go around the room and pitch bits. And during this time, the Sopranos had like was one of their runs. I can't remember what season. And we were just all around the room on the Monday. We would talk about the show for like an hour and a half and we'd have like no bits. Everybody's like, damn, that was just like, that's just gone in the binge model. And so I don't know, I understand there's reasons why they do it. I'm sure the numbers are just as good, but like I watched DTF because I had screeners for that. DTF St. Louis, I watched it the day after New Year's all at once.

• 1:49:58Bill Simmons?

  I watched like six episodes in one day because I was hungover and I just wanted something to watch. And it hit me differently. I think if I had watched it week to week, I would have liked it more, but it was like too much all at once. And that's another issue. Some of these shows are like too too dense to binge.

• 1:50:14Speaker 04

  That's a show that didn't really work for me personally, but I will like.

• 1:50:19Bill Simmons?

  You respected it.

• 1:50:20Speaker 04

  I really and also like is the kind of thing that we should have more of. Now you could say DTF might have been like a good two hour movie and or, you know, whatever. But I I wish more shows had like the sensibility and also like the creative bravery to be like, this is not like every other show.

• 1:50:40Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:50:40Speaker 04

  The sense of humor is going to be different. The performance style is going to be a little bit different. The tone is going to be different. You may or may not love it, but we're going to take a risk with it. And I think that there's a lot of like risk aversion in TV that you can really feel.

• 1:50:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:53Speaker 04

  Every show, starting with a flash forward and then a six months earlier. Is like, you guys don't.

• 1:50:59Speaker 03

  It's like putting the hook at the front of your song.

• 1:51:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, you guys don't trust me to watch a TV show because you gotta show me a dead body in the first five seconds.

• 1:51:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:51:06Speaker 04

  I know, I know what show I'm watching. It's presumed innocent, you know, like, it's like, I assume.

• 1:51:11Speaker 03

  I've seen the movie.

• 1:51:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:51:11Speaker 03

  And to go back to your, um, your point about how you don't watch binge shows that closely, then we get into that feedback loop that, you know, people have been talking about more and more recently where, Netflix execs or whoever say you have to repeat things 10 times because people are second screening this. They're not paying attention. And so then the shows get worse. And so then people want to pay even less attention to them because you're like, oh, I already saw this scene. You, you keep repeating the same lines over and over again because you think I'm not paying attention and so I won't pay attention.

• 1:51:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, sadly, I, I was laid on the pit and we binged it. And I, I really tried to lock in and, but I'm sure I missed a bunch of stuff.

• 1:51:51Speaker 04

  Well, the pit is almost like, I think it's, it's an amazing week to week experience, but watching it in binge is almost representative of like the qual, like the durational quality of the day that they're having on the show.

• 1:52:03Bill Simmons?

  True.

• 1:52:04Speaker 04

  So if you watch like five episodes, you really are like, holy shit, it's been five hours and like.

• 1:52:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it did work, but I still feel like I missed.

• 1:52:11Speaker 03

  You caught up right at the end, didn't you? I thought you caught up like by the time the finale aired.

• 1:52:15Bill Simmons?

  I did, I caught up for you guys.

• 1:52:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:52:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I made it in time.

• 1:52:19Bill Simmons?

  It was good. But, uh, I do wonder like the seesaw of the movies versus TV. This is gonna be an interesting next couple of years. Cause if I'm, if I'm a creative person, do I want to have a movie and I can get out of it? I can just create something from scratch and have people see it and do well and make the next one? Or do I want to emulate what these other people are doing with these TV shows where it's like, I might be locked into this for five, six years of my life? By the way, I'm not going to make as much money as I used to back in the day. And I actually might have more upside on the movie side. Your brain's gonna shift toward the movie making, I think. Like even somebody like the guy in The Bear, right?

• 1:52:57Speaker 04

  Jeremy Allen White.

• 1:52:58Bill Simmons?

  No, the, the creator.

• 1:52:59Speaker 04

  Chris Story, he's making a movie next.

• 1:53:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. The bear was amazing for him, right? It's the stepping stone for him to make movies, which is where I think that's where the real money is gonna be for them.

• 1:53:10Speaker 03

  I hope so, but there's still plenty of movies that come and go and people pay no attention to them.

• 1:53:15Bill Simmons?

  But you can at least move on to the next thing when you're doing it.

• 1:53:17Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:53:18Bill Simmons?

  You do a show, this is, you're locked down. Like even these euphoric actors couldn't get out of these shows.

• 1:53:23Speaker 04

  Nate Bargatze's movie's kind of flopped. If he had been locked into like, I have to do Everybody Loves Raymond for 10 years.

• 1:53:29Speaker 03

  Mr. Mom for 10 years, yeah.

• 1:53:31Speaker 04

  Although that was like, kind of like, maybe that made more sense. I don't know. I mean, you know, the difference is like, yeah, Joe's right. Like, there's, there's gonna be, for every Odyssey and Backrooms and Obsession, there's gonna be 10 movies.

• 1:53:44Bill Simmons?

  A bunch of them you didn't know.

• 1:53:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:53:45Bill Simmons?

  But then some, some of them can even do well when they end up on like the Amazon On Demand, you know, the pay-per-view, the Roku.

• 1:53:52Speaker 03

  Does that even exist? I don't know.

• 1:53:54Bill Simmons?

  Fandango Universe.

• 1:53:55Speaker 03

  It is fun, you know, I'm relatively new to living in Los Angeles, but having worked with you guys for years and years and years and having listened to Mallory say, every screening of this is sold out. And I'm in San Francisco, I'm like, not here, man. So it is nice to be in this town where people are going to the movies all the time. And any time of day that you decide to go to a movie, there are gonna be other people there. It's really cool.

• 1:54:16Speaker 04

  But you're, you're really right, though, about, there's something different. Like, I remember even like last year with Andor, and I was like, me and the 10 people I know who are watching Andor are obsessed with this and can't believe this is happening. And then there's like, all these people who are like, I know I'm gonna love it. I just, I just, you know, just don't have time right now. You know what I mean?

• 1:54:34Bill Simmons?

  It's too much, because there's too much stuff and it's too much of a commitment to go into any of these shows. That was one of the things that kept me from the pit for a while. I was like, I don't know. I'm busy watching important stuff, like terrible NBA games.

• 1:54:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:54:50Bill Simmons?

  But it is a commitment, and I found the same thing. It would be a funny letterbox of like, did I quit this TV show?

• 1:54:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:54:57Bill Simmons?

  Where it's like, I lasted an episode and a half with that new show on HBO that I just kind of stopped watching.

• 1:55:03Speaker 03

  But I also feel like, I hear from you more often than not, it was horrible, I watched all of it.

• 1:55:07Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:55:08Speaker 03

  When it comes to TV.

• 1:55:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but that, usually that means I had it on as I was doing other stuff. Beef is a good example.

• 1:55:14Speaker 04

  So when you're watching.

• 1:55:15Bill Simmons?

  I saw every episode of Beef, but if you quizzed me on it, I'd probably miss like half of the the second season.

• 1:55:20Speaker 04

  My nanny stole my dog and turned it into a fighting pit bull. Like when you're watching that on Netflix, like two seconds screening that.

• 1:55:28Bill Simmons?

  Well, and that's, that's another thing that's winning right now. It's certainly winning for Netflix is these, these hour and a half true crime documentaries. The Crash has been, I think, number one on Netflix for like two weeks. And I feel like everybody saw it at some point, had an opinion on it. There were other documentaries about it. And from a watercooler standpoint, it feels like true crime documentaries are, are hitting as hard as any TV show. It's really a strange time.

• 1:55:56Speaker 03

  Can we talk about our pals at HBO who like HBO FX and Apple are the ones who are like holding it down on the week to week releases despite the bear.

• 1:56:03Bill Simmons?

  And Hulu is doing the, they'll release two and then you have to.

• 1:56:06Speaker 03

  Right. The mini, the half binge sort of thing. HBO this year had Night of the Seven Kingdoms, which was great, but that's like their IP. Euphoria is their IP to a certain degree, right? DTF, which you, you liked.

• 1:56:22Bill Simmons?

  I liked, but that was like, my dad would not have made it 10 minutes on that show. Like that, that show had a distinct audience and I'm not sure Middle America is an interesting one.

• 1:56:32Speaker 04

  Ironically, because it was set in Middle America.

• 1:56:34Speaker 03

  Right. House of the Dragon, Lanterns. So, and then Harry Potter at the end of the year.

• 1:56:39Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:56:40Speaker 03

  You know, off the back of them doing like Welcome to Derry and Dune. So them investing in these like IP shows.

• 1:56:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. It seems like they're kind of going a little bit more either big blockbuster stuff or getting into the pitification of other genres.

• 1:56:56Speaker 03

  And I'm in, I'm here for the pitification of other genres, but like, and the pit, obviously. But like, I'm, I'm curious, like, where's this year's task? Or where's, you know, where's, like, where is that?

• 1:57:07Speaker 04

  As long as those guys still make industry or something like it, as long as like there's a show that comes out of nowhere and just kind of like feels like lightning in a bottle and it feels different.

• 1:57:17Bill Simmons?

  Industry was great.

• 1:57:18Speaker 03

  Industry was great. Industry was fantastic.

• 1:57:20Speaker 04

  And that's the kind of thing that you really, really need to keep TV feel alive.

• 1:57:25Bill Simmons?

  What's the show you're looking forward to the most?

• 1:57:28Speaker 03

  House of the Dragon, because I get to cover it with Chris.

• 1:57:32Speaker 03

  Actually, the real answer is the vampire list at on AMC. But that's just my own personal.

• 1:57:37Bill Simmons?

  That's where.

• 1:57:39Speaker 04

  I don't know. I think lanterns. I'm really excited to see Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre in a show together. I'm a big Kelly McDonald fan. She's in it. Excited about that.

• 1:57:50Bill Simmons?

  If you knew a super talented 25 year old who made shit, would you tell them to go into TV or movies?

• 1:57:57Speaker 04

  It depends on what kind of shit they want to make, you know? They're little Vince Gilligan, then I would say try to try to pitch.

• 1:58:05Bill Simmons?

  What would you want them to make?

• 1:58:07Speaker 04

  Uh.

• 1:58:09Speaker 03

  Again, it depends on the person.

• 1:58:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, it depends on the person and the story.

• 1:58:11Speaker 03

  We love TV and movies. So like, you know, I wouldn't trade a well made movie for a shitty season of television. I wouldn't trade a well made season of television.

• 1:58:20Bill Simmons?

  I'd push it toward movies.

• 1:58:20Speaker 04

  The one thing I have learned is that over the last 15 years is like, this will go in some cycle that's way faster than than we understand. And whether or not like the kind of TV that we're watching in three or four years feels way more like the kind of TV we were watching in the early 2000s. I think that's possible. I think people could start being like, there were certain things that people expected. There's a reason why these kids are watching 300 episodes of Gilmore Girls and not this other show that kind of feels like Gilmore Girls, but isn't as well made.

• 1:58:51Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:58:52Speaker 04

  Like, how do we go back to that? But the economics have to work.

• 1:58:55Bill Simmons?

  That did happen, by the way.

• 1:58:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:58:56Bill Simmons?

  Grey's Anatomy and Gilmore Girls, for whatever reason.

• 1:58:59Speaker 03

  Friends, The Office, you know?

• 1:59:01Bill Simmons?

  I think the 90s stuff is starting to die, according to my daughter.

• 1:59:05Speaker 03

  Oh, well, because we're in the different nostalgia cycle.

• 1:59:08Bill Simmons?

  It's too far now. The nostalgia cycle is now the 2000s. What's really interesting is that Lost Hasn't had its real moment again yet. And I kept, I keep waiting for it to happen and it just hasn't.

• 1:59:18Speaker 03

  It had a mini peak during the pandemic, I would say, but um. I mean, because everyone was at home watching everything, but um, but yeah, it's it's not it's not in that nostalgia cycle yet. You know, because in the 90s, we were.

• 1:59:32Bill Simmons?

  Usually 20 years is the nostalgia cycle, so which is right now.

• 1:59:35Speaker 03

  2030, like I was talking to Yasi about 80s movie soundtracks that she's going to be doing on Bandplain. We were talking about the big chill and we were talking.

• 1:59:43Bill Simmons?

  Another time I didn't get the call from Yasi.

• 1:59:45Speaker 03

  And we were talking about.

• 1:59:46Speaker 04

  She won't take that personally.

• 1:59:48Speaker 03

  Uh, we were talking about, we were talking about the big chill, we were talking about Dirty Dancing and that like 50s nostalgia that infused the 80s, you know, and how like all we listened to in my house was 50s music in the 80s.

• 1:59:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, the 90s, it was the 70s.

• 2:00:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:00Speaker 04

  You know, like.

• 2:00:01Bill Simmons?

  Well, the 70s was amazing because like Happy Days, people going backwards.

• 2:00:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:06Bill Simmons?

  Basically pre Vietnam War.

• 2:00:08Speaker 04

  What did we just talk about that with? What movie was?

• 2:00:10Bill Simmons?

  We talked about it with, uh, yeah, we brought it up with something.

• 2:00:14Speaker 04

  Animal House.

• 2:00:15Bill Simmons?

  Right?

• 2:00:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:00:16Bill Simmons?

  Oh, because Animal House was set in 1962.

• 2:00:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:00:19Bill Simmons?

  Um, but it's so weird that that never really happened for

• 2:00:25Bill Simmons?

  the 90s. I don't know.

• 2:00:27Speaker 03

  Oh, it did. I mean, I feel like nostalgia has been a real like.

• 2:00:31Bill Simmons?

  But not, not like we never had our Happy Days set in like Seattle in 1992.

• 2:00:36Speaker 04

  I mean, everything from the Love Story show to the way that like jean cuts came back, the way like the 90s came back.

• 2:00:44Bill Simmons?

  The closest that we had.

• 2:00:46Speaker 04

  Also, there's like, I can name 100 bands that sound basically like.

• 2:00:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:50Speaker 04

  Obscure bands from the 90s, but are now like much bigger. It's it's crazy.

• 2:00:54Speaker 03

  I was in, I was in New York a couple of years ago and a friend of mine said, she's like, oh, 90s fashion is back. I was like, yeah, kind of. And then four girls walked past us, like teenage girls, dressed exactly like they walked out of my so-called life, like exactly, just like the flannels and the docks. And it was just like all there. And I was like, never mind.

• 2:01:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, my daughter's big on this.

• 2:01:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:11Bill Simmons?

  She thought Love Story just fucking nailed it. She's like, all this stuff you could wear now. She was all excited about it. Love Story is a good success story.

• 2:01:19Speaker 04

  True.

• 2:01:19Bill Simmons?

  I wonder if we're going to get more of those too, like the real life stuff with the twist. We watched, when my daughter was home, we watched the entire OJ show that they did 10 years ago.

• 2:01:28Speaker 03

  That OJ show was fantastic.

• 2:01:30Speaker 04

  The Brian Murphy OJ show?

• 2:01:31Bill Simmons?

  Oh, it was, it was great. I forgot how awesome the actors were and like-

• 2:01:35Speaker 03

  The same people on Love Story.

• 2:01:37Bill Simmons?

  Paulson's like out of control, Courtney Vance is out of control, like there's like five-

• 2:01:41Speaker 03

  Sterling K. Brown.

• 2:01:42Bill Simmons?

  Sterling Brown.

• 2:01:44Speaker 03

  Travolta's Travolta-ing.

• 2:01:45Bill Simmons?

  Travolta, Travolta. Cuba Gooding is really good.

• 2:01:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:48Bill Simmons?

  I emailed Rob Mills-

• 2:01:49Speaker 03

  Schwimmer.

• 2:01:50Bill Simmons?

  I, I texted Rob Mills at Hulu and I was like, you guys, you know, we're, we're, it's almost OJ time. It's June 12th. You guys should put this on the, on the main page, cause my daughter didn't know anything.

• 2:02:02Speaker 04

  Can they put it on the main page with it's almost OJ time?

• 2:02:06Bill Simmons?

  It's OJ time.

• 2:02:07Speaker 03

  It's OJ season.

• 2:02:09Bill Simmons?

  No, but I, my daughter didn't know anything and she like couldn't believe it. She, she didn't know the car chase happened.

• 2:02:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:02:15Bill Simmons?

  And he's, and she's like-

• 2:02:16Speaker 03

  I remember that happening when it came out and we were covering it and I was just like, you had to write explainer posts, you know, this is like what, what happened with the crown. Where it's just sort of like the Diana season of the crown.

• 2:02:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, don't spoil the crown.

• 2:02:27Speaker 03

  And don't spoil the crown. Don't spoil the OJ show. Don't spoil what, whether the plane crashes in Love Story.

• 2:02:32Bill Simmons?

  That's another thing that's going on now is we have so much good content from the last 25 years that you can just repurpose the content, pretend it's new. And somebody like my daughter would have no idea.

• 2:02:43Speaker 03

  What's the, what's the true crime story that you would want to tell in a Love Story fashion? Yeah.

• 2:02:49Bill Simmons?

  You know what? The Coonan and Doc was pretty good. It was too long, or the show was too long.

• 2:02:53Speaker 03

  Versace.

• 2:02:53Bill Simmons?

  But that was, the Versace one I thought was good. It was just like too many episodes. I don't know, man. I thought the further we get away from that Thrones, Breaking Bad.

• 2:03:03Bill Simmons?

  Um, what else was in that?

• 2:03:05Speaker 03

  Mad Men.

• 2:03:06Speaker 04

  Mad Men.

• 2:03:06Bill Simmons?

  Mad Men. What was, there was a fourth one.

• 2:03:08Speaker 03

  Sopranos?

• 2:03:09Bill Simmons?

  Sopranos was over in 06. No, that was 2000s. We had that run to the bit when we were at Grantland where we just had all those shows at the same time.

• 2:03:17Speaker 04

  You could go down the list. Americans, uh, Justify, like, yeah, I mean, there was tons of, tons of stuff.

• 2:03:23Bill Simmons?

  Hope it comes back. Joanne Robinson, thanks. Chris Ryan, thanks. Thanks for having me.

• 2:03:27Speaker 03

  Thanks, Sam.

• 2:03:27Bill Simmons?

  All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Doc Rivers. Thanks to Chris Ryan and Joanne Robinson. Thanks to Eduardo and Chris and Jack Wilson and everybody on the Spotify and Ringer side. I'm not sure if I'm going to be back on this feed this week, but you know where I'm going to be. We have a rewatchables mailbag that's coming on Thursday, so stay tuned for that. It is in the bag that is coming. And then our next three movies, because we are doing From Hell Month, and the first one's going to be on Monday. Hand that, uh, no, Single White Female on Monday, then Hand That Rocks the Cradle the next week, and then The Good Sun. All those movies are on Netflix if you want to watch those. So I will see you again on this feed, um, maybe, maybe Sunday night?

• 2:04:12Bill Simmons?

  Maybe earlier? I don't know, but I'll see you soon.

• 2:04:35Bill Simmons?

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• 2:05:20Bill Simmons?

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• 2:06:04Bill Simmons?

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• 2:06:06Speaker 05

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