A Jokic Fest, the Worry Scale, Rather Have, and Favorite Movie Girlfriends LIVE From Denver With Ryen Russillo

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo LIVE from Fillmore Auditorium in Denver, CO, to give Nikola Jokic his flowers and discuss the Nuggets’ NBA Cup win vs. the Warriors, Bill and Ryen’s NBA biases this season, a new segment called the NBA Worry Scale, Bo Nix’s surprising rookie season, Ryen’s top five TV/movie girlfriends, how Bill and Ryen first met, a sports edition of “would you rather,” and much more! Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Ryen Russillo Producer: Kyle Crichton The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:01Bill Simmons?

  Coming up, Russel and I did a live show in Denver and you're about to listen to it next.

• 0:07Bill Simmons?

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• 0:47Bill Simmons?

  See retailer's storefront for details. Taxes, fees, and terms apply. Product availability varies by region. Exclusions may apply. See app for details. 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 3-1 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. 1-2-3 Cancun. Or if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save. Savings vary.

• 1:27Bill Simmons?

  We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. If you like our pods and our videos, please go check out the redesign for theringer.com because it's awesome. It was a long time coming. It's easier to read features and columns and pieces. It's easier to find your favorite writers. It's really easy to find your favorite shows and videos and some good sorting stuff, some good pages for pods like mine or for the Rewatchables pod. So please, go check it out, theringer.com. Everybody did a great job. Congratulations. We are eight and a half years in with that website and couldn't be more proud of it. Go check out The Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. Rewatchables is coming back next week. The Bill Simmons YouTube channel where we run all the clips and videos from this

• 2:07Bill Simmons?

  podcast. Hey, million dollar picks. So I am going to do a podcast after Packers Lions tomorrow night. So we are ending up doing three episodes this week. The one today, right now, that you're listening to. And then- After that Packers Lions, a reaction with some other stuff that I have banked that I'm pretty excited about, but I wanted to get a million dollar pick on the board for that game because I'm in Denver right now, Fanduel is legal there, and I could not resist betting on the Packers plus four and a half adjusted with love to throw at least 200 yards. That is minus 101 as a parlay. We are putting $200,000 on that for million dollar picks purposes. Coming off the best week we had all season. We won $870,000 last week. Out

• 2:52Bill Simmons?

  of our seven big bets, we hit six and we are up 1.213 million fake dollars for the year. Doing pretty well this year. So we're going to throw 200K on Packers plus four and a half with love to throw for at least 200 yards and the rest of the picks will be in the third podcast of the week tomorrow night. What you're about to listen to is me and Ryan Russillo at the Fillmore in Denver in front of an awesome crowd. So glad we did this. And if you want to hear you guys talk about Nikola Jokic for a couple of minutes, you've come to the right place. Russillo and Simmons live from Denver next. First, our friends from Pearl Jam.

• 3:59Bill Simmons?

  I should have worked out today. I feel scrawny. Thanks for coming out. Thank you to State Farm because I always forget to thank them before we start this stuff. But oh, and Story. Thank you to Story. Here's how this show happened. I texted Russillo and I said, Jokic is in playing Golden State in the NBA Cup game on a Tuesday. Live show? And he was like, fuck yeah.

• 4:27Bill Simmons?

  Why do you love Denver so much?

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, I think it was, uh, I had a bunch of friends, like, there's a big Vermont, Colorado thing.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  There you go. And I think once they were like, all right, I've kind of done the JV version of things in Vermont, I'm gonna head out to Colorado. And when I left ESPN and I was kind of going like, all right, Manhattan Beach or Denver, it was like really close.

• 4:54Bill Simmons?

  Was it a toss-up?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  It was, it was ocean or friendship.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  And then friendship lost out to the ocean.

• 5:04Bill Simmons?

  I think that people in Denver, every time I'm here, they're disarmingly nice. That's what I, that's what I notice over and over again. I'm like, oh, man, people are just nice here. But then I wonder.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  I think those are my friends, by the way.

• 5:20Bill Simmons?

  Then I wonder if it was just they're stoned. I can't tell.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Friendship, friendship.

• 5:25Bill Simmons?

  So, we're gonna try to do a version of the pod that we would do on Sunday nights, because we haven't done Sunday nights this year, because

• 5:33Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 5:33Bill Simmons?

  We should wait till when the, when the football season's over.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:36Bill Simmons?

  We have a lot of basketball stuff to talk about, but the real reason we're here, let's be honest, Russel and I both love Nikola Jokic.

• 5:47Bill Simmons?

  We're not gonna hide it. We love how the guy plays. He's about as reliable as it gets from an entertainment standpoint, not just sports, music, movies, TV. I feel like Succession got to this point for me, Succession episodes, where I was like, I just know this is gonna be a good episode.

• 6:05Bill Simmons?

  We just love Jokic, and we wanted to surround ourselves with 1,100 people who also loved Jokic.

• 6:12Bill Simmons?

  Which is why this first segment is gonna be called Jokic Porn.

• 6:18Bill Simmons?

  We're just gonna porn it up.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  We don't have a slideshow for this show.

• 6:21Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my god.

• 6:24Bill Simmons?

  He did, we were sitting behind the scorers table yesterday and he came up and we were just kind of marveling at him. We're like, "Look at that guy. Oh, man. Just amazing." Where do you want to start? Do you want to start with notes from last night? Do you want to go big picture? Where do you want to go?

• 6:42Speaker 01

  The only thing I would say is that, you know, Bill and I have been doing this, whether it's together or separately, for a really long time, that I know personally, like, players that I start to like or start to hate have a lot to do with how the fans talk to us. So there's just players I know nothing about and I despise them just because of what their fanbase has said the entire time. And Denver and Nuggets fans are seriously maybe the only, like, modern history intensely annoying fanbase about one guy, and you were totally right about it. So I think that needs to be said, because more often than not, I'm like, "Nah, you were wrong. You guys are just annoying about the whole thing." And I don't think it was ever that we didn't... They just got to appreciate him, I think,

• 7:23Speaker 01

  quicker than we did, because you were watching it happen, and whether it was the draft, and you're like, "Hey, that fat guy's kind of like fun to watch."

• 7:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  But what, like, what's he really gonna be? And then you're like, "Oh, he's gonna be, like, without question..." Like, I mean, the list starts at one, and I don't even... Like, I love Giannis, we all love Luka and everything, but the gap between him and the next guy right now, I think, is significant.

• 7:46Bill Simmons?

  I... This is great. I'm already having a great time. I think what's crazy about this year is he somehow got better. I mean, he already won three MVPs and a title. See, I told you, we're gonna porn it up with Jokic. And I think the best... A friend of mine described it, and I'm gonna steal it from him, where Jokic was always playing chess when he was out there, right? He was always like two, three moves ahead. He was just so smart. It was always so admirable to watch how he just processed the game. But then Minnesota, boo.

• 8:20Bill Simmons?

  Minnesota threw some stuff at him, right? They were like, yeah, we're, we're actually fine with you taking those threes. We're gonna beat you up. We're just gonna throw big guys at you. We're gonna try to wear you down. And now this season, it feels like he's, he's moved into this speed chess mode. Where it's not just chess. He's now solving stuff instantaneously. And watching him in person last night, I mean, Golden State was like, you're not doing the thing you always do. We, you know, we're not giving you 14 assists tonight.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:46Bill Simmons?

  You're gonna, we're gonna take away everybody else and you're gonna have to do the thing you hate to do, which is score a lot. And he's like, all right, fine, fuck. And ends up with 38. He's six for seven in the fourth quarter, makes all the big shots. But I just feel like he's solving stuff faster. Does that make sense?

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz I, I think he knows he needs to. And I think that first week, like I both hated and loved it. Like, we all get geared up for the start of the season. We all know we were worried about the bench. Look at me, I'm saying we, like I actually moved here. But, um, now when you, you knew there were gonna be some serious problems with the depth and letting KCP go and the draft picks, you know, still kinda like a massive question of mark about whether or not they're viable rotation pieces. And he took, I think, 13 shots in that opener against OKC. And it gets smoked. The next two games, he takes 27 and 26 shots. And I was so happy about it cuz it was like this immediate thing within 48 hours where he went, I guess this is what I'm gonna have to do. I mean, he's not shooting it that much, but he's shooting it more now this season than at any other point in his career.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  And yet his efficiency is in line with the best season he's ever had, which is probably the one he had two years ago. So he can unlock anything in every single game at that size in a way that I don't know that we've ever seen before.

• 9:59Bill Simmons?

  I hadn't seen him in Denver. I've seen him obviously all over the place, but not here. He, he did two things last night. You know, you could pick up most of it on TV. One of the things was, he was just trying to read what Golden State was gonna do from what Kerr was telling his players. So he would like run down and he'd be in the paint on the Golden State side, just watching Kerr, what he was saying and what he was flashing. And then he was yelling to his teammates, they're running 5-3. And Kerr would be like, what the fuck? Like, you're cheating. He was getting mad. But he was calling out all their plays, everything they were doing with Curry, which has been a recurring theme. So that was one. The other one, they're up two. There's like, what, 16 seconds left, they're playing keep away. And he gets the ball at the top of the key. Normally when a guy gets it,

• 10:42Bill Simmons?

  They either throw it back out or they dribble out. They're just trying to, they know they're gonna get fouled. And he was like, oh, they're gonna foul me. I'm actually gonna lurch forward, drive into this guy and see if I can get a three-point play, which I don't think I'd ever seen anyone process it that fast. So two little things, but we left, we were just like beaming. We didn't even know what to do. We were like, that was amazing. It was like the Chris Farley show with Paul McCartney. Remember when we saw Jokic? That was awesome.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, if he had been in town and would have declined the request, because he would have,

• 11:13Speaker 01

  if we would ever get the chance, like, I think I would be such a loser in that interview. I'd be like, remember when you did that thing? Like, what, what, what were you thinking about when you did it? And I think, honestly, I think like the hard part with it too, and it's the same back to his draft thing. Like, when the draft comes around, I'm an athlete snob, and you go, I don't know, is this, is this going to work? And then it starts working, and then you start comparing him. And we had all those nasty MVP conversations, which I just made me root for him, I think even more. Because it just, well, it just was ridiculous. Like, some of the stuff, and I know it turns into propaganda, and it becomes really political. And it's like, okay, but if you're, any of your points are tearing this guy down, like, you're just, you're not, you're either not watching, you're not being fair, you're not being honest, you can't see the things. And I think it's such

• 11:57Speaker 01

  a visual thing with him that we've talked about in the past, is other basketball players have done things that are just aesthetically more pleasing. I've seen him get back in transition, where I thought he was gonna have a heart attack. I was like, does he have, does he have, like, polio? Like, what the fuck is wrong with him right now? And, and yet, he's always in position. He knows everybody, everybody, what they're gonna be doing ahead of time. And, you know, when I say nobody's unlocked the game at his size, I mean, certainly LeBron, and I'm just giving, because Jokic has got an inch on him or two, and then Magic, the same thing. But, like, to be straight up a center, and then know, okay, well, if they're doubling me, then it's all of these things. If they're not doubling me, he's just sitting there in the triple threat at the

• 12:38Speaker 01

  free throw line, going up against TJ D, and he's just, he's just been like, all right, if you're gonna give me one-on-one, and I'm just gonna just jab step you and hit this free throw. Like, I would like a night where he just did it 35 times. Like, score 60.

• 12:54Bill Simmons?

  They won by four last night. He played 40 minutes and was plus 23. So try to figure that one out. They were minus 19 when he didn't play.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Well, those first three minutes of the fourth quarter, as you know, are the most horrifying.

• 13:07Bill Simmons?

  You're just panicking.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Like, there are horror movies that are more fun than those three minutes of every fourth quarter where you're like, they, they were minus eight in those three minutes. I'm like, Golden State has to win this and they won it. And then they still lose the game because he comes back in.

• 13:21Bill Simmons?

  One thing, sorry to get big picture on this, but one thing I was thinking with him, there's still like mystery with him. I don't know a lot about him and people are trying to figure out like NBA ratings are going down a little bit. What does this mean to people like the product as much? Is it too easy to follow the sport without actually watching the games game in and game out? But I do think a piece of it is there's no mystery with any of these guys. They, they're all on social media. You know, I mean, they're, they're doing like the infomercial documentaries about themselves. They're all over the place. They're super available and I feel like I know all of them. And when you think like when we were growing up, we didn't know anything about anybody we watched. And Jokic is like

• 13:59Bill Simmons?

  one of the last, I know he's got two brothers. I know, I know he likes horses. I, I know he goes to Serbia as soon as the season ends and that's it. Like, I don't even know, like, what kind of car does he drive? Nothing, right? What do you know? Do you know anything other than that?

• 14:19Speaker 01

  I know, I think it pisses everybody else off that this guy is this dominant and there's not going to be a workout program that he's going to share with people, right? Like, there's not going to be a Mamba mentality ripoff of Jokic. That it's like, you know, I remember, I know Mike Singer wrote the book about him and I was listening to an interview that he did. So there were some excerpts and it was, he hated practice. He didn't want to do any of these things. So it's, it's like the opposite of everything that you would tell your kid. Like this guy hated all of the extra stuff and yet he's this dominant. But it's, it's about his instincts and his vision and just simple things like watching people play basketball, like I have now for, for like 40 years. And you watch the ball come out of his hands and like even when it's off, it's like, no, it's just soft.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  It's perfectly soft and it like cuddles with the rim a little bit. And then it falls back in. It's his hands. Like, I know that it was the water polo thing, but like however he was taught to look at the game. It's really special stuff because he just sees it in a way that you have to kind of be born with. That I just don't, I don't even know if that can be taught.

• 15:26Bill Simmons?

  See, I told you it was gonna be Jokic porn. You guys didn't believe me. You guys were like, ah, they'll do five minutes.

• 15:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it would be interesting like if Jokic started doing stuff that the other players do. How startling would be where it's like, Jokic just formed a production company. Like, what?

• 15:44Bill Simmons?

  He wants to make independent movies.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  I want to tell stories about underserved stories.

• 15:48Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Or he just, he has an IT band thing on Instagram. All of a sudden he's running. No days off. You're like, what?

• 15:55Bill Simmons?

  Jokic just bought a women's soccer team. He did?

• 15:59Bill Simmons?

  Big picture. Well, it's 20 games. We're not going to do the, he's gonna win the MVP. He's certainly on pace. He's averaging 30 and 13 and 10. He's shooting 56%. He's shooting 52% from three.

• 16:13Bill Simmons?

  Which is more than half, in case you can't do math. And if he gets a fourth MVP here, now we're in the club with Jordan, LeBron, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Will Chamberlain, and that's it.

• 16:29Bill Simmons?

  What's interesting, two things are in play now. Well, one, he's kind of clinched. The best guy of the 2020s. Cause now.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Well, we have some time still.

• 16:38Bill Simmons?

  Well, we got, so we're halfway through the decade. We're heading toward the second half. I don't know who could make a run at him in the second half. If you just look at the candidates, like the resume he already has, if he won four MVPs, like who would be able to match that in the second half of the decade? We're talking, this is a lot to ask for Lamela Ball is my point.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, he has some work to do.

• 17:02Bill Simmons?

  You know.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Scoring a lot. I think we'll get to him maybe later in the show. But yeah, you're right. I mean, that's kind of why it gets back to even, I've never rooted for the Nuggets necessarily. Like I'm never, I don't have some thing that back in the day.

• 17:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  I would have probably started two years ago and tapped out after this offseason, but.

• 17:22Bill Simmons?

  That's coming up later, too.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  There could be somebody that gets, well, you're right, we're halfway through it. So who gets a second ring? That would be the dumb ring count thing that gets in the way, I think, of just being honest about who players are sometimes. So you're right, you might be right.

• 17:37Bill Simmons?

  It would have to be a guy that has to admit, that is in their twenties, that makes a huge leap over the next three years. So like, I'm not, well, Wemby, would he have enough time? So you guys are gonna laugh, but the only guy I think could, could be in the running is my guy, Jason Tatum. Yeah, I said it. Wow, I'm getting booed? Just, just if the Celtics won a bunch of titles, that's it. But I don't think that's gonna happen. All right, settle down.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Is Tatum a more athletic Jokic?

• 18:09Bill Simmons?

  There's no bad ideas in a brainstorm, come on.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but no, no one has ever, look, Tatum, I think, is actually underrated at this point, but don't worry, don't worry, don't worry.

• 18:20Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  He's never once and never will be considered the best player in the world.

• 18:24Bill Simmons?

  Right. That's why it's not gonna happen. Best center since Kareem is in play for him, too. But yeah, I was looking back at the.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  What else is in play? You're good at, I think you update this stuff a lot.

• 18:37Bill Simmons?

  I do.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  But I like it, you're keeping track.

• 18:40Bill Simmons?

  It's one of my things when I'm bored on an airplane when we haven't taken off it, I'm like, I think I'll, I'll work on the Pantheon.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  How many times have you ranked the top 20 players of all time in your life?

• 18:49Bill Simmons?

  I just did it four hours ago.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  He sent me the text.

• 18:56Bill Simmons?

  It's interesting. I mean, doing best player by decade isn't totally fair, because sometimes people can peak, starting in the middle of decade, whatever. But if you go back, like 2010s is LeBron and Curry. And probably in that order, right?

• 19:11Speaker 01

  It's LeBron, yeah. LeBron, Curry, second. We knew the ring count thing, but you know, even if Curry was winning MVPs and I thought he had better seasons.

• 19:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, somebody at a sports bar could make a Curry case, he wouldn't be right. In 2000s, it's Duncan and Kobe, and that's a bloodbath argument that we're not gonna have right now.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Shouldn't be.

• 19:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I have Duncan, but other people would say Kobe. 1990s is MJ alone, there's no other person in the convo. 80s is Magic and Bird, 70s is Kareem.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Is it Magic?

• 19:41Bill Simmons?

  And 60s is Russell Wilson.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Longer run, those Pistons finals?

• 19:55Bill Simmons?

  Kareem in the 70s, Russell and Will in the 60s. The point is Jokic doesn't even really have a rival for the 2020s yet, which I think is interesting.

• 20:04Bill Simmons?

  I guess it would be Giannis if he could.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  I think Giannis is the second best player, you know, as much as I'm like in love with the Jokic part of it, there's a health element to the Giannis discussion, how he'll age.

• 20:16Bill Simmons?

  The playoffs last couple of years were tough.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, here's the problem.

• 20:23Bill Simmons?

  Dramatic pause.

• 20:25Bill Simmons?

  I think he's had the worst luck with teammates of any great player, if you're talking about the top 15. Never played with an NBA guy. Murray gets hurt, when he got hurt, cost two playoffs. Now he's got Murray and Porter taking up 40% of the cap. And I hate to say it, I hope he's not here, I doubt he is, but the owner was fucking cheapskate. Like, spend some money, give Nikola Jokic on your team. You have one of the best 15 players of all time in his prime. Go into the second apron, motherfucker.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  So you have 14th as of today?

• 21:01Bill Simmons?

  For all time?

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:03Bill Simmons?

  I need to see how this plays out, but he is in the 9-2-13 range for me now.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  You could argue, you could make an argument for him as the ninth best player of all time today.

• 21:12Bill Simmons?

  Depending, if he wins a fourth MVP, I think it's in play. Here's where.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Can we hear the eight and see who he's hypothetically in range with?

• 21:20Bill Simmons?

  I'll give you the list, just because you guys all.

• 21:25Bill Simmons?

  Jordan first, because he's the GOAT until I die.

• 21:29Bill Simmons?

  LeBron, Russell, Kareem, that would be the Mount Rushmore. Magic, Bird, Duncan, Will. And then it's like, I originally had Curry, Kobe, West. And then Hakeem, Shaq, Moses, and Jokic is somewhere in that last six. But if he wins a fourth MVP and he carries this Denver team to like the Western Finals or better with what we watched last night? Where he can't even come out of the game for two and a half minutes? Like, he literally couldn't come out of the gate, Mike Malone had to call timeout because the team was cratering. So I think he's somewhere in that range. But I think for me, just as somebody who's watched basketball my whole life, I like, he's, he does the same stuff Bird and Magic did. And he's been doing it now for six, seven years.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Do you think he, see, this is the ring counting thing.

• 22:17Bill Simmons?

  This is it, but this matters. The ring part matters though. All those other guys won rings.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Especially when you put together that list. I mean, Moses just has the one.

• 22:25Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Hakeem's got the two. So then.

• 22:28Bill Simmons?

  Shaq's got three or four.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Right. He has the fourth.

• 22:32Bill Simmons?

  West only had one though.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the West one, when you're losing to the Celtics every single year in the finals, like I almost think we should just round it up to three for him.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  When Jokic, when it's all said and done, if he stays on this pace, like say another four years, you know, as the MVP, I think the simpletons will just count the rings and be like, you can't put him ahead of those guys. But from just impacting a game at that level, and again, you know, we're assuming a lot in the next few years, but the guy stays healthy. It's not like he's this wiry dude who has all these muscle pulls all the time, right?

• 23:06Bill Simmons?

  Well, what happens if he does, remember Larry Bird that one year when he came, I think it was the 87, 88.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Not as well as you do.

• 23:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, all of a sudden there was the big offseason storyline was Larry Bird has quit drinking beer and he's in phenomenal shape. And he showed up for the season. He had this follow-up two-hand dunk at a preseason game. We're like, oh my God, the legend. He's in shape. And then he got hurt within.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  I don't know if I believe the quit drinking beer part.

• 23:32Bill Simmons?

  Well, probably not. But I didn't, to me, Jokic, like apparently has never really lifted. I don't even know what his offseason change program would be.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Whatever he's doing, it's fine.

• 23:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, keep it going, Jokic.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Sometimes I think the guys, it's like the old quarterback thing where Dilfer used to tell me, like, I wanted to come in like 20 pounds overweight. He's like, I wanted a little spare tire down there so that I could, as I tapered off, I at least had something to take the damage. I'm not necessarily saying like that's what.

• 24:00Bill Simmons?

  Embiid does that too, I think.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Embiid's been trying. He's like, this is ridiculous. You know, there was those next five guys that when you get to eight or whatever, like it's just a player. I don't know. I mean, it's tough for me to put anybody above Duncan just because of how perfect he was and how sustained it was and how long it went. But the fact I'm even suggesting it's possible is, is the win as of today.

• 24:24Bill Simmons?

  So you loved, you love Moses and you love Hakeem.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Love Moses.

• 24:29Bill Simmons?

  And Shaq, but Jokic is at least swimming in that pool.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  I don't think I appreciated Shaq enough, but I was also like a shithead kid and he was on the Lakers.

• 24:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we held some weird things against Shaq where he was like, he made a rap album. We're like, what's he doing?

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Fushnikens, yeah.

• 24:44Bill Simmons?

  He made Shazam or Kazam, whatever that movie was. You're like, what a dick.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  And then Dwight tried to do all of it. We're like, all right, you're definitely the dick.

• 24:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you, you were the dick.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  I actually appreciate Shaq like way more now than, than I think I did. And that might've been just a Boston weirdo thing that some of us grow out of.

• 25:10Bill Simmons?

  All right, last section of Jokic porn. We were, we were saying like, we try not to have biases, especially because we have votes for NBA and, and I like to think I'm level headed, even like with the Celtics. Like I know when the Celtics. No, listen, let me, let me talk this out.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Right down the middle.

• 25:29Bill Simmons?

  There's been seasons where I'm like, they don't have it this year. Something's wrong. I don't like this. Like I, I try to be objective. Um, it's really hard for me to be objective with, with Jokic and I think it is you too. So what are your other actual basketball biases that you can admit? Do you want to go back and forth?

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we're admitting that we both want Jokic to get that second ring. So the commoners.

• 25:52Bill Simmons?

  As long as it's not at the expense of the Celtics. Yeah. Like if the Celtics can't win, I would hope that he would be the one that won would be my bias.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause like the Curry fourth ring for me was such a big deal and him too, but, um.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  I felt like it just changed. I don't even know that that many people hate Curry. I mean, if you want to find hate, it's pretty easy to find right now. But with Curry, it just kind of changed. I think it changed a lot of the way he was looked at.

• 26:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was very similar to like the John Elway Super Bowl. Oh, I forgot, we're in Denver, the John Elway Super Bowl. But John Elway was like this stats, couldn't get it done. And they could drag a team to the precipice, but not. And then all of a sudden he won and we never talked about it again. And Curry was same thing. It's like, ah, well, he had Duran and that one year in 2015, all the Cavs got hurt. And there was always an excuse. Now there's no excuses.

• 26:51Bill Simmons?

  The NBA hit the quarter mark of the season and FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook, wants you to catch all the action. They're trying to help you right now. FanDuel giving everyone three months of NBA League Pass. All you have to do is place any $5 bet on the NBA. You can jump in on the NBA Cup because we know that's coming in a couple of days. I like Houston over Golden State. They're minus three and a half. I just think that's a bad matchup for Golden State. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you something else. I kind of like Houston to win the NBA Cup at plus 700. I think they can hang with all of these teams. Anyway, next time you get a hunch on who's going to win or how many points a player will score, you can watch your picks come to life live by visiting fanduel.com/BS.

• 27:35Bill Simmons?

  You can get three months of NBA League Pass courtesy of FanDuel. Make every moment more with FanDuel, official sportsbook partner of the NBA. You must be 21 plus and present in select states or 18 plus and present in DC. After three month free trial, the full price of League Pass will be automatically charged monthly. Cancel anytime, no refunds. Terms, restrictions and embargoes apply. Limit one pass per customer. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com.

• 28:03Bill Simmons?

  All right, quick break. This episode is brought to you by Fire TV. You ever sit down ready to watch the game only to search and scroll endlessly? If so, you need Fire TV. It shows your live games from your favorite teams all in one place, right on the home screen. No more searching. Just sit down and turn on Fire TV. Separate subscriptions may be required. Feature and content availability may vary. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Excitement is in the air. That's right. It's the start of NBA season. I can't wait to get together with friends, share some Michelob Ultras and watch Tip Off. Plus, as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting you closer to the action with experiences that make you feel like

• 28:42Bill Simmons?

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• 29:06Speaker 01

  All right, so bias.

• 29:07Bill Simmons?

  Give me another bias.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  I'll give you, I'll give you a small one. I'm rooting for the Pistons. I have a lot invested in my Cade Cunningham position. I think that that's come around after some scary like early developments. Jaden Ivey being allowed to play in front of Killian Hayes seems to be the right decision. I wonder if Monty Williams has watched one Pistons game on League Pass because I know he didn't watch one before he got the head coaching job. If I owned the Pistons, I might have been like, we're gonna fire you, you're gonna keep the 75 million, but you're gonna be an analyst for 45 games this year.

• 29:39Bill Simmons?

  Killian Hayes is down in the league.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  No, and they had the same record as the Wizards last year. Think about that. The same record. And like, nobody wants to hear your Pistons are sneaky kinda good. You know, we never did that monologue luckily, but. I would go, how, there's no way like just even if all these guys are morons, they're way more talented. There's no way they're the Wizards. And we've seen with a little shooting balance, a little spacing, that if you don't lace them up for the Pistons on the wrong night.

• 30:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there's a few teams like that this year.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  I like seeing a team that is, they're the more like, I just, I just like them being somewhat more entertaining. Cause I probably watched too many Pistons game. Cause it's always the first game on in the West Coast, like a four o'clock when I don't want to be inside.

• 30:26Bill Simmons?

  My first bias that I'll admit, won't be a surprise to any of you. Uh, hate's a strong word with sports. I always liked the word sports hate. I don't actually hate anything. So it's in the context of sports hate. I, I hate the Lakers. I, I just, I just do. Like, and I think it's healthy. I think it's a good thing. I think there should be teams that you just don't like. And, uh, part of it's their fans. Like they started out well, right? First couple of weeks and their fans got super chirpy about how we took the under. Right?

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:59Bill Simmons?

  Um, they lost by 40 tonight. Maybe like 41. Um, but it's just more, it's more fun for me personally when they're not doing well. And I might be a bad person. Not gonna apologize.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  It is weird. You know, when you're from the Northeast, you don't think anybody cares about sports as much as you do. And there's some elements of that, but then when you go out to LA and you're like, oh, these guys are all soft or whatever. The Lakers thing is very real.

• 31:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they have, they have good, passionate fans. I gotta hand it to them.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  The other thing I've never understood is that there's just Kobe fans that aren't Lakers fans. And they just hang out, you know? And I remember there was like a Lakers, like it was a big Lakers game. And I think I was recording it. So I was like, I'm gonna go out, get outside. I'm gonna go to the beach. And then I just see all these guys in Kobe jerseys at the beach. And I'm thinking like, this is a huge game.

• 31:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  What are you guys doing? It's like, oh, you know?

• 31:50Bill Simmons?

  Talking Kobe?

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:53Bill Simmons?

  One bias we have together is.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  So there was nothing else to that Lakers thing? There's no like, is there a version of that that you want? Like, do you have kind of a thing you don't want to share of what you hope happens this season?

• 32:13Bill Simmons?

  The Lakers panic trade would be really fun. Like if they talked themselves into, you know, Zach Levine's contract, something like that. Just like taking more money on to try to save, but I, I think they know. I think they're so bad on defense. They're one of the top four worst defenses in the league.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  That'll be a weird time though, before the deadline. Because when you're 30 and you're LeBron, or hell, even when you're 35 and LeBron, you can kind of get away with putting the pressure on them. But so far the Lakers have kind of shown like, yeah, we're not like the picks became eligible. They didn't do anything. I actually think they did a great job in the draft.

• 32:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, me too.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  There's a version of a rotation here that should work where they're in the playoffs. But if they go through a weird stretch and they don't, they're not active or anything, the, the subliminal messages and that kind of stuff, like you're going to have a good couple of weeks.

• 33:00Bill Simmons?

  If you're a scoring point guard or a scoring wing and the Lakers are on your schedule, you're fucking pumped. You're like calling family members like, hey, make sure you watch tonight. I'm going to have 48. One of our biases we share.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:13Bill Simmons?

  We both are rashly root for Scoot Henderson. Russel and I have a pretty big Scoot position. And unfortunately we live in the era of people could just cut out clips from your video podcast and then torment you with them over the next two to 20 years. And we had some, some pretty passionate pro Scoot takes during the draft and they're not aging well.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  He got off to a good start. I thought he looked bigger. I'm like, this is great. They're bringing off the bench, sort of like a mental reset. The numbers are just as bad as they were last year.

• 33:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  I even got so desperate, I called like one GM that I'm, I'm pretty close with, who I don't think lies to me. I was like, you liked Scoot too though, right? He's like, is this off the record? Yeah. I'm like, no, I just, just tell me that, that you liked him too, right? It's like, well, a team took him third, so I think a lot of people liked him.

• 34:06Bill Simmons?

  I'm not giving up, but I, I'm not giving up.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  I'm preparing myself for the day I have to. Like when I had Jalen Suggs on last year, cause Jalen Suggs had. Whatever it was, it was like the worst offensive rating of any single player his rookie year, like anybody that actually played. And then I was looking up historically, like who else had done it? Scoot did. And then I was like, oh, well, Jalen Suggs did, you know, and then we had Jalen Suggs on after that and he's turned it around. And I brought up that entire like stat profile to him. And then I was like, what do you think about Scoot? And he was like raving about Scoot. He's like, he's gonna be so good. I was like, all these guys. What was he gonna say? Like, no, he actually sucks, dude.

• 34:42Bill Simmons?

  So you don't think like eight years from now, being Portland, doing a Scoot porn intro to our live podcast? Probably not ruling that out.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  We'll probably get the venue now.

• 34:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  If.

• 34:56Bill Simmons?

  Tickets are available. What else? Give me another bias.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Um, I'm not sad about the Sixers.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  And it actually circles back to the Embiid, Jokic propaganda year where I don't, I don't even know who I'm really mad at, you know? I think Daryl's a great GM. He and I don't exactly, I don't think we like each other that much anymore, but it's okay. We'll get through it. But he, they did such a good job. And yet, all of us that have been around it long enough, you're like, all right, like I can see the good version of this, but are you investing in the right people? But you also do have a choice to invest in other people and you don't. And then when Embiid took the extension like that, and it was kind of lost in all the mayhem, I think it may have been lost in the Woj wake of him being out,

• 35:57Speaker 01

  you know, and then the Embiid extension happens. And it's almost one of those extensions where when it's done, you wonder if you're the team, you're like, he took it? Like, he was like, yeah, sure, with tack on three more years.

• 36:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Keep adding them. Um, I, we were texting a lot during that time and the Sixers were checking a lot of boxes that I would say would, would, I would call Russillo trigger boxes. Um, the guy saying just openly that it's all about April now and, and not playing back to backs anymore. The offseason workout stuff, the victory lapping before we've seen the team yet is one that will trigger you from time to time. What else did they do?

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Well, then they also had, um, Embiid.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Everybody kind of knew that he wasn't really the locked in guy that you need to be like if you look, it's a very simple timeline in the NBA. Top draft pick, score a bunch of points, you're going to get your max extension. And then it's like you're seven or eight, I think something kicks in for a lot of the special players were like, okay, maybe it's not about all the points and I'm going to get the accolades. I'm going to make all star and all this stuff, but like, I almost have to figure out a way to be a more productive basketball player that's not just about the stat line. And I think there's a lot of stat line players out there that people talk about being really special that I'm like, I don't know, I know they're good at scoring, but I don't know that they're great at like, all the things that you need to.

• 37:17Bill Simmons?

  Do they affect winning?

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Right. And as talented as Embiid is, and I've always really liked his game, I loved him before the draft, but we knew there was the weird injury stuff with him. I actually always loved his personality. I liked that he cried after the Kawhi shot, losing to Toronto. When he got shit for that, I was like, that's ridiculous. Like this, this matters to him. That's a great sign. So there was all these things for him that I was kind of rooting for. And then you started hearing more and more of like, he's actually not taking this stuff serious enough. And you were wondering if that story was going to get out. And then it gets out within the own team meeting leaking.

• 37:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  And then he's like, I don't know who said this is like, you know what?

• 37:52Bill Simmons?

  He got mad about the leak.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can be mad about the leak, but be mad like you, at some point you have to get more mad at yourself. And I know he's had all these different injuries and all these things, but I've just, there was like a tipping point for me and you when I did the preview show with you where I went.

• 38:07Bill Simmons?

  I cleared the floor for you.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Cause I remember Zach Lowe, like, yeah, I just was waving everybody to the side.

• 38:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. He was like, I so.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Well, just like LaMelo, but I, I, I remember Zach Lowe, who we love, like did his top five players. And it was this like, unarguable list of, of the five guys of Jokic, Giannis, Luka, SGA and Embiid. And I went, I think we need to stop just penciling him in despite that we know what he was statistically to start that year. And I think people are starting to, like, it's not like, hey, finally we're all on the same page or realizing, but you know, get out of the second round. That's it.

• 38:42Bill Simmons?

  We don't, we don't value durability enough when we talk about players is one of my big lessons of the 2020s.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  That's why Boston's so good.

• 38:49Bill Simmons?

  It's all hypothetical and not, yeah.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  But those two guys for Boston played all the time.

• 38:54Bill Simmons?

  They take it seriously. Yeah. They want to show up. They play back to backs. Uh, quick biases for me. I want Seattle to have an NBA team again. And I'll root for that team.

• 39:06Bill Simmons?

  And along what you just said, if you're not in shape, it's really hard for me to like you that much. And I feel that way about Luca.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Thanks, man.

• 39:14Bill Simmons?

  No, not you. But I just feel like when these guys are making the money they're making, it'd be nice if, if, if you worked out in the offseason. Doesn't seem crazy to me, right? It's your job.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Which is weird because Ben Simmons works out more than anybody.

• 39:33Bill Simmons?

  Right. My other biases quickly, I still defend Kevin Durant. I don't know why. It's like being in a bad marriage. Like he flies off the handle on social and I'm like, you don't understand. He was upset they lost last night.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Because if you wanted to just, like, if you were forced in, like, debate class, like, you have to be the anti Durant guy.

• 39:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  This is gonna be easy, actually.

• 39:58Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  And I don't want to be that guy. So I understand that bias.

• 40:02Bill Simmons?

  I have two more biases. What do you have before?

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.

• 40:05Bill Simmons?

  Well, one of them is yours, too. I hate heliocentric basketball. I'm just never gonna like it. I'm just not. And I really respect what Harden and the Clippers are doing this year. It's, it's way better than I thought. Their over under was 37 and a half. They, it was almost a lock for me. And he's playing great. I just don't personally like watching it that much. And that's not gonna change. And then my last one is I want Jordan to stay the GOAT. And I just, I just feel like he's the best and the years pass and people forget. And I just think he still levitates above anyone I've seen in person, even Jokic.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  I have one last one, little off the menu. I was so happy that you were able to witness not just the greatness of Jokic. It wasn't the best Curry game, but it's all right. We'll get through it. To see Tyler Ford handle a review. He's, he's my favorite official in the NBA. And we had a front row seat to it. And I kept nudging the group. I'm like, watch this. He doesn't fuck around.

• 41:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I didn't realize you had a referee bias.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I mean, he knows how much I love him. Like, he gave me the shout out before the game starts. And my friends are like, the official say hi to you. And

• 41:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he asked us when the Sunday pod was coming back. I was fired up.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think the other guy I tweeted a picture of being like, I like French fried potatoes or whatever. And I was like, then so then he was kind of like, fuck him, Priscilla. But Tyler, you know, Bill Kennedy.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  I think as a SAG card.

• 41:31Bill Simmons?

  Oh, when he's doing the reviews?

• 41:32Speaker 01

  The reviews.

• 41:33Bill Simmons?

  He's doing a one man show.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Right. And then Tyler Ford is like, efficiency, efficiency, efficiency.

• 41:39Bill Simmons?

  If you don't know who Tyler Ford is, he looks a lot like Jem from the town, which is one of the reasons Russillo loves him.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  It's also a plus.

• 41:46Bill Simmons?

  Cause he looks like he's gonna, at any time, say, who's Kyle we taking?

• 41:53Bill Simmons?

  All right, new gimmick here. We're moving out of Jokic porn. We're moving to what we're calling the worry scale. Where I'm gonna list some topics.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  You were having fun the first 30 minutes.

• 42:08Bill Simmons?

  I didn't want to lose the crowd, but he might be coming up at some point.

• 42:14Bill Simmons?

  The worry scale, one to 10.

• 42:18Bill Simmons?

  Curry ever getting a fifth title? One to 10, how worried are you?

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Well, worried because it's probably not going to happen, but it, the fourth one, like, I don't worry about his next ring the way I would about somebody who I think deserves the recognition.

• 42:32Bill Simmons?

  Ties Kobe, though.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, well, I guess the number one option thing, Kobe was the number one option for what?

• 42:41Bill Simmons?

  Two of them.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Two of them.

• 42:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Two for Steph.

• 42:44Bill Simmons?

  I, I'm a nine out of 10. I don't know how they do it with this Warriors thing.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  I don't know how they do it either.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  Do you think he'll ever be on another team?

• 42:52Bill Simmons?

  I don't.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  You think Lacob is just?

• 42:54Bill Simmons?

  I gotta say, I, I think, not to suck up to the crowd, but I don't think Jokic is ever not gonna be on Denver. I don't think, I don't think Curry will ever not be on Golden State. And I honestly don't think Tatum will ever not be on Boston. I think, I think those are the three that I see staying whole career. Luka, Luka is an interesting one. I don't, I don't know if I would bet on Luka staying in Dallas.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  I keep waiting for the first mad international guy. Cause it doesn't, it hasn't really happened yet.

• 43:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, who's a bet?

• 43:24Speaker 01

  I mean, Nurkic seems to get upset, but he's not really on the level of what we're talking about here. But when you look at like the next pissed off NBA star that forces his way out of something, I don't say this because I think it'll never happen, but it's just something that you notice that it, it hasn't happened yet. I think you're nuts to put Tatum in that group with the other two guys, by the way.

• 43:41Bill Simmons?

  You think he would leave?

• 43:42Speaker 01

  I just think it's, he's still so young. Never on another team?

• 43:47Bill Simmons?

  I just think those would be my three, if I had to pick three.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Trey Young Hawks, because if they haven't traded him yet.

• 43:54Bill Simmons?

  LaMelo Charlotte. Uh, next worry scale. Houston fucking up this cool Rockets roster that we love. How worried are you?

• 44:04Speaker 01

  On a scale of one to 10, it's a three because it's an awesome problem to have. But I, like you, they're one of my favorite league passes. They might be my go to.

• 44:11Bill Simmons?

  Now, they're the MVP.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Right. Cause I'm not only entertained, I'm trying to figure out how they're going to figure it out. And Ime is the best coach for this because he's just like, hey, guess what? You're benched for the fourth quarter.

• 44:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  And he'll bench Jalen Green, he'll bench Jabari. They have to play Van Vliet. They kind of make this defensive decision where they'll go with Thompson over Jalen in some of these spots. And then Tari Eason comes in and wreck shop. And they're like, all right, we don't need Jabari spacing. So there's lineup stuff that they're matching there. Long-term, I don't know how, like, they're probably better off getting out of the depth for the next guy. I don't know who the next guy is.

• 44:46Bill Simmons?

  Like a three for one.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Cause what'll happen is you're going to end up ruining the value of your own guys because there's just not going to be enough minutes for dudes.

• 44:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  So it's a concern, but not concerning enough that, look, they're winning games too. So it's like a three.

• 44:58Bill Simmons?

  So the Rockets, they're in the, uh, they're in the NBA Cup. They play Golden State and they're, I think they're seven to one on FanDuel to win it. I think they're a pretty live bet. I, I was, I watched their OKC game on Sunday, the next day, because it was against football. And, uh, they reminded me a lot of Minnesota last year where we, nobody wanted to say that Minnesota was ready in like December, January, but they kind of were. And it was like, wow, this would be soon. And then it just kept going. And I think Houston, that's how I feel when I watch them. They're so good defensively and they're so athletic and they have so many different lineups that they're just a bitch to play.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  I love that game because it was one of those, you know, we've had some really cool regular season games and I feel like Houston's in a lot of them just because of the effort alone. But with no Chet, like I didn't, that game will be so different with the Chet decision and how they want to pull Shingun away, or maybe they close with Jabari. Like, that's what I love is that Ime is like, I know where you were drafted. I know you get paid this, you don't get paid.

• 45:54Bill Simmons?

  Right. He did, he could care less.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  This is what I'm going to do tonight. And it's, he's actually the tough love, no bullshit thing is the best version, when normally it's like the hand holder for all the young guys.

• 46:05Bill Simmons?

  That game, if you guys didn't see it, you ever see those Instagram videos when the two cats are fighting and it's just like amazing to watch the how athletic the cats are and you're like, oh my God, wow, they just jumped off a table.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  You watching a lot of cat videos?

• 46:18Bill Simmons?

  I, I, I think the algorithm knows that I like them. Um, but they.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Your wife picks up your phone, you're like, I'm no longer worried.

• 46:29Bill Simmons?

  But they were just so young and athletic. It was, uh, it was a treat to watch. Next Warrior Scale, Towns in New York. I was probably an eight before the season. I think I'm like a two now. Seems like they like him and he's playing really well.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  I think the defensive part of it though, like their identity, their identity's entirely changed. So maybe.

• 46:47Bill Simmons?

  But that's what happens when you trade for Karl-Anthony Towns.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  True, which is funny.

• 46:50Bill Simmons?

  And they lost Hartenstein.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Which is funny that he's not on Minnesota and now their defense isn't what it's supposed to be, which doesn't really make a ton of sense, even though I think like, look, nobody stops Jokic, but in that series, like he bodied him up and the fact that it stayed in front of him is better for Towns than having to move around. The Mitchell thing is another one of those things I can't wait to see because Tibbs won't care. The cats already paid.

• 47:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  You know, he needs, he makes, he might have closing lineups where he's like, I don't want spacing. I don't want five out. I want some resistance at the rim or maybe the Knicks are like, as long as we're top five in offense and 15th on defense, we have a chance. But yeah, and he hasn't, look, if they lose, then they're going to get on his case. They're going to be like, what's up with these interviews? But right now, everybody likes it.

• 47:36Bill Simmons?

  He's kind of throwing a no hitter right now. I don't think he's had one weird interview yet. I keep waiting for it.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Maybe the PR just keeps turning down all of these invites and not even telling them.

• 47:45Bill Simmons?

  Smart. Well, conversely, you mentioned Minnesota. Ant Minnesota Warrior Scale, I'm like an eight and a half.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:52Bill Simmons?

  That team, the body language doctor does not like what he's saying with Minnesota. And then Ant called it out. Ant had that press conference after where he was like, we, we're all, we're too negative. Every, we're, we're all doing our own thing. It was really kind of crazy.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, they started 16 and four last year.

• 48:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  And they were the best defensive team in the NBA. So, I mean, this is like Knicks, like to another level of disappointment to who they are defensively, but they moved out Cat. They didn't bring him in. So that part of it's really weird, but look, there's nights where Ant doesn't look like he loves playing defense. And even though he's making a ton of threes, I'd rather him not take 11 a game. Devenezzo hasn't been good and Randall puts up numbers, but it's, it's all kind of on his terms a little bit. So they look very disconnected and it's a team offensively that I thought may get in their way of preventing them even making it to the Western Conference Finals as much as I like some of the guys on the team.

• 48:49Bill Simmons?

  Last year, it really felt like they had an identity. I knew what it was. I didn't know if it was going to translate to winning four playoff rounds, but there was something unique about them. They sure, I don't know. When I watched them, I don't know. They just seemed like another team.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Well, at least they had the defense. They knew they could rely like that.

• 49:05Bill Simmons?

  They could stop, they could take, they could take out Jokic as well as anyone. Nobody takes them out, but they were at least, you know, big guys they had a real effect on and they could guard Jalen and Jason as well as anybody. Now it's, I don't know. I don't see it. I don't think it gets better either. Where does Randall rank for you on guys you wouldn't want to play pickup basketball with four hours a week?

• 49:27Bill Simmons?

  It's like, oh, man, I'm on Julius's team. Fuck. Ah, he saw me.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  You know what?

• 49:32Bill Simmons?

  He's waving me over. Ah.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  I, I always think it's funny is when like people just knock the NBA product and you know, there's always like this weird push. There was even an NFL push this year, even though there's a few Sundays where I was like, this wasn't that much fun, but it's like, hey, the NFL product, it's always somebody with some kind of agenda, but there's a lot of the, the NBA part of it. And I'll have nights too, where I'll watch a game and like, there's way too much three point shooting tonight, or why is that guy taking that shot? And then I'll go, do you miss post ups? Do you miss them? Do you watch these games and be like, I miss an Al Jefferson, like entry pass so bad? And Randall backs guys down. It's like, hey, it's right there for you.

• 50:10Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Like, there you go. If you miss it.

• 50:12Bill Simmons?

  I had this coming up later, but I'm glad you're bringing it up now. They, this became that, that, that one clip went around. That was like two minutes of terrible Lakers, Suns threes.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  It was bad.

• 50:21Bill Simmons?

  You guys must've seen that, right? And it was just terrible three, terrible three. And people were like, this is basketball now. And I'm watching it because. I'm old and I'm like, you guys don't understand how bad the 90s were like watching Bobby Phil's trying to post up whoever or watching Anthony Mason trying to split a double team. Like

• 50:41Speaker 01

  They had a Mark Jackson rule because your post ups took too long.

• 50:45Bill Simmons?

  And how slow it was.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:47Bill Simmons?

  Like that, remember that Cleveland team with Brevin Knight where they Fratello like his whole goal? No, remember he slowed it down, slowed it down to try to have like 65 field goals a game? Like there's 90 now.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  I hope there's one person in this audience that's YouTubeing Brevin Knight possessions.

• 51:03Bill Simmons?

  No, someone in the back is like, finally, Brevin Knight has been.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  No, but I was thinking like that clip sucked. All right. And if you show that clip and there's plenty of games, there's some D'Angelo Russell Warriors games where I go, I might have to take a year off from this team before they get rid of them. But then I think like, okay, what are you talking about that you miss? And it, there was no movement, so much slower. Like even last night's a nice reminder. And I hate this, this is my thing, but somebody posts one clip of a Pistons hard foul and they act like that was every fucking possession of every game from like 1978 to 1996. And you're like, actually, that's just a really hard foul. And we thought that was hard when it happened at the time. And then you're watching guys cut and how physical even last night's game is with two teams, with two teams that wouldn't even be suggested as like,

• 51:51Speaker 01

  oh, those are the two most physical basketball teams. The guys are so much bigger. They're so much fat, like they're hitting each other off the ball. The game is so physical and yet these dudes on TV just never want to admit that it might, it, it might be as tough, even if there's more space.

• 52:06Bill Simmons?

  Somebody did a study about how much more running there is now. And it's, I just think basketball, I've talked about it. It's way harder to play basketball now.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  As great as that stuff and how much we can get nostalgic over it. Like I'll watch a Celtics playoff game from the 80s.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Once the ball is crossed half court.

• 52:26Bill Simmons?

  Everyone stops.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Everybody stops. There's times, I'm talking about like big playoff moments where they're not picking somebody up who has the ball in transition.

• 52:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  They're letting them because there wasn't, you know, the, the, I would say the lengthening of the court or the threat of deeper shots because people just didn't take shots back then the way they do now. But they would just almost let people get in to setting up what they wanted to do. And I would challenge anybody, like, go watch some of that stuff for 30 minutes. And it's hysterical how different it actually is in the way people talk about it today.

• 52:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we have a league where somebody's trying to win the fourth MVP and he's shooting 52% on threes and his 10 assists and he's a center. People are like, this sucks.

• 53:10Bill Simmons?

  And everyone forgets of the mid 2000s when we, we actually, it was like a crisis with the pace of the game and just how much it sucked to watch that they had to change these rules. Anyway, uh, next one for the, uh, the worst skill. We just got to get it over with. Jamal Murray.

• 53:30Bill Simmons?

  Listen, we're all friends here. Let's talk it out. I don't want this to be like the Sopranos intervention where somebody charges me. Let's just, let's talk it out. Jamal Murray, how worried are you?

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Not as worried as you are. You, I don't know if I'm bad at it or you're dangerous. But you went in and you were like, I don't think he's moving well. And I went, I, he's not peak Westbrook. So it's, it's always a bit shifty into his.

• 53:59Bill Simmons?

  I studied a lot. I studied how he was walking.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Couldn't stop talking about him. He actually, I think the quote was, he's not the same anymore. And I went forever. And then he goes now.

• 54:11Bill Simmons?

  So we decided, no, that was a game. Doesn't have it right now or doesn't have it anymore.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:17Bill Simmons?

  Are two separate things.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Right, but you said.

• 54:19Bill Simmons?

  Right now, because he looks slow. It doesn't look like he's in the same shape.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  He was bad last night. It was bad to see live.

• 54:26Bill Simmons?

  He walks. I'm going to do some walking for the.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Here we go.

• 54:29Bill Simmons?

  He does, uh.

• 54:36Bill Simmons?

  He just looks, looks creaky. Like I, you know, I want my guys to walk around the court like guys making 40 million a year with their chests out. I just was, I just was worried. I left the game thinking that guy doesn't seem 100% healthy to me. That was that. I don't know if I'm right or wrong, but that was what I saw.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  Beginning of last year, when he came back, it looked different because he was coming off the injury, right?

• 54:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  And then I think you could tell when it, when, you know, you try not to just go by like, oh, he's scoring more. Everything is fine now, but he's a tougher one. I'm not as good at this as you are. I'm admitting I, I can't because he is not somebody.

• 55:12Bill Simmons?

  It's not like I have my own CBS show where I'm like the mentalist.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  Would you turn it down?

• 55:18Bill Simmons?

  Mentalist. That sounds great. The two, here are the two things I noticed that he used to have.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  Elevator pitch.

• 55:23Bill Simmons?

  Doesn't seem to have the same way. When he's going coast to coast and he's going fast and he's got the defender on his hip. He always had like a little super blast where he could get ahead of that guy and get his shot. And he doesn't seem like he totally has that yet. And then he has that little, where he goes to his right, that little 12 footer, the Chris Paul shot, which always used to go in and was like his kind of like, that was his shot. And it's not going in anymore. And it doesn't seem like he has the same lift on it. So that's just what I saw in person. We'll see if it's fixed, but it's, if you're the Nuggets, like your ceiling depends on what happens with him over the next four months. Cause you know what we have with the other guys.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he's been so great and huge playoff spots. Everybody knows that. And like, when you can do that, that tells me everything about you. That even if you don't have the accolades of the other guys, I think the no all-star team thing is completely overblown. Cause if you go through it like every single year.

• 56:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, a million guards.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Was and when he was healthy and when he wasn't, the other guards that made the team, it's, it's not as egregious as it's always pitched every time. It's a national broadcast, which seems to be some rule like Jalen Hurts squatting. You have to bring up the Jalen. Jamal Murray hasn't made an all-star game, but.

• 56:29Bill Simmons?

  What are the other ones like that?

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Uh, well, the all-timer was Kershaw and Stafford went to high school together.

• 56:36Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's a good one. Jim Harbaugh and John Harbaugh are brothers.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  What Russell Wilson one?

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Did you just yell Russell Wilson?

• 56:46Bill Simmons?

  Trying to throw us off. I have a, I'm an eight and a half for Jamal Murray for word.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  Put me down as a 6.5. He's too young. He's too young.

• 56:55Bill Simmons?

  You're always conservative with this. I'm always like more panicky and you're more conservative.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:03Bill Simmons?

  Embiid, George, Philly. Just as a group.

• 57:09Bill Simmons?

  Removing all your whatever. I'm like an eight and a half.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  See, I think you're right. This is why it's an eight. It's not a 10. Okay? The Pelicans are an 11.

• 57:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Philly, there is, despite the time we just been talking to them. There's a version of it coming together.

• 57:26Bill Simmons?

  Well, the thing is, they only have to be like the 10 seed. That could be 34 wins.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  With Maxey, George, Embiid.

• 57:33Bill Simmons?

  Yabaselli.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  And McCain.

• 57:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. They have talent.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  I mean, Oubre, who I can't stand, has been pretty good for them for a couple of years.

• 57:42Bill Simmons?

  I'm not crossing them off, but it's not great.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Like when Oubre has to play somebody tough defensively with all that length, like he's, he's into it. He's kind of a different cat now, so I gotta give it to him. So at least with Philadelphia, as bad as it is, it's kind of like the Clippers thing. Yes, it's a huge worry, but dot, dot, dot. Now, it never worked out for them. And maybe it doesn't where the odds are against Philadelphia, but there's something there is in place where I don't see why they couldn't put together a couple of months and we start talking about them being like, hey, that's gonna be a weird, that could be a weird 1-8.

• 58:09Bill Simmons?

  Here's why eight and a half might be low, because Embiid was in the Olympics. Looked slow, looked creaky.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Do his walk.

• 58:18Bill Simmons?

  See, that, that one will be tough. I don't know if I could do that one.

• 58:22Bill Simmons?

  Then before the season, it's like, we're taking it easy with him, but he's doing great. His knee's good.

• 58:29Bill Simmons?

  Signed the extension. That was a red flag. It was like, why did he grab that extension so fast? That was weird. Then it was the ESPN sent, who was it? Bon Tams to write the big feature about their whole master plan for it's all about April, May and June now. I was like, that's weird. Why are they telling us that? And then all of a sudden, Embiid. Not playing tonight. It's like, ah, the season started. That seems like a problem. And then he played. He looked terrible. Then he got hurt. Then he was mad at his team. The team meeting happened. And then we haven't seen him since.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  Suspended for.

• 59:07Bill Simmons?

  Oh, and he got in a fight with the reporter, not the fight, but the shoving thing. And then I saw today, another red flag. Embiid is ramping up.

• 59:17Bill Simmons?

  What does that mean?

• 59:20Speaker 01

  It generally means you've been disappointing.

• 59:23Bill Simmons?

  What other life?

• 59:24Speaker 01

  Parents should start using it. How's Doug? Ramp up this summer?

• 59:32Bill Simmons?

  Like if my son's grades, if I'm like, hey, Ben, how are your grades? And he's like, yes, I'm ramping up.

• 59:41Bill Simmons?

  But how are your grades?

• 59:44Speaker 01

  As long as you're ramping up.

• 59:47Bill Simmons?

  Like, how's it going with the ladies? I'm ramping up.

• 59:51Bill Simmons?

  So you're single?

• 59:55Bill Simmons?

  LaMelo Ball, where are you scale? Where are you?

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Really high.

• 1:00:00Bill Simmons?

  You're high. He's averaging 30 a game.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  He's second in the league in scoring and I'm worried. Now, I know there's a large segment, not the great city of Denver. Never want to hear Bill and I talk about LaMelo, speaking of Scoot takes. And that's totally fair. I didn't like the Australia footage. Don't know how many times I can say it.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  Having said that, he's a incredibly talented guy at that size, the passing, the, I talk about all the time, like his size, the start, stop, start again thing is just stupid. But when I watch the games and I see, like, he took 35 the other night and I'm like, you know what's not a good shot? Is a one foot three from 30 feet out with 16 seconds left in the shot clock. And I think when you're allowed to just do that forever, because he is their attraction, he is the kind of the Trey Young thing in Atlanta, where this may not be great, but the kids love him. I wonder now on another coach who was supposed to be the guy, and by the way, when he benched him in that Nets game, I don't think it was about the fourth quarter because I went back, I was like, where is the moment where Charles Lee's like, I'm benching you in

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  a tight game. He made nine more substitutions in under four minutes. He was subbing in for offense, he was subbing in for defense, and he never put LaMelo back in the game. And I thought it was about the overall approach that he has to have. He's obviously more talented and a more productive player than I thought he would be before the draft. But I think there's a tendency of like, he just kind of gets out there and does his own thing. I think it sucks to play with, and I think it's losing basketball. And this is a habit that he has to break to be something in this league, other than just a box score guy.

• 1:01:36Bill Simmons?

  Year five. Good stats, bad team guy. He's probably the captain.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  And his stats are awesome.

• 1:01:42Bill Simmons?

  Stats are great.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  Like even, even with the bad threes, like, look at the three point, like, the numbers, he's a better shooter in the NBA now than he was at any other level. Like, and it was immediate.

• 1:01:51Bill Simmons?

  I've made this joke before, and I'm gonna make it again. His destiny might be social media 15 years from now with clips of people saying, LaMelo Ball was a problem. And just like a one minute highlight tape of crazy shots he made. And that's where we land. We'll see. Uh, next one. Worry scale. A stringer Avon situation with Franz and Palo when Palo comes back. Are they gonna be on the balcony together? Franz is like, this is kind of my team now.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  Here's why I'm not worried about it at all. Because when you watch Palo at Duke, he actually wanted to get other guys involved, even though he was clearly the best player, was gonna be the number one pick.

• 1:02:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so he likes this.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  Palo is totally fine getting other people involved, which is why I like him probably, I mean, Wemba Yama's in his own planet, right? But-

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Paulo to be that good, that young and not have to have the seven year run of, I guess I have to kind of find a way to play with other people. Like that's in him already. So with this front, I think this is just a nice Franz reminder tour of what he is and how pissed people got him the Cavs series. So I, I'm not worried. I think this is actually one of those weird injuries where it may be better for the rest of the magic.

• 1:03:07Bill Simmons?

  It certainly helped Franz.

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Bill Simmons?

  Cause he Olympics wasn't great. First start of the season wasn't great.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  The Cavs series, people were acting like he sucked.

• 1:03:17Bill Simmons?

  I was one of them. Um, no, it's good. Orlando's on my radar. I'm the most worried about the Cavs in the East, obviously, because I think they're really good. Um, but I think I'd put Orlando next for teams I'm worried about because if Franz keeps up.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  For Boston or in general?

• 1:03:33Bill Simmons?

  For Boston.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  So you would rank.

• 1:03:35Bill Simmons?

  Keeps this up.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  The Boston threats are Cleveland, Orlando to you?

• 1:03:40Bill Simmons?

  I think Orlando because of the defense and because if Franz can be the second guy that you never know who's going to have the 35 point game. I'm not as, I just can't be as scared of Milwaukee with the, with not knowing what I'm getting from Middleton. I just don't know if we're ever seeing.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  No, but it's good to see that they turn it around because Giannis has been insane.

• 1:03:58Bill Simmons?

  And the Knicks are honestly just not good enough defensively. It's never worked. When, once you get to round three, round four, you have to be able to get stops and I don't know if they can. Next one, worry scale.

• 1:04:12Bill Simmons?

  LeBron going 89 Kareem on us as this year goes along.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  Revisit 89 Kareem for those that don't remember.

• 1:04:24Bill Simmons?

  So it's 36 years ago is the farewell tour season. Um, Kareem was amazing. I mean, he was, he had one of the most amazing careers in any sport. He was the finals MVP, I think in 71 and 85. In 87, they ran the biggest play of the game for him in game four. He made it, he got fouled. 88 Piston series, biggest play of, of the entire series. They ran for him. He was like 42. So he, he was an amazing aging player, but he was obviously old. And then all of a sudden 89, it was grim. It was. It was bad and LeBron, like he put up 29 today. Offensively, he can still do it.

• 1:05:05Bill Simmons?

  The defense is, uh, you can't even call it defense because he's not playing it. So he's basically, he's become a DH in basketball. Um, and you still play pickup and I think you have a lot of pride in your pickup. I

• 1:05:25Bill Simmons?

  You're trying to figure out how to be insulted by that. Um,

• 1:05:29Bill Simmons?

  I had a run in pickup when I was in my early 40s where I really tried to keep it going. And then eventually you start learning all these tricks to survive in a pickup game when you're old. And LeBron's doing a lot of those tricks now where I'm like, I used to do that. Where he'd be like on defense, under the basket where he's just kind of doing this. And then, no, get that, get that guy.

• 1:05:55Bill Simmons?

  And, and he's just not covering ground?

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  This is the worst comparison you've ever made.

• 1:06:03Bill Simmons?

  Thank you. Look, I can tell when somebody's trying to conserve their energy at a basketball court.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you could have done it without comparing it to your pickup game in the 40s.

• 1:06:14Bill Simmons?

  I'm an only child. What do you want?

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  I hope someone that despises you tweets that you said this at this show tonight. With no context whatsoever. I might even retweet it.

• 1:06:26Bill Simmons?

  You know what I mean though.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  I know exactly what you mean. I know exactly what you mean.

• 1:06:29Bill Simmons?

  You're supposed to be my friend on stage and now you're undermining me.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's always good to be, you know, every now and then I gotta, I gotta disagree with you.

• 1:06:37Bill Simmons?

  No, but you know what I mean though, when the people don't move.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  I know what you mean, but I mean, if I said like, hey, man, I always hit the cutoff guy in softball.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  Nobody, trust me, as somebody that tried to do that a few times, like I was trying to explain why my Tyson's.

• 1:06:55Bill Simmons?

  Defensive pickup?

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 1:06:57Bill Simmons?

  Do you still move on defensive pickup?

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, it depends on, I usually will like, if you make three, I'm like, shit.

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  Like Matt Liner's kid just destroyed me a couple of weeks ago.

• 1:07:09Bill Simmons?

  So how many years left for LeBron in your opinion?

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  Well, everything you said is right, but don't you feel guilty holding them to a standard that we shouldn't hold them to?

• 1:07:18Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's year 22.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I mean. So, I mean, some of this defensive stuff he's been, he's been doing for a while. I mean, he's had the worst defensive assignment for years, which I think is smart to try to pace him. I mean,

• 1:07:30Bill Simmons?

  But now they have Austin Reeves and Connect out there too. And it's like, ah.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  And D'Angelo Russell.

• 1:07:35Bill Simmons?

  And D'Angelo Russell, hey.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Lock it down.

• 1:07:37Bill Simmons?

  Who's got John Moran, anybody?

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  I, uh, I think I'm at a stage and I, I've, I've talked about this before, but I'm, I'm with you. Everything you said is right. And when Denver played them, they had LeBron's guy stay baseline. So LeBron was the baseline help, kind of in the dunker spot. And they were running these cuts like it was a handoff at the high post and then somebody would cut down off of it. LeBron just never, ever rotated over. And they're like, we're just going to keep doing this over and over and over again.

• 1:08:05Bill Simmons?

  He's had some tough fast break defense plays.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  What, what, I mean, I thought he'd, I thought he'd be on TV three years ago, you know? Go back to 2010 and we're talking about him and holding him to this standard defensively. So this part I actually feel guilty about, even though you're right.

• 1:08:18Bill Simmons?

  I guess my reaction is based on the, the dialogue about him heading into the season. And all the people in the media were like, he's still a top five guy.

• 1:08:29Bill Simmons?

  The answer is no.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  Where do you have him in your top 100?

• 1:08:35Bill Simmons?

  He was not in the top 20.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  Whoa, that seems low.

• 1:08:39Bill Simmons?

  I'm sorry. I like defense.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  Do you have Rudy three?

• 1:08:43Bill Simmons?

  Next, what, next worries scale?

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  You still have worries?

• 1:08:50Bill Simmons?

  I have one more.

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:08:53Bill Simmons?

  The Celtics ending up with a crappy owner.

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  Oh, all right. I'm, I'm laying out.

• 1:08:59Bill Simmons?

  Let's talk this out.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  Well, no, go, cause this is your world. This is,

• 1:09:02Bill Simmons?

  I don't know what's gonna happen.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Owner's insider.

• 1:09:05Bill Simmons?

  I'm always nervous when I have a good owner and now I don't know what I'm getting with the next owner. I'm just going to naturally be nervous about that. So I'm like a seven. What if the next guy comes in and it's like a A-Rod, Mark Lorry situation, like, hey, we gotta trade Towns. We gotta trade Towns. He's too expensive. Like that, that's the shit that starts happening when you have the wrong owners.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  What if it's John Henry? Those guys have won.

• 1:09:34Bill Simmons?

  We're moving on.

• 1:09:39Bill Simmons?

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• 1:11:31Bill Simmons?

  I'm going to save, rather have right now, because I want to get to your top five movie TV girlfriends.

• 1:11:40Bill Simmons?

  I asked for Cilla. We're going to break up the hoop with a little pop culture.

• 1:11:47Bill Simmons?

  Five movie TV girlfriends that when you watched the show or the movie, you were like, I'm in.

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  Well, Meghan Markle is available again, right?

• 1:12:02Bill Simmons?

  Is she available?

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  Can you believe-

• 1:12:04Bill Simmons?

  Is that the word in the street?

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  After, I think that podcasting didn't work out.

• 1:12:08Bill Simmons?

  I think she's still married, though.

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  No, but it was, it was, uh, we played in a celebrity flag football game together. And it was all of the swimsuit models. So nobody was really paying any attention to Markle. So I was like, that's my lane. Like, she's probably, she's probably down herself a little bit right now. And she's never been more obtainable. And then, I mean, I caught the game winning touchdown over Deion Sanders, no big deal.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  And I was like, yeah, you know, uh, I shot her a DM.

• 1:12:47Bill Simmons?

  She DM'd me back- Shot her a DM!

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, um, then somebody was like, do you know who she's dating? I was like, I don't know, I don't pay attention to any of this stuff. And, uh, it didn't work out. And no, it's the funniest thing. And so then the joke kept going, cause when Piers Morgan would lose his shit about it, I would always quote tweet above him, be like, it gets better, man. Like, don't worry. And I was basically only doing it for like Sarah Walsh and Krista Thompson, because they knew the story, they thought it was so funny. So like, nobody really knew what the joke was. And I kept doing it over, like, again, I don't do it that often, but maybe once a year, Piers Morgan would have some other Meghan Markle thing come up. And then I would just be like, don't worry, dude, I'm here, if you need to talk, ever. And he never responded. And the funniest person, the, you would never guess this, the funniest person ever

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  to reach out to me after one of those Piers Morgan tweets was like, dude, what is wrong with you? She's not that great. Like, have you paid attention to this hairy thing? Like, you're way better. And first of all, you realize she wasn't gonna go out with me, right? So there's that part. Jeff Van Gundy.

• 1:13:48Bill Simmons?

  Come on!

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  Jeff Van Gundy texted me to tell me that I was better off without Meghan Markle.

• 1:14:00Bill Simmons?

  That's a thing that actually happened?

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  And I was so like, I was at home solo and I'm on, you know, I'm like, what's Van Gundy want? Cause I don't, we don't text a lot. And I was like, oh no, he thinks that Piers Morgan tweet is real. So then I had to explain the whole thing to him and he was like, I've lost interest now.

• 1:14:24Bill Simmons?

  Then Mark Jackson texted, hand down, man down.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  I don't think Mark Jackson, I don't think he was ever gonna text me after that, that one monologue that I did where I was like, why does everyone keep asking why he's not getting a head coaching job? And I just went through like a 10 year timeline.

• 1:14:40Bill Simmons?

  So not, not on your speed dial?

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  Thing is too, is I loved him. He's a Johnny.

• 1:14:44Bill Simmons?

  Wait, one more question?

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:14:46Bill Simmons?

  What was the DM to mega Margot? Was it like, was it like, what's shaken?

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  It was not what.

• 1:14:52Bill Simmons?

  How are you?

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  No, it was really, it was.

• 1:14:54Bill Simmons?

  Hey, it's Ryan?

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  No, it was a soft, it's a very soft sell. It was, hey, I know the new season of suits is coming out. If you ever wanna come on the show.

• 1:15:04Bill Simmons?

  Come on the show.

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was really professional and it was like a gauging of interest. Like if I got an emoji back, who knows? And I didn't. It was ice cold. It was, oh, I don't know anything about sports, but thanks for the offer.

• 1:15:20Bill Simmons?

  Next one. So mega Marco, who else?

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  Well, is it weird to go all the way back to the Goonies?

• 1:15:28Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  I left the movie theater in love with that girl. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Not, not the one with the glasses, but the other one. Like, yeah, I don't, I don't know what the deal was, but.

• 1:15:43Bill Simmons?

  It's never happened?

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And who was that? Brolin? Was Brolin the bad guy?

• 1:15:47Bill Simmons?

  Brolin might've stepped in, yeah.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  I was like, what's she seeing him? He had a car though. And I think I was like 10.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  So I think that was the first one where like I went to a movie and felt a little different after I left.

• 1:16:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying? You don't know what the hell is going on, but you're like, why do I, why am I looking at Bob Magazine at the CVS the next week with her on the cover of that? So that's one. Did you have ones that I, we, we don't have a slideshow for this, right? Cause this now feels incredibly awkward after I told the Markle thing.

• 1:16:18Bill Simmons?

  Slideshow would have been good. Um, my moment for that was the Charlie's Angels Hawaii episode. I was like, I'm just a different person now.

• 1:16:33Bill Simmons?

  What about the town?

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  All right, let's just get to it instead. Cause I don't, I don't. So Blake Lively in that movie, like I had a stretch where I was in Boston where I would see the Blake Lively's and.

• 1:16:49Bill Simmons?

  It's one of the most accurate characters in the history of movies.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  When you guys do the Oscar revisit thing, have you ever nominated her for like supporting actress?

• 1:16:58Bill Simmons?

  I mean, we don't even need to. It's just a given.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  She nails it because she's so dangerous. She's the worst idea ever. And you know that you're in. And I thought.

• 1:17:12Bill Simmons?

  And has a kid.

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:17:14Bill Simmons?

  With one of the most dangerous gang members in town.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  I love kids. So is somebody smoking?

• 1:17:20Bill Simmons?

  We're in Denver. Everything's possible.

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  I think she might be back there smoking. She would smoke in the car when she met your parents the first time. Uh, the reason why she was modeled, she was modeled after these girls that like, none of us really knew how to talk to, but at the same time, like you never, I wanted to date one and have every one of my friends tell me how terrible it was. I wanted to lie to my parents that I wasn't seeing anybody and I wanted to date her all the time. And I wanted to go up to like Medford. I wanted to go to these dangers. Like I went to Revere one night when I was in my twenties to scope this out. Like I was like, I'm going to Revere. I just want to see it for real. And I was like, I think I'm going to get my ass kicked here tonight. So I'm going to have to leave. So it never really quite worked out for me. I knew what kind of hair was going to be like a bad dye

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  job, like sort of a Jennifer Aniston thing that was way out of style. And then the streaks that weren't blended properly. Cause she went to some cheap place in a strip mall. Like I had, I was like, look, I'm on TV for the Celtics. There has to be something like, oh, he gets, he gets fucking great seats.

• 1:18:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  You know, but I was losing my hair and I was losing my confidence a little bit. So.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  Never happened.

• 1:18:29Bill Simmons?

  She's still the ideal though, right?

• 1:18:31Speaker 01

  I think I have a little different standards now.

• 1:18:36Bill Simmons?

  Should we tell the story about when we met?

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz that guy.

• 1:18:43Bill Simmons?

  That guy would have loved the Blake Lively character.

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  That guy, I actually was, to be totally honest, there was one deal that was sort of close and I got dumped because she got on a reality show.

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  I wasn't bummed out. That was the best thing is that you know what's bad for you and when you get dumped, you don't even care.

• 1:19:00Bill Simmons?

  Like a cable show or a network show?

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  No, it was like fairly, fairly popular.

• 1:19:04Bill Simmons?

  A prominent show.

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then when she was, I was like, you didn't even win. Now you want me back?

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we met.

• 1:19:15Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah. You can tell that story. Well, it was, it was the first great Celtics moment in nine years. It was the game when the playoff game against the Nets, game three, where they were down like 25. Came back, really ugly game, but really fun. And it was, everyone was just so happy. The Celtics had

• 1:19:34Bill Simmons?

  a nice, happy playoff moment. It was like, it just literally nine years is forever. And it was a day game and everyone went out and it was one of those just drunk, drunk, drunk Boston days. And that's where I met Russillo and he was not sober.

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  It wasn't that game.

• 1:19:56Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was.

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:19:59Bill Simmons?

  Was it a different game?

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  It was a Pacers playoff game.

• 1:20:03Bill Simmons?

  That you're right.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  It was the week.

• 1:20:04Bill Simmons?

  That was also a great game.

• 1:20:08Bill Simmons?

  That was the Paul Pierce over, I knew it was a playoff game from back then.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:20:13Bill Simmons?

  Are you sure it wasn't that night? I think I might be right.

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  No, cuz you were getting married that week.

• 1:20:19Bill Simmons?

  You're right.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  And I had just started at that station, The Zone in Boston.

• 1:20:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  And you had just left and gone on to other things. And so we had just kind of missed each other, like just missed each other. He came on, like did a phoner. He was, he was nice enough to, to find some time for us. And then I hadn't actually met him and a bunch of my guys from Vermont came down because it was like the first time I'd ever been able to like do my friends a favor with a hookup. So I got us like four seats in the suite. And like, you know, that age, you're just going to get after it because your friends are in town. And then I was like tight, white T-shirt. I mean, I looked like an extra.

• 1:21:04Bill Simmons?

  That I remember.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  The outsiders. And Bill's there with like his soon to be wife. I think her parents, your parents, but it was at the fours, I think.

• 1:21:15Bill Simmons?

  Is that the fours? I have a completely different memory.

• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  And so he was down.

• 1:21:19Bill Simmons?

  This is great. It's like one of those movies where it's two different stories.

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  Well, we're colleagues, so I'll go say something. And I was like, hey, the Heathcliff Slocum trade for Veritek and Lowe was the best since Andy Dufresne bought that rock hammer from Redline, man. I'm like, that was, that was something else, you know? And I've got like a Coors Light and I'm like, you know, like, yeah, well, we're getting married tomorrow. So you were nice, but it was, it was over. And I, I didn't, I realized 30 seconds later after it was over. I was like, oh, I guess this is over now. And that was the beginning of this.

• 1:21:57Bill Simmons?

  Funny, that's not what I remembered. This is what happens when you get old. You have these memories and then they morph into a different memory.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  It'd be really weird if we had met after that Nets game and then the, but I know where I was after the Nets game.

• 1:22:12Bill Simmons?

  Can we play some rather have right now?

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got a list. I'm excited.

• 1:22:18Bill Simmons?

  Embiid or Kawhi? Who would you rather have?

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  I have the same one down for you. That's hilarious. Uh,

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  Embiid, because he doesn't have a ring.

• 1:22:32Bill Simmons?

  I think I would rather have Embiid too.

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  What's the Kawhi argument?

• 1:22:36Bill Simmons?

  My Clippers guy was telling me Kawhi's coming back before Christmas and he's, I think he's ramped up.

• 1:22:44Bill Simmons?

  He's ramped up, ready to go, but uh, I had the Embiid thing.

• 1:22:50Bill Simmons?

  Just doesn't feel like it's headed toward a good place, right? Like what, what, give me the best case scenario for the Embiid situation. Like comes back, he's like, you know, the team meeting, I really, I did some soul searching.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  He needs to follow the Duncan model. He has to get lighter.

• 1:23:06Bill Simmons?

  All right. Well, that's not gonna be this season. Uh, Zion or Trey?

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's actually Trey. I mean, it's Zion.

• 1:23:15Bill Simmons?

  Can you believe that? You were like Zion's number one guy.

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  I'm no longer his number one guy. What about Zion or Ja?

• 1:23:24Bill Simmons?

  Ja.

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  August, would you have said Ja?

• 1:23:30Bill Simmons?

  See, to me.

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  Done Willys.

• 1:23:33Bill Simmons?

  Well, that was here, right?

• 1:23:37Bill Simmons?

  Should we have done the live show at Shotgun and Willys?

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  I know a guy.

• 1:23:42Bill Simmons?

  Barely is. Jesus. See, I had Ja or Halliburton.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  Ja or Halliburton?

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  I think this room's a little high on Ja.

• 1:23:57Bill Simmons?

  I'm still in on Ja.

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  He's, he's awesome, but I mean, he basically said the other day, he's going to stop dunking. That seems alarming.

• 1:24:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  Cause I do, I would like, every time I'd watch him, I go, I, I love this. And like those Grizzlies like spikes that didn't really amount to anything because they were always hurt. Like they put together some really nice stretches.

• 1:24:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:17Speaker 01

  Maybe this five and I think the front office does a really good job with everybody, but I thought there was like a Ja Zion off the court thing. Did you see Zion hit up that ring girl from Alabama?

• 1:24:29Bill Simmons?

  I did.

• 1:24:32Bill Simmons?

  Well,

• 1:24:36Bill Simmons?

  I guess the question for me is-

• 1:24:38Speaker 01

  Who knows? Maybe I could take a couple of lessons.

• 1:24:40Bill Simmons?

  If they could get out of the Zion contract after this year, do you do it? Is a question I can't believe we're even asking, but I think it's a serious question.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  He's gonna be reevaluated in two weeks, so I'm excited for that. But that story today that the Pelicans aren't gonna waive him, like, there's some times you're like, maybe this isn't really updated information. Like, no shit, you're not gonna waive him?

• 1:25:00Bill Simmons?

  Right. Next, rather have Bo Nix or Jaden Daniels?

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  Jaden.

• 1:25:20Bill Simmons?

  I agree, but can you believe this is an argument?

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:25:23Bill Simmons?

  Bo Nix looks like Drew Brees. Like, it's like Peyton has just sprinkled Drew Brees Kool-Aid all over him for eight weeks.

• 1:25:33Speaker 01

  Well, think about this. Like, McShay and I did this two weeks ago of the... All right, so it's six quarterbacks in the top 12. Penix hasn't played, JJ was hurt. So we've got Caleb, we've got Jaden, we've got Drake, we've got Bo. And if I asked you right now, hey, if in five years, any one of them were the best of this group, it's all still on the table.

• 1:25:55Bill Simmons?

  Right. Except it's not, because it's gonna be Drake May.

• 1:26:03Bill Simmons?

  Hey, I'll fucking leave.

• 1:26:07Bill Simmons?

  Drake May's amazing.

• 1:26:10Bill Simmons?

  I'll say this with Nix. I watched that Jets game. What do you have, 60 yards and the bad weather and the Jets kicker missed the field goal and the Broncos somehow won? It was before the Broncos turned the season around.

• 1:26:23Bill Simmons?

  And it looked like he was gonna be like out of the league in three weeks. And you watch the guy the last couple of weeks, and he just looks completely legit to me. Like, he can make every throw, he runs around, he'll make like two mistakes, but I like his leadership. I like that he gets in fights with the other team, starts barking at defensive linemen.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  That Max Crosby highlight got you?

• 1:26:42Bill Simmons?

  He just has it. I think he's got it. I think he's got charisma. I like him.

• 1:26:49Bill Simmons?

  I don't know what the ceiling is and I know he's like 25 and maybe this is the ceiling already, but he's, he's, he's an average to above average starting quarterback.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  I'm serious though, like if he ends up being like a real guy, you know what I mean? You know what we're talking about here, signing up for 10 years. I, you know, I don't know, we started counting Super Bowl rings here, but he answers your quarterback question for a decade, which is really what you're hoping for with, with any of these guys. You may have to just start drafting guys, but like, how many games have you played? You haven't played 50 in college. We don't want anything to do with you because they keep getting it wrong. And when you look at how many games he's played, how many games Jaden's played, like, maybe it's just trends and it all kind of changes year to year, but it seems like there's real value in avoiding, at least avoiding the guys that have like 25 starts to their, their career in college.

• 1:27:38Bill Simmons?

  The situation piece, which everyone talks about, I mean, he, he came into an incredible spot too, which can't be understated, right? Like Sean Payton is like, I'm taking this guy 12th. I'm making this work. I'm going to turn him into a QB. This is, this is all I care about. And it actually happened.

• 1:27:56Speaker 01

  I also thought it was-

• 1:27:57Bill Simmons?

  I think he's gonna be, he's gonna be in the playoffs.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like when he got into it with Sean Payton, then it kind of turned into a thing where it was like, oh, so Bo Nix can do this, but Russell Wilson can't. And I just wanted to be like, maybe Bo Nix isn't the most annoying human being in the NFL.

• 1:28:08Bill Simmons?

  What did you have?

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  All right. Matherin or Peyton Pritchard?

• 1:28:22Bill Simmons?

  Let's just say I handed in a Ringer 100 top players list today.

• 1:28:27Speaker 01

  No, you didn't.

• 1:28:29Bill Simmons?

  Oh, not only did I, I put him in the eighties.

• 1:28:38Bill Simmons?

  He's been incredible. He's the best, he's the best bench guy in the league.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  He's been awesome. I mean, there's metric, when I was going through my top 100 and doing it and I was looking at like, you know, just all the different things that you want to prioritize or are there any secrets in here? Some of the metric stuff for Pritchard, I'm like, how is he, he's up here with these guys. And by the way-

• 1:28:55Bill Simmons?

  White got scratched the other day and I was like, Pritchard's going off, man. Watch it. And he had like 29. I can't believe you're not in on this. He's been, he's been the best bench guy in the league.

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  It's 20 games, 80th best player in the NBA.

• 1:29:10Bill Simmons?

  It's a 350 player league. It's in the top quarter.

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  Or 450.

• 1:29:18Bill Simmons?

  McCain or Scoot?

• 1:29:23Speaker 01

  Pass.

• 1:29:23Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  We don't pass Tina.

• 1:29:29Bill Simmons?

  How about Tatum or SGA?

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  SGA. The advanced stuff is like.

• 1:29:38Bill Simmons?

  You used to be on the Tatum side of that.

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  No, I love Tatum. I think Tatum doesn't get enough credit for, sorry to steal your routine here, but

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  his, his setting the table, like even some of the bad shooting nights through the playoffs last year, like watching those, you know, the Curry MVP thing in 15 to this day is going to bother me the rest of my life. When I die, I hope the first thing someone says will be, he was still really mad about Igudala getting the 2015 MVP because everything that happened was dictated off of what they were doing to Curry. Like, you know, and Igudala got it because LeBron was held to 40. And so when I think about Tatum's impact versus all the other people that benefit from it, I think that part of Tatum's game isn't discussed enough because he also, you know, can be a bucket whenever he wants. But the SGA thing is,

• 1:30:33Speaker 01

  it's kind of hard to deny some of the advanced stuff there that he's just at a level than Tatum.

• 1:30:39Bill Simmons?

  I have Tatum's slight edge.

• 1:30:40Speaker 01

  All right. Shocked.

• 1:30:42Bill Simmons?

  Hey, listen, I, I had SGA over him. I thought the last month Tatum played was the best I've seen him play on both ends. Everything he's doing. I, I just feel like he's gotten to another level. His shot, he fixed it. Rebounds, he plays hard every night. I just think it's harder to find 6'9 guys than guards.

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  Is he East Coast Jokic?

• 1:31:02Bill Simmons?

  No, I would never say that.

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

  Played center on defense in the NBA finals, played point guard on offense.

• 1:31:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  Does he love horses? Uh, I got one for you. Jordan Poole or Draymond Green?

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  As a roommate.

• 1:31:21Bill Simmons?

  I think that would be a fun one for road trip. Jordan Poole. On my basketball team, probably Draymond Green. Dinner? Interesting. Maybe Draymond.

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  Draymond, definitely.

• 1:31:35Bill Simmons?

  Might have a couple of good stories.

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:37Bill Simmons?

  How about Otani or Connor McDavid?

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  Give me McJesus.

• 1:31:43Bill Simmons?

  I think I agree.

• 1:31:45Speaker 01

  I started like putting Oilers games up on while their NBA playoffs games. And I had to, I had to turn off McJesus. Cause I would turn back to the NBA games. You haven't watched.

• 1:31:56Bill Simmons?

  You were like missing it.

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  I was like, I haven't watched 20 minutes. I have no idea what happened.

• 1:32:00Bill Simmons?

  Anthony Edwards or Drake May?

• 1:32:04Speaker 01

  I don't care about the Patriots anymore. So, um, post Brady, don't care. Ant, a hundred times out of a hundred.

• 1:32:11Bill Simmons?

  Drake May has it. You've heard me.

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  Did you say any of these things about Mac Jones?

• 1:32:18Bill Simmons?

  He's comparing him to rookie Mac Jones is insane. He's so much better than Mac Jones. Matt Jones had a good first three months. He was good.

• 1:32:26Speaker 01

  I remember hearing like a little Mac is giving off early Brady vibes.

• 1:32:31Bill Simmons?

  It was 2001 Brady vibes.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  That's what I said.

• 1:32:34Bill Simmons?

  Game manager vibes. Game manager.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  I always loved that. Actually, it's a great Peyton Manning rule and I need to do these. I'm going to track these, maybe write a small book on it, but whenever a rookie QB has a million interceptions, they're like, oh, Peyton had 30. I'm like, okay, I guess he's going to be Peyton Manning. And anytime a quarterback didn't do a ton, but they just won games, you're like, you know, Brady.

• 1:32:53Bill Simmons?

  2001.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Like, great. I guess it'll be Tom Brady. Uh, you or me here? I got a couple left. I got like two left.

• 1:33:00Bill Simmons?

  Go ahead.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  Mobley or Lively?

• 1:33:06Bill Simmons?

  Mobley. You like Lively that much?

• 1:33:10Speaker 01

  I just wanted to see where you were at with it.

• 1:33:11Bill Simmons?

  I'm still, I kept my Mobley position.

• 1:33:13Speaker 01

  But you're aware he's not going to be like that, right?

• 1:33:19Bill Simmons?

  I'm not giving up. I'm an optimistic guy. We'll see.

• 1:33:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:33:25Bill Simmons?

  Team's playing well. How about this one? Sean Payton or Jim Harbaugh?

• 1:33:32Bill Simmons?

  Wow, a lot of Harbaughs.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  Harbaugh's my new neighbor.

• 1:33:39Speaker 01

  Uh, give me Harbaugh.

• 1:33:44Bill Simmons?

  I think I would take Harbaugh too.

• 1:33:47Bill Simmons?

  But I think Payne's done a really good job with the Broncos.

• 1:33:51Bill Simmons?

  Jamal Murray or Dame Lillard?

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  I thought Malone's comments last night were pretty interesting. It's like Jamal was getting hunted late in the game. Like that was the primary thing that Golden State wanted to get into. And then Malone was like, I hope he knows and he takes pride in the fact and like make sure that doesn't keep happening. Having said that, Dame will be hunted defensively. He's hunted on the way to the game. So he's, he's probably a better like peak holy shit scorer. But see, as I say that, like Dame's had more of that in his career, but those Jamal playoff games are a huge deal for me. So Jamal and the age thing.

• 1:34:37Bill Simmons?

  I would take Jamal because I, I feel like there's another level to where he can get to where Dame is where he is now at the age he's at and who he is.

• 1:34:45Speaker 01

  Dame's a much worse fall baiter too. It drives me crazy.

• 1:34:48Bill Simmons?

  Roger Goodell or Adam Silver?

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  Well, if we both pick Silver, people are going to think we're doing, although if you pick Silver, I think people would understand why.

• 1:35:05Speaker 01

  I'm going to go with Silver just because I felt like the NFL had a stretch there. And again, the commissioner is the mouthpiece of ownership. So you always have to remember that. But the NFL ownership run there was just so gross and so arrogant and so dismissive of people. Like the NBA has never had a run like that.

• 1:35:22Bill Simmons?

  That's well put. I think if I was an owner, I would rather have Goodell.

• 1:35:29Bill Simmons?

  As a human being, I would rather have Adam Silver.

• 1:35:33Bill Simmons?

  But if it's somebody to run my business, like right now, like, uh, cause Paramount got bought. The NFL has it out in their deal and you just know Goodell is going to be like fucking Tony Soprano with it. Like, it's like, you're going to pay us more and that's how it's going to play out. And he's just, that's who he is.

• 1:35:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, the TV thing is a lot like college football to me because anybody that's heard this rant, I'm not, I promise I'm not going to do it again right now. But like, there has to be a point of diminishing returns of having, I don't know, Cal play SMU in an ACC fucking game. All right. So when I look at people losing track of who's where and how dumb and imbalanced the schedules are and leading to all sorts of nonsensical results from the season. It's like, okay, how much further can college football push the money grab to where maybe start turning people off? And clearly.

• 1:36:18Bill Simmons?

  You think the NFL is there?

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  Well, no, because I think the live rights thing is we both know, you know, whether it's our time at ESPN and understanding of being the priority, which it should have been. But they are treating it like cocaine and they are cutting it up as much as they possibly can. And they're putting it on every single corner and you're like, I still have an NBC streaming subscription. I'm like, how, how did that happen? And when they did that last round of packages, it's like, they don't even care. And it's actually kind of smart. It's like, why are we doing deals with two or three networks? Put it on eight and everybody will get their little piece and that'll drive up the price.

• 1:37:00Speaker 01

  And I, I always wonder if there's a moment in time where it's like, we did too much of it and it actually kind of hurt it. I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:37:08Bill Simmons?

  I wondered that as well. And then I was so excited. There was a Black Friday game. I was like, I, apparently they could have the NFL every day of the week.

• 1:37:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:15Bill Simmons?

  Three Thanksgiving games. There's like, wait, the Raiders are playing. I get to watch, uh, Aiden O'Connell. I'll never. It's a Chiefs team that doesn't care. I'm in.

• 1:37:25Speaker 01

  Do you guys remember that Denver Thursday night or two years ago? Colts, right? Denver Colts. I was in Vermont. I was in a hotel room. I'm watching it on my laptop because I couldn't get prime on the TV and it was one of the worst things I've ever watched.

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  And I remember this amazing, like empowering moment where I went, I'm gonna turn this off.

• 1:37:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  Like, I don't have to watch.

• 1:37:53Bill Simmons?

  I think they've done a better job with the Thursday schedule this year.

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  Thursday's schedule is way better, right?

• 1:37:57Bill Simmons?

  It's Packers Lions on Thursday.

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  That's the other thing NFL does. The NFL is like, as soon as you get a couple of games, you're like, we're gonna give you some really weak product.

• 1:38:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:06Speaker 01

  The first.

• 1:38:07Bill Simmons?

  Well, even like the Christmas games, the games are pretty good. Well, Casey Pittsburgh might actually matter.

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  The nice thing about the NFL doing their Christmas thing is that Goodell told us that is because football is family.

• 1:38:22Bill Simmons?

  I'll say this, it really bothered me that the NBA got rid of Thanksgiving games and that they're so scared of the NFL now.

• 1:38:28Speaker 01

  Well, what about the Thursday TNT thing? Like, we have to wait basically now. It's that, and look, I used to love betting on Aaron Brooks at UVA in college when it was the Virginia Thursday night ACC thing. Like, that was my shit. And that was one of the great college games and it was so awesome to have that on a Thursday. And now, again, they don't care.

• 1:38:47Bill Simmons?

  Everyone's just so terrified of them, but I thought the NBA, I thought it was nice to have those two. And instead they have 15 games on a Wednesday. You can't watch, you know, as you can't watch all of them at the same time. And I just, I don't know, like, I feel like they've moved too far away. They already got the TV deal. It's not like, oh, ratings are down. People always love to do this with the NBA, oh, the ratings are down. Well, who cares? They just signed an 11 year deal. You think they give a shit? Like, they got the money already. So put more games on times when I want to watch.

• 1:39:14Speaker 01

  I don't even know what ratings being down means, because every time it happens, then the TV deal triples the previous one.

• 1:39:21Bill Simmons?

  I don't either.

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:39:22Bill Simmons?

  I've never been a ratings guy.

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  When you have them.

• 1:39:26Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm just like, when it became like a thing about, oh, ratings are down 12%. It's like, alright.

• 1:39:32Speaker 01

  I like fastest growing show in America.

• 1:39:35Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's a good one.

• 1:39:36Speaker 01

  There was a couple of shows at ESPN that just were at a zero and they were ramping up.

• 1:39:41Bill Simmons?

  Or they replaced the worst show possible.

• 1:39:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. And then I'd be like, who keeps track of fastest show in America? That would seem like a huge deal. It's like, well, if you started zero, who can really say that?

• 1:39:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there's 700 channels.

• 1:39:51Speaker 01

  I have one more for you.

• 1:39:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  Would you rather watch 90s NBA players at the TNT desk after a Wizards Hornets game?

• 1:40:03Speaker 01

  Or an MSNBC panel after the election?

• 1:40:10Bill Simmons?

  Can I pass up both? I got one more for you. Yellowstone or Landman?

• 1:40:18Speaker 01

  Early Yellowstone, there's a version of events where if I had moved out here, I would have modeled my entire thing

• 1:40:29Speaker 01

  after Rip.

• 1:40:31Speaker 01

  Dooley, super inefficient gasoline, the wind visor hat, probably would definitely get my ass kicked more than Rip did. But, you know, there's sort of like, we're all, you know, we can be a certain age, but this is all a little make believe, I would hope, some of us. So yeah, early Yellowstone Rip is really high up there for me, although I think that the show, its tentacles went into a bunch of different directions there.

• 1:40:59Bill Simmons?

  I love Landman. Have you watched?

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  I've seen the clips. I've not, I've not dug in yet.

• 1:41:06Bill Simmons?

  Landman is unbelievable.

• 1:41:10Bill Simmons?

  It's Billy Bob Thornton clearing out LaMelo on the Charlotte Hornets style. He's just like, can I shoot 35 times today? And Taylor Sheridan's like, you can. And Ally Larter comes in and she's like, can I just be like a way crazier varsity blues, older person version of that? He's like, absolutely. And then they're like, should we do stuff with the daughter? That's kind of inappropriate with older characters on the show. And Taylor Sheridan's like, done. It, and then things blow up every once in a while. It's great.

• 1:41:40Speaker 01

  Where are you with Jon Hamm texting? Can you text him after an episode?

• 1:41:45Bill Simmons?

  I would not, I would not.

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think that's like a real, you and him actually have a-

• 1:41:49Bill Simmons?

  I would text him if I liked it, but I wouldn't be like, I don't know about episode four.

• 1:41:53Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't expect you to do that. That would be actually be an amazing friendship.

• 1:41:58Bill Simmons?

  The funniest thing is-

• 1:41:59Speaker 01

  Be like, did you realize you peaked?

• 1:42:02Bill Simmons?

  The funniest thing is Demi Moore's in this show.

• 1:42:06Speaker 01

  Good for her. I actually like what Sheridan, Sheridan's casting is awesome.

• 1:42:10Bill Simmons?

  She didn't let me finish. She doesn't have any lines.

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  Oh, I haven't watched it.

• 1:42:15Bill Simmons?

  I think she's had like five lines in four episodes, but they make it seem like she's in it, but she's kind of like Joel Embiid on the Sixers where it's like, is that, he's not playing again? Um, so I don't, I don't know whether they were doing her a favor or she couldn't be for the first five episodes or what's going on? Maybe.

• 1:42:31Speaker 01

  Here's the deal. We want your comeback story to be this, but you don't have to do anything. I haven't, I haven't watched it. I'm in a, I'm in a deficit here.

• 1:42:38Bill Simmons?

  I really liked it. But you do watch old succession episodes.

• 1:42:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love it. I, I think I had an epiphany recently where it has surpassed everything else is my favorite show. And like, we could all go with the Wire and Sopranos and I loved Mad Men. I loved it. But there's something about succession where the show found a way to put stuff in it that it didn't need. Like, I'll use a small example here and I promise not to go too long on it. But the election night episode where they already have everything they need, right? It's going to be this close election. The Roy's are going to have to be put in a situation where they're going to have to make this decision and call the election for Menken and Shiv is going to fight against him. So they got the back and forth and Tom has just lost in all of it. But the fact that in that dramatic, I don't know, hour

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  long show, but in that moment, it's a few minutes, that Greg gets wasabi on something so that their data guy, like their Nate Silver.

• 1:43:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:33Speaker 01

  Gets wasabi in his eyes and Greg is dumping lemon flavored La Croix into his eyes. And in the script, Greg is yelling, it's not that lemony. It's just a hint of lemon.

• 1:43:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  The brilliance to be able to write, like all the stuff that mattered and that, that episode could have not had that. And it still would have been a great episode and the tension of the election night and now what's at stake and how wrong they could have got it and everything that develops off of that, that they were like, let's just have a moment where Greg gets wasabi in the data guy's eyes. It's just not a lot of shows that would pull that off.

• 1:44:07Bill Simmons?

  So you've been binging Succession. I've been binging Sopranos. And I might have to, I did the full circle. I started on like writer at the end of season four. Went all the way through to finish because there was a marathon. I'm like, all right. I want to keep watching and I got to the end and I was like, season one. And then now my, and my wife is just furious now. She's like, what the, really? Again, you just did this two years ago. So maybe I need to shift to Succession. Cause I feel the same way about The Sopranos that you do about Succession where I can just watch the same episode over and over again and just learn, find new things, you know?

• 1:44:46Speaker 01

  You know what I love on a rewatch? And I think AJ was awesome.

• 1:44:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he really was.

• 1:44:50Speaker 01

  He was so good.

• 1:44:52Bill Simmons?

  AJ got booed.

• 1:44:55Speaker 01

  That doesn't seem very nice. He didn't.

• 1:44:56Bill Simmons?

  No. Well, let's, let's end with this.

• 1:45:00Bill Simmons?

  How many cities could you have actually lived in? And I mean, actual cities. They can't be like, you can't say off the beaten path, like cities that have to have at least one sports team. How many could you have lived in?

• 1:45:11Speaker 01

  Have a sports team?

• 1:45:12Bill Simmons?

  You have to have at least one professional sports team. Yeah, Hartford's out.

• 1:45:16Speaker 01

  That's Hartford was going to be one of my go-tos.

• 1:45:20Speaker 01

  Well, I always want to move to happy, accomplished. I did want to live here. It was close, but I could live here. I love it here. Great group of friends. I've just never had a bad time coming to Colorado. So.

• 1:45:37Speaker 01

  Wyoming, we're 0 for 1.

• 1:45:42Bill Simmons?

  I just got that.

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 1:45:44Bill Simmons?

  For me, Boston and LA, which I've already done. I absolutely could live here. I really like it here.

• 1:45:50Speaker 01

  What about San Antone?

• 1:45:53Bill Simmons?

  Texas, I'm out.

• 1:45:54Speaker 01

  Chicago?

• 1:45:56Bill Simmons?

  The extreme weather, I'm out. That's why I love Boston. Seattle, if they had an NBA team, I'd really consider it.

• 1:46:05Bill Simmons?

  And that's, that's about it. It would take a lot to get me to leave LA. Just like it was on Thanksgiving. It was 70 degrees.

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  What about where the Panthers play?

• 1:46:16Bill Simmons?

  Where's that?

• 1:46:17Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:46:22Bill Simmons?

  So that's it. So you could move here, but you would.

• 1:46:24Speaker 01

  Well, once you said NBA town, it screwed up my whole St. Bart's.

• 1:46:27Bill Simmons?

  I didn't say NBA. You could have any team.

• 1:46:29Speaker 01

  No, because I think.

• 1:46:31Bill Simmons?

  Cause some people like Nashville is getting momentum now.

• 1:46:34Speaker 01

  No, because you guys think I bought this boat for like luxury purposes and it's actually my exit strategy. St. Bart's Rye Boat Captain, NBA Pod once a week to cover the boat excise tax.

• 1:46:47Bill Simmons?

  From the boat?

• 1:46:48Speaker 01

  No, it just needs something to cover the taxes, which I know I'm not supposed to bring up anymore, but.

• 1:46:55Bill Simmons?

  So you'd have the boat in St. Bart's?

• 1:46:58Speaker 01

  I don't know. I would live there.

• 1:46:59Bill Simmons?

  But you'd have YouTube TV?

• 1:47:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Unless they do some weird thing of like, are you here permanently? Because you just keep clicking, I'm visiting.

• 1:47:10Bill Simmons?

  This would all lead to you disappear and we do like an eight episode Ringer podcast?

• 1:47:14Speaker 01

  Well, there was.

• 1:47:15Bill Simmons?

  Narrative thing about what happened to you?

• 1:47:16Speaker 01

  There was a South of France thing where I was looking at something on Zillow where I was like, I could just have the worst schedule ever and do NBA pods from here. Like I don't really.

• 1:47:25Bill Simmons?

  Five in the morning?

• 1:47:26Speaker 01

  I don't have anything telling me I can't do it. And then, um, I think something came up and I was like, I can't.

• 1:47:33Bill Simmons?

  What was the shortest amount of time where you decided that you were flying somewhere that wasn't in this country? And then you were actually going on the plane.

• 1:47:43Speaker 01

  All right. This is actually kind of funny because when I flew to Reykjavik in Iceland, the flight from Minneapolis to Reykjavik is like five hours, 4:45. And I was like, dude, if I meet just some smoke show from Reykjavik, like I could just, it's not that bad a flight. It's, it's two and a half to Minneapolis from LA and then.

• 1:48:02Bill Simmons?

  So you could live in Minnesota. You got the Timberwolves.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  No, I could live in LA and I could commute through and then I could be a Reykjavik. We'd split time.

• 1:48:14Bill Simmons?

  You went through this thought process?

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  I just couldn't, it was, it was like you sit in the, I remember when I flew to Greece once, I was like all pumped up and I like turned to the guy next to me and I was like, what have we got like six, seven hours here? Cause I was so used to the East Coast Europe thing. The guy's like 11. And I went, fuck, like I have not mentally prepared myself for 11.

• 1:48:35Bill Simmons?

  So what was the fastest you've gone on a trip though?

• 1:48:37Speaker 01

  Right. So that was, that was the, the Iceland one. Once I sat down and I saw the thing on the graphic, I'm like 445. Could I, should I look at property? Yeah. And it was all because the, I didn't, it wasn't seven hours. It was under five. It was really stupid. I mean, all these things are stupid that I do. San Sebastian, applying for a job.

• 1:48:59Bill Simmons?

  Do you tell people when you're like, all of a sudden on your way to some country? Are there five people you're like, hey, just FYI, I'm going to be in Spain for a while?

• 1:49:10Speaker 01

  No, I actually was in New Zealand, hopping on like this, this prop plane over Milford Sound and you had to sign all these waivers. And I was like, I probably should tell somebody. So I, I remember I forwarded my trust and will to my brother and I was like, hey, I'm in New Zealand. I was like, did you get that email? And he's like, what the fuck are you doing right now? He's like, are you all right? I was like, no, I'm fine. I'm going to where they fill more of the rings.

• 1:49:36Bill Simmons?

  You were like, so Scoot Henderson gets 10%, you get 40, 5% to Yoka, just so you could buy another horse?

• 1:49:47Speaker 01

  I just hope Scoot gets a second contract and he won't need any of my money.

• 1:49:53Bill Simmons?

  Last thing, what's your prediction for the Denver Nuggets this season?

• 1:49:57Bill Simmons?

  How many rounds?

• 1:50:01Speaker 01

  I don't know. I don't know what you're trading unless you just pulled a flight on Michael Porter Jr. And you think it's an upgrade.

• 1:50:07Bill Simmons?

  You look at the contracts, it's gotta be Porter.

• 1:50:12Speaker 01

  Who's the impactful person that then makes you better? Cause Gordon, like I love Gordon on this team so much. I don't know that I would, there actually, there's no version of him I would like as much as this one because of Jokic and the baseline stuff and all that stuff.

• 1:50:25Bill Simmons?

  Well, the other thing is it's harder to make trades now, which I didn't, I'm still kind of figuring out the machinations because we gotta get ready for when we start doing fake trades in about a month.

• 1:50:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's not even what the penalties are in place. It's the fear of what the next one will do to you.

• 1:50:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. But even also just matching the contracts and be like, no, no, you actually can't do that because you're over this apron. So you can only, it's, I didn't get into sports to actually have to figure out fucking math. I gotta, I'll tell you that much. And it's the most confusing it's ever been, but like even you look at it and you go, well, why wouldn't they trade Michael Porter for Zach Levine? That would be an interesting trade, right? And it's like, no, you can't, because then you gotta give him Zeke Najee. It's a hypothetical. Some Porter fans, huh?

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  I think it's a matchup thing. Like I, I think some teams still have real like question mark. There's some teams that want to close small all the time. Like I'm noticing it more and more where teams will just like match each other with small lineups. And like, here we go again. So it depends on the draw, but they're certainly not the favorites. But here's Phoenix who's falling apart again.

• 1:51:28Bill Simmons?

  Well, how many West teams do you really like? Cause for me, it's like, assuming check comes back, which we, we have no idea. OKC is the only one I feel great about.

• 1:51:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Dallas is turning it around. They're going to be good, but I don't know if they're locked into as a two seed. But if it were Dallas, Denver, I mean, it also has to see how it looks in March and April, but.

• 1:51:47Bill Simmons?

  I'm trying to think of a single team in the West that would be psyched to see Jokic. I'm gonna say the answer is zero, but OKC would be, you know, they're just like, take your 40. We'll take out everybody else. We have a way better team than you. And I, that'd be a really tough one. So I would have OKC and then I just think it's TBD. I liked Phoenix and we went big on them in the over unders and you know Durant's been hurt twice now already. We're not even in

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  When they're together, they're really good.

• 1:52:15Bill Simmons?

  Mid-December. Yeah, but it might be one of those. One of the things I'm thinking about with this season is just, do we count on these mid 30s guys too much? You know, forget about LeBron, the age he's at, but do even Curry 36, Durant, in the 2007 draft, on and on. And we see like the best case version of them when they're actually playing. But the season's like too fucking hard now. All these teams are good. The style of play is really hard to play and flying up and down. Then you got four playoff rounds. It's like maybe, you know, somebody like Curry, how realistic is it that he could get through a season like this where he's carrying the burden he's carrying and then win four straight playoff rounds?

• 1:52:55Speaker 01

  No way. Look, I want to defend Curry all the time. The second player isn't good enough. I don't even know who it is. For a playoff team to get through multiple rounds in this West.

• 1:53:03Bill Simmons?

  Like two years ago, or two and a half years ago, they barely got there and they got a lot of luck. But, you know, I just wonder if this is the year where it's like Boston, Cleveland, OKC, these young, talented, hungry teams. And it's just, those are going to be the three. I think Cleveland's in the conversation though. I believe in them.

• 1:53:20Speaker 01

  I do, but I do think it's going to be tough to close with those two bigs. And that's why they're benching Jared Allen down those stretches. And I think that's what it'll look like. And that's probably their best chance to not. I just don't know how you can play three out with two non shooters in a game in the playoffs in today's league. But I'm not done with Minnesota. Phoenix is a tough gamble. Denver, Denver's in that mix with those teams.

• 1:53:37Bill Simmons?

  You're not done with Minnesota?

• 1:53:39Speaker 01

  No. It's December 4th.

• 1:53:43Bill Simmons?

  I'm done if this is the roster.

• 1:53:47Speaker 01

  I'm not.

• 1:53:47Bill Simmons?

  Who booed? Thought you guys all hated Minnesota. They knocked you out last year.

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  Lot of, there's a lot of transplants in Denverville.

• 1:53:56Bill Simmons?

  I do not like the body language or the ball movement on the Minnesota Timberwolves.

• 1:54:01Speaker 01

  You know what I want from you?

• 1:54:02Bill Simmons?

  I don't like the dueling banjos. Your turn, my turn. I'm out.

• 1:54:05Speaker 01

  When we get ready, when we do our first NBA Sunday pod,

• 1:54:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:09Speaker 01

  I want your five favorite body language teams.

• 1:54:13Bill Simmons?

  Five favorite bad body language.

• 1:54:14Speaker 01

  No, five favorite body language teams.

• 1:54:16Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:54:17Speaker 01

  Like raving about high fives.

• 1:54:19Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my God. I thought Golden State was great last night. They, everybody was standing. Body language doctor noticed that. OKC, I like when they all do the postgame interview together. Heartwarming. Uh, Boston, I think, has, has great stuff. Everybody's pulling for each other. You can see, you can tell which teams like each other.

• 1:54:37Speaker 01

  Looks like you already did the segment. Be easy to prep.

• 1:54:41Bill Simmons?

  Hey, Denver, this was great. I'm glad we came. We, uh, we got an incredible Jokic game. That was the other reason we came. He delivered. He was great to watch a person. What a treasure. I hope you guys appreciate him. Uh, we love being here. Any last words?

• 1:55:01Speaker 01

  We'll see you at the gun.

• 1:55:04Bill Simmons?

  We will not see you at Shotgun Willie's. Thank you, Denver.

• 1:55:16Bill Simmons?

  All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Kyle Crichton and Steve Sarudy for producing. Thanks to Russillo for joining me in Denver. Thanks to Elizabeth Fearman as well. Thanks to everybody who came out for the show. It was great. Don't forget to check out the Ringer dot com's relaunch. And don't forget, third podcast of the week, coming Thursday night, well after that Packers Lions game. And don't forget, million dollar picks, Packers plus four and a half. Would love to throw for at least 200 yards, but 200K on that. That is a very, very nice parlay. Minus 101 on Fandel, wherever you can find Fandel. That's it. I will see you in 24 hours.

• 1:56:19Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh, writer-director of The Banshees of Minnehoshan and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys. Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters Friday. Get tickets now.

• 1:57:04Speaker 03

  Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change, your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5, only at McDonald's for a limited time.

• 1:57:17Speaker 04

  Pricing participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.