The Buddy Hield Game, Indy’s Dangerous, a Clips Collapse, and “Whaddya Do” Teams With Ryen Russillo

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to react to all the NBA playoff games over the weekend and more (2:03)! Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Ryen Russillo Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo #ULTRACourtside could get you closer to the game! michelobultra.com/courtside ENJOY RESPONSIBLY ©️ 2025 ANHEUSER-BUSCH, MICHELOB ULTRA®️ LIGHT BEER, ST. LOUIS, MO. 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

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• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  You're listening and watching the Bill Simmons Podcast presented by FanDuel, our friends, America's number one sportsbook, and they've made it easier than ever to get in on the action during an NBA playoff game, even after tip off. Just look for the live SGP tab on the FanDuel Sportsbook app and build your own bet slip, then sit back, relax, track the outcome of your parlay right in the app. And if you don't already have it, download the FanDuel app today to make every moment more. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available and listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Must be 21 plus and present in select states. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMER or visit rg-help.com.

• 0:44Bill Simmons?

  Coming up, it was a game seven weekend. Russel and I are here to talk about all of it next. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. It's football season. Uber Eats is delivering deals every game day. This week, get 10 free boneless wings from Wingstop on qualifying orders. Game on, flavor on, Wingstop is here. So if your fantasy league is coming over for some in-person smack talk, order Wingstop on Uber Eats and get 10 boneless wings free. It's the perfect way to keep everyone fed tonight so you can focus on the game. No matter who scores big tonight, you'll score a great deal. Order now and get 10 boneless wings free from Wingstop only on Uber Eats. Offer valid from September 14th to September 27th and from November 2nd to November 16th.

• 1:27Bill Simmons?

  Order minimum before taxes and fees is required. See retailer's storefront for details. Taxes, fees, and terms apply. Product availability varies by region. Exclusions may apply. See app for details. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. I have new rewatchables coming for you on Monday. It's a big movie. It's a big, big movie. That's all I'm telling you. You've seen it. Monday night, it's going to be on The Ringer Movies YouTube channel. It's going to be a video podcast on Spotify.

• 2:01Bill Simmons?

  It might be more than one part, or maybe it'll just be one part. I don't want to spoil it. Could be one part, could be two. Get ready. Uh, this podcast is going to be back Tuesday and then Thursday, and you can follow the clips and videos on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel where we went live tonight after Golden State and Houston with Ryan Rusillo. And it's coming right now. First, our friends from Pearl Jam.

• 2:54Bill Simmons?

  Bill Simmons here with Ryan Russillo. It's Buddy Hield day. Who knew? The nephew of the Klay Thompson game. We now have the Buddy Hield game and also an incredible Steph Curry game where he's just getting doubled the entire time. But Buddy Hield, 33 points, nine for 11 from three, and the Warriors hold off the Houston Rockets, who were a tenacious band of pit bulls, just coming and coming and coming. But unfortunately for them, could not make a shot. Russillo, what are you going to remember about this game 10 years from now?

• 3:26Speaker 01

  10 years from now, probably not much, but it is not exactly on par with my favorite Steph game of all time in 2019, scoreless in the first half, and then 23 in the third quarter. So it goes for over 30 in the second. It's probably my favorite Steph game. But yeah, he wasn't, he wasn't getting it done. He was making other plays. Certainly his movement alone opens up other things for other people. But when a men Thompson couldn't contest on that three point to the right side, like the first thought is like, he actually got an open look against a men. It actually happened. And then we realized it was a continuation of the calf injury he had on that layup attempt. And so, think of your Houston fan, you're probably not going to remember this in 10 years, but at least this week, you're wondering how the game goes if a men is able to just stay in there because it was, that was honestly,

• 4:11Speaker 01

  I think, one of the most defensively challenged series that I've seen from Steph in his career. And granted, he's older now, too, but it was just a grind to even get open looks.

• 4:21Bill Simmons?

  Can I make the case for the Steph Curry performance? Can I zag? Is it zag time already?

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Well, you're not comparing it to 19, right?

• 4:30Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  All right. Thank you.

• 4:32Bill Simmons?

  You know what I liked about it?

• 4:35Bill Simmons?

  First of all, I think Ime from the 2022 finals was just like, fuck this. I'm not letting this guy beat us. I'm gonna, not only am I gonna double him when he has the ball and send second guys at him. I'm going to double him when he doesn't have the ball. Have you ever seen a guy get guarded with multiple guys when he wasn't anywhere near the ball? Because that's what they were doing. They were grabbing him. They were holding him. They were like double teaming him from back and forth. And they were just like, you're just, you're not gonna beat us. So then it came down to Buddy Hield and Podzemski for three quarters. Buddy was great. Pods was, that was a rough Pods game. He played hard, but, uh, but when you think, what did he finish with?

• 5:18Speaker 01

  He was 4 for 12.

• 5:20Bill Simmons?

  1 for 7 from 3. All of those were open.

• 5:24Bill Simmons?

  But they basically were just like, we're not letting Steph. So Steph figures this out early. And you can either try to go hero ball and just launch some crazy threes with a hand in your face, or just continue to try to keep making the right plays, swinging the ball, trusting your teammates. It was a great trust your teammates performance. And then when, when they finally let up and he saw some daylight, he grabbed it. And then Jimmy took care of the rest. But I, I really thought like he did everything you had to do in this game. That team, there was one stretch where they had Thompson and Easton out there with Jabari Smith. And there was like this three minute stretch of defense where it was like, oh my God. Like it seemed like a miracle just to get a shot off in 24 seconds.

• 6:06Bill Simmons?

  But they unfortunately couldn't sustain it and they couldn't make a shot. I, I thought that was such an impressive win by Golden State though. They were down to five guys plus Looney that you could trust? Five and a half? Five and a third?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, Kaminga got out there and he had some, he had some interesting possessions. You know, so if you look at that with Moody, he only played 11 minutes in this game. Yeah, I mean, Draymond's 40 minutes and he hit a couple of shots early, but you just know offensively, it's not necessarily something you can rely on. He had two shot clock threes in the second half. I think they're both in the fourth quarter. They're like, oh my God, because there's all these plays where the entire defense is designed to, we wanted to end up in the wrong guy's hands. And if you're thinking of Houston and Emei's game plan and the players executing it, they actually executed it perfectly. You just don't expect Buddy Hield to go for 23 in the first half. So if you don't have that second guy, because even Jimmy is going to go a little bit slower. Like, there's even a few moments with Jimmy before that outburst where you're like,

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Van Vliet got him on a turnover and you're like, man, you've got Van Vliet iso'd. Like, you gotta, you gotta go with this guy. They didn't score a point for four plus minutes until you had that Jimmy layup, then the threes, and then you had the review on the layup after Beal forced a turnover when Van Vliet pushed Butler. And that pretty much was the game. But it's incredibly frustrating for a Houston team that probably feels like they did a lot of things, a lot of things right tonight, but you know, they ended up with six made threes. Three of those were garbage time. So over the course of the game being competitive, a team that averaged 11 threes per game, games one through six, had three. So technically they had six in this one, but you know, when you and I were talking this morning, it's almost like Buddy Hield, even though less is expected of him, took on the Van Vliet role

• 7:47Speaker 01

  that we've seen in the last few games, because that was a huge difference. We can talk big lineups, rebounding edge, second chance points, points to the paint. All these things are real things, but Van Vliet was playing out of his mind for three straight games in the series.

• 7:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and I think if you're the Warriors, you're just saying to yourself, is that going to happen four times in a row? I'm gonna do, I wrote down with like four minutes left, the Rockets were three for 14 from three, right as the game had gone south. And the Warriors, how many turnovers did they end up with? Seven. They had five turnovers with like four minutes left in the fourth quarter and Kerr, that's been his passion point. Like if we play defense and we don't turn the ball over, we're, we're always either going to be in the game or we're going to win. And the turnovers drive them crazy. And this is a team that can get really sloppy with the ball sometimes. Not today. Took care of it. I, that, that's another thing with the Steph game. Steph had two turnovers. How many times did he have two guys on him?

• 8:42Bill Simmons?

  Where he's like throwing the ball behind his head to Draymond or throwing these cross court passes or,

• 8:49Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. He finished 22, 10 and 7. He led the team in rebounding. He led the team in assists. Had two steals, two blocks. He led the team in every category except points and had Thompson coming at him. Thompson was hitting a point in the third quarter when it just seemed like he thought he could go to the basket every single time.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Cause he could.

• 9:10Bill Simmons?

  And then he was guarding Steph on the other hand, on the other end and shutting him down. And there was this moment where I was like, God damn it. Do I have to raise the ceiling of the Amen Thompson building? Do I, do I, I, cause I had it set at 15 floors. Do I have to like blow the roofs out and bring it up to 25? He is, I thought, I just thought he was such a gem. And I, I think you're right. It's an interesting what if for them? If he doesn't hurt his calf, could they have like pulled this off defensively? My thing is they just didn't get any offense from anybody other than Thompson. I mean, Shingun had some around the basket points, but everyone else, Jalen Green, uh, three for eight in what could be his last Rockets performance.

• 9:49Bill Simmons?

  Dillon Brooks, three for nine. Jabari, one for five. Tyrese and two for six. Like they just couldn't get anybody to get hot. And then Van Vliet couldn't do it.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  And the double big thing that's been such a huge part of this series where, you know, I think there's a version of how we talk about this and similarities to how we talk about Minnesota and Los Angeles where it's like running the football. Over the course of seven games, if we play big and you play small, it's just going to hurt more. We're going to get extra opportunities. We're going to beat you on the boards. And over the course of a series, like having to do this every other night with us, you're going to. Pay some sort of tax and you'd wondered if that's how this series had shifted because when we talked after game one, I remember thinking like, remember they started hacking Adams and they yanked him. I was like, I wonder if Ema is talking with the staff after the game being like, we should not have given in to them on that. You know, maybe it's worth it for us because of our defense to sacrifice whatever we're not getting from Adams at the free throw line. So guess what happened?

• 10:44Speaker 01

  They actually defiantly kept him in when they did it later in the series and it felt like, it felt like that was like this real turning point in this series that we're going to stay big. We're going to stay in this zone and it doesn't really matter. And then Ema clearly just didn't like what he had. I think the Looney minutes probably changed up some of the calculation on that because Ker probably felt like he could just trust Looney a little bit more.

• 11:05Bill Simmons?

  Allowed 11 minutes from Looney. It felt like he played like 25, only played 11.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  They were huge because they were two, you know, when you trap Steph, like eventually he's going to figure it out and they had two in the first half where Looney was the release on that. And he had a layup and then he had the free throws. That was back to back possessions for three points. And then they started trapping him in the second half too. And that was turning into four on three behind him, which doesn't guarantee open shots or anything, but. I, it really just comes down to the shot making. I think that's what's so great about a man. Like I, I'm with you. I feel even better about him now going like, that was actually the only dude with the ball in his hands or is like, fuck this. Like I'm just going.

• 11:45Bill Simmons?

  See 23?

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Uh, let's look it up. I don't think.

• 11:49Bill Simmons?

  22, 23?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  20, he just turned 12, 22 in January. Remember those guys are a bit older coming out of, uh,

• 11:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  The pre draft thing, maybe like a year or two.

• 11:58Bill Simmons?

  Well, you know, the other thing, it felt like Golden State, like you were talking about the rebounding because I agreed, like watching, watching the game go along. It's like, ah, they're holding their own today. Houston out rebounded them by 14. And it really came down to when you only make three three point shots in the first 48 minutes of an NBA game. And the other team ends up with 18. I don't care how many extra rebounds you get. If you're going to be minus 15 on three pointers, that's too many points. You know, it's just, it's, it becomes math after a while. If one team is going to get 54 points from three and the other team's going to get 18.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Well, this is the impossible number. They have 14 to three in the offensive rebounding edge. They only took two more shots. And normally that's like a massive turnover. You're like, where's the rest of the math? Like we're after figure. It's only four worst turnovers on the Houston side of it. So normally when you're doing something like that, when you look at those Minnesota Lakers box scores at times, you just go, at this point in the game, when it still matters, they've taken six more shot, 16 more shot attempts is the point I'm trying to make because you just go, you know, even if you're not even shooting it that well, that many more attempts. It's just, it's just hard to beat a team that has that many more opportunities. And that wasn't even the case, even though it felt like they were beating them up. I also felt like Golden State really battled around the paint.

• 13:11Bill Simmons?

  They really did.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Where it's like, oh, man, they're deep again. They've got a seal. They've got all these bodies. They're just taller and bigger than them everywhere, but they were fighting like crazy.

• 13:19Bill Simmons?

  It was like the Clippers yesterday, same thing, like just so much fight. Oh, no. Bad analogy. That, oh, no, it was the opposite of the Clippers. My bad. I got my wax skirt up. It was the complete opposite of the Clippers. My bad.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Not a lot of fight there.

• 13:35Bill Simmons?

  Not a lot, not a lot of fighting over screens, protecting the rim, grabbing rebounds.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  This is best of nine, right?

• 13:45Bill Simmons?

  Game eight, guess they've hardened. Let's rest these dudes. So Buddy Hield, how many career playoff games do you think he's had? Counting the seven in this series.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  I don't know, 19?

• 14:01Bill Simmons?

  11.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  All right.

• 14:03Bill Simmons?

  He's played 11 games in his career. This was easily the best one.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  So wait, so that's just the series last year with the Sixers or he didn't want to shoot?

• 14:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's it. And I was like, wow, he really replicated the Klay Thompson game. And then I was like, I gotta make sure. I can't remember the Klay stats from that game. 41 points, 11 for 18 from three. Klay Thompson in 2016. So yeah, Klay, you're safe. You're way over here, Buddy. But I mean, to get that out of him, and I've always kind of liked Buddy Hield. It's always been one of those, you're always, you know, certain guys in the NBA, you're glass half full with. Really, ah, it's the right situation. I could really see him thriving. And it's just never really happened in a sustained way for a good team. Then it's, you think, is he just a good stats, bad team guy? And then he just became a bad stats, mediocre team guy.

• 14:55Bill Simmons?

  And they sign him in the offseason and he has a really good first four weeks with them. It's like, oh, man, he might be able to be Clay and then halfway through the year he's not playing anymore. And then they get this out of him and they save him and now they live to fight another day. I don't, the Minnesota matchup seems pretty intimidating after what we just watched, but um, a lot of pride on this Steve Kerr, Draymond Green, Steph Curry era, I think.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll admit throughout this series, you know, even wanting the Steph thing to keep going because I just enjoy Steph. You know, granted, they weren't going to get OKC unless they were to advance, right? And OKC advances, but it kept coming back to me. And then even so with Minnesota's options and their size, I just was like, this, this is a nice little Golden State story. But I mean, come on, are you there? Are you going to pick him against Minnesota?

• 15:46Bill Simmons?

  How healthy do we think Butler can be in a week? And how healthy did he look to you today?

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Well, he doesn't have a week.

• 15:54Bill Simmons?

  No, I know. I assume they're going to lose game one. They just had, I mean, that game they just played counted as like a game and a half. That's, that's the thing with these playoff games. Like if you start doing like, was that just one playoff game? Like that game we just watched was a game and a half of, of miles and energy expended and you know, they're challenging everything.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like the pitch count thing we always talk about.

• 16:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was a 145 pitch game by the Warriors just now. And you're asking them to basically throw three days from now and try to throw seven innings again. So I just assumed.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, they're playing in 48 hours, man. They're actually playing less than 48 hours. So that might be one of those game one, you know, I don't know what the line is yet here, but uh, I'm sure it just got set. Yeah, I really.

• 16:40Bill Simmons?

  Do you want to, I have the series line. Do you want to guess? Minnesota Golden State?

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Minnesota minus 165.

• 16:49Bill Simmons?

  I mean, you're getting really good at this. One of the things I'm proudest at in life is I felt like you were gambling, gambling, uh, what's the word, lingual? When I met you, but now I feel like, I feel like you could move to Vegas for an NBA season and maybe make a run at it. Uh, you're almost there.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Minus 155. Yeah, I used to be really, really into it when I was younger.

• 17:13Bill Simmons?

  Oh, there you go. It was dormant.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  It was.

• 17:17Bill Simmons?

  Van Pelt beat out of you.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  No, luckily I didn't have enough money to ever get into too much trouble, but it was, uh, it was definitely something I looked forward to a lot. And then once I, you know, once I was at ESPN, like it was a thing that you weren't actually supposed to talk about.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Remember?

• 17:35Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I, I remember.

• 17:40Bill Simmons?

  I got a couple of phone calls.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. So I, I don't know how Minnesota, you know, I would have thought they were a healthy favorite in this one, other than maybe the public.

• 17:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, minus 166 on Fanduel right now. Because, but that's factoring in. They're almost definitely going to win game one, I would assume. They're just gonna have.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  What's the line in the game?

• 18:02Bill Simmons?

  Line on the game is

• 18:07Bill Simmons?

  minus five and a half. That'll go up. Um, couple other, couple other storylines from this game. Draymond defensively, I know, I know it's a theme over and over again. Today, in this game, he was like a sweeper in soccer, or he was like Char on hockey. He was just under the, under the, in front of the net, just protecting the goalie and just come, jumping out from under the basket and swiping down and stripping or protecting the rim or going vertical. I thought he was incredible and they were able to steer the defense around him being able to do that and not really having to guard anybody. Just pop out and help and jump in. I thought he was awesome and those threes he hit was awesome. That was among the better.

• 18:52Bill Simmons?

  I get it. Three years ago, I didn't think he still had a game like that in him. When we were watching him in 2022, it felt like he was phasing toward the next phase of his career.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  It's funny, when you play really high level defense and you just call like a two-way player, and I think there's an argument to be said that he's actually still a one-way player.

• 19:09Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  There's not a lot of offense there. I'd say the layups, it's almost in his head a little bit. We saw some of it in game six where he had probably a better opportunity to just go at it and then see what happens and then.

• 19:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, when you start contorting, when you start doing this stuff on the layups.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  I mean, plenty of guys screwed up trying to play for contact or whatever. And then he's always good for a few passes where you're like, we're, because some of them, some of them are, you know, look, he's a great passer. He's, he's one of the best passing, kind of like hybrid guys of his era, but there's also some passes, I think as he's gotten a little bit older where it's like, man, you were really forcing that one in there. Or he's just like swinging it to guys.

• 19:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  It's like, did you think you had an angle on any of that stuff? So, look, all of that, the offensive side, whatever you get from him is a plus. He wasn't on the ball in this, in this game tonight, much at all. There wasn't a lot of playmaking Draymond stuff. If anything, because it always felt like they were playing five against four when Draymond had the ball. Like, there just wasn't a lot of room for him to find some of the stuff that he maybe would normally do in a regular season game. But defensively, to have to go up against and, and just, look, we know he's a tough guy. We know he's strong as hell. I think there's probably a Shingun conversation. If he's a little bit more polished and a little bit more aggressive, even though he's incredibly skilled, I felt like tonight's a disappointing Shingun game because there's so many possessions where you're like, dude, you had

• 20:27Speaker 01

  just, all you had to do was be big and go to the rim. You had Pachamsky against you. Switch. Yeah, like, just, just go. For Draymond to hold up when he's battling Adams and Shingun as much as he was for those minutes and him not getting a foul trouble tonight was a huge part of it. Because then Steve didn't, I don't know, I call him Steve, but why Kerr didn't have to kind of manage his minutes at all.

• 20:48Bill Simmons?

  You know, the ref, uh, one of the last Laker games, the ref did the challenge and he was giving the verdict on the challenge and he said LeBron instead of James. And I thought, I just thought that was really funny.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  I caught that.

• 20:59Bill Simmons?

  He was like LeBron had position. Say, oh, we're first name or is this like a Beyonce thing now?

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Poor, poor Mark Davis did a Christian Brown one. He called him Christian Braun.

• 21:09Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  If you're him, you gotta, you gotta be thinking like, man, I've been in the league a few years. Like, come on.

• 21:15Bill Simmons?

  A couple of other notes from this game. Steph is now five and O in playoff series against Houston. Now that counts the 2016 one where he got hurt and they won anyway, but, uh, they still have not beaten a team with Steph Curry.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  That's what his gravity is like though. Even if he's not playing, he's just in the building.

• 21:31Bill Simmons?

  Are we going, want to have a gravity combo? Just even street clothes gravity?

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's at least worth mentioning because, you know, when I think of, like, we get to these points of the playoffs where if you don't like somebody and you have a platform, there's a really good chance that the guy you don't like gets eliminated and then you just get to say that the guy sucks.

• 21:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  It's almost this video game where there's just different tiers of like, all you're trying to navigate is a way to get to saying the guy you don't like sucks. And the chances, like the odds are in your favor that you'll get to say it about certain players. And, and my contention has always been like, some players are really great and they're great in elimination games and they still lose. And when Steph doesn't have any points up until the very end of the first half, I'm watching it going, well, this is going to turn into one of those moments where, when everything that's happening offensively, you know, there's a few possessions where he just doesn't have it on cuts, but they're like the Buddy Hield left side first half three and Van Gundy called it out. They ran Steph through, everybody shifted to the right side and then Buddy's fine. And then there's a Draymond drive on the left side

• 22:35Speaker 01

  where they run Steph through everything, everybody, it's like a wave of people just going to his side. So by him just being active, cause I think there's a lot of stars in those spots, especially a little bit older are just so frustrated. They're not going to cut, you know, they're, they're probably going to put up a few more shots just to say, at least I took a few. And he, he really wouldn't even take the bad shots if he felt like it wasn't a good look.

• 22:58Bill Simmons?

  So you're coming around. I thought that was, I, you were, you're on my side now. I feel like I won you over.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Well, I, I think I-

• 23:04Bill Simmons?

  I thought that was a good Steph game. I was ready to zag the whole time, even in halftime when he had three points. I was like, you know what? I'm going to figure out how to do this.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  I guess I don't feel like you should have to defend the guy anymore at 37 years old and I'm not picking them in the next round. So this has been kinda nice.

• 23:20Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that you're getting off?

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't think they're gonna be.

• 23:24Bill Simmons?

  Want me to help you? Want me to help you with your bags as you get off the bandwagon?

• 23:31Bill Simmons?

  It's like 1923. You're just getting off the train.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  When I asked you, did you pick or did you just give me the odds?

• 23:37Bill Simmons?

  I'll, I'll give you a thought in a second. Can I, can we talk about Steve Kerr for a second? Cause I thought he coached an awesome game today.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  What did you like?

• 23:47Bill Simmons?

  I rarely do this. Cause this is the old Hubie Brown thing about Hubie Brown loved every timeout.

• 23:55Bill Simmons?

  I thought Kerr called like three or four of the best timeouts of the playoffs. He felt, and I, I only, we've talked about this in the past. There's only a couple of coaches that really understand how to protect the lead where it's like, all right, we are up between eight and 15 points for an hour here. I can't let them get a run. I can't let the crowd get into it. I, I feel something bad happening timeout right now. And he did it like every time I felt like, oh man, I think the wheels are about to come off. He was just like, I've had enough. He had that one play when they went zone in the fourth quarter and Van Gundy called it out. And he was like, he needs to get J.B. Butler back in the game to break this zone. And there was like 10 seconds left in the shot clock and Kerr's

• 24:35Bill Simmons?

  like, timeout. I, I don't, I don't like the possession we're about to have. Let me, let me preempt this. To know, not know what you're getting from any of your bench guys, right? Think about the bench. It was, other than Looney, just a complete no show from everybody. He knows he has to play Butler and Curry big minutes. He obviously talked about that, but I think they went 44 and 45 for minutes. And it's like, how can I, takes Curry out with like a minute before the end of the quarter just to kinda buy him that little break. I just thought he did a really good job.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  So he called one at 9:42 when he didn't like it immediately and he wanted to get Butler back in the game. And I love that timeout because I do think, especially in this game where it was low scoring.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  There have been games in the past where you're watching a coach and he wants to make the substitution and then they don't have a stoppage. He doesn't want to burn the timeout. And you're like, okay, but what's more valuable this timeout, which again, I'd always want to have one in my back pocket, especially in an inbound in a close game. But there's also some math of, okay, we just went three possessions on offense without this guy. And in game six, where Detroit beat New York, Brunson left the game and then he went to go to the scores table with about two minutes left.

• 25:49Bill Simmons?

  And five, you mean?

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, excuse me, game five, right? Cause they eliminated him in six.

• 25:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  So game five, when Detroit won, and granted, they were dealing with a Brunson situation that isn't normal, but Tibbs is thinking clearly he's going to get some kind of stoppage in there. And when I was watching it, I'm like, you, you just gave up multiple offensive possessions with him at the scores table because you didn't want to call a timeout to get the guy in there. And really, when you think of the game and how close it was and who Brunson is.

• 26:14Bill Simmons?

  The two minutes.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it doesn't happen very often, but I'm with you, especially on that one at 9:42.

• 26:20Bill Simmons?

  I have one other big storyline from this game.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Is it Houston or is it Golden State?

• 26:26Bill Simmons?

  But we're going to take a break. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. We all have our routines during the playoffs. I'm the same man who once wore the same T-shirt every single day during the 2003 baseball playoffs. I am the same person who will tell my wife to come into the room when I need a team to win because she's good luck during the NBA playoffs. These are things that happen. Well, Michelob Ultra are a great addition to any game time routine. It is a superior light beer. It's really great. And they're getting fans closer to the game with exclusive prizes, including courtside seats to see your favorite team

• 27:03Bill Simmons?

  play, uh, signed memorabilia, lots more. Enter for your chance to win at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Superior Access Courtside 2024 to 2025 Sweepstakes. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21 or older. Ends on July 1st, 2025. Multiple entry periods. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess/courtside for free entry. Entry deadlines and official rules. Message and data rates may apply. Void.

• 27:38Bill Simmons?

  We're prohibited. Here's the other big storyline. Houston lost in round one and now I feel like if they won, the Yanis trade becomes a little bit harder as a destination. Cause it's like, yo, we won. Let's, let's follow the model of OKC and some of these other teams. Now it's like, hey, we lost in a game seven. We have a chance to get Yanis. What's it gonna, oh, it's gonna be Shangoon and, and, uh, I don't know. Jabari and Jalen Green. Pick three, Easton, Jalen Green. Wait, but three of those guys and a bunch of picks for Yanis. Like, let's go. Can we, we'll, we'll re-sign Van Vliet for the extra year. We'll keep Brooks. We'll have Yanis.

• 28:22Bill Simmons?

  We'll have, we'll have Thompson. We'll still have some picks and some maneuverability and let's overpay. And they have the best chance to overpay and put Yanis in a situation. But as we talked about a week ago, they also have the best chance to give Milwaukee guys back because Milwaukee can't really tank because of them, their picks. So they could at least give them a bunch of players to be like, yeah, you guys are getting a ton of assets here. Who knows? Like, let's say it's Shangoon, Tari, Easton and Jabari. Like, that's a pretty good haul with all the picks for Yanis. So I, I felt like if they lost this game, maybe the Yanis thing becomes way more realistic. Do you, do you think I'm right?

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Well, I think the way it's discussed, I would say you're right. I resist all of that though. I think that's the dumbest shit you can do when you start planning based on like, hey, we won a first round matchup, but we lost in the second round. So if we had lost in the first round, we would approach our team entirely differently.

• 29:15Bill Simmons?

  You and I agree. I'm just trying to get, I'm trying to base that on the history of how the NBA has gone, where people can fool themselves because they won a round to be like, oh, we're closer than we re, and I, I think they should try to get Yanis. And if they can keep Thompson out of the deal, just do it.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  I would try to figure out a way to to move some of these younger pieces because you have so many. There's younger guys that have value that don't even play. And I think the damning part of this series is the Jalen Green conversation. He's just.

• 29:48Bill Simmons?

  Is there a conversation anywhere?

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Well, I think there's a real conversation because the highs, whether it was the end of two years ago, which I always call the Gerald Green season, when Shingun was out, he was so good. I felt like he turned a corner. I felt like the light was kind of going off with him in some of his playmaking. And then, you know, he's had his moments. We know he can do scoring wise. But no, the game, when he had 38, it's like, see, you know, everything's fine. Everything's fine. Well, that was the aberration. I mean, he had seven, nine, eight, 11, 12, and eight in the other six games. That's, that's not just like, hey, he's young. And, and I know this is early. And yes, he is young and all this stuff. But like a men clearly needs to be the priority for him around whatever they do with Van Vliet, whatever they do with Brooks.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  So Green is taking away shot opportunities from a man next season. That's getting in the, the way of his development. Because, you know, again, a man isn't even like fully formed. And just some of his reads, his aggression, his confidence, and Jalen's just kind of this wild card guy who drives and the decisions aren't great. And, you know, if they had made it, I would have thought all of these things, by the way, if they had won this series. If they had made it, I, to your point, you wonder if they go, okay, hey, we took a step forward as an organization and, you know, a couple of things break our way or whatever. I would be really, really aggressive about adding to whoever you're keeping here and trying to get out there in the market. Because we're talking about Giannis, who's, you know, never

• 31:17Speaker 01

  lower than third best in the world in the conversation. I mean, who, you know, and you wouldn't do a men for him. You would say, hey, I'm sorry.

• 31:24Bill Simmons?

  Go fourth in the world. No, I meant, Thompson's off the table. He's off the table. I'm not discussing him.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Okay, so if it's a bidding war, because if we're doing any kind of Yanis conversation.

• 31:34Bill Simmons?

  He's not, you can't put Thompson in the deal. Like at that point, um, and if I'm Milwaukee, I'm saying the whole summer Thompson has to be in the deal.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Well, of course.

• 31:44Bill Simmons?

  We're going to do that dance back and forth forever. But ultimately, if I'm Houston, I'm like, look, you're not getting him. We have a ton of picks. We have all these other guys. So let's figure this out. I think with the Jalen piece, the part that's disappointing to me, because what I really liked about him, when he had that moment that you talked about from two years ago, was it wasn't just the scoring. Like, I felt like he was starting to

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 32:06Bill Simmons?

  create shots for other guys. Guess how many assists he had from game four, game five, game six, game seven? Four games.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have it up in front of me right now.

• 32:15Bill Simmons?

  All right. Well, for the audience, he had six assists total in four games. So he's turned into this guy that he's either looking for his own shot, or he's not doing anything for anybody else. And I feel like he's gone backwards with that. The defense certainly isn't on the par with Thompson and Eason and Jabari, who I think are just way, way better than him. And I don't know what he is. Like, would you trade for him? Let's say you're like, let's say you're a lottery team right now. And it's like, oh, we can get Jalen Green. Pretty good contract. 33 million next year. What's he worth? Is he worth a top five pick in this draft? I would say no.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  No, because you would still hope for like, the unknown of hitting on somebody to cost control the whole thing. Whereas you as a team, like, I wonder if Miami, but what would Miami be able to offer that would make sense? You know, is there some three-team thing where Miami goes, you know, we'll bring him in here, and we're in transition anyway, and we still think he's a really talented guy? Because I think we have seen that talent. But this is a really, and if you're doing local Houston radio this week, you know, it's a bummer of a Jalen Green conversation, because now he's just in a men's way. If you bring him back next year, he's just in his way.

• 33:26Bill Simmons?

  If you were Houston, like, if we were running Houston,

• 33:30Bill Simmons?

  we would keep Thompson and Eason. And we would try to do Shingun with Jalen Green, with Jabari, right? Those three plus picks. We'll take one of your bad contracts back with Yanis. And let's try to figure it out. And now I get to keep Eason, and I get to keep Thompson. And I get to put them with Yanis. I bring Van Vliet back. I have Brooks back, and now my team's better.

• 33:56Bill Simmons?

  And by the way, I like Jabari as an asset. I think he's misused on this team. I just think they decide they stick him in the corner. They don't run plays for him. I think he plays hard. I like him defensively. I think he could be a stretch five in the right team. I actually, that's somebody I would target this summer if I was somebody else.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I still hold hold out some hope for him, but he also showed that they handled things a real problem in this series. You know, and Steph had a defensive play against him on the left side on the baseline where Jabari's like, all right, I'm ready to start going to work. And like Steph knew he couldn't dribble. So he just stayed straight up with him. And he he held up great against him. And he had another play, I think it was in game six, where he like went to kind of create on his own. I was like, damn it, you know, because I, I really like him. And I'm with you. I think there's a role for him where he's playing 30 plus minutes a night, and he's hitting threes, and he's playing really good defense and all that kind of stuff. Even though Steph got him on a switch, she was so happy to get him on a switch and not have it be a men on that layup in the second half. But the only thing I would say about the amend thing

• 34:57Speaker 01

  is if it's a bidding war, which I don't know why it would be that, right? Giannis has to go to them and say, I'm good, but then also feel free to send me anywhere. That doesn't really seem be the way any of this stuff works for stars. Or it's not just open for Milwaukee to decide where they want to send them. So if Houston's not necessarily bidding against anybody, and they put together a sexy package, then you're right, they shouldn't have to throw them in there. But if it's somehow turned into there's four or five teams involved in this, you know, then it becomes the kind of conversation of like, really, you wouldn't include a men in there for somebody who's as good as Giannis? But again,

• 35:32Bill Simmons?

  They have the advantage, though, because, again, Milwaukee needs to get players back so they can compete next year, unless they just decide their picks are sunk costs for a year. And Houston's really the only team, other than maybe the Knicks, that could actually give them players that could still make them good. Because they have the Doc situation, too, where Doc's got two years left in his deal. He's never wanted to be in a rebuilding situation ever. So he's not going to be happy. He's not going to be psyched to just throw in the towel. Do you think this ultimately was a win for Houston in this playoffs? Would you say it's a W to go to seven against Golden State, and then you lose in seven because your offense, which was the thing everybody was pointing at this entire season as the thing that was going to sink you in the end? And then that's exactly what happened in the end?

• 36:21Speaker 01

  If you label it just as the two losing to the seven, I think you're losing sight of how ridiculous the Western playoffs were.

• 36:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  So other years, you'd be like, what a huge disappointment because they were on the cusp of it. Fall apart a little bit at the end of the season because they were one of these great stories. And for two years now, they've been one of our favorite teams to watch because all these guys and wondering how it's all going to shake out. I still feel like the entire season is a, is a positive. I know it hurts right now, but it's positive and you lost the staff. You know, you lost Steph, you lost the Warriors, history is terrible. As you mentioned now, uh, with this group, this Warriors group going against this franchise. So, you know, even though it's the two, I would throw the two, seven part of this out because all of these teams, two through seven were really close.

• 37:06Bill Simmons?

  Well, also the Warriors lose that stupid Spurs game, which comes back to haunt them. Because now they, now Minnesota is the six seed with home court. Because they lost that ridiculous Harrison Barnes game where they were trying.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:19Bill Simmons?

  And, and the Spurs were just like, our season's kind of sucked. Wemby's been gone for two months. This will make, make our season if we can somehow stick it to you guys in this game. Chris Paul, Barnes, and they stick it to them and now they don't have home court. But I will say, I'm not positive how much that matters for this particular Warriors team. Cause we've seen them stink at home and we've seen them win on the road. So.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  The game seven stuff is crazy too, like NBA history, we grew up with that 80 plus percent chance of winning at home. And now is it nine of the last 13 road teams have won?

• 37:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  It's absurd.

• 37:52Bill Simmons?

  You know, who didn't win yesterday was the Clippers.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Oh wait, so yeah, it might be, it might be, uh, nine of the last 14.

• 37:59Bill Simmons?

  The Clippers tried to keep it old school, the way you used to remember the game seven.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I appreciate it.

• 38:04Bill Simmons?

  Golden State, Minnesota. I think it's a really, really, really tall task for Golden State. When you consider that Kaminga now, I don't, do we see Kaminga again? If it's not garbage time, I'm going to say no. He was so bad in that, hey, not to defend Kaminga, but I think Kerr probably broke his confidence completely. And then I don't know what they were expecting was going to happen if you're throwing them in. Moody's been up and down. Post has been up and down. Peyton, who missed the game today, which I forgot to mention. Might have helped the Warriors because Houston crafts this defense thinking we're just going to double Steph everywhere and they make these other guys beat us. And then all of a sudden Buddy Hield is in that Payton spot playing big minutes who can actually shoot.

• 38:49Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Payton doesn't make a couple of those, but.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  By the way, I think you're right. I think you're right because you know, I think that's why we didn't see Quentin Post a lot because even though the idea of him as a stretch five to try to pull one of those bigs away, I think Houston was thrilled that every time Quentin Post ended up taking a three in a playoff series.

• 39:09Bill Simmons?

  Or had the ball.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  And almost all of these were high leverage moments. And when you factored in when he was at the rim for rim protection, you know, a man's like, this is, this is unbelievable. I think Post still doesn't know what a man did on him on that drive a couple of games ago. So I think Payton was probably one of those guys with the ball ended up in his hands a little bit too much. Post was one of those guys. So now they weren't really even options tonight. And by the way, I know that the regular season series, Golden State has the three one advantage. The last time they played double checking it was January 15th. I feel like Minnesota closed as the healthiest version of themselves and was still just a weird team. Because three of the games were in December.

• 39:45Bill Simmons?

  Can I intervene with you once? I got to stage an intervention. I don't think you can look at the regular season matchups anymore. I think it's a 95% chance. Nobody on both teams played in any of the games. I've just, I'm sorry, I feel like I want, I want the five hours of my life back where I've looked at different matchups and like, oh, Halliburton didn't play that game. Ah, no Mitchell that game. It's like there's, you're just learning nothing. It's not like it used to be even five years ago. You're like, oh yeah, that February game when they all played and they won 138 to 130. There's never a game where everybody played anymore. Uh, listen, we talked before the playoffs started about how Minnesota was a long shot that we didn't totally understand because there was a path for them, right?

• 40:30Bill Simmons?

  Their path was beating the Lakers, getting home court in the round two against Golden State and then just basically being toe to toe and unafraid against, uh, OKC. I think Minnesota should win this series. And I think Golden State, I continue to think they're a guy and a half short. They're not even a guy short. They're like a guy and a half short. And you're gonna need, you, you, you need eight guys against this Minnesota team because they're deep. They have different lineups. They have size. They can go small. You have the Edwards piece where he's just relentless on both ends. And I think Minnesota should be more of a favorite. I would have had this at minus 200. I think the Warriors are getting a lot of respect in this. I think Minnesota is a good team.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  You know, what's really funny is everyone from Minnesota has played in this.

• 41:17Bill Simmons?

  Has what?

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Played in the four regular season games.

• 41:21Bill Simmons?

  Is that true? You just looked that up.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  I knew it was gonna happen because you're right.

• 41:26Bill Simmons?

  There it is. There's the 5%.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  But see, there's just a lot of times, whether it's who played, because Draymond missed a couple. So Golden State has a 3-1 edge, but I don't know that you can look, and this is the thing I always struggle with every single year is, so you're watching Golden State and they have this great closing stretch. Okay. Houston felt like they competed throughout the entire year. So those felt real like closing, like a closing month. If you'll give me a month.

• 41:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  The Clippers felt like a real closing month. Okay. Well, does that mean that that was all misleading because Denver went into it as the worst defensive team in the playoffs? The Timberwolves closing the way they closed felt real. That's why I picked them. And also just because I felt like, how is no one picking them? Like this isn't, this isn't that daunting to go up against Los Angeles and.

• 42:14Bill Simmons?

  Well, they, did you know LeBron was gonna sprain his MCL near the end there?

• 42:19Speaker 01

  I didn't know that.

• 42:20Bill Simmons?

  Who knows? That last seven minutes of that game five.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  This isn't even a LeBron thing.

• 42:25Bill Simmons?

  He had him sprain his MCL.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  We're getting updates on injuries. We're like, hey, the normal timeframe for this Michael Porter Jr. shoulder thing would be four to five weeks. He looked great in game seven.

• 42:37Bill Simmons?

  This, you're right. This is a new language. Normally he'd be out 10 days, but he's gonna get through it.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  They did it with Darius Garland today. They did it with Austin Reeves. They did it with LeBron. So LeBron's not the only one. There, we've got like a first team of, he would have been out.

• 42:51Bill Simmons?

  Can I, I'd like to raise my hand on this one.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Please do.

• 42:55Bill Simmons?

  Everybody's hurt in the playoffs. Everybody has injuries, right? Like the Celtics are starting their series tomorrow. Drew's gonna play. He has a hamstring. They'd probably rest him two more weeks. Tatum hurt his wrist. If it's December, they're probably sitting him for two weeks. Jalen's got the knee. Like it's, it's May. I would expect people to get hurt. I'm sure Steph has like two injuries that we probably don't even know about.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Steph's hand.

• 43:16Bill Simmons?

  All these guys are fucking banged up. Steph had that crazy thumb thing.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Right. It looks like footage from some sort of like pharmaceutical ad during the commercials where you just go, if you're experiencing growth on your right thumb.

• 43:29Bill Simmons?

  He got stung by a stingray in Cabo.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Although I'm Chris Finch, watching the tape of this series being like, are we also not going to get called for anything off the ball with Steph like this series? When they called the off ball on Shingun, Kerr, he may just run that on a loop and they'll have like a celebratory dinner and just be like, let's not get ahead of ourselves. It was only round one, but I think we should all get together as an organization, cake and champagne, that there was actually a foul called on Steph at some point in the series. Cause it was un, it's going to be one of the most disrespectful star whistles. And I know the off the ball stuff is just never police the same way. I just thought at some point the rest might be like, let's call one of these early to see if they.

• 44:11Bill Simmons?

  I didn't know you were allowed to bear hug somebody off the ball.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  There was one.

• 44:15Bill Simmons?

  It seems like it's happening now regularly with the, or at least in that last series it did. They're just bear hugging him.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  If you're wrestling with your younger brother and he's just weaker than you, unless it sucks and he's just Kyle Long and you're Chris Long, but you hold your brother's arms out and you're like, why are you, you know, not necessarily making him hit himself in the face, but you're just holding his arms and there's nothing he can do and the wrist control and all this stuff. There was one play where Van Fleet had both of Steph's wrists.

• 44:40Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  As he was trying to like get off of some sort of screen, they were setting off the ball and he was holding both of his arms.

• 44:48Bill Simmons?

  If you're defending somebody the same way you would hold back one of your buddies from trying to take a swing at the bouncer at two in the morning, that's probably a foul.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm glad they won so that it doesn't sound like it's, it's making excuses, but.

• 45:02Bill Simmons?

  They got away with, they were smart. They got away with what they wanted to get away with.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  If Minnesota can get away with that, but they also have one of the least respected stars whistle wise in Ant, but it's for different reasons. Cause Ant plays to avoid, doesn't play to contact. Like Luca plays to contact. Some of these guys are really smart, like knowing Brunson. Hey, if I just play into the contact like it's going to go my way. Ant is so dynamic that he's avoiding everybody. And everybody's just in awe of his athleticism. And I think a lot of the stuff with Steph is he's not going to get the foul calls because they're not just traditional drives towards the hoop. Granted, if he's fouled on a three point attempt, that's different, but the off the ball stuff with him in a playoff series and good for the defense for getting away with it.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  But it, when you really lock into it and watch it for a few possessions, you just go, dude, I can't believe somebody wouldn't want to retire. Like this is, this is what I have to do.

• 45:54Bill Simmons?

  Or that why he was going to punch somebody. You know what's crazy? So you get Minnesota, Golden State, that's a great series for the league, right? Curry versus Edwards. I think both of those teams are really fun to watch. I did not.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Even Jensen Pajemski.

• 46:09Bill Simmons?

  Right. I didn't think Houston was very fun to watch, just for the record, not, not bummed out. To not get them for the next two weeks. I was pretty much done with Houston Rockets basketball games, no offense to their fans. Wasn't exactly a great hang. It's like, oh, cool. It's 74, 72 with five minutes left. Minnesota, Golden State is a great series and yet.

• 46:35Bill Simmons?

  It's not even one of the two best series that we have left from like a big storyline basketball standpoint, because that Indiana, Cleveland series. And we've been talking about Indiana for weeks now and the people just haven't been on it.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  No, you've been on it more. I, I know that I'm labeled as more dismissive, but today was tremendous. So go ahead.

• 46:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, that could, so Cleveland was minus 500.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  In the series?

• 46:59Bill Simmons?

  In the series.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  So you bet the Pacers?

• 47:01Bill Simmons?

  I, I have multiple Pacer bets. I did the Pacers plus two and a half for the games that'll go like six or seven. I did Pacers in six was 10 to one. I bet them today. Uh, I was just like, especially when Gar, no Garland, it's like this is, these teams are even. I looked at the last 50 games, Russillo. Cleveland was 35 and 15 in the last 50 games. And the Pacers were 34 and 16. And if you look at the net rating, the Cavs are like 7.7 and the Pacers are like 5.1. I think they're pretty even teams and you saw it today, like when the Pacers, when they can play the pace they want to play and they suck you into it and teams get sucked into it and they can't help it.

• 47:42Bill Simmons?

  And once we're doing this, they're like, they're happy, they're in, they were getting the matchups they wanted. I think they can play with that team. Like I wasn't surprised they won today. I think it's gonna be a long series and I actually think it's probably the best basketball series of the four. Just for like, I don't know what's gonna happen. The styles are great. It's a styles make fights. It's a great series and I thought that first game was awesome.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Today was awesome.

• 48:07Bill Simmons?

  That was an awesome basketball game.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Okay, now I'm gonna, I'm not gonna you guise you here, but there's something with the gambling world that I actually get annoyed with. Did you pick the Pacers to just win the series though?

• 48:20Bill Simmons?

  I, I mean, I bet them to win in six.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  But you, you bet them with the payout at 10 to 1.

• 48:26Bill Simmons?

  I thought that was the best value. If I had a gun to my head, I would have probably said Cavs in seven.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:33Bill Simmons?

  If I had to make a pick.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  Is.

• 48:36Bill Simmons?

  But I do think the Pacers come in seven? Sure. I just feel like it's a 50 50 series is my point. It's not a minus 500 favorite series.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Right, but what happens if you pick the upset, but you put a ticket on a five to one payout or a 10 to one payout? Then I've noticed, I don't know if it's you, but guys that I follow that are really into gambling would be like, well, you know, I picked him. And it's like, no, you picked the odds. You picked the value.

• 48:59Bill Simmons?

  Fair.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  You didn't pick it straight up.

• 49:00Bill Simmons?

  Here's where, here's where I took a loss. I picked the Clippers against Denver. And I had Clipper stuff multiple places and uh, I know we're gonna talk about that in a second, but that was one where I was like, I think the Clippers will win this series. This Pacers, Pacers Cavs is more, I think either team can win this series. And I think it's a 50 50 series. I felt that going in and now that they won game one, it's, it hasn't changed. I don't think it's 60 40 now. I just think either team can win. And the Garland thing is a big deal because they needed his three point shooting. You can see it today. I think they were like eight for 39 from three.

• 49:37Bill Simmons?

  You know, it was a lot of Ty Jerome. Ty Jerome, 20 minutes, fantastic. 30 minutes, now we're pushing it a tiny bit.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  We were talking about what's real, right? As teams close out after the All-Star break before, let me just do it this way. Before the All-Star break, the Pacers were 21st in defense in the NBA. After the All-Star break, they were eighth. So the thing about them that always bothered me against another talented team was you're just going to be able to score against them whenever you want to. And last year's playoff run, that was still true. There were injuries against teams they faced. We've covered all of this stuff, but if you want to look at a team where you go, hey, something's a little different there. Now, I don't know if the Cleveland closing numbers for that team are as relevant because they were at such a ridiculous pace through so much of the season. They knew they weren't going to lose the one seed. I felt like a lot of the Cleveland games I watched, like, I don't know, maybe they're, they're still too new to feel like they're taking the foot off the

• 50:30Speaker 01

  gas, but it felt like that might have been a misleading closing part of it. But that Pacers defensive thing is real. And I wondered also too, like in the series against Milwaukee, I'm like, Carlos is really going to play 10 or 11 guys? I think he put Ben Shepard in the game as the 11th guy in the first quarter of a playoff game.

• 50:45Bill Simmons?

  You know, that's my all time pet peeve.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Who does that? And yet he played a ton of guys again today. So there's a lot of stuff that I really liked from the Pacers today and the Garland part of it's totally true because as much as we both love Ty Jerome, he can't be taking 20 shots in a playoff game.

• 51:02Bill Simmons?

  In 29 minutes. And also it hurts the calibration of the team too, because now you don't have him coming off the bench in the same way to swing a game because he's just out there playing most of the game. I will say this, if Garland's not going to be 100% healthy in this series, I actually think Indiana is going to win. But it seems like that injury, like whatever, they're being careful with it. And it seems like he's going to be able to play with it, not be completely compromised. But.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  You could argue three point variance in this one too. 19 of 36 for Pacers, 9 of 38 for the Cavs. The alarming part about the film, if you were going to go back and watch this, the Pacers shots were open the majority of this game. And part of that's Halliburton's brilliance. Like I know people. He's a funny one too, because it's like, man, when he is really rolling, do you realize how special he is at breaking the paint, getting past the first defender, then the help defender thinks that maybe he's giving up on his drive and then it's too late and he's already by you, but people are collapsing. He's finding open shooters all over the place. I think he could have attacked even more if he wanted to today. And I'm

• 52:07Bill Simmons?

  By the way, he had 22 and 13. And I think he leads the league for me. And when I watch a Pacers game, I'm always like, just go buy him. Just go buy him. You find yourself saying that with him constantly. Just go buy him. You know, you can.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  A lot of open looks. Because you could tell when Cleveland cranked up its intensity and Atkinson did the in game interview, he was almost sitting there like a fan going, this is awesome, isn't it? But he also felt better because Mitchell was just driving at will, which I think there's going to be a lot of that in there, like Miles Turner being pulled away is a problem. They don't have any depth behind that against the two bigs for Cleveland, although Atkinson did separate those guys the way he normally would. But I was really, really impressed with the Pacers and I, I don't know if it's just the three point shooting. I don't know if it's that even though the Pacers were better than Milwaukee, this might've been a wake up call for the Cavs. Like that Heat series was as bad as garbage a series as you're ever going to see in the playoffs. Do you know that was the highest point differential ever in a four game sweep?

• 53:08Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 53:09Speaker 01

  That was the biggest point differential four game sweep in NBA history. That's how disgusting that first round series was against Miami. So you've got to wonder if Cleveland had a moment where like, holy shit.

• 53:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but you know what though? We both watched the whole game. I thought Cleveland played hard. I, the Pacers came out. I've seen them do that where they, it, it, they just put you on your heels. They turned around, tracked me and you get excited because it's the first game of the series. Like, all right, let's run, let's go. And it's like, that's what, exactly what they want you to do. Cavs tried to start slowing it down. Mitchell took over. And if you're the Cavs, I think you would take Solis, watching the tape. The Pacers made some dumb shots. Like, what was that one, Nemhard? He made like a 29 footer at one point with like two seconds on there. Then he made another one, then Toppin made a couple. And it was just like, every time they needed a dumb shot to go and it did. But I thought Halliburton

• 54:02Bill Simmons?

  was the, I thought he controlled the game offensively, especially some of the transition stuff, which I think if you're Cleveland, when you, you have guys out there like, you know, Wade and what's it, Strus? Like, I thought athletically, they were kind of trying to make the Cavs pay for, are you gonna put those shooters out? We're gonna go, go, go on you. And the other thing that was interesting to me was Halliburton attacking Allen, you know, who I think is a really good defensive center, but he was like, come on out here. Let me do my yo-yo thing with you. And, and he got him a few times.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that one I watched where I think the league's like letting guys change their pivot foot a little bit more than I ever remember.

• 54:41Bill Simmons?

  When you go, when you take the five steps backwards to shoot the three?

• 54:44Speaker 01

  The backwards travel thing, I've never, and I guess it's legal, but I don't understand how that evolved into something. But look, everybody does it, so I'm not even making it specific to anyone. But Halliburton got Allen on one. Yeah, he got Allen on one of those. And then the drive where he like delayed it mid-drive and then went, that was straight, that was two steps. That wasn't even like an NBA two and a half or whatever. That was like a real drive. And it reminded me a bit of when the Celtics, I can't believe you're not doing this and I'm doing it, but Tatum, I think the Celtics preferred Allen against Tatum in a switch because they liked Tatum. Look, it's just a lot to ask any seven foot guy, even as great defensively as some of these dudes are to hold up.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  That's what made Garnett so special. Is it just like, oh, you're gonna switch into me? Like, what are you nuts? But Tatum likes that matchup because it's also pulling Allen away on everything else. And I'm with you. I thought Halliburton was in complete control every time he had the ball to the point where it was like, I think you guys could actually do this more. But the balance was so incredible from six guys tonight, including all the starters. It was, I thought it was just off the charts impressive because then you blow the lead. Mitchell's going nuts, although he can't hit any threes, that place is on fire. Like the announcers are basically saying, hey, man. Like Greg Anthony's like, I think this is the loudest building I've ever been in for a playoff game.

• 56:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so do that, Greg.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  To be on the road and blow, well, not blow, but you just expected the Cavs are gonna have some kind of fight in them and then still respond and close it out. As impressive as a win is like, I'm not gonna say today, but I think it's just up there with anything else we've seen. Yeah.

• 56:21Bill Simmons?

  That move Mitchell has where he drives right at the guy and he does the high dribble.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 56:26Bill Simmons?

  And he carries the ball by his head and then rips it forward and comes in. And I was like, where have I seen that before? And I was thought about it for like an hour. It's Dwyane Wade's move. That was the old Dwyane Wade. Is that, are those the only two guys that had that? I'm trying to think, did Kobe have that?

• 56:42Speaker 01

  I feel like Kobe had everything. He splits the screen.

• 56:44Bill Simmons?

  But did Kobe do that one, that high, bringing the ball up high? And then you're almost like driving the ball down into the guy and then bouncing off and.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  JR Rider, maybe?

• 56:54Bill Simmons?

  No, Isaiah Rider, changed his name.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:59Bill Simmons?

  Mitchell was great. You know what I loved about Mitchell in that game? It was the same reason why I felt like he had to be a top five MVP thing. Like he could feel what was happening and he's like, I got this, I got this. And he really like legitimately took over the game and swung it for a couple of minutes.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  It was 80-68. It was 80-68 and he drove six straight possessions, just drove.

• 57:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  And with him, you know, he's probably as good as anybody is splitting the two defenders, which is, you know, when Kobe, I think Kobe's probably the best I've ever seen at it. Wade always wanted to reject the screen a little bit more than you expect. But with Mitchell, you don't even necessarily need, like sometimes you just screen to try to get people moving around and figure out where the help's gonna be all those stuff. It's, it's not as, as much as it is hunting the big all the time. But Mitchell, he can beat the guy off the dribble and then he can beat the help defender. He can split a double. He, you know, he can do anything that you really ask of him there. But if he's not gonna hit his threes, you know, I mean, you don't expect him to shoot that poorly.

• 58:01Bill Simmons?

  One for 11.

• 58:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, if I'm Indiana, I'm psyched because I almost feel like you have to win game one on the road if you're going to win a seven game series where you don't have the home court. Like you, otherwise now you're looking at, you have to win four out of six and it's just, the math becomes too hard. It always seems like winning that game one is huge. I think they know they can win there. And I continue to think that's as good of a team as anyone in the East. Boston obviously has a higher ceiling. Cleveland has the pedigree from the season and probably have the best player, I would say Mitchell, slight edge over Halbert. But I think Indiana can play with both those teams. I was talking to my dad today. My dad's like, who would you want to play in round three if we get by the Knicks out of these two? And I was like, we want to play Indiana because we'd have home court. He's like, yeah,

• 58:48Bill Simmons?

  good point, but man, they're scary. Like, but like, and both of those teams have played the Celtics really well and know that they can hang with them and potentially beat them, you know? And for the Celtics, health is going to be the biggest enemy for them these next two rounds, whether they can, on a back-to-back season, try to keep everybody upright and play in big minutes. But I think all those teams are really good. I think Indiana, if Indiana made the finals, I wouldn't be shocked.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  I'd be a little surprised.

• 59:16Bill Simmons?

  I'd be shocked if Golden State made it with how limited their roster is. Like, if they actually put together two more rounds, that would be like playing Quentin Post and coming good, hoping Moses Moody's making threes and like, that would be shocking. I would not be shocked by Indiana.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Like Carlisle, even though he plays a ton of guys, he knows what he's going to do over the course of a game and then he can kind of figure out how he wants to close. Kerr doesn't know who he's going to close fourth quarters with.

• 59:44Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  This late into the season.

• 59:45Bill Simmons?

  Moses Moody can't make a shot today. Cross him off.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Game 89.

• 59:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  He's turning around going.

• 59:52Bill Simmons?

  It's like, is there anybody else? Is Andre Gudala over there? Oh no, he's not on our team anymore. You know, the other thing with Indiana that I think is interesting? Everybody they bring in, I like.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, you like Jarius Walker.

• 1:00:05Bill Simmons?

  I even like him. Yeah, but like Toppin.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Do you want to expand on that?

• 1:00:09Bill Simmons?

  But when Toppin's open in the corner, do you think the shot's going in in a fourth quarter? Cause I think it's going in.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  After that Minnesota run, yeah.

• 1:00:15Bill Simmons?

  When TJ McConnell's driving to the basket, I'm like, I think he's gonna score. I think they're a good team. Continue. I thought they were the best value for all the bets before the playoffs. Cause they were like.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  You have no hesitation then. I mean, Thomas Bryant's out there, right? They're playing Obi Toppin at the five against the Cleveland options that they have.

• 1:00:34Bill Simmons?

  Five minutes for Thomas. But I'm like, I just think Carlisle was showing off at that point.

• 1:00:45Bill Simmons?

  He's like, you don't think I could play 11? Watch this.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Doesn't that mean, doesn't, isn't Thomas usually the 12th guy?

• 1:00:55Bill Simmons?

  I'll tell you this, if Garland's not healthy, I think Indiana wins the series. And if Garland ends up being healthy, I still think they could win it. I think it goes six or seven. I thought that was a great bet. That was one of my favorite bets, the Indiana plus two and a half. Let's take one more break for the podcast and we got to talk Clippers. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. And whether it's a flea flicker or a tush push, you need a plan that fits your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you. So they can help personalize coverage for your life and for your budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. 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.

• 1:01:40Bill Simmons?

  But what if you went to Cancun with Expedia? Save up to 30% when you bundle and save. You can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness though, hopefully your team doesn't go to Cancun. One, two, three Cancun. Or if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save, savings vary. This episode is brought to you by Workday. Guessing is for game shows, not your business, especially when your margin for error is zero. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance and IT. With a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission aware, giving you accuracy 24/7 and the ability to not just get work done, but get it done right. It's a new workday.

• 1:02:27Bill Simmons?

  Clippers, so big picture.

• 1:02:31Bill Simmons?

  I think this is the rare series that was decided in game four. You see this sometimes where

• 1:02:40Bill Simmons?

  sometimes the games, I know it's weird to be like game seven, anyone can win and the line certainly reflected it. The line was even, then it was minus one, then it ended at Nuggets minus one and a half, which I asked FanDuel like, have we had a game seven line that low? And we really haven't like they're usually like three and up for a game seven. So even Vegas was like, we don't know. But I think game four, which we talked about a week ago, the one I went to at the, at the Intuit. And the way the Nuggets played in that game, the desperation they had, where Jokic, Gordon, Murray, where all of them were like, we have to win this and they end up, they went, win it on this crazy alley-oop. But the desperation they showed in that game

• 1:03:25Bill Simmons?

  versus the desperation or lack of desperation the Clippers had yesterday was pretty telling. And I don't know what happened. I don't know whether Clippers wore out. It's an older team, maybe playing on Thursday, maybe the Denver altitude, maybe they kind of deep down knew they missed their shot in this series. But that third quarter, which I asked to re-watch this morning, the first five minutes of the third quarter for the Clippers was one of them, one of the most putrid, embarrassing displays of basketball on both ends. I can remember because it was an eight-point game. Kawhi hit a three. And then for the next four minutes, they just took a complete shit on both ends. And there's 20 mistakes. It's just awful. And that was it.

• 1:04:08Bill Simmons?

  That was their season over in four minutes, basically. It was really bad and I don't know what they do now.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  I thought the Clippers were going to win the series. You know, back to that closing part of it's like, you realize how bad Denver is defensively? I didn't like their defensive options and I think we're going to see those exploited again on the perimeter against the OKC team that has its shit together. Certainly more so than the Clippers do.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  You know, I watched the third quarter again this morning because he asked me to and you're like, what happened to you guys? Like, I, I know they were kind of like trying to figure out how to like the done parts that were good defensively. Clearly he was the guy that was getting exposed as they ignored him offensively.

• 1:04:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  I think Zoo is a great story this year. I thought Jokic fought him way better in game seven. Um, then maybe you'd expect there's some really good Jokic numbers as far as like defensively, what the averages would be for the Clippers at the rim.

• 1:05:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  Against everybody. And so, you know, that's always the thing. That's the thing with him is he's at least positioned better. And it was funny because you know, he was so bad defensively in that first half of the game. They ended up winning, but I don't, I have a lot on Harden. If you want to do it, I just don't know that any, I have stuff specific to the third quarter, but it's just crazy to see the cycle of the Harden conversation happen all over again. It's like, who's even, what is the debate anymore? Like at this point, I actually have sympathy because clearly there's something.

• 1:05:40Bill Simmons?

  But he had assists in the first half, which kind of,

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Get 10.

• 1:05:43Bill Simmons?

  Which kind of shielded some of the stuff that he did that fucked them over in that first half, like just not running back on defense, being lazy, you know, in a bunch of different ways of with specific plays. And then in the third quarter, he's like, I'm taking it up two notches. And he was so bad for five minutes.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  He played, so I went through it and I was really focusing on him. You knew it was bad. Like you can just tell, if you've watched it enough, you can tell, you can see it and go, oh, this is a problem. His first technical shot, his first actual shot of the game was about 55 seconds left to go in the first quarter. He had gotten free throws on that bullshit arm hook thing that he does, uh, at about the two minute mark. He had let Watson get behind him after a make. Like you didn't, there was no one else in the area other than just, I'll let a super athletic guy just kind of get behind me because whatever. He played the entire 12 minutes. I counted the number of times he actually got inside the three point line. And I'm not talking like a foot over the line. I'm talking like got into the, got into the offense.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Of all of their possessions in the third quarter, he stepped inside the three-point line three times. One was an atrocious lob attempt. There was another play where he was on the right side and there was another one where he played for free throws on a foul. He was hoping to get fouled on this layup going against Jamal Murray and he lost it. So, all right. He doesn't want to shoot. Fine. He doesn't want to move. Fine. I mean, he's standing by

• 1:07:13Bill Simmons?

  the ball.

• 1:07:13Bill Simmons?

  And they're killing him on defense.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  Right. He's standing on the ball arena logo, which is like by the coaches box. He just can't. There's one play where Kawhi gets totally shut off in the paint. He's like at the free throw line. He's at the paint. Denver scrambling on defense and he looks to Harden. All Harden had to do was take two steps just to get there as a possible option to catch at the three-point line. And Harden couldn't even move in from the five feet there. There is something that happens with him where his regular season brain and his approach to dissecting everything, there is a speed difference. There's a process because obviously, look, Austin Rivers was just on with me last week saying he's one of the three smartest players he's ever played with. And I'll give it to him because you see the moments where he's diagnosing everything that's going to happen and how the help and which matchup

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  makes more sense. But there is something that happens to him when he is in these high leverage moments that he's just clearly uncomfortable. So it's like, okay, you don't want to shoot. You don't want to move. Can you at least be positioned somewhere? The Aaron Gordon tip in. He just lets him just step right in front of him.

• 1:08:16Bill Simmons?

  Stop boxing out dudes. It's not, yeah, it's not just basketball. It's like it's the same fight we just watched from the Warriors. You watch and you go, where's the fight? This is game seven. You're going home if you lose this game. You realize that, right? And you just don't see it. You saw it in game six. Game six, he came out, he was aggressive, he was attacking and it was like, oh, this guy really cares that they win today. Game seven, it didn't seem like he cared.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  That Sixers series against the Celtics a few years ago, he saved their ass a couple of those games early on. And as somebody who's been well positioned on this, like I remember being on SportsCenter 10 years ago going, yeah, something's wrong here. And, and, you know, people were like, oh, he had a concussion. It was like that Spurs series, remember?

• 1:08:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  And you're just like, what? You think he has a concussion? So that's, that's what happened. And it's like, okay, what about this year? What about this year? What about the Warriors series? What about the 18 closeout game? What about the 19 closeout? Like, it just goes on and on and on. And I don't, I don't know why it keeps happening, but it's like, okay, so you don't want to shoot. Like, whatever it is, you're not comfortable. At least. Do something else. And I think it's a really good lesson in the first half tonight where Steph is struggling and nothing is easy and he can't get an open look. And it's like, okay, but there's still a bunch of other ways.

• 1:09:27Bill Simmons?

  Right. He's rebounding, he's playing defense, he's scrapping, he's trying to create stuff. Well, is that so? Our friend Zach Lowe, when he wrote his Harden playoff piece, that was heading into round two of the Lakers series in 2020.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  When they won game one.

• 1:09:47Bill Simmons?

  And he had, in that piece, he had in 15 games facing elimination since 2013, you know, Harden, 90 assists, 79 turnovers, 40% field goal. The crunch time stuff was really bad, 38%, nine for 50 on threes and crunch time during that stretch, right?

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 1:10:07Bill Simmons?

  Well, since then, 20, that's six more playoff exits. These were his elimination game totals. He had 30 points in the Lakers one that they lost, six turnovers, 22 and 21. He had 11 in the closeout in 22, nine in 23, 16 in 24, and seven in this game. But the, the total shots, he averaged 16 a game, 9.3 assists, 31 for 81 field goals and nine for 42 three points. So one, one thing that definitely happens is you can't make threes in these big games. But then if you go further, you know, this is just statistically, one of the best offensive

• 1:10:49Bill Simmons?

  players of all time. Like I looked at how many guys have averaged 24 points a game just for their career, who have played a thousand, a thousand games or more, and it's 11. It's Jordan, Wilt, Durant, LeBron James, Oscar, Karl Malone, Kobe, Dominique, Steph Curry, Kareem and James Harden. That's why we talk about this because that's, that's how good the stats are. You go to the playoffs and there's only 16 guys who have played at least 140 games and, and averaged 22 a game or more.

• 1:11:27Bill Simmons?

  And they're all guys who won titles. Jordan, Durant, West, LeBron, Curry, Hakeem, Kobe, Dirk. Malone's the first one who didn't. Kareem, Shaq, Larry, Wilt, Harden, Wade, Havlicek. So he statistically resides in this area with all of these great guys who have all won titles. And yet his legacy is over and over again.

• 1:11:49Bill Simmons?

  The worst possible things happen at the worst time for him. And you know, we, we could talk about legacy and whether it actually matters. Because I think what we've learned the last 10 years is sometimes the legacy stuff doesn't matter as much. And people choose to remember or forget what they want. But you know, Zach was saying four or five years ago that this was the Karl Malone of guards. And it's worse now than it was when we were talking about it a few years ago. And this is it. What is he 35, 36? It's been the league 16 years. It's not going to get better. This is just the legacy. And the Clippers, you combine that with the Clippers and it's unbeatable.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  I wasn't even, you know, the reason it used to get me more passionate was because what he was doing in the regular season. People were like, you know, putting these numbers up there going like, look at this. I mean, top five MVP finisher, top three MVP finishes, like five straight years. Maybe it was top four finishes. And so when you look at those stretches,

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  you start going like, okay, where's this guy going to end up? And without the ring, you know, we're pretty resistant to let you hang out in that top tier neighborhood.

• 1:12:57Bill Simmons?

  But make the finals.

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, I, I think the other thing that we learned through those years too, was that that's where the usage part of it comes in. Is it's an entire season is dedicated to you having the ball every single minute to like absurd historic levels. And you're putting up all these points like that's cool.

• 1:13:16Bill Simmons?

  And you're playing a different team every game versus the same team seven times in a row.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, is that going to translate? Is that going to be the best thing? I mean, again, I don't mean to bring up the Westbrook stuff because um, you know, he was great. He was great in the elimination game. Tons of energy. Good for him. But there was this regular season thing that was happening those OKC games that once again to the playoffs, like, oh, so now we don't just stand around and wait for him to do something? Because Westbrook had such an advantage because of how athletic he was and Harden had the statistical advantage because he was going to make threes. He's terrific. If you send help, he's terrific on the lobs. He lives at the free throw line. So like those prime years for him would give him the profile of somebody really, really special. And I figured

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  at some point, he would probably just have a great elimination game because he was fucking due. This is over a decade, man. Like that Spurs series that I'm just thinking about.

• 1:14:15Bill Simmons?

  That was the point of Zach's column in 2020. He's like, why haven't we had our James Harden playoff moment yet? And we've had six playoffs since he wrote that column. I'm mailing you. I'm texting you. Check your texts.

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  I mean, even when they beat OKC in 20 before they lost to the Lakers in five, he was four of 15, one of nine from three.

• 1:14:37Bill Simmons?

  I just texted you what I'm about to run through. This is the James Harden. This is the the levels of of the bad James Harden closeout games. I'm going to rank them. James Harden closeout terrible games ranked. 2017 game six Spurs, I think, was the worst one ever. This was the one where they lost.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:14:57Bill Simmons?

  They lost by 39 at home, two for 11. He was one for two in the first half field goal wise as San Antonio went up by 18. And by the way, Kawhi Leonard did not play. Did not play in the game because he was hurt. The next one is the 2023 game six, game seven, the Boston combo where they blew game six, lost by nine. He was four for 16, oh for six from three, five turnovers, one for six in the second half. They lost game seven by 24. He was three for 11 in that game with five turnovers.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  And you could see from the first drive where he had to make a decision with the ball. You're like, oh, he, I don't think he.

• 1:15:35Bill Simmons?

  You kind of know right away.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this is a series where he had 45 in game one and won the overtime game.

• 1:15:41Bill Simmons?

  Right. He was awesome.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  When Embiid wasn't even, I think it missed one of those games, right?

• 1:15:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Next one, 2015 game five Warriors, round three, conference finals. They lost by 14. He was two for 11 with 12 turnovers. They were down six at halftime. He was 0 for 5 in the second half. So you have that. I put, this is a game they won, but 2015 game six Clippers, round two, which they ended up winning by 12. He was five for 20 in the game. Bench for the comeback.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, the bench for the comeback is one of the all time.

• 1:16:12Bill Simmons?

  They had a four, they Houston's 40 and 15. They won that 40 to 15. They won the fourth quarter. Harden never played. He was one for seven in that game. Uh, the game seven this year, two parade field goals, seven points. Denver goes plus 16 in the third quarter. He's 0 for 2 field goals in that game. And then there's other ones. There's 22 game six Miami. They lose by nine. He's 0 for 2 in the second half field goals. Last year, game six Dallas, round one, they lose by 13. He's 0 for 6 from three, 5 for 16. It goes on and on. Uh, the point is there's not a lot of good ones.

• 1:16:48Bill Simmons?

  And there's not even a lot of decent ones and there's no great one.

• 1:16:53Bill Simmons?

  And in fact, probably the most honorable one he has was that year when they played the Bucks when he had the hammy. And they lost in OT. And he was five for 17, but he had 22 points. He got to the line. He had nine assists. Remember he was playing on one leg? That's probably the most admiration I've had from one of these games, but um, look, people are going to remember what they want to remember.

• 1:17:15Bill Simmons?

  But I'm going to remember that this is a guy that you're just like, I, I'm so mad I didn't bet on Denver in game seven. When you think of the Clippers piece combined with the fact that the Clippers needed Harden to really come through in a big game. He's just never done it.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  But see, that's what's so crazy is all of these other games, for the most part, I mean, granted, you can argue Embiid's importance in the 23 series. The funniest thing too, is because I'm looking through the game log too, when they swept Brooklyn.

• 1:17:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  In the game four closeout, he was four 18 in 40 minutes.

• 1:17:44Bill Simmons?

  He was, right.

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  You know, and like they didn't, they didn't need him, obviously, because they swept that Nets team. But I at least felt with this one, because I knew and I had said it, I'm like to pick, and it wasn't like I was picking Harden against Jokic, because really it's about Kawhi, and it's about Zubots, and it's about the team. It's about how, how great they had been defensively, and it felt like they had really figured some of this stuff out.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  I'm not, I don't even know who was left to argue with. I mean, you could find somebody. Over the years, there was always people from Houston arguing about this stuff all the time. You're just like, all right, cool, man. Like, whatever.

• 1:18:20Bill Simmons?

  The argument was what he did in game six. He was really, really good in game six, right? That was

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  Game six of what?

• 1:18:25Bill Simmons?

  Three days ago, the Denver series, the one Thursday night. He was really good in that game. So the argument would be like, hey, he was really good in game six. Couldn't it happen again? And the answer was, it can't.

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  Okay. And I think to be fair to Harden, you've got to admit that they unloaded the clip in game six, and then to turn around and play in games.

• 1:18:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's an older player. He's playing in altitude. I get it.

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  I would not lead my show with this today, because if he were 30 and he were the number one option and get MVP votes, then I would be like I was a few years ago. But I'm, I'm pointing to the stuff that's frustrating, because it's like, all right, if you don't have the offensive part of it, doesn't mean you don't have to do any of the other stuff. You just decide, I'm going to stop moving. But I'm, again, like I said, I'm more sympathetic this time around, because he's not the number one option. He's not in the MVP conversation. I mean, he might make all NBA.

• 1:19:12Bill Simmons?

  But they really, they really needed him, though.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  They needed something. They needed, they needed him.

• 1:19:16Bill Simmons?

  A catalyst.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  If he was spent, he's played this game long enough, he needed to figure out a way to be like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm like, dude, it looks like he's saving himself the entire time he's out there. But be calculated about what your team needs from somebody who's been in this many playoff games. And, you know, you would wonder if Ty Lou was watching this going, do we need him out there for all 12 minutes?

• 1:19:38Bill Simmons?

  Was he gonna put in Corey Brewer? Josh Smith?

• 1:19:43Bill Simmons?

  Amir Coffey is playing Corey Brewer?

• 1:19:48Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Ben Simmons is Josh Smith. Oh my God, he just hit a three.

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  Um, look. He's pronounced Smith.

• 1:19:55Bill Simmons?

  Harden's been in the league 16 years and it's a lot to ask for him to outplay Jokic in a game seven. But it leads to a pretty good, what do you do conversation if you're the Clippers? Because.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  Okay, real, real quick though.

• 1:20:10Bill Simmons?

  You couldn't, you couldn't get through, you couldn't get through around one. Go ahead.

• 1:20:14Speaker 01

  I have to pretend, but Pop Pop Simmons. You know, you've got your compound. You know, who knows, maybe Montana for you and the grandkids.

• 1:20:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  The grandkids come to visit.

• 1:20:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  And they go, Pop Pop, tell us about James. Tell us about James Harden. What are you going to say to your grandkids?

• 1:20:41Bill Simmons?

  Good question.

• 1:20:42Speaker 01

  Do it in a grandfatherly voice if you could.

• 1:20:46Bill Simmons?

  One of the best left-handed players I've ever seen.

• 1:20:50Speaker 01

  Good start.

• 1:20:51Bill Simmons?

  Uh. Recreated offensive basketball in a couple of different ways. Was one of the best two guards of the 24 first 25 years of the 21st century. Put up huge stats and his teams were always good.

• 1:21:07Bill Simmons?

  And something would happen to him in playoff series that none of us could really fully understand. And by the way, the same thing was, could be said about Karl Malone, but at least Karl Malone made the finals twice. As the best guy in a finals team. Did I think he was going to come through in those games? I did not. But at least he was able to get that far and he won some big playoff series, you know, and Harden. You know, Zach wrote that piece six years ago. What's the James Harden playoff moment? We still don't have it. It's, you know, I was thinking about this stuff because I was thinking about in the context of Carmelo, right? Cause I think Carmelo has had a nice little resurgence post-career and he, I think there's. He's, I think a popular ex-star, right? And I think people remember his Knicks era really fondly.

• 1:21:54Bill Simmons?

  He won one playoff series with the Knicks.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:57Bill Simmons?

  If you go through Carmelo in the playoffs, he starts out with five straight first round exits. And you know, I'm a Carmelo fan. I was the one who wrote the Carmelo column about how I felt like he had a chance to be on that level and he was just bad luck with his teams.

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  My homepage.

• 1:22:11Bill Simmons?

  Five, five straight first round exits. He lost 18 of his first 21 playoff games. In the 2009 playoffs, they won two rounds, lost LA in six. They lost the first round the next year to Utah. His career record in, in Denver playoff record, two for seven in playoff series, 15 and 28. Career record goes to the Knicks. Three years, one for three in playoff series, seven and 14 is his record. Average 28 a game, then missed the playoffs the next four years. And now Brunson is hot this year and people like, who's better, who's the greatest Nick ever, him or Carmelo? Because people can't remember anything. So that, bringing my point back to James Harden, maybe people won't

• 1:22:54Bill Simmons?

  remember 10 years from now. They'll be like, oh yeah, the beard. He was awesome. They're not going to remember any of this stuff because they certainly don't remember anything with Carmelo.

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  I'm pushing back on this. I agree with Carmelo. I think he's incredibly likable guy, but Carmelo doesn't have the failures at the highest moments. Like this is like not making fun of the Broncos before Elway.

• 1:23:10Bill Simmons?

  But I'm just saying, he didn't, he didn't really have any success as like from a playoff standpoint as a player. But I think now as the years pass, people feel like he was on like that LeBron Wade level in some ways. My point is if you actually go through it, like it's, it's pretty grim.

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  But I think you're missing my point is that failing consistently with this many eyes on you later, Los Warriors failures. Everybody missing threes. I mean, even though he had 30 in the closeout game and 18.

• 1:23:38Bill Simmons?

  Two for 13 from three.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know that you felt great about him necessarily in that game.

• 1:23:42Bill Simmons?

  I feel a hundred times worse about Harden. I'm just saying like, I, I just wonder with legacy sometimes when people are like, legacy, legacy, legacy, legacy. We don't even do a good job of remembering what legacies were or what happened in somebody's career. I think Carmelo had a lot of bad luck. Teammates, he pushed his way to the Knicks and they traded all these guys back to Denver. But for the most part, for what his talent was to never, to never make a finals, to be in one round three, like it's kind of disappointing in retrospect because I thought he was one of the best guys of that generation. And he's the one that nothing really happened.

• 1:24:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you go through the Carmelo thing, because I used to argue with Knicks fans that like turned on him big time. Like they ended up really turning on him.

• 1:24:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  Uh, I think it's that Pacer series, you know, speaking of the Pacers again, but if you go through all of Carmelo's playoff exits, and I promise like it's, I don't know how many people would actually do it. More often than not, the team they were going up against, you weren't going to pick that Carmelo's team to beat that team. I think there's a Jazz series in there, maybe the records were pretty even.

• 1:24:44Bill Simmons?

  It's a Clippers series. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he was, he won three playoff series in his career. He was 22 for 42 in the playoffs.

• 1:24:55Bill Simmons?

  But that's the thing is I think as the years pass, people remember what they want to remember. And the Twitter videos and the social media stuff becomes as big a part of somebody's legacy as, as anything else. And I think James will probably be, okay, big picture, because the stats are going to have them. Look at Karl Malone. You and I were there for the Karl Malone era. And now the years pass and people are like, yeah, Karl Malone's stats, holy shit. Wow. Made the finals twice. It's like, all right, well, you wouldn't want to throw him the ball with 18 seconds left. Just wouldn't have.

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  Game four, maybe with Harden. Cause that's what I like to remember about Jim.

• 1:25:35Bill Simmons?

  Well, Jim Harden?

• 1:25:35Speaker 01

  Down 115, 113. Sixers need it. Harden, three pointer, wins it in overtime.

• 1:25:44Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  Think he ended up with about 42 in that game.

• 1:25:47Bill Simmons?

  Big game Jimmy. Well, big picture. What do you do if you're the Clippers? What do you do?

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  Uh, well, Kawhi's not going to be there two years.

• 1:25:54Bill Simmons?

  Harden, Harden has got a $36 million player option. They have Powell and Bogdanovich and Eubanks and Batum for 46 million expiring next year. So they could put contracts together. They don't really have any picks to move. They could put together some contracts and take somebody else's high salary problem. Or somebody who's a little, little expensive that maybe somebody wants to dump because they're tanking. But, you know, it's, do we run back this team and be like, hey, we lost to the best offensive player since Jordan, basically? In round one and seven, let's not overreact. Or do you overreact?

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  Are they gonna have the option to overreact? And I would say this is just the headline to all of this offseason stuff that I want to get into with you that I know you're excited about, but just in general. When you look at the free agent list, it's terrible. Okay?

• 1:26:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's more the player acquisition list. It's the

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:26:49Bill Simmons?

  Can you talk yourself into Zion? Can you talk yourself into Trey Young? There's eight of those guys.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think

• 1:26:54Bill Simmons?

  Sabonis, hmm, what's he, what's he up to?

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  You're right, that's the exciting part of it. There's a really exciting version of this summer for the NBA. But more often than not, like history tells us, it's not just all of a sudden every GM is like, let's just get wild with this and start changing our dudes and we'll just keep running back. So the fact that you have Kawhi under contract for two more years at 50 million.

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  You know, everything still kind of revolves around him because I don't even know what the market would be for him. And as you pointed out, they're not like, they can't just like tear this whole thing and necessarily start all over. I don't know if Harden's gonna opt out because of the over 38 rule if they extend him. Like, is he probably thinking in the back of his head, this league still owes him money because of the Philadelphia thing?

• 1:27:37Bill Simmons?

  I just think he's got to opt in at the 36. You have to.

• 1:27:41Speaker 01

  But he could opt out and go, fine.

• 1:27:43Bill Simmons?

  You can't do that again. He did that the last time.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  No, but if he already understands like, all right, how about I figure out a way to give us? Cause I think last season was, you know, they were smart about the Paul George thing.

• 1:27:53Bill Simmons?

  How much money can James Harden give away?

• 1:27:56Speaker 01

  I'm talking about opting out of the player option at 36 million and then doing a three-year extension and then having the number be less each year. So it's like, okay, James, like, why don't we do it this way? And maybe there's more flexibility. But they've done a good job of kind of resetting the financial restrictions here because depending on, you know, the options and who they want to keep around here. But you, you seem to be completely either not being with me on this Harden thing at all. Do you not understand like just opting out and taking a less average annual salary for a couple more years?

• 1:28:26Bill Simmons?

  Now I'm in business with James Harden for three more years. I just

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  Well, I know we didn't make a compelling case of wanting to be in a long-term relationship with them last few minutes, but I don't know what their options are.

• 1:28:39Bill Simmons?

  To say the least. I mean, we just went through it for eight minutes. So now if they bring it back for three years, I would do 36 million. If you opt in, okay, let's see how it goes. And then I have him, I have all these expirings. And I can get a little frisky either before the season or heading into February. Because the best thing that happened to them is Kawhi. And how good Kawhi was, I think, the last three months of this season, combined with Zubats. At the foundation of something and have some flexibility and they have one of the. But it's a front office you and I both really respect. Like, I feel like they're going to figure out. They have options.

• 1:29:15Speaker 01

  I don't think they have a lot of options, though.

• 1:29:18Bill Simmons?

  But that doesn't mean you have to give James Harden 100 million for three, like, we'll shave 5 million off your deal, but.

• 1:29:23Speaker 01

  I wasn't talking about 100 million.

• 1:29:26Bill Simmons?

  What would you do? If he's going to opt out of his 36, then you're talking about like. Those deals like what like CJ McCollum did, some other people where it's like.

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  Would you say, would you do?

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  What if he says, I'll opt out, I'll do three years, 70 million?

• 1:29:43Bill Simmons?

  Now you have my attention.

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 1:29:48Bill Simmons?

  Would he do that?

• 1:29:49Speaker 01

  Do you think he would? What do you think he signs for after another year? He'll be 37 that summer. Do you think he's making?

• 1:29:59Bill Simmons?

  Listen, you're asking me to, you're asking me to figure out the motivations of somebody who's passed up two giant max deals over the last six years to take less money each time.

• 1:30:07Speaker 01

  Well, we know I did it in Philly.

• 1:30:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, no, I get it.

• 1:30:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, the bigger question for me is you're in the West. You're in the same division or the same conference as OKC, who's just a fucking nightmare. You're in the same conference as Minnesota is a fucking nightmare. You have Wemby in San Antonio with these draft picks and cap space. You have Luca and the Lakers, like he go on through, it's a nightmare conference. And you just, and Jokic, who just beat you.

• 1:30:38Bill Simmons?

  I don't know, you're no man's land, but the owners, like the owner just flew 200 fans to Denver for game seven, like he's not. He's going to think they have a chance.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  On the way back.

• 1:30:49Bill Simmons?

  Why was there more social media from the fight?

• 1:30:53Speaker 01

  I want to.

• 1:30:54Bill Simmons?

  Silence.

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  I want to read that on the Athletic, the flight home.

• 1:31:03Bill Simmons?

  Maybe it's a documentary.

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  We're landing in Barstow, by the way.

• 1:31:09Bill Simmons?

  I think it's one of those guys you have to find your own way home. Denver, of course, over there.

• 1:31:15Bill Simmons?

  So you're just, you're, you're trying to do 370 for Harden.

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  I mean, maybe that's, maybe that's nuts, but like Harden next year, 37, coming off the 36 million. Who knows? Does he, does he look at it as like, I'm going to get another 40 million guaranteed on the books right now? Maybe he thinks, hey, that's ridiculous. I can do another three for 75 after that, keeping this high average annual for this one. The chances are is that he's on the team. Kawhi's on the team. So that's whatever this is, it's like 80 plus million with those two dudes. They don't have a young player that you're really excited about that maybe can entice a vet to say, I want to be traded there because it's LA and it's a great coaching staff and front office and great ownership.

• 1:31:54Bill Simmons?

  Good arena.

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  There's a lot of stuff about it that feels really attractive for the next guy that's mad, but it's not a great group on the court to be mad enough to be like, I'm going there.

• 1:32:06Bill Simmons?

  If you had to do a pie chart of this will be better next year, this would be the same, or oh, this will be worse. I think the, oh, this will be worse is 60% of the pie.

• 1:32:19Bill Simmons?

  Right? Cause you, you basically have to get another healthy Kawhi season. I have no, no idea how many of those are left. You know, you're never getting a better Zubot season.

• 1:32:30Bill Simmons?

  You got Norm Powell.

• 1:32:30Speaker 01

  Well, you might get the same.

• 1:32:32Bill Simmons?

  You might get the same. You're not getting a better season.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  I mean, unless you wanted to trade Zoo, can you get creative with a Zoo Norm?

• 1:32:41Bill Simmons?

  Zoo's like, I thought, it's weird. His stats went down as the series went along, but I really respected how he went at Jokic.

• 1:32:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:49Bill Simmons?

  I don't know where the rebounding was for him. I, I thought he was a better rebounder in the regular season than he was in the playoffs, but I just think, I think when you play Jokic for two straight weeks, I think it starts to break your brain after a while. If you're, if you're actually, you're in charge of defending him and stopping him. Can you imagine that? The response, but just like going to sleep and being like, yeah, I gotta play Jokic again tomorrow. Like, like it's like three hours sleep. He's lying in bed staring at the ceiling like, fucking A.

• 1:33:21Bill Simmons?

  Next team for what do you do?

• 1:33:24Speaker 01

  So basically, we agree, though, on the Clippers. You didn't have some magic crazy scenario here. Cause when I was doing it out this morning, I'm like, I don't really know how different.

• 1:33:32Bill Simmons?

  The crazy scenario is, do you take a big contract from somebody that somebody is like, kind of excited to, to get off of, like whatever this year's version of Brandon Ingram is. And Brandon Ingram didn't get traded. Do you talk yourself into a Brandon Ingram type? Somebody who's available and expensive? You know? That's the question for me. I don't know who that is yet, because we haven't seen. First of all, the playoffs have to shake out a certain way. Somebody might, might tail out in the second, you know, in the second round. Who knows?

• 1:34:04Bill Simmons?

  The Pistons get really interesting because they have Hardaway and Schroder and Beasley all as unrestricted free agents. They have Tobias on a 26.6 expiring. They have Ivy coming back.

• 1:34:17Speaker 01

  They have Harris?

• 1:34:19Bill Simmons?

  They do.

• 1:34:21Bill Simmons?

  And you could talk me into, hey, let's just keep the trains moving. The thing I would recommend them not doing is overreacting to how the playoffs went. And doing new, longer, big deals with Beasley and, and Hardaway and Schroder and being like, we have our nucleus. I, I would go the hired gun route for those. But, you know, this is an interesting KD destination. So let's talk about it.

• 1:34:50Speaker 01

  My, you know, we were talking about, hey, how do you feel about the Rockets? Right? What's, what's the grade you give them? And it sucks right now, but the season was a success. Detroit, you gotta feel great about this. And I think they battled with New York to even a higher level. You know, there's a couple of things where this breaks maybe to a game seven. So I thought they competed to a level that I didn't know that they were going to get to against the Knicks. And I'm totally with you. Like, I think because of the free agent class being so bad, but then, you know, whether Nets gonna sign Malik Beasley to a huge contract? And then after the Nets, you look at who has available cap space. Detroit has cap space, but with Cade's new deal, because he's gonna make all NBA.

• 1:35:32Speaker 01

  It's gonna be 19 million in cap space as opposed to 24. Chicago's got 20 million in cap space. Memphis has like 17 and a half. There's like five teams that have between 15 and 12 million. And then you kind of run out of teams. So you start going, okay. If we know something about this year with Detroit, it's that spacing around Cade is really, really important. And as much as we all love Dern, he's not going to provide that spacing ever. So you really have to make sure that rotationally around that, you're doing those kinds of things. But Beasley's season this year, I'd be scared to death of what that price tag ends up being because another team may just say, screw it, let's throw him a crazy contract because he was so good this year from three, when I don't even know that I necessarily trust him. So, you know, Hardaway was a bigger number. I'd have to keep one

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  of those guys. They can get creative because of their own cap space and how they want to structure those contracts.

• 1:36:21Bill Simmons?

  But Hardaway was an old contract. So he was like 16, 17 million range. He's not seeing that again. He's, he's now a six to eight million player, I think, in the market.

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  I'd rather pay him six to eight than pay Beasley, what I think might be a scary number from the one other team that goes, ah, we've got this cap space. So let's just use it on somebody and look at all the threes that he made. The biggest part of this is that Ivy's going to come back. And it's easy to forget that Ivy in 30 games shot 41% from three. He was terrific. And I think in the playoffs, it shows is, as tough as Schroder was, and he was big for them, and he fights like crazy because clearly takes the Brunson thing personal.

• 1:36:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  Ivy being a second on ball creator and getting his own at his size and his athleticism. I think that's actually going to solve some of the problems, especially if that three point shooting holds up. So we know Cade needs spacing. I would not be in any kind of hurry to mess with this. Houston, I think, is on a different timeline because they have all these different guys that they still probably don't even know who they want to make decisions on. Maybe they do, but there's not necessarily enough assets for Detroit to have to get as creative than Houston could potentially get. I would really just be steady here if I were Detroit, making sure I don't let all of this shooting leave. But I think I'm probably going to be scared off by the Beasley price tag.

• 1:37:37Bill Simmons?

  So Phoenix calls and says, you know, Tobias and Thompson and Fontecchio actually works in the trade machine with KD and throw us some picks and let's start talking.

• 1:37:51Bill Simmons?

  You have the meeting? You have the internal meeting with the rest of the front office trying to figure it out?

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  You definitely have a meeting.

• 1:37:58Bill Simmons?

  KD one year left.

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  You have to have a meeting, even if a man is asked for on the Houston one.

• 1:38:02Bill Simmons?

  I'm saying, do you have like a, do you have a, do you have a small meeting with their, with like your inner, inner circle? Or do you keep it open and invite a bunch of people?

• 1:38:11Speaker 01

  What is it again?

• 1:38:12Bill Simmons?

  Do you have a catered lunch for the meeting? How, how?

• 1:38:15Speaker 01

  Little Caesars. Yeah, probably get a deal. What, what is it again, Fontecchio, which obviously gets me excited.

• 1:38:21Bill Simmons?

  Just Tobias Fontecchio, but Thompson would be the big piece and then you throw a bunch of picks.

• 1:38:25Speaker 01

  You gotta throw a bunch of picks.

• 1:38:25Bill Simmons?

  You did three firsts and two, two swaps, whatever the fuck it is. For three years of KD. Then you, then you bring in KD for 50 plus million, you'd sign him for the two-year extension. So it's 150 million commitment.

• 1:38:41Bill Simmons?

  I personally wouldn't do it. I would just keep the, cause I don't think they're gonna win the title or come close with any sort of trade. The only one that I think you really have to think about is if they could get Giannis. And it's a mortgage to farm thing and basically everybody's available except Cade. Like Duran and Thompson are in it. Tobias' contract is in it. Fontecchio's in it. Picks are in it. You're just like, we're going all in on Giannis and we're gonna have a Giannis-Cade franchise. And we'll be able to fill it around. We'll be able to fill around those two guys. And actually try to win the title.

• 1:39:16Speaker 01

  You could have the Tigers too. I mean, if you're talking about Cade and Giannis on pick and roll lobs.

• 1:39:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. You've probably thrown in some Tigers, maybe a couple of Red Wings.

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 1:39:29Bill Simmons?

  But yeah, I don't.

• 1:39:30Speaker 01

  I, the Durant thing really hinges more on like, hey, what's the history here? Is he super happy everywhere he goes? So I think I'd be a little cautious if I were Detroit.

• 1:39:44Speaker 01

  Now granted, we're talking about a team that just won their first playoff game since 2008, which seems just impossible.

• 1:39:49Bill Simmons?

  So we agree. Take your time, Detroit. This, like maybe even target February. As, let's see where we are in February and maybe we have some expirings, we have some stuff. I would not overpay Beasley. I'd probably go two years for him. Maybe like a 30 for two.

• 1:40:10Bill Simmons?

  30 for two, maybe Hardaway, two for 16. Try to, try to do something like that.

• 1:40:17Bill Simmons?

  You bring Ivy back.

• 1:40:21Bill Simmons?

  Would you do?

• 1:40:26Speaker 01

  Hmm, I was looking at this.

• 1:40:30Bill Simmons?

  You have another trade for me?

• 1:40:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  Is there? No, I'm not even gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it. This is stupid.

• 1:40:40Bill Simmons?

  Can you be the player you were thinking about?

• 1:40:44Bill Simmons?

  Is it Jalen?

• 1:40:47Speaker 01

  Jalen Green? Jalen Brown?

• 1:40:50Bill Simmons?

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

• 1:41:35Bill 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. LeBron is a $52 million player option.

• 1:42:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:42:01Bill Simmons?

  Kleba and Vincent, $22.5 million combined expiring. Ruiz on an $18.3 expiring. Finney Smith on a $15.4 expiring. This is all next year. Then Reeves is 14 and then 15. So they have some flexibility. Kept a couple picks. They clearly need a center and a rim runner. My question would be, would you trade Reeves? If you could get a, if you get a real, some sort of rim protector?

• 1:42:31Bill Simmons?

  Somebody like a richer man's Myles Turner in that range.

• 1:42:37Bill Simmons?

  Would you trade Reeves or do you feel like you could build around Luca Reeves and 41 year old LeBron? And then there's something there to try to win multiple playoff rounds?

• 1:42:48Speaker 01

  The first thing's going to be LeBron's number.

• 1:42:53Speaker 01

  Because depending on, now granted, he took just a sliver to keep them away from the most restrictions. And then there's a bunch of people being like, see, it's like, all right.

• 1:43:05Bill Simmons?

  Drafted his son and gave him a four year no cut contract.

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:43:10Speaker 01

  If he stays at around 50 million, they're going to be, I would say on the practical things that would happen here. They're going to be six, seven million below the first apron.

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  So if that puts him as his tax team, I don't know what kind of big you're signing for a five to six million dollar tax mid level.

• 1:43:33Bill Simmons?

  You know what season it is though right now? It's ridiculous trades on social media for centers they'll never get. It's like, they should get Bam out of bio.

• 1:43:42Bill Simmons?

  It's like, oh, cool.

• 1:43:43Speaker 01

  Well, they're a little emboldened right now. I mean, basically Jokic, once the coach was fired, was in the Lakers jersey and now Giannis has been in one. And as much as you like to say, yeah. Like, I don't even know how they get Myles Turner.

• 1:43:58Bill Simmons?

  I don't know how they get anybody. I mean, how they get somebody is if, if you have the two expirings. I mean, they could, the thing is with all the expirings, they can work toward any kind of number, right? So could they get Sabonis?

• 1:44:14Speaker 01

  Okay, but what, what is going out that's exciting? Because this is where it comes back to the Austin Reeves thing, which I don't think they would want to do because he's really good and he's 26 years old. But if they thought, okay, what can we do to shake things up? Like as a Bam, like would you do Austin Reeves for Bam just in a vacuum?

• 1:44:32Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  If you were the Lakers?

• 1:44:33Bill Simmons?

  No, I wouldn't do it if I'm Miami. I'm not doing that in a million years. Why am I trading Bam?

• 1:44:39Bill Simmons?

  For Austin Reeves?

• 1:44:40Speaker 01

  I'm just trying to see where your head's at with this.

• 1:44:43Bill Simmons?

  I was thinking Sabonis, I thought was an interesting one because if I'm Sacramento. No.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  All right, God.

• 1:44:50Bill Simmons?

  If I'm Sacramento, I put together this team that clearly doesn't work. I'm paying Sabonis more money than he's worth for somebody who's basically, if he's your most expensive guy, you're going to be a slightly better than 500 team. You're probably not going to have a huge playoff upside and you're going to get torched defensively unless you put the perfect amount of guys around him. And could you give, could you give them a get out of jail free card with that Sabonis contract? Be like, we'll give you all expirings and a couple firsts and you can get out of Sabonis. I don't, I don't know if the Kings are at that point with that contract that they might not be.

• 1:45:33Speaker 01

  Look at the contract. It is nasty. It's 43, 6, 47, and then 50.

• 1:45:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:42Bill Simmons?

  It's a lot. But I'll tell you this, paying LeBron $52 million when he's 41 years old is fucking crazy. That's a lot of money.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  But if you get the year you just got from him, he's worth it. I mean, I know the playoffs didn't close the way everybody expected. I think that's another reason of like even talking about Houston, Golden State. Like you can sit here and make fun of, oh, look at this Lakers group. They didn't even get out of the first round. This first round was, all of this stuff was on the table. And granted, it was five games and it was felt over the course of the five games. They weren't even close. I think it's a bad draw for the Lakers now that we saw it actually play out, even though nobody felt that way, very few people felt that way at the beginning of it. I don't really know. I mean, you know, we keep writing these teams down like, what would you do? What would you do? I think they need to figure out a way to try to get cheap rim runners like a baseball team that doesn't love their starters, three, four and five. And then just all of a sudden you're like, Al Lighter's still around? Like you signed, you signed this guy?

• 1:46:36Speaker 01

  Like the Walker Kessler shit doesn't make a ton of sense. I don't think Dalton Connect gets Walt, gets, gets Kessler done.

• 1:46:46Bill Simmons?

  Well, I was thinking with Utah, who has too many guys plus a bunch of picks. And if they floated Austin Reeves to Utah, what's the reaction?

• 1:46:57Bill Simmons?

  Like that's one where you could get a three for one and a four for one and picks like whoa.

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  That feels weird. They already have Filipowski.

• 1:47:04Bill Simmons?

  We could put Austin Reeves, Filipowski and Kessler.

• 1:47:07Speaker 01

  Could they Hoosier it out if they get Cooper Flag?

• 1:47:11Bill Simmons?

  And we can have Cooper Flag?

• 1:47:13Speaker 01

  Just.

• 1:47:14Bill Simmons?

  Uh, I think Reeves on that contract making 14.

• 1:47:17Speaker 01

  Just Will Hardy going teams on the floor.

• 1:47:22Bill Simmons?

  I think, uh, I think Reeves at 14 and 15, but when you throw expirings with him, you could get some really good players at that point. I don't know if you could get Bam out of bio.

• 1:47:34Speaker 01

  You're, you're with me though. It's an automatic no for Miami as much as we love.

• 1:47:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, automatic.

• 1:47:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:47:40Bill Simmons?

  Automatic.

• 1:47:41Speaker 01

  Can you think of anything where if you're the Lakers, you go now I have, I have to think about this a little bit.

• 1:47:48Bill Simmons?

  Embiid?

• 1:47:51Speaker 01

  That's something the Lakers would like traditionally do.

• 1:47:56Bill Simmons?

  Talk about get out of jail free cards.

• 1:47:58Speaker 01

  I think this is what they do in a second.

• 1:48:00Bill Simmons?

  We'll give you all of our expirings and a first and we'll get you out of the Joel Embiid business. Here's your get out of jail free card right now. You don't have to deal with them anymore.

• 1:48:10Speaker 01

  I heard Embiid was available at the trade deadline. He'd be irresponsible to not even ask. Yeah. Oh yeah.

• 1:48:18Bill Simmons?

  Come on.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  But I mean, like.

• 1:48:21Bill Simmons?

  Oh, we're getting on Hoops type tomorrow. Yeah, baby.

• 1:48:25Bill Simmons?

  Hoops type.

• 1:48:27Speaker 01

  It may have been a would you?

• 1:48:32Speaker 01

  But I, I think this happens all the time. So it shouldn't be something that's that big of a deal.

• 1:48:36Bill Simmons?

  We're getting so aggregated. I'm fucking pumped.

• 1:48:38Speaker 01

  But I don't know that you're doing your job. How are you doing your job?

• 1:48:39Bill Simmons?

  Should we say something about Bobby Barack again? We could get aggregated by them too. Let's try to get aggregated. Think Barack will pick that up?

• 1:48:50Bill Simmons?

  Post?

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  Are you talking about Obama?

• 1:48:53Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm talking about Embiid.

• 1:48:55Speaker 01

  Oh. You think it's surprising that in that, that Daryl would potentially float the idea?

• 1:49:02Bill Simmons?

  I just hadn't heard that. I was excited about the info. I think Daryl talks to everybody all the time. I think he calls people constantly and they're like, ah, fuck Daryl's in the phone.

• 1:49:11Speaker 01

  Tommy Shepherds like I'm not in charge of the Wizards anymore.

• 1:49:14Bill Simmons?

  Stop bothering me.

• 1:49:16Speaker 01

  The fuck?

• 1:49:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So, all right. That's my favorite Lakers move. All their expirings and two first round picks and they get Embiid.

• 1:49:26Speaker 01

  So not Reeves?

• 1:49:28Bill Simmons?

  Reeves isn't in it.

• 1:49:30Speaker 01

  Oh, Reeves isn't in it?

• 1:49:31Bill Simmons?

  He's not in it. You don't even get Reeves. We don't know if Embiid's ever playing again. I'm like, I'll take Embiid. You can have one of our first round picks and here's some bunch of expirings.

• 1:49:43Speaker 01

  I think what they need to do is figure out a way to, and you know, I don't know what's going to happen with all the decisions here, but if they're below the tax, can they use, you know, the, the non taxpayer mid level is, is a decent, you know, it's a decent, it's like 14 million. So could you go after, like, I know nobody likes Clint Capella anymore. He's 31 years old. You put Clint with Luca, does it work? Now his numbers decline. Some of the advanced stuff declined. He also played less. It also felt like Atlanta was waiting forever to have Okongwu be the guy. And clearly he balances them out a little bit better offensively. So maybe Clint isn't worth it at this point. I don't know.

• 1:50:25Bill Simmons?

  When was the last time you got super excited watching Clint Capella play basketball? Was it in the last three years?

• 1:50:30Speaker 01

  Jackson Hayes catching lobs from Luca in the beginning was exciting. The Lakers fans, they're like, unlock Jackson. This is awesome. What about Jonathan Isaac? Is there a Jonathan Isaac? But I don't know if Orlando wants to be in the Gabe Vincent business.

• 1:50:44Bill Simmons?

  What about Mark Williams? Are we kindling?

• 1:50:48Speaker 01

  Batase, I'd be calling about Batase, I'd be.

• 1:50:53Bill Simmons?

  What about Deandre Ayton? Now we're talking.

• 1:50:58Speaker 01

  35, 35 now.

• 1:50:59Bill Simmons?

  Now, now we're talking. Deandre Ayton. So a couple of expirings. Do you think when they shop Rui around all summer while pretending that they really like him? They're just hoping nobody watches the rebounding in game five? He's been, he was really good for us this year. Can we see the tape of game five? It's been destroyed. We don't have it.

• 1:51:21Speaker 01

  Um, is there a, is there a Rui? Cause there's nothing that screams Lakers more than like massive.

• 1:51:28Bill Simmons?

  I love that Deandre an idea. LeBron can teach him how to win.

• 1:51:32Speaker 01

  Right, right. So all this talent, still really young.

• 1:51:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:36Speaker 01

  He's at 35 million. So you load up Rui, you throw in a pick, maybe a little Dalton Connect action in there.

• 1:51:41Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Dalton.

• 1:51:43Speaker 01

  Right. So you start going, okay, where?

• 1:51:44Bill Simmons?

  I'm doing a trade machine right now.

• 1:51:45Speaker 01

  What's the point, right? Why does Portland want Rui? Well, maybe they don't want Rui, but is there some version of there's they're they're grabbing an asset of getting somebody out, culture wise, change of scene? The change of scenery pieces for Deandre Ayton in a Lakers uniform alone, those are gonna, writers are gonna have beach houses, people clicking on those fucking things.

• 1:52:04Bill Simmons?

  LeBron has wanted to play with somebody like this for his entire career.

• 1:52:09Speaker 01

  Right. Ayton's never played with Luca and Luca's never played with a stretch five like this.

• 1:52:15Bill Simmons?

  Luca still remembers how good Ayton was in their one playoffs series.

• 1:52:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:21Bill Simmons?

  Oh yeah, Porzingis yet.

• 1:52:22Speaker 01

  Made it to an NBA finals, was too soon. Peyton, you know.

• 1:52:27Bill Simmons?

  So you're saying, Rui?

• 1:52:31Bill Simmons?

  I feel like they could, I think they could keep Rui. I think they could get Ayton for Maxey, Kleba, Gabe Vincent and another contract and throw a first round pick and Portland's super happy to dump that last Ayton year.

• 1:52:44Speaker 01

  So just a first round pick?

• 1:52:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And I think I'd even say top four protected. Great. We sobbed the Lakers.

• 1:52:53Bill Simmons?

  Um, Milwaukee Bucks, I have no solution for. I really wanted to come on here and, and say something provocative and smart and forward thinking. And I don't know what, what it is. But the thing is, if Giannis says, I don't want to be traded, then do you trade him? What if Giannis says, I'm happy here. I don't want to leave Milwaukee.

• 1:53:11Speaker 01

  I don't trade him. I don't, I don't take any calls.

• 1:53:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't either. My goal would be to keep Giannis.

• 1:53:15Speaker 01

  The, the forgotten zone of this league is, okay, we're screwed. And you laid it out perfectly last week. Like when you really dug into how bad the future draft stuff is for them.

• 1:53:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:28Speaker 01

  So when you're married to having none of that coming in, then you can't.

• 1:53:33Speaker 01

  No one ever wants to hear it. But there's a lot of like honest conversations where teams, believe it or not, are opening the season going, all right, we have Giannis and we'll probably win like 45 to 48 games. And that's probably who we are, but at least we have Giannis. I mean, hell, Atlanta's been doing that with Trey this whole time. Charlotte's gonna keep doing it. At least Giannis is one of the best players in the world. So if Giannis doesn't want to go anywhere, that's enough for me. And I just pick, all right, hopefully we can get competitive and then one year's a short amount of time. Who knows what happens? The problem is for Giannis, and look, this might be a league-wide thing, but you know how we always talk about like, oh, this guy likes this guy and that guy wants to go there and Glenn Davis is now in Orlando because of this and they brought in Jarrett Jack because Chris Paul likes him. Like all of these things that

• 1:54:18Speaker 01

  we used to talk about. Granted, it was the big three in Miami and then everybody trying to figure out how to team up and all that stuff. It feels like that doesn't necessarily happen as much anymore. So

• 1:54:28Bill Simmons?

  There's more animosity than we've had in a while.

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  But Jokic isn't going to be somebody who's going to be coming up through the AAU ranks and having those relationships with the other stars. I mean, every star who's like on the fence about sticking around should want to go play in Denver, but I don't know that he has the relationship with other players. I think the same goes for Giannis. And I just don't know a norm of this league. It doesn't feel like it's as normal as guys being like, hey, let's like Paul George and Kawhi and all that kind of stuff. I don't, I don't know that we have that as much anymore. It doesn't mean it can't happen again, but if Giannis is just happy there, then that's enough for me if I'm running the Bucks. Okay. Yeah, I know we're not going to win the title next year.

• 1:55:05Bill Simmons?

  He'd have to ask out. And even if he asks out, I'm not trading him unless I can get a trade I'm pumped about. And that's it. Not gonna like give you away for 60 cents on the dollar because you don't want to play for us anymore. Like you signed an extension. Let me, let me try to figure out a good trade for us. Can't figure it out. Let's take it in this season and try to figure it out in the December, February range. Once eight teams are unhappy with how their season is going, then we'll do the trade. But you have our word. At some point, we're going to do it. Just keep, just keep playing hard and we'll figure it out.

• 1:55:39Bill Simmons?

  And then you kind of keep your fingers crossed that Dame can come back from Achilles surgery in five months. Dame sets the record for coming back. That's, they're, you know, they made two trades where they gave up an inordinate amount of picks for one player because they wanted to win the title and they won the 2021 title. They couldn't win it with Dame, but they traded a shitload of draft picks. Like this is what happens. If you're mortgaging all this stuff to win now, everyone forgets that part. It's ah, man, they gotta get Giannis some help. It's like, they did. They made two massive trades and gave away a bunch of assets to try to get him help. Now they're here. This is how it works. This is how the league works.

• 1:56:22Speaker 01

  And they have Kuzma on the books.

• 1:56:24Bill Simmons?

  Well, that one neither of us agreed with because we watch basketball. I don't know how anybody could watch basketball this season and thought Kuzma was gonna make a difference.

• 1:56:33Speaker 01

  That's, that's a huge, I mean, he's like 23 million in these two years. 43 over the next two.

• 1:56:39Bill Simmons?

  The Heat got knocked out and I don't really know what the Heat do either. Where you have, you have a Bam, Hero, Wiggins foundation, right?

• 1:56:48Speaker 01

  Wiggins?

• 1:56:50Bill Simmons?

  Wiggins. He's still there.

• 1:56:51Speaker 01

  All their guys are under contract. You want to go through a tough book here.

• 1:56:55Bill Simmons?

  It's brutal.

• 1:56:55Speaker 01

  Hero and Bam, fine. The fact that you're only going to be paying them, I think before the Bam extension kicks in here, or, you know, because it's going to jump up, he's going to be like a $50 million a year player.

• 1:57:05Bill Simmons?

  Hero got barbecued in the Cleveland series.

• 1:57:08Speaker 01

  He did, but his shot making is pretty special.

• 1:57:12Bill Simmons?

  Maybe he should be a sixth man.

• 1:57:14Speaker 01

  He should be a third option, I would say. But, you know, sometimes we look at guys and be like, okay, cool. It'd be awesome if we had two dudes that were better than him and he would be our third option. Bam is not enough offensively, as much as we all love him. They're on the books next year. They've got Wiggins for 28 and then a player option, probably going to pick that one up, 30.1 million in 26, 27. Terry Rozier's 26.6. Duncan Robinson, one of the few remaining early termination options, just at 19, 8 million. Kyle Anderson's on the books for nine. So they have a bunch of contracts of dudes that probably are not in demand.

• 1:57:57Bill Simmons?

  The Butler thing murdered them.

• 1:57:59Speaker 01

  Unless somebody said, I am so mad. I have one year left. I'm only going there. Why are you going there? Because you love Bam and Tyler Hero?

• 1:58:11Bill Simmons?

  The only reason I wouldn't count them out is just because they've pulled rabbits out of the hat over and over again over the last 15 years. Every time we felt like they'd hit rock bottom, then they'd make some, even the Butler thing, which was one of the craziest transaction sequences in the recent history of the league, and they pulled it off. And I still don't know how they got anyone to take Hassan Whiteside. I still don't understand it. But this time it seems bleak. Because I thought, you know, that the, the one guy we didn't mention that I wonder is out, out there in some form who I think would be considered a real asset is Jaren Jackson. If Memphis is handcuffed at all by being able to spend as much money as it's going to take to keep him.

• 1:58:56Bill Simmons?

  If he makes all NBA this year and his, and different triggers come in, I just, just monitoring that one.

• 1:59:08Speaker 01

  I'd be happy to be in the Jaren Jackson business, even with his limitations. Well, I really started to like him even more this year. Even though I know you get mad about his fouls, but you should get mad about his fouls.

• 1:59:19Bill Simmons?

  The rebounding makes me madder than the fouls. Get, can you get nine rebounds?

• 1:59:25Speaker 01

  I would say down 30 to OKC and running Jaren Jackson post ups. Clear out. Like, I don't really know what was going on there. But I mean, that series was such a mess.

• 1:59:36Bill Simmons?

  Can I, I forgot to give you one Yanis situation. If OKC's, if OKC somehow lost this round or next round, huge upset loss. Would they, would Presti, who by the way, has only made the finals once and lost the finals four to one and has not been back since. Even though we all agree he's one of the best GMs of this century. But at some point, he hasn't won titles or even finals games. I wonder if he would just be like, fuck it and do like a giant Yanis thing. And if you're Yanis and you could go to OKC and be on this incredible team. Like that, that's a team that's actually built to make a 160 cents on the dollar trade. They wanted to.

• 2:00:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do wonder about that because I would say that that's kind of the lingering, you know, as much as Bucks fans hate all the Yanis trade stuff that's gone on forever. And then he signs an extension. I mean, this has been going on for a long time with the Yanis speculation. And then sometimes when you hear the speculation, you wonder like, have I heard anything specific? Is there anything new that sounds like it's very specific? Or is it everybody just repeating everybody else that thinks like eventually he's going to ask out? And it's been going on for such a long time. Again, in this time, he actually signed an extension. So Bucks fans, much like Cavs fans with the Mitchell stuff, because they were hearing the same shit from all of us over and over again. It's like a nice little victory lap.

• 2:00:56Bill Simmons?

  We were right.

• 2:00:57Speaker 01

  Hey, guess what?

• 2:00:59Bill Simmons?

  We were right about Mitchell.

• 2:01:01Speaker 01

  The OKC one is like, should it matter? I know it's, it's kind of back to the beginning conversation about Houston. Should it matter on where they're at in the playoffs?

• 2:01:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I think if OKC doesn't win this year, they have to really think we're really close. How did we not win the title? We were favored. All the math said we were going to win the title. If they don't, if they get bounced in one of these next three rounds, I think that's, I think that's the, the biggest overreaction team, even though Presti doesn't overreact. I think you'd have to really think about it. Like, what's the point of having all these assets and all these picks if you're not going to cash them in at some point? Like, like this isn't, this isn't blackjack where you just get to stack chips. Like, at some point, you have to try to win the title and they're, they have the best chance this year. But, you know, if Yanis is on the table and they can make a run at them and they're, and they're bummed out because they couldn't get it done in the playoffs when it mattered.

• 2:01:59Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. I still think good, my bet would be on Houston. If I had to bet on a team, I think the Houston thing makes so much sense in so many different ways. And I think it's a good spot for him. I think it's good for everybody. That's the trade that makes sense to me.

• 2:02:15Speaker 01

  Is there a trade built around Chet or Jalen Williams? And all the draft picks that you'd have to sift through, which ones you thought were the more valuable ones? If you were Horst, where?

• 2:02:28Bill Simmons?

  Well, you insist on Chet, right? If you're, if you're Milwaukee, you're like, Chet has to be in it. I'm not even discussing this unless, call me back when Chet's in the trade.

• 2:02:36Speaker 01

  Wait, if you're Presti or Stone, what's a quicker no? Them asking for Chet or asking Stone and Houston for a men?

• 2:02:45Bill Simmons?

  Presti, yeah, I think a men's a quicker no. Cause Chet's been hurt twice already. Said two injuries already.

• 2:02:54Bill Simmons?

  Right?

• 2:02:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you're right. The injury thing, I can't, I can't throw a counter argument to that.

• 2:03:00Bill Simmons?

  You're right. He's also one of those guys, when you watch him run around, you're like, ah.

• 2:03:05Speaker 01

  I don't know, did you watch that third quarter against Memphis?

• 2:03:07Bill Simmons?

  No, and I, listen, you don't have to sell me on Chet. It's just, you know, he said two, two injuries is 23. So that part does scare me a tiny bit. So I think when you ask me quicker, no, I just think Thompson's like, not trading that dude. Shut up, hang up. But if I'm OKC, I'm trying to, now I'm assuming I've had some sort of terrible playoff loss. Probably trying to start with, how about Hartenstein? And then, and how about, how about you, you seen Kason Wallace? He's really good, huh?

• 2:03:38Speaker 01

  You hear Russell talk about Usman Jang?

• 2:03:41Bill Simmons?

  See our lottery pick? We had the seventh pick in the draft. Like anyone in the lottery? Yeah, you're, you're moving that way. But that's the thing, if Yanis is in, if Yanis is actually going to be traded, good people are going to be in the trade. You don't just get to not put a good person in the trade. You know, it's the thing.

• 2:03:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, but when you were talking Houston and you're like getting to meet Shingun, Jalen Green. It's like, can I have any of the other guys? So you would do Jabari, Shingun. Now I, I don't know what the salaries are.

• 2:04:10Bill Simmons?

  I think Shingun, Jabari, Eason. And Jalen Green, at least three, but maybe even all four are all in the trade, right?

• 2:04:21Bill Simmons?

  If I'm not getting Thompson.

• 2:04:24Bill Simmons?

  Then I get everybody else. That's where we're starting. Just keep giving me dudes. We gotta wrap it up. Do you have any, you want to do a Bill Belichick update quick?

• 2:04:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have a small, small piece of, of stuff here.

• 2:04:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, let's hear it.

• 2:04:44Speaker 01

  You know what? Why don't you start though? Cause I gotta look up.

• 2:04:49Speaker 01

  I gotta get, make sure I got my facts straight here.

• 2:04:53Bill Simmons?

  I was trying to think that maybe with coaches. Maybe it just doesn't end well. And that's how this usually goes with guys who are super powerful. And, uh, and fly a little too close to the sun. And are used to controlling their circumstances, which becomes harder and harder as you get older and you have to stand on top of the ball. That maybe this goes worse more times than we realize. And when we're talking about, I can't believe this is happening to Belichick. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised that it's happening to somebody in their mid 70s. That they're making some bad decisions because we see this in every aspect of life.

• 2:05:30Bill Simmons?

  It's like, what's he doing with this girl? It's like, well, you know?

• 2:05:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't even know that I care about. I don't know that I care about the personal part of it all that much. Cause I really do. Kind of want to like leave people alone, you know, on that, that part of it, even though we spent our entire careers talking about people.

• 2:05:49Bill Simmons?

  But this has leaked into the actual running this UNC program in a variety of ways, which is how it became a bigger story. And also that interview was so crazy. And for somebody who has been so intensely private. Where you just know nothing about him ever. And he, you know, and then for that to happen, the way it happened is just like, it's just really weird. He would have been a top five draft pick of, I would never expect anything like this to happen to this person.

• 2:06:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's all true too. And I think when you probably look at him evaluating players and being like, what am I bringing into the locker room? Right? He didn't want free thinkers. He wanted people that were single minded. I mean, when you played for the Patriots, you weren't even supposed to live in fucking Boston. Like that was thought of as a bad thing. If you were on the Patriots, you lived in Boston.

• 2:06:38Bill Simmons?

  No further than Attleboro.

• 2:06:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Gonna stay right here in, no offense to that part of the state, but.

• 2:06:45Bill Simmons?

  Providence, too far.

• 2:06:48Speaker 01

  So this is, if he were evaluating Bill, the person is Bill, he'd be like, what, what's going on here? I remember Stoops telling me the story about Gronkowski. Where Belichick called about Gronk before the draft. And he was like. What's this guy an asshole?

• 2:07:09Bill Simmons?

  Tight end.

• 2:07:11Speaker 01

  That was it. And he was like, no, man, he's, he's the best. He's the best. And, you know, look, you picked him Hall of Fame, Super Bowls later, like, it all worked out. But Bill always was very big on prioritizing, like, I don't want any extra shit.

• 2:07:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:26Speaker 01

  So if he were a booster with those values that he would take from his time running an NFL team, if he were a booster running a college football program and the money guy behind it, and then was evaluating the situation of the head coach being involved in something like this, like, Bill would be the first guy to be like, this is all stupid shit. We are giving people all the, like, the reason his brilliance was so-

• 2:07:51Bill Simmons?

  Intentional distractions.

• 2:07:51Speaker 01

  Right. To think how simple his brilliance was, and even in the times I didn't like it, where he just couldn't answer a question because he knew if he answered a question, it just opened up another question. And then he's like, looking around at the world going, why do you answer any of this stuff? So I may not have always loved it. And again, it wasn't like I was a reporter who had to deal with any of this stuff, but there'd be times I didn't love it. I didn't love some of the press conferences where there were really serious issues. And it was like, you're gonna play this card again? Like, you wouldn't even, but I admired the tactic because it was actually really smart. It was like, I remember when the Feeding the Monster book came out, Felger and I, Felger had his radio show at the ESPN affiliate, right?

• 2:08:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:29Speaker 01

  And so I come in, and it was one of the funniest, so it's Seth Manukin, I think, was his name, the author. He did Feeding the Monster. It was like this all access thing that John Henry wanted because everybody was jealous of Moneyball. So Felger has Theo Epstein, ready to go. It's the big Feeding the Monster interview. I powered through the book. I've written down all my questions because I filled them with Felger for a month. And I promise there's a point to this story here. I know you love these long winded ones. So I show up to that radio station because I didn't really work there. It was just this month that I was there. And you know me, all prepped up, all excited. And I think the world of Theo, so I'm excited to even talk to him. And Felger looks at me and he goes-

• 2:09:07Speaker 01

  We've been mapping out the interview. I don't think we're gonna have time for you to say anything. And I was like, great, like, but it was Felger's show. It wasn't mine.

• 2:09:19Bill Simmons?

  Sounds like Schrager during the NFL draft. We're throwing to you and Schefter again. Just smile for a minute.

• 2:09:26Speaker 01

  By the way, get up, just absolutely dissing the combat odds for Schrager. Schrager's a big dude. They had like Schefter as the favorite in some Royal Rumble and Schrager had the lowest odds. And I felt like, yeah.

• 2:09:40Bill Simmons?

  He was like 6'2".

• 2:09:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a big guy. So anyway, um, so Felger looks at me and says, you, we're not gonna have any time for you. And I'm like, oh, okay, fucking awesome. Of course, you know, back then insecure and pissed and, but it was, it was the right thing. It was Felger's fucking show and he wanted to map out the interview. He wanted to control all the, the timeline of things. So we cracked the mics, we bring in Theo, we're back from commercial and Felger's like, all right, you know, Theo Epstein, GM or whatever. He was, okay, so you know, on page 14's that really jumped out, Theo's like, you know, I haven't read the book. He fucking, he ruined Felger's entire plan because he thought he would at least know when the book was about him. And Theo just stopped him and was like, yeah. And it, and then Felger's looking at me like, you got anything?

• 2:10:26Speaker 01

  Do you have anything in there for somebody that's not going to acknowledge that the book even exists? And that's Belichick's playbook. All right. So that part is really interesting because it completely contradicts everything that he's valued. The last thing that I would say about this, and this is the part that always pisses me off, is whenever Bud Selig used to do this constantly, people would be like, hey, baseball, it's kind of losing momentum. And by the way, all of those people were right. What's going on with baseball? What's going on baseball? And Bud would point to TV deals. Like, look what we renewed for. Look at the growth on this TV deal versus the last rights deal we did. Conference commissioners all over the country do it every single time they re, look how great of a job I'm doing. Look at what our new deal was compared to what our last deal was. Belichick in this email actually says, I will say again, quote, that I want this book to be presented

• 2:11:11Speaker 01

  as a look at my professional life and how I did my job on the way up to and as the leader of an organization that grew from a $500 million franchise to an $8 billion organization that played in 10 Super Bowls. Super Bowls, awesome. If you're suggesting that your run in New England increased the value of the team from 500 million to 8 billion, then what the fuck is Brady worth? And by the way, you were awesome. Maybe you've done it better than anybody else. No one would ever deny that. But that way of thinking is if you have as much to do with the value of a franchise in the NFL as the TV rights growth does, like, that's insane. That's delusional to think that. Like, you write that and be like, oh, wow, are any of the other NFL franchises worth a lot more

• 2:11:52Speaker 01

  than they were in the 90s? Well, of course, the answer is yes. That's a really-

• 2:11:57Bill Simmons?

  Even the Bengals are worth more.

• 2:11:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, that's a very, most people may not understand that. We understand it. People listen to this podcast understand that. But to get to that kind of closing statement of like, this team was worth 500 million before me and now it's worth 8 billion. Dude, you were awesome. You did it again at a level that is unsustainable in the NFL, but the value has way more to do with TV rights than it does you.

• 2:12:22Bill Simmons?

  There's one other level to that point. It explains a lot about what happened from the mid 2010s on with Brady and Belichick. Cause everyone was like, Patriot way, Patriot way, we're just about Super Bowls, but there was clearly some sort of ego thing. And it's two guys that really understood their place in history in a whole bunch of different ways, right? And it was always like, we're in this together. There's no credit, but the credit thing was a big part of it. And Garoppolo's in there and he's really thinking about, I never wanted to believe it. I never, when Rico Sham and people like that were reporting about it, and I was like, fuck that. I want to hear this. Stop trying to cause trouble. But there clearly was a ton of trouble. And I think when you win, you win titles like that. We've seen this over, we saw with the Last Dance

• 2:13:04Bill Simmons?

  documentary, you know, and you saw the Kraus, Jordan, you saw Jordan Pippin, who no longer talk, they hated Kraus. The only one that really-

• 2:13:14Speaker 01

  The Kraus stuff at the end is crazy.

• 2:13:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they seem to get like Phil Jackson, but then you look at the Kobe Shaq stuff with Phil Jackson and Phil Jackson's writing books. The credit grabbing that happens when you've had real success is surprising because the rings- Should be the best example of how much success you've had, but for whatever reason. So anyway, I think that really explained to me why Brady didn't end up with the Patriots. Because what everybody was writing about and doing the sports radio topic of who's more responsible for all the Super Bowls, Belichick or Brady? And the right answer was always both. They needed each other and that's the answer. But clearly, they both kind of thought each of them was more responsible than the other. So when I read that paragraph, I thought, man, Belichick must have been so pissed when

• 2:13:59Bill Simmons?

  Brady had that Tampa season where he won the title. Cause clearly he does give a shit about all this stuff. And all the media he did last year, the fact that he's writing this book, some of the documentaries. And we always thought, no, he doesn't care. He doesn't care. He clearly really cares. And so I read that same email and I'm like, oh, he really did. He really does have a massive ego about all this stuff that he would say that.

• 2:14:25Speaker 01

  It made me wonder too, if he was like thinking he's owed more. When you start throwing around dollar figures.

• 2:14:34Bill Simmons?

  I mean, when Kraft bought the Patriots, they were ready to move to St. Louis and they didn't. He kind of saved the team. They were the black sheep of the, of the local sports scene. And then Brady and Belichick, I think both of them probably built it up, but like, you know, we saw this happen when LeBron was in Cleveland, right? Cleveland was like a top four franchise and all the Forbes list. And then he left and went to Miami and they were like 28th. And then he came back in 2014. It's like top five franchises in Cleveland's in there. So, you know, you get the right asset and it does make the franchise.

• 2:15:08Speaker 01

  But I'm not, I'm not diminishing his value, but I'm, I'm talking.

• 2:15:12Bill Simmons?

  I know what your point is though.

• 2:15:13Speaker 01

  The value of all these franchises has way more to do with television rights than even the accomplishments.

• 2:15:20Bill Simmons?

  But you don't think he put that in there partly because of what Kraft did with that dynasty apple thing?

• 2:15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a hundred percent.

• 2:15:27Bill Simmons?

  When Kraft's just rewriting history is the three of us. That last 10 years, I was just holding on. I was holding us together with all the dumb shit he said of that. And now it's just, these guys are like in, they're in credit grab bukkake. Just, just go at it. Just battling each other.

• 2:15:46Speaker 01

  Took us two hours to get a porn reference out of you.

• 2:15:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, sorry. It's over the two hour mark. I got, maybe I'll get aggregated again. Be great. Gotta get those aggregated or something.

• 2:15:59Bill Simmons?

  Anyway, we, uh, I, I, Belichick's a classic example of if you had just left four years ago and just moved to Wyoming, done the Johnny Carson.

• 2:16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 2:16:12Bill Simmons?

  We would talk about you so highly.

• 2:16:14Speaker 01

  When you've been competing your entire life, I don't blame guys for wanting to hang on to the whole thing. I'll, the Brady Tampa Bay Super Bowl is my second, that's my second favorite Brady Super Bowl.

• 2:16:24Bill Simmons?

  I'm talking about the, the UNC 24-year-old PR person controlling his life, people wondering if it's elder abuse, like really like dark shit. People, like, this has gotten to the point that like my wife's friends are asking me about, hey, what's going on with Bill Belichick and this girl? I read like on Apple News, they had a story about how cra- like, that's what this has reached. That CBS Sunday Morning thing was like his version of Tom Cruise on the Oprah couch. Like it's, it's part of his legacy now.

• 2:16:58Speaker 01

  I just don't understand, somebody that understands how the media works as well as they do, which clearly he does, what he thought that was going to be. Like, hey, this is the deal. You come in, you promote the book, and we ask you questions about it.

• 2:17:09Bill Simmons?

  No, but maybe, but this is what people are worried about. Maybe he's not, not batting a thousand right now.

• 2:17:16Speaker 01

  I'm not ready to go there. We'll see what kind of defense they're running.

• 2:17:18Bill Simmons?

  That Sunday Morning thing was insane. That was insane. I never in a million kajillion years would have guessed that he would be in that position.

• 2:17:29Speaker 01

  Joe Prunty, maybe.

• 2:17:32Bill Simmons?

  Out of all people, that was, uh.

• 2:17:35Speaker 01

  That would be a good pod. Five guys, most likely, that you would expect that to happen to.

• 2:17:40Bill Simmons?

  That would be good. Uh, before we go, picks for round two? Celtics, you still going Cleveland?

• 2:17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think Brunson having to go through the gauntlet of options as opposed to being able to switch into Beasley, Hardaway, and Dennis Schroder, even though Schroder, I think, competed like crazy against him. I think it's a little different challenge, and I think Cat is going to have to cover a lot more ground than he did against Durin. Um, I'm still holding out hope Garland's going to come back game two, but today was super impressive. I'm totally with you, and you've been higher on the Pacers than I've been, and you might be right about it. OKC, no issues, and I have Minnesota.

• 2:18:18Bill Simmons?

  Is there any case for Denver?

• 2:18:27Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, I could sit here and say, oh, you know, the craziest thing about even the elimination game is Jokic and Murray weren't even going crazy. I think by Jokic's our standards for Jokic, this wasn't some like Jokic fest for seven games.

• 2:18:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:44Speaker 01

  You know that they were the first team with six players with 15 or more points in a game seven in NBA history?

• 2:18:50Bill Simmons?

  It's so funny, those game sevens, though, like Christian Brown became, right? That was the Grant Williams game for Christian Brown where he's just huge. Like the game sevens, there's always the random, it's the Buddy Hield. Yeah, you always see those. That would have been a fun one to predict for a Fanduel bet. Russillo, you got two pods this week and then I will see you live on Sunday night, which will not be as fun as this one. Our guy Steph Curry came through. Good to see you, my friend. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo. Thanks to Russillo. Thanks to basketball for giving us two game sevens over the weekend. We thought we might get zero. I will be back on Tuesday. Don't forget, huge rewatch of us coming on Monday. Get ready. You can follow all the clips and videos from this podcast on the Bill Simmons

• 2:19:34Bill Simmons?

  YouTube channel and I will see you on Tuesday.

• 2:19:51Bill Simmons?

  Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in DC. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-887-897777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-8778-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures, WildHorse9, John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. I like those guys. Star in the Sharp Witted Comedy Thriller from Academy Award winner, Martin McDonagh.

• 2:20:38Bill Simmons?

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• 2:21:21Bill Simmons?

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