OKC Ends Denver, "Whaddya Do" Second-Round Losers, and Knicks-Pacers Predictions With Ryen Russillo

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to react to the Thunder’s blowout Game 7 win against the Nuggets (2:21). Then, Bill and Ryen discuss trade scenarios and what they would do with the assets of the semifinal losers (33:08). Finally, they discuss the Knicks knocking the Celtics out of the playoffs, the Eastern Conference finals matchup, and more (01:30:46). 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

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

• 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. Coming up, we had a game seven.

• 0:45Bill Simmons?

  It wasn't that good, but we still talked two hours of NBA 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. Order minimum before taxes and fees is required.

• 1:29Bill Simmons?

  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 a new rewatchables coming for you on Monday night. We did Close Encounters of the Third Kind as part of Big Ass 70s Month. This was a very, very, very fun podcast, so that is coming. You can also watch on The Ringer Movies YouTube channel. If you like movies, by the way, I went on Sean Fantasy's Big Picture. We did a Tom Cruise movie draft. Me, Van Lathan, Chris Ryan, Sean Fantasy, and Amanda Dobbins. Spoiler, I thought I won the draft, but you guys can decide. I thought I waxed everybody.

• 2:16Bill Simmons?

  Who knows? Coming up on this podcast, OKC killed Denver in game seven, and we're going to talk about that, the ramifications. Does this mean OKC is smooth sailing now until the finals? We are also going to talk about the four what do you do teams that lost in round two? What do you do if you're Cleveland? What do you do if you're Boston? And talk some draft stuff, or so is at the Combine, and some future basketball stuff as well. So this is a good one. First, our friends from Pearl Jam.

• 3:12Bill Simmons?

  Russillo is here. We are coming off a dramatic game seven. That was dramatic for about 40 minutes. And then it was 42 to 41 at one point. It was one of those. We ended up at 125, 93. OKC blows out Denver. And that was the OKC team. That was the ceiling of the team that we're always afraid of when we think about them, big picture. But more impressive that Denver even got to a game seven? Or do you look down on them that they didn't show up in a game seven? I would say the more impressive for me.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, considering where they were at the end of the year, you still didn't really understand what the rotation was going to be, the defensive numbers that we had talked about. So to get it to a game seven with this group, because I just think, even though you have the Strother game in game six, you had some good Westbrook moments sprinkled in there. When it's bad, when the spacing is terrible, and we'll get to some of the numbers of some of this stuff, like you understand, there's just incredible limitations. And I think the headline of today is Caruso and his defense, and that OKC kind of found something because they abandoned the Chet Jokic idea. So it's crazy that that's the second round game, but game seven went the way I just thought the Thunder, despite some of the concerns, I thought they were the better basketball team.

• 4:31Bill Simmons?

  And Gordon on one leg was kind of the decider. If there was any hope of them gutting it out, you need him for 44 minutes at 100% speed, but you know. Put a lot of miles on dude over the course of two weeks. They play 14 playoff games and he does a lot of stuff for them. He breaks down. I want to go big picture before we dive into the game because I was thinking about, you know, this might be, I'm not saying the windows closed for Denver, but they might be moving into a different part of the journey here with Jokic in the 2020s. And I was thinking about how many teams, the first half of the decade's now done, right? We're moving into this, we're now in the second part of the 2020s. And you have these teams that in the first part of the decade seemed like they were going

• 5:13Bill Simmons?

  to be the defining teams of the decade, right? Tatum Celtics, Jokic's Nuggets, Giannis and the Bucks, Luca and the Mavericks. I had one more. Oh, and just like whoever, whatever team has Curry and whatever team has LeBron. And now it feels like all those windows are either closed or in danger of closing, which I just think is noticeable. I think this is a very strange season all of a sudden where you have a final four of Indiana and the Knicks and Minnesota and OKC. And I think all four of those teams are arrow pointing up even not just for this year, but for next year too. And then everything else feels like that, like San Antonio, Houston might be coming. And then this whole other group of teams that

• 5:56Bill Simmons?

  have either already fell apart like Phoenix, or this other group that felt pretty unassailable two years ago, last year. And now it feels like they're on the outs. And I don't really know what the reasons, it's beyond injuries. I think the apron plays a little bit of it. But what, what do you, what do you think? Is this just the league now where we just, every three years, we just flip who's on top, basically?

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Well, it could be, you know, whatever result we get, and certainly if Denver had won this game today and you're going, this is about as wide open a final four as I could ever remember.

• 6:28Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  And now it feels like there's even more pressure on OKC considering what's on the East.

• 6:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Even though there's part of me that really just doesn't want to overlook this Minnesota team. But it's, it's been an easy run for them, the first couple of rounds here. So, yeah, bigger picture, you know, I'd, I'd mentioned this before with the SEC and college football where, well, eventually they were going to lose a national championship.

• 6:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  There was going to be a stretch. Now they haven't won one in back to back years, which seems odd, but it's like, that's, that's more normal. But is it going to be the norm moving forward? We don't know that yet. Whatever result we end up with.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  I think it's two things. One, I'd have to see it happen a lot to be like, okay, is it just such a different version of basketball that the regular season is completely pointless? Cause there's times where it feels like that.

• 7:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  But I, I think you can factor in the age part of Curry, LeBron, you could throw Durant in there. You know, the Bucks, basically it wouldn't, it would make more sense that they would be like this five years after a championship, four years after a championship.

• 7:30Bill Simmons?

  Well, plus everything they traded to make that championship happen, right? They, they shouldn't feel bad about where they are now because they, they pushed all their chips in. They got the title out of it. And I think the Celtics are a little bit of the same way. Pushed all their chips in last year. Now they have this giant tax bill coming and the dinner bill has arrived, you know, in a lot of ways.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  And this may be the last version of a team that we ever see like this under the CBA with Celtics. Now, if they'd won it and then were able to repeat, you know, maybe new ownership comes in and is like, the last thing we can do is after winning two, screw this and probably just going to have to take the tax hit because we'd rather take that financial hit than the PR hit of all the new guys are here and now they're dismantling a back-to-back champ. So I think the Celtics part of it with Tatum impacts this too. So when you go through all the different scenarios, you're like, okay, these individual things, but that second apron, I know we're going to do some of the, what are you going to do?

• 8:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we're doing that later.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  You know, the realization of what this is and that it is a hard cap with a different name. And you know, you're trying to figure out trades and, and then it's like, oh, I have, I have a match. And it's like, actually the team can't do this, or if they do this, then they're hard capped because of where they're at right now. So, you know, there might just be more parody. This may lead to more parody and we also were coming off of like two iconic runs. You know, some people look at the Heat and try to dump on them for only getting two titles in four years. I think making it to four straight NBA finals is something that should be celebrated. And then you've got the Warriors putting together what I think is the best five we've ever seen in the history of this game. So we're coming off of like a decade of that into these last five

• 9:09Speaker 01

  years and then looking forward with even more restrictions. So maybe we're just too influenced by thinking that that was normal when Miami and Golden State was, was not normal.

• 9:21Bill Simmons?

  I think it was kind of normal though. I think what shifted.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Maybe this construction, but not the success because I don't think the success is normal.

• 9:29Bill Simmons?

  Well, but we're going to talk about the Celtics later. And one of the things with them is you look at all the moves they made individually. Don't be sarcastic. You look at all the moves they made one by one. It's good drafting and good trades, right?

• 9:41Speaker 01

  That was a little sauce.

• 9:43Bill Simmons?

  But it's not like they traded five first round picks to get to where they were like they, but now they're screwed anyway. You know, and I think, like, I actually think OKC, and we should talk about the game, but OKC is probably the last team that has a chance to keep it going for seven, eight years because they have all these picks. And eventually like they'll probably trade Dort this summer regardless of what happens because they can replace him, right? And you could probably send that money out, maybe bet on one of your draft picks or bet on the cheaper guy or whatever, but you can constantly be replenishing as long as you have SGA and Williams and maybe home grand or maybe it's two of the three, but they have the best chance to do it. But you're also, they're going to be penalized too for the same thing.

• 10:26Bill Simmons?

  They did a great job building the roster. They did a great job assembling all those picks. And they're probably going to be screwed anyway. Once, once like the MVP stuff kicks in, those little kickers like Cleveland is screwed with the Mobley thing. His salary went up eight million bucks. We're going to talk about them later too. They're $200 million for eight guys. Next year, they haven't made the conference finals. So I, I just think I, it almost feels like there's this reckoning coming where this, the salaries are going to have to really shift. We talked about it with the moment they did that CBA and you and I were trying to figure it out. And we were like, what is this? Why does it seem like this is bad for the players ultimately? I think this is the summer where it's going to be bad for the players.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  It's going to end up being historically bad because it's, it just reminds me so many times throughout. You know, I'm not trying to go super deep here, but. In life, the way we label things to lie to ourselves about what something really is.

• 11:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  And after we did that pod, I ran into a couple of guys from our front office shortly after. And somebody said like, hey, did you go through? I was like, yeah, Bill and I went through it, but you never feel like, unless you're like a capologist or a lawyer, you're like, I'm, you know, how am I possibly screwing this up? Or what are the unintended consequences? And I was like, man, it feels like a hard cap. And the guy just, I didn't, I didn't even know the guy and he just looks at me and goes, it is a hard cap.

• 11:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  It is a hard cap. And I was like, okay, all right. So that confirms. And now that we've had a couple of years of like, looking at what this is going to be. You know, it's even more of a credit to Presti, who I believe was like in on the meetings on some of this stuff. So you're going to like this. It reminds me of like when Belichick would just always trade out of where he was in the first round. And then if you just keep doing it year after year, it's like, man, they have this many picks or they have another couple. Like it felt like for years he had two firsts to maneuver around with, because he just kept doubling down on the approach. Granted, it's worked a lot better for Presti than it did Belichick. But if he understood, if he understood all of this stuff and we kept wondering, which is another conversation too.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Had OKC somehow lost this game at home again, seven, does that mean that they're more motivated to start going off season shopping and packaging some of these assets? Or is it to the longer view of Presti realizes all the restrictions? How hard it would be to keep together this roster? And that even if they win this whole thing, he has the flexibility to tweak and make tougher decisions because he just feels like he's stockpiling and their tracker would tell you they're better positioned than anybody to do so.

• 12:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I mean, he has all these picks that enable him to basically, oh, I need to get out of this $25 million guy and move him into a $12 million guy and I can reward another team with it's the, the situation the Celtics are in right now. Cause. It's impossible for them not to do a trade. They're gonna have to do one if they're over the second apron as badly as they are, which I think it's like 20 million. So like, for instance, everyone's like, well, they'll trade Holiday or Porzingis. It's like, okay, well, who's, who's taking them? What are the Celtics getting back to make the math work for the trade? And then how does that help them? You know, but I don't want to step in the Celtics thing. Let's do, uh, let's do OKC why they won. Um, did you feel like they went through playoff puberty in this game in some ways?

• 13:41Speaker 01

  It felt like that a little bit.

• 13:42Bill Simmons?

  They were tight in the first quarter, like legit. I felt like there was two guys that showed up for that first quarter, SGA and Caruso, and everybody else, the sphincters were like this.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  I'm glad you said that because it's exactly what I saw. And the, the Jalen Williams game six performance was so disappointing. Cause then you're thinking, okay, what, like, I don't even know what to expect from this guy. You know, somebody that was supposed to have his off playoff games, you know, maybe we're a little unfair. It's like, okay, you're a young guy. You weren't great against Dallas. You couldn't be counted on as that second scorer to SGA. Like you need that second guy to create on the ball when everything's a mess. And if you don't have it, you're so limited as a playoff team. And, you know, I think there was something to be desired there based on, you know, you can look at the final box scores of the Dallas series and be like, oh, it wasn't all that bad. It's just funny. I think that stuff becomes the most misleading stuff. Like there's some efficiency stuff that I'll look at with a player in a series and go,

• 14:37Speaker 01

  there's no way he was this, like, this is a bad reflection. These metrics are too rewarding to however he played because just in the moment, you needed more from him. So he has that abominant game six at Denver. And, you know, look, I, I think it's fair to say, even for a guy like Jalen Williams, like at Denver, you know, going up against the best player in the world, you get the Strather game out of nowhere. I mean, he was wide open, one, because of Jokic and two, because I, it felt like, okay, see, it's like, hey, do you want to guard this guy? It was like, no, we don't want to guard him at all. So when-

• 15:10Bill Simmons?

  The Nuggets had four guys like that that OKC was like, go ahead.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  There was a couple of five man stretches that Adelman, like even he had to be looking at the scorer's table going, I can't believe I have to do this right now. But in that first quarter, I'm like, what's up with Hartenstein? Like after he missed those two floaters in the baseline earlier in the series, it's like, does he not want to shoot that anymore? Jalen Williams getting a couple of open looks. And there were so many open looks that were great looks in game six, and it looked like he was going to be tight again. And I'm thinking, I, this can't possibly, like, he's not going to be this bad game six and game seven, is he? I mean, he had a three, you know, Denver's playing so much zone, they're collapsing the top for SGA. So SGA is getting cut off. It's kind of working. And there's a kick out to the right side, a little bit later in the game, where Jalen Williams just turns it down. And I'm thinking like, you don't even

• 15:58Speaker 01

  want to take, like, you, you have to take this shot. But what I loved about game six is that against that Denver zone, if you could find any way to collapse, there were all sorts of points waiting for you on guys just cutting on the baseline and in the dunker spot. You saw more of that with the Chet. They had one play where Chet passed to Caruso and he made a layup. Caruso beat his man and Dort was coming from the other side. Both baseline cutters are wide open. So, you know, there was a lot of stuff that I saw in six that I thought if they can just go, hey, when they zone us, because they're going to like crazy.

• 16:33Bill Simmons?

  Well, especially Gordon hurt, you knew the zone was going to be even bigger.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. So, you know, there's a lot of stuff, but the fact that Jalen Williams stepped up and played the way he did today. And I think there was like one driver, you could tell, okay, he's now feeling it a little bit. You could see his confidence was a completely different place.

• 16:50Bill Simmons?

  Started to attack. He was 42, 41. I'm not a live better and I'm also gambling is not legal in California, but it felt like the perfect live bet spot because Gordon had given them a lot in the first quarter. Brown had made some shots. OKC missed everything from three. I think they were like one for 10 at some point. And you could just feel the game. You could feel it starting to shift potentially.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  And then And they hadn't taken any free throws when it was like

• 17:17Bill Simmons?

  Right. And Denver had like 10 free throws, something like that. But that Caruso Wallace combo, which I think is going to be a real problem for Minnesota, too. Like I like even thinking, not to jump ahead to the next series, but you think like Connolly is like the one point guard. Then they'll bring Edward. Edwards will have the ball sometimes. Then it'll get weird with like Alexander Walker and DiFenzenzo. And that's when these OKC guys feast like they're over the mid court line. And they just come in waves where it's like it's Caruso Wallace. Now Dort's in too. Oh, wait, here's Jalen Williams. And they're just trying to make you uncomfortable over and over and over again. I think it's going to be a problem for Minnesota, but it became a problem for Denver. And it was one of the worst. It wasn't. Russ wasn't just bad.

• 18:02Bill Simmons?

  He had like three or four passes where you're just going. What is that? This is game seven. How is that the pass you just threw? And then Strathair and Watson, you know, it was no surprise turned into pumpkins. And Murray was not really playoff Jamal. And then Porter was playing with one arm and Gordon was playing with one leg. And then Caruso became the star of the game. And I guess Caruso guarding Jokic, I feel like is a slight hit for the Jokic legacy. That Caruso was able to do that, but to defend Jokic, which I have to, because I love Jokic. I really did feel like they were getting away with a lot with how they were pounding him physically, which they should have because they were getting away with it all series.

• 18:45Bill Simmons?

  But I'm not really sure what Denver is supposed to do when they're defending him like that. I don't know what the move is. Like if you're just, you're putting smaller guys, they're planning, they're pushing, they're shoving. If he's turning around and going into them, he's just going to knock them over. It's an offensive foul, right? He's not fast enough to go by him. You don't have any spacing because nobody can shoot. So I'm not sure. They finally like moved him to the top of the key, like 25 feet back to give him, try to give him more space. By that time it was too late. Not really sure what the move is, but I wonder if OKC might have stumbled onto a strategy with him. Now, there's that many Carusos in the league, but like, let's say it had been alternate universe Celtics, Denver finals. Could Drew Holiday have guarded him like that? Like, could other teams?

• 19:29Bill Simmons?

  Do other teams have guys that could do that? Or is Caruso just that special?

• 19:34Speaker 01

  I don't know how it would look for seven games.

• 19:36Bill Simmons?

  Right. I guess for one game you could do it.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Right. Caruso might end up shooting like 10% from three because he's so exhausted the entire time. Uh, look, Jokic could have been better today. Certainly.

• 19:48Bill Simmons?

  Wasn't a great Jokic game.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  No. Is some of the passing or it's just like throwing it back to him and he's turning the ball over because it's getting knocked out of his hands. Like a couple were definitely on him. He had the one late where he tried to go right at Caruso at the top and he just got stripped. There was another one from Murray where he's throwing him a buddy pass and all Wallace has to do is just see it coming in. So I think there was a bunch of different things, but I think overall, if you're looking at Jokic just saying that he was the problem. I mean, the number of times that you're watching defenders, and I think over the course of a series, you get more and more comfortable with it being like, all right, well, Westbrook hits a couple of corner threes, we're okay with it. Like as long as we try to stay in front of Murray at the top and then collapse on Jokic. Cause I, you know, you could sit there and say, well, if Caruso.

• 20:33Bill Simmons?

  In game six, same thing.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, they just left. They don't care. I mean, there was at one point, I mean, the game was like basically over at this point, but I looked at it to see what Strother, Watson and Westbrook were, and they were one of four, oh, a six and two of seven. So if you're not getting anything out of any of those guys, then good luck. Um, and then I.

• 20:51Bill Simmons?

  And nothing out of Porter too, like as you're expecting like best case scenario, like a 15 and seven, something from him, but you weren't getting that.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Nothing, nothing. And you know, at least you have to defend him as if he's going to shoot, but like it was just a bunch of bricks from him. Um, you know, maybe you say, hey, Jokic needs to get deeper on the catch and then have crew. But then if you're doing that, there's just so much more traffic in there defensively that I think they want Jokic to have more space to get it outside of the elbow, to be able to turn and shoot, to turn and drive. Um.

• 21:22Bill Simmons?

  But also the further he goes away, now I don't have his rebounding and I got Gordon on one leg and now OKC started killing them on the boards too, which was another thing. But the turnovers, they had, I think 23 turnovers halfway through the fourth quarter. Which if you have over 20, just in a normal NBA game, that's a lot. That's like, whoa, didn't take care of the ball today. So the ball was sailing around. Yeah. Okay. So you had at halftime, they're up 14 because they have this crazy run the last three minutes. They're five for 20 from three and they're up 14 and they have eight steals. And it's like, that's it. There's no road back for Denver. What you need like Christian Brown to have like 35 points. So you need some complete or you need Russ to flip it on.

• 22:06Bill Simmons?

  And by the way, how mad do you think the Clippers were watching this series with Russ? I think Russ was like minus 86 in the series. Games five, game six, game seven. He was like, just universally atrocious. And you think like, he was one of the guys that swung that Clipper series. And then turned into, he's another one who turned into a pumpkin. But I saw, if I'm the Clippers, I'm still looking back at that round one being like, how? How did we not get past this team? Like, how? What, what, what happened? You know, but they, to Denver's credit, they were able to play 14 playoff games somehow. Just to get OKC to seven, I thought was remarkable. Cause I don't know. I just don't think that teams were close from a talent standpoint.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  I don't know who can beat an entire team when every single defender is just like, all they really care about is you. And Murray's elimination game track record is terrific. He's got two 40 point games. He's got the 50 point game in there. So you wondered, you know, you're going to get another Murray moment out of this. The fact that he played as well as he did with the illness in game six. But you know, just over the course of a series, when you're going, okay, when Jokic does this, you know, and now it's like three, four, five, you know, in this case, seven games in a row. It's like, when he does this, when he catches here, we're doing this. And then everybody's just in tune. And when you wait around on OKC and everybody starts flying around and the help is so good and they're so smart. And all this stuff starts happening. Uh, I'm with you. I can't believe that Denver played 14 playoff games.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  I think that's well said.

• 23:36Bill Simmons?

  The other thing with OKC is they have different looks, like almost like a football team. Where they can be like, ah, we're just gonna rush you conventionally. Now we're bringing in six defensive backs. Oh, now we're blitzing from this side. And you just kind of never know what to expect. So I'm sure mentally, just trying, for Jokic, he was like a supercomputer, trying to basically diagnose the problems that he can solve. And just the lineups keep changing over and over again. They're bringing, it was almost like they were like a hockey team, bringing dudes in and out the second quarter. Um, I think OKC is gonna win the title. And I'd be really surprised if they didn't. But the seeds were planted for how it wouldn't happen. Where you need a team that would just be able to go toe to toe

• 24:18Bill Simmons?

  with them and make them nervous like they were at parts of game six, like they were in that first quarter today. And you leverage their youth against them, I guess would be the recipe. But I, I just don't see anybody beating them. I think they're, I, I said this to you last week. I think, uh, I think what they do on defense is the best thing anyone's doing right now. And I don't, I don't, could there be, I'm trying to think of like, the Knicks, like those five guys, the way they played in the second half of game four, the way they played for all the game six, five guys that have not, I don't think have gotten a ton of reps together as a five, as a healthy five some. Maybe, maybe there's a ceiling there that maybe game six is a little more representative of that.

• 25:02Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Indiana, their depth and, you know, their style of play and just their pace and how comfortable they are all playing with each other. Maybe that could be something. And maybe Minnesota with, uh, with the Ant piece and then the Randall, um, just really punishing anybody who's, um, smaller than him. Maybe there's some level there, but I can't see anyone touching OKC. Can you?

• 25:27Speaker 01

  No, you're right. Like when you think about football teams, you go, which is the best unit? Um, OKC's defensive unit and the numbers would back it up. And I think the other part of it is the thing that you loved about them all regular season is this team can go one big, they can go two bigs and both bigs actually complement each other.

• 25:42Bill Simmons?

  We found out today, they don't need a big. Just Alex Caruso as a 6'4" setter.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  There's times where, you know, against Memphis, it didn't really matter. But then I remember, I think it was even in game one with Dagnall where I'm thinking like, he's coaching this game like he's down 20. Like, is he experimenting in game one for the rest of this series? And then they have that small lineup today just to kind of pour on their adaptability. And so, you know, whenever you look at the playoffs, you're like, hey, they're deep. They'll do all this stuff. It's like, yeah, you really only want to play seven games or, excuse me, seven guys and, and be who you are. That's, that's completely like removing the thing that I've liked the most about them all season long is on paper and based on watching them play all season long.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Their depth, or sometimes we can overrate the depth part of it a little bit. Like, I was still surprised when the Pacers, I'm like, they're in these playoff games and they're playing 10 guys in the first quarter. Like, that's, that's unheard of. And it's working for them. Maybe it's because of their style. And again, we'll see what happens here with the Knicks. But there's part of me, because I thought OKC was so good, had they lost this game. It's like, so do I have to just completely eliminate teams that have all this malleability with their roster? Because that is their greatest strength. And I think we saw that in this series.

• 27:04Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's like we say every spring when we're doing these, how many guys do you actually have? Right?

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:11Bill Simmons?

  I think the Knicks in that last series, they have seven guys now. Now that Robinson can give them 15 minutes a game and McBride has been, I think, a really good bench player all season. They have seven, which I think you can win the title with seven guys. Indiana has 10. We'll see if they get into a really hard series, how many people that number actually is, but it probably is eight. You know, and then maybe Obi Toppin, maybe that's nine, but you could work there. Minnesota as a team, I'm really interested to see what that number ends up being. Cause you have Nas and Gobert, you have Randall, you have Ants, there's four. Dee Fincenzo, Conley, as the playoffs go along with his age, we'll see. That's six.

• 27:56Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Alexander Walker?

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, he's definitely, I mean.

• 28:00Bill Simmons?

  So I'm at seven.

• 28:03Bill Simmons?

  And that's probably it. OKC, they might have nine or 10. I mean, I think Wallace, I, you know, I've loved him all year. I always put him in my Ringer 100 voting, even though I think he plays like 19 minutes a game. But I just think they're bringing dudes out. Isaiah Joe's not even playing for them. I really like Isaiah Joe. Wiggins, I really like. I almost feel like Wiggins is probably like, fuck, I could probably play 30 minutes for 20 teams in the league. So I guess that's what we're going to find out with, with Minnesota, because they're going to need everybody and they're going to be coming at Connolly. They're going to be, they're going to be pressuring Ant. And I, I don't think it's a great matchup for them. What do you think the line is, just out of curiosity?

• 28:48Speaker 01

  For game one?

• 28:49Bill Simmons?

  Okay, no, OKC, Minnesota as a series.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Minus 175, OKC?

• 28:57Bill Simmons?

  I'm going to say higher. I'm going to say minus 300. And the answer is, oh, minus 375.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Jesus. Well,

• 29:07Bill Simmons?

  I think Minnesota has a better chance than that, right?

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that seems

• 29:11Bill Simmons?

  With the way Randall's playing?

• 29:14Speaker 01

  The first, game one line is huge. I mean, I already looked at it because I was like, is there a game one scenario there where you go Minnesota, easy path so far, grind for OKC, having to play in Denver that whole time? And the fact that the Western Conference has the quicker turnaround than the Eastern Conference on this one is brutal. But they had to do that in case there was going to be a game seven. So it's minus seven and a half for the, for game one. I mean, to me, that screams Minnesota plus the seven and a half, feeling like you're hoping to get OKC a little hung over from this series.

• 29:46Bill Simmons?

  If I'm betting against OKC, I'm just betting the money line in a game. Because it feels like they just, they cover those bigger spreads and their defense, if they're up 10, if they're up 12, all of a sudden it's 20 before you blink. But the, I'd rather just take the, go right against them.

• 30:04Bill Simmons?

  Time for a special part of the show brought to you by Workday. Are you a forward thinker? I feel like you're a forward thinker. Then you need an HR and finance platform that thinks like you do. Workday is the AI platform that helps propel your organization, your workforce, and your entire industry into the future. Workday moving business forever forward. Watching OKC today, I felt myself get relieved yet again that they didn't end up with the seventh pick in the 2025 NBA draft because that would have sucked. Because we got really close. We had two teams jumping Philly there. And OKC could have added the seventh pick to everything we're watching right now, where they're already so deep, they have guys who are playing 10, 15 minutes less. Jalen, Jay Will, the other Jalen Williams, I don't even think he played in the first three quarters.

• 30:48Bill Simmons?

  And that guy, that guy would have played 30 minutes for the Celtics in the Knicks series.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  And the craziest thing too is you'd watch the series and you're like, here's a guy that scores three points a game. He's a complete afterthought on offense and yet his body and his strength was like a nice little like, hey, go in there and hack Jokic. Like to think that the third center that they don't even need, plays a significant role at times defensively in this series because, you know, it's a bit like the cat thing, at least last year, where you go, okay, at least we have a huge, big body type that's strong and can fight for position. Because you're just going to need some of those minutes with Jokic. So you're just not allowing him to get deep. And because every time that Jokic got checked, his just eyes lit right up. It was like, okay. And you could see Dagnall was like, I want to end up with shit.

• 31:37Bill Simmons?

  That was the one thing they didn't want.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Than the beginning of the series.

• 31:41Bill Simmons?

  How many, if you did the player by player on each team?

• 31:47Bill Simmons?

  So Jokic, let's remove Jokic, Gordon and Murray. The fourth best guy on the Nuggets was Brown.

• 31:55Bill Simmons?

  And the fifth best guy was probably Porter. Is that fair for the Nuggets?

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I, I think, I mean, even though he's disappointing, I don't, I don't, who else are you picking?

• 32:09Bill Simmons?

  It has, so it has to be him, right? So Porter with one shoulder, does he get on the court for that OKC team? Their fifth best guy, does he play a minute in that series for them?

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Well, he's not playing over Caruso. He's not playing over Wallace.

• 32:23Bill Simmons?

  Caruso, Dord or Wallace, so cross that off. Is he playing over Wiggins? I don't think so.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  So that's five, six, seven. Wiggins, Michael Porter Jr. At his peak.

• 32:33Bill Simmons?

  I'm saying the guy we just watched the last two weeks, I don't think he plays for them in that series.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't.

• 32:40Bill Simmons?

  And nobody else does either.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  I don't think Wiggins was, was all that necessarily in this series.

• 32:45Bill Simmons?

  No, but this is healthy. 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, 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 play, uh, signed memorabilia, lots more.

• 33:26Bill Simmons?

  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 where prohibited. All right, let's play, uh, let's play, do you want to talk about the two series coming up or do you want to do, what do you do?

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Whatever, man. I'm ready to go.

• 34:10Bill Simmons?

  All right, let's do what do you do first because we can talk about Denver.

• 34:14Bill Simmons?

  They have Jokic, Murray and Gordon at 124 million last year, next year. They have Porter making 38.3 next year, 40.8 the year after. And we're going to find out he has like a torn labrum or some terrible injury. They have Najee at eight, Brown at five and Sarge at 5.4 player option. Do you want to report now on Sarge 5.4? Do you want to do a breaking?

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're going to go ahead and confirm that.

• 34:42Bill Simmons?

  Okay, so he's picking it up. Okay.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Well, I just don't know who's paying him with the limited cap space.

• 34:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but they say he's picking that one up. Why that's not a one-year deal? You can ask Calvin Booth, who's no longer the GM of the Denver Nuggets. They have their own first in 26 and 28. Their 27 and 29 firsts are top five protected going to OKC. They do not have a lot of flexibility to improve the roster. They were well under the second apron this year. They had like seven, I think six, seven million to play with and just didn't get whoever. But we always talk about this every February, like, go get a buyout guy. It's like, well, who? Who are the buyout guys? There weren't really any good ones this year. But the team, the roster wasn't good enough. Westbrook has a player option that I think he probably opts into too, because that's like three and a half.

• 35:32Bill Simmons?

  So they might be stuck with him again, whether you consider it stuck or not. But it can be a tough roster to improve. And meanwhile, all these other teams in the West are getting better, which is why I led in the first segment with, you start to worry about the windows with this stuff. Because if this is the nucleus and you're just bringing this back and hoping everybody's healthier, I don't think that's going to be enough in the West. As great as Jokic is.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  I know we're, we're probably gonna fall on a lot of this of like, what do you do?

• 36:06Speaker 01

  But if Porter Jr. Has like, I sometimes I see him written about like he's this awesome trade asset.

• 36:13Bill Simmons?

  Is that?

• 36:14Speaker 01

  You're like, if he was any good, they wouldn't want to get rid of him. And the numbers are massive. I mean, it's 38 next year, 40.1 in two years.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  And he just appears to be a guy that even at his peak, um, you know, was more aware defensively, which is being nice. He rebounded a little bit more. He stretches the floor. You just wish you were more aggressive. It doesn't happen uh for him to the point where, you know, it ended up being a huge issue in that Clipper series where he got benched before he was hurt. And even Jokic was like, look, it's the playoffs. If you're not, if you're not into it now, I mean, that's his teammate saying that, which really doesn't happen very often. So if you're moving him out, you're not moving him out for some other player that's this massive upgrade in solution, because it's not like the rest of these executives aren't seeing these games and know that generally with his talent, his size and his shooting ability, he should be a better

• 37:08Speaker 01

  player. So if he's available, what are you actually getting for him?

• 37:12Bill Simmons?

  Bradley Beal? That was a joke for people not watching this.

• 37:18Bill Simmons?

  But that's you're, you're, you're shopping. You're not shopping at, at uh Whole Foods or Bristol Farms. You are, you are shopping at a pretty grossly kept grocery store when you're shopping Michael Porter around, like where you're picking up the ground beef going, ooh, this might've been here for a while. That's who you're looking at.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Like you say, Cam Johnson was available, like why would the Nets?

• 37:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they're, they're never getting, yeah. And he's on a better contract too. So I don't really know what they do. And it'll be interesting because Jokic has done a great job over the years of doing the whole, I'm just here to play basketball. I leave every summer. I don't really have any opinion on anything.

• 38:01Bill Simmons?

  He's never really come out and said, I need help. I need more. He's just not wired like that. But if he was ever going to do it any summer, I think it would be this one. They, I still feel like that Jokic, Murray Gordon as a three person foundation can compete for a title because we just saw it. And, uh, and the rest of the supporting cast has been bad all year and it failed them at the worst possible time. Uh, I don't really know the answer. I guess it's, it comes down to that Porter deal, whether you feel like, would you have to attach a pick for it? Um, could you find the right GM who really likes him as an asset and gets excited about it? I don't know. Are you looking at like, you're

• 38:41Bill Simmons?

  talking to Milwaukee and hoping maybe they talk themselves into him and it's like, all right, we'll take Kuzma back and something else and get two guys, turn them into two guys. And then where are you anyway? All right, the Celtics.

• 38:59Bill Simmons?

  So

• 39:03Bill Simmons?

  I haven't talked to you, we haven't talked on a pod since the Tatum injury.

• 39:09Bill Simmons?

  The numbers are grim next year and they were a lot less grim if it was a team that made the Eastern finals or the finals and they had cashed some playoff money this year and you felt like, uh, you know, they were headed for something special. And instead, the season abruptly ends, Tatum is out probably for next season. Who knows? Their starting five next year is $188 million. Their top nine is 205 million. That's not counting Al or Cornet, who are free agents. Total salary is going to be around 227 approximately. Second apron is 207. So they have a huge tax bill plus a repeater tax. And with Tatum's injury,

• 39:52Bill Simmons?

  I don't see any way that, uh, they don't try to get under that second apron, do you?

• 39:59Speaker 01

  I don't know which owner would go into next year going, yeah, let's just run it back. Like I, again, I still think that they were going to be pretty proactive about trying to figure out a way to save, even if they'd won the whole thing. I mean, it just was going to be tough. And so we've already covered the PR part of it of like, the first thing you do is start saving money. But it's a little different when you're spending $6 billion on a team as opposed to a few hundred million like it used to be back in the day for these teams. So

• 40:24Bill Simmons?

  True.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  The Drew contract, I think all of us probably deserve a redo on not going like, hey, he's a great guy and he's such a good leader. He's so good on defense. You're like, what are those numbers again? I mean, it's three years, 105 million for Drew Holiday.

• 40:42Bill Simmons?

  32 next year, 35, 37.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Player option.

• 40:48Bill Simmons?

  You want to report it now?

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Probably put that one up.

• 40:51Bill Simmons?

  KP is 30.7 next year and then it expires. But the thing is like, they won the title last year. That was the price of doing business. They had to take care of Holiday before the playoffs started because he didn't know if he was staying or going. They didn't want that hanging over. They had to extend Pritchard as part of, Porzingis as part of the deal. And they won the title. So, you know, when you win the title, it's, it's hard to be critical. But then when you look at these numbers, it's like, holy mackerel. I still feel like Drew would have real value for somebody because there's, it's not a good free agent market. And I think he's the type of person that you always hear younger teams want to get.

• 41:33Bill Simmons?

  Like the, you know, the veteran who's been in a lot of big spots, who's a glue guy, who doesn't care about his own stats. We need, is he, do you wish if you're trading for him that he was making 22 instead of 32? Probably. But it feels like that's one. And then KP is an expiring. I don't know. I guess we have to find out what's wrong with him and we still don't know for some reason. This is the most covered up illness, whatever that I can remember, where even like people around the team won't talk about it. I still don't know what it is.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  Porzingis has missed 65 games since he's been with Celtics. So when they made the trade and you think about the ceiling version of it, because the ceiling version of it's really good, stretches the floor, defends the rim. But this past year was a disaster. I mean, they were 18.7 points better per 100 possessions with them off the floor. So even with the 30.7 million left on this deal, I don't know why anybody trades for that. I mean, again, all of these guys are tradable, so I'm not saying they're these movable contracts. But I'm surprised that you're so bullish on the market for Drew. I would feel like with 105 million remaining for him.

• 42:36Bill Simmons?

  I'm not bullish. I wouldn't use the word bullish. I think it's doable, though.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Doable, or you have to attach something to it? I mean, that's a ton for him.

• 42:45Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if he would have to attach, but maybe I'm being naive. Because I'm trying to factor it in, there's, so there's 30 teams in the league and 10 of them every summer are like, we're one guy away from really being interesting. The problem is, there's no, there's really no free agents this year. There's nobody to like, oh, this guy, that guy. There's, you know, it's like a lot of the Bruce Brown types, right? And the price for the Bruce Brown types in the free agency are always higher than you think, right? It's like, or like Caldwell-Pope last year. You know, Caldwell-Pope got what, 22, 22 a year? You know, the problem for them is I didn't, I didn't think Drew was not good in the Knicks series.

• 43:27Bill Simmons?

  I mean, other than game five, I didn't think, I just didn't think he played well.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  He's coming off his worst year in a really long time.

• 43:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I kept thinking he was gonna turn it on for the playoffs and, and he just didn't.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  So if you're taking back a worse player with a shorter contract for a ton of money, okay, maybe. If you think you're getting an asset back that's a rotational guy for this team next year and sending out, you know, him making 37 million plus at what, 37 years old, 36 to 37, it's, that's a huge ask. Granted, it's a player option, but again.

• 43:59Bill Simmons?

  Howser's at 10, who I might be a little tradable, but yeah, I'm with you. I see it the same way as you, the whole, oh yeah, they'll trade guys and get under the second apron. I, I definitely spent a couple of hours looking at all the teams and you'd be surprised how many teams are just immediate cross-offs. Either they don't have that thing to trade back, or they wouldn't be interested in the first place. So.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Well, you know what it gets back to, right?

• 44:23Bill Simmons?

  What?

• 44:26Speaker 01

  If you were, all right, you just bought the team and you hit me up. You're like, what should I do?

• 44:32Bill Simmons?

  I would have caught you, it would have been one of my first like 10 calls. I just would have wanted your advice.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  I would say, and I hate that I'm.

• 44:41Bill Simmons?

  It would have gone right to voicemail and then I would have had a call back and you would have answered.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Far too often, all of us just say, hit the magic reset button as if there's all of these scenarios out there for these teams to get better and not realizing the teams are trying to compete and be a little bit better. But next year without Tatum is most likely a lost cause. And Jalen, as expensive as he is, he's an NBA finals MVP. And he's still young enough that I would try to flip him. And look at next year as like this gap year of getting in some kind of assets. To then reset, because you're going to have to reset it around Tatum anyway. Al's going to be gone.

• 45:23Bill Simmons?

  So you're looking at the 2020 Warriors scenario of let's just take our lumps for one year and try to be ready.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it, look, it doesn't, doesn't guarantee anything and it'd be a lot easier to say, hey, Jalen's a really good player and he'll be the number one option and it's going to be fine. And you know, who knows, get into the playoffs, you see what'll happen, but I think you're just then delaying all of these other decisions that you're going to have to make. So I would hope, if I'm a, if I'm, you know, again, the Celtics, a lot of these things are connected. If Houston were to miss out on Yanis, right? Say Yanis isn't real forceful about it. Milwaukee kind of goes to the default of like, hey, run this back. But granted, I think we'll have a Yanis conversation here anyway. At some point, you may be getting in front of something you probably have to do in 2026 anyway. And then resetting this thing around Tatum.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  And it would be really bold. It'd be probably hard to do because it's a new ownership group that doesn't have the equity of Wick and his group where Wick was explaining it. Ownership that never spared any expense that, you know, they could probably pull it off quicker than who's this new guy? And then they just traded Jalen Brown, but I'm serious. Like, I think I would try to figure out a way to get a few assets back. And, and reset the salary deck that way and then hope, you know, granted, you've got to be right around the things you're bringing back in around Tatum. And do it that way because you may be getting in front of something you have to do pretty soon and it's probably going to be a lot less options. What do you think?

• 46:52Bill Simmons?

  So I don't know who to blame for this second apron thing. Because I think the owners are just gonna try to get away. They're trying to protect themselves from themselves. They're trying not to spend too much money. And they want all these checks and balances. This is what's been the case for all professional sports forever. They want to protect themselves from themselves, from the four, five, six, seven people in the league who are like, I don't care. Like Baum or Ishbia, I don't care. I don't care what stuff costs. I'm just gonna pay, just gonna throw money around. And everybody else, so they put this infrastructure in. But the players' union, who is always run poorly and always does a bad job with this stuff. And this is the worst thing they've ever done. Because what they've created is a league where you can't keep Tatum and Brown together.

• 47:36Bill Simmons?

  And you can't keep core people together because you can't afford to do it. And if you try to keep the two together, you can't put anyone else around them. So this is just the way it is. And you're gonna have these three, four year windows and then you're gonna have to blow it up. And this is just what we have, which is not, I don't think what professional sports is about. Professional sports is about, I have these guys, I've followed them their whole careers. We drafted them or they showed up or I've watched them go through their prime and then age with them. And you know, if we're just gonna be this like transactional league now, I don't think that's good for anybody. So when I think of like the Brown trade, it probably is the one that makes the most sense on paper, but that means we're splitting

• 48:19Bill Simmons?

  up Tatum and Brown, which is something I never wanted them to do. And it might be the only move. You might be right. Because you know, like looking at Houston, if Houston was gonna say, we'll take Jalen and Drew and we'll give you Van Vliet back and Jabari and Eason and we'll give you the 10th pick and you know, you'll save like $20 million, we can make it work with our cap. And that gets you under the second apron right there and gets you a rebuild. I think they would have to think about deals like that. And then if you're Houston and you can get Jalen and Drew in the same trade and give up assets, but not touch Thompson and not touch Shangoon and you know, keep it, keep enough going. That's the type of trade, but I just, for me, it's like, trading Jalen is an all time last resort.

• 49:04Bill Simmons?

  There has to be a better option.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  What are your expectations for next year?

• 49:12Bill Simmons?

  Not good.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  So why play it out another year?

• 49:17Bill Simmons?

  Well, it becomes a question of, do you want the person to stay in the city for his entire prime? Or in this case, the two people together?

• 49:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'd be nice, but now you don't get that option for 25, 26.

• 49:30Bill Simmons?

  You don't.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  I'd add something else onto the Houston thing because I think the Giannis thing is going to be a big influence on like, how does Houston do all the legwork for some sort of Giannis deal? And then it's just pulled back.

• 49:45Bill Simmons?

  And he backs out or?

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 49:46Bill Simmons?

  Well, also like, if you're Giannis, like, I'm, I would rather kind of stay in the East if I felt like my team could be almost good enough. Right? The East is going to be awful next year. Compared to the West, like, if you're just removing Boston from the picture next year in the East and, you know, God only knows what's going to happen with Cleveland because they're way over the apron.

• 50:10Bill Simmons?

  I might rather, I might rather stay in the East than go to Houston. And be in this like juggernaut of a conference against all of these awesome teams. I don't know. Does that guarantee me anything? Plus, Giannis already won a title, which I think everybody forgets in there. I don't think he's decided anything. But he already won the title. I think he just wants to be in a good team. I don't think it's about like, I need a ring. He won a title.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  It was the most talked about thing at the Combine.

• 50:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, let's hear it. You were in Chicago for three days.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'd say like, the conversations are kind of all over the place, that it's definitely happening. That, you know, it's, or the other side of it is that he actually hasn't initiated any of this stuff.

• 50:51Bill Simmons?

  I think that's true.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  I've talked to teams that spoke with his agent where it's like, if anything were to happen, you know, we're, we're kind of like hinting in these areas of like semantics. It's like, hey, nothing's really happened, but if anything were to happen, I think the most important thing to remember is that it's probably not a free market kind of deal. Where Milwaukee's going to be telling Giannis and his agent, hey, guess what we did today? All right? Even with control for a couple of years here.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  You know, the standard usually is there's somebody at this level, we're talking about one of the three best players in the world, that he's going to have input on where he would be going. Now, if he's open to four or five different teams, then you know, this is a different transaction as opposed to guys in the past where it's like, hey, I have a year left on my deal. And if you trade me anywhere else, like, I'm not going to resign. So then that destroys the trade market. And then it's like, all right, how many swaps can we throw in this thing to make it look like it was that good of a trade?

• 51:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  And you're kind of screwed, which I think is another conversation that you would have if you're the Bucks going, okay, if Giannis is fine with it, okay. And I know I've said that in the past, like, if he told me, hey, I'm good with Milwaukee, that's all I'd need to hear. And you hope to win 48, 50 games. And, and to your point, see what's going on in the East. I mean, it's not the worst scenario. But if I'm getting the feeling like it's going to be way worse in 26, then I might just want to get this thing over with now and bring back players.

• 52:13Bill Simmons?

  Do you think he'd be like, is, is Kuzma going to be in the team next year? And they're like, he is like, okay, I'd like to revisit my options.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  You're just gonna keep scrolling right on this, on this one.

• 52:26Bill Simmons?

  And this spot check thing.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:28Bill Simmons?

  Just keep, just keep going left.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  No, keep going, keep going.

• 52:31Bill Simmons?

  There's one more year there.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Wait, that's not an option? Nope.

• 52:34Bill Simmons?

  Well, let me ask you this with Giannis, though. What if, what if he says to Milwaukee, I've decided I want to be traded. They're like, okay. But I only want to be traded Golden State. That's where I want to go. And I won you a title, and I've been an awesome Buck, and I've been here since 2013, and I represented the community in an amazing way. And all I've done is kick ass for you guys. And if you're going to trade me, I'd like to go to Golden State. So now what do you do if you're the Bucks?

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Like, well, that's really nice.

• 53:07Bill Simmons?

  It's cool.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  But we like a lot of other potential pieces more than Kaminga.

• 53:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's looking like Draymond, Kaminga, and all of their picks and a million swaps, I guess. And that's not, not a headliner.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  I would not.

• 53:22Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Pods is in there.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  There's no way I'm bringing Draymond in to be like, okay, we need more from you on offense, because now Curry's not running around you for a decade. So.

• 53:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, how about that? What Randall did to him? That ended the Defensive Player of the Year debate.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought it strengthened his case, considering everything that he had to deal with in Houston. But Randall, I mean Randall's just off the charts right now.

• 53:51Bill Simmons?

  So wait, so this leads me to Cleveland though, just talking about Giannis quickly.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 53:57Bill Simmons?

  Do you want to be the Milwaukee GM or the Cleveland GM? Uh, for this phone call.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  I'll stay in them, I'll stay with Milwaukee.

• 54:05Bill Simmons?

  Okay. I'll be the Cleveland GM, I'll be Kobe Altman.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Hey Kobe.

• 54:11Bill Simmons?

  Hey. Mobley for Giannis, straight up. What do you think? We could do the deal on July 1st. When Mobley's kicker comes in, straight up, he's six and a half years younger. Call it in right now.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Done.

• 54:27Bill Simmons?

  You're done if you're Milwaukee.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:31Bill Simmons?

  I think I'm done if I'm Cleveland too. I think I'm doing it. I think it's a great trade. And I don't even know if you had to say one side has to throw in something else. Which team would you pick to have to throw something else in? Giannis is a better player, but Mobley's six and a half years younger.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  I mean, what else would you want from Milwaukee? There's no picks, right?

• 54:55Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 54:57Bill Simmons?

  Some sort of, I guess, some swap in 2032, anything? I think it's a really fair trade.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  You know, can you send us AJ so we can do an AJ Sam Merrill backcourt?

• 55:08Bill Simmons?

  Can you sign and trade Kevin Porter Jr. and keeping him? No, I think, uh, that trade makes a lot of sense to me. And I know they love Mobley there.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Option or is he two years?

• 55:21Bill Simmons?

  So Mobley turns 24 in June.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  He has an option.

• 55:23Bill Simmons?

  And Giannis is 30, turns 31 in December. Cleveland is really screwed with, uh, no first round picks this year in 2729 and swaps with Utah. So they had no, their picks thing's done. I guess the question for Cleveland is, do you overreact? To what happened in those playoffs or do you say?

• 55:44Bill Simmons?

  Garland was hurt, Mobley missed game two. The series got away from us. We're still really good. We won 64 games. And, and if you think that Garland wasn't super important in everything we did, then you didn't watch us this season because he was, our backcourt was the single biggest, like basically OKC's defense was the best thing they had. Their backcourt was the best thing that they had and Garland wasn't Garland in that series. So that's what you would talk yourself into and their role players sucked. Struce sucked. Jerome was super disappointing.

• 56:16Bill Simmons?

  That's where you would say, let's give this one more year. Counter would be you could have a team that has Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland and Giannis on it in a weakened East. And I think you're immediately the favorites in the East.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, the only reason I'd be so quick on the Milwaukee side is that I'm, I'm emphasizing, I'd rather do something now if I get the hint that it's like, okay, we're fine for now, but I'm going to have to do this all over again next year with another year of, of miles on Giannis. There's probably another just little nagging injury that'll happen. I mean, this guy is on an all time tear. He was great again this year. I don't have a negative thing to say about him. I mean, hell, the fact that he addressed the Halliburton's dad thing, the way that he did, where he composed himself, thought about what he was going to say and gave you this incredibly like heartfelt answer. You know, he just, I'm such a huge fan of this guy, not only because of stuff like that,

• 57:15Speaker 01

  but knowing that when he takes the floor, he wants to kill everybody out there. And I want to see him get another run. So I realized like, I'm losing the trade on talent out for talent in and wondering, okay, like even the best version of Mobley, it's likely he's not going to be finishing top five in the MVP race like five years in a row. And I think Giannis, he's going to be what, like seven years in a row, top four, something like that. So we all love him. We all think he's fantastic, but it would be, okay, comparing Mobley to the rest of the potential, like make believe stuff that we're doing here. It's better than maybe even a men Thompson. It's better than the number two pick or the number three pick. I mean, some of the stuff that I've read in the days removed from the combine of like Houston, if they were going to do something and San Antonio was going to do something and like

• 57:59Speaker 01

  what they wouldn't trade. It's like, look, Castle had a nice year, but Giannis, like, give me a fucking break. You're, you're going to have to trade Castle. But Houston has these pieces where it's like, dude. They're not doing it for Cam Whitmore. You don't get to keep everybody.

• 58:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  You're gonna have to like Jabari or Jalen or Shingoo, like one of the three has to go and then you're figuring out the rest of the part. And if it's Jalen.

• 58:22Bill Simmons?

  Maybe even two of the three for that.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, right. Cause like, oh, no, I'm in no Tari, no Reed Shepard, no Shingoon. Don't give up on Jalen yet.

• 58:31Bill Simmons?

  We with the Milwaukee, we I just have to mention this, even though we talk about every time we talk about this, they don't have any of their picks. So it makes no sense for them to do a dump trade, which is why the mobile thing was so interesting to me that they could bring back somebody that would keep them competitive and somebody they could build around and then hope, oh, when Dame comes back, maybe we'll be pretty good and maybe we'll have cap space in two years. Like there's light at the end of the tunnel where right now they don't have any. And I think it gets, when you don't have your own picks, it just gets so complicated with the rebuild because it's not really rebuild. You don't have your picks. Brooklyn's in that spot too. And they made that crazy trade with Houston last year to get their picks back so they could feel better about basically tanking, which is what the league is now. And the league rewards that.

• 59:15Bill Simmons?

  And this goes back to the second apron discussion. The league rewards that over actually shrewdly building a smart team and do and putting your roster together the right way and winning trades and drafting. Now it's like, you know, you should actually do is just throw away four seasons in a row, accumulate a lot of picks, take some of those picks and keep trading and get more picks down the road. So you have this never ending fountain of picks and then eventually hopefully you strike oil with a couple and you can have a contender. And then you could thwart the second apron that way, which is basically what Utah's trying to Utah's basically emulating what OKC did, right? Houston's emulating it to some degree. But that's, I guess, what the league would rather see people do.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I also think there's like a conversation in there about, you know, was there so much freedom of movement and so many players dictating things that they put enough restrictions in there? It was like, okay, you can be as mad as you want. You can want to go there, but now I legally can't even do the thing that you want to do. Now, granted, it's about, to your point, giving yourself a credit limit on a card that even though you could afford a higher credit limit, you're like, I need to figure out a way to curtail this because it's not, it's not just, you know, sometimes we lose sight of this. It's not, oh, well, they're keeping spending down across the board. It's like, no, that comes down to the negotiated split on the basketball revenue. So whatever the basketball revenue is and whatever the split is that's agreed upon, like that money's going to the players. So the lower, the lower apron or, you know, granted, the cap's going up every time, but whatever the money is,

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  it, it only hurts the players in those off seasons. It's going to hurt them individually, but collectively, these guys are still making what's agreed to with all this stuff. So.

• 1:00:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, like Mitchell was a good example last year. We talked about that last summer that he kind of ran out of options and it actually made the most sense for him to stay with Cleveland, which I think is part of what they were designing the CBA around to kind of nudge people to staying where they are. But ironically, now you have this new issue where the Celtics, you might be right. They might have to trade Jalen Brown just to right the ship financially for a year during this tragic Tatum injury. And then, so now you have a different problem. You still have the problem of stars not staying where their cities are, you know, which is why the SGA thing, I think the SGA thing is what people, I personally think that's what people want to root for. I think they want to root for Edwards staying in Minnesota and staying there for a while and starting to win titles.

• 1:01:39Bill Simmons?

  They want to, they want to root for Curry at age 37, trying to win one last time in Golden State. Everything Kobe did for, you know, two decades in LA, that's what people care about. That's what they respond to. And we're unfortunately going to start moving away from it, it feels like.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  But if it means more parity and if we're seeing the first postseason of, of something that becomes more of the norm, which I'm not ready to say. I mean, this could be a.

• 1:02:06Bill Simmons?

  It might be. It's, well, it's definitely, this season's definitely something. I don't know if it's a new thing going forward, but it's definitely some sort of era ended and some sort of new era is here. And I don't know how to really put my hands around it yet.

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not ready to make any definitive statement about what we have playoff teams. But if it is, if there is more parity and it's not just three guys teaming up and going somewhere, whether it's through free agency or demanding trades and the next mad guy going, I'm mad, I want out and I'm only going there and we just all accepted it. And was that better?

• 1:02:43Bill Simmons?

  No, the good thing is that era is over. Well, that was the longest segment we've ever done. You can learn more about Workday at workday.com. We're going to take a break and come back because I want to talk about Golden State as well, but we're staying on YouTube. 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. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Excitement is in the air. That's right. It's the start of NBA season.

• 1:03:28Bill Simmons?

  I can't wait to get together with friends, share some Michelob Ultras and watch Tipoff. 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 residents 21 plus 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. All right, quick break. This episode is brought to you by Fire TV. You ever sit down ready to watch the game only to search and scroll endlessly? If so, you need Fire TV.

• 1:04:12Bill Simmons?

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

• 1:04:27Bill Simmons?

  Okay, Golden State. Golden State's probably in the worst shape out of the four, the four what did you do teams that just got eliminated because um they have all their firsts. Basically Miami has their first this year, but they have 26, 28, 29, and 31. And they basically have 32, they made this weird trade with Washington where they get the pick if it's one through 20 and Washington gets it if it's 20 through 30. So they basically have it. Draymond's got two years left. Curry and Butler have two years left. They're basically locked into that core for 140 million. And Peyton and Luna are UFAs and then Kaminga is the sign and trade piece. I personally think somebody's going to trade, sign and trade for Kaminga would be my guess

• 1:05:12Bill Simmons?

  because I think it's limited for agents and I think there's enough there to fool you into thinking he's a 15 to 20 million dollar guy. Some GM will be fooled. I'm dubious of it, but what do you think?

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right. The free agent list is so bad and that's why it's so funny. It's like, well, there's not that much cap space.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  It's like, okay, but is there not that much cap space and guys aren't going to get paid? Or a couple of guys going to get paid a ton more than we thought because there's no one to pay. So if I'm the Nets, I'm probably not looking to get into the Kaminga business at a huge number because it's probably pretty stupid. I think the best version of Kaminga, unless you know, everything clicks and he totally figures it out, it's probably like, all right, you run out there with a bad team and score your 20 points a game. Like this dawned on me during some of the Jalen Green struggles and Kaminga playing really well, where I'd said in my pod, I was like, is Kaminga Jalen Green with less opportunity? Which is, seems like it's, it's kind of insulting to a Jalen Green. I'm not even sure that I'm.

• 1:06:10Bill Simmons?

  Two guys that should end up on Charlotte?

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:12Bill Simmons?

  Just putting up stats?

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  The thought popped in my head and I actually think that's unfair to Jalen Green. So I'm, I'm not, that's not my conclusion. It just, hey, I'm sharing some thoughts every now and then. What like the non taxpayer mid levels 14 million? I mean, is there a non tax team that goes, hey, this is actually a pretty decent acquisition?

• 1:06:30Bill Simmons?

  Did you look at these numbers where there's three teams that have cap space? Brooklyn is 58 million. Detroit's got 24.6, it might be able to get a little more. Memphis has 6.9, but could also potentially get a little more.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  And the Detroit one, I think is going to be different depending on the Cade stuff too. So I think that could be.

• 1:06:45Bill Simmons?

  Right, if he gets all NBA.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  Right, I think it goes to 19, but.

• 1:06:48Bill Simmons?

  Full non taxpayer mid level is San Antonio, Sacramento, Charlotte, Washington, Utah, and Atlanta.

• 1:06:55Bill Simmons?

  A couple of those teams feel a little coming to me.

• 1:06:59Bill Simmons?

  And then taxpayer mid level, but not full that that list has like 10 teams on it.

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's only like five and a half million. The crazy thing is when you see the guy who's like seventh or eighth on a team and he immediately gets the two year like two year tax mid level and he's just like, I don't, I'm like, I'm afraid. I'm afraid to wait this thing out. So I'll just take that right now.

• 1:07:21Bill Simmons?

  You know what they call that? The Austin Reeves.

• 1:07:25Bill Simmons?

  That, yeah, but one day when he's like, how much? Okay.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they weren't, look, the, their agents. I mean, look, I know those guys, so I'm a little biased. They knew what was going to be out there and what wasn't going to be out there for Austin. So it's not like they jumped on something without all the information they needed.

• 1:07:42Bill Simmons?

  Fair. Uh, I don't know what Golden State does, and I don't know what makes them think a year from now, a team that got solely injured as the season went along and limped to the finish would somehow be super healthy next year. But.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  It was fun. It was more fun, right? It was, hey, this could happen.

• 1:08:04Bill Simmons?

  It was fun right until the fourth quarter of game three against Minnesota.

• 1:08:09Bill Simmons?

  That was when the fun stopped. When it seemed like they were going to go up 2-1 against Minnesota and at least buy enough time for Curry to come back for game six and then Minnesota finished them off and, uh, Randall, the Randall Renaissance. Did you keep any Randall stock? Did you ever have Randall stock?

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  No, I didn't. I mean, I think I had it for the draft. I liked him better than Marcus Smart.

• 1:08:29Bill Simmons?

  Did you really?

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did.

• 1:08:31Bill Simmons?

  Interesting.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  I liked his playmaking. I liked the size and there were times where I thought I was right. I mean, you want to talk about, this is like you and I revisiting the Pelicans Lakers Anthony Davis trade again, which you should probably do next week.

• 1:08:44Bill Simmons?

  I have it scheduled.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  The number of times that you could have argued smart against Randall and then it's like, it was this late to be able to argue like, yeah, I actually.

• 1:08:55Bill Simmons?

  You're right. That argument flipped again.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  Like, that would be an incredible segment, maybe not a great segment, maybe a real slow.

• 1:09:03Bill Simmons?

  No, you and I would enjoy it.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'd like it, but just trying to figure out like, what are the longest possible?

• 1:09:09Bill Simmons?

  Are you like drafting one guy or the other guy? How many times it flipped back and forth?

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, could you get to year 14 where you're like, I'm still not sure?

• 1:09:20Bill Simmons?

  Shot Marion versus Andre Miller. Had a couple twists and turns.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. I mean, then, once, you know, Dantoni got there with Marion, you're like, all right, he's hitting threes and everything else.

• 1:09:32Bill Simmons?

  I have a couple of fake Celtics trades for you.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  I want to stay on the Warriors thing though, because I think there's a little bit of a lesson in this, in that

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  the things you're battling and how tough the moment is versus all the decisions later on, because I would have not wanted to get into the Jimmy Butler business, okay? And then Dunleavy basically is like, what are we doing? We're not doing anything. We got off to this great start. We're terrible. And now it's everybody chasing Steph around and he has to take all these other shots because we don't trust, like, no one cares about any of the other four guys that are out there offensively. And everything's on Steph. And so if we we're not really moving out anything of significance.

• 1:10:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  What are we actually disrupting? And then they get a tack on the extra massive year for Butler. Okay, because like that becomes part of it, but you know, the beginning of the 25 calendar year, nobody cares about any of that stuff. And it looks like, how could you have questioned this? Butler has his joy back and all these different things. And, you know, the playoffs are disappointing.

• 1:10:38Bill Simmons?

  Also, Minnesota might be really good.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:40Bill Simmons?

  That's the other piece. And they lost their best guy one game in.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  But there's, you know, I know Jimmy in the game where he took nine shots after the fact, like, hey, he was sick. I mean, this, by the way, this playoff season is unbelievable with the health and illness updates that we get from every team as soon as they're eliminated. We're like, our trainer had a cold, our, the pilot has, has eczema. You know, it was tough. It was tough for us at the end. So you, you look at all of this Butler stuff and it's this huge celebration. And then it's almost like, how could you have not wanted Jimmy Butler? And he's so smart and he's doing all these different things. And then you're watching like, take the first quarter off of playoff games. And then Steph is out and you're like, hey, dude, just shoot. Because, I mean, another Pajemski off the dribble stuff isn't working. Draymond offensively.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  I mean, if you, you know, I know he hit four threes in that game. Thanks. But then you're like, all right, now we're kind of stuck and we're paying those three guys 140 million. And like, what's Jimmy going to be like with an expiring contract?

• 1:11:39Bill Simmons?

  He was healthy.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Jimmy?

• 1:11:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because I'm not, I'm not positive he was healthy in that Minnesota series.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  He looked.

• 1:11:46Bill Simmons?

  That injury, he got fucked him up and I think they could, you know, I, I think these guys get shot up with a whole bunch of stuff so they can play. Like God only knows what Aaron Gordon had put in his body today so he could limp around for two hours. But um, I don't know if that was like a five day injury Jimmy had. I'm not, by the way, I'm not making excuses for Jimmy.

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  He looked exhausted.

• 1:12:08Bill Simmons?

  I don't, he just didn't look right to me in round two. I didn't, I did not feel like that was like a vintage Jimmy performance.

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  Well, cause it was.

• 1:12:15Bill Simmons?

  Well, you know what I mean.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Ready, is there anything for Draymond Green at 34 years old? At 26 and a player option for 27 and a half? Is there anywhere? Yeah. I mean, is there anything that works there where you go? Hey, it's been a great run, but we need to figure out something else. We need more offense in today's game.

• 1:12:39Bill Simmons?

  It's interesting because we, it feels like we've had this conversation now for three straight years. If it's a younger team on the rise that needs like their version of the veteran guy who's been in some wars? Maybe, but I, I just don't know what you're getting back. It's not like you're saving money. You're going to have to take somebody else's contract back. Right?

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  I'm not talking about it as a salary dump. I'm just wondering if there's a specific value that he brings. Well, you'd already have to have your offense pretty established because he can't go to another team. And you're like, hey, we want you to shoot more. Because the offensive stuff with him now is like a major problem for them in the playoffs.

• 1:13:17Bill Simmons?

  Could it be the Lakers?

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  Are you doing a Reeves deal?

• 1:13:21Bill Simmons?

  No, I, I, I was thinking like a Rui and something else. But I said, I don't think the Warriors are trading Draymond unless it's like this unbelievable deal for them, which I don't think they're getting. Reeves is getting traded. That one I would bet on. I wouldn't bet my life on it, but I would bet on it. I think they're going to turn him into something. I don't, it's just the logical thing because he's, it's the same situation the Knicks were in with Hartenstein last year where it's like he, he's just going to be able to get more money outside the team than he will with the team. And he's not going to stay for less money again. So they have to trade him this summer. And by the way, I, I think it makes sense to trade him. I don't think it makes sense to have, if you're keeping LeBron for this year, next year, and you have Luca and you have Reeves, we've already seen it. You're not going to be able to win four rounds with that as your top three.

• 1:14:06Bill Simmons?

  They need to turn him into a center.

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, but can't he just turn down the extension now and then sign for more with them if they wanted to keep him later on?

• 1:14:13Bill Simmons?

  There's, I thought, maybe I'm wrong, but I thought there was something with the, it was a little hard, like for what?

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  It was the raise.

• 1:14:21Bill Simmons?

  The extension that he got, I think he can only get a certain level of raise unless they're like way under the cap. So I think that's the issue. But I think they're gonna trade him.

• 1:14:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, they can, I'm pretty sure they can wait. You're right, because it's like the max, like the percentage off of the last year of the previous contract because it was lower. I think that the extension puts him way below market again. But I think what they were waiting, if, which he was obviously going to do, I think there's, they could actually then sign him later on. So I don't, look, let me throw two at you though, because.

• 1:14:57Bill Simmons?

  For Warriors?

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  No, just in general.

• 1:14:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  Would you do Tatum for Giannis?

• 1:15:04Bill Simmons?

  Wouldn't, I don't think Tatum's on the, on the table.

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  Is there?

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  Do you think if Nico hadn't traded Luca, he trades the number one pick for Giannis?

• 1:15:25Bill Simmons?

  I don't. I think from all indications, they're like, holy shit, we got Cooper flagged. Like if we're doing trade value list, it feels like he's already in the top like seven. Cause of his age and the rookie contract and how impactful he's gonna be right away, right?

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  He's 19 in December.

• 1:15:45Bill Simmons?

  It's like, how can you possibly, that, the list is so short of people I would even like entertain a phone call with him. And he's gonna be so good right away in all these different ways. The Giannis, I, I do have some fear with Giannis if I'm trading for him. I'm not getting Giannis in his mid twenties. I'm getting a guy who's 31, who has been in some long seasons, who's already had some wear and tear. And who plays a really physical style of a game. You know, I, I just don't, I would just rather have the young guy in the rookie contract and take the ride with that. You, do you disagree?

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  No, that's the right answer, but I.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  You know, there was all sorts of stuff where I know K O C had mentioned that the Celtics talked with Cooper Flag. And by the way.

• 1:16:28Bill Simmons?

  Oh, at the combine.

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they have.

• 1:16:30Bill Simmons?

  Five years from now when he turns down his rookie extension and just comes the Celts.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  Be the first.

• 1:16:36Bill Simmons?

  I'm counting on you, Kelly Flag. Kelly Flag. She's got our backs.

• 1:16:41Bill Simmons?

  2030 Celtics. Come on, Kelly Flag.

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  It sounded like a newsworthy item, but and and K O C mentioned it. So it wasn't as if he was reporting it as this like, oh, my God, can you believe this? Like, once you understand how it works, like they're like, yeah, we'll do the interview with him. We'll do the interview with the top guy. And by the way, front offices, there's nothing they love more than doing stuff where they think they're collecting information, even if it's incredibly unlikely. All of these rookies are going to interview. They're never even going to have on their team. But I thought some of the Cooper stuff of like the hypotheticals and then realizing like, even if Nico and ownership were like, this actually makes a ton of sense. It makes a ton of sense for our window. Why would we do this? Like, why would we try to have two timelines, which seems like it never ever works out, except for maybe the Spurs?

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  But they just obviously couldn't do something like that months after they did what they did with Luca. But the longer term part of it, which is a lot like the Lakers side of it, which again, you're not going to say no to getting Luca for anybody. But it's like, even if this screws up the 25 part of it, which again, I don't know what Anthony Davis, how different it would have been. I'm not going to guess that he's healthy with them, hurt with anybody else, but Cooper gives you the post A D. Like you know what you can be and build around. So it's extending like it's not necessarily a championship window. But it's like, hey, if Kyrie's this or A D is this and all these things like we now have a new thing though, that we already have in place.

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  That if he's as good as everybody thinks he can be, the hardest thing to get in the league, which is again, why the Lakers? That's the discussion around the Lakers in 25. It's like, all right, whatever even happens here, but you know, for the next five years or longer with Luca, like we have the first thing, which is the hardest thing to find because without it, there's no point.

• 1:18:30Bill Simmons?

  Bigger question, why wouldn't you trade Davis? As weird as that would be to consider he was the focal point of the Luca trade. But wouldn't it make more sense to trade Davis and try to build a team that has a different timeline?

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  Is there a Davis Lakers trade that makes sense?

• 1:18:52Bill Simmons?

  Not that I

• 1:18:54Bill Simmons?

  we'd have to be flipping it back.

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  If Reeves turned into

• 1:18:59Bill Simmons?

  Reeves.

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  Like if Reeves turned into like, I don't know, I'm trying to think, you know, it's not Paolo, but like that level or Scotty Barnes two years ago. When it seems like his, his value has taken a massive hit, which I'm pushing against here. That's my position right now on this.

• 1:19:16Bill Simmons?

  But what if San Antonio said second pick and Vassell? Well, I don't even think they would do this, by the way. I'm just, I'm just using as hypothetical, like range of what AD might be worth. If San Antonio is like, you know what? We feel like Wemby is ready right now. We'll do the second pick in Vassell right now for AD.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:19:38Bill Simmons?

  I wonder if Dallas would even consider that.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  I don't think they would. I think for everything Nico Sopac committed to the AD thing working out. I don't think they're going to do an injury sample.

• 1:19:49Bill Simmons?

  What if Booker was on the table?

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  Then you have to do it.

• 1:19:54Bill Simmons?

  You have to if you're Dallas.

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. But why would Phoenix do it?

• 1:20:03Bill Simmons?

  Durant, Beal and AD? And it's Matt Ishbia who's already done nine things we disagreed with? I don't know.

• 1:20:12Bill Simmons?

  Would, so you think Dallas would have to throw in more in that?

• 1:20:16Bill Simmons?

  Be AD plus for Booker?

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Booker doesn't. Well, I shouldn't say Booker doesn't get hurt because he, he's had some, some time.

• 1:20:27Bill Simmons?

  I would say Booker's value is not as high as it used to be.

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  I think that's a mistake.

• 1:20:33Bill Simmons?

  Uh, he's born in 1996, so that makes him 28 years old, 29 in October. So he's, I think, three years younger than Davis.

• 1:20:43Bill Simmons?

  What if there was a?

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  Wait, you think Phoenix would have to?

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  Well, who do you value more right now, AD or Booker?

• 1:20:53Bill Simmons?

  I'm a bad person.

• 1:20:54Speaker 01

  Think about this?

• 1:20:54Bill Simmons?

  I'm a bad person to ask because I don't, I'm not convinced AD can stay on a basketball court.

• 1:21:01Bill Simmons?

  I do have to think about it.

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  So that's your answer.

• 1:21:03Bill Simmons?

  I was really unimpressed by Booker the last two years. I don't understand why it wasn't more of his fault that his team went to hell in a handbasket and couldn't even make the playoffs. And he was somehow absolved from this. When we both thought he was like a really special player who should be in the shortlist of franchise guys.

• 1:21:22Bill Simmons?

  I don't understand why they were so bad.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  I can't believe you just said, I'm not the person to ask. This is you. This is your entire life's work. I'm not the person to ask about.

• 1:21:30Bill Simmons?

  I'm talking about, I'm not the person to ask with AD because I default toward not thinking he's going to be on a basketball court. But I don't know if I'm in the minority or not in that.

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:21:38Bill Simmons?

  That was one of the things I thought was so crazy with Dallas. Like, I just don't trust that he's going to play nine months of basketball in a season.

• 1:21:46Bill Simmons?

  You know? Especially they trade for him and he got hurt again. What if it was?

• 1:21:52Bill Simmons?

  What if it was, uh? Where's the other one? What if there was something with Brooklyn? Where Brooklyn traded for Davis and Cam Johnson, the eighth pick in the draft and more first.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  Little Nick Claxton action?

• 1:22:07Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Nick Claxton, like? I don't know. My point is I couldn't figure out the AD trade, even though I think it probably makes sense for them to trade AD. But maybe they can decide it in February. I don't understand the team they have now. I guess they'd have to play flag at small forward, but if I'm Dallas, all I care about is flag. That's my number one, number two, and number three priorities is how can I put this guy in this position to succeed for the next five years? And I'm not positive him playing small forward is how, how he's succeeding. But they have these two centers and they have Davis. So then plan B, I guess, would be to trade at least one of the centers. And maybe you could just have lively Davis and flag and those are your three guys. And you split up the 96 minutes with those three guys and you feel like Davis can get hurt sometimes anyway.

• 1:22:52Bill Simmons?

  But they probably have to trade Gafford. That might be the move. That's probably the easiest solve.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  I'm sure they're going to have to trade one of the centers.

• 1:23:00Bill Simmons?

  Right. If I'm them, I want to keep flag and lively.

• 1:23:05Bill Simmons?

  Cause now, short term and long term, that's where I'm in business with those guys.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, but lively is a little different player when it's not Luca.

• 1:23:12Bill Simmons?

  True. True. But maybe he'd have value for the right thing. Anyway, I think it'd be hard to trade AD. I have another draft trade for you. What if Philly didn't want to stay at three? And what if they wanted to move back a couple of spots? And what if they called New Orleans and said, we'll give you three and Oubre is expiring for seven and Herb Jones? Call it in right now.

• 1:23:38Bill Simmons?

  Philly moves back four spots to get Herb Jones.

• 1:23:42Bill Simmons?

  New Orleans moves into that top four that I think all of us really like. And I would include Ace Bailey in the top four personally.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  Man, I love myself some Herb Jones.

• 1:23:55Bill Simmons?

  I figured you would. Feels like a Daryl-y trade, right? Still loves, he ends up with like Knipple at seven and Herb Jones and that's what they turned the third pick into?

• 1:24:07Bill Simmons?

  It's pretty interesting.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, because Vissini was really good on this, as he always is, from the Athletic on the draft stuff. And he was talking about how, you know, Philly, because of Daryl, you'd expect, you know, big into the models. But not, I don't know that any team would go, hey, this is what our model says and now this is all we're doing. But that Bailey on Sunday on the Knicks stuff is just not.

• 1:24:31Bill Simmons?

  Not a Daryl guy. I've been trying to tell people that. He's, Edge Combe, I think, is more in the Daryl vicinity.

• 1:24:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, but then you think, okay, they have Maxie McCain. I feel like Edge Combe with his, his just motor and the way he attacks the rim. Like, there's just another level of like, hey, some guys get to the rim. Like, I look at the NBA and go, okay, whenever we say it's really hard to stay in front of this guy. Well, the way defenses are so sophisticated now and everybody kind of understands like game in and game out. Like, this is the plan against somebody who's really aggressive and dynamic off the ball. You can clog them up. I mean, look what Denver did with a zone against SGA, who's one of the best drivers in the entire league. All right, so having said all of that, then there's Ant. Okay. And then there's Ant. And in college, somebody can be really good and special athletic.

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  You're like, all right, but can this guy consistently just get to the rim? You know, that's really hard to do when a team is ready for it. And Edgecombe felt like he consistently was just in this other gear in comparison to other guys that are, you know, playing college basketball. So does that translate over to the NBA and everything? So, you know, it'd be interesting if there's no deal there for Philly. If they go, it doesn't make a lot of sense because of who we've invested in and nailing the McCain pick last year to throw another small player in like this.

• 1:25:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but I'm not, I'm not letting McCain change who the right player is for my third pick. I like McCain. I don't, yeah, I, I really, I know, I really like him, but like, okay, so we, like Indiana has multiple really good guards. Like, it's not like, oh, we have too many good guards. Like, that feels like a good problem to have for me. I feel like two and three, and I know you talked to way more people than I did this week because that's the combine is it's the Super Bowl for that. I feel like two, three and four are wide open. I don't, I'm not convinced San Antonio is taking Harper second. I'm not. And I would say Harper feels like, they think outside the box more than anybody, though.

• 1:26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:27Bill Simmons?

  Where they're just like, hey, we like this guy. We don't care what the mock drafts say. We like this guy the most. We're taking him second. I, well, is Harper the most likely guy to go there? Probably. But I just think like, if anyone's just, they're like Danny. Like, I don't, I would never trust Danny with a mock draft versus if he just likes somebody, he's just gonna take the guy. You know, they might, they might say, whoa, Trey Johnson, this guy, we love this guy. We're just taking him here too. I have no idea.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's a good reminder with San Antonio and the Danny thing's right because of the Tatum year where it just was like, how could you not take Fultz? And I just love that Danny was like, I don't, I don't see it, you know, and you've got to have some stones. You have to have like years of, of everybody just accepting you to go ahead and do some of that stuff because I think the mocks screw.

• 1:27:12Bill Simmons?

  Durant, I mean, Durant was even bigger because he didn't even have the resume at that point to fall back on and they would have taken Durant first.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. He had, that would have been the year. Well, again, that was the year they ended up winning the title, but um, the reason they were able to do everything they did is because they didn't win the lottery or didn't get one of the two first two picks. So the funny thing is, is that all of that probably would have been delayed. And maybe they don't do the Ray Allen. Well, they wouldn't have done the Ray Allen deal because that was a Jeff Green pick. And then maybe that, you know, likely means they're not giving.

• 1:27:39Bill Simmons?

  No, them falling to five led to the title.

• 1:27:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right. You're right. So um, I would say other teams though certainly think it's Harper two. So maybe you're right about San Antonio thinking outside of the box. I'd say consensus is Harper's two in this draft. But I like the Herb Jones thing. I know when the you put these trades together and we sit here and we were like, all right, and then we just end up talking about it for five minutes. We're like, yeah, that's not going to happen, or that doesn't make any sense. Philly probably doesn't want to wait on another guy. I mean, if somebody's special and they do all the evaluation, it's like, hey, this is still the best value. We'll sit there at three. But Herb Jones healthy again, gives you stuff that very few wing defenders gives you.

• 1:28:20Bill Simmons?

  There's one more trade back for them. Brooklyn is at, they're at eight with the Cam Johnson pick. With Cam Johnson and eight. And that might be too much to flip with Philly. But if I'm Brooklyn and I can get in the top three, I'm trying to do it. You know, and that's the other one. I just feel like Philly with the, talk about windows. I don't know what their, their window with Embiid might already be shattered and there might be wooden glass everywhere, but they don't have time to wait on some 19 year old kid with Embiid. I don't think. So they're, they're basically, and George, who's going to be 35 years old, but thank God he's podcasting again. Um, they need to move fast on turning this pick

• 1:29:04Bill Simmons?

  into people who can help them next year if they're actually trying to get 10. Plus the East, like we talked about earlier with Giannis leaving, the East potentially and Tatum being out, like the window's now. So, you know, if they get Cam Johnson in the eight for the three, I would do it. Unless I felt like one of those guy, like, I'm kind of with, and I haven't done all my work yet. You're way ahead of me in the draft stuff, but I'm with you on Edge Com like that. His, the clips of him are unbelievable. It's like everything you want in the NBA now is a guy who can, is that athletic and can go to the basket like that.

• 1:29:38Bill Simmons?

  So I would have a hard time not taking him.

• 1:29:42Speaker 01

  And that may be what they're stuck with, but I think your approach and your strategy, if you're going back into it and be like, all right, the whole thing this offseason is health, be ready to go, limit the minutes for these guys, see what you have in what feels like a more open East with the Tatum injury, with Milwaukee likely kind of stuck a little bit. Maybe the Knicks and the Pacers are the favorites to win the East going into next year because everybody's going to be so pissed off about Cleveland. Although the odds are they're going to be the odds on favorite, at least to be the one seed in the East if everything stays status quo, but we know that's not going to happen. But even if they want to do all those things, and if you start looking at going, okay, is this a veteran that actually helps us or is it just a veteran?

• 1:30:26Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:30:27Speaker 01

  Because they're like, you know, I don't know if John Collins, like, yeah, this makes sense. Same timeline.

• 1:30:34Bill Simmons?

  Speaking of John Collins, we got to take one more break for the podcast. We'll keep going on YouTube. This episode is brought to by WeatherTech. Whether it's a pumpkin spice coffee that goes splat in your seat or a weekend tailgate that leaves your trunk full of gear and who knows what, you're going to want WeatherTech in your vehicle, whether you call it fall, autumn, or spooky season. Whether the mess is your fault, the kids, the dogs, or the weather's fault, you're going to want WeatherTech for American-made floor liners and a cargo liner that laugh in the face of fall weather. Visit weathertech.com today. This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun? Sometimes earlier than expected, sometimes after blowing a 3-1 series lead, but what if you went to Cancun? With Expedia, save up to 30% when you bundle and save. You can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all

• 1:31:18Bill Simmons?

  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. John Collins was in one of my get the Celtics under the second apron trades. Yeah, weren't expecting that, were you? Porzingis for John Collins just saves the Celtics 4.1 million. In Utah, I thought they were getting Porzingis a couple of years ago, and then he had a chance to go to Boston, and he did that instead. So they've always liked him.

• 1:31:54Bill Simmons?

  It's interesting. There's 4 million. Hauser to Detroit, just trading him there? That would save another 10.

• 1:32:04Bill Simmons?

  Holiday to Memphis for Conchar and Pippen?

• 1:32:08Speaker 01

  They're not going to give you Pippen. I think Pippen's good.

• 1:32:12Bill Simmons?

  All right. I was trying to steal him. Holiday to Memphis for Conchar? Maybe in that, maybe it's just, maybe that's a trade.

• 1:32:20Speaker 01

  How long would you wait after they said no to Conchar or Pippen before you called back and asked for just Conchar? You'd have to give it a few days, right?

• 1:32:27Bill Simmons?

  I'd call a second time for Pippen. No, I'd keep, I'd keep trying for Pippen first. I love Pippen. Holiday to Detroit for Fontecchio. I thought was the most interesting because that actually makes sense to me for Detroit. That's the exact type of guy they need for the team they have with Ivy coming back. In that Schroder spot with all the other stuff they're probably going to want to do in the East. And the fact that they're not going to be able to sign a free agent and I don't know. Maybe that's one too. That would save the Celtics 24 million. I feel bad trying to trade Drew Holiday because I love Drew Holiday. But if the assignment is you have to shave 20 million, he's the most logical candidate.

• 1:33:06Speaker 01

  But if you're Detroit, I mean, they're going to see the same thing that we've been talking about here being like, how much does he cost in that last year? Three years from now, 37 million. At that point, Cade's making his massive contract, which is the highest version of it because of the escalator. You've got to, at that point, figure out what you're paying Ivy, Durin and Sar. So that's, that feels like one of those deals. And now maybe they go, hey, but at that point Tobias is expiring, which I would imagine.

• 1:33:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Holland, I'm assuming that they think Holland's going to grab some of those minutes. The thing with Memphis is just, I think some of these smaller market teams do not lure free agents. As we've seen for the last four decades and the best way for them to add and impact veteran is to trade for one that's under contract. And that's a possibility for them. But anyway, it's a, it's a tall task.

• 1:34:00Bill Simmons?

  Can I give you my list of we should have won the title Celtics seasons? My top four? Do you think, do you think 25 is on the list? I'm just giving you a top four. You think 25 made the list?

• 1:34:15Speaker 01

  No, because you're going to put nine and 10 in there. So I don't think 25 is on the list.

• 1:34:20Bill Simmons?

  It's not on the list. And I'll tell you this.

• 1:34:24Bill Simmons?

  Game four was they lost before Tatum went down. They were down nine. Or I guess Tatum went down as the steal layup. They were down 3-1 in the series and let's say Tatum never gets hurt. I still don't know if they, I don't think they win three in a row without Porzingis. Do you? Think they could have won three in a row without Porzingis? Or, or the ghost of Porzingis or zombie Porzingis, whatever version of Porzingis that was.

• 1:34:50Speaker 01

  He was terrible. I mean, I know.

• 1:34:51Bill Simmons?

  It's a lot to ask, man. I don't think they could have done it.

• 1:34:55Bill Simmons?

  They blew the series in those first two games is where I've kind of landed on a Sunday after the series.

• 1:35:01Speaker 01

  Game one, fine. I can't believe they did it again in game two. And Tatum going down to say, well, that, that game was, we'd already seen it two other times. So sure, they're like, there's randomness of the OKC Denver stuff where OKC looked like a terrible team in the fourth quarter a couple of times.

• 1:35:18Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 1:35:18Speaker 01

  Denver looked like a terrible team there in the fourth quarter. When Tatum went down. If you're a Celtics fan, you cannot use that injury as an excuse for the outcome of that game. I mean, sure, you can hit me with the, you don't know what's going to happen with three minutes left and this team, okay, fine. It didn't feel that fucking way, man. It, it like, that felt like in that span, when they got down to them, it's like, oh my God, they're actually going to lose this series. And then the Tatum part is just the bad news on top of everything else. So I think we're on the same page with that one.

• 1:35:48Bill Simmons?

  The second half of game four for the Knicks and game six for the Knicks. Is the best I've felt about them as a team all year. I was really impressed and.

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  The Mitchell Robinson stuff, man.

• 1:36:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, just the 15 minutes, him and McBride.

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  That possession on Jalen in the corner when he defended everybody.

• 1:36:09Bill Simmons?

  Oh God. Yeah, that was great. I gotta defend the Knicks fans for a second because they took some shit for the over celebrating, getting out of round two.

• 1:36:19Bill Simmons?

  I was fine with it. I mean, that team hasn't had anything good happen to them in 25 years, other than Linsanity and beating like the ghost of the Celtics in 2013. Like, they should have celebrated like that. It's a Friday night. It reminded me a little that when the Celtics had that comeback Nets win and then nothing good had happened with the Celtics for nine years and everybody just went out in the streets and got drunk in Boston. Same thing. It's like, they deserved it. That team, all those fans have been through so much shit and so many bad, stupid management things and owner things and so much bad luck and bad lottery luck. Like, I would have expected them to celebrate that way. And if they make it two more rounds, I don't even, I can't even imagine what that's gonna be

• 1:37:02Bill Simmons?

  like. But I, both of us know, a ton of Knicks fans. I was happy for a lot of people, even though it was at the expense of my team. I thought, I thought it was a pretty cool story.

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  Is any of this true, or is this just like?

• 1:37:14Bill Simmons?

  No, it is. I feel, the Knicks, you know, there's some Red Sox parallels. I see it, I feel it. Like with the, you know, they haven't won in 52 years. It's like you're talking entire generations of people. Talking people like Koppelman's son is like, in his late, mid, late twenties now, he's never even seen them win a game like that. So, I don't know. I was, I was feeling for them positively.

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  I loved watching them play last year. I know I've mentioned that Philly Knicks series for an early round series last year. It was like one of my favorite series of the last few years and the intensity of it all. And clearly like Brunson's more comfortable, which doesn't make any sense considering the Celtics team and everything they've gone through, but he's more comfortable in those moments than anybody on the Celtics. And that was gonna keep happening.

• 1:38:00Bill Simmons?

  Great point.

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  And I know how I felt. Like, I could do a much bigger, you know, one of my favorite things about the Combine is just like, what the dudes who do this every single day think about this sport, where it's going.

• 1:38:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  And, you know, are we now away from like, we just accepted small balls? Like, well, it makes a lot of sense. Like, why would you want some big plotting guy out there who's not as skilled? Put your five best skilled players. Like, what took us so long to get to this point? And now we're seeing in a real way, pretty quickly, the teams are going, you know what I really like is controlling the glass and having a second rebound.

• 1:38:36Speaker 01

  It also helps that some of these big guys can both stretch the floor offensively, which you know, maybe a reason.

• 1:38:42Bill Simmons?

  Miss a shot and then get it back and then take another shot and then that one goes in.

• 1:38:46Speaker 01

  No, but I started thinking about, and you know, look, I don't love doing this, the week Tatum blows out his Achilles, but it was another thought that I had where, you know, I remember I've talked about the usage rate stuff of like, if you look at the history of like the highest usage rate seasons and how many, I haven't updated the numbers recently, but more often than not, those teams didn't do very well in the playoffs. Now, the counter to that can immediately be the reason the guy's usage is that high is because the rest of the team isn't that good. And that means that's why those, those teams didn't do anything. I think both things can actually be true. I think if you do something in the regular season where it's always in one guy's hands over and over and over again, like I think there's probably a Donovan Mitchell conversation about that, that he defaults back to the Utah Jazz version of him where it's so dynamic

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  and when he's rolling, he looks like one of the five best options with the ball in his hands.

• 1:39:33Bill Simmons?

  Nobody else is doing anything.

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  But then no, right, then nobody else is doing anything. Guys aren't boxing out as hard because they're sitting there watching. They're not playing defense as hard because they're like, this guy's going to take 30 something shots again. And you know, for the most part, I really like Donovan Mitchell because when it's right, it's probably one of the most fun things to watch in the NBA. So if you allow me to take my time here and making the point, you know, I was talking with just different people, just bullshitting about the game. And I was like, this isn't even about Tatum so much is like, when you see it going bad for the Celtics and everybody knows, I mean, it's unbelievable. It's like there's a warning sign or a greeter.

• 1:40:12Bill Simmons?

  Eight years of watching it, like you kind of know the signs. It's like, you know, being in a marriage or something where you're like, oh, my wife seems pissed right now.

• 1:40:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a maître d.

• 1:40:21Bill Simmons?

  I've seen her like this.

• 1:40:22Speaker 01

  Well, like four minutes to go interrupts the broadcast and goes, and here's the point where they're going to hunt for switches and then settle for bad threes. And it's going to be a lot of isolation. So.

• 1:40:32Bill Simmons?

  They're going to walk the ball up and start the offense, eight seconds left in the shot clock.

• 1:40:38Speaker 01

  Are we in a parallel of of this small ball to now the too big? And I I'm going to say it one more time, also known as center and power forward, which was pretty accepted for a long time.

• 1:40:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was working.

• 1:40:52Speaker 01

  Have we gone so far away from the traditional point guard? Who may not even, he may just be extinct now. I don't even know if there, there may be a couple of zoo in China.

• 1:41:04Bill Simmons?

  That's why Mike Conley is still working. That's why Chris Paul can still get 30 minutes a game.

• 1:41:09Speaker 01

  There's no, I kept thinking about like Gary Payton in some of these games where you can see the best player, you know, whether it's a Mitchell or whether it's a Tatum or some of these other dudes that are like MVP caliber players that are just like, hey, this is kind of what we do. Like I'm the best player. The math says that I have to have the ball. The math says I have to take the shot, but that means that it's kind of pretty ridiculous. Well, like what I'm going to do. So the defense is more prayer, prep for it. They can help off a little bit more because it's just not likely that we want like any of these other three guys even shooting. I wonder if Gary Payton watches some of this stuff and goes, hey, after three of these in a row, let's do something different. I'm going to take the ball.

• 1:41:49Speaker 01

  I'm going to tell everybody what to do and I'm going to get us a good look because the way I'm programmed to play this game is to figure out the best possession for us and not necessarily saying, hey, an open three in this spot gives us this many points per shot, points per possession. So it's not even like an anti.

• 1:42:06Bill Simmons?

  So you're saying like a Steve Nash, Jason Kidd, any of those old school point guards that we grew up with?

• 1:42:11Speaker 01

  I don't think a Chris Paul or any of the guys you just named would let that many possessions go as bad as we've seen with the high usage. And we're talking about some of the best players in the sport, players that have had huge accomplishments. A few of these guys that have won rings, but to see.

• 1:42:27Bill Simmons?

  You put Halliburton in this though, because I think I really liked some of the decisions he made in those first two rounds. And he's a real point guard.

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  I think it's a great, the way he collapses a defense because of his handle and because of his size. And you can see, and then he's keeping like almost Jokic ish. He keeps all of these passing lane options open. Like he's not just throwing to a corner. He's not just hitting the roll man. He's thinking like, okay, I have a few different things. As soon as I can get into the defense and get them to collapse, I'm going to find a couple of different things.

• 1:42:55Bill Simmons?

  You're just talking half court. The other thing is he's getting fast break transition stuff too.

• 1:43:00Speaker 01

  You're right.

• 1:43:00Bill Simmons?

  But, but that's the bonus of, that's the stuff you don't get with Tatum and the Celtics because he's not wired to be like rebound, I'm going to try to create a, you know, even like Jokic is wired that way. But I see what you're saying though with this stuff.

• 1:43:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, we are like combo guard, the tweener thing, like it used to be bad. Well, he's kind of a combo. He's not really a one or he's not really a two. Now it's mandatory that you're the one, but you're really, all of these ones play as twos.

• 1:43:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:28Speaker 01

  And have, has the game in those huge playoff moments, have we lost that part of the game? Those guys that had that talent to go, it doesn't guarantee you anything, but hey, we just did this three times. Let's do something different. It sounds simple, but I think the game is missing that a little bit because when you look at the draft.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, but uh.

• 1:43:56Bill Simmons?

  Cause that, that got really stale in the Dallas, Boston series specifically.

• 1:44:01Speaker 01

  You're talking about the, the bad part of it where it's predictably the same thing over and over again.

• 1:44:05Bill Simmons?

  Just over and over again, same. I see what you're saying. I, I think there's one other piece.

• 1:44:10Speaker 01

  Appreciate LeBron more.

• 1:44:12Bill Simmons?

  No, I think there's one other piece that you're, you're, you're not factoring in that I think is important because you were talking about how more bigs. We also have more bigs now that can play this style. And I think that took like 12 years to shift.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:44:27Bill Simmons?

  Cause remember like those 2012, 13 bigs, I always think we talked about Brandon Bass and the 2012 Eastern Conference Finals, like this type of forward that just no longer exists. Or big baby Davis or like the PJ Brown, those guys are all gone. And now it's turned into um, this new version of those guys where it's like Mitchell Robinson is almost a throwback center.

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  He totally is. Not almost. He, he is.

• 1:44:56Bill Simmons?

  But you can, you can.

• 1:44:57Speaker 01

  Well, you know what? I, well, I would give you this though, because what this game asks bigs to do now defensively is insane, is insane. And so maybe those.

• 1:45:05Bill Simmons?

  Guarding, yeah, he's guarding Derrick White 25 feet from the basket. That wasn't happening in 2012. So it's like you, even if you're a big, you're accumulating these new skills that I don't think the guys from the previous generation had. Combined with you have like these Chet Holmgren types that are this new version of a center where it's like they're 25 feet from the basket, they're spacing. So I just think we have better talent to play. You know, these ways to play the double big that maybe we did. When it was Ante Zizic, Zizic, what was his name? Piranich?

• 1:45:40Speaker 01

  Macedonia. I just had a guy, he was driving me in Chicago. He's from Macedonia. He told me the NBA was fixed. It was a long hour.

• 1:45:51Bill Simmons?

  Wow. I know they could fix the ping pong balls. I think the whole discussion is Al Horford. If you just look at his basketball reference, that is, that is the roadmap. That is the IMDb of how basketball changed where he's zero free, zero threes a game to like one to all of a sudden he's at like five. And now, when you look, he's like, no free throws and threes. And this was a guy who used to, you know, post up and play near the basket. Now he doesn't.

• 1:46:19Speaker 01

  But he always should have been because he was pretty good with the ball in his hands. I always felt, and I know I interviewed him and I asked about this. I go, you're going to spend your entire career out of position because you end up having to play center. And you should have been a power forward who had the ball a little bit more. And of course, it's Al Horford. So he's like, yeah, you know, whatever.

• 1:46:36Bill Simmons?

  Blake Griffin's another one. Blake Griffin, near the end of his career was, became more of a three point shooter.

• 1:46:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:42Bill Simmons?

  But if he came into the league being a three point shooter, combined with all the other stuff he had, it's pretty interesting. Um, so that was what you guys were, that was one of the combine discussions of is the, the way people are playing basketball is something broken? Is it fixable? Like, because I still feel like-

• 1:47:00Speaker 01

  It's just a lot of philosophical stuff that I think is really great, especially when you're talking to the guys that think about the game.

• 1:47:07Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:47:07Speaker 01

  Every single day of their lives. All they are, like they're thinking, and it doesn't mean everybody agrees. It's not like I came back from the combine like 10 teams said the exact same thing about the way they see the game, but there is, I'd say there is a- A sentiment from a few of the guys that I talked to that were like, there's just a lot of this stuff that gets really repetitive and really predictable at the ends of these games and it feels like almost the default setting for all those teams. They're like, look at OKC to bring it full circle. They had to figure out the second thing because the SGA take you from the top, high ball screen and then now you're chasing him and he's pulling up from every single angle,

• 1:47:50Speaker 01

  full speed to straight up in the air where he's working you for three free throws. Like OKC could not go to that as consistent as they wanted to or as they had throughout the regular season because Denver was prioritizing just clog all this stuff up at the top. And it almost makes me think the Celtics would have just kept running that.

• 1:48:09Bill Simmons?

  Right. Well, because it was the math was on their side. And then they won the title last year, which makes you think you're invincible, but they,

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  sure.

• 1:48:16Bill Simmons?

  I mean, the, I mean, the last minute of game one was an atrocity, the shots they got. And then the fact that they repeated it in game two. You know, it's even worse. It's interesting with Minnesota because Minnesota is a hybrid of both of these worlds, right? Where you, what you're talking about is basically the ant issue where it's when they're at their worst, it's him trying to do the same thing over and over again. And teams like threatening to send a second guy, not him getting frustrated. That's usually when they unravel. But then they added this Randall piece and now they have these two different versions on offense that they can kind of attack you with. It was notable in those Laker games. Like at some point you're realizing Randall's just not having a good game. Like he's attacking them and they can't match up with it.

• 1:48:59Bill Simmons?

  And I felt the same way in Golden State. We'll see with OKC. So you, you think you have OKC in this next series?

• 1:49:06Speaker 01

  I picked him this summer. I'm picking him again. I'm again surprised the odds are that.

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  In their favor, but maybe it's because I thought the Thunder were going to dispose of Denver a little bit earlier. Well, I did.

• 1:49:22Bill Simmons?

  There was a lot of, a lot of pride, championship DNA, and that one game where Gordon hit the game winning three was a pretty lucky win. Right? Even though it was a great win for Denver, it was still pretty fluky. I guess them winning three was an achievement, I think.

• 1:49:39Speaker 01

  Clippers are probably saying the same thing.

• 1:49:41Bill Simmons?

  Definitely. Yeah, if I was going to bet, if I was going to bet the finals, I, I, I still think OKC is going to win the title, but I would probably do the, uh, I'd probably do the SGA to win the finals MVP. I think is the best value, although it's basically the same as OKC. OKC is minus 185. The Knicks are plus 490. Minnesota is six to one and Indiana is eight to one. And this is, I guess we can hit the finish line with this. I picked the Knicks to kill that Detroit. I thought they were going to win in less than six. It took a little longer. I thought the Celtics were going to kill the Knicks in round two. They didn't. I like Indiana and against the Knicks in the series.

• 1:50:25Bill Simmons?

  I think Indiana is going to win the series as a bet. Like the Pacers are plus 126 and the Knicks are minus 148. I think that should be a 50 50. So I think you're getting more value with the Pacers at plus 126. Cause I honestly, I think the Pacers have a slightly better team. They're deeper. I think this is a good matchup for them and I, I continue to really believe in them. I think they're really good. So for me, I would take the plus 126 if I was betting on this. That line's moved a little, it was plus 140, it's dropped. What do you, what do you have? You think the Knicks or the Pacers?

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  This is a coin toss. I'm taking the Pacers. You know, there's not really much. I mean, their, their first three games were October, November and February.

• 1:51:10Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  And the Pacers are a better defensive team than they were. And, you know, here were two teams I thought had a lot of similarities in that, man, I like them and I, I like their top level scoring, but are they, you know, are you really weak? At point guard defensively, and then you're really weak at the rim defensively. So I felt like they were kind of emulated each other, even though the Pacers have mentioned numerous times, a big reason why this has happened in this turnaround is that they're able to get stops now in ways that you just didn't expect.

• 1:51:36Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:51:37Speaker 01

  You, we always knew they were going to score. It was like, that team is not going to get a high, they're not going to get multiple high level stops. They need to get them. So now, when I look at these two things, I mean, I can understand the Knicks side of this and the argument, and I would throw in a little thing about the Knicks fans, though. Everything you said, totally fine. And look, this is kind of what this is now. Get a bunch of dudes together, do crazy shit, film it. I mean, we've got this generation throwing stuff at strangers and Target and posting it. So like, this is not new and it isn't any different than anybody who was young at some point when it's like, would I do this by myself? Nope. But would I do it with, there were 50 of us? Yep, probably would. But leave Brian Windhorst the fuck alone. Okay?

• 1:52:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  Just leave Windhorst alone. And Chuck D, again, a legend. We don't need him tweeting Windworst, which may be his worst bar of all time. I mean, Chuck D is like unimpeachable for just a million reasons and how awesome he was. But maybe he was, you know, look, he's a Knicks fan. The Knicks fans get so upset at Windhorst and it's like, dude.

• 1:52:36Bill Simmons?

  I don't understand that. People are just here to get, we're here to give our opinions on what we're watching.

• 1:52:41Speaker 01

  Right. And here's the thing, Windworst, Windhorst is like, of all the good guys out there, leave Windhorst alone. Okay?

• 1:52:50Bill Simmons?

  I vote for leaving a lot of people, but yeah, that, uh, that was unfortunate. I agree with you. I'm glad you said that. I, uh, I have one thing to say because I was too positive about the Knicks.

• 1:53:05Bill Simmons?

  So I'm just gonna put sports hate, my sports hate. This is an actual hate. I really grew to hate Karl-Anthony Towns by the end of that series. I wasn't a huge fan to begin with. I'm just talking.

• 1:53:15Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:53:16Bill Simmons?

  I'm not, I'm, I'm just talking sports hate irrational. I'm a Celtics fan. Just you end up not liking certain people on the other team. By the end of game six, I was, I was just like, oh, my God, I can't wait for some team to expose him. He just drove me fucking crazy. Um, especially when they go up 15, 20 and then he starts like, you know, punishing Al Horford. I was like, ah, he drives me crazy. I hated rooting against him.

• 1:53:43Speaker 01

  Well, you get to do it again.

• 1:53:45Bill Simmons?

  Well, I haven't decided what I'm betting, but I'm leaning toward Pacers. But to me, this is a no lose series because it's gonna be super fun either way. I really like watching Indiana. I think they've been a revelation and teams, people just continue to underrate them for some reason, which I don't really understand. Now the Cleveland thing, it's like, oh, that Mobley and Garland and they, they, I thought they broke Cleveland by the, by game five. I really did. I thought, thought Cleveland like melted.

• 1:54:17Speaker 01

  The fact that they got down that big on the road and you're thinking, most teams go, ah, whatever. Like, all right, they're all hyped.

• 1:54:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  They go to the, we're going home. We still have two more chances. And then they come back and then they just close it. The way, the way they close that game, that is one of the most impressive things any team has done in any game during this postseason.

• 1:54:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And it was the whole Cavs team too.

• 1:54:45Bill Simmons?

  I also think they have the right level of feistiness that you actually need in MSG, which I'm not positive the Celtics had at certain points in that Knicks series. Um, there was a couple of points where Jaylen Brown stood up to Josh Hart, but I think the Knicks, they're.

• 1:54:59Speaker 01

  You got Neesmith, you got Matherin.

• 1:55:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:02Speaker 01

  Turner mixes it up with you.

• 1:55:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, however, talk shit like though Nem Hard.

• 1:55:07Speaker 01

  I'm just telling Knicks fans right now, be prepared for Nem Hart to drive into OG. Maybe it'll be Josh Hart, but it'll be one of the perimeter guys. It'll be McHale, OG or Hart, where you're gonna think. That Knicks player after that collision who will get called for the foul and Nemhart will get the and one. But Nemhart, it is like a crash test dummy level of impact. Could be organ damage. So if a guy is out, just internal organ damage, game four questionable or whatever, there's going to be a Nemhart collision where he gets going. Where you're, you know, again, I just think most people just kind of watch their team. The number of games where I've watched do that, where I think, and then he gets the call. And, you know, look, there's going to be,

• 1:55:50Speaker 01

  there's going to be a really rough Brunson night in there for Pacers fans where you're going to go, this is happening all the time. Like, yeah, yeah, it is. It is.

• 1:55:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, the other thing they do is the 94 feet of just putting wear and tear in him and just bringing the ball up, which I continue to think is underrated. And the Pacers love doing that.

• 1:56:08Speaker 01

  They did it. TJ McConnell.

• 1:56:10Bill Simmons?

  They love it. They want to just wear you down. They want to put miles on you during the game. Dumb miles that don't matter in the big scheme of things, but that's, that's how they're wired. They come, come, come, come. I think they're really good. And that there's a moment here for either Brunson or Halliburton. Right? Brunson, if they make the finals, you're moving into this completely different territory in the city. And he, he might already be there, but you, you bring that team to the finals with some of the late game stuff that he's did and just how like, likeable and fucking awesome of a guy that he is. Just making the finals, you could dine off that for the next 50 years, much less winning. I mean, now they have a real chance to win. But Halliburton, who I didn't even vote for for all NBA, who

• 1:56:55Bill Simmons?

  was in that overrated poll. Um,

• 1:56:59Speaker 01

  I think that's because people can't stand him though.

• 1:57:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And he, he's been a pretty polarizing guy. Didn't play in the dream team, all that stuff. And I think he's been awesome in these playoffs. Uh, I've been really impressed. And he has a chance, you know, to really put himself on the map here because he's the best guy on that team. So there's big stakes there. The stakes on the other, the other battle is easier because if Minnesota beats OKC, now we're moving toward this Edwards might be actually ready. Like that's, I'm not ready to, we'll talk about that in a week, but like Edwards going through this gauntlet and all the fucking dudes OKC has that they'll be able to throw at him for seven games. If he gets through that, this is like, we might be ready to have the combo.

• 1:57:44Bill Simmons?

  Like is it time?

• 1:57:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, because the other side of the Knicks thing first, and you're right about everything you said, is I just keep thinking of Myles Turner and then the Thomas Bryant minutes where Carlisle must just be like, ah, I can't believe it. Can't believe this is, this is what I've got to do. And it's like, okay, if the Knicks frontline beat up on the Celtics frontline, you know, because Porzingis, whatever point, I knew what Missoula, it seemed like Missoula was hoping, like, can this just wake up, right? Can it wake up at some point?

• 1:58:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:12Speaker 01

  It never happened. They bet him in that second half of that game because they said he couldn't breathe. But I mean, he just, he was that bad, but you still had Cornet, you still had Horford out there battling. Maybe the Knicks, maybe this becomes more of a cat thing. But see, Cat was actually like, look, he didn't hit any threes.

• 1:58:29Bill Simmons?

  He was really good in game six.

• 1:58:31Speaker 01

  The on the glass stuff.

• 1:58:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:33Speaker 01

  And the put backs and just being big and being physical and being quicker to the ball and all that kind of stuff. Like, I don't know why that would get worse against the Pacers. If anything, it should get better. I mean, Mitchell's just going to be a cleanup guy. It's not like they're going to give him touches and actually like run something with him there. But I mean,

• 1:58:51Bill Simmons?

  Neesmith is going to be a real problem for them too, because I, he's turned into one of the best defensive guys in the league. And I think one of the problems with the Celtics in that last series is Holiday didn't do a good enough job on Brunson. Brunson was cooking him.

• 1:59:03Speaker 01

  Derrick White was bad too against him. And then that's why Jalen ended up having to play him. And then,

• 1:59:07Bill Simmons?

  And Tatum was covering him too before he got hurt. Like they were using their forwards to guard Brunson. Indiana has way more options.

• 1:59:15Speaker 01

  Brunson was looking for Horford. I thought Horford held up really well, but then when it was the Porzingis stuff, it was just a disaster. But look, Neesmith, we'll see what happens here. Because there's part of the Jokic conversation where it does get really annoying with Jokic too. As much as we all love him, like when he pins the defender's arms into his arms and then screams with his palms up. And you're like, dude, you're doing all of this right now. But then there's other plays too, because he's so big, where he's just getting swiped at the entire time. It's like, okay, but they're not going to call all these fouls. So if you have Caruso, if you have Jalen Williams, if you have the two bigs, if you have the other Jalen Williams, you're talking about like 30 fouls you can throw at this guy. And if they get to the bonus quicker, no problem. Like, we'd still

• 1:59:57Speaker 01

  rather them get to the bonus and try to just physically attack this guy the entire time. It'll be very interesting to see what the fouls are like on Neesmith in the first quarter against Brunson. Cause Neesmith should foul out of every game he's in. He's just.

• 2:00:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but you could have said that about Caruso and Dort and that's the thing. It feels like if you can establish it in the first quarter, then you can get away with it.

• 2:00:19Speaker 01

  But the smaller guy gets the calls more. I mean, Brunson is drawing.

• 2:00:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 2:00:24Speaker 01

  Free throws Brunson is drawing the second most free throws of any player. The last time I looked at, and I think during the regular season, Giannis was the only player that drew more free throws, excuse me, drew more personal fouls. Cause that's another thing that happens with this Brunson debate. It's like, oh, well, look at his free throw and all these different things. Like dude, he's number two in the NBA. I'll look it up right now just to make sure I don't get this wrong. Cause obviously it's going to piss everybody off.

• 2:00:46Bill Simmons?

  I thought he was top three.

• 2:00:49Speaker 01

  Is it? Per game, I think he was second to only Giannis.

• 2:00:52Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:00:53Speaker 01

  Now, look, somebody has to be number one, number two, number three. But I'm going to, I'm going to look it up just because I don't, I don't want to get this wrong. And I, I'm almost positive I had it right. All right. So he's drawing seven and a half fouls per game during the playoffs.

• 2:01:09Bill Simmons?

  Jesus.

• 2:01:09Speaker 01

  In the regular season.

• 2:01:11Bill Simmons?

  It felt higher.

• 2:01:14Speaker 01

  Well, some of them were overturned. Yeah. So like, you know, Giannis was number one at seven and a half during the regular season. Brunson was number two.

• 2:01:24Bill Simmons?

  That's crazy. Well, if you're the Knicks, this couldn't have broke better. You get rid of Boston. You have Mitchell Robinson healthy, which I would have, I would have put the odds at like five to one in.

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

  And OG.

• 2:01:36Bill Simmons?

  October.

• 2:01:37Speaker 01

  Sort of.

• 2:01:37Bill Simmons?

  OG's at least out there.

• 2:01:41Bill Simmons?

  And you look the best you've ever looked all season in game six.

• 2:01:45Speaker 01

  Those Bridges, those Bridges makes in the start of the fourth quarter in game two. The other game, like those non Brunson minutes to start the fourth quarter, letting Bridges cook, man, it's one of my favorite things about this because he has that in his game.

• 2:01:59Bill Simmons?

  We were calling for it for half the season. Well, the other thing is everyone on the team is the hungriest you can possibly be, which was reminiscent of the Celtics last year, right? There, there's a hunger level with them. Not that everybody else doesn't have it, but it's, these are all of these guys that are really interesting points of their career. That have this whole city behind them in this crazy way. It's gonna be a tall task for Indiana. I think Indiana is slightly better than them. I don't think that's gonna mean it's gonna win, that they're gonna win the series. But I think Indiana is really good. We'll see. Those threes, when you're down 3-2 in a series and you, you know, they're home in Indiana in game six and they need, they need to hit some shots and you miss a couple and it ends up being like that Denver

• 2:02:42Bill Simmons?

  game where you're down 15 and you start doing the math like, oh God, we gotta get going. And the sphincters start tightening.

• 2:02:49Bill Simmons?

  Flip side will be the Knicks, but anyway, good final four. I think this is, uh, it's weird. It's unconventional, but the, I like both of the matchups. So we'll see what happens. Uh, I didn't finish my list for you before we go. My, my four, my four titles, my should have won titles. Number one, 1958, Bill Russell sprained ankle.

• 2:03:09Speaker 01

  Bob Pettit, right?

• 2:03:10Bill Simmons?

  Number two, Bob Pettit, number two, 2009.

• 2:03:14Bill Simmons?

  KG, number three, 1982, tiny Archibald shoulder. I still think we win.

• 2:03:19Speaker 01

  When I talked to Tibbs about the 2009 team, I was in a room with him.

• 2:03:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:25Speaker 01

  And we started talking about 2009, I think it moved.

• 2:03:30Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  He was that excited.

• 2:03:34Bill Simmons?

  Number four, 1973, Havlicek sprained shoulder. Separated shoulder, Knicks series. The three we shouldn't have won, 1969, 1976, 1981. So we're plus one.

• 2:03:48Bill Simmons?

  But I wouldn't put 25. I, I thought, uh, thought this team had a chance, but you know.

• 2:03:55Bill Simmons?

  It's, I'm not gonna look back 40 years from now and be like, oh, we should have won that year. Like the team, the Porzingis thing was super weird.

• 2:04:03Speaker 01

  I don't think the Knicks fan base would have celebrated the same way if it wasn't the Boston, New York thing and the fact that like, there was all of these matchup things that I thought were gonna be a problem for New York. And even if they were, because it's the times when Celtics had to leave, you're going, all right, this makes sense. This is what it was supposed to look like. And it's like, oh, okay. Brunson is so fired up in this spot and you guys are not.

• 2:04:31Bill Simmons?

  We're so good to see you. We'll be back next Sunday. You have your podcast Tuesday and Thursday. I look forward to talking more basketball with you. Thanks.

• 2:04:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's talk hoops.

• 2:04:41Bill Simmons?

  All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Gahow and Eduardo. As always, thanks to Russillo. I am going to be back, I think, on Tuesday and probably on Thursday as well. And I'm going to be on the rewatchables on Monday doing Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And I will see you Monday and Tuesday.

• 2:05:14Bill 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.

• 2:05:55Bill Simmons?

  Star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Minnehoshan and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island, Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys. Parker Posey and Tom Waits. WildHorse9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss WildHorse9, only in theaters Friday. Get tickets now. This episode is brought to you by Core Power Protein Shakes. You know how we always talk about the little things that separate great athletes?

• 2:06:40Bill Simmons?

  Post-workout recovery is a big factor. Core Power Protein Shakes help you keep going after your workout with high-quality protein to build muscle and electrolytes to help hydrate. It's all you need for your recovery in one bottle. Available in 26 and 42 gram protein options to pick what works best for you. Visit corepower.com to learn more.