Pod Insights The Bill Simmons Podcast They Saved the NBA All-Star Game? Plus, the NBA’s Tumultuous Week, With Zach Lowe About this episode The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Zach Lowe to react to NBA All-Star Weekend and to catch up on the NBA season (0:32). Then, they try to figure out how to fix some of the problems around the league (45:44).
Host: Bill Simmons
Guest: Zach Lowe
Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo
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Transcript 20,336 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 I'm pro football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carried sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit MDDAllies.com to watch my story.
0:25 Speaker 01 Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.
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2:03 Bill Simmons? All right, live on Netflix, Zach Lowes here. It's the Bill Simmons Podcast. We just watched the NBA All-Star Game 2026. Team Stripes took it down. I never thought I would say these words, Zach. I wish I had gone. It was a fun game.
2:20 Speaker 04 It was a fun game.
2:21 Bill Simmons? Thirty-five, forty minutes from my house. It would have been inconceivable to me twenty years ago, twenty-five years ago, that I wouldn't have wanted to go to the All-Star game. But it had just beaten me in this submission. And I just didn't want to go. And then as the game kept going quarter by quarter, all of a sudden it became super duper fun. Fourth quarter, not fun. But first three, super fun.
2:42 Speaker 04 It was a great, like, a bit of redemption for the NBA. I made fun of the format. I still don't love, like, the round robin for mini-game format. I love USA versus the world. But it was a pretty competitive game. It wasn't like an NBA regular season level of competition. It wasn't that intense. Transition defense wasn't great. But it was definitely like worlds better than two years ago when it was two eleven to one eighty something. And every, the five All-Stars before that were all
3:11 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
3:11 Speaker 04 just dunk, dunk, dunk laziness. This was like a fun game. There were fouls, there were blocked shots, there was buzzer beaters, drama. It was a lot.
3:19 Bill Simmons? There were a couple of hard fouls. But yeah, we had, we did not have a lot of the guy lazily running out to block a three at the top of the key and then just continuing to keep going and then getting the long pass for the dunk. Had maybe two of those in the last game. More importantly, Zach, and you're wearing the sign right now. We defended America from the world.
3:40 Speaker 04 Stars, stripes, world. Thanks for showing up. Team USA versus Team USA.
3:45 Bill Simmons? Thanks for, thanks for not carrying Nikola Jokic.
3:48 Speaker 04 Well, I was gonna say, the one guy who just steadfast, I mean, we're gonna give Luka a pass because he's coming off an injury. Jokic is also coming off an injury, but he's been playing and playing a lot of minutes. He just was like, he can't be roped into it. We like, oh, Wemby's trying hard, he's gonna lift everybody up. And Ant's trying hard, he's gonna lift everybody up. And like, the Pistons guys are going like it's a Detroit Pistons game. Jokic is like, when is this over, man? Like, can we just get out of here?
4:11 Bill Simmons? It's so weird, because I don't know. I just would think he would love just fucking around in the game and doing weird passes and trying things and just having guys caught and just like, I don't know, having like this playhouse to do Jokic things, but he does not want to be bothered. Maybe they should have to get him engaged. Maybe it should be like a horse for the winner. Three million dollar horse, something like that. Anthony Edwards MVP, 32 points. One of the things we were complaining about before we came on, the stats, NBC wasn't showing us really any stats. I had no idea how anyone was doing, but when Kawhi ripped off the 31 points in third quarter, we're at least aware of that.
4:52 Bill Simmons? I don't know how many points he ended up with. You know, there's some historical stuff that I, um, did we decide that that carries over? Like, did Kawhi have 50 points today? Did he have 45? We don't know. That was probably my biggest gripe, other than Reggie Miller telling us for an hour that the guys were trying. Cause I was watching, I could tell they were trying, but other than that, uh, two thumbs up. I thought it was, uh, a huge win for a league that needed a win this weekend.
5:19 Speaker 04 I do like what they did. The NBA really did need a win. I do like it when the announcers and Reggie was the most guilty of this and I like Reggie overall. It's just like, the world is in desperation mode here. They monster possession, gotta get a stop. It's like, no one's really in desperation. Well, you don't have to go, you don't have to go that far.
5:37 Bill Simmons? Yeah, they, he was definitely cooking the drama on. Well, the big winner of anyone today was Kawhi Leonard. Who aspired to be the MVP.
5:49 Speaker 04 He did. He did. He burned, he burned, he burned up some nets. He was on a, on a burner today.
5:57 Bill Simmons? Planting some trees in that third quarter, like left and right. And there was a scenario at one point during that third quarter where it was like, holy shit. He's gonna win the MVP and Adam Silver is gonna prevent it to present it to him as Steve Ballmer is cheering in the background and this is just gonna be a moment because the general feeling is some sort of resolution is happening with this Clippers thing in the next couple of weeks. I've no idea if that's true. That's just a general feeling. I'm just here to pass along general feelings, but Kawhi winning the MVP would have been hilarious.
6:29 Speaker 04 I think we were all rooting for that, right? I mean, two years ago, two years ago, I remember Adam Silver presenting the MVP when it was the 200 something to 190 something or whatever game and just like shaming the players, just like a cranky miserable parent who's fed up and just has had enough of the whole thing. Two years later, it would have been, all right, uh, I'm not gonna talk about the elephant in the room here. Kawhi Leonard in and with them. Steve Ballmer, like Jokic won't play hard for any of this. Steve Ballmer will not settle down. Steve Ballmer is in his same seat doing the same.
7:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
7:02 Speaker 04 He has piston arms, churning, he's screaming, he will not settle down. It would have been, it would have been great theater and and and team stars. I think he was a star. Team stars ruined it for us.
7:13 Bill Simmons? Yeah. So the the star stripes, it seems like the older players were on the stripes, but they didn't fully differentiate it because there were some younger guys on that team as well. But the LeBron team had LeBron and KD and Kawhi and then poor Jalen Brown, who I think had real ideas to win MVP in the first game, seemed like he was among the people that cared the most. And then Kawhi was just like, Jalen, hold this and then took over. But I I thought the the setup, which I didn't really fully understand all week and nobody seemed to really fully understand it. And they asked Kawhi about it yesterday and he was like, I don't understand it, but it's basketball. So we'll figure it out. I thought it worked and I and I think it comes back. And I think at the very least,
7:58 Bill Simmons? with all the other things this league has to solve, we at least seems like it seems like we have found something that might work here with the All-Star game after 15 tries. So maybe there's hope for the lottery now.
8:09 Speaker 04 Well, let's, could we go through what we liked and what we what we didn't like? Should we actually discuss the All-Star game and like the format?
8:15 Bill Simmons? I'm ready. I took a ton of notes. So here's my big question for you and and I think it starts here. Like the, I wrote down all the guys who seemed like they gave a shit. And it starts with Wemby, Edwards, the two Detroit guys, Jalen Brown, Barnes, Maxey, Denny.
8:35 Speaker 04 Booker, I thought Booker.
8:36 Bill Simmons? Booker, Booker and Jalen Brunson. All those guys are basically 27 and under. And I just wonder if this All-Star thing was a little generational where the LeBron generation decided that they couldn't be bothered anymore. The Yoka, Luca generation came in there like, you think you can't be bothered? We're not even gonna run. And now we have these young guys. I thought that Detroit guys, especially Dern, I loved how he played today. I thought that Detroit guys like genuinely cared. And that's why the game was good.
9:04 Speaker 04 If I had a box score, and not four box scores, I would look up how many block shots and steals Cade had in this game. Cause it felt like he had four blocks at the rim and like was really trying. And that's, it's what you like about the Pistons. It's, it's like the, the, like the fight against Charlotte is the downside of what they are. But the upside of what they are is like, they legitimately just wanna beat the hell out of you and out physical you and out tough you. And they want to make you like quit. They wanna make you feel like, I don't, this is just too much for me today. I don't wanna deal with this.
9:36 Bill Simmons? Yeah, Dern was like, really? This is the lineup you're gonna play? And just was, was running amok in that, uh, that last game. I thought, so they named the MVP, which Ant won. I don't think it's a bad idea to name, almost like we have all NBA, to name the first team guys who seem like they gave the most shits.
9:55 Speaker 04 Okay.
9:56 Bill Simmons? And.
9:56 Speaker 04 We'll workshop the name, but sure.
9:58 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I don't know if that's sponsorable. I think that would be tough, but.
10:02 Speaker 04 Pampers?
10:04 Bill Simmons? Well, Wemby, Ant and Kawhi and the two Detroit guys would probably be my five. I think Jalen was sniffing it, but then, uh, as the, as it went along, but I, I think that would be my five. Wemby like was genuinely enraged when Karl-Anthony Towns screwed up.
10:22 Speaker 04 It was great. It was great. The only thing they needed to do was not give up a three. And I think it was Abdi and Towns both rotated to the roller at the same time, leaving all the shooters open. And Wemby was like, like, ah. I just couldn't believe it.
10:37 Bill Simmons? All the guys around the Karl Anthony Towns chat who have played with him over the course of his career, that was a fun text thread after that happened.
10:44 Speaker 04 Oh, boy.
10:44 Bill Simmons? All the guys in the Timberwolves, the Knicks, it was just classic. The announcers are saying, look, all they have to do is not give up a three. And then he's like going with, uh, I think it was Duren for a layup. But, uh, but Wemby was like genuinely mad. It gave Wemby credit after the first game, which was great. And that first game was big because Barnes hit the three in OT. There was a five point OT.
11:07 Speaker 04 Love the target score, by the way. Love the overtime target score. Great, great touch.
11:13 Bill Simmons? You could argue they should have had a target score for each quarter, right?
11:16 Speaker 04 Sure, why not?
11:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I think we could have gone 40 for each one, maybe get gets a little faster. But, um, but yeah, so Barnes hits the three. At some point, like I did an Instagram video, I was making fun of the game because it had all the makings of another boring All-Star game for about five minutes.
11:33 Speaker 04 Well, I mean, in, in your defense, we have been conditioned to expect exactly that.
11:38 Bill Simmons? All right, this is going to suck like all the other ones, but something switched with three minutes left in that first game. And I think all of us realized simultaneously like, oh, so does Wemby get credit for that? Or is it just all the young guys?
11:51 Speaker 04 I think Wemby gets a lot of credit for it because he was like, he was putting it forth a week ago, like I'm, I don't care what the rest of you are doing. I'm going to try and if you don't try and I try, my wingspan is like a million feet and I'm just going to swallow the whole game up by myself and embarrass you. I think he gets, but like, you know, we have to see next year. Is it carryover effect? Is it this format US versus the world that actually made them try? Or was the outcry of how bad the All-Star game had gotten? Was the shaming just so loud? Plus the shaming the general league has taken, I don't know if the players care about that, but the whole last week has been a catastrophe for the NBA, as you've remarked. Maybe that's like a perfect storm of like, you know what? We got to put on a decent show tonight. Does, does it happen again next year?
12:37 Speaker 04 Like, I, I kind of want to see it, but this was undeniably a big success for the league.
12:42 Bill Simmons? I'm a generally optimistic glass half full guy and my guess would be the positive reinforcement that these guys are going to get over the next 24 hours who actually like people from people who like the game like, hey, man, that was cool. That was really fun. Blah, blah, blah. Like I that's got to carry over because I it felt like this was headed toward being a lost cause like what happened with the NFL with the Pro Bowl. Like we were right on the precipice of going over the cliff. And this was what the fourth time they've changed this?
13:14 Speaker 04 Yeah, last year was another kind of round robin that I didn't understand. And I actually last year, I just sort of was like, I'm not even going to try. It's going to be bad. I'm not even going to try to understand it. And then we had the picking teams thing for a while and that they've tried a lot of different things.
13:28 Bill Simmons? None of it worked. Well, Barnes hit a three for the win in the first game. Edwards said shit during the post game, which I loved. In the second game, Darren Fox, did you think it was going in? Game winning three and they were down, had to go in. Did you think it was going in? Cause I did not.
13:43 Speaker 04 I felt good about it. He was open. He got to set his feet. You see, you know, feel good. He got added to the All-Star game Spurs coaching staff. I felt good about it because I was that was the same. So this is the second game, I think. That was the game. That game had an ant had just had to steal and a three to put his team ahead. And it was felt like ant had stamped like this is my night. But when they brought it back that fast, I was like, oh, this is going to go in. This is going to be fun.
14:07 Bill Simmons? Third game, Kawhi goes on a run. We end up getting close to the 50s. Kawhi has 31 points, 11 for 13 from a from the field, six of seven threes and hits a step back three to take the lead. And that was like a legitimate, I wish I was there moment like that. Like that was really as good as anything we've had this century in the All-Star, him just heating up, you know, sequentially. And you've seen him do it. You said on your pod earlier this week, you thought he's been the best player in the league for what? The last two months?
14:38 Speaker 04 Basically since he came back since Thanksgiving, thereabouts. I mean, the part of that is Jokic has missed a bunch of games. Shay is right there with him. Like Shay is just this metronome of he's missed some games recently, but.
14:48 Bill Simmons? I have some notes on that take, but I respect the take.
14:51 Speaker 04 Okay.
14:52 Bill Simmons? I I don't know. It's like I would put Jaylen Brown head to head with him. And they did go head to head at the Clippers and won and the team's success is around the same. But I also, the, I think Cade, Cade, it's weird. It's a weird year because a bunch of guys probably are in that conversation for who's playing the best, which is what is going to make MVP so bizarre if SGA and Jokic don't make it. I don't know what happens if those guys don't get the, is it, or what is the MVP threshold? Is it the same as all NBA?
15:24 Speaker 04 65.
15:25 Bill Simmons? So if neither of those guys make it, I don't know what happens. I was looking at it on FanDuel today and the, uh,
15:33 Bill Simmons? the, I have this, the third odds are SGA is minus 180, Jokic is plus 290. Cade is the next one at 14 to one.
15:42 Speaker 04 Wow.
15:43 Bill Simmons? And then Lucas 20 to one, Wemby's 33 to one and Jaylen Brown's 100 to one. And there's a real chance SGA and Joker might not make that limit.
15:51 Speaker 04 Well, all right, uh, SGA's missed seven games.
15:56 Speaker 04 So unless this-
15:57 Bill Simmons? But when's he coming back?
15:58 Speaker 04 Unless this thing lingers longer than expected, he'll, he'll, he should be able to make it. Jokic, I believe, can only miss one more game, maybe two. I can't remember off the top of my head.
16:08 Bill Simmons? It's probably SGA.
16:09 Speaker 04 It's probably, and he's been great. Like there's nothing, he's been awesome.
16:14 Bill Simmons? Well, the other stuff that happened.
16:16 Speaker 04 Okay.
16:18 Bill Simmons? Steph, did you see the shot he made in the pregame?
16:20 Speaker 04 I did, and he has also declared that he will be participating in the three-point shootout next season, which is fantastic. Let's do that and let's bring back, you know, the Sabrina versus Steph thing. And that was awesome, too.
16:32 Bill Simmons? And then KD was the MVP for content this weekend and we'll talk about that, uh, in a little bit. We had, John Tesh did a live round ball rock. Shades of the, the video that I remember running on a trade value from him in some casino in 2009, dressed as like a pirate doing that. It's one of my favorite YouTube clips. We had- Norm Powell was on the world team?
16:58 Speaker 04 He was.
16:59 Bill Simmons? They, they just needed a guy and it was like, well, his dad was born in Jamaica. Let's bring him in.
17:05 Bill Simmons? Ingram, I felt the same as you. I heard you do this on your pod about Ingram making the All-Star game. I thought, I thought two Raptors and no Hornets felt like a stretch to me. I probably would have worked a Hornet in just to even it out, but what do I know? Was, did you have a backup choice for Ingram?
17:22 Speaker 04 Well, did we, are we assuming that James Harden just called the league and was like, I'd rather just not, just not go like, like.
17:29 Bill Simmons? You think like that trade made it where, yeah, James Harden, who is, just when you look at the, I was one of the things I did all morning. I was trying to figure out a whole bunch of different things and Harden's stats are really good.
17:40 Speaker 04 Yeah, for sure. He should, he should be in the All-Star game.
17:43 Bill Simmons? Yeah, he probably should be. They, uh, the other thing that happened, they condensed the All-Star game, kind of warm up first part into 15 minutes. If you remember on TNT, that went on forever. It was like they're introducing each guy. There's like concerts and it was like, almost it took an hour before the game started. And it was like, do I have to watch all this? What, what's the, this was like boom, boom, we're playing.
18:06 Speaker 04 So, so after the second game, I went to eat dinner because I just assumed there was going to be a 50 minute concert before the third game. And then I started getting alerts that the game was about to start and I had to scarf my chicken vindaloo as fast as possible to get back out there for the third game. I was like, oh my, I love it. Give me the basketball. Like, I don't need, I don't need five concerts with a basketball game interspersed in between them.
18:30 Bill Simmons? Yeah, your, your Twitter burner would not be get off my dick or saying it would be.
18:35 Speaker 04 Don't rope me into this.
18:36 Bill Simmons? It would be, don't eat my vindaloo. I think would be.
18:43 Bill Simmons? And then, uh, all right, three other things to flag here. One is that somebody, somebody asked LeBron about Israel before the game and that felt like that's going to turn into a 24 hour cycle. Or at least it did until this KD Twitter thing happened, which I think we at least have to acknowledge that this is happening in real time. That there is a burner account.
19:06 Speaker 04 I, I don't, could you explain to me what, what it is? Cause I, I know what's happening. I know what's alleged to be happening, but I don't know if it's a Twitter account or a text thread or something like, I don't get what's going on.
19:17 Bill Simmons? Oh, I thought it was a Twitter account. But it's it's an account and it's allegedly him. And there's a lot of signs that it's him. Just shit talking a bunch of people that he's either played with or played against. And if you go to basically any place on social media, you'll be able to find a lot of examples. And there is video of him in the warm up line, looking at his phone and typing. That was also weird. I assume this is probably some, there's probably some smoke with the fire on this one.
19:49 Bill Simmons? And we've never been in a situ, if this is all true. And he's talking about guys that he plays with right now. I don't know if we've ever been in a situation like this. A social media scandal of revealed tweets slash texts of somebody talking disparaging people on his team that he then has to go play with tomorrow night. I think we've made new ground on this.
20:15 Speaker 04 Um, I just, I'm gonna wait. I want to see, I just, I need more information.
20:19 Bill Simmons? That's why we said allegedly and yeah.
20:21 Speaker 04 I need more information.
20:22 Bill Simmons? You're, you're, this is why you're Spock. You're way more careful.
20:24 Speaker 04 I just need more information. It doesn't look good, but I need more information.
20:29 Bill Simmons? By Tuesday?
20:32 Bill Simmons? Well, no, we'll probably have a better idea. Conspiracy Bill is here.
20:38 Bill Simmons? I don't have.
20:39 Speaker 04 On a different topic or on this topic?
20:41 Bill Simmons? Different topic.
20:42 Speaker 04 Okay.
20:46 Bill Simmons? Might break out, maybe I'll bring out the wind horse fingers.
20:49 Speaker 04 I can't, you're, I'm in suspense. Come on.
20:54 Bill Simmons? I don't know if you saw this over the weekend. Celtics Sixers on Sunday night, March 1st.
20:59 Speaker 04 Okay, this is, this is a, this is disappointing for Conspiracy Bill. This is too easy. This is, this is like, everyone's already talking about this.
21:07 Bill Simmons? Move from 6 to 8 PM.
21:11 Bill Simmons? That got a hmm.
21:12 Speaker 04 Well, and they, did you see it during one of the breaks in the game?
21:16 Bill Simmons? This is where Conspiracy Bill is going.
21:18 Speaker 04 Okay.
21:19 Bill Simmons? I was like, that would be weird. That's a lot of pressure to do a Sunday night game as your comeback.
21:25 Bill Simmons? Then randomly during, during breaks between, I think it was the third and the fourth game, a three-minute Jason Tatum comeback, very well done, very well produced comeback video about his journey, set up in a way that made me super suspicious that NBC and, and him are working together in some way. And this is all part of the thing.
21:49 Speaker 04 Well, I mean, clearly NBC, clearly NBC has had crazy access to this all along. I mean, they've got the trainer talking, they're in rooms when he's having cellphone conversations with people. I don't know who arranged it or what production companies or what, I don't know what it is, but clearly they've been in the, in, in the rooms with him.
22:07 Bill Simmons? Cause when the flex thing happened, that was, that was a red flag. But then I looked at the schedule that night and I was like, well, they, they said they were going to do stuff like this and they're moving the game two hours and that's an awesome game, Boston and Philly. They didn't know that that would be a great game. So maybe not. With that said, had been hearing first week of March for a while, that it was going to be somewhere around that March 4th, March 6th game. Conspiracy Bill has also noted that if you go on any ticket resale site for the Dallas March 6th game.
22:39 Speaker 04 Okay.
22:40 Bill Simmons? The prices are way out of whack and it can't just be because Cooper flags coming to town. Like they're way out of whack. The prices are really, really high. So I'm factoring that in too. And now the Sunday, I talked to my dad today and I was like, you kept your Sunday and your Friday tickets, right? And he's like, oh yeah, yeah, I still have them. So yeah, it's, it's really starting to look like March 1st or March 6th, but my money would be on March 1st now for him.
23:06 Speaker 04 I'm a little surprised, you know, where I know this is Conspiracy Bill. Why is your tone not giddy about this? I mean, I'd like, it, it, he's practicing with the red, with the red clause. I almost called the Maine Celtics. So he's, he's doing real basketball stuff now with, against real basketball players. Clearly we're heading in, in the direction of a potential return maybe soon.
23:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
23:26 Speaker 04 Why are you not just over the moon?
23:29 Bill Simmons? Because I felt like this was coming for the last six weeks and I I'm not sure why anybody would have been surprised.
23:35 Speaker 04 Okay.
23:36 Bill Simmons? Because because I just feel like and I've talked to a bunch of people and people asked me about it all the time, like, why would he come back? Why wouldn't he wait? And it's like, well, if he's ready to come back, why wouldn't he come back now and play 20, 25 minutes a game and ease back into it versus waiting until next October and putting all that pressure on him? I mean, even like I look at Kyrie and I don't know whether Kyrie's coming back or not, but I still don't understand why you wouldn't want to play like a little bit when you're ready to play. Like, how does that help you to just not play for another six months? I just get taking 18 months off for to do anything, I think, is a lot to ask for an athlete.
24:14 Speaker 04 Well, their records are inverse, 35 and 19 Celtics have the best record in the NBA and the Mavs are tanking and that probably would explain some of it. But yeah, like, so you don't, I mean, I talked about this on my pod, but you do not buy at all this this idea of like, is he going to hurt the chemistry of the team? Is there any, is any of that? You're not worried about any of that?
24:36 Bill Simmons? I'm going to tell you that right after we take a break.
24:39 Speaker 04 Okay.
24:40 Bill Simmons? I'm going to give you my answer. So let's go to a break.
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26:14 Bill Simmons? All right. You asked before the break, am I concerned at all about the Jason Tatum thing? Of course I am. I just watched Drake May completely fall apart in the playoffs and possibly get hurt. Like I'm still in, I got to shake my head out of glass half empty mode with my favorite teams. But in this case, everything makes sense. They trade Simons away, flip basically flip Garza Navusovich, and you figure Tatum just moves right into the minute shots vacancy of Simons. And now you have more size. Now you have the ability to even like play stretch five with them if you want, and all kinds of stuff. But I, you know, when you've been out for that long banging bodies, that part's weird.
26:57 Bill Simmons? The Jalen thing is, I talked about it a little on my podcast on Thursday, but the Jalen thing, he just really thinks it's his team now. I'll be really interested to see how they share that thing, which has always been, I think some of it was overblown. I don't know if the MVPs helped that much. When Jalen won both of them, I kind of wish that they just split it. It would have been fine, followed by the Olympics. And then, you know, Jalen's been
27:27 Bill Simmons? pretty, and he has a right to be this way because everybody counted this team out and said it was the gap year Celtics.
27:33 Speaker 04 Including me, including me, guilty as charged.
27:35 Bill Simmons? I had, I was over 41 and a half, but like barely over. I didn't.
27:39 Speaker 04 I was under. I have not been as wrong about a team as I've been about this Celtics team. I don't think ever.
27:45 Bill Simmons? Wow. Well, I have some other people for that group just from this year's podcasts, including the Suns.
27:53 Bill Simmons? But Jalen, I do think he's been like this and he, and he should be. And Tatum's gonna have to move back into that. And they're also, the bigger thing for me is the style of play is different. And you're better at that stuff than I am. But they, the way they play is just a little different than last year. And it's way more through the guards and it's with these centers setting these big picks at the top and then rolling hard to the basket. And Pritchard and White have the ball a lot more than I think they did last year. And then Jalen, his ISO game on the two-point stuff has just been elite. Like he has, I looked at it today. He has the most two-point baskets over everybody but Shay. And Shay's only like a little bit ahead of him. And he's missed a couple more games. But that's how good he's been as a two-point scorer.
28:37 Bill Simmons? So how does he fit into this year's team? I think is the thing that I want to see.
28:41 Speaker 04 Yeah, Jalen has been so good and so efficient on mid-range shots off the dribble that I'm almost like, he can't possibly sustain, like he's over 50 something percent on really hard mid-range shots. And you think the other shoe is going to drop it? Not like in a big way, but is he going to settle back to like 44% or something? I don't worry about the style thing. To me, they still kind of look like the Celtics. Spacing, threes, guard, wing, pick and rolls, targeted isolations, big wings playing bully ball against smaller guys, hunting them. Like Tatum does all that stuff. The style, the schematic, general, like, big picture style, doesn't worry me at all. The only thing that I've just, I'm like you, I'm interested to see is like, it's just so
29:23 Speaker 04 clearly Jalen Brown's team right now. Like, there's just, he's, he's number one, and everyone else is way down the totem pole. That does change. And even if Tatum isn't Tatum, and he's not going to be Jason Tatum right away, he's not going to be Jason Tatum for a couple of months, probably at least, like, peak, peak, peak, first team All-NBA. And even if he's aware of that, and understands that it's Jalen Brown's team, and I think all of those things are true, he's just played that way his entire basketball life. He's played that as, as the number one guy. It's not that easy to just sort of.
29:57 Speaker 04 Take your way to a different style of play or even like a hybrid style of play. But I, I, I think that it's workable and you know, you have said, you don't think they can make the finals as is. And if, if you believe that, then this is a no brainer, like good thing, because it, it, it might, there might be some hiccups, but your ceiling definitely gets higher.
30:14 Bill Simmons? Around the league, people seem to be concerned that the, the ceiling of this team is just so much higher with Tatum, right? If, even if, you even forget, like they showed the highlights of that Knicks game when he got hurt. He was incredible in that game.
30:29 Speaker 04 It's one of the best games he's ever played.
30:30 Bill Simmons? One of the best games, that might've been, other than the Milwaukee 50-point game, that might've been the single best game he's played. I really liked his game six against Dallas too, but, um, but he was just awesome. And you kind of, I think there's been a little anisio with how good he is and throwing him in there. Um, I can't wait to see how it goes. Jalen's had probably, I'm not going to ding Jalen on this, but he's probably had three too many, this is the most fun I've had in my career, kind of quotes.
30:58 Speaker 04 I've always been able to, I've always been able to do this.
31:00 Bill Simmons? Probably plus three in that category and minus three in the, I really miss my brother, Jason. We've been playing together our whole career. It's going to be great to have him back. I'd probably like tilt that seesaw a little this way, but it's going to be, I, I don't think there's a more fascinating March story, is there? Is there anything more interesting than, than watching Tatum try to figure out how to assimilate to this team? I don't think there is.
31:24 Speaker 04 As a basketball story, there are very interesting things happening in the NBA. As a basketball story, on one team, probably not, as I'm, as I, I guess the Harden thing, but that's been pretty seamless on offense.
31:39 Bill Simmons? So Harden, that would've been my one B is, is, you know, I think we all saw it that one game when they beat Denver and Harden with a little more size and how easily he just can fit in with whatever team he wants to when he's like distributor James Harden.
31:56 Bill Simmons? It just, it was, felt different watching them in a good way for them. They, they did, you could still hunt James Harden and teams are going to do it in the playoffs, but at least like you can put him on bigger guys and try to hide him. So I thought that was interesting. Give me more All-Star game notes that you had.
32:11 Speaker 04 Uh, all right. So.
32:13 Bill Simmons? Or All-Star Weekend.
32:14 Speaker 04 Well, let's just start with the game.
32:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
32:18 Speaker 04 I love USA versus the world. Nailed it.
32:22 Speaker 04 Don't need to change that. As we're talking about box scores and game two, game three, game four, and all of this. The and I might be like too old school in this regard. I would, can we just have two teams like, can we do US versus the world? But there's and if we're worried about American players getting left out of all star status and they had the, you know, the 16 eight quotas that they added this year. Just can we have 15 team rosters then? Cause I just want to know, like, A, it was a little anticlimactic that it came down to US versus US in the end for the winning championship of All-Star Weekend.
32:59 Bill Simmons? I think it was dynamic for the guys playing too. I thought the world piece of it brought out more maybe than the last game.
33:06 Speaker 04 And I also just like to know, like, it's easier with two teams. It's very easy to keep track on who's like of who's on what team so that it very, it makes the coaching choices down the stretch. Like they're playing these five guys and here are all the guys on the bench. Well, oh, team red, I don't remember who's on team red, like who is the coach sitting for team red? And the stakes like I shouldn't have to watch the first and second quarters and not understand the stakes of what's going on. And this team's got to win by four and this team's got to win. I have heard from people inside the league now, people in the league office who are sort of incentivized to defend every tweak they make and stuff. That the players like the idea of the mini games that they, it feels like pick up to them.
33:49 Speaker 04 They like the, they like the quick finality of it. So maybe I'm fighting an uphill battle. But I like US versus the world. I like that it's my favorite thing from the picking teams format that they then ditched was watching teammates go against each other in, in the All-Star game.
34:06 Bill Simmons? Like Brunson and Towns.
34:07 Speaker 04 Brunson and Cat is, is, is the best example. I like that and this keeps that. I just like the clarity of one team versus another and the world, the international pool is definitely good enough to field a competitive 15 player roster. I mean, like, like, like, how many of the seven best players in the league are world guys to begin with? I, that would be my one, my one note is I just would like to have one, one team against another team, like a regular basketball game.
34:34 Bill Simmons? So the counter to that was if you go by quarter, that's what made it feel more like a pickup game. And if we have two teams, you can't do the quarter thing. I was trying to figure out, the part that I struggled with was how did they figure out what these two teams were that were the USA teams? And whether next time they either have to do east is one side, west is the other side for the two USA teams? Or do you have some sort of age cutoff where it's like 27 and up, 27 and down, and that's how you do it?
35:04 Speaker 04 And the pick at the quarter stuff, not only do the players supposedly like it, but it does, although the last game was a blowout, it does mitigate against like, all right, well, the world is up by 35 going into the fourth quarter. This is going to be totally unsuspenseful. I just like to, I like the two teams thing. The stakes are more clear. The rotation decisions are more clear. The game makes more sense. And if they're trying hard because of its world versus US, then that that would carry over too. I thought the jerseys were awesome. All three jersey kits, awesome.
35:35 Bill Simmons? I also like the Stars and Stripes as two of the three team names. That actually made sense to me.
35:39 Speaker 04 Stripes, baby.
35:40 Bill Simmons? USA Stars, USA Stripes.
35:42 Speaker 04 Yeah.
35:42 Bill Simmons? Good job.
35:43 Speaker 04 I'm trying to think what other, I mean, clearly the game was better. There's just no question. It was a pretty competitive basketball game. There were fouls. There was physicality, all of that. I, it was really fun.
35:55 Bill Simmons? The game never should have degenerated like a date over the last 25 years. And I still don't fully understand why that had to happen. But I don't understand a lot of things. I also don't understand All-Star Weekend in general. I think if they're going to evolve the game, I think they have to really look at the weekend. And having the Friday night, Saturday, Sunday thing, like there was just nobody there on Friday night. And maybe that part of it is you're doing it in Los Angeles. And if you did it in Indiana, or Milwaukee, or Oklahoma City, or Portland, or even Boston, if Boston ever gets the All-Star game again, the novelty of, oh, I want to go to everything. And then LA has had the game, I think, four times in the last 22 years or something.
36:37 Bill Simmons? The Saturday, they just. They they just can't figure it out past the three point contest. And when you're at the point where you have Jackson Hayes doing running left handed. How is Jackson Hayes in the All-Star game? To me, the number one cry for help is that VJ Edgecombe didn't want to be in the dunk contest. It makes me think they shouldn't have it because we've had Ja Morant not want to be in it. We've had Zion not want to be in it and now VJ Edgecombe. And if I'm like VJ Edgecombe's manager, I would want him to be in it. It's like, dude, go kill this dunk contest. It's gonna be worth like $10 million in sponsors for us. Go do some awesome dunks and raise the knowledge for people like my son, who barely knows who he is.
37:20 Bill Simmons? But people have just punted on it, so I don't know why they have it.
37:23 Speaker 04 So what so what do you what do you want to happen? What do you what what is your All-Star Friday and Saturday? Like, I'll I'll give you my All-Star Friday and Saturday. Zach Lowe's experience not going to All-Star this year. Confession to make, I don't know if I'm gonna get flack for this. Did not watch any of All-Star Friday. Can't do celebrity game. Can't do celebrity game. Don't care about the Rising Stars Challenge. I just can't I can't.
37:46 Bill Simmons? Well, after you and I lost our coaching in 2014.
37:50 Speaker 04 Yeah.
37:51 Bill Simmons? It's hard to it's just will never never understand what happened.
37:55 Speaker 04 We caught Michael B. Jordan on the way up. Like what like we'll never have access to that guy like that.
38:01 Bill Simmons? We caught him and he and he didn't and he we weren't getting him the ball. And some would say it's coaching. Some would say it was people on the team, but we just blew it. It was a tough loss for us.
38:08 Speaker 04 It was a tough one. I I love All-Star Saturday night, just unabashedly. I still love it. I watch it. But so that's why so this year they took away the skills challenge, which fine, and replace it with the shooting stars thing, which I thought was cool. Anytime you throw in half court shots and I like it.
38:24 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
38:25 Speaker 04 What what is your All-Star Saturday look like? We agree Friday stinks. They're gonna keep it. The young guys like it. The agents for the young guys like it. It's cool, whatever. What is what is Saturday to you? Just nothing? Have a have just have a two day All-Star weekend?
38:37 Bill Simmons? No, you have to have something on Saturday night, but I don't know why they can't merge Friday and Saturday into one mega night and do it that way. I don't know why we need Friday night. Friday nights, everyone's like, everyone at the weekend would rather be going to parties and dinner anyway. And that's what, that's what's been part of the issue. So that's always the one where people give away the tickets. I still really like the three-point contest. I bet they made a mistake not factoring in Caitlyn and Sabrina. I just think have to be in it, even if it's like a Steph versus Steph and pick one other of our best NBA three-point shooters going against those two is some sort of, you know, some sort of battle, I think. I just would have watched it. My rule is like, I'll just watch it. Dunk
39:22 Bill Simmons? contest has gotten to the point, I don't watch it live and I'll rewind it if people are telling me something crazy happened, which in this case was poor Jace Richardson almost knocking himself unconscious.
39:34 Speaker 04 That was a little scary.
39:35 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that was our, almost our worst dunk accident we've ever had. But I just, I've been writing, I felt like I was writing this for page two in 2002. We've run out of dunks. There's nowhere else to go.
39:47 Speaker 04 I, so, okay. Shooting star is fine. I could take it or leave it. It was fun. I love the three-point contest. It's always been my favorite event. In fact, it's one of the ones that they have added these little tweaks to, and I've liked every tweak. I like the Moneyball rack and you get to pick where it is. I like the two State Farm extra-long logo shots that are worth three points or whatever. I like that. I like everything about it. I like, love three-point contests. I will, I thought, I saw some people, I went on Twitter to see what the reaction was.
40:19 Bill Simmons? Why'd you do that?
40:20 Speaker 04 People were mad, like some people whose, whose favorite players were in the three-point contest and did not win, were mad that a player who had not played this season was allowed into the three-point contest and then won over their favorite player. I fucking loved that Damian Lillard was in the three-point contest. I loved that he won it. It was awesome.
40:38 Bill Simmons? Who was against this?
40:39 Speaker 04 This, this is, this is what all-
40:41 Bill Simmons? It's an insane take.
40:42 Speaker 04 This is what All-Star Weekend is supposed to be. A showcase of the best players. He's a two-time champion and he won the freaking contest. You think my take is insane?
40:50 Bill Simmons? No, I think anyone who's like, anyone who's like, I don't like that Dame lowered one when when my player should have won instead is, that's crazy. I'll go further. I would watch a Legends three-point contest too.
41:04 Speaker 04 Could get ugly. I don't know if you want to see that. Did you see Ron Harper, did you see Ron Harper missed that layup in the Shooting Stars competition? You might have missed it.
41:13 Bill Simmons? Fine.
41:14 Speaker 04 No, I will say this, here's my, here's my other take on the three-point contest. Khan, on fire in round one.
41:23 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
41:23 Speaker 04 Pressure may have got to him.
41:25 Bill Simmons? He had a long layoff, my guy.
41:27 Speaker 04 And I, as I'm watching it, you know, I'm thinking, is he not, is he not made for this level of pressure, for this level of moment? And, you know, is it because people coddle him by driving him home after podcasts instead of making him get an Uber? Like, like an adult and toughen up a little bit.
41:48 Bill Simmons? I should have shown him some tough love after the pod.
41:50 Speaker 04 Yeah, just so he thought it crossed my mind.
41:52 Bill Simmons? Yeah. He'll be fine.
41:55 Speaker 04 I thought the dunk contest was good. The problem is that no one is, no one other than crazy, diehard fans has heard of anybody in the dunk contest. I thought the dunks were good. There just aren't any new dunks. I kind of liked it for the most part, other than the E40 dunk. They pretty much dispensed with props and just were like, we're gonna jump really high and swing the ball around and do crazy stuff. I thought the dunks were good. People always hate on the dunk contest and they hate on it because none of the stars do it. I don't know what's to be done about that, but I found it entertaining. It's faster now than it used to be. It doesn't take forever anymore. It's at least a quick event.
42:30 Bill Simmons? Um, I just would have all the rookies do it.
42:34 Speaker 04 Just make them do it? Like it's part of your job as a rookie?
42:37 Bill Simmons? It's part of like the CBA. When you're in the league, we, we pick four, because then you would add VJ, you would add Cedric Coward, like you, it just would have been more interesting. Right? We could, we could have, we could have thrown together four rookies or maybe rookie sophomores. Maybe that's what it is. So maybe, but it goes back to when Zion and Judd didn't want to be. I thought when Blake Griffin was in it early in his career, I thought it was like a really important moment for his career. Like I thought it elevated his star power. We've seen that a few times over the years with younger players using the dunk contest to just become more famous. I don't know why he would toss that away.
43:14 Speaker 04 It's, it's so I was, I, we, we watched all the All-Star Saturday and my, my, uh, my wife and I went out to, to dinner and a comedy show. And we were over dinner and I was telling her that like the guy who won the dunk contest is basically played like 15 games or something in the NBA. And the guy who won the last two or three, whoever is like a G League player. And she was just like appalled of like, why, why do the stars not do this? And I have permission from her to share this take. And I was like, well,
43:41 Bill Simmons? I can't wait.
43:42 Speaker 04 LeBron's never done it. I don't, is Ant, I don't think Ant's ever done it. And I, and we did, I did go back and say, it's funny, like a lot of big stars did do it, but it was when they were just ascending as rookies. Like Dame, remember Dame did every event at All-Star Weekend one year. Donovan, Donovan Mitchell did it. Blake Griffin did it. Like the best rookies at least used to do it. And obviously back in the day, Jordan did it. Dominique did it. Big, big stars did it. And she was asking me like, why, why wouldn't LeBron James or whoever do it? And I said, well, there's no real incentive. Like the money means nothing to them. And they probably only see the downside of embarrassment.
44:19 Bill Simmons? Yeah. I was going to say the embarrassment overrides whatever the dollar figure.
44:22 Speaker 04 For being Chris Anderson who missed 13 dunks in a row. And, and she was like, basically said, you know, are they, are they not, so take a little embarrassment for the good of the game. Like you're, you're making a gajillion dollars. You're already one of the, take LeBron or whoever, one of the best basketball players that ever lived. Stomach a little embarrassment. I was like, this is a good take. This is like a good, this is like a good pre comedy show drink right now. You're spitting fire on, I should let her come on.
44:47 Bill Simmons? Well, you have that combined with why don't they care about the All-Star game? It's all part of the same thing, which is, you know, do you, do you want to carry the league in other ways than just trying to win the title and making a lot of money to play in it? And do endorsements, you know, and, and should these guys feel a responsibility for All-Star Weekend? And I, I'm not positive they should at this point. I, I don't think they have properly flipped it because there's been so much atrophy over the last 25 years. I, I feel like the guys in the seventies and eighties, not to be the old guy, remembering the old days. And if you go back and watch those games, they're not as good as they're being romanticized. But I do feel those guys cared about promoting the league because
45:30 Bill Simmons? the league wasn't that successful. Right? And it's like, we gotta do this because this is going to help the league. And then the problem is the league became very healthy. And you don't have to promote something that's healthy. And I, and I just think that's where it flipped.
45:45 Speaker 04 Well, the dunk contests in the game are different, are distinct elements in terms of participation. The dunk contest is like, it's, it's, it's a, it's not low stakes, but it's not a competitive 48 minute basketball game. Like you can do that as a steward of the game and it's on Saturday, it's earlier in the weekend. The, I, I empathize with the players when they don't try in the Sunday game and they say, look, man, we've been here 72 hours and I've done 72 media hits. My shoe company needed me to do this. I had 14 activations that my agency set up for me. And like by the end of, I'm exhausted by Sunday of All-Star Weekend. If you're a player in the All-Star Game, you've just done wall to wall crap for 72 hours. You're exhausted. Like I don't blame them. Then in, in the
46:30 Speaker 04 seventies and eighties, you went and had fun at All-Star Weekend on your own schedule and then you played a real basketball game.
46:38 Bill Simmons? I thought yesterday was really bad.
46:40 Speaker 04 Saturday.
46:41 Bill Simmons? And I, yeah, Saturday. I thought the, thought it was bad. I didn't think there was any energy for it. And, uh, three-point contest was about the only.
46:49 Speaker 04 People were saying the crowd was bad. Early probably didn't help, right? Like, super, it was early Eastern time zone.
46:56 Bill Simmons? How about this? Like, they, I'm assuming they moved it for the Olympics. These two things. Well, why not pass it off to another partner? And, and have it prime time. That's like to have all this stuff during the day, LA time is really weird. I, I didn't understand why they did that at all. This episode is brought to you by PNC Bank. In today's sports, everyone is constantly trying to outdo each other. Trick formations, infield shifts, constant rotation changes, yet it's proven time and time again, that strong fundamentals are the thing that will lead you to victory. Banking, no different. While everyone else tries to outdo each other, PNC Bank just keeps going right down the middle with steady, calculated money moves and the financial wins
47:39 Bill Simmons? just keep coming. PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865, brilliantly boring since 1865 as a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group, Incorporated. PNC Bank, National Association, Member, FTIC. All right, quick break. This episode is brought to you by Fire TV. You ever sit down, ready to watch the game, only to search and scroll endlessly? If so, you need Fire TV. It shows your live games from your favorite teams all in one place, right on the home screen. No more searching. Just sit down and turn on Fire TV. Separate subscriptions may be required. Feature and content availability may vary. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Excitement is in the air. That's right.
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48:59 Bill Simmons? We have to talk about.
49:02 Bill Simmons? Some of the, some of the stuff that's been building the last five, six days, I talked about on my podcast on Tuesday, you talked about it some as well, because the tanking thing, for some reason, the Utah game become this, became this. And I felt it. That's why I tried to structure my Tuesday pod around at least some of that. That Utah game became some sort of tipping point. And I talked a lot with Nick Wright about it on Tuesday about some solutions. And I know you talked about some too. And I've been thinking about it all week, and I've been talking to a bunch of different people who know stuff. And I feel like there are five different problems that all intertwine.
49:38 Speaker 04 Okay.
49:39 Bill Simmons? Maybe that's part of whatever the solution is, because I, I know you saw Adam's press conference yesterday. That was about as, as we're blowing this up as I think he's ever been, right? Have you ever seen him like that before?
49:55 Speaker 04 This was not the typical Adam thing is like, you know, we're, we're considering all ideas, you know, we, we, we leave no stone unturned. This was like, this was his polite way of saying like, I'm fucking sick of this shit. And we're going to change a lot of stuff.
50:09 Bill Simmons? Combined with, I kind of feel like I, I might have to fix some of this stuff, or I'm not going to be here in five years was, was the underlying piece of that too. Because this is on his watch. And at some point, if you're just a commit, I said this on Tuesday, if your job is the commissioner, if your only job is to make everyone as much money as possible, and that's it, which you could argue he's done, because the last media deal was by far the biggest they've ever gotten. And all the franchise fees are the highest they've ever been. So if you're just judging them by that, huge success. But if you're judging him by what is the league like competitively, um, this is about as bad, bad a shape as we've been in since the early eighties with some of the issues.
50:54 Bill Simmons? So here are the five things. I'm just gonna throw them all.
50:56 Speaker 04 I was gonna say, you're gonna list me the problems.
50:57 Bill Simmons? Yeah, yeah.
50:59 Bill Simmons? Seasons too long and more importantly suffers competitively at the worst possible time, which is mid February through March after football ends. Football ends, spotlight comes on you and it's right as 25 to 30% of your league is like, we're going to try to lose from now on. So that's problem one. Problem two, teams can tank, which we've had for 43 years, but there's no repercussions for the following season, only positives. If you tank, the best case scenario is you get an awesome pick. The worst case scenario is you're still going to get a good pick. There's no other repercussion.
51:40 Bill Simmons? Issue three, the star players are less durable than ever, which has partly to do with the schedule and partly to do with how hard basketball is played with. We've talked about that. Issue four is 25 to 35% of the fan bases get screwed on season tickets during the last basically 30 games of the season. Right? So it's like, if you're a season ticket holder of Sacramento or Washington or Brooklyn, pick a team, your last two and a half months, you can't give your tickets away. And then if you have one of the good teams in Sacramento, Brooklyn, or Chicago on Wednesday night, where I don't know if you saw that game, but Missoula just basically decided to use that as a practice for Nikola Vucevic because it was like Chicago's giving up.
52:24 Bill Simmons? We're just, they're out there in the fourth quarter, they're running plays for Vooch, trying to be like, he's just like, fuck it, we use this as practice. That's issue four. And then issue five, any team can participate in luxury tax revenue if they're under the tax, no matter how little they care about this season. So you have, to me, this is about misaligned incentives where there's not enough recourse against the teams that don't care as much as they should. There's not enough protection for the fans. And then on top of it, the season's too long, which hurts the players, which is part of this too. And it all kind of feeds together in this giant jellible.
53:08 Bill Simmons? And those are the five things that I think they have to figure out how to make this better as a group. And I have some ideas for that, but I'm going to throw that at you first.
53:17 Speaker 04 Well, first of all, I'm weirdly not worried about the Washington Wizards season ticket holder, because I'm already worried about his sanity or her sanity to begin with. Like, they, they just love basketball so much that I just don't even think they care who's playing in the game. So I'm going to leave them aside. So I listened to you and Nick Wright, and you were talking about consequences for tanking. You were talking about, and there are two different types of consequences that you just sort of alluded to just now. One is just strictly hitting the owner's pocketbooks, like, like you don't get to participate in the luxury tax windfall, whatever. Another that you mentioned with Nick that I think is important to talk about is erasing cap space the following season for a team who's deemed to have tanked.
54:01 Bill Simmons? That was my favorite idea I've had in a while. Like, to actually hurt you for the next season.
54:06 Speaker 04 So that, I think, gets at the core of what really needs to be discussed here is, like, the entire point of the draft and the lottery, it is all based on the principle that the worst teams need help acquiring better talent. It's all about redistributing talent. And you either believe that that is, that should be the case, that that's what the draft is for, or you don't, and then you're open to much more dramatic solutions. But on that point, penalizing cap space, it's hard to do that and still believe that the draft should be for redistribution of talent, because if a team tanks and you take away their cap space,
54:50 Speaker 04 it's like almost a double penalty on that team that's making it even harder for a bad team to get good again, which is what they're tanking to try to do. So that, that sort of, like, the money penalty, I'm fine with. Like, hit the owners, they're billionaires, like, whatever, I don't care. Making it harder for a bad team to get good, to me, by taking away cap space, by taking away team building resources, to me, cuts against the entire idea of what the draft is supposed to be for and the reason they're tanking anyway.
55:21 Bill Simmons? Well, couldn't the penalties be tied a little bit more to behavior? And I don't know, like I said in that pod with Nick, the cutoff was like 20, can you go 27 and 55? And if you can't do that, every win under, we start taking stuff away. The reason I thought of this idea, because I'm in, I've talked about it before in the pod. I'm in the league of dorks, this American league only keeper league fantasy, where we have a 40-team roster, 40-point roster. We do a minor league draft.
55:50 Speaker 04 Unbelievable.
55:51 Bill Simmons? And this is a league that has been around longer than when I was in it. And one of the early problems they had was tanking. And it was like, I'll just throw away my season. I'll trade my best guys, I'll get picks, and I'll try to get the first pick in the next year's draft to get the best rookie. And it becomes such a problem, we put in these penalties in the keeper league, and they've actually worked. And it's like, if you fall below, we do it by categories, and it's like you fall below like 27 points, whatever it is, Commissioner Mike Meldelson, you have $15 less to spend at the draft next year. So we have like, I think it's like 200, 200 bucks to spend at the draft, 250, whatever it is. And the 15 bucks, you really feel it the next year.
56:34 Bill Simmons? So the teams that suck, they're like, well, I can't really tank completely because I don't want to fuck over next year too. And I think we have to start thinking that way with some of this stuff, where there's two things. One is you can't get the top four lottery pick two years in a row. I just think that should be automatic voted through.
56:52 Speaker 04 That's got some unintended consequences to it, though.
56:56 Bill Simmons? What do you mean?
56:56 Speaker 04 Well, if I'm a bad team, and I know that another bad team is ineligible to pick in the top four, that might embolden me to like, or if I'm just a mediocre team, that might, that might embolden me to do like a aggressive, a more aggressive tank than I had planned, because I know I'm ahead of that team already.
57:17 Bill Simmons? Well, could they do something with the ping pong balls where? If you finish in the top four, you get that certain number of ping pong balls. But you now get the fifth team ping pong balls. We just take ping pong balls out of the lottery. So you can't get the most. You have to get, you had this last year. You were in the top four. There's something with the ping pong balls. I feel like they can experiment with too. Including, by the way, Adam finding teams with ping pong balls.
57:44 Speaker 04 Taking combinations away?
57:46 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Cause there's a thousand ping pong combinations, right?
57:50 Speaker 04 Some, something that, yeah.
57:51 Bill Simmons? You go to the ladder every year and you stare at these ping pong balls as they bounce around. But like, yeah, would Utah do some of this stuff? And Utah, by the way, has done a great job of being like, what do you mean? Those guys played 28 minutes. They just didn't play the fourth quarter. It's like, okay, guys.
58:06 Bill Simmons? Also, like the, all the stuff about that OKC was behind the punishment for Utah because they have their protected pick. I thought was just downright hilarious. Because this is the team that traded for Al Horford not to play him for a year, just sent him to the Bahamas. And sat SGA at least once down the stretch. Was it once or twice? Where they were just like, we know you're a young player trying to be better, but you're going to sit down for two months here.
58:32 Speaker 04 Yeah. No franchise is like, almost no franchise has like been scot free from tanking.
58:39 Bill Simmons? I think all of them have done it because by the way, if, if we were running a team. We would do this.
58:45 Speaker 04 Well, look, to be clear.
58:46 Bill Simmons? There's no penalty to do it. It's not like, like, what do I care? I'm trying to beat everyone else. This is a smart move.
58:51 Speaker 04 So what people were talking about was, I, I think the Athletic was the first to report it was that Oklahoma City is, Oklahoma City officials are like whispering to people in the media about Utah and.
59:03 Bill Simmons? Oh, that's not like OKC at all.
59:05 Speaker 04 Well, look, for the record, no one from the Thunder has talked to me about the Utah Jazz. So I, I cannot speak to that, but I said on my pod two months ago that it's like a lock that the Thunder are going to complain to the league about Utah if Utah decides to tank. And by the way, of course they are. These are 30 self-interested entities. They only care about the, what, no matter what they say. They only care about them winning short-term and long-term. It's all competition. Of course they're going to.
59:34 Bill Simmons? Right. Well, I got a couple of emails and I would give the people credit, but I, all right, I'll, I'll give Kyler, Kyler Dickey sent this in.
59:44 Bill Simmons? Why can't we eliminate pick protections?
59:46 Speaker 04 That's on the table. You can. They're definitely gonna consider that.
59:50 Bill Simmons? Be like, you know what? We don't have these anymore. You can do swaps and you can do pick protections. Top four, top seven, top eight, we're done. No more.
59:58 Speaker 04 I would predict right now that something like that happens. That that, that like, I think, I think they will exist. But the proposal that they've really taken the most seriously is you can only do top four protection. Uh, and you can only do lottery protected. Nothing, nothing in between. We're not doing any more of the whatever, not top eight nonsense.
1:00:18 Bill Simmons? But the lottery protected leaves, leads to with that Derek Lively situation.
1:00:22 Speaker 04 This is, this is my general, no, well, Derek Lively was top 10, I think.
1:00:27 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah. All right. You're right. Top 10.
1:00:28 Speaker 04 Anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry. I don't want to interrupt the email chain.
1:00:32 Bill Simmons? Well, it was just, either you trade the first round pick or you don't. And when you trade it, it's gone like it was in the eighties and nineties.
1:00:41 Bill Simmons? I'm still on on this. See, are you ready for the most interesting idea I got? Or did you have more to note takes on this stuff?
1:00:47 Speaker 04 Go, go, go.
1:00:49 Bill Simmons? So a couple of people sent versions of this and I'm going to go with the email I got from Eric Wyden.
1:00:56 Bill Simmons? Who, and I don't agree with where he landed on this, but it sparked something that I thought was really interesting. He, he wanted to have a lottery cup.
1:01:05 Bill Simmons? 62 game mark, three bottom teams in each conference. Are relegated to the lottery cup and only play each other the last 22 games. And then everybody else still plays same scoring system, blah, blah, blah. I don't think they would do that. But I do wonder. It did spark something in my brain about is there a cutoff date? Where basically teams get relegated to go play each other. So I wrote down, if we, assuming we still have a 30 team league. And everybody plays each other twice, that's 58 games. You play everyone in your division once, now we're at 62 games. So we have 20 games left. And then.
1:01:47 Bill Simmons? I'm going to have to make up games that I'm about to cut out. So let's say everybody plays two games overseas for international money. To try to make up some of the salary cap. So I'm at 64 games right now. So those would be neutral site games, 64, 18 to go.
1:02:04 Bill Simmons? We eliminate 10 teams right there. Five in each conference, we're done. So those five teams, that's 10 would be Chicago, Milwaukee, Brooklyn, Indiana, Washington, Memphis, Dallas, Utah, New Orleans, Sacramento. You're done. You're all gonna just play each other. Nine games, you all play each other once, we're done. We're gonna end up at 73 games. And guess what else happens to those teams, Zach? The worst five out of those teams cannot participate in luxury tax revenue. Any team, so we have a 74 game, we're gonna have like penalties for if you lose 50 plus games, 55 plus, we're throwing all that in there. And they finish with a 73 game season,
1:02:47 Bill Simmons? and that's it. So if 20 teams left, they're all playing with each other, right? So I have, in the conference, 10 teams each, nine games against each other, and they just, you play everyone in your conference once, now I'm at 73 games. Is this too complicated? Or does this make sense?
1:03:06 Speaker 04 I mean, I'm trying to stick with you. I'm trying to think, what are the stakes in the games between the 10 relegated teams? What are we playing for in those games?
1:03:16 Bill Simmons? Nothing.
1:03:16 Speaker 04 Nothing.
1:03:17 Bill Simmons? You're like banished. You're in the fucking kids table. Enjoy, tank away. Go see if you can out-tank each other. We're not showing these games on TV. You're not gonna participate in that. You're just, you're over here now.
1:03:28 Speaker 04 Is that good? Is that good for fans of those teams? Is that worse for fans of those teams?
1:03:32 Bill Simmons? No, because I'm giving everybody, I'm giving everybody 75% off tickets for those last nine games.
1:03:37 Speaker 04 Good luck with that.
1:03:38 Bill Simmons? Yeah. And then, after the 73 games, we eliminate the 10 seed. Let me know what you think of this for game 74. We have one game battles for the 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, 6 seeds. One game. Higher seed gets home. We just play one gamers, almost like the plan, but better. Just playing for home court. I mean, I'm sorry, not for playing for the higher seed for each of those. And then we do play and stuff for 8, 9, and 7, 8, we're off. And the playoffs start after 74 games. And we have, because those seed games are so important, plus playing games, we have more money we can make from those games. So the flaw in this is like, those 10 teams just being at the kids table would be the
1:04:23 Bill Simmons? flaw in this idea.
1:04:26 Speaker 04 It's I I need to sit with this a little bit. You also, I I don't know that I want all the seeds, the playoff seeds and everything that comes with them to be decided by a one game tournament where like a team could be like the seventh best team and somehow end up with the top seed. Is that possible?
1:04:41 Bill Simmons? No, no, no, because it's only one versus two.
1:04:43 Speaker 04 Oh, I see.
1:04:44 Bill Simmons? Three versus four.
1:04:45 Speaker 04 I retract.
1:04:45 Bill Simmons? Five versus six. Yeah.
1:04:46 Speaker 04 Got you. Okay.
1:04:48 Bill Simmons? And then everyone under six is in the plan anyway.
1:04:51 Speaker 04 It's a it's a it's a lot, but it would take some. It's like learning anything. Like my daughter and I learned a complicated new board game this week. You do it once or twice, and now you learned it. Now you're you've mastered it.
1:04:59 Bill Simmons? Well, so the easier way to do this is just we have we knock out 10 teams at the 62 64 game mark, wherever you want to say, and then the top 20 just play each other those last few weeks. And the bottom 10 are just over there not messing with anything. And they're just we basically have relegation because a lot of people have asked me, why don't we have relegation?
1:05:22 Bill Simmons? And the answer is you can't like that's not it's not like in soccer. I get it. They've had it forever, but in basketball, like no team, no good player would want to be on a relegated team, right? You can't ask like, I don't know, Trey Murphy to be like, hey, you're you're just going to be in the shittier league this year.
1:05:41 Speaker 04 You're in a different you and your team are in a different league.
1:05:43 Bill Simmons? Yeah, you're just down there now. And like you can't do they're never going to do that. But I do wonder if the bigger thing to me is how do you shorten the season while also raising the stakes for these last few weeks?
1:05:56 Speaker 04 Look, you you've landed on there. We we can get lost in the weeds of all these proposals and and and I'm guilty of it, too. But I I like to zoom out and start thinking more broadly, like, what are the like the central questions that we're really asking? And one of the central questions or conclusions in this case is the season is too long. The season needs to be shorter. And it's it's it. We all know why they're sticking with 82 games. It's purely money. Everybody involved, union, player, players, union, owners, whatever.
1:06:28 Speaker 04 And it this shortening the season is not quite a silver bullet, but it's pretty close because it just solves a lot of problems. It solves some of the wear and tear on the players.
1:06:38 Bill Simmons? It spreads the schedule out.
1:06:39 Speaker 04 It spreads the schedule out. It introduces just even if you shave 15 games off. I know you're 70 games, 12, 15 games, whatever it is. It introduces a little bit more randomness. The shorter the season, the more random it is. If you're a team like Utah, if you do that, plus none of this protected pick nonsense, if you're a team like Utah and you start out 11 and nine, you're done. You're going for it. Like it's you're already a third of the way through the season. Almost there's no way you can parachute out of that. Your fans won't let it happen. Now you have 60 more games left. You have plenty of time to tank. I don't think it should be a 50 game or 55 like those are so low as to be unrealistic. But if you can get down towards 65, 70, I just think the benefits are enormous
1:07:23 Speaker 04 across the board. Other than this, this dip in per game gate, etc. Revenue that you would hope in the long run by the game being healthier, each game feeling more important, new TV deals, streaming deals coming in, that that is made up in the, in the long, long run. And team, most owners are in this league to own their teams for a long time.
1:07:48 Bill Simmons? Yeah. So we've all heard, we've all talked to this same types of people. We've heard the same things. They're never getting up the extra money.
1:07:55 Speaker 04 But it, but what's
1:07:55 Bill Simmons? Whether it's five, five games or
1:07:58 Speaker 04 I'm sorry to interrupt you, but what's maddening about it is even those people, like, does anyone think this is a bad idea on the merits? Like if you left aside the money, even the people who are like, well, I can't take the money hit. They know on the merits, the season is too long.
1:08:12 Bill Simmons? But this is why, and this is why I was hard on Silver on Tuesday, because this is literally the most important decision of his entire career, him getting this across the finish line in some way.
1:08:22 Speaker 04 And I'll bet he knows. He knows the season is too long.
1:08:25 Bill Simmons? If he can't do this, if he can't convince two separate groups of people who are tough to convince anyway, that the season has to be shorter. And here's all the reasons why. And here are some slight fixes that I think I can generate more money. I think more international games would help. They'd be able to make more money from that. And even whether it's that, that seed battle I had or whatever, like adding some games that feel like playoff games near the end of the season that that I think, you know, they could probably sell those games. I don't think this is a, this is not like a crazy amount of money that they're giving up. I know it's a lot of money in the context of life. But for these guys, it's like you're, you, you said 70 to 72 games, right? That's. Sure.
1:09:11 Bill Simmons? That's 11% of the season.
1:09:16 Bill Simmons? I still think it's worth it. And I still think that the making the league healthier in the long run is going to make everybody more money. And that's how they have to think. And what worries me is not only are they going to not get off the 82, they're going to now expand. And they're going to take the expansion fees for that, which could be six, seven million bucks or seven billion bucks. So 14 billion each, every, every owner is going to make another 475 million, whatever. And I think that makes the league worse too. Now I, now we have two more teams tanking.
1:09:49 Bill Simmons? So we're presenting like all these reasons they should do this. And if anything, there, it's probably more likely they're going to stay at 82 and add two expansion teams. Versus like having some hard conversations about, should we just relocate two teams if we like these markets so much? They're doing this out of greed. And I've heard the theory like, oh no, we have enough players now, which technically I agree with. But I don't agree with it when most of these guys on these teams are playing 62, 65, 66 games, the best guys. And you actually need depth now, right? Absolutely. You need more guys. You don't, we, we can't get away with the rosters we had in 06. So, um, I just, I don't think the team, the leagues needed a leader more than this.
1:10:33 Bill Simmons? Really since anything since the Sterling, um, situation in 2014. That was the la, and Adam did an awesome job with that. That was the last time we were like, this is now a crisis.
1:10:45 Bill Simmons? We're now hitting a point where the players on a team might strike a playoff game unless you do something. And he rose to the occasion and they made stuff happen. I think this is a crisis now. That Utah thing and everything that's happened and we all these teams that don't care when we're early February, this is an official crisis.
1:11:04 Speaker 04 Well, and on 82 games, you know, they've done the back and forth a little bit on, does the science of load management and injury management, is there any actual proof that fewer games reduces injuries?
1:11:19 Bill Simmons? That's ridiculous.
1:11:20 Speaker 04 Well, we don't, they've, they've, they've done this dance of, well, we're studying it. Well, we haven't found anything. You can't prove a negative and this and that. Just set all that aside. Shortening the season solves a lot of other like, that solves, but helps a lot of other structural issues with your league, including in, in at least some cases, reducing the incentive to tank for a team that it didn't expect to be good. It's is better than it is. And you'll have teams that are the other way where they are worse than they are and start so far behind the eight ball that they can see the end of the season coming sooner. But I think that scenario is, is less frequent than the, the former where a team gets off to a hot start. It's like, all right, let's, let's just let it ride.
1:11:58 Bill Simmons? Well, there's two, there's two groups of teams that suffer in this. One is the shitty teams, the fan bases of those teams where you're just able to throw away three, four years if you want. And it's actually probably a smart move versus like being the bulls. We make fun of the bulls all the time for going 40 and 42 every year. That's where you don't want to be in the NBA. And Adam even said that in his press conference. The other group, the group of the teams that are really successful for a five or a six year stretch, there's an extra wear and tear with that, too. We saw that with Golden State, with the Curry, Klay, KD, having Klay and KD both break down in the 2019 playoffs.
1:12:39 Bill Simmons? We saw that with the Celtics where I think Tatum's played more minutes than, he said this in the NBC, he's played more minutes than anyone since he came into the league and played big, big minutes in 22, 23, 24, and 25 and broke down. So you're asking these guys to over and over again, play a hundred game seasons if they're good. You're also telling them if you played less than 65 games, you're not going to be eligible for all these awards and all the award bonuses. That part's fucked up too, right? I like, they haven't solved the good side of this either. I don't think.
1:13:13 Speaker 04 No. The, the question that I grapple with is,
1:13:18 Speaker 04 They're always going to be bad teams. Like you can't legislate away bad teams. There's a natural life cycle that a lot of teams live of they're good, then they get old, then they get bad as they turn over their players, even in teams that leagues that don't have much as much overt tanking as basketball has always had. And in baseball, you get your September call-ups, you know, you get your trade your veterans for prospects. Like that's all part of the natural cycle of sports. So there's always going to be bad teams. And the draft has always been there as a way to help bad teams get better. And, and the question the league is facing is, is as long as the, that's what you consider the draft for, to give the bad teams a better chance of getting the best
1:14:01 Speaker 04 players, there's going to be some incentive pointing for bad teams to be bad. Can you keep the reverse order draft principle at, at its core that the worst teams draft highest? Can you maintain that?
1:14:19 Speaker 04 And chip away at enough of the tweaks to eliminate the worst tanking or to really eliminate tanking? Do you just have to scrap that principle all together and reimagine what the draft is? In other words, like, do you believe that the worst teams should by and large pick highest? If so, can you maintain that in some form, but eliminate protections, eliminate this and that to sort of mitigate the natural incentive to tank that the reverse order draft brings? Or is it such a big problem that you just have to be like, maybe the reverse order draft is just not the way to go anymore? Maybe we have to reimagine the entire concept. I don't know the answer to that. Those are the things that I am grappling with. And if you, if you are a
1:15:03 Speaker 04 proponent of any system, and we don't need to talk about all the wild ideas that are out there, any system that does away with the reverse order draft altogether, you have to fundamentally be okay with the Thunder get the first pick in the draft, the 2017 Warriors get the first pick in the draft, because that will happen at some point. As I said on my pod, it could happen this year via the Clippers that the Thunder could get the first pick in the draft. But like, you have to be okay with that. And I
1:15:30 Bill Simmons? Well, so we had that, the Magic. The year, the Weber year.
1:15:34 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:15:34 Bill Simmons? That was the year we were like, oh no.
1:15:37 Speaker 04 So.
1:15:37 Bill Simmons? Oh, this is, wait, I, I liked the lottery until this happened and everybody panicked.
1:15:41 Speaker 04 And this, this is, I'm still thinking about it and talking to experts about it and trying to game out how these different universes look, but like, these are the hard questions you answer because I think the NBA is heading toward, although Adam did in his press conference allude to like, everything's on the table, like any, like reimagining.
1:15:58 Bill Simmons? It's the first time he, it's the first time he's really come out, cause I was writing, I did the entertaining as hell tournament for the first time, like 2005. You wrote about the lottery wheel for Grantland in 2013, right? It's not like we haven't been talking about trying to fix this. The process Sixers were another catalyst where we were like, fuck, but it feels worse now. And I, there's another piece to this that I think why it feels different in 2026 versus other decades. I think there's more stuff grabbing attention from people.
1:16:33 Bill Simmons? That the league is competing with. I was thinking about this last night with All-Star Saturday, which was just for me, like always, I'm in, it's All-Star Saturday. There's just more content, there's more things to do. There's, uh, I think some of the other places, like even UFC and WWE and, and boxing, like they, people have figured out how to fill the weekends. Football, the football season got longer. There are all these things where it just feels like we go from content to content to content. And you can't just really trot out the crappy All-Star weekend anymore. And you can't trot out like two months of bad basketball with, with 130 year league and expect that not to matter because what's going to happen is people, what's really good, the, the biggest fear
1:17:18 Bill Simmons? that the league should have is the playoffs are always awesome and they're going to be particularly awesome this year. I was texting with some friends about this this weekend. I was like, this is gonna suck for six weeks. We're gonna get to early April and basketball's gonna be awesome for 10 weeks.
1:17:33 Speaker 04 It's gonna be Denver, Minnesota, first round.
1:17:36 Bill Simmons? It's gonna be incredible. There's gonna be so many storylines and we're all gonna forget all this shit. The question for me is, why does the league make everyone suffer until we get to that point? It's just bad. It's a bad business model. They have. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. And whether it's a flea flicker or a tush push, you need a plan that fits your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you. So they can help personalize coverage for your life and for your budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. This episode is brought to you by 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.
1:18:20 Bill Simmons? 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 to fix it.
1:18:35 Speaker 04 The question for me is, look, I don't know what, if anything, is gonna change. And it requires a bunch of owners to get on board with whatever is proposed and the players you need to agree. It's like, not that easy to just pull a lever and all of a sudden 17 different rules are changed. But I, I would, I would rank the most likely outcome as a bunch of Band-Aid tweaks to the reverse order slash lottery draft. So the protection thing that we're talking about, maybe you give the seven and eight seeds, some lottery balls to, to, like, the play-in was also supposed to boost competitiveness. And I think it has in the middle of the league to some degree. You know, whatever, whatever tweaks, you know, that you, that maybe, maybe you do.
1:19:18 Bill Simmons? The top four pick back to back years.
1:19:20 Speaker 04 Something like that.
1:19:21 Bill Simmons? You can't win the lottery twice in a row.
1:19:23 Speaker 04 After March 1st, you get half a credit for every win instead of every, whatever it is. Like, all these little, little levers, little mini levers that are like mini Band-Aids. Can you do that? Is there enough of those where the equation clicks into place where you've tightened it up enough, but kept the reverse order draft and you can have the, still have. Have a reverse order draft, but tightened up the tanking enough that we hit a sweet spot? Or do you have to reimagine everything? My guess is they're going to try all the mini Band-Aids. And do the mini Band-Aids reveal, you know, new openings here and there for teams to game the system? Because every time they do a tweak or a Band-Aid, the smart teams figure out, oh, this, this just incentivizes
1:20:05 Speaker 04 me to do this instead. And I don't, I don't know the answer to that. It's a very complicated question.
1:20:10 Bill Simmons? I did have one more idea, and it's either the greatest idea I've ever had or the worst. And I don't think there's an in-between.
1:20:21 Bill Simmons? The first picks on the clock.
1:20:24 Bill Simmons? The five, teams one through five. With the first pick. All put in who they would take in that spot.
1:20:35 Bill Simmons? Whatever player is the consensus pick. He then goes up to the podium and he sees who picked him in that spot and he gets to decide who he plays for.
1:20:46 Speaker 04 So the bad teams are, it's still the bad teams, right?
1:20:49 Bill Simmons? So it's Cooper, it's Cooper Flag last year. He goes up and it's like Dallas, San Antonio, Philadelphia, Charlotte, and whoever the fifth team was, Utah. And it's like, all of them have decided they would take Cooper Flag in this spot. Here's Cooper Flag. He walks up to the podium.
1:21:08 Bill Simmons? I've decided to play. For the San Antonio Spurs and they just win the lottery that way. And we give some player empowerment to this.
1:21:15 Speaker 04 Do we do that again for the second pick?
1:21:18 Bill Simmons? Pick two.
1:21:20 Speaker 04 And it's the next five?
1:21:21 Bill Simmons? Next five, yeah. They put it in and it's like, they've all picked Dylan Harper. Dylan, come on up. Here are your five choices. And we just do that for the first seven.
1:21:30 Speaker 04 You are putting a team in position where it's like, it's like cut to Danny Ainge and seven consecutive players have snubbed the Jazz.
1:21:40 Bill Simmons? You only do it for the top five or the top four or whatever. But I, I think, I like the idea of, one of the problems with the lottery is some of these guys just get sent to Siberia. You know, and, and maybe they should have more autonomy. And maybe that would wanna make wanna players be in the draft, but it would be so interesting this year with Darren Peterson. It's like, okay, Darren, it turns into almost a reality show. Darren, all five teams have decided you are their first pick. It is now your choice.
1:22:11 Speaker 04 Wait till my Tuesday show, cause I'm still fleshing it out, but I'm working on, I'm working on. I'm gonna call it the NBA conclave as, as, as a way to solve the draft order. I, there's a lot of minds, there's a lot of minds chipping in on this, but it's, it's, there's like, there's no idea too outlandish.
1:22:31 Bill Simmons? Short term, if Adam had to do some bid date stuff, I think penalizing teams with luxury tax money.
1:22:40 Bill Simmons? With salary cap space for the next year and with the inability to repeatedly do this season after season. So the Kings, the Kings tried to be good.
1:22:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, they just suck. Like what do you do with it?
1:22:50 Bill Simmons? It just sucks. They're not tanking. And if they win the lottery, it's like, you know what? That this is kind of the spirit of the rule, but I, I have an issue when it's a couple of the other teams that are still in this again. Like Washington, we, Washington, I think really reinvented this a little bit with the trading for guys who just aren't gonna play. Utah did that too.
1:23:10 Speaker 04 Toronto did it last year.
1:23:11 Bill Simmons? Toronto did it last year and this is just, you know. All right. So you, so both of us feel like something's gonna happen.
1:23:20 Speaker 04 I, I think, I mean, look, the process takes a long time. The competition committee recommended to this committee, recommended to this, and it's a vote here. But I would be surprised if we got to the 2028 lottery and the rules were not different. And maybe even the 2027 lottery.
1:23:39 Bill Simmons? Couple of other quick things before we go. Giannis gave some interview, the All-Star break.
1:23:45 Speaker 04 Can I pass? I pass.
1:23:47 Bill Simmons? No, he started with the as of today.
1:23:49 Speaker 04 I pass, I pass.
1:23:50 Bill Simmons? I know. I, well, remember like on, when Twitter added the mute button?
1:23:56 Bill Simmons? I'm, I'm ready to mute all the Yanis stories until July.
1:23:59 Speaker 04 In his defense, people are interviewing him and they're asking him and he, he says the same thing over and over again. I admire the steadfast, I'm just, I just, I'm ready to take a break.
1:24:09 Bill Simmons? Can you imagine having a, having a friend who may or may not be like getting divorced or getting separated, but then won't say either way what's going to happen. And this was just all the conversations you had for three years. And then you go on double dates and then you would talk to him separately and it was just, it just kind of went on forever. That's what this is starting to feel like. I just wish he would say, I don't want to get traded.
1:24:35 Speaker 04 It, it really is. Yeah. No, I was.
1:24:39 Bill Simmons? Just say that. Now I'm roping you into a Yanis conversation.
1:24:41 Speaker 04 No, he doesn't. I don't, because he doesn't want to get traded, but he wants to compete for the championship now. And those two things are currently incompatible. And I think he is, and everyone is struggling.
1:24:51 Bill Simmons? Or maybe that, maybe they're not incompatible. I don't know if you saw the last two Bucks games.
1:24:57 Speaker 04 I, I saw one of them. They beat.
1:24:58 Bill Simmons? Stuff's, stuff's, stuff's going down with the Bucks.
1:25:01 Speaker 04 Cam Thomas played well and.
1:25:03 Bill Simmons? And dang.
1:25:05 Speaker 04 And Usman Jang like lit up the thunder. I, I was watching that game and thinking, are the Thunder coaches, player development coaches taking joy in seeing the fruits of their labor and Usman Jang's labor payoff, but against them? I bet they are.
1:25:19 Bill Simmons? I would be trying to trade for all the 12 through 17 OKC guys. The Bucks are 12, 23 and 30 and they're a 12 seed. Now, if we had my 64 game rule where you get relegated after 64 games, we'd be excited to watch the Bucks try to break into the top 20. But we have Atlanta at 26 and 30 and Miami at 29 and 27 as the eight seeds. So it is conceivable the Bucks could creep in the vicinity, which is what I think. And then maybe Yanis does come back for the last month. Kind of watching that one. Um, we have the Boston situation. We have watching James Harden on Cleveland.
1:25:59 Bill Simmons? We have this amazing Charlotte Renaissance where they're 16 and nine in their last 25 and like fourth in a net rating. We have Minnesota trying to get in the top four. We have the Clippers punishment, which or lack of a punishment, resolution in some form.
1:26:15 Speaker 04 Wait, can I stop you for a second? Why is Minnesota trying to get into the top four? So interesting to you. I mean, I, you know that I'm super high on Minnesota as a sleeper title contender, but why, why not? Like, what is more interesting about them than like Houston Lakers? Why is that on your, on your map?
1:26:32 Bill Simmons? Because I look at the actual contenders and I make my little power pole each week and I try to figure out who I think has a realistic chance to win the title. I don't think you can do it as the road team in four straight rounds.
1:26:46 Speaker 04 Sorry.
1:26:47 Bill Simmons? And I think for them, you have to get at least the four seed, maybe even the three seed. They might have a chance to get all the way up to the three seed. But you're not doing it at five or six unless it's a really weird season or a really weak conference. This is not a weak conference.
1:27:04 Speaker 04 Interestingly, I'm looking at their schedule now just for fun.
1:27:08 Speaker 04 They only play Houston three times and they've lost once, but two games are left. That could be an important head to head. I think they will pass the Lakers.
1:27:18 Bill Simmons? I would assume, well, the, the last question I had was related to Minnesota is whether Houston has reached the cross off point as a contender. Do you take them seriously as a contender anymore? Because I felt like the Adams Shingun together thing was such a superpower for them. And it was this crazy wrinkle that it was almost like watching an NFL team that could play three tight ends at the same time and just blow you off the line of scrimmage and had all these extra, you know, wrinkles. So it was like, oh shit, nobody else can do that. Losing that combined with Van Vliet and now we have this Durant situation gets worse. I just haven't liked how they've looked for a couple of weeks. I know you talked about it too.
1:28:03 Bill Simmons? And to me, they were a team that I felt like was a legitimate unquestioned contender. And I don't feel that way anymore when I watch them.
1:28:12 Speaker 04 I was never quite there with them as like a top tier A1 contender.
1:28:19 Speaker 04 I did think that they were in a universe of teams who could win the West as as of right now. I would be surprised if they will. I don't think they could win the West. I don't think they can win three playoff series in the West.
1:28:28 Bill Simmons? They just lost too much. They lost that offensive rebounding crazy quirk. And they just don't have the right kind of right kind of point guard situation, in my opinion. The only other thing that I thought was interesting. Basketball wise, yeah, um, then we can wrap it up, but the whether Joe Lacob buys the Padres or not.
1:28:51 Bill Simmons? Was a wild card for me. I just found out about this for real on Thursday that he's one of many suitors for the Padres and the Padres are an amazing business and I think they're they have a chance to go for maybe even more than would the Mets go for like two, six?
1:29:05 Speaker 04 I don't even I don't even remember, but you know, Joe Lacob, you wanna you wanna go head to head with Stevie Stevie C. Bring it on, buddy.
1:29:13 Bill Simmons? Well, that so I'm wondering. So let's say, let's say he wins and he gets the Padres. Is it inconceivable to think that would be the next team available? Because I've asked it from people and everybody was like, no way. He'll never sell the Warriors. But.
1:29:30 Bill Simmons? This is kind of the perfect time to sell the Warriors right now. Because you get you're at the height of the market. Expansion money is coming. And then on top of it, the new owner can be the owner of the team that has Steph Curry on it for the next three to seven years, however long he plays. And you could just be like, you know what? Four titles. I couldn't have done better. I built this amazing infrastructure and now I'm going to take, take my talents over to baseball. I'm 70 years old.
1:29:58 Bill Simmons? Interesting thought bubble, right?
1:30:00 Speaker 04 Interesting.
1:30:00 Bill Simmons? I don't know what he's gonna do. Maybe he'll try to own both, but I just, just got my, got my brain circulating. Who do you think is the next giant team to sell?
1:30:09 Speaker 04 In the NBA?
1:30:10 Bill Simmons? Yeah, if you if we were doing a who's gonna sell draft. And it had to be like a team with some, some oomph.
1:30:17 Speaker 04 Some oomph. Well, the all the Dallas noise has been very weird in the last couple of weeks about like the Mark Stein reports that Cuban had an investor trying to buy it back from Dumont and then Dumont's being like, no, we're not selling the team. That's been strange.
1:30:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah, but if Cuban calls Dumont and says, I have this investor. We want to buy the Mavericks. And Dumont says, no, thanks. Is that a story? Or is that Cuban trying to get it out there that? To make it seem like he has a chance to get him back.
1:30:45 Speaker 04 All right. So you're asking me just blind pick?
1:30:48 Bill Simmons? Blind pick. Pick any kind of major. So Celtics are in the six and a half range. Lakers were valued at 10. Somewhere that would at least be a kind of in the circle range of the Celtic price.
1:31:07 Speaker 04 I mean.
1:31:10 Bill Simmons? I probably should have prepped you for this.
1:31:11 Speaker 04 No, I'm just, I'm thinking out loud, like, what do I want to say?
1:31:16 Bill Simmons? Oh, what do you want to say?
1:31:17 Speaker 04 Well, no, just like, could Dolan sell the Knicks and keep MSG is always just like every six months. There's rumblings, you know?
1:31:24 Bill Simmons? There's rum, yeah. And he doesn't get along with Adam and blah, blah, blah.
1:31:27 Speaker 04 My, my dream answer would be the Bulls, but there's just no sign of that happening that I've heard. And then like, remember, I, I have not paid much attention to like Tillman Fertitta's financials, but then there's been no buzz about it. But remember there was like, well, he stretched himself pretty far to buy the Rockets. I don't know. Just I, I don't, is there, is there an answer you're looking at? That I'm not, that I'm not seeing? Cause none of this is like, I'm not reporting any of this. I don't think any of this is real.
1:31:53 Bill Simmons? You mentioned the Knicks. Thought that was interesting. That always is rumor, but I almost feel like Dolan's so stubborn. He'd intentionally not sell the Knicks.
1:32:01 Speaker 04 Plus high times right now. I mean, like.
1:32:04 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:32:04 Speaker 04 Title contender. MSG is going to be rocking. Jose Alvarado is on board.
1:32:09 Bill Simmons? Jose Alvarado is just a.
1:32:11 Speaker 04 Perfect Nick.
1:32:12 Bill Simmons? Just.
1:32:12 Speaker 04 I'm not even being sarcastic, like perfect Nick.
1:32:14 Bill Simmons? Literally perfect. Philly was on my radar.
1:32:17 Speaker 04 I mean, those guys own a ton of teams.
1:32:19 Bill Simmons? They own a ton of stuff. I just, I'm.
1:32:22 Speaker 04 Well, there's the arena.
1:32:23 Bill Simmons? No inside info, but.
1:32:24 Speaker 04 That's, that's an arena situation too.
1:32:27 Bill Simmons? Um, Miami?
1:32:30 Speaker 04 You don't hear anything about the Arisans ever, right?
1:32:33 Bill Simmons? Yeah. And it seems like by all indications, he's just going to turn the team over.
1:32:38 Bill Simmons? And then, uh, I gotta do it.
1:32:42 Bill Simmons? Clippers?
1:32:46 Speaker 04 Steve Ballmer looks like he's having a blast. Like, I don't know if they're all putting on a good face, but he and Ty Lou and Lawrence Frank are grinning ear to ear as Kawhi lights up All-Star Weekend. I don't know if you saw Ballmer's during one of the commercials that I had to feed on and they were, he was addressing the crowd about All-Star, he was just having a blast.
1:33:06 Bill Simmons? A couple of people have sent me this email, so I'm not, I'm sorry, I cannot give you all credit, but it is a great idea. What if the punishment was Ballmer has to move the Clippers to Seattle? And then sell the Intuit Dome to the Lakers? And then everyone wins. Lakers get a new stadium.
1:33:27 Bill Simmons? But Seattle gets the Clippers. The Clippers finally get to leave California after 50 tortured years. We go back to one team here. And we don't have to expand two more teams, which I still don't understand when we have a tanking crisis, why we add more teams. Kind of an interesting one.
1:33:46 Speaker 04 Okay.
1:33:47 Bill Simmons? So what'd you do on Valentine? Oh, Gahow hates that. Sorry, Gahow, I should have prepped our producer Gahow for that. He's a big Clipper fan. He didn't like that idea at all. I'm sorry, Clipper fans.
1:33:56 Speaker 04 These are just pie, oh, we're just, you just put, you put me on the spot. These are just pie in the sky thoughts, that's all.
1:34:03 Bill Simmons? Knicks would be interesting. What would the Knicks go for?
1:34:08 Speaker 04 You'd have to.
1:34:08 Bill Simmons? I assume you can't get the arena. So you're renting.
1:34:13 Bill Simmons? You're renting games from the arena for the basketball team.
1:34:16 Speaker 04 The arena and the tax breaks that go, that go with it.
1:34:20 Bill Simmons? It'd be funny if the Nets, if Joe Tsai was like, I'm out.
1:34:24 Speaker 04 This just isn't fun.
1:34:26 Bill Simmons? This, this, this just sucks. I'm out, we're gonna keep the Liberty, that's way more fun. Somebody else, please take this. What'd you do for Valentine's Day? Let's send there.
1:34:35 Speaker 04 So one of the great things about being married to a badass European woman is that Valentine's Day is just not a thing. Like, they don't have it in Croatia. She doesn't care about it. She thinks it's a dumb, Hallmark manufactured fake holiday, which is just a home run for me. But by accident, we did, we did have plans. We went to see Sam Moro, who's a comedian you probably know. He's a lot of Knicks games. Absolutely hilarious. He and Anthony DeVito, who's his opener, performed in Stanford last night near where we live. So we got tickets for that, not even realizing that it was Valentine's Day. And we had a blast. We hung out with him backstage after. He was a great guy. We talked a lot about Knicks, the Knicks and Knicks basketball. So that was our, that was our Valentine's. That was a great time.
1:35:20 Bill Simmons? Saw Seinfeld twice in Stanford in the eighties, well before the NBC show.
1:35:25 Speaker 04 Wow.
1:35:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Loved him from his Letterman appearances. And when I was in high school in Connecticut there, he was passing through, went both times.
1:35:33 Speaker 04 Wow, that's great.
1:35:36 Bill Simmons? I had early sign, it was one of my best stock purchases, Seinfeld stock. I mean, that one, that's, I'm still getting residuals.
1:35:41 Speaker 04 Oh, shoot. If you bought it then, you're getting major residuals.
1:35:45 Bill Simmons? My wife and I, she's also a, doesn't really care about the Valentine's Day thing, but we both got, got sick. Cause anyone with kids, like there's just colds everywhere. I'm amazed you're not sick.
1:35:57 Speaker 04 Even, even kids, your, your kids' age just doesn't stop. They don't get any less disgusting?
1:36:02 Bill Simmons? I think I flew back to Boston a week ago, so I probably got infected. Maybe I was patient zero, but we were both sick. And we just hung out all day and, and just acted sick together and watched TV. And I gotta say, it was one of my best Valentine's days ever.
1:36:17 Speaker 04 That sounds great.
1:36:18 Bill Simmons? Just watched a ton of movies. We watched the entire JFK, Carolyn Bissett, all three episodes on FX. Had a great time watching that. We watched Crazy Stupid Love, because I think that's gonna be the next rewatchable.
1:36:33 Speaker 04 Super underrated movie.
1:36:34 Bill Simmons? Well, it's gonna be properly rated when we do it in the rewatchables in a week. But yeah.
1:36:39 Speaker 04 Does Gosling ever miss? Has there been a Gosling miss? There probably has been.
1:36:44 Bill Simmons? I was looking at his IMDb and I was like, Jesus. Like, there's some wins. Like, like, kinda like three more wins than maybe I had in my head, anyway.
1:36:53 Speaker 04 And he's ascending to top five all-time SNL hosts? Like, how many more home run SNLs does he have to have before he's in that category?
1:37:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Um, in the Olympics, I just kinda waiting for the hockey to heat up. That's where I've landed. And I'm more of a bobsled guy than a luge guy. That was another one of my takes that I've landed on.
1:37:12 Speaker 04 So, I, I'm only loosely paying attention because it's overlapping with the NBA. So I don't have any sports time. But the quad God guy, he does a backflip?
1:37:22 Bill Simmons? Quad God does a backflip, but he really, he really had like a Karl Malone, James Harden. Like, it wasn't just a choke. I felt bad for him, but he didn't even have to break out like the major ammo.
1:37:37 Speaker 04 Karl Malone getting roped into a Winter Olympics conversation only on the Bill Simmons podcast.
1:37:42 Bill Simmons? This was the dangle the ball out so Michael Jordan can swipe it and go down and make the most famous shot in the history of the NBA.
1:37:48 Speaker 04 This has been a Winter Olympics take I've been sitting on since the early, since the early 90s. When little teenage sports fan Zach had a lot of takes. I don't understand the niceties of sports like figure skating and gymnastics, the judge sports. Like, I don't understand, oh, that person's graceful and they spun really tight and did all this stuff. I just wanna see you do crazy shit. Who can do the craziest shit and land it? That's how I, that's how I process those sports. And Surya Bonerli, back in the day, the French skater, could do a backflip. And it drove me crazy at age 12 that they banned her from doing it because it was too dangerous. And now she's back in the news because now you're allowed to do it. And of course, she was not allowed to do it.
1:38:32 Speaker 04 And I was always on like, I don't care what, she should win. She can do the craziest stuff. She should win. That's how I, because I'm dumb and I'm sure there's all sorts of stuff happening that I don't understand.
1:38:42 Bill Simmons? What's the practice part of it where somebody like breaks their neck trying to do it, I think is what the word is.
1:38:47 Speaker 04 Well, that's fine, but like, I just wanna see the people do the crazy stuff. That's why Simone Biles is awesome. She just did, she does, all the moves are named after her because no one else can do them.
1:38:56 Bill Simmons? All the skating stuff, you really get it if you're with your wife or girlfriend, watching them lock in on the 17 different things going on that are just going over my heads. Like, they're, my wife, I, I, like, these alt-casts that we have.
1:39:12 Bill Simmons? It really should be an Olympic alt cast with somebody like my wife, who's just having this alternate experience with the event. It's not like, when you have the alt cast for like football or basketball, it's just people watching, having basically the same takes as the announcers. This is like what we really need is like, oh my God, why did, why is he wearing that jacket? Like she, she's so into it.
1:39:34 Speaker 04 And I'm, I'm just, I'm just as dumb the opposite way of just like, like, like before, before the criminal activity began and was publicized, Tanya, Tanya Nancy, I was team Tanya because she could do crazier jumps. That's all. I don't care who's more graceful at this and that. I want the person who could do the crazy jumps.
1:39:52 Bill Simmons? We had a whole convo about, would you want to be a married couple? Who was also a pairs figure skating couple? Like how much, how much pressure? Like it's one thing, like they always talk about the actors and actresses who are working with each other on some TV show or a movie. And it's like, God, that would be weird.
1:40:10 Speaker 04 Eyes wide shut.
1:40:11 Bill Simmons? You're acting. Yeah, they broke up after, but then to have to add competition and day after day rigor and all the different things that come with that. I don't know. That's, that's a tough one for the old relationship. I also don't know how you come down from that. Like you retire as skaters and you're like, hey, now what?
1:40:30 Speaker 04 Did you see the curling spat yesterday between?
1:40:33 Bill Simmons? I did.
1:40:34 Speaker 04 That was, that was.
1:40:35 Bill Simmons? I have watched a lot of curling.
1:40:37 Speaker 04 Is there an Isaiah Stewart of curling? If there were another team, like could the broom have been wielded as a weapon? Just bam, right over the guy's head.
1:40:44 Bill Simmons? Well, Canada, Canada was a good candidate for this. Candidate where the guys just trying to pull each other's jerseys over. I think my note on curling is I would go seven rounds, not 10.
1:40:56 Speaker 04 Okay.
1:40:57 Bill Simmons? I would speed it up.
1:40:58 Speaker 04 I still, I have to admit, I still don't.
1:41:00 Bill Simmons? It's a lot.
1:41:00 Speaker 04 I don't understand the scoring system. I need to, I just, I don't pay any attention really.
1:41:05 Bill Simmons? I also don't understand how they don't touch the pucks when the guys are doing the broom thing.
1:41:10 Speaker 04 I assume that's a.
1:41:11 Bill Simmons? How they come so close to it and don't touch it.
1:41:13 Speaker 04 I assume if you touch it, that's a full on, like you lose the whole thing.
1:41:16 Bill Simmons? Like in some ways, those are the most impressive Olympic athletes we have.
1:41:21 Speaker 04 That's a hot take.
1:41:24 Bill Simmons? It's a good one to end on. Uh, thanks to, uh, Michelob Ultra. So your next podcast is gonna be Tuesday.
1:41:30 Speaker 04 Tuesday. Yeah, we're switching up our schedule because I'm gonna be doing these with you Sunday. So there's no point in me going on Monday. So we're on Tuesday, Thursday.
1:41:37 Bill Simmons? But you fixed the, you fixed the draft. It's gonna be Tuesday's.
1:41:40 Speaker 04 Yeah, who knows? Well, there's others, there's other, there's always stuff happening in the NBA. So we're gonna talk about a lot of stuff.
1:41:45 Bill Simmons? This is a really strong podcast for us, except conspiracy bill. Maybe that, maybe that wasn't a conspiracy bill. Tatum, Philly, March 1st. He kinda poo-pooed it.
1:41:54 Speaker 04 I expect, I just expect more outlandish conspiracies.
1:42:01 Bill Simmons? It's fair. I'm trying to think if I could have had a better one. Well, Joe Lacob selling the Warriors to buy the Padres would be, that's not really a conspiracy bill take.
1:42:10 Speaker 04 That would be a big one.
1:42:11 Bill Simmons? That's just a hot take.
1:42:12 Speaker 04 That would be a big one.
1:42:13 Bill Simmons? All right. Thanks to Michelob Ultra for, uh, for helping us out with this one. Thanks to Gao and Eduardo as well. New rewatchable is coming tomorrow. Golden Eye.
1:42:23 Speaker 04 Ooh.
1:42:24 Bill Simmons? James Bond, Pierce Brosnan's first, uh, on Netflix now, if you want to watch it. Zach Lowe, a pleasure as always. Good to see you.
1:42:32 Speaker 04 Fun times. Thanks.
1:42:33 Bill Simmons? Thanks, everybody.
1:42:48 Bill Simmons? Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino. Or 18 plus and present in DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 888-797777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts. Or call 8778HOPENY or text HOPENY in New York for Louisiana. Call 877-770-7867. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wildhorse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. I like those guys. Star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner.
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Previous Handing Out the ‘Heat’ Awards for This NBA Season With Chris Ryan, Van Lathan, and Rob Mahoney Next The Mailbag: Dangerous NBA Teams, Lottery Tweaks, the KD Files, The Oscars, and Cruise vs. Pacino | With Chris Ryan and Joe House Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated