A Loaded NBA Draft Debate, Wemby’s Finals Shadow, and Fun MLB Story Lines With Tate Frazier, J. Kyle Mann, and Billy Gil

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by J. Kyle Mann and Tate Frazier to preview the NBA draft by looking at some of the top prospects before discussing the Spurs' ceiling this season (3:40). Then, Billy Gil joins the pod to discuss fantasy baseball leagues and preview the MLB season (01:16:59). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: J. Kyle Mann, Tate Frazier, and Billy Gil Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo The all-new Audi Q3: Made for the yes life. Learn more at https://audiusa.com/ The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠⁠⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 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.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 1:36Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast, brought to you by Fanduel Sportsbook. We are also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new rewatchables last night. We did Crazy Stupid Love. It was me and Van Lathan and Chris Ryan. Had a great time. It's all foreplay until next week when we kick off CR Month. All Chris Ryan movies that he loves. And we're going to start with Sicario on Monday, 6 PM ET live on Netflix. You can actually watch us do rewatchables in real time live. It's going to happen. Sicario, me, Chris Ryan, Sean Finacy. And can't wait for that. We also launched a new podcast last week that I forgot to tell you about on this podcast. I was actually the first guest of this podcast. It was called Wait a Second. It's hosted by our old friend Jason Concepcion,

• 2:20Bill Simmons?

  and it dives into the things that you text your friends about. That you go, wait, what's going on? What happened? So last week, we did surveillance. We talked about the Ring Camera Super Bowl ad and Savannah Guthrie's mom's house recording the outside, even though she wasn't paying for it. Basically, are we being watched all the time? Was the conceit last week. And each week, it's going to be some sort of topic that as you're reading about in the news, you go, wait, what's going on here? This podcast is going to work. I am 100% convinced and it's already one of my favorite Ringer pods. So it was really fun to go on last week. Check it out. Subscribe, follow.

• 3:01Bill Simmons?

  Wait a second on wherever you get your podcasts, including hopefully Spotify, because Spotify has a great podcast experience. Coming up on this episode, Tate Frazier, J. Kyle Mann, two people that love college basketball. We're going to try to figure out what's going on with the top three in this college basketball season, heading into the NBA draft. Darren Peterson, A.J. DeBansa. I call him DeBansa. It's DeBansa, DeBansa. Now, there's arguments about how to pronounce it. I'm calling him A.J. And Cam Boozer, who should go first? And also, what the hell is going on with Peterson? Diving into that, we're going to talk about some Spurs Pistons and the Spurs ceiling as well. But very fun basketball convo. And then the Duke is here.

• 3:44Bill Simmons?

  Billy Gill wants to fill us in on what we should be looking for in spring training as we head toward the baseball season, which baseball with a lot of momentum right now. We're going to talk about all the things we're looking for. So basketball, baseball, it's all next. We're going to take a break, Pearl Jam, and then Tate and Kyle next. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. The football season may be coming to an end, but things are only getting started on the court, on the hardwood, on the wood, as some people call it. FanDuel, the number one choice for same game parlays, live betting, and much more during the NBA season. Don't forget with FanDuel, you get paid instantly when you win. Download the FanDuel Sportsbook app right now.

• 4:29Bill Simmons?

  And play your game. 21 plus and president in select states or 18 plus president DC, Kentucky or Wyoming. Gamble, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut.

• 5:11Bill Simmons?

  All right, Tate Frazier, Kyle Mann are here from The Ringer. We have deliberately not done a lot of college basketball in this podcast, or really any, because until football ends, I don't throw myself into it. And then I belatedly catch up. I start watching. I start studying YouTube. Congrats and thanks to all the weirdos who put up the crazy detailed YouTube clips, by the way, of all the prospects. I really enjoy those. This is the toughest top three or four that we've had in mid-February that I can remember for the draft. This has only happened a couple of times where there's arguments. Even if you look at the FanDuel Alliance, Peterson has dropped down to minus, I think, minus 125 to go first.

• 5:53Bill Simmons?

  DeBansa, we're going to talk about that. That's actually the correct pronunciation. Tate's going to talk about that in a second, is now like plus 130, and Boozer's a long shot at plus 750. And these are great arguments. Very few drafts, Tate, where you could make a case for three guys going first. We had this with Palo and Jabari and Chet, I think, was the last time. And this one, it almost seems more violent because of the super duper star potential. But can you remember a draft like this?

• 6:20Speaker 04

  I do think it is 2022, the last time that we had this conversation. And I do feel like there's a Reese Shays test here that's happening where it's like, how many of these guys would have gone number one in 2024? And we probably, I mean, we're definitely at four, maybe against the five, depending on how you feel about some of these other guys, like Mikel Brown Jr.

• 6:38Bill Simmons?

  Tough week for Reese Shays. He's fired. He already lost his job in Atlanta.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  I I'm just saying, I think that's kind of like the the test to see what you have at the top of of this draft. And I mean, each one of these guys is very unique in their own way. I got to see him all at the McDonald's All American game last year in April. I got to see him in practice, got to see him kind of hanging out with each other, how they interact with each other, how they treat each other. It did feel like at that time, the top four was Nate Ament was in the spot of Caleb Wilson and Caleb was kind of lurking in the five, six, seven range. I think Caleb has swapped with Ament and now Ament is more in that in that situation. But the way that they kind of looked at each other, right? It was Darren Peterson seemed like the alpha dog of the group.

• 7:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:18Speaker 04

  We can get to that. But you know, DeBansa, DeBansa, which we can talk about that as well, is obviously in the mix. And then I'm coming around on Cam Boozer because, you know, and I say that with a little bit of a Sure, that's tough for you, Tate.

• 7:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:31Bill Simmons?

  Jesus.

• 7:32Speaker 04

  But I did like him, just as a kid and just kind of the way he carried himself. And I do feel like he's Mr. Consistent, Mr. Consistent. So yeah, those four guys are all in the mix right now.

• 7:41Bill Simmons?

  The worst thing we ever did to Tate was when he was producing stuff for us and we had him and helping out with JJ Reddick's podcast. And it was honestly like a like a psychological experiment. And I think about a broken Tate a little bit. I don't know if it was the same for like a year after. Kyle, where do you stand on this being the hardest one to predict as we're we're near the end of February now, so we should have some feelings and yet we don't.

• 8:06Speaker 04

  There's a real like Neapolitan ice cream thing going on with these three guys where it's just like, you know, you could legitimately argue for, you know, it's it's tough because Tate's right. They absolutely do. They do separate things well. There's the steadiness of the Cam Boozer that people, he lulls you into a sense of it almost being like a boring efficiency. Like he's good, but he's really good at a lot of different things. There's the electric scoring of Darren Peterson. And then there's the kind of throwback ISO just kind of, you know, bullish way that AJ DeBansa played.

• 8:40Speaker 05

  The DeBansa DeBansa thing is really funny because Tate and I have joked about this. On BYU's website, they had recordings of the players saying their own names. And he said, his voice on the site said DeBansa. So they internally and their family must have had some kind of agreement about this is how we say this. But yeah, I mean, over the course of the year, you know, in the summer, I was, I was kind of trying to, I was talking myself into like, gosh, like I could see Cam Boozer just being a universal donor and helping so many different teams. You see the doggedness of AJ DeBansa, DeBansa, I see, I did it again, DeBansa.

• 9:12Bill Simmons?

  We'll just call him AJ.

• 9:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, AJ. The thing, the thing that I love is this used to be a foursome, Bill. This used, and Cooper was a part of it. And these guys played it, we didn't have any instances of like, man, we'd love to see these guys head to head. They played each other over and over and over again. They're all incredibly competitive players. That's what's really fun about it is like, if you get a top three pick, it's a legitimate possibility that all three of the teams in the top three could come away being like, yeah, we hit a home run.

• 9:40Bill Simmons?

  Peterson had one of the best high school tape, everything that I've ever seen. And he has now become the polarizing guy of this whole process for a variety of reasons, which I think we have to dive into because this is why we're doing this now. And I watched the whole game last night, I'm studying everything he's doing.

• 10:00Bill Simmons?

  Compared to the high school tape, he doesn't seem like the same guy. Like wherever you stand on, we talked a little on Sunday about there's a competitiveness question. And I think this is the one thing as I get older and I study these drafts, the competitiveness has to be the number one thing. Even beyond the athleticism and talent and uniqueness, like, do you actually give a shit seems to be the most important quality, which AJ has. Like, I don't know what his ceiling is going to be, but you can just tell like he, he, when he's going to go to the pros, he'll play as many minutes as it takes. And now Peterson. There's so many theories on this and I think we have to talk about it because he doesn't look like the high school guy. He looks 20 pounds heavier. He doesn't seem as explosive.

• 10:43Bill Simmons?

  And you can't say he's 100% hurt because if you watch the first like five, six minutes of that game yesterday against Houston, I thought some of the stuff he was doing defensively was like high, high, high end. The way he was moving around screens and picks and sticking with guys. I was like, this guy doesn't seem hurt to me. And then in the second half of the game, he started to look like he was 30 years old. And I, I, I just don't understand it. It seems like he, his body tires out. Tate, what, what's your, if you had a theory, I know Kyle has one, but if you had a theory on what's going on, what is it? Cause everybody's been trying everything.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  Well, I talked to his dad at the McDonald's All American game and I do feel like the dad, Darryl Peterson is obviously, you know, involved in the process. I do think that there is kind of a two horse race that's happening as far as perception versus reality. And they feel very content. Also you throw in Matts, who's his agent, Matsubara, who is an Adidas guy. And there's just a lot of smoke and I'm not sure there is a fire, but it's a lot of fog if it's not smoke. And it's very hard to read the, between the lines as to what they're trying to do. I think that the AJ matchup in that first half where he has 18 points, does it so methodically easy. You're just like, wow, this guy is the guy. He is the number one pick. There's no doubt about it. Then he sits out in the second half and that sort of is the story of Peterson this season. It's like, just when you get there and you're

• 12:00Speaker 04

  like, oh, I understand. I see the vision. I saw him in person against North Carolina, against Caleb Wilson. Caleb played great. Peterson played game. He had like the quietest 22 point performance you've ever seen, but it's just so easy and smooth for him. Now I do buy into the injuries. I don't quite buy into the, you know, him being able to dictate his time. And on Monday night, that was the first time I saw Bill Self actually coaching him and he kind of fit into the game. Like it was the first time that it wasn't like, okay, Darren, you do whatever you want and we'll fit around you. It was like, no, we're going to play how we've been playing without you and you're going to play off the ball and you fit in with us. And I actually was encouraged that he fit in and he ended up hitting a huge three late in that game, kind of sealed the game for Kansas. So that was encouraging to see that he can do both things, right? He can be a-

• 12:43Speaker 04

  Or he can be off the ball and fit into a team setting. But yeah, there's just a lot of conspiracy. I think some of the stuff that's been speculation has been incorrect. But again, nobody really knows except for Darren and his dad and his agent. So we all kind of sit here and wonder what's going on there. But as far as his competitive fire, he's very competitive. He wants to be the number one pick. And I think that's one thing that I feel like has been really incorrect when it comes to people talking about him.

• 13:09Bill Simmons?

  Well, I mean, I'm sure I'm sure that's true, but we also haven't totally seen it, right?

• 13:14Speaker 04

  Right.

• 13:15Bill Simmons?

  Like if he wants to be the number one pick, I don't know if this is the way to go about it. And there's a million conspiracy theories we could do Kyle here. Like we could do the, he got a big NIL deal. And he was supposed to play 26 games to get all the money. But he's not healthy enough to be 100% for all those games. So he's kind of pacing himself. There's that. There's the, there's actually something medically wrong with him and they're not being honest about it. Or an interesting theory, because we've all played pickup basketball in our lives. His demeanor is the guy that's like, I'm, I'm out here to sweat a little bit and run back and forth. But I don't really care about the game that much.

• 13:54Speaker 04

  He's the actual pro at the run. Yeah. He's like, I'll turn it on when I want to.

• 13:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And it's like, I know I'm the best guy in the game. If we actually need me, I'll be here, but I'm really just going to kind of run up and down and try not to get hurt. Which I've never seen somebody do as an audition to be the number one pick in NBA draft. What's your theory, Kyle?

• 14:12Speaker 05

  I'd say the dude that comes down from lifting for like a game after all the real hoopers have been running for like an hour and a half. And he kind of glides. And you're like, come on, man. Like it's been picked apart. I mean, the photo that got tweeted of him like at a distance from the huddle, like a lot of people correctly weighed in or like he was checking into the game. It's just gotten ridiculous. And I was going to say, Tate, you said something, you said a lot of interesting things there that I think we should go through. But the first thing that I think you said, and this is the entry point, I think that's the most interesting that courts conspiracy bill, in my opinion, which is the idea that they are trying to do something here, which is like, and I think that runs counter to the idea of like, is it about being the number one pick? Or is it about a destination? Because that's, that's a factor with some of these teams at the top because

• 14:57Speaker 05

  it's, I, I was, well, let's just start there. I mean, do you think that it's, is it, is there value in the pride of being the number one pick? Cause I think the money will even itself out in terms of his deals and things like that. Cause that, that is kind of the starting point for me.

• 15:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. The one thing. I've heard so many different theories. And by the way, this is one of those things that everybody is talking about in NBA circles, but a lot of it hasn't drifted out into the podcast yet, but I think it's about to start because we love nothing more on podcasts than to just pass along things we've heard. The dad's a big part of this. And the theory that he wants to go to a team that doesn't have a star yet. And they're kind of, we haven't really seen anyone do this in a while of, it's almost like the football strategy of, it's like what Eli Manning did. It's like what John Elway did. I don't want to go there. I'd rather go here. We've never really seen an NBA top five guy do that. And I wonder

• 15:54Bill Simmons?

  if he's going to be the first where he's like, actually, I'd want to go to Brooklyn. They don't really have a face. I'd like to go there. That's the team I want to go to. It's like, what about Indiana? Nah, I don't think so. You have Tyrese Halbert in there. What about Sacramento? You don't have a face in Sacramento. That's interesting. Like, I wonder if that's a piece of it. But again, this is all conspiracy theory stuff. That's why if you're cutting out clips from this and putting online, we're just presenting theories. I don't know what the truth is. Don't aggregate him. We're sending things to the board right now. The only thing.

• 16:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's no string connecting them. We're just putting the pictures on the board and you guys can connect them however you want.

• 16:33Bill Simmons?

  Here's the only thing we know for sure is if you watch the guy in the high school, the best games, and there's been really good clips of like, here are the best, best high school slash A, anytime he went against somebody awesome and you watch him in those games, it's not the guy we're watching in Kansas. It's just not. It's not, he's going to the basket in a way, different way. He's more competitive. He's more vocal. I don't know. Is it possible, Tate, that there's some pressure stuff with him too? Because some of his quotes have been weird. Like he, he had this quote.

• 17:06Bill Simmons?

  Couple of days ago, he described himself, he was like, I don't really know what's going on with social media. He's like, I'm an antisocial loner was the quote. And it's like, okay, we've seen that work with Kawhi, you know, and that that might just be his personality. He might be a Kawhi type, but that also did not totally seem like his personality in high school. So there's more going on here.

• 17:28Speaker 04

  It definitely is. It's also strange. Like if you're trying to sell yourself, like you said, to be the franchise guy, the face of the franchise, saying I'm an antisocial loner isn't really the best sales pitch for that, unless you are Kawhi Leonard. And even then you have people that kind of pick apart Kawhi and saying that he doesn't do enough to be kind of the face of the franchise. And I do feel like with Peterson, it does feel like there's a lack of joy that is happening right now with the way that he's playing. And maybe that is a bit of the frustration of all the outside noise and a lot of speculative talk. And it doesn't feel like he has really any say. This is the first time we've heard him speak. Myron Metcalf went there, did a nice reported piece and got some actual quotes from Darren Peterson. That's the first time we've heard

• 18:08Speaker 04

  Peterson speak. Other than that, it's been Bill Self speaking about the situation, rumblings of like Adidas putting out different graphics being like the obvious choice for number one pick, right? But it's never been Darren Peterson saying anything. So it's the first time we've heard from him. I do hope that he's doing okay, because again, when all the outside noises around you, it can kind of temper and change who you are a little bit as a person. And I know that's a tough kind of place to be in. But you mentioned it, they were both in Brooklyn there, AJ and Darren, and you know, Brad Stevens is in the building, you know, all the different GMs are there watching him in the practice. And it felt like they were happy to be in Brooklyn. And I do feel like maybe there could be a little bit of a ploy there for them to want to be with the Brooklyn Nets. So if there was any sort of, if I want to buy in and maybe, you know,

• 18:53Speaker 04

  take a bite of the conspiracy pie there, Brooklyn would be one for those two guys.

• 18:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, if we were doing conspiracy destinations, it would be Peterson, Brooklyn and AJ in Utah.

• 19:03Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 19:03Bill Simmons?

  Who's been probably, probably helping out, funding some of his.

• 19:07Speaker 04

  They've been funding his career since he was like in 10th grade. Yeah.

• 19:13Bill Simmons?

  These kids, I mean, these kids are so young. And I have to mention this as a parent of a 20 year old and 18 year old who's watched my kids go through so many different changes and evolutions and up and downs. And I can't imagine having a kid in the middle of this process, just being dissected like this is nuts. With that said, we have to dissect it because this is one of those you're getting fired if you get this wrong drafts, right? You have the number one pick. You have DeBansa. Let me give you this stat. I nerded it up today. I was checking all this different stuff. First of all, he's averaging 24, 7, and 5 in 40 minute college games. And he's getting better as the year went along. I actually think like

• 19:55Bill Simmons?

  his last few games, some of the stuff he's doing is stuff he wasn't doing as comfortably two months ago. There's only three players ever, freshman or sophomore, who have averaged 24, 6, and 4 in a college season. And AJ right now is one of the three. The other two are Larry Bird and Pete Maravich.

• 20:15Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:16Speaker 04

  Good company.

• 20:17Bill Simmons?

  That seems relevant. That was Bird's second Indiana State season and then.

• 20:22Speaker 04

  Danny Ainge just passed out as you said that.

• 20:25Bill Simmons?

  Well, but here.

• 20:26Speaker 05

  Squirted himself with a spray bottle.

• 20:28Bill Simmons?

  This is also crazy. Boozer, who's averaging 23, 10, and 4, who's really a good passer, and I can't wait to talk about him. The only freshman sophomore ever to average 22, 10, and 4 in a college season are him and Larry Bird. So when you talk about like which draft is better, last year's top four, this year's top four, and Flag certainly would be in the mix with these guys. And Knipple, you know, has been awesome. And I think I love Harper and I love Edgecombe. Like, I love that draft. The ceiling, would you say, Kyle, like a whiff higher with this 26 class from a superstar standpoint? Or would you say it's even?

• 21:08Speaker 05

  This one as opposed to last year?

• 21:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:11Speaker 05

  I think this one's higher.

• 21:12Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 21:13Speaker 05

  But the cluster at the top is really good. I mean, gosh, I wanted to say this because I know we, we, the three of us have this in common is that from USA Basketball, this is one of the most incredible, like, cluster of players coming into the system at the same time. AJ will have a choice, I think, for which he's been playing for Team USA. He played for, I forget, he played for, anyway, but, and then Edge Com, obviously, is not in that group, but on that front, they're really good. Are we done with the basketball side of Darren? There were a couple of the things I wanted to add before.

• 21:42Bill Simmons?

  No, I just, I just wanted to set the stage for everybody. Like, we're talking about three guys that Peterson, from a on-paper standpoint, is just the best guard prospect we've probably had this century since we're going back to like Vince Carter. I just don't think we've had somebody who has tools like him. From what we saw in the high school stuff, we haven't seen it in Kansas.

• 22:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:05Bill Simmons?

  DeBance is like, I don't, like, he just seems like he's 29 years old. And then Boozer, I just, there's, any team that he goes to, he'll be able to figure it out and fit in and be good. You can't be like, oh, if he goes there, that'll suck. Like, he'll be fine. But Peterson, we just don't see guards like this that are this good and can just get to 25 points without breaking a sweat. What else has impressed you just with the positive stuff in Kansas?

• 22:34Speaker 05

  I wanted to affirm what Tate was saying about him being, and I think that the Adidas thing has kind of played into it where a lot of the guys are on the Nike circuit, and Darren was always kind of to the side on the Adidas thing. He was like, never, like, he wasn't at the Hoop Summit, and they were all there, and it was like, well, this isn't, Peterson's not here, so we're not getting a perfect read on this. But I've always gotten the impression, I think he's got, even has like a Michael Myers tattoo, so he thinks of himself as this stoic, quiet killer. That's how he sees himself. Is absolutely married to like, working out. He sought out one of the best, like, shooting player development workout guys when he was in high school. That's what he's about. And it seems like this is probably really all deeply uncomfortable for him. And speaking of like, the high school part of it, like you were talking about,

• 23:17Speaker 05

  everything I got. Everything that everybody I've talked to has affirmed that that that's what he's about. And the high school tape is very different because I wrote this down. Peterson, the flow of the way that people have thought about him was he was a downhill, crazy athletic explosive guard. And people were like, if he settles for threes, that's it's not a super win, but it's more of a win than him getting into the paint. And in college, you've seen it, the clips really support it. He doesn't have the burst. He doesn't have the explosiveness. We saw little instances of it, like in the first half against BYU, and he just was like, I'm going to dunk on the whole frigging team. And he did, but this is kind of, I wrote this down, his shot distribution, only 14% of his shots right now are at the rim. And almost 41% are above the break from three. So he's playing like a movement dribble shooter right now, when that is not who he is.

• 24:01Speaker 05

  He's like a ball screen operator who can score at all three levels. And he's still crazy effective, efficient. It's just like interfacing it with Kansas hasn't been perfectly seamless. And an interesting thing, interesting thing is like Kansas is still really good. So if the, if that ever clicks into place, they're going to be good. So I just think it's been really bumpy, but he's still been a pretty remarkable shot maker. One of the more talented shot makers I've ever seen in college, to be honest with you.

• 24:25Bill Simmons?

  That college profile you're mentioning, that ties into what we said before about the guy. Playing pickup and just kind of going back and forth and taking shots and not, not really trying to not get hurt, basically. But that's what jumps out. If you go back and you watch his high school stuff, Tate, this guy's like a Rose Westbrook. Kind of like going to the rim, getting into the paint, bouncing off people, combined with the shooting. That's a, and the shooting, worst case scenario, this guy is going to be like, he'll be the best fourth guy in a starting five of all, you know? Just somebody that you can't leave him open. He'll be fine and he can defend. But there's the ceiling of this is just so much higher and that.

• 25:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:07Bill Simmons?

  I, is there another guard you can remember since you've been following college basketball that has more skills than him?

• 25:14Speaker 04

  I was gonna say Rose to me, it's like, but Rose was so violent to the basket that it's just such a different, like, he was so demonstrative and kinda sending the message. And so was John Wall, where they were just like, watch this, you know what I mean? You never, and Westbrook too, right? It's like, well, here's what I do as a guard. I am gonna be a different type of point guard than you've ever seen before. And Darren seems like, you know, there's the deep end of the pool and he's kind of in the shallow end and he's just kinda like walking around, you know? We're just like, hey, are you gonna dive in down there? Like, we want you to dive in and see what you can do. Um, and let's really get into this. And I do feel like this is the first time we've seen Bill Self push him. Uh, he had a three in that game and Bill Self kinda like finally got on him to get back on defense. Peterson looked at the bench like, did he just say something to me?

• 25:58Speaker 04

  Like, he almost gave him a little bit of a death stare.

• 26:00Speaker 05

  He went to go take me out and then he was like, oh, I can't say that right now.

• 26:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. And to me, like, that will be the best thing to happen to Peterson, where it's like, there's no tiptoeing around anymore. Like, you're in the, you're in the midst of this. You're already in kinda the, the troubled waters. Let's go ahead and swim. Uh, there, there's time to do this and there's times not to do this. But, I mean, Embiid had the same agent and Embiid was trying to get talked out of playing in the NCAA tournament, right? So it's not like Bill Self hasn't dealt with this Adidas situation before. I think he does know how to handle it. And Peterson, as far as like the other guards that come to mind, he is unique and very special in his own way. But I do think that he has more of a gear to get to as far as getting to the rim and getting downhill. And those, yeah, those stats that Kyle was talking about, it's like, let's just go ahead and show that to everybody.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  Also, like, he's playing off-guard right now. I think he can be a one at the next level. Council is the one for this team right now. So he's almost playing out of position too, which is another encouraging sign, I guess, because you're like, hey, we can use him in different ways.

• 26:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's interesting when, like, they'll get defensive rebounds. You would think he would always be the one they look for to get the ball, but this team's so loaded, a lot of the times they get a rebound and he just kinda jogs up the court, like, he knows they don't need him. And it's a really, it's a really fun team to watch. In a weird way, when he's not on the court, it seems like, uh, like, like that lineup is almost like, uh... I don't want to say better, but it's just like they really let loose when he's out. And then when he's in there, they're constantly trying to shoehorn and figure out what he is and what he's doing.

• 27:31Speaker 04

  They're all looking at him out of the side of their eye like, does Darren want the ball this possession? You know, it's like they're like, do we run our offense or do we give Darren the ball? You know, it does feel like that.

• 27:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And sometimes he'll just be like, I'm just going to hang out over here, guys.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  Go to the corner.

• 27:44Speaker 05

  You nailed it though. I think, I think what's interesting about this situation is that like odd as it is that it they, I think ideally they were going to build this around him is that he's demonstrated something really interesting about his skillset, which is he can play as a movement shooter and be a dominant pick and roll guy, which is that is not common. You mentioned Russell Westbrook. If Russell Westbrook could shoot like Darren Peterson, he would have been like a top 10 all time player. Like, I'm not even joking. He's like, right now he is 47% on catch and shoot threes and he's shot a decent amount of them. His mid-range touch is crazy. I noted this because I'd watched a lot of clips of him in a row. His shots go through the middle of the basket. This guy has a beautiful arc on his shot.

• 28:25Speaker 05

  It's just, and he had a couple of plays against Steven DeBansa where he was just like, I'm going to make this crazy, crazy contested shot in your face. There's a little Ann Edwards in there. I mean, it's, he's, he's an interesting, he's explosive like Tate was saying, but very, very skilled.

• 28:38Bill Simmons?

  The stoic thing, we've seen stoic guys. It's fine. I'm not worried about that. The, the cramps part and trying to figure out what's real and not real. What'd you, what have you been able to find out about that, Kyle? Anything interesting?

• 28:51Speaker 05

  The term full body cramps was sent my way. I asked around about that.

• 28:56Bill Simmons?

  That's like when you get in Mexico and you get food poisoning.

• 28:59Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 29:00Speaker 04

  I got Montezuma's, yeah.

• 29:02Bill Simmons?

  Full body cramps. I'm pooping every hour.

• 29:05Speaker 05

  I kind of took that as, I don't know that that's like a medical term as much as maybe there's been cramping in a couple of areas. And we rounded up to that term because apparently if it's actual full body cramps, that's like a, a serious medical thing. I think it's probably, there's been some cramps. I don't know if maybe you, you get into the weeds of like indicting like medical people on staff and things like that. And I'm not qualified to do that, obviously, but I think it's probably can, it's contributed to a lot of discomfort for him personally too. So you just mix that up into a big stew and like Bill Self has had to masterfully kind of prod this from a lot of different directions. And we've gone through the evolution of him being extremely defensive to like, you know, coming at it and trying to motivate

• 29:47Speaker 05

  him in indirect ways. I think it just kind of strikes me like the, the, the missing variable is like, we've kind of traced what it is. And I kind of feel like there's some kind of motivation. That's like, that's where I'm leaning at. And I think that's why I thought it was interesting that you said that first take because it's like medically, can we figure out what's going on with him? No, but we can kind of deduct what his motivation might be. And I kind of think that might be what it is.

• 30:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And that's why I said on the podcast Sunday night, like, that's the thing that scares me is if it's a some sort of competitiveness question, that's when my red flags go up. If he's got hamstring cramps or they're trying, you know, maybe, maybe he's this generation's version of Kevin Johnson on the Phoenix Suns, who just could never, he pulls hamstring every year. They could never figure it out. But if it's a competitiveness piece, I don't know. I, we, we're going to take a break and I want to go through some of the drafts where we've had the hardest trouble figuring out stuff. And I think the history of the draft is instructive of that. And then we got to talk about AJ and Boozer a little more too. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. FanDuel is putting you

• 30:52Bill Simmons?

  in control right from tip off. Choose your reward. You can be bold, play it safe, take some chances, whatever you want to do, whatever your style, you're in control. You can bet on the NBA draft right now. If you think the Bonta is going to be the number one pick right now, he's a slight underdog to be a number one pick, grab him. You could also jump into the last couple of months of the NBA season, grab money lines of teams you like and parlay them with whatever team is playing the seven teams that aren't trying anymore. It's a little fun, little, little tanking parlay you can have fun with. No matter how you play, FanDuel is giving you the power to choose your award. Own your game this NBA season. Go to fanduel.com/BS to make your pick, get in the game. Play it your

• 31:35Bill Simmons?

  way. 21 plus select states or 18 plus DC, Kentucky, Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut.

• 31:50Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Audi, the official car of my son. Yeah, we all know the feeling, a change of plans, a new opportunity. Instead of overthinking, what if he just said yes? With the all new Audi Q3, the answer is easy. It's made for the yes life with the power and room to handle whatever pops up. Yes to adventure, yes to right now, because saying yes without hesitation, that's the real luxury. The all new Audi Q3 made for the yes life. Learn more at AudiUSA.com. So I went through the last, basically everything in the 21st century, trying to figure out the toughest number one pick calls. And I'm not talking about like the Reese Sache, Anthony Bennett. Like we don't, we kind of don't know who the number one pick is.

• 32:35Bill Simmons?

  I'm talking about when there was ceiling and basement stuff and trying to navigate shit. The worst case scenario is pretty bad. The best case scenario of getting this guy is this, and we have to talk about this. So I think Wiseman, even though he didn't go first in 2020, was a good one for this where we just had no, what did he play? Three college games. He was dominant the year before. There was no March Madness, they couldn't interview him. And it was COVID season. But there was a scenario where this guy was the, you know, the next dominant center, at least, you know, maybe, maybe what Duren is for Detroit right now. A better version of that, like a better passing version of Duren.

• 33:19Bill Simmons?

  And it was like, shit, I can't pass that up. Fultz in 2017 was a good one because his team wasn't winning ever. And we just kind of penciled him into number one in December. And that's where we all decided. And then there was some Tatum buzz building and some Lonzo buzz building. And Fultz's team never won, so that's two.

• 33:37Speaker 05

  Wasn't, wasn't there intel about Fultz that was similar? Like keeps to himself, he's a little uncomfortable, like just, just bringing that out. Yeah.

• 33:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and there was, uh, there was one team that he interviewed with where he asked about if they had Chick-fil-A in the city. And they said that we don't have Chick-fil-A and he was like visibly bummed out. And they were like, back on my back. That's a true story. Ben Simmons, 2016.

• 34:08Bill Simmons?

  Now, he played 33 games for LSU that year, but kind of punted.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  Just hated his life the entire time.

• 34:14Bill Simmons?

  Seemed miserable.

• 34:14Speaker 04

  Did a documentary about it, yeah.

• 34:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the team, the team wasn't good. He was doing that documentary and there were like red flags, you know, as good of an athlete as he was, there was some stuff that was like, what's going on with this guy? Embiid in 2015, this was all health related because he would have been the number one pick that year. He gets hurt and then it becomes a question of, well, can we still take him first when he has this foot injury? And he goes third. Kyrie is my biggest miss of the 21st century with the draft. 2010, played 10 games for Duke. And I, I think I thought, maybe it was Derrick Williams, I forget who I had. I was like, you can't take Kyrie, we don't even know what he is. And this is where I think is the most instructive for Peterson, I want to circle back on that.

• 34:59Bill Simmons?

  Oden in 2007, where franchise center, but kept getting hurt, had some knee stuff already. And then 04 with Dwight Howard versus Okafor, where one guy's in college, winning the title, the other guy's just playing in high school in the South. How do we even know? The Kyrie thing is the interesting one because the Kyrie people were adamant this guy was the best guy in the draft. Throw away the Duke season, whatever. And the high school tapes kind of went out and Kyrie was as good as advertised. And I wonder, Tate, does that just happen with Peterson here? Where we, we've had these college years that have thrown us off the scent with guys. Rondo is probably the most famous one. Where Rondo, where he was versus where he landed, landed outside the lottery and then

• 35:43Bill Simmons?

  became, but there's, there's been guys that have just done damage to themselves in one college year. Is that what's happening here?

• 35:49Speaker 04

  I do feel like Kyrie is a good one because Kyrie had this unique elite skill, which was finishing around the rim. And I think everybody was so confused and confounded by the fact that he was able to finish at such a high level with both hands at the size that he was at. So everyone's like, there's no way this translates. And then you start kind of digging deeper and you're like, well, Rod Strickland's his godfather, you know, he's got a kind of all this basketball acumen behind him. And then everyone's, you know, sort of talks themselves into it and you know, you got all these different basketball people that are like, you know. It's a different guy, different story. And that's sort of what Peterson has behind him. It's like every time you want to poke a little bit of a hole in it. There's people that come to, you know, kind of his bat quickly to be like, no, this is a different type of talent that we have here. And I think Wiggins was a little bit weird too, right?

• 36:33Speaker 04

  There was a lot of stuff with Wiggins where it was just like, are we sure this guy can be a franchise guy? He's a little bit off, um, you know, I, I'm not really sure what we do with him. So maybe, you know, that could be another example, right? Where he's just a supreme talent, but not quite the, the face of the franchise, Mr. Personality that you would suspect. AJ is that guy. And that's why, like, if you're doing like, kind of the sales pitch, like AJ is going to do a lot better pitching himself as sort of like, I'll be the spokesman. I'll do this, I'll do that. Darren doesn't have that mentality. But as far as natural knack and natural ability, I, I feel like Kyrie, John Wall, like that era of guards, you know, from like 2008 to 2011. Darren Peterson is kind of of that ilk of guys and he's very special in that sense.

• 37:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Kyle, it feels like Peterson, like when you read about the old drafts. And it's like, wow, all those teams passed on Kobe. And then as the years pass, people are like, I wanted to take him and Calipari said, talked us out of it. And you don't know, team by team, everybody, there's half the people now are like, no, no, I wanted to take him. The reality is he fell to 13. And now it seems crazy, right? And we've had this a bunch of times with guys where guy falls out of the top five, into the top 10, 13 range. Donovan Mitchell was a really good one. It was like, why is, he's really not going to go into the top 10? Like this guy's clearly good. What's, what's happening here? And, um, and then everybody feels stupid.

• 38:00Bill Simmons?

  I think the problem with the Peterson thing is this has a chance to make people feel all time stupid. If you get thrown off the scent by this weird college season he's having. But this guy basically becomes Kobe crossed with Derrick Rose as a pro. And you're like, yeah, I didn't take him. And then it's like, guess where you're going to end up on NBA TV or doing the podcast with us? And that's the issue, right?

• 38:24Speaker 05

  I could say something blasphemous pop probably here. I think he's a more talented, talented shooter than Kobe was at the same age. I don't really.

• 38:32Bill Simmons?

  I think that's probably true.

• 38:34Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, it's, it's, yeah. And I think that that's what makes it like, I don't doubt his, I don't doubt his skill level at all in the same way. Like the thing that maybe potentially that we could look down the road is like, maybe this is a sign of complications with him in terms of how he interacts with teams or contract type things or destinations. Like he's trying to move on, you know, from XYZ destination quickly. Like I could see us like wringing our hands about those types of things. Like at the deadline is it's like, oh, he's annoyed again. Like maybe this is a sign of those types of things. But you mentioned like over the years, it's like, there's a lot of different categories for those. I don't, I don't know that they all fit in one box. It's like there's structural things that we didn't see like the, there's the micro fracture thing that just a lot of guys fell prey to like Odin

• 39:19Speaker 05

  was one. I think Odin, I've said this over and over again, would have been good. I don't think he was a bust. I just think his, his body just couldn't do it. He was kind of in that same buoy kind of category. And then there's the trends that like in the early 2000s with the Dirk thing where people were chasing that and overlooking obvious talent like Paul Pierce and things like that. And then there was just the fog of lack of information. Like a Kobe Bryant would not happen today because we have access to all the high school footage. There's no VHSs. There's no I have them, you don't. It's everybody has access to all the information. So this one just feels a little bit more of a, um, it's hazy in the sense of we're just trying to look into the, the Will Hunting, like no one can know the depths of Darren Peterson. Uh, like, uh, how can we know? Uh, there's a lot of things that I think teams are going to be interviewing and trying to find out about

• 40:04Speaker 05

  him personally and, and making a call on that are hard for us to speculate about.

• 40:09Bill Simmons?

  I think Edwards was a good example of the learning from history where it's like, you know what? This guy's really good. Let's just take him. You know, this guy, he's got the competitiveness. He's got the athleticism.

• 40:23Speaker 04

  His teammates also loved him. I was at the Maui Invitational and like Georgia was terrible, but like his teammates were like, we love Ann.

• 40:29Speaker 05

  Everybody loves Ann. Yeah, I talked to, like I said, I told Tate this, I think I talked to Tom Corrine, his college coach last spring. And I was like, what was the story with that? What was it with Ann? And he was like, Ann had never watched basketball. He said he liked football because he had just watched football more. He's like, he literally just had never watched film and we would talk about it and he, and eventually you can see it clear as day, the NBA, he started watching the NBA and he's so phenomenally talented that he figured it out. Cause that was a weird one to figure it out. Cause it was just like, what's going on with this dude? Does he care?

• 40:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And plus they weren't able to work out people in person. In the eighties or nineties, Wiseman goes before Edwards. Like they just screwed that up. I promise you, whatever draft it was, they would have screwed it up. Well, I promised you a hot take.

• 41:13Bill Simmons?

  I think AJ has to be the first pick. That's where I've landed. I wasn't there in November, December, and I wasn't even totally there in January.

• 41:24Bill Simmons?

  I think it'd be insane not to take him first. This is a sure thing. And the upside that you could potentially have with Peterson, this chance that he might, you basically might be this, this best car, best guard of the last 20 years type of potential versus what we know we're going to get with AJ. I can't believe some of the stuff he's doing that like some of the offensive stuff he's doing is like high level stuff. Jason Tatum couldn't do until like year five, like he, one of the things I like that he does, he does that though, like space out for him, which they don't really do in college where he's basically doing like a foul line post up on somebody, he'll back somebody down.

• 42:07Bill Simmons?

  And the cool thing is, he doesn't just have one move off this post up. He can, he can do the turnaround to the left. He can do a turnaround, follow it to the other side, or he can do a spin, go to the basket. And he can spin to the basket on either side. So he basically has four options from this one spot on the court. He's 19 years old. Like, nobody should be able to do this. Not to mention, he's the best athlete in every game he's in. He's, he rebounds, he plays defense, he wants to be out there competing. I, I sound like I'm getting paid off by the, by the BYU, Utah crew. I'm not. I just think like, I, I don't know how you pass on him. I can't believe he's an underdog to go number one. I think this is crazy. He has to be the number one pick. That's my take. Tate, your thoughts?

• 42:53Speaker 04

  I think if Brad Stevens had the number one pick, he would take AJ. And I observed that at the McDonald's game and how much he was watching AJ intently, not just on the basketball court, but how he was kind of maneuvering around the room, how he was talking to people. Obviously, he's a Brockton, Massachusetts kid, so there's a little bit of a connective tissue there to the Boston Celtics. But even then, I think the Celtics were like, you know, hey, if we end up in this lottery situation, like, what is AJ? Does he fit in our world? It just felt strange to me. And I was observing Brad in that room and how he was watching AJ. And that stood out to me. Obviously, like you said, Utah's in the bag for this kid. They want him desperately. And if they have the number one pick, there's no doubt in my mind that they would take AJ number one. I don't think that Peterson would be, you know, upset if that were to happen, if it

• 43:38Speaker 04

  was a Utah situation, right? He'd just be like, okay, that, that's their guy. I go where I go. I'm, I'm okay with that. But when you watch AJ, he leads college basketball in scoring. I feel like he's not talked about enough. Richie Saunders goes down with a torn ACL. He's going to get even more of a shot diet. He's going to get even more usage. So he's going to take it up even more to a different level. So it's like, if you haven't watched, go, go check him out now. And honestly, one of my favorite matchups this season, you know, outside of the Peterson matchup, was when they had an exhibition game. It was BYU, North Carolina, Caleb Wilson versus AJ DeBansa. And these are two guys that are very competitive, that took it very personally. And they went at each other pretty hard for an exhibition game. And that fired me up. You know what I mean? Like, this game doesn't really matter,

• 44:22Speaker 04

  but they played that like a tournament game. So as far as the makeup. You need someone that wants to be the number one pick. That was the whole thing with Palo, right? Like you, you meet Chet, you meet Jabari, you meet Palo. There's one guy in that group that believes he internally, he should be the number one pick. That was Palo. Chet might say it, but I don't think he believed it. And Jabari definitely didn't want a piece of it, right? So like, take the guy that wants to be number one. AJ wants to be number one. That, that's a part of his whole makeup and the way he's pitched himself to everybody. So I think that plays a big role too. And you, you want an elite wing. He's an elite wing. He's right there in front of us.

• 44:55Bill Simmons?

  And he's a three, four. I think he, he gives you all this flexibility. I like that they can, he can actually like run offense already. We'll see if he can do that on the NBA level. But I, I think even in the, since I saw him beginning of the season versus now, I, I see like a difference already. And that's even what happened with Cooper Flagg on Dallas this year, where if you watched him in the first week of the season versus now, he's like a completely different guy. And then if you look at the Tampa Palooza teams, where you have the Kings, Indianapolis, the Nets, Washington, Utah, the Hawks, Dallas, Memphis, he fits in with all the teams and is like a truly terrifying Indiana Pacer.

• 45:35Speaker 04

  Oh, man. They all want to go to the Pacers.

• 45:38Bill Simmons?

  That's the nightmare scenario for the East is AJ goes to the Indiana Pacers and you just put him with Hal Burton and Siakam and all those dudes. Kyle, have you noticed, especially like the last, I don't know, two, two and a half weeks, AJ just going up a level? Cause it seems like now, like he's playing tonight, unfortunately, but as we're taping this for the game, he just seems like he's a 30 and eight now every game. That's what, that's where we're headed.

• 46:03Speaker 05

  I mean, yeah, huge usage. I mean, I think he's pushing like 33% usage. Like that number might even be higher since Richie went out. Richie might need to be a player too.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  I thought it was 37 when I just looked. Yeah. I mean, it's insane.

• 46:15Speaker 05

  37. But I mean, yeah, I mean.

• 46:19Speaker 05

  The questions that I've had about him are, you know, he's obviously a really talented isolation scorer. You mentioned him, he, you could make a highlight reel that's like five minutes long of him just dribbling with his left hand to like 14 feet, hitting the guy and just shooting that little shot. I've wanted to see him over the course of the season, like as teams like load on him doing that, for him to like make those little passes to K. Bakata, who's their big guy, is really athletic. Just, those are the areas where he can kind of expand. But I think the arc of this has been interesting for me is when I initially watched him, I was like, oh, this guy's like an incendiary athlete. It's like, I don't know that that is the intrinsic thing that's interesting about him as an athlete. I think he, his balance and he has like really interesting kind of herky jerky pace in the paint.

• 47:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:03Speaker 05

  That at times will sort of like rouse thoughts of like, there's a little bit of Shea in there. Like, he's got some weird odd footwork when he gets around the basket. I personally think that that is the thing that he's going to be able to lean into and make himself like a maddeningly tough to deal with scorer. He wants to dunk on everybody. I love that, like at all times. You mentioned the teams. I think this is the most interesting thing. So let's say the Hawks end up with that pick and AJ's on the board. If they still, you know, not that you would make any decision based on like Kuminga, but they're going to have such an interesting.

• 47:37Bill Simmons?

  Poor Reese Shea.

• 47:38Speaker 05

  Cluster of 6'8", 6'9" guys.

• 47:41Bill Simmons?

  Ball boy.

• 47:43Speaker 05

  I've gotten the impression that from what, from talking to people close to Darren, that Darren is more likely to say like, I'm interested in being like the full-on brain of this team. Like, I don't really want to play with another superstar. I want to be like the center of the universe. Whereas AJ, people that know them both has told, have told me that like AJ is probably more likely to fit in with an Indiana, which is interesting because AJ kind of, he likes to have the ball. And like, is he willing to be like quick off of the ball to play with a Halliburton? I just think that's an interesting wrinkle in this.

• 48:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, one of the ironies here is if he goes to Utah and he's with marketing and, and Triple J next year, that's kind of like the perfect frontline. I love that fit for, I like the fit for him anywhere. I just, Tate, he can face up and go to the basket left or right. Like, I'm amazed that he can go left as easy as he does already. He's got a floater already. I mentioned the post-up stuff where he can, he can swing either way in the turnaround or go to the basket. And I don't mind his three-pointer either. You know, I, I think we'll see when you move it back to two and a half feet if it's the same, but he seems pretty comfortable. Doing it. He's competitive as hell. The defense is there. He rebounds in traffic.

• 48:57Bill Simmons?

  I don't know what he's missing. I don't really, and I don't really understand how this is a debate when you have the other guy that we don't even know what's going on with him. And I get it. You could get seduced by the high school things, but if my job's on the line, I'm just, I'm not risking it when this guy's a sure thing. And I think he's a sure thing.

• 49:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. The only two knocks that I would have on AJ are very fixable at the next level, which is his handle, which can be a little loose at times, but we're also not asking him to, you know, specifically initiate offense all the time. He can, you know, rip and run.

• 49:27Bill Simmons?

  Also.

• 49:28Speaker 04

  You gotta be fair.

• 49:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, true.

• 49:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. Comparing him to other 16 guys, he's got an elite handle. But again, you know, for what he's trying to do with his shot creation, that's one knock. And then help side defense, which I just feel like is a, is a team kind of issue that like team defense is going to solve that at the next level where it's like, hey, you know, you can't be this lapsed on certain possessions and certain moments. And he does have a little bit of that, but again, he's 19 years old. You can write both of those off. So I feel like the only two knocks are two things that are going to be fixed at the next level and adjusted at the next level. And as far as like someone who really wants to like be better and be in the conversation and be a part of kind of like a bigger growth, you know, potential.

• 50:10Speaker 04

  I just feel like he is that guy. He's going to be in the dunk contest. You know what I mean? Like when you're just at NBA and you're a business, like this is a guy that's going to sign up and agree to do all this stuff and want to be a part of the show. And like that, like this is show business at some level. The business is good. The show is good. And like you said, that's why it's a sure thing.

• 50:27Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's the funny thing is the way it was setting up for him, even when he went to Utah to play basketball in high school, and it just seemed like he was making decisions for money only. The way it's played out with Peterson this year is kind of what I thought was gonna happen with AJ where it was like, oh, we see, we knew all these red flags. It's almost like they they switch bodies. I just think, listen, Peterson can can flip this, but right now in February 24th, I just think it's insane that AJ wouldn't be like the hands down number one pick with what we've seen, and especially that he's getting better. Boozer.

• 51:01Speaker 05

  We even mentioned Boozer.

• 51:03Bill Simmons?

  Boozer three, I was tester, I really like Caleb Wilson. I'm not just sucking up to Tate. I just, I know he's gonna be a good NBA player. He can't really shoot, but he does so many other good things. We just know it. We know he's gonna go in the pros.

• 51:17Speaker 05

  He's got great touch and feel, it's gonna translate.

• 51:19Bill Simmons?

  So good around the basket. And then if he adds a shot and he adds a little 15 footer, it's a bonus, but the competitiveness is there like I just really like him. Boozer, though, I don't know how he falls lower than third because it's like, oh, which guy could fall out of the top three? I think this will be the one, two, three in some order. The Boozer piece, it's been funny now. Are people just dinging him, Kyle? Because it's a Duke thing and this is what we do with Duke guys where it's like, there's a lot of yeah buts with with Cam Boozer. And I don't really understand it because from what I see, like the dude, every game gets his stats. He's always around the rim. He hustles. He really gives a shit. He's a good passer. I wish he was two inches taller. He's not.

• 52:06Bill Simmons?

  Maybe there's an athleticism piece that's 90% there, not 100, but it's just, there's no way he's not gonna be a good pro.

• 52:13Speaker 05

  I think people are misidentifying his player type in a way. When they see him, they're like, okay, bully, bully college, four or five. They're like, he's, you know, Jared Solinger, like, you know, Tyler.

• 52:25Bill Simmons?

  Hansbrough is a good one. Yeah. He gets the Hansbrough tag.

• 52:28Speaker 05

  People, but that it's not the case with him. Like, he's extremely multifaceted. I mean, he's, his shot has really, really improved. I mean, he's not gonna be like making like movement threes, but his set, set three is really good. I thought that Michigan game, Tate, I'm sure you watched that one, was a really interesting game of him going up against like an NBA sized front court and he just big boied him and he also was playing out front. He, to me, maybe doesn't have the wow factor of the, it's a little bit of a quieter, winning production, multifacetedness kind of a thing that he has going on where.

• 53:00Speaker 04

  I personally think, and I've said this from the beginning, when I was really trying to think of a comp for him. I think that he's a cross between a Kevin Love type and like an Al Horford. Whereas he may not hit the highest highs of the shot making brilliance and the things like AJ, you know, and Darren might, but I think he's a guy that's going to win and just win for like over a decade. And I think if you look at the types of teams that are in the lottery, you plug him into Washington, Washington's instantly going to become like a play in level team, maybe or more. I think Charlotte was my dream for him, but that's not going to happen. They're too good. New Orleans, Brooklyn, Indiana is the one. You put him next to Zubac next year. He's going to be, he will be ready to roll next year.

• 53:41Speaker 04

  And I've been telling my Pacer fan friends this, like, he's going to be ready to roll immediately. So he could help every team.

• 53:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think he's an instant like 16 and eight guy in the pros. And a lot of it will depend on who is he, who's the five that he's playing? Like Washington's really fun because he'd get to play with Sar. And there's a little inside outside action with them with Sar as like the three point shooter, but rim protector and then Boozer doing all the other stuff. Tate, I know this is just killing you that we're talking about a Duke guy for this long, but can you make the glass half empty case for him or no?

• 54:14Speaker 04

  I, I mean, look, it's a, it would be the safe, not sexy pick. But at the same time, like I got to interact with Cam and I just came away thoroughly impressed. I mean, he and Caleb did their interview together with me. And these are two guys that played on the EYBL circuit together. He was always the one, Caleb was always the two. They were ribbing each other, talking about Duke, North Carolina. Caleb's like, I can't wait to get at you next year. Cam's just kind of sitting there like, hmm, yeah, sure. I'm looking forward to it, you know, very, you know, just very chill kid. And he's like, I'm like, what do you like to do in your free time? He's like, I like to hang out with my girlfriend and play golf. I'm like, oh, you're, you know, speaking, speaking my language, man. I like you. And as far as like the fundamentals of what he does, plays off two feet.

• 54:56Speaker 04

  We, you mentioned Connepple earlier, like, look how Connepple has been able to impact the team, impact winning and be so fundamentally sound that he's able to make an impact on a team. I think, you know, Cam has a little bit of that. Yeah, I like the Kevin Love reference. I was saying like a. Paul Millsap, maybe. And again, these are just like, they're

• 55:13Speaker 05

  Don't insult him with that. Come on, Tate.

• 55:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, rebounds better, yeah. But I see what you're saying.

• 55:19Speaker 04

  Better. Yeah, I mean, just like it has some of that, you know, touch, shooting the basketball. He's obviously like a modern level big because he's able to stretch out to the, to the three point line, which is nice. And as far as winning, the guys won at every single level. So it's like, it, it, that's why it's a sure thing to me. And I'm even at the point, Bill, I'm not even a hater on the kid. I'm like, when you have the volatility of a Peterson and you have the AJ, does he fit with my team situation? If like a team like the Spurs or some good team gets thrown up into the front that already has a franchise guy in their opinion, why not take a Cam Boozer who's only going to be additive and can also still get to a higher ceiling. Like I, I, I feel like there's going to be a situation where maybe teams are going to say, why not Cam Boozer? And he might even bump up a

• 56:03Speaker 04

  little bit higher than we suspect. So that's where I am with them. Cause when you watch him, he just dominates. And, and the Michigan game kind of broke it for me to see him do that against Mara and Mores Johnson. Two, one athletic guy, one supersized giant, and he was able to still handle and manage and get his numbers. So great passer as well. We haven't talked about that.

• 56:21Bill Simmons?

  Really good passer.

• 56:22Speaker 04

  Really good passer.

• 56:23Bill Simmons?

  I wonder if Knippel is going to open up this wave of where teams just start to value more like, that guy's really smart and knows exactly where to go and where to be and what to do on every play, even if he's not involved. Cause that was what we liked about, and we really liked Knippel going into that draft last year.

• 56:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, we, we were. I got a Knippel jersey. That's how, I'm, I'm all messed up. You know what I mean?

• 56:46Speaker 05

  This is news to me. For what school?

• 56:51Speaker 04

  Jersey. Oh my God. Never in my life. I try to forget that he played at Duke. That's, you know, I mean, that's what I'm trying to do.

• 56:56Bill Simmons?

  Kyle, you remember?

• 56:57Speaker 05

  Wisconsin Lutheran?

• 56:58Bill Simmons?

  I started texting Kyle about Knippel in like January, February during that, during that Duke season. Like what's going on with this guy? Who is this? And he seemed like it was a little Westbrook ish where he was always in like the eight to 16 range in the draft. And then all of a sudden, by the time we got to the draft, everybody kind of agreed like, oh yeah, that guy's going to be really good. And then he ends up going fourth. I think the same thing with Boozer. The more you watch him, he just. Knows where to go and what to do. I there's I the guy I was thinking about was David West for him. Earlier David West, not where is David West, but like

• 57:31Speaker 05

  Young David West.

• 57:32Bill Simmons?

  New Orleans, David West. But a little bigger, but he's just, he's one of those guys that there's a fast break. And the guy misses the layup. It's like, oh, he missed it. And then Boozer's just laying it in like he's always no. He's always in the right spot, which I think like, when you think about the smarter teams that are going to be in this draft like Indiana. That's the kind of guy that that we keep mentioning Indiana, but it's important because that team made the finals last year. They added Zubots. They're going to get Halbert back and they might get a guy who is just immediately a transformative starter, you know? And I was thinking about even watching Tatum and Brown, the first two years they were on this, the first year they were on the Celtics, the rookie years.

• 58:13Bill Simmons?

  And Jalen's rookie year, it was like, yeah, there's something there like he's good athlete like I could see it. And it wasn't really until year two that he even really started to look like Jalen Brown. And Tatum, the first year where you could tell he was good. We basically had him in the corner like he was Sam Hauser, like they didn't run plays for him. He didn't really know how to initiate offense. He was a good defender, rebounder. These three guys are so far ahead of where we were. So why, Hal, why is that? Why are the guys, why do they seem further ahead? Is there such, did we improve AAU or what's going on? Cause this was last year with Cooper too, like Cooper comes into the league and he's running an offense at age 18. Like, I don't really fully understand this.

• 58:56Speaker 05

  Oh, I have some like broader kind of theories as to why that is. I think my biggest theory is just that I think, you know, let me, yeah, the, all right, picking the direction I want to go with this. I mean, I think I've said this on the show before. I think basketball video, like access to it, I alluded to it before with the high school thing. I just think kids have access to quality information earlier and earlier. And I think that they are learning, you know, I think that they're learning skills that guys had to kind of source in different ways. You either had the benefit of knowing someone or having a good coach or just those things have become more available to everyone. And I think that we're just seeing talent kind of. Double it's it's it's we're seeing talented guys.

• 59:37Bill Simmons?

  Preparation thing?

• 59:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:39Bill Simmons?

  Advanced metrics across the video and studying what your weaknesses are and just getting better immediately.

• 59:44Speaker 05

  Information about what's a good shot, information about moves. I think guys emulate efficiently that I just think those things are cleaned up. I don't take has an opinion on this. This is one of my big theories about basketball and in general is that I think that's why kids are better younger is that they can study great examples earlier. And overall, I think it's just brought the the intelligence of the sport up in my opinion.

• 1:00:08Bill Simmons?

  It's like when I had Khan on before I gave him a ride back to his hotel and we did the pod.

• 1:00:13Speaker 05

  I wanted to bring that up, but I didn't feel like I was in on the bit.

• 1:00:16Speaker 04

  I love to hear that.

• 1:00:17Bill Simmons?

  But Khan was saying how he loves the advanced metric stuff and he was like, I was looking and I realized like I suck from one of the corners. And I was like, I do. And then he basically like, all right, I gotta work on that corner where you think like 25 years ago. You know, Michael O'Leary wasn't like, oh, maybe I shouldn't shoot that lefty jump hook. What are your theories on this, Tate?

• 1:00:39Speaker 04

  I do think like I'm with Kyle. I think they do get the information, right? We have the Ken Palm, the Torvik. I mean, everybody's kind of going and watching their own tape and have people, you know, helping them break it down at this point. But I do think this crop of especially US players have all been around each other in the USA basketball system. And it's kind of like skateboarding early on, right? You started seeing guys do tricks and you're like, I'm gonna try that. You know what I mean? Or like, I'm picking up a little bit of that. And I do feel like that's what's happened with this group where like, you know, flag demands to see something that flag is doing to get to his spots. And then he's initiating it and putting it into his game. And like, they've all kind of made each other better. And that's when I was at the McDonald's game seeing all them. I was, it was funny to see like Braden Burries who's at Arizona, who's great.

• 1:01:21Speaker 04

  He was like watching Darren Peterson do his individual workout. And it's like, they're all kind of in the same crop with each other. And not that that's anything different, but I just think in general, there's a lot of talent in this, you know, two, three year window. And they've all made each other better and they all are very competitive against each other. So I think Kyle's right as far as being smarter about it. But I also think like, as one person does something like what Cooper has been able to do, they all are trying to climb that same mountain. And I think that's really, it's great for USA basketball. We need a new group to come in and be great. And I do think that we have that right now.

• 1:01:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, that leads me to the second take I was gonna unleash on you guys. This is a test driver. Think about this next time we could talk about it. I've talked about age limits for Team USA for the hoops.

• 1:02:06Bill Simmons?

  26 and under.

• 1:02:09Bill Simmons?

  That's just our team in 28. Can't be 27 or over. And we just built it around Ant and Flag and basically these draft classes. And we just have this young fighting machine of dudes that just, let's go, let's roll. And, you know, I'm glad Kevin Durant wants to play for Team USA for the fifth time, but let's move on. Let's get some of the younger guys in. Let's get some young blood in. I think the experience is so great for them. I would love to see a team built around all of the guys that we've had basically in the 2020 drafts. And just, let's do it.

• 1:02:41Speaker 05

  Cade Cunningham, Anthony Edwards backcourt. Like, that is a, that's a, that's a team that I want to see.

• 1:02:48Bill Simmons?

  The top three from this draft. Let's bring Caleb Wilson off the bench as a 12th man. I, I just think that would work. Hey, before we move on from this draft, there's a bunch of really fun guys from five to 10, and I have a favorite, which is the third thing I haven't told you guys, but who's your favorite in that five to 10 range, Kyle? Is it still the Louisville kid? Cause I know you love the Louisville kid.

• 1:03:10Speaker 05

  I like him. I have some just kind of like novel favorites that I argue for a lot. I mean, Kingston Fleming deserves a mention from Houston. We have an interesting kind of case in this class where we had a couple of guys who were off the main circuits and were playing on like those extra circuits who weren't as visible and they kind of got undervalued and they just shot up the board. Kingston Fleming is one of those. Keaton Wagler, Wagler at Illinois is another one. There's a sneaky one for Kentucky. I'm not gonna, I mean, Mike, well, we could start with Michael Brown. I think, I think it's pretty likely. I don't, Tate, I don't know how you feel about him, but movement shooter. He's a little skinny, but he can really pass the ball. He strikes me as somebody that, he's kind of, he would fit really well alongside another star. He's got interesting size, about 6'3",

• 1:03:55Speaker 05

  6'4". But yeah, that's, those are guys that kind of in the, projected in the top 10 that I think are interesting.

• 1:04:00Bill Simmons?

  Tate, who's your favorite?

• 1:04:02Speaker 04

  I mean, I saw Wogler in person on Saturday. I went to that Illinois UCLA game and Wogler is one of those guys where he does take some head scratching shots at times where you're just like, I'm a little worried that he can't, you know, get a better look than that. But a lot of times he makes those step back threes. So you're like, I'm intrigued. He's got great passing, you know, vision. And that's why Brad Underwood, who had never seen him play in person, gave him the offer. I've seen him kind of drum up boards right now. There's another guy that I think you'd really like, Bill, and he's not in the five to 10, but he's probably in the late lottery. Braylon Mullens at UConn. If you're just one of those teams like a Magic, yeah, that just wants like a shooter, like a specialist type. But I do feel like Braylon has more to his game than he's really shown. At this point, he's getting better and better,

• 1:04:45Speaker 04

  getting more usage from Dan Hurley, getting more trust from Coach Hurley. Got to meet his family, was a big fan of them. And they're just like an Indiana, like you talk about Knippel a little bit. Like, I feel like a Mullens could be one of those guys where it's like, we just got a smart, really good, sound basketball player that can make a lot of shots for us. So he's another one I would throw into that group that I really like, late lottery.

• 1:05:07Bill Simmons?

  I'm still working on this. I've only concentrated in the top four. But now that now that football's gone, I can really start watching the college. There's one guy I really like, and I don't know if he's polarizing. I know nothing about what the take is. He's in the top 10. I really like the Arkansas kid.

• 1:05:26Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Acoff. Yeah.

• 1:05:28Bill Simmons?

  I think that kid's got something.

• 1:05:31Speaker 04

  He's got FU mentality, that's for sure.

• 1:05:33Bill Simmons?

  Something about him that I'm just, I'm kind of in. I want to see him a couple more times, but he's a guy who can explode for 50 in any college game. He's, he's like a sequence guy where it's like he gets hot and you can kind of feel it. I like that he's easy three-point shots, but he's also paint shots, but he can also get to the rim. And he, he seems like he's listed at 6'3". He seems like maybe an inch taller than Kyrie. But I'm like, if I, I think March Madness is going to be fascinating this year for, we have so much talent on the March Madness this year, but he's the one that I could see just bumping off. It's like the 1-8 matchup and he just single-handedly takes down somebody. So I'm watching him. I think he's been my favorite in the top 10 outside of the top four.

• 1:06:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's, he's got, he's more the steadiness thing that we were talking about before with Boozer, where it maybe isn't as like, it's not as flashy at times, but he's absolute, I think he's one of the smartest guards that Cal's ever coached. I think he's right there. Tyler Ulis is another one who just had the disadvantage of being really small, but he's, he's really, really sharp. He's an orchestrator. You mentioned sequences and I think that's really something that he's great at is he sees things ahead of time. When teams switch coverages, I've seen him do this multiple times. He's like, he'll look at the floor and be like, it's not that there's a guy open immediately, but Acuff is really good at seeing the board and being like, okay, I know if you, if there's a screen here or you space here, we're going to get a shot after this move. Like he, he thinks a couple of moves ahead. He's really

• 1:07:04Speaker 05

  savvy, man. I could see him being like, as people reach for the flashy shiny objects, 10 years from now, we're like, damn, Darius Acuff is just maybe not an all-star, but he was a winning player for, you know, a decade.

• 1:07:15Bill Simmons?

  Great, uh, great name too. You could hear either Ian Eagle or his son be like, Acuff for three. And I haven't done nearly enough work yet, but I also, as I told you guys before the pod, I like the Kansas center. I don't care that he's undersized.

• 1:07:32Speaker 05

  Flory Badunga.

• 1:07:33Bill Simmons?

  That guy's going to be an NBA player in a rotation. Like you could just.

• 1:07:36Speaker 05

  From Kokomo, Indiana.

• 1:07:37Bill Simmons?

  Like, I, I don't know if it's the older I get or whatever, but you could just clearly see who the NBA players are. Sometimes it's like, that guy will be in a rotation. I don't care that he's two inches too short. It'd be like, oh shit, OKC took him at 38. Like, should I be shocked? Uh, before we go, um, San Antonio Detroit was last night. Did you see it, Tate?

• 1:07:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm, I'm locked in.

• 1:07:58Bill Simmons?

  You saw it too, Kyle.

• 1:07:59Speaker 05

  Oh, man. Oh, boy.

• 1:08:03Bill Simmons?

  We just, we're inching closer and closer to the, holy fucking shit. San Antonio could actually win the title.

• 1:08:10Speaker 05

  It's 2012 OKC territory. Like, we're like, this is for real. Like, we gotta take it seriously.

• 1:08:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And it's probably even like 2011 OKC where that was like the year before the year.

• 1:08:24Bill Simmons?

  Wemby wasn't even good and got the shit kicked out of him and must have fallen 20 times and didn't have good stats and yet I thought he completely dominated the game. It was, it was crazy. Like he, like Cade, that was the worst game I've seen Cade play since they were having like the losing streaks. And what he is able to do to these guards over and over, he did it to SGA, he did it to Cade, these guys that are used to just, I'll either shoot three or I'll go to the basket and I'll get my little 12 foot floater or whatever. And Wemby just removes that and you can watch their brains break in real time where they're like, fuck, I don't, I don't have that shot anymore.

• 1:09:04Speaker 05

  They didn't think it was possible to clam on. They're like, I thought that was possible, but it's, it's not. So I don't know anything anymore.

• 1:09:11Bill Simmons?

  I just, and, and then they have to move back three feet and it screws up the whole offense. Um, and then, you know, Castle going forth is one of the draft tragedies of the last 20 years. We were talking about it during the drafts. We all were like, this is stupid. These teams are going to regret this. Um, but the stuff that he's doing in these big games where he's really like brings attitude and, um, I just think he's a way better offensive player than I think anybody could have guessed this early. Um, combined with their bench.

• 1:09:41Speaker 05

  He out-Detroited Detroit last night. I mean, he absolutely, like Holland and Assar and Cade and those guys who like puff their chests out and hit you first and things like that. Um, you could tell he took that game personally. I mean, I'm reading into it a little bit, but he, I mean, going at Cade on offense, like he was, God, he was a dog last night.

• 1:09:59Bill Simmons?

  I don't want to overreact to it because they don't have Stewart. So that wasn't like, if that was a finals preview that you can't, cause Stewart is so important to Detroit and he's another tough guy. And he would have even helped their game plan even more tate of, let's just beat the living shit out of Wemby for two hours.

• 1:10:17Bill Simmons?

  I if I still don't think San Antonio is going to win the title, which isn't a hot take because they're like 10 to one to win the title. So it's not like I'm going out on a limb. But I do think the physicality of the playoffs is going to be my question with Wemby because you can see the strategy now. It's even in like off ball stuff. There was that one play. It was in the first half when they were waiting to throw the ball and and Duren's just like hitting Wemby and they're fighting for this one piece of turf and Duren's just leaning on him and elbowing him and pushing him. And that's just what teams are going to do. And I don't know if he's going to hold up this year. He might be two years away from that. What do you think?

• 1:10:51Speaker 04

  I don't know if the centers all have like a group where they all have like a conversation together, but I do feel like all the fives in the NBA.

• 1:10:57Speaker 05

  A text threat?

• 1:10:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, like a text.

• 1:10:58Speaker 05

  A center's group text is great.

• 1:10:59Speaker 04

  I think they're all, they're all trying to convince Wemby not to play the five. Like, if you watch any of these games, like anytime that he's at the five and he's matched up against another five, like they are just trying to wreck him as much as they can to be like, you, you really want to play the four. Like you don't want to play the five with us. You're not strong.

• 1:11:14Bill Simmons?

  You don't want to be down here.

• 1:11:16Speaker 04

  You don't want to be down here.

• 1:11:16Speaker 05

  Trying to A D him.

• 1:11:18Speaker 04

  They're trying to A D him. Exactly. They're trying to get him out of the paint and be like, you don't want any part of this. And I do feel like Wemby has been, he's been taken a beating, but he does bounce right back up, which I think is the really encouraging sign. And he seems like he's okay with dealing with it. I got in trouble because when the Hornets fight happened, I said Detroit kind of reminded me of like some fake tough guys, you know, like.

• 1:11:38Bill Simmons?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:11:39Speaker 05

  Whoa, Tate.

• 1:11:41Speaker 04

  Hey, man, I like Diabate. Diabate got, you know, roughed up by Duren and he met him with the same amount of fire. And then, you know, obviously, like you said, the enforcer Beef Stu came off the bench and made sure to send his own message. But without Beef Stu there, it did feel like a little bit of that, a tinge of that. I really like this Detroit team. I would say they're probably my favorite team right now in the NBA. I enjoy watching them play. Cade's one of my favorite players. Just watching him when he was younger to see what he's turned into.

• 1:12:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:09Speaker 04

  But that was the first time I saw Cade, like you said, Bill, get really shook by the space he was not able to dominate because of his size. And it was because of Wemby. And, you know, I thought we were maybe overrating Wemby a little bit just because everybody was like, I mean, is he going to be the youngest MVP ever? Is he going to win a finals in his first year? And that's a lot to put on someone, but he's there. He's, he's absolutely there. So, you know, I think at this point, we can accept that fact.

• 1:12:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's why you can't totally, you do the MVP conversation and you just. Compared two guys stats, there's other stuff that goes into it.

• 1:12:45Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:12:45Bill Simmons?

  This is what I was saying about Jalen Brown on Sunday, like Jalen Brown's guarding the best guy on the other team a lot of the times this season. Wemby's wrecking offenses in big games like that. That has the biggest X factor of any MVP conversation.

• 1:12:58Speaker 05

  He had a play last night, I sent this to Rob where, because we were watching, we were both watching the second. He didn't play great in the first half, but he definitely responded to that physicality in the second half. Him and Duren going at it was really interesting, but they were in this play that you see a lot of NBA teams run where Cade's at the top and he passes it to the left and it's an empty side, basically pick and roll. And Dennis Jenkins, who's been great, comes across it and he's got Duren in the dunker spot. And the center is put in this position to play two people. Wemby literally just kept his hand next to Duren and was just like, this is, this is not going to happen. You're not going to throw this lob. Did it all the way to the basket and Dennis was like, all right, well, I guess I have this layup. And then I looked at the time marker and the second didn't change is how quickly this happened.

• 1:13:41Speaker 05

  So Wemby is flat footed, he rotates his body and blocks Dennis at like the high point where no one ever blocks shots. And you see these guys repeatedly be like, that's a goaltend. And you go back and watch it and be like that, no, it wasn't miraculously, it wasn't like Wemby just, he can play. I was talking with somebody about this where Wemby's drop coverage and like soft show in ball screens is as effective as, he doesn't have to switch all the time. Like he can give guys a pad where, and give them this false illusion like he did with Cade of like, oh, well, this is there. And then Cade sees it a couple of times, he's usually the Pistons are the people making people think about things other than basketball. And the Spurs were just like, it was a really interesting title checkmark thing for them last night, I thought, where they were like,

• 1:14:24Speaker 05

  yeah, we're tough and we're good on offense and they have a lot of stuff.

• 1:14:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, especially because they blew the lead. Detroit came back, Detroit took the lead, the crowd was incredible. I mean, the Detroit home games are some of the best crowds we're getting in any sport. And, uh, and San Antonio just figured it out. Plus our guy, uh, our guy Harper, Kyle, I just.

• 1:14:44Bill Simmons?

  Just, I always get excited when he's a little bit involved and in some ways I almost wish he was on a bad team just so he could like be what's going on with Flag where he just gets to test drive stuff all season and there are no stakes, but I think he's figured out how to fit in more and more as the years gone along. I'm fascinated by them. Wemby, three times a game just does something you, you, you just, you forget that he can do, you know, like these alley oops where he doesn't jump.

• 1:15:11Speaker 05

  He called one.

• 1:15:14Bill Simmons?

  I'm not used to the experience of that yet. Yeah, he's just like boom. It's like watching somebody on a Nerf hoop and I can't get used to it. And then the way he's challenging shots in the paint, I'm just not used to it. So I can't imagine what it would be like to play him. I do think, I said this Sunday that, uh, I just don't think Detroit as a four round team makes sense to me with how much is on Cade and you saw it last night. There's like, he didn't have it. They kind of figured him out. There was no second guy to help with the offense. They don't have that yet. Whereas like all these other teams, they, they always have like a plan B or a plan C on offense. I don't see the plan B with Detroit. It's really like Tobias Harris? And I, I just don't think that's good enough

• 1:15:58Bill Simmons?

  for four rounds, but that's my take. Anyway, that was some game. We got a OKC Detroit this week too. Um, which I think is Wednesday night, but that'll be a good one as well. All right, guys.

• 1:16:08Speaker 04

  We need SGA to come back so we can have like a real MVP conversation. The 65 game thing is ridiculous and if it keeps us away from having like a de facto default MVP, I'm, I'm not going to be happy, Bill. I just want to put that out there.

• 1:16:22Bill Simmons?

  It's, it's, it's good for Wemby. The longer he sits out.

• 1:16:24Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 1:16:25Bill Simmons?

  Um, maybe there.

• 1:16:26Speaker 04

  And Cade.

• 1:16:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and Cade.

• 1:16:28Speaker 05

  Detroit, uh, Detroit Spurs play again, March 5th. That's going to be a good one at, at San Antonio. So.

• 1:16:33Bill Simmons?

  All right, fellas. I'm going to have you on again in a couple of weeks and we can do a little update. We'll see what happens with our guy Peterson, but, uh, Tom, man, can you hear me on the Ringer NBA Show? Tate Frazier, not only on Ringer Gambling Shows, we head toward March Madness Tuesdays and Thursdays, but, um,

• 1:16:49Bill Simmons?

  You know, the hit show of 2025, Ringer Tailgate.

• 1:16:52Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:53Bill Simmons?

  One of the most important video podcasts ever created. Unleash Joel Anderson on the planet as the comedy, comedy figure of his times. But you're keeping that going all the way through the draft, right?

• 1:17:05Speaker 04

  And once a week, we sometimes, you know, I send them the rundown and they have a, Joel has a different plan for what we're going to talk about. So, I mean, it's a beautiful thing. We never know what's going to come up. You know, Joel has so many, so many stories. And Van is living his best life. So it's a lot of fun with those two guys.

• 1:17:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, we're going to take a break, come back with somebody else who's on that show, the Duke, Billy Gil is next. So thanks, guys. Good to see you. And now it's time for today's with the assist segment presented by State Farm. In basketball, you can have the best player in the league. It doesn't mean he's going to win the title. He can't do it alone. He's going to have to lean on teammates, coaches, even fans to push them to be better. And we've seen some pretty iconic assists over the years. Yeah. Then the second half of the 2010s, you had Steph and Klay. You had KD joining the Warriors at some point. Denver, they win the title. It wasn't just Jokic. Jamal Murray was huge that year, too. OKC last year, SGA, then J-Dub steps in every once in a while. You need some help.

• 1:18:04Bill Simmons?

  You might even see with San Antonio this year with, with Wemby, but also Steph Castle. Like basketball, life is easier with great assists. State Farm is here to dish one your way. They're not just an insurance company. They're a teammate who's on your bench, ready to listen assist and help you get the right coverage when it matters most. State Farm with the assist, coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state. This episode is brought to you by Carhartt. We spend a lot of time talking about football, the players, the coaches, the big plays. But there's a whole other team we rarely think about, the people who make the game possible. The workers building stadiums, paving parking lots, growing the grass, welding the goalposts, even making the footballs. They're committed to their craft and they're doing the work long before kickoff.

• 1:18:49Bill Simmons?

  Carhartt is proud to outfit those crews. So next time you're watching a game, take a second to appreciate the people behind it. Learn more at carhartt.com/jointhetrades.

• 1:19:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Excitement is in the air. That's right. It's the start of NBA season. I can't wait to get together with friends, share some Michelob Ultras and watch Tip Off. Plus, as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting you closer to the action with experiences that make you feel like you're courtside to actual courtside tickets. Enter now for a chance to win at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21+ Begins on October 1st, 2026. Ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry. Entry deadlines, prizes and details. All right, the Duke is in the house. Billy Gill, you can see him on the Ringer NFL Show.

• 1:19:45Bill Simmons?

  You can see him on Ringer Tailgate with Tate, who is just on, and he loves baseball. I am going to start doing a little more on baseball on this podcast. It's slowly come back. Hopefully, we're not going to have a debilitating three-year labor strike later this decade. For now, we have baseball. And I gave you an assignment.

• 1:20:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Bill Simmons?

  What theme did we officially decide on? What did we, where did you land?

• 1:20:08Speaker 04

  I was going to say it was a very loose assignment. It was like, let's come up with a list of five things, maybe seven, maybe eight, maybe nine, maybe things about spring training. So with that direction, I kind of tried to piece all of that together and see what I could come up with. So what I did was I kind of like went over what happened last season. And then what I did was I think I created maybe a cheat sheet of eight or nine things that I feel like if you know headed into spring training, you can kind of be caught up with what's going on in the world of baseball right now. Or you could fake it just enough to your friends while they think like, oh, this person's really paying attention.

• 1:20:44Bill Simmons?

  So conversation starters slash I'm fooling people at cocktail parties, including the one guy here who really follows baseball. And I'm going to prove I can hang with them, even though I only have these nine things.

• 1:20:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, you just kind of need a couple nuggets. I feel like that you throw in there and we could do like maybe a thing per team or whatever that you have, you just throw that out there. So what I did was, I don't know if you still do this, Bill. So I kind of like the actual like magazines, the books, the research. So I went a little bit crazy. And when I got the Lindy's Sports Baseball Book.

• 1:21:15Bill Simmons?

  Look at that, yeah.

• 1:21:17Speaker 04

  I went through, I took some notes. I went through all 30 teams. If you want, we can just kind of pick some teams at random. If you don't like any of the topics. 178 pages of team previews we went through.

• 1:21:27Bill Simmons?

  Well, you're talking, you're talking to a guy who still buys the USA Today Sports Weekly during spring training to follow the fantasy baseball. Yeah, they still make it.

• 1:21:36Speaker 04

  Do you, do you baseball forecaster it at any point for your, for your?

• 1:21:41Bill Simmons?

  Do I need to?

• 1:21:42Speaker 04

  I mean, it's like very in the weeds on like advanced metrics. Baseball forecaster is more so for fantasy, but the thing with fantasy is it's all speculative, right? Like you're just kind of guessing. So you can spend all these hours. This poor Ron Chandler writes this book every single year. I think there's like the 26th, 20th, whatever edition it is. And he's been doing this forever and someone gets hurt and none of that matters. So he goes around, he talks to all these people. None of it really makes a ton of difference, but I'm on a revenge tour this year, Bill, in my fantasy league. Because I think this is the 20th or 21st season of our fantasy league. And I started out strong. I won two out of the first three championships.

• 1:22:21Speaker 04

  And I haven't won anything since. And yeah, we're getting to the point where I think that I can do it. Uh, my wife doesn't believe in me. She's asked me to quit. She successfully got me to quit, uh, the COVID year. Cause she told me, yeah, COVID year I took off, which was a big mistake. Cause she said, you're going to give them the buy-in, you're gonna lose, you're gonna get upset. You're gonna be mad at your cousin. My cousin's the commissioner, but he's a bit of a scoundrel and he changes the league rules every year. There's a bunch of lawyers in the league, so they'll send out like their own like new league rules, but it's all in legalese and it's like 40 pages long. And it's like, I get the gist of it. I'll figure it out. Every year there's new rules.

• 1:23:00Speaker 04

  Every year there's cheating of some kind. I'm the only person in the history of the league who has had trades vetoed. It's happened to me on two separate occasions. And are they like spiteful moves that I'm making? Yes, but do they fall within the spirit of other moves? Like absolutely, because my thinking is in fantasy, if you're going to do something outrageous, right? Where you make a trade where it's clearly very one sided. Why not just go big? So like I would make trades or attempt to make trades where I'm trading essentially like my whole roster. And I have three team deals, four team deals. Do I have to reach out to the other teammates? Because they've given up on the season. I have to get their passwords to like approve them like maybe potentially. I'm not going to admit any of that, but these, these always get vetoed.

• 1:23:44Speaker 04

  So I have, I'm very upset with my commissioner.

• 1:23:46Bill Simmons?

  Wait, is it a keeper league? Or is it just every year it's a new team league?

• 1:23:49Speaker 04

  That's another situation because it's fluctuated back and forth. Different like versions over the years. We're now finally settled on, we're doing categories. It's a keeper league. You can keep the players for two years. So you have draft them, you can keep them twice. And it's four rounds higher than you drafted them for the previous year. So like if I draft someone in the 20th round and I want to keep them next year. It's the 16th round, the following year is the 12th. And then after that they're in free agency. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:24:18Bill Simmons?

  So I'm in this, I'm in a 40 player AL keeper league with where we do a draft. And you can keep a guy, it's two years. You can keep them two, three, four more years. It's $5 more every year. It's insane. I've been in it all century. I haven't won in over 20 years. I'm partners with my buddy Hench and I really care about it. And it's a colossal waste of time.

• 1:24:41Speaker 04

  Well, that's the thing. It becomes a full time job. Like fantasy baseball is, it's like fantasy football is the most popular of the fantasies, right? Anyone can play fantasy football. You basically just set your team. Yeah. And you don't really need skill. You just kind of draft your team. Just make sure that, you know, when there's bye weeks, you're swapping people out, whatever. Baseball is like a full time commitment.

• 1:25:01Bill Simmons?

  Well, throw in a minor league draft. Like we had a couple of years ago, we had the number one pick and it was between Marcelo Meyer and Anthony Volpe, the Yankees shortstop. I spent more time on this decision for three weeks than I did on like the Ringer. It was really important. Hench and I just texting, we're texting like features we read on each guy. It was pathetic. Not ashamed.

• 1:25:23Speaker 04

  The thing is, it hurts me how much I end up caring and I see how me caring impacts my family negatively.

• 1:25:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:31Speaker 04

  So I, I wanna say that if I win, I'll just be like, let me go out on top, but I know I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna have to kinda defend the crowd. I'm never, I'm never gonna quit. I regret quitting the one season that I did because my wife was like, you're gonna give them the money. They're just gonna get mad. They're gonna cheat. You're gonna be screaming. You're gonna spend, because I would spend. I remember we were in Washington DC, like on a trip. I was like an internship up there, like PTI, whatever. And I spent multiple days just with this little notebook on an inflatable couch that I got from like the grocery store, like one of those, you know, like composition notebooks with like this squirrely stuff on the cover. And I'm just like trying to figure out, how can I trade this person? How can I trade that person? I execute what I think is a perfect trade. It gets vetoed and I'm just cursing out my family members.

• 1:26:13Speaker 04

  I have like other cousins that are in this league as well. My dad was in this, he got kicked out because of apathy. It's a very serious league. It's a very serious league.

• 1:26:20Bill Simmons?

  Aren't like, most of our fights are that somebody made a trade without, without shopping the same offer to other people. It's the same fight every year.

• 1:26:28Speaker 04

  There's no honor in my league. You never really make the people available to everyone. There's inside trading here. There was a situation where we had to kick people out of the league where one of the iterations of this league, it was like the first time we were gonna do keepers, right?

• 1:26:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:43Speaker 04

  So we had a guy that was a friend of ours from high school. He was a lawyer. And he had then like a lawyer intern, whatever it would be that they're called, right? Where they're kinda just like starting up at the law firm. So he was in our league. He was related to us.

• 1:26:57Bill Simmons?

  Paralegal.

• 1:26:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think so. Maybe.

• 1:27:02Bill Simmons?

  I'm helping.

• 1:27:02Speaker 04

  It doesn't matter. Yeah. So anyways, so he comes in, he's not paying attention at all. He trades all of his good players to his lawyer boss, who's a friend of ours. And then the explanation was like, no, well, it's a keeper league. So he got this back. So this person could be worth something like three seasons. So this is actually a good deal. Except he ended up leaving our league. They changed the format the following year. So none of those people were keepers. It was just cheating from the beginning. It's honestly. It's bullshit. Every year it's bullshit. Something happens. Someone's trying to pull a fast one over someone else. We have a corrupt commissioner. No one wants to stand up to him. It's nonsense, but I can't give up because I need to win this league. I need to get back on top and feel alive. I feel like it'll bring me back to my youth, you know, like I'm old now. I have kids. I don't have the same energy.

• 1:27:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:46Speaker 04

  I, uh, I wake up and I feel like I'm missing something. And I think that, that what I'm missing is a fantasy baseball championship and that'll get me right back on top and bringing back to where I was 20 years ago, you know?

• 1:27:57Bill Simmons?

  I was in a league where the guy traded Mookie Betts for three guys who sucked. Oh no, that was real life. That was the Red Sox. My bad. I, I got mixed up for a second. Anyway, what are your, let's go. What are your things? What's your number one thing? Give us your conversation starter, your cocktail party helper.

• 1:28:18Speaker 04

  All right. Well, so before we get to the cocktail party helpers and all the conversation starters, last year, great year for baseball.

• 1:28:25Bill Simmons?

  A plus.

• 1:28:26Speaker 04

  Record, record numbers, World Series, incredible World Series, setting records, 30 million viewers. I think game seven had 50 million viewers. They're doing this thing now where they're combining viewers in Canada, the US and Japan to say like, wow, 50 million viewers watched this combined across the three countries. And it's kind of like, we've never measured anything in television across three countries. But if that's what we have to do, like, okay, fine, Major League Baseball. Like it was a great game, game tying home run, game winning home run, plays at the plate. It was awesome. I thought, and I don't know if you were the same, I thought at the time that the Blue Jays going wouldn't be best case. That like for viewers, it would be like Yankees, Dodgers again.

• 1:29:09Speaker 04

  But Yankees Dodgers like that'll be doing it. But I didn't take into account the three country factor that I didn't know that we did in rating viewers where Canada would be involved. And then of course, Japan is involved with Shohei. So it ended up being great for the game. Attendance has been up, length of game has been going down, but there are changes coming to baseball and that's kind of one of the things that we're going to get to.

• 1:29:34Bill Simmons?

  I thought it turned out to be a great World Series. I was dreading Dodgers Yankees because that would have meant the Yankees could potentially win the World Series. So just having them out of it was great. But I think the thing that changed last year was the Dodgers becoming like this monolith. You know, like almost like what the Mahomes Chiefs were like, or the Brady Pats, like they kind of moved like the Kobe Shaq Lakers or the Warriors in the 2010s. They moved into this thing now where they're now this unbeatable champ. This thing we can all measure against to try to beat, which I like, I'm pro. I like that when we have a team like that. You don't like it as much?

• 1:30:12Speaker 04

  It's not that I don't like it. I think last year played out well for the Dodgers because they didn't struggle, but they didn't run away with it in the regular season. They didn't, they didn't win 100 games. So it wasn't like they're going out there. They're winning 115 games. It's not close. They almost lost the World Series. It took seven games. They could have lost it in six. They could have lost it in seven. So the Blue Jays kind of taking them to that point, like to the brink, extra innings. And then they win it. It was fine. Like it was good. It was an exciting game. It was kind of like, okay, well, this feels like someone can kind of get to the Dodgers because surely the Dodgers can't just spend every offseason throwing all of their money. They already spent $700 million on one guy. Like obviously they're going to run out of

• 1:30:54Speaker 04

  money at some point. They can't just keep up this insane spending, right? Well, they did. They continued the insane spending in the offseason. They just continue to do whatever it is that they want. So we'll see how it goes. I mean, the West is, the Padres can kind of maybe, Padres can put up a fight here. The Padres are kind of like a perennial disappointment under the achiever though, right? Like I feel like we're told every year, like this is the year the Padres are going to do it. And now we've kind of just somewhat given up on teams overtaking the Dodgers in the West.

• 1:31:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, what's the NFL version of that? The looks awesome on paper. What's, I mean, it's probably the Buffalo Bills. Yeah.

• 1:31:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, the Bills, you feel like it's always going to be their year. The Bills like, the thing is, there's no Dodgers in the NFL right now. It was the Chiefs.

• 1:31:42Bill Simmons?

  It was the Chiefs. Yeah, but it didn't.

• 1:31:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it hasn't. It's done. Yeah. Like, I mean, it lasted as long as it could, but everybody just kind of got old. So.

• 1:31:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, the Dodgers, so they get the Mets closer Diaz and they also get Kyle Tucker. Add that, add that to a, to a two time champ. That kind of sucked for the National League and it, and it spun the Mets out was the other fun part of that.

• 1:32:06Speaker 04

  You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna, I'm gonna fast forward to number nine since we're already talking about on my nine things that you should talk about.

• 1:32:12Bill Simmons?

  This is the last, yeah, we're going backwards.

• 1:32:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. This is the last thing here. Well, just because we're already here. So we might as well get to it. So actually this is number eight. So this is, what are they doing? Like, what, what exactly is going on here? And the teams that we're trying to figure out what exactly is going on here are the Dodgers, as we mentioned, because the Dodgers continue to spend money. They continue to do whatever it is that they want to do. Right? They give $240 million to Kyle Tucker. Why did they do that? Why did they give him $60 million a year? Aside from the fact that they can, what is the actual explanation for why the Dodgers are giving that money to him? He wasn't that great last season. You know, like 20

• 1:32:54Speaker 04

  home runs. He had like an 800 plus OPS. He's good, but $60 million seems like you should be a game changer, which he wasn't really. So what, what are they doing?

• 1:33:07Bill Simmons?

  So it seems like with these shorter contracts, I was talking to a Dodger fan friend of mine about this, where in the old days it was, you'd give the Pujols contract, right? It was like, what was that? Like eight, 10 years, whatever it was for.

• 1:33:19Speaker 04

  250, whatever.

• 1:33:21Bill Simmons?

  In the last half of that contract, you're kind of screwed. It's like, ah, fuck. We got four good years out of this. Now we got to ride out these next four. And the Dodgers are just like, we'll overpay you now. And we'll get out of it after four years and maybe you're a 35 million or $40 million a year guy. We're gonna, we're gonna pay out the extra 20 a year now. Hope you're good in your prime. And if you are, it's a bonus. If not, we're getting rid of that money during the contract. And then we don't have it hanging over our heads six years from now. Seems like the strategy. Not against it. It's just weird.

• 1:33:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, they, they, they also signed the best closer out there. So they're said, you know,

• 1:33:59Bill Simmons?

  They didn't have a closer last year.

• 1:34:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. Any hole that they, I mean, they had Tanner Scott, who ended up kind of being a disappointment for them. So wherever they had minor weaknesses, they, they no longer have any of those weaknesses. So the Dodgers just continue to spend money. The Giants decided, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna hire

• 1:34:21Speaker 04

  the University of Tennessee's head baseball coach this year because we don't really know what it is that we're gonna do to keep up with the Dodgers. Buster Posey's there. He's in charge. He fires Bob Melvin after 500 season. And he says, you know what we're gonna do? Let's hire a college coach that's never coached at any position in Major League Baseball. What are the Giants doing here?

• 1:34:41Bill Simmons?

  That one I did not understand. Well, we've seen this happen in NFL and it's, and it's, the results are mixed to say the least, but it reminded me a little of the Steve Spurrier. It's like, this guy's good. Maybe it'll translate and keep your fingers crossed.

• 1:34:55Speaker 04

  Well, it's kind of like when Saban went to the NFL, right? Which didn't really pan out, I guess. Another one that's going on, because the NL, NL West right now, it's just everyone's trying to keep up with the Dodgers. And the only reason the Dodgers are on here is because of how much money they gave Kyle Tucker for 22 home runs and 71 RBIs, is the Rockies decided, you know, we had, we had a terrible season last year. We need to change things up. They notoriously just hire from within. We need to go outside of our organization. So for the first time in 26 years, they hired outside of their organization for someone to run the Rockies. And the person that they hired was Paul DePodesta.

• 1:35:34Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:35:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. Paul DePodesta.

• 1:35:36Bill Simmons?

  Checkered history.

• 1:35:37Speaker 04

  He's been out of baseball for 10 years and he most recently was with the Browns as their chief strategy officer where he decided, you know, we gotta do, let's sign Deshaun Watson to the worst contract in the history of the NFL.

• 1:35:51Bill Simmons?

  And trade picks for him.

• 1:35:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. Let's completely handcuff this organization forever. And the Rockies said, you know what? We just saw Moneyball. Maybe, maybe Paul DePodesta, we can bring him in. He can do something here. He can figure this out. Except again, he hasn't been in baseball for a decade. So he needs to catch up to what's happening in modern day baseball.

• 1:36:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so maybe somebody was trying to zag in the front office.

• 1:36:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:36:14Bill Simmons?

  It's like, yeah, he was ruining the Browns. This seems stupid. And then somebody was like, yeah, but if he had been in baseball this whole time, maybe he'd be the single best guy running a baseball team. So we're buying low. Maybe he was just in the wrong sport and they do it that way.

• 1:36:31Speaker 04

  It's the perfect division for things like this to happen. Cause again, you have the Dodgers at the top who are going to dominate this division seemingly. You have the Padres who can threaten them. You have the Diamondbacks who seemed like they were a nice, fun, young, up and coming team a couple of seasons ago, and then kind of gone back to, you know, 500 more or less. So if you're the Rockies, I guess, why not try anything? And if you're the Giants, why not, I guess, try to think outside the box when you fire your longtime manager?

• 1:37:00Bill Simmons?

  The problem is you're going against the Dodgers who basically have revenue streams from two massive countries happening at the same time, California and Japan. And it, and then the Padres, so the Padres are for sale now and they're going to go for over three billion. And I didn't realize this, they have a revenue of like $550 million a year because they're the only team in San Diego. And they get, they just leverage everything and they just like print money. So those are the two teams you're competing against.

• 1:37:29Speaker 04

  They're, they're in like the top 10 in spending. I think they're like second or third in attendance. Like they have money to spend.

• 1:37:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:35Speaker 04

  They're just not spending it. They also just resigned their president of baseball operations, A.J. Preller, who's like, you know, some people love him, some people hate him, but he always kind of goes for it. They resigned him. So that might've been kind of like a gift on the way out where his future was up in the air and they said, you know what? This guy's been loyal to us. We're going to sell the team. Let's like lock him in or, you know, at least get a nice payday on the way out if they decide to fire him.

• 1:37:57Bill Simmons?

  People care about Dodgers Padres here.

• 1:38:01Bill Simmons?

  The Dodger fans, like the Padres as a rival and the Giants as a rival are real. I mean, the Giants is like a whole other level, but the Padres are a real rival. Like then that's something that kind of reemerged this decade, which has been pretty fun.

• 1:38:13Speaker 04

  But do they have to win to actually be a serious rival? Like, could they just be kind of like the annoying little brother for the Dodgers?

• 1:38:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's what they are. They're the annoying kind of, kind of kicking them under the table all the time.

• 1:38:26Speaker 04

  They play the game close, like best of 11. They get to like nine and then it's like, all right, like we've had enough fun here. Like, go back to where you were.

• 1:38:32Bill Simmons?

  What's your next one?

• 1:38:33Speaker 04

  All right, so here are noteworthy things that happened the first weekend of spring training. So this is like, you show up to a cocktail party this weekend. You walk around and you say, hey, did you see, you see this? This is where we were supposed to start, but we got to number nine, so we had to naturally talk about it. Yeah, we'll figure it out. Anyways, so noteworthy things that happened the first week. Tony Clark, out as Major League Baseball Player, Players Association, uh, union rep.

• 1:38:58Bill Simmons?

  Lot of fascinating things about this one, including the crazy beard he had.

• 1:39:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's, he kind of secretly grew that long beard. He had to goatee for a while. It, it kind of grew out and he decided he knew what to keep going all white on the beard. Like, I, I kind of like it. I mean, I can't grow that beard, but I kind of like it for him. It's a good look for him.

• 1:39:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, almost like an old hillbilly Jim wrestling beard crossed with, I don't know what. So he had an affair with his sister-in-law, um, who we had then hired for the players' union, and that became the problem.

• 1:39:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, that, that was an issue. And, uh, as you mentioned, there's a looming lockout coming after the season, December 1st. If they don't reach a new CBA, there will be a lockout. And it's kind of a bad look, I guess, to have your union rep be involved in extracurricular activities while you're trying to, uh, renegotiate a new CBA.

• 1:39:47Bill Simmons?

  Especially that was a sordid one, too.

• 1:39:50Speaker 04

  Did we ever figure out?

• 1:39:52Bill Simmons?

  Which side of the sister-in-law family was? I think it was the sister of his wife. But who knows?

• 1:39:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:59Bill Simmons?

  Oh, this is alleged. I'll just say alleged over and over again. But yeah, I think it was the sister.

• 1:40:05Speaker 04

  It's safe and it's one of those things that like on the way out, knowing kind of how delicate the situation was, no one was really like, can we just like, Tony, before you go, like, can we clear up like brother's wife?

• 1:40:15Bill Simmons?

  Good question.

• 1:40:17Speaker 04

  Wife's sister. How exactly did this, uh, how did this work out here?

• 1:40:22Bill Simmons?

  Fendel could have put odds on it. That could have been fun. I would have liked to wagered on it. But yeah, so Tony's out. He's a beloved Red Sox opponent because he hit the double in one of the ALCS games in oh, four, that would have been the go ahead run in extra innings, but it bounced into the right field stance. Guy had to stop at third.

• 1:40:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:40:43Bill Simmons?

  It's the Tony Clark hit. So we've always enjoyed him after that because he, he did that for us.

• 1:40:48Speaker 04

  All right. So Tony Clark, Tony Clark is out. Also happening, first game this weekend, Yankees had a sewage leak that took over their entire clubhouse. It was going into the team store. They had to close off sections of the team store. The clubhouse is all carpeting that probably ruined all the carpet.

• 1:41:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:06Speaker 04

  It started in the bathroom, just kind of bad plumbing situation. I don't know if this is like, has anything to do with the Rays played their, their entire season there last year or the Yankees have their spring training, but it didn't affect them. They went on to win 20 to three against the Tigers. So that was kind of like a short term annoyance.

• 1:41:22Bill Simmons?

  And they have some prospect that's throwing like 103. I don't know if you followed this guy.

• 1:41:28Speaker 04

  I don't understand arms, I guess, like just human arms and how they work now as opposed to how they used to work back in the day and how people are capable of just regularly hitting 103, 104. And, you know, they just go on living their lives until they blow out their elbow and have Tommy John and that's their career, but.

• 1:41:46Bill Simmons?

  But that's the thing. 99 was super fast 20 years ago. 99 was like, wow, that guy's throwing 99 and now that feels pedestrian.

• 1:41:55Speaker 04

  I, I was impressed with a 97. If I saw like a 97, I like the old scoreboard that was actually like individual, like light bulbs that are like orange or whatever color. Like you'd wait, you'd turn and see like, wow, that one seemed like fast. You'd look up, you'd see how fast it was. It hits like 97, like, wow.

• 1:42:11Bill Simmons?

  You haven't heard the conspiracy theory that they jack up the radar radar gun a little bit? That has been out there.

• 1:42:19Speaker 04

  That's out there. I have one that that I heard from the former Marlins team president who put it out there. When Brad Penny was on the mound, they would intentionally lower the speed of his pitches. Because they wanted to kind of like amp him up and get him to throw harder. So he'd be out there and he'd be throwing as hard as he could and he'd look up after like every pitch. And it would say like 93 when it was really like 97, 98. And he'd just get pissed off and he's like, I gotta throw harder. He'd just throw even harder the next time.

• 1:42:49Bill Simmons?

  And then he blew out his elbow and it wasn't as far anymore. Yeah.

• 1:42:52Speaker 04

  Weird that it didn't last long for Brad Penny. Yeah.

• 1:42:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, no rules in that.

• 1:42:57Speaker 04

  Okay, so there was a sewage leak. Weird triple plays have returned. I don't know if you saw this game. I think this is a game that involved like the Orioles or the one of the teams. I don't know. Where it was a hit and then they decided to throw in. He decided to try to go for two. Tag him out at second base. There's two runners on third base. They tagged the guy out that went from second to third because they're both standing on the base. So the, you know, the back runner is automatically out. The lead runner then decides, you know what? I guess I'm out. So he walks off the base. Triple play. So we're still trying to figure out the rules. These are kind of the things that happen in spring training. So you can talk to people about the weird triple play that happened. Also, home run leaders. Pete Alonso already has two home runs and I don't know if you saw this.

• 1:43:38Speaker 04

  It came out today. Daryl Strawberry, have you seen? Have you seen this, Bill? Daryl Strawberry today, I believe it was in the New York Post, said Pete Alonso is going to regret leaving the Mets. So Daryl Strawberry and Pete Alonso are already kind of somewhat beefing. They then had to go back to Daryl Strawberry and get clarification on what he meant. Where it was like, kind of like a half apology where he's like, no, no, what I really meant was is I was in his position. And when I left and I could have been an all time leader for an organization. That's a special thing. So I think he's going to look back one day. And he's really going to regret leaving, not being an all time Mets leader and something, even though. It seems like the Mets didn't really make that much of an effort to keep Pete Alonso.

• 1:44:21Speaker 04

  Like, they could have locked him up last season. They ended up not doing it. He was a free agent. He signs like a one-year deal to come back. I think there was an option that he opted out of. And this year, they also didn't give him money, which is weird because the Mets have just about as much money as everyone else. So if they really wanted Pete Alonso, they could have easily signed Pete Alonso, but they decided to kind of let him go, which is weird because I think the last five seasons, he's been top five in home runs every year.

• 1:44:46Bill Simmons?

  Here's the thing, though. It's not weird because this, this brings up one of my favorite theories.

• 1:44:51Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:44:52Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if I've introduced this on the pod. I think running backs and people who could only be a first baseman, DH, very similar what happens to them in the market when they start hitting their, like, their early 30s, right? Because people don't, doesn't seem like they want to tie up a ton of money with the guy who could only play that position, who might actually get worse, and then you're stuck. Versus like, if you get, I don't know, like a wide receiver or a tight end or something, you feel it's a little, it's a little harder to find those guys versus running back, you could just cycle in these second round, third round, fourth round picks. Like, the Red Sox were in this situation where, with Casas, right, who's young.

• 1:45:35Bill Simmons?

  But it's like, well, if we double down on him, now we're kind of stuck and now we have no flexibility with the spot. I think teams like having the flexibility with first base DH. Is my take.

• 1:45:47Speaker 04

  Steven Cohen just seems kind of like a weird guy. Did you see, he also came out and he said there will be no captains on this team.

• 1:45:53Bill Simmons?

  I did see that. I didn't understand that.

• 1:45:55Speaker 04

  I don't, I don't either, but I don't understand it in that I'd never, growing up, considered captain a baseball thing.

• 1:46:03Bill Simmons?

  Do you think I should designate a captain for the Ringer? And if I did, would Van quit if he wasn't named captain?

• 1:46:09Speaker 04

  I was gonna say, I feel like Van has to be high on the list of who you might designate as captain of the Ringer.

• 1:46:16Bill Simmons?

  He'd start calling himself the captain?

• 1:46:18Speaker 04

  He's on a lot of shows if we're gonna be on usage rate. Van's Van's pretty high on there.

• 1:46:22Bill Simmons?

  He really is.

• 1:46:23Speaker 04

  He he could be a captain. I mean, Joel from Tailgate would be offended if he wasn't captain.

• 1:46:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that could cause problems on the Tailgate show. Maybe that's why Steve Cohen didn't want a captain.

• 1:46:33Speaker 04

  Hmm. He he made it seem like I think he said there will never be a captain as long as I own this team, which also seems like, why do we have to be so definitive on this? Like, captain's a dumb thing, but why are you taking such a strong stand on this captain nonsense?

• 1:46:45Bill Simmons?

  Why is he offended by captains?

• 1:46:47Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 1:46:48Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. All right.

• 1:46:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. All right. So other early home run leaders, Aaron Judge has two home runs for the Yankees. So he's kinda, yeah, he's sticking on there strong. And here's kind of a fun thing that you can talk about with your friends. Clint Hurdle released a book this week.

• 1:47:05Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 1:47:06Speaker 04

  And he he also has been very, very active on Twitter this past week with his book coming out. It's called Clint Hurdle Hurdleisms, Wit and Wisdom from a Lifetime in Baseball.

• 1:47:18Bill Simmons?

  Wit and wisdoms.

• 1:47:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, wit and wisdoms. And it essentially is like, not a poetry book per se, but it's a lot of just kind of like nonsenses. If you go on his Twitter account, you will see his last like five or 10 tweets have been things that have really just cut on. And it's just things that pop into his head that have absolutely, they're nonsensical. They're somewhat related to baseball and he then will quote himself. Also, if you follow him, Clint Hurdle is following absolutely anyone out there. He followed me today. He's following anyone that interacts with him on Twitter. I don't know that he knows how Twitter works, but one tweet that really caught fire yesterday was him saying, quote, "We can measure everything with radar guns and analytics, but none of these can measure guts and nuts."

• 1:48:05Bill Simmons?

  Guts and nuts.

• 1:48:06Speaker 04

  Guts and nuts can't be measured. There's no analytics for guts and nuts, according to Clint Hurdle.

• 1:48:11Bill Simmons?

  Well, you left out that this book is only 144 pages. Is it a book if it's under 200 pages? That's a borderline pamphlet.

• 1:48:19Speaker 04

  I think it's more, if you look at it, I can't figure out what it is, but when it says wit and wisdom, it seems as though it's just like not poetry, but it's nonsense. So like his last tweet was, "Don't take the heart out of the player. Don't take the heart out of the game. Let it be." Clint Hurdle.

• 1:48:40Bill Simmons?

  Multitasking makes me multi mediocre. That's another.

• 1:48:44Speaker 04

  Clint Hurdle. Clint Hurdle. I'm also pretty sure these hurdleisms are things that he took from other people.

• 1:48:51Bill Simmons?

  This could have been the whole podcast. Why did we even need to do anything else?

• 1:48:55Speaker 04

  They never care how much you know until they know how much you care. Clint Hurdle.

• 1:49:02Speaker 04

  So if you want, and you want to get an early, you know, holiday gift or whatever, for some friends, Clint Hurdle wrote a book of hurdleisms that you can give. Tough love is still love. Clint Hurdle.

• 1:49:13Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:49:14Speaker 04

  There's no chance he invented tough love is still love. I just find it hard to believe that Clint is giving him credit for all of these sayings.

• 1:49:20Bill Simmons?

  Shower well is another one he has.

• 1:49:23Speaker 04

  What does that mean?

• 1:49:24Bill Simmons?

  I don't know.

• 1:49:27Bill Simmons?

  Shower well.

• 1:49:28Speaker 04

  Shower well.

• 1:49:29Bill Simmons?

  Showering is super important.

• 1:49:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:49:31Bill Simmons?

  Oh, man, I'm definitely getting this book now. We just, it'd be funny if it became a bestseller.

• 1:49:37Speaker 04

  Clint Hurdle hurdleisms. Go get your, I think, I think it's available now. So.

• 1:49:41Bill Simmons?

  Sounds great.

• 1:49:41Speaker 04

  Go support Clint. Yeah. All right. So now you're all caught up. Now you can tell people what happened this weekend in, in spring training baseball. And, you know, you'll feel like you're not out of the loop.

• 1:49:50Bill Simmons?

  That was good. 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 just keep coming. PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865, brilliantly boring since 1865 is a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group, Incorporated. PNC Bank, National Association, Member, FTIC.

• 1:50:31Bill Simmons?

  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.

• 1:50:51Speaker 04

  So here's something that's going on. Big change in baseball this season. Something that everybody's going to be talking about. ABS, Automatic Ball Strike Challenge. Are you familiar with this?

• 1:51:03Bill Simmons?

  I'm so glad you brought this up because I don't think people are going to be prepared for this. And they're going to be watching the first game going, what's going on?

• 1:51:10Speaker 04

  There's a lot of confusion and it happens very quickly also, which is one of the good things about the situation. So they kind of tinkered with this last year in the All-Star Game some, which was kind of cool because they had a lot of the players mic'd up. And we saw it in a Major League Baseball game for the first time in the All-Star Game. They've been doing it in the minor leagues for a couple of seasons now. So the way that they're doing this is if you're unfamiliar with baseball and just kind of how this is going to work out, but you're super familiar with tennis, this will make sense. Think about in tennis where you see whether the ball is in or out, and they go and they say there's a challenge and everybody looks up at the screen. And then within seconds, you see exactly where the ball hit. That's basically what they're doing with balls and strikes this year.

• 1:51:52Bill Simmons?

  I like it.

• 1:51:54Speaker 04

  They're giving each team two challenges, but if you win the challenge, you then don't lose it. So you can keep challenging. Now, a lot of things are going to happen. There's only three people that can challenge. The people that can challenge are the pitcher, the catcher, and the hitter. So a coach can't challenge, a manager can't challenge. I guess they can yell to challenge the ball or whatever. A second baseman can't challenge. Only pitchers, catchers, and hitters can challenge. If you, if you keep winning, you keep being able to challenge. Today, there was a game between the Blue Jays and the Yankees where they had. One team, no lie, had nine or 10 challenges and it was getting ridiculous because they challenged the second pitch of the game to make it a 2-0 count, the first hitter of the game.

• 1:52:34Bill Simmons?

  Oh, no.

• 1:52:35Speaker 04

  Where I feel like during the season, we're not going to see that as much.

• 1:52:39Bill Simmons?

  We were on such a good pace. Like, why did they have to tinker with this?

• 1:52:43Speaker 04

  The good thing is, is it's quick. It, you see it instantly. So you see it and you move on. But I feel like there might be unintended consequences and it's so precise. It'll say this pitch, you see the graphic, it goes by the side, you see exactly where it was. And it'll say this pitch missed by two tenths of an inch, which seems impossible to actually calculate. And when it's like that nitpicky, why don't we just kind of let it go and not hold up the game? But this is what we're in store for now. One of the situations that's going to happen as a result of this is there's going to be teams that are constantly doing this. On the broadcast, they've removed the strike zone. So you can no longer see during games this season, the little box live where you see if it's a ball or a strike.

• 1:53:24Bill Simmons?

  I don't like that either.

• 1:53:26Speaker 04

  Now you go back to the world where you're dependent on the camera angles in each stadium being different and you have no idea what's a ball or strike based on the angle, how far it is. You know, behind home plate, is it further left, the center, is it further right to center? So you're going to have no idea in real time. You're going to have to kind of depend on this. But I'm assuming they did that because they want to protect, you know, the integrity of the game from the Astros of the world who will probably have a TV in there where they were just watching the game and they see the ball in real time in and out. But here's another thing.

• 1:53:56Bill Simmons?

  I'm glad you, I'm glad you pointed to the Astros on that. They, they still haven't got enough shit. Anyway, keep going.

• 1:54:01Speaker 04

  I hate the Astros.

• 1:54:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, me too.

• 1:54:03Speaker 04

  I, I gotta tell you, there's no grudges I hold longer than baseball grudges, especially grudges from like my early childhood I'll really hold on to for absolutely no reason. Like there's this guy Richie Lewis who pitched for the Marlins when I was like six years old. And we went to this autograph signing at Champ Sports. He was like a relief pitcher or something. Guy sucks, but he went out there, he had his fancy Oakleys on. He was one of like the four guys, the first season of the team that was signing autographs. And he decided not to sign autographs for certain things. And he didn't sign autographs for me because I guess the line to close or whatever. And I remember my dad as a young boy, my dad said to me, Billy, no matter, you know, how you, how successful you are in life,

• 1:54:45Speaker 04

  never be a Richie Lewis, who's too good to spend time with the people because one day, people aren't going to care about you. They're not going to care about Richie Lewis. And you're going to wish that you had signed that autograph. So never be Richie Lewis. So Richie Lewis, wherever you are out there, screw you, buddy. Like I haven't forgotten this thing that happened.

• 1:55:03Bill Simmons?

  This is weird. That was also a clinhurdleism.

• 1:55:06Speaker 04

  Was it?

• 1:55:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:07Speaker 04

  Never be Richie Lewis?

• 1:55:08Bill Simmons?

  Never be Richie Lewis. I don't know. I don't know how that happened.

• 1:55:11Speaker 04

  Classic hurdle. So here are some unintended consequences. I think of ABS, right? If you have a situation, you no longer have the strike zone. So you're not going to see that. You also have catchers whose entire career is based on framing and tricking umpires into thinking, this is a strike when it's actually a ball. So you have Alejandro Kirk from Toronto. He just signed a long-term deal. He's fine. You have Austin Wells, who's a master framer. He'll be fine because he's good offensively. But you have the Austin hedges of the world in Cleveland, who's not great offensively, but he's loved by pitchers because he's great at framing and he's great at turning balls that are either right on the zone and is a ball into a called strike, or just, you know, holding it firm and not moving too much so that the actual strikes are called strikes.

• 1:55:57Speaker 04

  I feel like the Austin hedges of the world, the players association shouldn't have allowed this because we now are going to be losing Austin hedgeses. Because if you're hitting 160 and your skill is framing, and the hitter can just challenge every time he knows it's a ball that you're making it a strike, there's no purpose for you in Major League Baseball.

• 1:56:16Bill Simmons?

  This sounds like a baseball movie. The best pitch framer in the league, they changed the rules on him. Now he's got to figure out how to make an impact. And also meets a girl.

• 1:56:28Speaker 04

  I was gonna say, in this, in this movie, does he like, they kick him out and then he has to kind of like, he's down on his luck. He's now like, I don't know, working like at a pizza place or something. And then, you know, something happens and someone calls him for one last chance. So then there's like, the scene where he's like in the cage. He's like, man, I gotta just get above the Mendoza line. Like if I just hit 203, like.

• 1:56:47Bill Simmons?

  I need something else. It can't just be the framing anymore. Yeah. He learns to be a better baseball player.

• 1:56:52Speaker 04

  All right. So there's that. And then here's another unintended consequence that I wonder if we're going to see. This could lead the umpires to kind of treating a lot of this the same way NFL referees treat things where it's like, okay, there's holding on every call, but I can't call, I can't call everything a hold, right? So I wonder if you have a catcher that's back there that says, you know what? I really want to show up this umpire today. Like, I'm going to challenge this. I wonder if he then starts kind of like, let's see if you challenge every play. Like, let's see how many of these you're willing to challenge in a row on borderline pitches. Are you going to be doing this six times in the third inning, six times in the fourth inning? We have a situation where we could have vengeful unfires here who are coming after teams because they're not liking

• 1:57:37Speaker 04

  being shown up because they're only human, right? They don't, they don't like that they're going to be shown up. I, someone who, I don't know how you feel about this. I kind of like the human element of baseball. I liked when you can kind of have things. You didn't have replay that would overturn absolutely everything.

• 1:57:51Bill Simmons?

  That's how I feel about basketball. I think it's okay that the, we have this with goaltending now in basketball where that you can't be reviewed.

• 1:57:57Speaker 04

  There was crazy goaltending though.

• 1:57:58Bill Simmons?

  It can't be reviewed and it's like, it's okay, we'll get over it. Whereas like, we're like, painstaking reviewing these other parts of the game. And I don't, I don't like it.

• 1:58:07Speaker 04

  Well, they, they stole from us in doing that. They don't think of the unintended consequences. When they went to the fact that they have the replay review and you can't come out and argue it or automatic ejection. We lost the Bobby Cox's of the world. We lost the Lou Pinellas of the world. We lost the theatrics that made baseball fun. The guys that would go out there and they'd cover home plate with the dirt. You'd have the minor leagues took it too far as they always do where you have kind of the coaches crawling around, you know, on, on the mound throwing rots and bats like grenades. Like that was, that was too much granted. Like that, we went a little bit too far in the minor leagues, but they're trying to get called up to the show too. So.

• 1:58:41Bill Simmons?

  The posture was good for those where, I liked when the managers would go up and they'd do this with their arms. So they can get really close, but it's not physical. And you just do this.

• 1:58:51Speaker 04

  You don't bump. You move your head a lot. You kind of go like this, maybe a little.

• 1:58:56Bill Simmons?

  Maybe some spit.

• 1:58:56Speaker 04

  Doesn't come out.

• 1:58:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, a little spittle, like just.

• 1:58:59Speaker 04

  Little spit, but unintentional spit. So you don't get ejected from the. And then you also had that as a tool to kind of light a fire under your guys, you know? When you go out there, you're like, look, I know, I know you're right. My guys are struggling here. So I just call you MF for this and say this about your mother or whatever. Just say the right things to kind of get yourself tossed out. And the guy's like, wow, man, coach really has my back. I'm going to go out there and we're going to, we're going to rally around, you know, Richie Lewis blew a game for us. We're going to rally around this and we're going to kind of come together. We're going to win this game.

• 1:59:28Bill Simmons?

  And then we're going to shower well.

• 1:59:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, and then we're going to shower well for a lizem.

• 1:59:32Bill Simmons?

  What else do you have? Want to zoom through these? We have eight minutes left.

• 1:59:37Speaker 04

  Oh, wow. Okay, we got to go fast. All right, so there's some new bodies.

• 1:59:39Bill Simmons?

  Minute fifty two, we're cranking. Well, we did a lot of fantasy baseball.

• 1:59:43Speaker 04

  New bodies, all right? So what are you thinking? It's not new places, it's not new faces. There's plenty of those, but new bodies in Major League Baseball. Roman Anthony, number one new body that's out there.

• 1:59:55Bill Simmons?

  So new body watch is a big fantasy baseball thing.

• 1:59:59Speaker 04

  You got to keep an eye on this. So he comes in, he gains fifteen to twenty pounds of muscle. However, he recently had a stomach bug where he lost ten to twelve pounds because of the stomach bug. So we're coming in maybe somewhere between three and seven pounds heavier in muscle than he did last season. Keep an eye on Roman Anthony, see what's going on with him.

• 2:00:18Bill Simmons?

  I mean, this is my favorite Red Sox player, so I'm concerned. I don't like the cycle of I put on a lot of weight. Oh, I hurt my back, I hurt this other thing. And then the next spring training where it's like, I put on too much weight last year. I needed it like sleek down and now I feel better. That's what I hope doesn't happen with Roman Anthony.

• 2:00:38Speaker 04

  Well, the thing is, so here's someone that you should be kind of concerned about. Eli De La Cruz put on fifteen pounds of muscle in the offseason. Eli De La Cruz is a guy who is a five tool player. He can hit for power, but he could already hit for power. He had a stretch, I think, last year from July until September where he didn't hit a home run. So he decided I need to kind of put on some weight. But he also went down from sixty plus stolen bases two years ago to thirty stolen bases last year. Now he's added fifteen pounds of muscle. You have to think that's not going to help him with his stolen bases. He also switched managers. At one point where they were like, run whenever you want. And then last year, the manager was like, you have the green light, but you don't always have to go.

• 2:01:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:19Speaker 04

  So this is one where the 15 pounds may not work in his favor. Then we can skip some of the other guys. We don't need to know everybody. Keep an eye on Vladimir Guerrero.

• 2:01:27Bill Simmons?

  It should be like, we should be able to look this up. Leader by pounds. Yeah, new body pounds. I would, I would click on that.

• 2:01:34Speaker 04

  Okay. So new bodies, two more that we'll go to. One of them, Vladimir Guerrero, Vladimir Guerrero on Instagram, not too long ago, put out a before picture and then he put an after picture and it said seven weeks in the lab. And there was no noticeable body difference that I could tell between picture one and picture two. One of them, he was just kind of down like this. The other one, he was posing.

• 2:01:56Bill Simmons?

  Correct.

• 2:01:56Speaker 04

  So whatever sags he may have had.

• 2:01:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:59Speaker 04

  Kind of like, didn't exist anymore when you kind of strike the pose. So I'm not exactly sure whether he gained or lost weight in the off season. I know that he signed a big contract and he's taken care of. He also could have just been making fun of this situation and showing like, hey, I'm back. Doesn't matter.

• 2:02:12Bill Simmons?

  Oh, like a parody, a parody account. Well, also like using the lab is a little, makes me nervous because sometimes that ties in with the 15 pound weight gain. Probably would have used the word lab.

• 2:02:23Speaker 04

  15 pounds is not the most severe weight gain we have. That goes to Zach Veen and the Colorado Rockies organization, who gained 43 pounds this off season in muscle. He comes in with a career one homerun. He gained 43 pounds in muscle. He credits this to getting sober and he's no longer dealing with substance abuse issues. But he comes in 43 pounds heavier than last season. And in case you're wondering, how will this play out? He has already hit a 468 foot homerun this spring. So it seems as though his 43 pounds of muscle are being used productively.

• 2:02:59Bill Simmons?

  So that broke the record of Kumail Nanjiani? Was the last person to put on 43 pounds in three months of muscle? Remember that?

• 2:03:07Speaker 04

  We don't talk about, we don't talk about that enough.

• 2:03:08Bill Simmons?

  Remember that?

• 2:03:09Speaker 04

  We're all just.

• 2:03:10Bill Simmons?

  He was just suddenly jacked. Now he's like doing DirecTV commercials so he can look jacked.

• 2:03:16Speaker 04

  Almost and like I don't, I don't, I'm sure he's a very lovely man, right? I, I don't know this, but almost disgustingly jacked. If we're going to be honest, it's almost a turn off. If I, if I'm going to be honest, it's, it's too muscular, especially where he was coming from. Like, I get it. His jaw is now like ultra defined also. It's just, it's a little bit too much.

• 2:03:35Bill Simmons?

  I don't think muscle and comedy really necessarily mixes. I've felt that way since Joe Piscopo way back when. The muscle is I don't, I don't need my comedians to be jacked.

• 2:03:44Speaker 04

  You need to be more relatable. I feel like, you know, like be like the every guy, be like the Jonah Hill of the world.

• 2:03:49Bill Simmons?

  Like Vlad Guerrero, just posting the same photo of himself and claiming he was in the lab.

• 2:03:54Speaker 04

  Exactly right. Okay. Here's one that you're going to hate. The world baseball classic. This is something that's going to be going on in spring training. You need to keep an eye on just because in the game that I was telling you about, there's injuries. There's also weird roster situations going on, but for the next like three weeks, some teams are going to be without their team essentially. So today the Yankees played against the Blue Jays and between the two teams, including minor leaguers, 24 players from the two teams combined were leaving to go beyond world baseball classic rosters, including the entire starting infield for the Blue Jays.

• 2:04:27Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 2:04:28Speaker 04

  You, you have teams that also exist just because they, they have to, I guess this late in the game. But the Puerto Rican team, almost no one got insured. So half of their team can't even play. So any stars that you were looking forward to seeing from Puerto Rico, Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, they didn't get insurance. So they are ineligible for the world baseball classic. It got to the point that Bad Bunny came in and offered to pay Carlos Correa's insurance to play in the world baseball classic. And they were like, no, Bad Bunny, but thank you for being very patriotic, but that's not how this works. You can't pay for their insurance. Now, they also famously, Puerto Rico lost Edwin Diaz last year.

• 2:05:12Speaker 04

  Um, or last world baseball classic in 2023, when he was celebrating a walk off win and then ended up missing the season. He bounced back ultimately, but world baseball classic, it's going to be exciting for about two weeks, but there's a lot of weird things that go on. There's Potential injury situations. Tariq Skubal is going to pitch for the US, but he's only going to pitch one start for the US. And the start that he's going to have for the US is not being saved for the later rounds. It's going to be in game two of the tournament against Great Britain. And then he's going to be going back to the Dodgers, which seems like a waste of Tariq Skubal. But they're very deep in pitching. You have Paul Skeen. So I think that what they're doing is just getting a ton of aces, having them pitch one game each,

• 2:05:53Speaker 04

  and then sending them back to their team. So that's, I guess, your very quick World Baseball Classic professor. Oh, and Shohei Ohtani, who won the last World Baseball Classic in that moment where he pitched against, he pitched against Mike Trout. It was like, wow, what are we going to do here? One run game, top of the ninth inning. Is Trout going to tie it? Who's going to win? He ends up striking him out. It becomes his famous moment. Japan goes on, wins, beats the United States three to two. Shohei Ohtani will not be pitching in the World Baseball Classic. He will only be hitting for Team Japan. But he will be pitching this year for the Dodgers. So while he's not pitching in games, he needs to be throwing bullpen sessions with the Japanese team to get ready to pitch for the Dodgers once the season starts. So the World Baseball Classic is kind of, you know,

• 2:06:39Speaker 04

  confusing things a little bit, but it's fun if you kind of can get into it for two weeks.

• 2:06:42Bill Simmons?

  Ohtani minus 135 for MVP on Fendel.

• 2:06:46Speaker 04

  Really?

• 2:06:47Bill Simmons?

  Feels like anytime he's around even, that's just a bet. Cause he's two guys.

• 2:06:52Speaker 04

  Who, that's, I mean,

• 2:06:54Bill Simmons?

  How does anyone beat him? You'd have to have like the greatest season of the last 10 years to trump that.

• 2:07:00Speaker 04

  It's his first, it's his first season the Dodgers are actually going to get a full season of the two Ohtani's where he gets the 760 million or whatever it was. Which by the way, I get it when it's two players, but I, giving people 600 million, 500 million, 700 million now, who are only playing one position, I don't get like, I get that Ohtani reset the market as to what the annual value is, but he's like one of one where he's two players essentially.

• 2:07:30Bill Simmons?

  Well, this is why we're going to have a long, ugly labor dispute.

• 2:07:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:07:34Bill Simmons?

  Because I think the owners are like, what are we doing? Kyle Tucker just got $240 million. What are we doing?

• 2:07:41Speaker 04

  I, well, that's why he was in what, what's the West doing?

• 2:07:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:44Speaker 04

  Kyle Tucker. I don't understand. I, well, they can't, they can't lock out like baseball with the momentum that they have. They need to figure it out because if they get a lockout here.

• 2:07:52Bill Simmons?

  Never underestimate baseball being dumb. This has been my entire life.

• 2:07:57Speaker 04

  All right. I want to re-award the manager of the year from last year if we can. Are we allowed to?

• 2:08:03Bill Simmons?

  To re-litigate it? Interesting. I don't know if it's allowed, but let's do it anyway.

• 2:08:07Speaker 04

  Okay. So last year's National League Manager of the Year was Pat Murphy of the Brewers.

• 2:08:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:11Speaker 04

  Here's something that you can talk about. I'm starting to think that the National League Manager of the Year should have been Rob Thompson of the Phillies. The reason that I think it should have been Rob Thompson of the Phillies is the Phillies were 30 games over 500. They won the East very easily. The next closest team was the Mets who had a meltdown. They finished 13 games behind the Phillies. The reason I would give him Manager of the Year now, retroactively, is the Phillies appear to be in shambles. They had Kyle Schwarber, who was runner up for the MVP. They re-signed him, but outside of that and some, you know, pieces here and there that they've added. Bryce Harper is feuding with Dave Dombrowski, who is the President of Baseball Operations.

• 2:08:51Speaker 04

  Dave Dombrowski, at the end of the season, said that Bryce Harper's season, while he was an All-Star, was not elite. Bryce Harper then got upset by this. He said, I thought that we were supposed to keep things in-house. Why is he going out? Why is he saying this publicly? Bryce Harper, who loves social media now, who does all kinds of things where he has his weird diet and he cooks all these different things, put up something on Twitter in December where he was in the, in the lab, if you will. He was in the batting cages, wearing a shirt that said not elite on it. So he was clearly taking a shot at Dave Dombrowski. It has since been resolved allegedly where Bryce Harper says that he, uh, and Dave Dombrowski have spoken and it's water under the bridge. They're going to move on, but you have one of your, you know, highest paid players and superstars here feuding with the President of Baseball Operations,

• 2:09:35Speaker 04

  who I also hate, by the way, just because again, childhood grudge. Dave Dombrowski came in, we win the World Series in 97, 98. He trades absolutely everyone. Then he goes, how do you feel about Dave Dombrowski? He helped you get a World Series. Do you feel positively?

• 2:09:48Bill Simmons?

  He did. He kind of like mortgaged everything, but we did get the World Series. So he technically did his job and did what he promised he would do, but, um, I wouldn't say he left the team in great shape.

• 2:09:59Speaker 04

  That's what he does, though. He kind of leaves like the cupboards barren after he'll win a World Series.

• 2:10:03Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, he's like an Adam McKay movie. It's like the Dave Dabrowski play where he just, he has this objective and hopefully you get it. And if you don't get it, you're screwed afterwards.

• 2:10:14Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:10:14Bill Simmons?

  Interesting way to play it.

• 2:10:15Speaker 04

  Never considered him the Adam McKay of baseball. Also going on with the Phillies and why Rob Thompson should have won manager of the year. Nick Castellanos essentially got kicked off of the team. So he last year got in a disagreement with his manager in a game in June. He hits a grand slam. They win a game. He comes to Miami. He's from Miami. His fans or family in the crowd watching the game. They pull him from the game, give him a scheduled day off and he decides to come back with a beer into the, into the dugout.

• 2:10:42Bill Simmons?

  I like that.

• 2:10:42Speaker 04

  He's then gonna go and he's gonna call out Rob and he's gonna give him a piece of his mind. Now, other Phillies teammates say, what are you doing? They take the beer away from him. They sent him back. He's then benched the next game. No one hears any of this went on until about a week ago, when they mysteriously released Nick Castellanos. They owed him $20 million. He ends up signing with the Padres for the league minimum. You're wondering what exactly happened here. Nick Castellanos puts out a post on Instagram where it's a handwritten note explaining what happened and then he like labeled it the Miami incident, which the majority of people had no clue even happened. So he outed himself on the Miami incident. Then all the players are asked about this. This Rob Thompson somehow has as president of baseball operations,

• 2:11:27Speaker 04

  feuding with one of their biggest stars. He has a player getting benched in the middle of a game, coming in with a beer, fighting with him, kept that under wraps for six months until they could quietly release him. And then he apologized on his own about the situation, I guess fearing that he was going to be outed. This guy did an incredible job because all of this, while they finished 30 games over 500 and easily won their division.

• 2:11:49Bill Simmons?

  And had to deal with all the crazy Philly fans and people like the Bundo and Sheil and Chris Ryan, just bitching about their team every, every day.

• 2:11:57Speaker 04

  I hate Philly fans. That's another one. We don't need to get into that today, though, I suppose.

• 2:12:01Bill Simmons?

  Well, that I don't even think Philly fans like Philly fans, though.

• 2:12:05Speaker 04

  I I have a theory, and I wonder how you feel this. I feel like if you actually love your team, you have to hate your team, right? But no one else can hate your team. Like, you should be able to pick apart your team and get frustrated and just absolutely hate them. You hate your star players. You hate everyone. But if someone else comes in like, oh, your team sucks, like, my team doesn't suck. What are you talking about? And then you go after them.

• 2:12:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:28Speaker 04

  But to actually love your team, I feel like you can't actually be happy.

• 2:12:31Bill Simmons?

  You just described every single NBA team Reddit page where they bitch about their team constantly. But then if a national person comes in and says something, it's like, how dare he?

• 2:12:41Speaker 04

  Well, that's

• 2:12:41Bill Simmons?

  How dare you made that Brandon Ingram comment?

• 2:12:44Speaker 04

  That's the theory behind Dave Dombrowski is he was just saying this and being critical of his guys to try to light a fire under him, which I don't buy. Dave Dombrowski sucks. That guy's the worst.

• 2:12:52Bill Simmons?

  All right, give us, give us a last thing, and then we gotta go.

• 2:12:55Speaker 04

  All right, last thing. And this is something that if you say out there, people are gonna kind of hold on to. We'll, we'll burn through the others. We don't need to get them. Last thing. Watch out for the Pirates. The Pirates finished last season 71 and 91.

• 2:13:10Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 2:13:10Speaker 04

  So this is a team that seemingly, you know, with the Brewers in their division, with the Cubs in their division, they're not going to go on a serious run. But they added a first baseman and Ryan O'Hern from the Padres. They added a second baseman and Brandon Lowe, who had 30 home runs last season.

• 2:13:25Bill Simmons?

  Oh, had him on my keeper team.

• 2:13:27Speaker 04

  Are you keeping him for next year?

• 2:13:28Bill Simmons?

  But not because he's in the National League. We lost him.

• 2:13:30Speaker 04

  Ah.

• 2:13:31Bill Simmons?

  Crossed, he crossed over into the other portal. We're out.

• 2:13:34Speaker 04

  How do you, how do you handle that? So like, if you have a keeper that you don't get like a compensatory pick or something?

• 2:13:39Bill Simmons?

  He got wiped out in the war. He's just done.

• 2:13:42Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 2:13:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:43Speaker 04

  That's sad.

• 2:13:43Bill Simmons?

  It's sad.

• 2:13:43Speaker 04

  They're gonna miss him?

• 2:13:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Not really.

• 2:13:45Speaker 04

  All right. So they got Brandon Lowe. They got Marcelo Zuna, who hits home runs. They got Jake Mangum, who has, who's a power hitter. Last year, they only had pitching, but they didn't really have any hitting. So you had a situation where Paul Skeens had horrible run support. He had a horrible, you know, wins-loss record because he was never getting any runs to support him. This year, they, they upgraded the offense. They have the top prospect in baseball in Connor Griffin, shortstop. Last year, he had three 333, over 900 OPS, 21 home runs across different levels in in minor league baseball, 65 stolen bases.

• 2:14:15Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 2:14:16Speaker 04

  This is one of those where honestly, I didn't want to tell you about him. And I don't know if you're the same way, where I feel like I find someone that certain people know about. I wanted, I'm worried that people in my league might see this and then say, you know what? We need to go after this Connor Griffin. And then they might get him. Also, didn't mention him earlier because I was saving him till the end. Connor Griffin also leads Major League Baseball in spring training home runs. He has two home runs this season already.

• 2:14:40Bill Simmons?

  Cranking it.

• 2:14:41Speaker 04

  Keep an eye on Connor Griffin. Paul Skeens is there. Mitch Keller's there. He signed an extension. Jared Jones is coming back from Tommy John surgery. The rotation's gonna look good. They also have arguably the best pitching prospect in baseball, Bubba Chandler, who had a 31 to 4 strikeout to walk ratio in 31 innings last season. And his name's Bubba, which is a great baseball name. So.

• 2:15:02Bill Simmons?

  Huge win.

• 2:15:03Speaker 04

  Keep, keep an eye on these Pirates. I'm telling you, they're gonna be pesky. I'm not gonna say that they're gonna win the Central, but this is a wild card team if I've ever seen one, Bill.

• 2:15:11Bill Simmons?

  80 plus wins on Fanduel, plus 112. You can get frisky and go 90 plus wins at plus 520, or take them for the division at plus 650. See, I like having the one random team in the National League to root for every year. I usually bet on one team. Cause I don't, otherwise I wouldn't follow the National League at all. But if I have a team, I'm like, all right, I'll adopt this team this year. So maybe that'll be my team, the Pirates. Plus you get Skeens.

• 2:15:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, I used to do that with the AL just because I'm an NL guy. So I used to say, I could, I could root for, you know, this team. And it was like, if I was in that city that year, like if I went to a game in Baltimore, I'm like, I'm gonna root for the Orioles this year. You know, I'm gonna root for the A's because I like Cespedes. Also, keep an eye on the A's. We don't have time, but keep an eye on the A's.

• 2:15:52Bill Simmons?

  No, the A's, the A's are loaded.

• 2:15:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:15:55Bill Simmons?

  And they have a bunch of young dudes. What are.

• 2:15:57Speaker 04

  They have a lot of young guys. I just wonder, the thing is, is that the park that they play in, that minor league park, it's great for their hitters, but horrendous for their pitchers. Cause the ball just flies out of there.

• 2:16:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they're over under for wins is 75 and a half.

• 2:16:10Speaker 04

  What were they doing, by the way? We don't need to get into this today, but they moved out of Oakland to move to Las Vegas, where they don't have a stadium in place yet. They're in Sacramento, just in purgatory. Why, why did they do this? Why are we here?

• 2:16:24Bill Simmons?

  There's things that happen in baseball and it's been going on my whole life that there's just no explanation for. It's like they basically didn't want to take shit for being in Oakland anymore when they were gonna leave. So they're like, we'll just go over here. It's like a divorced dad moving out and just grabbing any apartment just to get away from the house for two years. Very strange.

• 2:16:43Speaker 04

  But they're stuck in it. They're stuck in this house. They don't have a new house.

• 2:16:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I'm also dubious of baseball in Vegas, but that's a story for another time. I'm positive. I know that it's gonna be indoors. It's not gonna be outdoors with people baking, but I'm just not positive baseball in Vegas makes sense.

• 2:16:59Speaker 04

  The tourists are gonna come after like the pool parties and after the sphere to go watch the A's play.

• 2:17:04Bill Simmons?

  I don't. And I don't think it's like the NBA where it's like Anthony Edwards is in town. Wemby's in town. I don't think baseball works that way in the same kinda thing. You know, a lot of times it's like it's the Royals and it's a Wednesday.

• 2:17:17Speaker 04

  Well, also if they're in town, they're in town for like three games. Like, ah, we'll go to like the third game, then like, ah, something came up. Like, I'm not gonna do that.

• 2:17:24Bill Simmons?

  Dubious of this. And you're gonna come back for the start of the season. We'll do some sort of preview. But so this is another thing with baseball. I never know when the season starts anymore. Now it's like March 25th range?

• 2:17:38Speaker 04

  So, yeah, it's like last week of March. I know, the thing is, they also have like a weird thing. I need to see, cause I'm not sure if they have the international game that they start on, that they have some seasons where it's like, here's an international game in Japan, and then they come back and then those same teams go and play like two more spring training games after games that actually counted, and then the season really starts. But it's like last week of March.

• 2:18:03Bill Simmons?

  Starts on March 25th. Yankees, San Francisco, taking place in San Francisco.

• 2:18:08Speaker 04

  Hmm, okay.

• 2:18:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:11Speaker 04

  There you go. That's on Netflix, right? That was one of the things. Baseball's on Netflix this year. It's on Peacock. It's all over the place.

• 2:18:17Bill Simmons?

  It's all over the place. It's like every sport now, you, part of the fun of following the sport is trying to figure out which channel it's on for the first five minutes.

• 2:18:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:18:25Bill Simmons?

  I'm just figuring out the NBA in mid-February, end of February. It's like, oh, it's Monday. It's a Peacock day. It's just in my head. All right, Billy Go.

• 2:18:34Speaker 04

  It's Prime Fridays.

• 2:18:36Bill Simmons?

  Billy Go, great to see you. Thanks.

• 2:18:37Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me.

• 2:18:40Bill Simmons?

  All right, that's it for the podcast. Don't forget, rewatchables, we did Crazy Stupid Love, me, Mina and Van. If you missed it, if you didn't see that, that one's up there. For this podcast, thanks to Kyle and Tate, thanks to Billy, thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well. And I'm going to be back here on Thursday with one more episode. See you then.

• 2:19:17Bill Simmons?

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• 2:20:01Bill Simmons?

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

• 2:20:44Bill Simmons?

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