2026 NBA Draft Winners and Losers With Joe House and J. Kyle Mann

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Joe House, and J. Kyle Mann go LIVE on Netflix to react to the 2026 NBA first-round draft picks and discuss the winners and losers. (0:00) Intro (1:15) NBA draft reactions (6:59) Winners and losers of the first round Host: Bill Simmons Guests: J. Kyle Mann and Joe House Producers: Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Chris Wohlers Brought to you by PayPal. Learn more at paypal.com Get 30% off snacks and groceries on Uber Eats. https://www.ubereats.com/feeds/wfootball_2026_us Presented by @MichelobULTRA #ULTRACourtside LDA 21 and over. Drink responsibly. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit https://fanduel.com/playwithaplan to learn more about the resources and helplines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:06Bill Simmons?

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• 2:15Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast, live on Netflix for my favorite day of the year. It's pretty sad that this is my favorite day of the year, but it's the NBA Draft. I'm with J. Kyle Mann from The Ringer. I'm with the deliriously happy and possibly drunk Joe House, whose team had the number one pick and took A.J. DeBosa. We'll talk about that later. We have a little gimmick. It's just for the live Netflix show only. We're going to have some voting. They started this poll thing that they did during Star Search, and we have borrowed the technology. And we're going to be able, if you're watching this live on Netflix, you're going to be able to vote on stuff, including House's blood alcohol level. Wanted to mention, we put up a new rewatchables on Monday night. We did Domestic Disturbance, the funniest From Hell movie of all the From Hell movies.

• 3:00Bill Simmons?

  Had a great time with Sean Finacy and Chris Ryan. We have another one coming on Thursday, The Good Sun. You can hear House's golf podcast, Fairway Roland, and you can listen and watch Kyle Mann on The Ringer NBA Show. Okay, guys. Winners and losers, and I have mostly winners. And I'm going to start here. J. Kyle Mann is a guy who works on our Ringer NBA Draft Guide and does lots of YouTube clips and studies and obsesses over the draft. The drafts become less and less fun over the course of the decade as everybody just makes logical, smart decisions and nobody messes up. And we have no monkey wrenches and no wild cards and no great players falling. I had the first 12 picks, regardless of the order.

• 3:45Bill Simmons?

  I thought were the 12 best guys in the draft. There were no, no stumbles at all. Is this just where we are now? We have too much intelligence? How do you explain this?

• 3:57Speaker 02

  It seems like the nerds have taken over and the math has kind of crept into the point where even, I just feel like it's created these little guardrails for if you have a wild take, you know, I just feel like we, we have so much more numbers justification. You know, scouting has improved, the information is improved across the board. I feel like we have fewer and fewer, just kind of like good old boy network GM, kind of front office people out there. I mean, there's maybe one or two left, but they're dwindling by the day.

• 4:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  But I went through and I was doing my grades on this and I was like, it was hard to really ding anybody hard for anything. I was like, I don't, I don't really have any like D's or F's, you know, it's there aren't any like Kentell Woods or what was the, what was the Juco guy that you guys took? Keegan Brown or not, what was his name?

• 4:44Bill Simmons?

  Kendrick Brown.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Kendrick Brown. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't get those.

• 4:47Bill Simmons?

  How about the 20 guys houses team took? Yeah. I mean,

• 4:50Speaker 02

  John Vesely.

• 4:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. 20 years ago, I just feel like the Kings would have taken Nate Ament and we would have been like, what are they doing? And now they just take Darius A. Kuff. House, you don't care because your team ended up with the number one pick. And by the way, my team is about to kick the pick at number 27, the Celtics, who have had a tumultuous week. I don't know if we're taking the team psychiatrist or an actual player, but were you going to experience my reaction live? House, your reaction? We had a lot of little birdies telling us that AJ was going to DC for the last month and that's what happened. But were you scared in the moment of truth that that wasn't going to happen? No, no, no. And honestly, you have to just, just keep the faith, let all of the stuff happen out on the periphery.

• 5:36Bill Simmons?

  Let everybody talk their talk. I do want to set up right away. My blood alcohol content level is, is at equilibrium. I'm at 0.0, no booze or, or boozer, no booze or boozer. I stand with my Mormon brother AJ D. I welcome.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  Him to Washington DC. Me and AJ the best where no booze for us tonight. Uh, because we're, we're, we're setting the, the, the, the path for a very clean start to, to our careers.

• 6:09Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's not the house I know. And Chris Ryan stepped up for you last night because we brought him on for the, it wasn't an emergency podcast because we knew Yanis was getting traded. So we called it an urgent gathering. It was being CR and barrier and CR had come home from dinner and it had a couple of cocktails.

• 6:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, CR.

• 6:25Bill Simmons?

  He was a lively CR and he was especially, oh, here we go. This is the only time I'll do this during our live Netflix trap. The pick is in.

• 6:33Speaker 03

  They're showing Isaiah Evans.

• 6:35Bill Simmons?

  Adam, the Adam Silver is on the clock and he's going to tell us that the Celtics are taking. Oh.

• 6:43Bill Simmons?

  A Houston forward, Kyle, man. What do you think of that pick?

• 6:46Speaker 02

  Snack?

• 6:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Uh, he's somebody that I've been a little more skeptical on because I, I said, I thought he was kind of in this. Well, caveat. He's, he's a guy that he's one of those conditional kind of dependent guys. It's like if, if he went to a team with like poor developmental structure, I would be worried about him because I'd worried that his offense was just in this weird purgatory. They needed to be straightened out where he was like a hypothetical stretch four, who really only got ran, he really didn't attack the rim. Even if he got run off the line, he would take these like long twos that weren't pretty. Uh, he had to kind of be spoon fed any offense that he got, but he's very big. He's very athletic. He has long arms.

• 7:29Bill Simmons?

  Rebounder. I liked him. I liked him in college. Yeah.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  I trust the Celtics to kind of detangle him and, and make sense of him. So that's a good one.

• 7:38Bill Simmons?

  Six double doubles last year, House. Pick 27. Okay.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  You needed size. I mean, it's why you, you got your asses handed to you by the Sixers.

• 7:46Bill Simmons?

  Man, one of many reasons.

• 7:47Speaker 03

  One of many.

• 7:49Bill Simmons?

  Including the fact that we started Ron Harper, Jr. In a game seven and had him played the whole series.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Maybe overthought it a little.

• 7:56Bill Simmons?

  All right. So winners and losers, and I have mostly winners. And we're going to go through this. I did not send you the list. I'm going to be surprising you guys with all of these and we can react. And it's a way for us to talk about the draft. Um, as I mentioned, the big winners is just competence. Just, just teams over and over again, doing what seemed to be relatively the right thing.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  Boring.

• 8:16Bill Simmons?

  I'm not a group pick guy, but you just kind of, it was always like, okay, they should take him and then they would.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  Here's how you know. The Kings just sat tight. They didn't do anything crazy. They just sat tight and let the guy that made the most sense for them, the guy they had their eye on, he just landed in there. No, no irrational behavior out of the Kings. Now you know.

• 8:41Bill Simmons?

  You saw what the Clippers tried to do because there's so many, there's so many info guys, the newsletter guys, and you can basically get any message that you want out. All of a sudden, within two days of the draft, there was a, the Clippers are really becoming intrigued by Aikov.

• 8:58Bill Simmons?

  They like him. They've spent a lot of time on him. He could go.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  Screenshots of the, the player development coach's son. That was one of my more, that was one of the more entertaining, like, I don't know if that was an angular approach or what that was about.

• 9:12Bill Simmons?

  Could you play Aikov and Darius Garland together? It might happen. And Vivek, you know, it was like, it was just like watching somebody stay disciplined at a blackjack table for the first time ever. Be like, nope, I'm just gonna double down on 11 here. Nope.

• 9:28Speaker 03

  Do they keep Vivek in like, like, like in the Wolfman, like they have leather straps over his wrists and he can't touch his phone. He's just like, or Hannibal Lecter, or whatever it is.

• 9:37Bill Simmons?

  They definitely like, that article came out and they're definitely like, we can't let Vivek see this. He's gonna trade our unprotected 2029 first to move up two spots. So yeah, House, I'll start with renewed hope. Like legitimate renewed hope in Washington, Utah, Memphis, Chicago, Sacramento. Five punching bags. Five teams that have been in the lottery a bunch of times or have rebuilt a bunch of times. Teams that I think during the course of last year were either egregiously tanking or not as blatantly tanking or actually screwing up the tank in Sacramento's case. And now that's one sixth, one sixth of the league has hope.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  Well, and the crazy thing is, in the context of a third of the league tanking last season, for each of the teams you just rattled off, you can come up with a decent, interesting core. Of guys, two or three or four young guys, all on this kind of trajectory. We're on the same rookie contract. Like, look at this little nucleus that's that's coming together. The bummer for those teams, and and this is one of the things I'm looking at from the Washington perspective, the league is good. The league is better. Like, you know, if if weren't, if teams aren't tanking next year, I was going through the Eastern Conference standings, trying to find who the three worst teams are. You know, is there a pathway for Washington to get to the play in?

• 11:04Speaker 03

  Well, yes, but you know what? There it's not easy. It's not an easy path. And obviously, the West is, is, you know, just nails across the board, especially like I look at that Utah roster. I'm like, wow.

• 11:19Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I can't wait to talk about that.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  This is coming together. But look at the West.

• 11:24Bill Simmons?

  Your stupid team paid Trey Young, but you have Trey Young. The Nets traded for Julius Randall, but then now they have Julius Randall. So you have this whole weird thing that they did, Kyle, with the with the draft order and the two ping pong balls. If you're in the bottom three, it already seems like it's affected some of the stuff we've seen, right? Like that teams, teams are actually okay getting, you know, basically good stat, bad team guys, which sorry, House, but that's what Trey Young is is been. And that's what Julius Randall is.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  To say sorry to me.

• 11:55Bill Simmons?

  Might be what Michael Porter is. But Kyle, is this where we're going?

• 11:59Speaker 03

  Uh, I mean, it seems like it. Well, it's going to be interesting to see how things shake up here now as these teams like House was saying, it's such a radical shakeup that all these have nots and hopeless wanderers in the desert are just no longer. It was like quick change. It was like the Jazz just have this like sight unseen team that might be. I know, House, you were talking about being like a playing team like the Jazz might be. I was, we were joking about it on group chat where I was like, are they better than the Suns and the Blazers instantly with the roster that they have? Like, and and they're rolling this out. And I know we'll talk about it more in detail, but pretty, pretty dramatic shift in terms of the competency in the in the way that these teams are being ran.

• 12:40Bill Simmons?

  Well, let's talk about them first. House, we'll save your team. We've been talking about them for a while.

• 12:46Bill Simmons?

  Oh, we have the biggest winner around one was the first poll we did on the live Netflix and houses wizards 36%.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  Let's go.

• 12:52Bill Simmons?

  So maybe the audience wants us to talk wizards first. That's fine. We'll do that winner, the whiz.

• 12:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:59Bill Simmons?

  AJ DeBansa, DeBansa. I'm just gonna call him DeBansa and DeBansa.

• 13:03Speaker 03

  You do whatever you want.

• 13:03Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna screw it up for 10 years.

• 13:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:06Bill Simmons?

  House, your first kick ass competitive wing since when?

• 13:10Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 13:10Bill Simmons?

  Karan Butler?

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Otto Porter. Otto Porter was a pretty, you know, they paid, they matched them. They matched the poison pill.

• 13:19Bill Simmons?

  Otto Porter?

• 13:21Speaker 03

  He was supposed to be a big three. He was part of the big three. We almost beat the Celtics to make it all the way to Eastern Conference Finals.

• 13:29Bill Simmons?

  I remember you texting me during his rookie year being like, I'm out.

• 13:34Bill Simmons?

  He was just kind of like third.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  The saddest thing is that you and Jalen, that was the era where you and Jalen were interviewing the prospects as they came in and you fed me some information that wasn't very flattering.

• 13:47Bill Simmons?

  Well, yeah, we were lukewarm on him. We liked to call him the most. The one, the one we were the most, the one we were the most worried about was the kid who lied about his age, whose name I can't even remember because it was so far ago. But, uh, so favorite AJ's ever?

• 14:01Speaker 03

  Thon Maker, right? Was that right?

• 14:04Bill Simmons?

  No, not Thon Maker was, uh, it was the shooting guard. I can't remember blank and he was a lefty. I can't remember. Anyway.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  Shabazz Muhammad.

• 14:11Bill Simmons?

  Shabazz Muhammad.

• 14:12Speaker 03

  There we go.

• 14:12Bill Simmons?

  Muhammad. Wow. Incredible. So AJ Soprano is the worst case AJ scenario, I think, House?

• 14:19Speaker 03

  That's fine.

• 14:20Bill Simmons?

  AJ Feely's in the middle.

• 14:22Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 14:23Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. I couldn't come up with any other AJ's.

• 14:25Speaker 03

  AJ Foyt, you didn't, you didn't get AJ Foyt? Don't you remember that?

• 14:27Bill Simmons?

  AJ Foyt's a good one. Maybe this will be your AJ Foyt.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  From our youth.

• 14:31Bill Simmons?

  Now here's where Kyle fills a pot of water and dumps it on your head. Kyle, you think they should have taken Boozer? Just make the case.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  No, this is a can't lose draft. I mean, I gave the top three picks, all A pluses because how often are you going to get, and they said it repeatedly on the broadcast that it's true. You could choose your flavor here of this Neapolitan sweetness of prospect goodness at the top of this draft and be come away satisfied. There's a perfectly reasonable case for taking AJ that I understand that is very sober, like House tonight, unfortunately. But I just thought that, I thought the basketball, you know, I said this to you all repeatedly, I just thought in the basketball sense to make them a competitive team that was going to be very efficient and focused and get the most and elevate their guys. I thought Boozer made a lot of sense. But if they end up having Trey on the team, which it seems

• 15:19Speaker 02

  like they're going to, and if AD hangs around and you think about putting Sar at the four and then you put AJ at the three and then you got Trey or bub or whatever it's going to be at the two or Kaishon or, you know, Will Riley's been showing out and looking good about the two, but I, I think they suddenly have a pretty balanced team. Like it's going to be pretty interesting, I think, so.

• 15:39Bill Simmons?

  So House, I was studying him carefully this whole week and all the interviews and then even today. And at one point, the pre-show, somebody complimented his outfit and he said, I actually went to France to find this and brought it back. I'm like, I don't know if I love that.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Why don't you love that?

• 15:54Bill Simmons?

  I didn't, I didn't love it. How about getting to the gym and working on some threes? But he's, he's very polished, almost a little too polished. Like polished enough where I'm like, huh.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  He's young.

• 16:07Bill Simmons?

  You don't really almost seem like a 19 year old.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  He's trying. I mean, this is.

• 16:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, very polished 19 year old.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. I mean, so polished that the league selected him as their sort of youth draft correspondent to go participate and, and interview people and, and, you know, be in the playoffs and, and be kind of a, a digital media guy for the, that, that's a lofty role. That's, I, I loved that. I thought it, it was very positive reflection on his maturity. By contra distinction, it was, you know, when you're splitting the hairs so fine. His, his personality coming out was the kind of the opposite of what we saw out of Darren Peterson. Now, you're, you're not drafting personality here, but you know, we are trying to come up with a reason to choose one guy over another. And that's part of why I like the Bonsa.

• 16:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Peterson seemed a little better after he got picked. He, it felt like you could see the weight. We'll talk about him in a second. So, winner, DeBansa, who, you know, we've talked about him a bunch in the pod. I remember, when was that, early February, I had you on the pod, Kyle, and I was like, DeBansa's gonna go first. Like, this is, this is a rap. The guy's, he's, he's too filled out already. Like, what's he gonna look like when he's 27? And there's just not a lot of guys like him. He's somebody that could have played in any of the last three playoff series we watched. He could have been thrown out there. He would have survived physically. There's, if you're nitpicking, I don't know. He, like, he talked about his off-ball defense, like, some people don't love his shot yet.

• 17:37Bill Simmons?

  It's all stuff that will get better and better as he goes along. But he seems like, at one point, House, he said, "I've been number one my whole life. I expected to go number one in this draft." Kyle, that's just like the kind of confidence I think you would want from your number one pick, right?

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, he's, he has earned confidence. I think an interesting thing about DeBansa, too, that I've, I've been amused by, through watching him come up through the grassroots circuit, knowing people that have interviewed him and his family, there is just a stern focus about them, you know, as a group. And I have friends who know his dad, who were like, talking about, he would have AJ talk to these different players, and just to like, kind of get on his ass, basically, on purpose, to give him feedback, critical feedback. And he, and he, and his dad specifically, I remember, said, "I don't kiss his ass, ever." He was just like, on him all the time. So, they kind of like that.

• 18:27Bill Simmons?

  That's the Rick Brunson strategy. Worked. Won the Knicks the title.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  And, and the other thing I wanted, I wanted to tell House is, I was thinking about this this week. If we watch these playoffs and we think about the way it gets officiated, if you watch your beloved Denny Avdia, if you watch just any of these downhill guys, or whether it be Shay, or whoever, you think about DeBansa's specific set of gifts. He's not like, I'm just gonna roast you with a live dribble. He's not like one of those nuclear athletes, but he's, his gracefulness and his balance and his power, combined with being a pretty good athlete, getting downhill makes him really potent. And I wanted to throw this stat at you, House. I was looking up, I was looking at this, uh, did you want to jump in, Bill, real quick?

• 19:08Bill Simmons?

  No, go, you do it. Keep going.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  There was, there was, uh- Paint touches in Division One college basketball this year. Guys that averaged over 20 per game. The top five is all point guards. Uh, number one is Ibuka Corey, who got drafted tonight. He was vicious downhill.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  We liked him.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Darius, this is efficiency among guys that had over 20 a game. Darius A. Cuff was number two among these point guards. Number three downhill paint touch efficiency, scoring the ball, A.J. DeBonsa.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  So that's, let's go.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  That guy's six foot nine.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  Yes, he is.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  He's set up to just get to the line and score a ton, just by the way he plays.

• 19:46Speaker 03

  I mean, we could do a whole thing of effusive praise for what he's bringing to the table. The of that, how, um, easy it seemed like the scoring came, especially after Saunders got hurt, where he became the focal point of the offense. But what I really love is he goes both ways. I love seeing him go left with the Euro step.

• 20:05Bill Simmons?

  We don't care about his personal life.

• 20:07Speaker 03

  Oh. Pause.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  Jesus.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  Go ahead.

• 20:12Bill Simmons?

  It's like, it's like 11:30.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  Are you drunk?

• 20:14Bill Simmons?

  I'm trying to rattle. No, I was kidding.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  Go.

• 20:17Bill Simmons?

  And three hours ago, you would have gotten that.

• 20:19Speaker 03

  I got it immediately.

• 20:21Bill Simmons?

  The, uh, the, here's the thing with A.J. He's not LeBron, obviously. Nobody's gonna be LeBron. We'll probably never see LeBron again.

• 20:30Bill Simmons?

  So don't aggregate this. I'm not saying he's next LeBron. How many guys have come into the league since LeBron where you say to yourself, eh, kind of a LeBron body, right? Where you look at him and go, I could see him at age 27, looking a little LeBron-ish. We, that is not a long list, Kyle, man. I would say that's less than 10 guys that we've had come into the league. And sadly, not all of them are good. Like, maybe you could have said that about Josh Jackson. Like, oh, Josh Jackson, when he's 27, he might be ripped. It turned out he was in the league, but, uh, physically, I think it's just gonna be really easy for him to get his points. And the fact that he produced in college, I think, matters, which is same thing for Boozer. So the Whizzer winner.

• 21:12Bill Simmons?

  Sadly, they're also a loser house because you gave Trey Young four years, $212 million with a player option year four that I think he's already picked up.

• 21:21Bill Simmons?

  I don't know who you're bidding against. I don't know why he did it. It was inexplicable. We're gonna do worst contracts with Waz in March. I was screenshotting you pictures of us. Try with the first, second, or third pick next March.

• 21:33Speaker 03

  Why do we have to wait till March?

• 21:35Bill Simmons?

  Why can't you have good things? Why can't you have good things for a week? Why did this have to happen?

• 21:39Speaker 03

  I, this is what I said with all the local folks here, like, did they have to announce this on Monday? Why couldn't we just wait till Friday or something? Make it a Friday news dump? Let everybody be in the honeymoon period with AJ. It would have been fine. And I had already wrapped my head around the idea that Trey Young was gonna be in my life for the next three years. I imagined three years, 140, 100, maybe like you were crazy.

• 22:03Bill Simmons?

  How about 100? How about three for 100? Sounds great.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  It really, you know, um, but the, you have to like sort of go, oh, Willie, there's a floor to the sal- you have to have a floor to your salaries and it's, you have seven guys on rookie contracts. You gotta pay somebody. You gotta pay somebody.

• 22:24Bill Simmons?

  How do you sound like CIA?

• 22:26Speaker 03

  You're just making, I'm just telling you, I am literally making shit up because it makes no sense whatsoever to pay that man 53 effing million dollars a year. No sense under any, here's my problem with it and then I'll stop.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Give me one example. I need one bit of evidence that this guy at the point guard position has made a teammate better. Give me, yes, he helped John Collins rim run. Yes, he helped Clint Capella rim run. Neither one of those fucking guys are still with the Hawks. He didn't help them like, you know, extend their careers with the Hawks and

• 23:08Speaker 03

  he was just in a situation where they had the number one overall pick in the draft and they had a real young stud in Jalen Johnson and Trey couldn't coexist with those guys. For whatever the reason was, stylistically, whatever the vision is, whatever Quinn Snyder's offense was, it didn't work there. So that's a lot of money for a, a, a project by which I mean you're projecting.

• 23:37Bill Simmons?

  You had two minutes. You took two and a half.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Done.

• 23:42Bill Simmons?

  It was horrible. It was egregious. It was a crime against the Wizards. And I don't know, this would be the only reason I wouldn't want to go to a Wizards game next year. And Trey Young's not, obviously not a bad player, but I just think, we did this when you did Bradley Beal. And Bradley Beal was coming off a good season when you gave him the dumb contract. Trey Young was coming off a season where his team gave him away. And the vicious history of this where it's like, well, Trey Young chose the Wizards. He did? Who wanted to trade for him? Not one person. House, did I have this friend at CAA, Kyle? Who's relatively powerful? And we were texting him like, you guys, why did you do that to the Wizards? Why did you Jedi monkey like that? Yeah, we congratulated him. Like somehow you found the sucker at the poker table.

• 24:26Bill Simmons?

  Just hilarious stuff. Anyway, they were-

• 24:28Speaker 02

  Who leads that team, House? Who's the leader of that? That's what we were speculating about. I was just like, I could see, I don't want to speculate too much here, but I could see AJ and Trey being at odds at some point. They like to have the ball. I'm just wondering where, that seems like a lot of personalities that I could see.

• 24:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, the biggest problem with Trey is he's this three-point Curry look-alike three-point shooter, but the threes don't go in.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  And he doesn't play off the ball. I mean, that's the key thing.

• 24:53Bill Simmons?

  Makes sense if the threes go in, but he's been, you know, low 30s now for three years.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  Well, he's going to set up, Trey Johnson's going to have nothing but open looks. He's going to be, this is the master facilitator version of Trey Young. That one of the all-time leading assist guys by, you know, per game. This is true. He did lead the league in assists in recent memory.

• 25:18Bill Simmons?

  We were going to do a poll for, do you think the Wizards made a mistake with the Trey Young contract? But Netflix said we couldn't do polls where it's 100%. Yes, they made a mistake. They wanted us to have polls where people had two votes. Another winner. So we mentioned this earlier, Utah. They take Peterson. We'll see how this turns out. Obviously, the ceiling of this is the highest of all these guys. On paper, and it didn't really fully cement itself until they actually took him. And he was walking up there and he seemed really relieved and happy with Triple J, Kessler, Laurie marketed, George Peterson, your starting five. Ace Bailey is your sixth man.

• 26:02Bill Simmons?

  They have Sensabaugh, they have some good pieces. They have an owner who's going to spend money. And you could see how they would have talked themselves into like, this is actually, Boozer would be an awesome pick for depth and maybe he's the best guy in the draft. But if we hit with Peterson, this is like the missing piece for us. We could be like a six seed next year. So what, what do we expect from him next year, Kyle, man?

• 26:24Speaker 03

  I mean, he could average over 20 next year, I think for sure. That's definitely possible. Yeah, I think so. He's like, I mean, you can't say he's one of the generational scoring talent and then not kind of, I mean, I think he could definitely do that.

• 26:37Bill Simmons?

  He's not 20 missed games, right? 20 points a game.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  20 points a game. I, I, he and Kante, I think are the biggest question about just how do those guys find kind of a synergy together. But man, just the shooting on a one through five shooting on that team. I mean, it's crazy.

• 26:55Bill Simmons?

  For eight years, when everybody on your, on your team in a playoff series can shoot. House, did you have a moment with him where maybe, maybe like a 1 a.m. You cheated on A.J. and you looked at some YouTube clips and watched a little Darren Peterson and you started thinking about it?

• 27:10Speaker 03

  Took your engagement ring off for, for an hour. Well, I, I don't want to talk about.

• 27:16Bill Simmons?

  Stay married, House.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  I am married, super happily married.

• 27:21Bill Simmons?

  Hey, I don't wear one either.

• 27:22Speaker 03

  Not a ring guy.

• 27:24Bill Simmons?

  I don't wear jewelry.

• 27:25Speaker 03

  I lost, I lost three.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  I'll make it three. I don't either. I lost way too long back and my ring fell off and I never got a new one.

• 27:31Speaker 03

  I, I lost three. I wore it three, three, I lost three different ones anyway. Um, I did flirt with the idea of a, I will say, I did, Darren Peterson and I had of like 24 hours.

• 27:45Bill Simmons?

  You had a fling.

• 27:46Speaker 03

  We had 24 hours together.

• 27:47Bill Simmons?

  For 24 hours?

• 27:48Speaker 03

  I mean, I took a look. I was like, wow, maybe I, I didn't.

• 27:52Bill Simmons?

  Wow, he looks like Kobe.

• 27:53Speaker 03

  I didn't give enough, I don't think I gave this guy enough credit. I need to think about this a little bit. Really was the movie list. That's what really pushed me like, he's a deep thinker.

• 28:04Bill Simmons?

  It was the most important thing he did.

• 28:06Speaker 03

  A calm guy.

• 28:06Bill Simmons?

  Oh, he looks Interstellar.

• 28:07Speaker 03

  Outstanding. Yeah.

• 28:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, this will be really fun. Look. Great coach, stable owner. He goes with Will Hardy, goes with a stable ownership franchise, goes with a really thirsty fanbase. A fanbase that has been there for a long, long time since they moved there in the eighties. Has had some, you know, really good moments, made two finals in 97, 98. Had a nice almost run there with Williams and Boozer. And then the Mitchell Gobert thing just never really played out, but they've been, once a decade, they've been relevant and they were obviously the most relevant with Malone and Stockton. But that's a really, really starving fanbase that will show up in big ways. So that might be great. I will say this, Kyle, man. Danny Ainge, really awesome track record with taking elite guys.

• 28:54Bill Simmons?

  And if he likes Peterson, that makes me feel a lot better about Peterson, as weird as that sounds. Right? This is the same guy that took Durant over, or wanted to take Durant over Oden. Like he, I think he hones in on star talent in a unique way. And obviously likes this guy. So I think that's a great sign for the Jazz.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  He's never going to cower from like, oh, are you going to be able to handle? You know, unless it's just like a, are there examples of just totally? You guys had him for a long time, Bill. I mean, you know, the track record really well. Is there a guy that he ever was scared away from? Like it's just not worth it? Even you told us the story.

• 29:26Bill Simmons?

  He went the other way. Yeah. He would take like the J R Giddens types, the, the super talented, screw up types, just because they had talent. Like he kind of couldn't, he couldn't resist those guys. He always saw the talent. So with this, you have talent, work ethic, whole bunch of things. So Utah, I don't know. This would be a good Netflix poll. Could Utah be a playoff team next year? How's, do you think, could you see them as one of the top eight seeds next year? Is that conceivable to you or no?

• 29:53Speaker 03

  You're basically saying that they're going to replace Phoenix. I think that's, that's how you get there. And at least on paper, like the, the talent is there.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  They're way more talented. Like it's not even close.

• 30:06Speaker 03

  The, the enormous unknown is like, what's Will Hardy capable of? Like how, how can this all come together with this team actually trying to win? And it feels like we might have the answer in the first 10 games of the season. Like I, you, you said that you think that Peterson's going to start. I think it's fine to bring him off the bench, but let Ace start. Either way, it doesn't really matter, but it's kind of a, um, an embarrassment of riches and, and, and a really fascinating challenge for them, but the West is so good. And they it's it's Portland and Phoenix that they're going to be competing with.

• 30:43Bill Simmons?

  Right. In Portland, we still has a chance to get better. We'll see with Phoenix. The Netflix audience thinks Utah should take him Peterson 69% on that.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Question on, you mentioned the fugitive. I was noting this in our, in our draft grades. I was like, do you think Darren Peterson sees any sort of kinship with, you know, Richard Kimball, the way he's in a bus, his, you know, his college season is like a bus crash and it's rolling down the hill and he miraculously escapes it as it explodes and still gets taken number two. Do you think there's like some, maybe some parallels there?

• 31:12Bill Simmons?

  Shaves his beard, dyes his hair. Yeah. It starts out that, I mean, there was one game where he told the coach, wasn't that a big game? Like 15 minutes before the game? I'm not playing?

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Not going. Yeah.

• 31:23Bill Simmons?

  That was when I've got really concerned. Look, the talent's there. We've talked about it a bunch on the pod. There's no question. If you're going to pick who has come into the league in the last 30 years, who's looked the most like young Kobe, you would pick Peterson. Um, there's red flags though, that I can't ignore. I don't know how it's going to play out. I'd be hesitant to make a prediction, but I will say this is the best scenario, I think, for him. Um, it's going to be far away in the, in the Pacific Northwest. Except where's, where's Utah? But that's not Pacific. Mountain, Mountain West.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  I mean, it's kind of close.

• 31:58Bill Simmons?

  It's like almost nine o'clock. I had Hold John and Vinnie's two hours ago. Cut me some flags.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  Vegas, but like four hours. It's like, it's closer to Vegas than you think out there.

• 32:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. West coast, whatever. Perfect spot for him. Well, I'm going to take a break and regroup after saying Utah's in the Pacific Northwest. We're going to be back in one second. We'll do the rest of the winners and losers. Yeah, there's some good ones. All right.

• 32:19Bill Simmons?

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• 33:00Bill Simmons?

  time. Offer eligible for 30% off entire order. Taxes, fees, and terms apply. Offer valid through July 5th. Product availability varies by region. Exclusions may apply.

• 33:15Bill Simmons?

  Winners and losers, we gotta hit Memphis. Shout out to our guy Verno. Verno was at a draft party. He said the entire city was rooting for Boozer. No disrespect to Peterson, but I think, I think that city's had a little bit of a roller coaster ride the last few years with unreliable guys. And I was basically looking forward to a guy who you could just come into the league and pencil in for 20 and 11 every year for the next 12 years of his career. He actually sent me the video. The crowd exploded at the draft party when Peterson went number two. So this is like a classic Memphis guy. This is the grit and grind Grizzlies. He would have fit right in. You have him and Boozer, him and Coward and maybe, maybe Edie.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Wells. I like Wells.

• 33:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, yeah, they have a bunch of dudes. And I think you just tell them coming out of the gate. If, if Ja calls you to go out and celebrate the pick, tell him, tell him you, you have the sniffles and maybe get out of that one. What do you think of Boozer, Memphis, Kyle?

• 34:15Speaker 02

  I think it's gonna be great. I mean, like you said, he fits their sort of organizational identity, you know, from the past, but he also, you know, they're big on analytics. They're big on efficiency and winning players and things like that. So he checks both boxes. And I feel like whenever we say grit and grind, I think sometimes we say, we make it sound like, you know, we're prioritizing that over skill, over everything. We're just gonna claw you to death. It's like Boozer plays that way, but, and he has all of those things, but he's just kind of like a modernized version of his dad. I heard Legler say, Kevin Love, that was something we had in the guide. That's something that I've, I've thought for a while that he's, he's just got all these kind of intangible skills that he can, you know, he can. Face it, if they want to play him and Zach Eadie together, I think he'll make him like Cam Spencer.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  He'll make Cam Spencer and Cedric Coward better with his passing, so they can work off the ball. It's a great fit, man, and it's organizational mouthwash. Like we were saying, you know, if Peterson had been there at three, do you think they even would have taken him? Like, would they, you know, it's such an opportunity. Maybe you don't pass it up, but I think this is the outcome that they all wanted. You know, I asked Verneau earlier in the night. I was like, I mean, is that who? In resounding, yes, they wanted Boozer and they got him.

• 35:24Bill Simmons?

  Would have been an interesting one, House, if Boozer goes to Naev Wilson, who is the most Memphis-y kind of guy ever. Like, that's a classic. Couldn't try harder. Great kid, like, would have fit in with all the different teams they had. Would they have done that or would they have rolled the dice? Then later, House, they deal 16 for 17 in two seconds, so OKC can take Bennett starts, which is the most predictable moment of the night. And then they go backwards from 17 to 21 with Detroit. So Detroit could take a Corey. They pick up three more seconds. And I'm like, ready to stand on my couch and applaud because I think they're going to take Fylon.

• 36:08Bill Simmons?

  And they took Lopez. So I did not stand up on my couch and applaud. I'm going to give them both a winner for picking up five seconds to move five picks backwards, but

• 36:19Speaker 03

  Let me ask J K.

• 36:20Bill Simmons?

  Thing I don't understand.

• 36:22Speaker 03

  I thought when they picked for Detroit, when they took a Corey for Detroit, I thought he would be an awesome guy for that young nucleus that they have going in Memphis. What do you think the thought process was?

• 36:39Bill Simmons?

  Not taking a point guard?

• 36:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:41Bill Simmons?

  The thought process is probably they're stuck with John Morant. They didn't want to bring in another player. I don't think they have a landing spot for him.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Has kind of a similar profile to Moran, except Akori Akori is super downhill, but he just leans scoring more than playmaking than Ja. But I mean, yeah, it would have been really fun. I think he would have been a nice change of pace from the size and the grinding kind of thing that they're going to have going on. Like just an interesting off speed pitch in the way that Mara is going to be for OKC, who I don't know if we're going to, we'll probably get to him in a minute, but yeah, I thought Akori would have been really fun. If you're for people who haven't seen him, I mean, he's just like ultimate jitterbug. I always say he's, he's like if an NFL kick returner was playing point guard. Like you just can't, you can't stay in front of him and you can't grab onto him. He's just, he's grease lightning with a basketball in his hands.

• 37:30Bill Simmons?

  He was one of the guys I was praying, well, I was praying for the, one of those guards to fall to the Celtics in 27. Anderson, Fylon, Akori, like just one of them, just hoping that there was a run on other positions. And sometimes guys get shoved down and it started to happen with Fylon. Cause it felt like if he didn't, if Philly didn't take him, it really felt like the next couple of teams wouldn't have taken him. And that, so sometimes that happens, but that never really happens. What were you going to say, House?

• 38:00Speaker 02

  Just, I think it was a sneaky good pick by Detroit.

• 38:04Bill Simmons?

  Akori.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. Really going to help them.

• 38:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. You know what they needed? Somebody who could create a shot.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  Greed.

• 38:10Bill Simmons?

  In April and May and maybe even June. Well, great times for Memphis. They end up with the third pick. They don't win the lottery. They might've gotten the best guy. How so you?

• 38:22Bill Simmons?

  You'll root for Boozer, but you don't want him to be too good, right? You're hoping he's like a solid A minus.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  I'm rooting for all of those guys. It's such a good draft.

• 38:30Bill Simmons?

  Deep down, you don't want him to be better than AJ. Just admit it, House.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  No, it's, it's all situational. We're like, it's going to be impossible to like parse who, you know, we'll see, we'll see like from the raw offensive talent, you know, we'll be able to judge some, but like Peterson's going to look incredible in Utah. I'm prepared for that right away in the same manner that Dylan Harper.

• 38:54Speaker 03

  Looked absolutely bonkers, but remember Dylan Harper played in the G League this season. Like it wasn't right away.

• 39:01Bill Simmons?

  I think we screwed that up. I think Carter Bryant did. I'm not sure Harper did. We might, I might have screwed that up. And now you took my screw up.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  Oh, well, I, he, there was extended stretches where he was not getting minutes. There was.

• 39:13Bill Simmons?

  No, that is true. Yeah.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  Stretches where he couldn't get on the floor and then it was clear that they were doing something in terms of, of the work. But, um, the.

• 39:23Bill Simmons?

  Took him a while. He was a slow, slow burn.

• 39:25Speaker 03

  It's, I don't think that's going to be the case with Peterson. I think we're going to see him right away.

• 39:30Bill Simmons?

  I have another winner. This is a quick one.

• 39:33Bill Simmons?

  The Knicks being a defending champion at the NBA draft.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  It was weird. Was that weird?

• 39:38Bill Simmons?

  Fans, they celebrated the title multiple times. The Knicks were on the clock. Everybody was cheering. They showed the trophy. It was just happy. Nobody was booing. They weren't showing Spike Lee looking like he was ready to have six drinks. They weren't booing the pick. You didn't see Nick fans just ready to be angry like the Jets fans are at every draft. It was just, just happiness coming.

• 40:01Speaker 03

  Did you wonder for a minute if the booing would continue or, or, you know?

• 40:05Bill Simmons?

  Just that a habit?

• 40:06Speaker 03

  And they're just that they won and you know, that'd be just like a nice soothing balm on their, on their bad feelings. I, I wondered if they'd boo Silver, but of course they, they immediately booed him when he came out. Yeah.

• 40:17Bill Simmons?

  They did boo the San Antonio Spurs, which I enjoyed. Um, all right. I'm bouncing around. We, we haven't gotten to Chicago yet, but we'll, we'll get to them. Cause I needed a loser. Um, loser, number 10, Brandon Burris, who I love, probably one of my three favorite guys in the draft. Could have gotten drafted by Dallas and played with Cooper Flag at number nine and Kyrie and just been in meaningful basketball games right away with a bunch of role players. He could have fallen to 11.

• 40:47Bill Simmons?

  And joined Steph Curry, one of the 10 or 12 greatest players of all time on their last run of relevance with two years with Steve Kerr and Draymond and maybe LeBron going there and the whole thing. He could have been part of that playing for Arizona's Steve Kerr. The Arizona connection. What happens? He gets drafted by the Bucks at 10, the crappy Bucks. The all time mediocre. There's never been a more likely 31 win team than this Bucks team. And now he has to fight for shots with a bunch of guys on their team. And I just got bummed out, Kyle.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  I think the good thing about Burries though, is that I don't know that he'll necessarily be bummed about that because he's just such a quality, like fits in wherever he is. I mean, it's a missed opportunity for him.

• 41:33Bill Simmons?

  Can I be bummed for him?

• 41:34Speaker 02

  You're welcome to do that. Yeah, I'll permit that. He's, yeah, I mean, he missed out on being in a more fun basketball environment in the, in the short term, obviously. I think for the, you can clearly see the thinking for the Bucks though. It's just like, they don't necessarily, I, and I hope they're not thinking they know they have a centerpiece right now. They're still going to try to figure out what their direction is and taking somebody that, Burries will fit into whatever they choose to do, you know, and then they took Amen with their other pick as sort of an upside swing. But I thought he made sense for them to pick because he's just going to be around for whatever happens.

• 42:05Bill Simmons?

  And that, that's one of the things with this draft house. I feel like 20 years ago, they take Amen at 10 and Burries falls to the Warriors at 11. And then we spend the next five years going, are you fucking kidding me? How does this happen? But no, the Bucks wisely were like, you know who we should take? The guy who's by far the best player in this spot right now. So now Burries has to go to this weird team. If he gets a text that says Kevin Porter Jr. And Kyle Kuzma want to take you to dinner tomorrow night. Again, I'd go with sniffles, maybe some bronchitis, maybe some tinnitus, maybe you went to a concert, your ears were hurting.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  Right, the ringing ears.

• 42:42Bill Simmons?

  Did you, were you surprised that the Mavericks did not take him? Because they took Maraz Johnson instead.

• 42:48Speaker 03

  All of that whole situation with Dallas changed, I think, in a pretty dramatic way with the Dusty May thing. Yeah.

• 42:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  Like, look at that situation that presents itself. And the most interesting thing is Dusty May got to choose his, his favorite, who, who he thought was going to be most impactful at the pro level. And he chose Maraz.

• 43:11Bill Simmons?

  Here's the best part about that house. He can also say he didn't choose it.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Of course. No, you're absolutely right.

• 43:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so I, I just got the job. They were already locked in on Mares. Obviously, I told them he's a great kid, but you know, I can't, I just got hired. I can't come in and start telling these guys what to do. Like, I, I just got hired a week ago. But you know, he probably was like, yeah. Cause everything, and this is why we all loved him, Kyle. Like, this was just a classic. These are the guys that would fall in the draft 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. Just the heartbeat of a great team in college. The engine, all the quotes about him where it's like, we could never have a bad practice because of this guy. Every time we needed a pickup in a game, he'd do something. He was relentless.

• 44:02Bill Simmons?

  The most competitive motherfucker on the planet. All the stuff you want to hear. All things that we discounted for years and years and then finally started listening to. But you, you were a little more down on him in the draft guide than, than, where, where, where'd you land on him? Like, we used.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  I ended up with Mares at 13. So, I mean, I wasn't like out of the neighborhood.

• 44:22Bill Simmons?

  Four ahead.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I mean, the argument there for him, he's really young too. I think people should keep that in mind. Like, Mares played a year of college at Illinois and went and played like FIBA U-19 with like AJ and Michael Brown and those guys. So, he's really had a year. So, he's, he's young for, for a college sophomore and just really dogged. I mean, and I, I think that Cooper being there and, and making like the playmaking progress that he made. And then you got Kyrie coming back. Granted, we don't totally know what's going to happen with that. Cause you were thinking, maybe they'd make a swing at like a playmaker type guy there. But you talked about it that like, I think the conventional wisdom has just kind of evolved over the years. Where you would just see teams get in the top 10 and be like, it's this illusion of being in the top 10

• 45:07Speaker 02

  that makes you feel like you have to be in this mindset of like, well, we're here. We gotta like, take this chance on an upside pick, right? It's like, and the upside picks year to year can be like, pretty volatile. It can be huge risks. And you'll see teams take the swing at those guys and end up with like a Kevin Knox or somebody like, oh, you get tantalized. Like, oh, he's inefficient, but I'm tantalized. And the safer thing to do is to take the dude who can switch one through five, like Mares Johnson, who's a winner, who's going to be on your team. He's not going to be a star, but it's, it's a safe, smart pick. I like it. I think it's good.

• 45:40Bill Simmons?

  I told you I did this exercise. I went through the last five drafts and tried to separate the guys based on studs, playoff guys, or just wild cards. And wild cards could be upside, or small guards, or shooters. And the playoff guys, year after year, like in last year's draft, it was Cedric Coward, Murray Boils, Carter Bryan, and Hugo, were the four guys that are just guys that have that playoff profile, that can guard different positions, that have energy, they bring some sort of skillset that seems to matter when it gets to April and May. In '24, the playoff guys were your guy Sar, I can't give him a stud, but he's,

• 46:19Bill Simmons?

  you know, maybe Serge Ibaka in the red situation, better Serge Ibaka, Klingon, A.J. Mitchell, Jared McCain, Baylor Shireman, right? So again, like, no, like, small, offense-first shooting guards, no kind of upside guys, these are just dudes that play. And then the year before that was Kamara, Kason Wallace, Hakez, Derek Lively, and Podzemski as like your playoff guys. So I look at Mares, and I'm just like, he just feels like he's in those three classes. I just, I can just see him in a playoff series. Everybody seemed to think, okay, so he was either gonna take him or trade up if they didn't feel like

• 47:00Bill Simmons?

  they could get him at 12. And I do wonder if they've infected the thinking of these teams a little bit. Back to Milwaukee, though. I had as a loser the honest trade already, 24 hours later, which I didn't like yesterday when we did the Urgent Gathering podcast. I usually like to get a blue chipper when I'm trading one of the best 25 players of all time. One of the things they got was the 13th pick in the draft, and they took Nate Ament, who I think was the most polarizing guy of these first 15. Classic. He, he, he hits, I don't want to be mean about somebody who's 20, but hits the draft checklist

• 47:43Bill Simmons?

  of, well, he didn't shoot last year, but he's a good shooter. Well, he struggled down the end of last year, but he was injured. You could see the upside. It's all like upside and not stuff. If you actually watch the games and you're just like, what is this guy? Is he Brad Sellers? So what is this guy?

• 48:00Speaker 02

  Billis was like, he got fouled a lot. He stuck his nose in there. It was just kind of, uh,

• 48:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he sounds like he's talking about the coach's kid.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  We're really getting creative with it. I mean, I do think there's something there. It's just a matter of where you, what level of investment you want to put in him. I mean, I was lower on him than consensus. I ended up with him at, at 20, uh, just because of where I was comfortable with that. I mean, I heard somebody on another NBA show say that he reminded him of Perry Jones III, which is kind of honestly, the way people used to talk about Perry Jones would be like, oh, he's so big. Watch him move.

• 48:35Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my God.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  And you just get caught up in these hypothetical vortexes where you're like, oh, the hypotheticals, man. It's like, no, I kind of would like to see something not hypothetical at some point, but he's like Sinak. It's like he's a guy who was a streaky shooter and he's just not comfortable at the rim. It's like, maybe you can kind of develop him into like a solid role player. I don't know if he'll be a star, but I think role player is what I would aim at first.

• 48:57Bill Simmons?

  At least with Sinak, he's, he rebounds, right? He's got one scale of that. Well, at least he does that. Right? I don't, I don't know if they, amen. I think the Perry Jones thing is a really good. It's a really good one. There's so many of those guys house. Why do we feel like we had way more of those guys in the 90s and the 2000s?

• 49:13Speaker 02

  We probably did.

• 49:15Bill Simmons?

  Maybe just the whole infrastructure for youth basketball is just better now. But, um, listen, maybe it'll happen. I don't know. But he set off a lot of red flags for me. My favorite though, about the honest trade, Shams, who seems to really want to make it work for the Bucks, that this trade was a good trade. When it was, as I said yesterday, this is a trade you make when you want to keep your job and everyone else's job in the front office for another three years. Just a lot of picks that are out in the future. You're sort of rebuilding. You have these guys that you might keep or trade. And at no point does anybody look at you and say, well, why aren't we better? We just traded for Jalen Brown. Shouldn't we have 50 wins? Why do we have 30? Shom said at one point during

• 50:00Bill Simmons?

  the draft, "The calls are continuing to come in for the Milwaukee Bucks for their guys." I find this hard to believe. I actually literally heard the opposite, that the calls were going out from the Milwaukee Bucks, asking if anybody was excited about this. House, you never gave your thoughts on the podcast about the Miami Giannis trade?

• 50:21Speaker 03

  Um, I, I, my first reaction was, wow, this is a rare lose-lose trade. You don't get a lot of those in the NBA. Um, now for Miami-

• 50:31Bill Simmons?

  Miami had to do it, because what the hell else were they gonna do? But yeah, I didn't like the trade for them either.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  It is Giannis, so I'm being a little-

• 50:39Bill Simmons?

  I get it from their side. Yeah.

• 50:41Speaker 03

  I get it from, exactly right. But like, okay, great job. They moved up from being the play-in 10th team to the fifth-best team in the-

• 50:52Bill Simmons?

  Sixth-best team?

• 50:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:53Bill Simmons?

  What'd you think, Kyle?

• 50:55Speaker 02

  You think they moved that high?

• 50:57Speaker 03

  I mean, that, this is the conversation to be had, right?

• 51:00Bill Simmons?

  Well, you're factoring in five seed, you're saying Giannis is gonna play 70 games with the five seeds.

• 51:05Speaker 03

  Exactly right.

• 51:06Bill Simmons?

  Which, that I am doing-

• 51:08Speaker 03

  That all, all of their top six guys are gonna play 70 games, because they can't afford for any of those guys to miss 15 or 20 games here or there. They really, they really can't.

• 51:18Bill Simmons?

  When we did the pod yesterday, we're like, well, they'll bring Norm Powell back. And then today, it's like, yeah, Norm Powell's not coming back. They don't have enough money to pay him. So, we'll see. They can patch it together, but what'd you think, Kyle?

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Defensively, I think they could be pretty interesting. Um, I mean, they're gonna, they're gonna have to work their magic in the margins and finding guys, though. I mean, because you're gonna, you're gonna need some more- You know, yeah, you're gonna need some more shooting. I mean, but that's kind of their specialty. They pull those guys just out of the, out of nothing. Like they find them, they target them. And there's a few guys in this draft, I think that they could go target, but I'll be, I'll be interested to see if they climb as high as five. I mean, Giannis being on your team automatically makes you dominant in some capacity and he's always something you gotta deal with. So you guys might be right. I'm, I might be a little on the cynical side.

• 52:03Speaker 03

  I'm just sad for the Milwaukee fans. The Milwaukee fans deserved the end of Giannis to be better than, than it turned out. They, they got bummed out, blown out of the playoffs, um, two years ago. They got blown out of the playoffs or three years ago, two years ago, then didn't make the playoffs last year. Yeah, I just, it's a bummer.

• 52:20Bill Simmons?

  And one thing I forgot to say yesterday, and I wish I had been harder on this part yesterday. You know, they shouldn't trade Giannis a year ago, which we've covered on many pods, I should have said yesterday. Not only did they not trade Giannis a year ago, they went all in with that Myles Turner hail Mary that involved stretching Dame Lillard for 22 million a year all the way through this decade. And now they've just traded Giannis for way less than they probably could have gotten. Um, another loser. It's 2026, guys. The NBA still has to do this thing where teams make a trade, but then somebody's on the clock and they make the pick. But we just found out five minutes ago that the pick got traded. Why can't we figure this out, Kyle? Why not? How hard is this?

• 53:06Bill Simmons?

  We have everybody on the desk just said they flipped 16 for 17. It's not, it's OKC on the clock at 16. No, Memphis takes Bennett's dirt. No, they're taking for OKC. We just heard that. Why do we have to do this?

• 53:20Speaker 02

  Is there like some kind of legality thing there where they can like speculate about it on the broadcast, but on the NBA like can't officially say it? Is it like, how is it something more strict like that? Like, or what is it?

• 53:33Speaker 03

  Well, they have to, I, I'm sure there's a process for submitting the trade and the trade has to be approved by the league office. And until that's done, you know, no, no trade is official. So.

• 53:43Bill Simmons?

  House, they can do whatever they want. They're fucking league. They can make, do anything. Speaking of doing anything, you can, you can, uh. You can vote on Netflix right now, whether you think Giannis will ever make the finals in Miami. Not even win the finals, make the finals.

• 53:56Speaker 03

  I'm sad.

• 53:57Bill Simmons?

  What would your take be on that, House?

• 53:58Speaker 03

  No chance, no chance whatsoever.

• 54:00Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you would go no chance?

• 54:01Speaker 03

  Zero.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  Never say never, but unlikely. Can we talk about how it should not be two nights again? Don't, do you not, do you not miss the one night experience? Cause the second round's so bad. Like, isn't it a waste of everybody's time to do it in one, like in two nights? I just, I want to go back to one.

• 54:18Bill Simmons?

  I, I have always wanted it to be, especially after having done the draft a couple of years, just the first 14 picks and take 10 minutes between picks.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  Oh, I like that.

• 54:29Bill Simmons?

  That way they can have, this is my next loser, by the way, the, the Lisa Salters interviews, when there's real basketball shit going on. Who are these for?

• 54:37Speaker 02

  Who are they for?

• 54:38Bill Simmons?

  Who are they for?

• 54:40Speaker 02

  They do a set with the fricking living room. What the fuck is that for?

• 54:44Bill Simmons?

  Kyle, what does this moment mean to you?

• 54:48Speaker 02

  It's the same question every family.

• 54:50Bill Simmons?

  Uh, it means a lot. I just got drafted. It's so meaningful to me. Uh, there's my dad.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  Really, really.

• 54:56Bill Simmons?

  He really, uh.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  Cathartic stuff.

• 54:59Bill Simmons?

  There's real basketball shit, like the Clippers took, you know, Wogler at five and it's, okay, now what's going to happen with these next four picks? And we, it's just, I just feel like everybody watching this draft cares about the basketball stuff, not the, not the family stuff.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  Could we get some more in the weed, like, maybe not too far in the weeds, but just could we get a little more like, what's this going to look like on court? Like, go to the screen, show us the clip.

• 55:23Bill Simmons?

  Kyle, they had two channels. They had ABC and then ESPN and somehow they had Lisa Salters on both of them doing interviews. Pick one. Have ABC be the one my wife would watch because she likes the interviews. I want to know all the mechanics of the draft as it's happening. Atlanta's on the clock at number eight. It's like, are they going to trade this? There's just been rumors all week that they might trade this. Who would trade it? What are the candidates? Could, could they trade this right now for Trey Murphy? But no, we had to, we had to interview Darius A. Cupp and his family. And I just don't know who that's for. I don't get it.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  What's, what's a back of the envelope math guy's name? We could have that feed where they go to him and he just for 30 seconds shows you like the, the analytics or the.

• 56:01Speaker 03

  Oh, Cornacki?

• 56:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, Cornacki, something like that, like a little more.

• 56:05Speaker 03

  But yeah.

• 56:06Bill Simmons?

  Jim, well, we'd just, we'd rent him for this.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  The equivalent, indeed.

• 56:11Bill Simmons?

  Uh, good news, guys. The calls are continuing to come in for Bucks players.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  The phones are just ringing.

• 56:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they just got a Kuzma call. Winner.

• 56:21Speaker 03

  It was Samsonite, the luggage company.

• 56:24Bill Simmons?

  Oh, uh, the votes came in. The votes came in too for Giannis and 87% of people watching this said, no, he will not make the finals in Miami.

• 56:35Bill Simmons?

  Sorry, Miami. Winner.

• 56:39Bill Simmons?

  Darius A. Cuff going to Sacramento. Is he the most fun Sacramento King we've ever had? What's your top three, House?

• 56:46Speaker 03

  Well, they were, they were so.

• 56:48Bill Simmons?

  White chocolate?

• 56:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, dude, yes. I mean, come on.

• 56:52Bill Simmons?

  Mitch Richmond?

• 56:53Speaker 03

  Oh, sure, sure. Yes.

• 56:56Bill Simmons?

  Would you put Boogie on there?

• 56:57Speaker 03

  That era, Doug Christie was an endless source of.

• 57:00Bill Simmons?

  Doug Christie wasn't fun, except for he was pointing at his wife. I guess the shit with the wife is fun.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Entertaining to talk about. Doug Christie inherently fun is kind of, I don't know about that one.

• 57:11Bill Simmons?

  I'll phrase it another way. Who is the best League Pass guy? We've had, I've had League Pass since 2000 or 2001. Who's the best League Pass guy they've ever had?

• 57:19Speaker 02

  Chris Webber. Chocolate, end of story, right? I mean, that run, that run, like early basketball internet where they were like the clips where you could watch the top 10 NBA.com.

• 57:28Bill Simmons?

  I always joke about this. The white chocolate is a problem versus what it was like to just watch white chocolate for 82 games.

• 57:35Speaker 02

  But that was pre, that was pre widespread League Pass. So perception was reality. I was seeing those clips and I was like, he's great. And I didn't realize he was not great for years. It was a long time.

• 57:46Bill Simmons?

  There's a chance A. Cuff is just absolutely awesome on the Kings and everyone in Sacramento is gonna be wearing A. Cuff jerseys. I'm all in. House and I have been all in really for the entire college basketball season.

• 57:58Speaker 03

  Loved him.

• 57:59Bill Simmons?

  He, he checks every box for me, including it's not perfect because he's not gigantic. He might get picked on defensively. Um, he's going to a franchise that has had, uh, been living under a ladder and, and has black cats on the front door when you walk in. And every sort of bad luck, broken mirrors everywhere and every sort of bad luck thing you can have. I just think the kid's got it and, uh, and we'll talk about one team that passed up on him. But Kyle, uh, are you as on a scale of one to 10, where are you compared to being House? House and I are a 10.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  I think I'm my the framing of how I like Acuff is maybe a little different than I don't know. I don't know what you all are envisioning for him, but I thought of him. If you're writing him as your like primary offensive star who's just always got the ball in his hands and you're living and dying with what he does in the half court. I don't love that as much as I like him as like a very, very good game manager guy who can hit open shots, who can bring stability. Lord knows the Sacramento Kings could use that on in all facets. I mean, it's funny. It's almost been 10 years ago since they took Fox. That was the last time that they, you know, took a took a promising guard who was, you know, bright kid and everything. That's I'm,

• 59:13Speaker 02

  I'm with him as not as necessarily like this. Our whole solar system revolves around this guy. I think he's probably better as like your third star. I think if you're going to build a team like a high level team. So.

• 59:26Bill Simmons?

  How's could he be as good as Kyrie in your opinion?

• 59:29Speaker 03

  I have a different comp for him that I felt this this way for a long time. I really feel like he's the second coming of Dame. I feel like he's Dame 2.0 and that that's what

• 59:40Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna steal it.

• 59:41Speaker 03

  44% from three as a freshman in fucking college and could just they weren't easy threes.

• 59:49Bill Simmons?

  Volume threes.

• 59:50Speaker 03

  Open threes. Yeah.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  He didn't play with anybody that could pass the ball. He was the only dude on that that team. That team was yakity sacks. They were athletic, but they didn't have anybody. He shot like 51% on catch and shoots and he barely got any. That's another. I think Dame's way better. The Kyrie.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  He just doesn't wiggle.

• 1:00:09Speaker 03

  Oh, as a can.

• 1:00:10Bill Simmons?

  It reminds me of the with the Kyrie part that he reminds me of is just the either hand thing in traffic. Like his ability to just finish at these weird goofy angles. I don't think Dame could do that. Dame came into the league after I think he was 22. And was was good right away, but it it it took him, I would say, three years. Like, I remember he had a really bad playoff series in 2015 against Memphis. Took him a couple of years to then go up that next level. I feel like A. Cup's gonna be further along and he's younger, too. But I like the Dame thing. I, to me, that's the motto of like, could he be a 25 points a game? Like, 25 and 7, has the ball a lot. Maybe you need some extra offense next to him, but that would be what I see, Kyle.

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I said, when did Dame hit the game set, the series winner? Was that 14 or 15?

• 1:00:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was later. It was, I think, the 17 range. It was after KD left OKC. So, anyway, the Kings, who, you know, have been, are probably the biggest train wreck in the league, I would say. Do we have a bigger train wreck? Now they have a fun player. I'm excited for their fans. I don't know if this was a, I don't know if this was a winner or a loser. But, uh, the Warriors, it seemed like Joe Lacob had an argument with Mike Dunleavy in the draft party. And it might not have been, I'm just seeing what I said on social media, but I thought that was pretty funny. Winner.

• 1:01:30Bill Simmons?

  Kyle, you love this one. The Spurs at 20. They drafted your guy. You've been riding for somebody. Why don't you tell us about him?

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  Uh, Jayden Quaintance was like a pretty highly regarded prospect. Um, he went to Arizona State last year and everybody that watched his tape from Kentucky this year. I've had people be like, oh, you're just, it's just Kentucky. I'm like, he barely played for Kentucky. It's like, it really is not that. All of his tape is from Arizona State. He was 17 years old and was like defensively just ridiculously dominant. I just think that, uh, I had this thought process during the playoffs. Uh, he's, he's probably, if he's healthy, that's the big question is, that's the thing that happened between now and when he was dominant at Arizona State is he, you know, had, tore his ACL, came back too early. There's some like real like Time Lord kind of worry about like, is this gonna keep happening with him?

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  But if he's right, I think that he could net out where he could be as high as like five in this draft in, in like a few years from now because he's that defensively special, in my opinion. I know people have worry about his offense, but I'm just like, this dude dunks everything. We don't worry about what Mitchell Robinson does around the basket. I'm like, he screens and he dunks everything.

• 1:02:37Bill Simmons?

  He's Time Lordish. You had this, you tweeted this one and. In May, you tweeted how he'd be the perfect guy for the Spurs.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  I mocked him. I mocked him to the Spurs in one of our mocks, because I was like, I didn't have any intel. I was just like, I think this just makes a lot of sense. It's he fits their brand in terms of the type of kid he is, too. Little soft spoken, pretty bright kid, plays chess. He's a big chess player. And then, yeah, after one game with the, during the playoffs, when OKC beat the Spurs, I was like, they need acquaintance. They need to draft acquaintance.

• 1:03:07Bill Simmons?

  Would you, would you rather, would you rather drafted him or a head coach?

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  What a setup.

• 1:03:15Speaker 03

  So rude, so rude.

• 1:03:17Bill Simmons?

  Why'd you, why'd you make me make that joke? You texted me to set you up with that. No, he didn't.

• 1:03:24Bill Simmons?

  Now, listen, Mitch Johnson's a great coach. None of that finals was his fault, except for the 43 things that happened that were poorly coached.

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  The whole.

• 1:03:31Bill Simmons?

  And all the game strategy.

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  They're all experiencing this for the first time together.

• 1:03:35Bill Simmons?

  Mitch Johnson, don't blame him.

• 1:03:37Speaker 03

  They're all young.

• 1:03:38Bill Simmons?

  All I know is we, House and I made fun of Rick Adelman during college and then after the college. By the way, R I P Rick Adelman. He was Hall of Famer. No, he was great, but we would always get mad about his game management. And Mitch Johnson's game management was 100 times worse than all the, all the stuff we had with him or Dunleavy or some of the other coaches we used to make fun of. So I don't know.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Mitch Johnson's younger than Steph Curry. He's like, he's young.

• 1:04:05Speaker 03

  He's young. That, that whole thing I chalk up, but I, I think acquaintance is absolutely perfect. Because, you know, that it, it solves a lot of the, the defensive challenges that this team, they just need, they need, they still need size, which is a very weird thing to say with Wemby. Who cares whether or not acquaintance can score? It doesn't matter. You're not worried about.

• 1:04:26Bill Simmons?

  You have a year with them too, because you have Cornet.

• 1:04:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:28Bill Simmons?

  And they have, I think Carter Bryant's going to play for them next year. By the way, they, Netflix did a poll for, is Darius A. Cupp the most fun Kings rookie? Basically ever, and 54% said yes.

• 1:04:39Speaker 03

  Kegan Murray had a lot of buzz when they, when he, when they brought him in.

• 1:04:43Bill Simmons?

  He's going to be more fun than Kegan Murray. Come on, House.

• 1:04:45Speaker 03

  No, but I'm saying the buzz surrounding him and as he, and as he arrived there, there was a big excitement.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  Exciting, cutting.

• 1:04:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:54Bill Simmons?

  One more winner before we go to break. Daryl Morey.

• 1:05:00Bill Simmons?

  Trades Jared McCain for pick 22 in three seconds. And then Jared McCain goes to OKC. And does really well there. And it's, I think, one of the reasons Daryl Murray gets fired. Well, Philly with 22 takes Fylon, who is one of my favorite guys in the draft. I think he's been vindicated. Great trade.

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  Just like that.

• 1:05:22Bill Simmons?

  Love it. McCain is a declining asset. He just turned him into Fylon and two more years on a rookie contract. Let's go, Daryl. Somebody hire him.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  I had it on good authority that they wanted Fylon last year. They might have promised him last year. So Daryl's

• 1:05:37Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  Daryl's vision fulfilled and

• 1:05:41Bill Simmons?

  He left some Daryl juice behind him. Some Daryl sprinkles.

• 1:05:47Speaker 02

  Daryl juice.

• 1:05:48Bill Simmons?

  Uh, did he, do I like Fylon too much? Or like, cause the knock on him is he's getting too skinny. And there's a whole weight limit thing with point guards where if you go below 175 pounds, people get concerned. I don't care.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  I was a little more leaning towards the Hornets taking him. I thought that's who they should have taken, you know? I know the Christian Anderson pick that I know our guy Khan is going to have another dude who's a great dribble pull-up shooter, fits their brand. But I thought Acuff is a tougher player. Like, I thought that he would be a better fit.

• 1:06:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  I thought that Fylon would fit with the Hornets better. I was surprised they didn't take him.

• 1:06:24Bill Simmons?

  I agree. I thought every pick after 14, I was ready for him to go. And guess what? House, now he goes to 22. He goes to Philadelphia, a city that takes everything personally and hates everybody else. And he's going to have a giant chip on his shoulder. He's going to fit right in.

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  It's going to be a great situation for him. All jokes aside, I think that with that backcourt and, you know, what they're capable of.

• 1:06:46Bill Simmons?

  Play all of them together. Yeah, let's do it. All right, we have a lot more to get to. We're going to take one more break. It's like going to be a little bit longer when we have, we'll have time to look at Twitter for two minutes, but we're going to take a break and come back with the rest of the winners and losers. And now for a special part of today's episode where we're going to be talking about the superior matches, teams and players of FIFA World Cup 26. Brought to you by Michelob Ultra, the official beer sponsor of FIFA World Cup 26 and a superior light beer. So let's get into the moments that stood above the rest and made a superior level of impact, at least so far. We're still pretty early in the World Cup. My MVPs right now.

• 1:07:27Bill Simmons?

  Messi has to be number one, already a legend, already probably leading the GOAT combo, had five goals in two games, missed a penalty kick to make it a little interesting in the second game that he played, but was so great to watch, so special. And I was thinking, he might have the highest approval rate of any athlete in any sport right now. Who doesn't like Messi? If somebody said they didn't like Messi, you would look at them like they were staring at your cross side or something. It's an insane opinion. Everyone loves Messi. That's it. This just reinforced that. So that's one. Second one for me, Team USA, which threw its hat in the ring as a perennial power. It's not perennial because it's the first time it's happened in 2010, but it sounds really good that it's a perennial power. But

• 1:08:11Bill Simmons?

  yeah, this is the first time we've actually thought that an American team could make maybe the final eight, maybe even the final four, as crazy as that sounds, since 2010, since Donovan with the Algeria goal. And it's been a long 16 years really ever since. And now, hope again. Very exciting. To the point they're playing their third World Cup game, they can rest most of their starters. So that's been great. Third thing for me, Alexi Lalas, great job getting everybody talking about the Fox studio show.

• 1:08:46Bill Simmons?

  Good job. People are talking about it.

• 1:08:51Bill Simmons?

  Fourth one, the African nations. You have Morocco, Egypt, Ghana, Cape Verde, and the DR Congo, all probably making the final 32. I think the record before was three, but I just watched today, I watched Ghana tie England. They parked the bus, which as somebody who's been involved in a lot of youth in high school and college soccer, watching over the years, it's mostly annoying when teams park the bus. But in this case, Ghana did a really good job. They needed a tie, they parked the bus, they knew what they were doing, and they got out of it. And now they're gonna make round 32. So just cool though to see like this entire continent kind of make their presence felt, especially with the extra teams. So you have that.

• 1:09:38Bill Simmons?

  Goals. We have more teams, which, you know, there's six to eight teams that probably have no business whatsoever being in the World Cup, but it has led to more goals. It's led to, you can do parlays where you have bet somebody to have two goals in a game with somebody else to have two goals in a game, like all kinds of fun things. Who doesn't love goals? As we keep going in the World Cup and the games get better and better, it's gonna be a lot of 1-0, a lot of 2-1. You're gonna miss some of these goals. Ronaldo? That's been fun. Is he washed up? Well, he scored two goals today against a team that wasn't good, but he had two goals. But it's, it's fun to watch somebody just, just trying to hold on who doesn't have it anymore. Who can't identify with that? And then last but

• 1:10:23Bill Simmons?

  not least, for me, just out of, out of the, out of the early stuff, it really looks like we're getting France versus Germany in the round of 16. I like when we have World Cup matchups that also feel like they could have been any sort of major conflict that we've had in the world in the last 400 years, right? France, Germany just feels weighty. It feels important. It feels like that's a game that should be in the finals. No, we're gonna get it in the round of 16 and it's gonna be awesome and we're gonna get Mbappe and, and a very, very fun France team who, if I had to pick right now, I'm leaning toward Argentina just because of Messi and just because they play so great together, but France would be the other one. I think those would be my two. And not hot takes because those are two of

• 1:11:08Bill Simmons?

  the favorites. But anyway, those are my superior moments. Ultra wants to hear your superior moments from the FIFA World Cup 26. You have the chance to vote after every FIFA World Cup 2026 match for the superior player of the match on the FIFA Plus app. That player will get the superior player of the match trophy representing the host countries of Canada, Mexico, and of course, the US of A. Celebrate every goal, save and win with US Soccer and Michelob Ultra.

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• 1:12:20Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Sony Pictures Classics. A perfect crime film, says The Daily Beast. John Tortore gives a career best performance. Don't miss the acclaimed new thriller, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. Tortore stars as an aging master pickpocket, whose latest score puts him in the crosshairs of a ruthless crime family. It's also starring Giancarlo Esposito, Tatiana Maslany, Will Price, and our guy, Steve Buscemi. See the film that The LA Times calls instantly classic. The Only Living Pickpocket in New York opens in theaters October 23rd in New York and Los Angeles, nationwide October 30th. All right, quick break. This episode is brought to you by Fire TV. You ever sit down, ready to watch the game, only to search and scroll endlessly?

• 1:13:05Bill Simmons?

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

• 1:13:23Bill Simmons?

  So before we continue with the winners and losers, one of my favorite things is to go back and look at the top 100 high school class of all the high school guys who then just got drafted, which is the DeBonsa class. And if you go back, DeBonsa was one, Peterson was two, and Boozer was three.

• 1:13:40Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:13:41Bill Simmons?

  Start there. Can you guess who the number four pick was? He was somebody taken in the first 20 picks.

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  Let House guess, because I follow this stuff.

• 1:13:49Speaker 03

  Oh, you already know the answer.

• 1:13:51Bill Simmons?

  Man probably knows the answer.

• 1:13:52Speaker 03

  Uh, he went in the top 20. Hold on, hold on, hold on. I'm scrolling through super fast.

• 1:13:57Bill Simmons?

  House, don't cheat.

• 1:13:58Speaker 03

  Amen, amen, amen. That would be my guess.

• 1:14:00Bill Simmons?

  House cheated.

• 1:14:01Speaker 03

  No, I'm suspicious. I have the draft up. I have, this is the draft. I, how would I know?

• 1:14:06Bill Simmons?

  Nate Ament was fourth.

• 1:14:08Speaker 02

  Some trackpad action over there. I was suspicious of.

• 1:14:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, because I'm looking at the draft.

• 1:14:13Bill Simmons?

  Taylor Wilson, fifth. And number six, the Celtics pick.

• 1:14:18Speaker 03

  Woo.

• 1:14:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, baby. This is something.

• 1:14:21Speaker 03

  Snack.

• 1:14:22Bill Simmons?

  They used to do in the past with Danny Ainge. They would take these dudes that had a weird college year. And I don't think he even had a weird college year, but they would take somebody that they're basically banking on what he was the year before his college year. Um, I remember they did this with Avery Bradley, because Avery Bradley was the number one pick in the draft. They took him, whatever. Acuff was seven. Brown was eight. Um, Koop Pete was 10, Burries was 12, and we could keep going. Um, and then Kings, Kings to Fleming's 22.

• 1:14:51Speaker 02

  Can I give you a good, an example of a good version of a guy falling the way that Snack did? This is an example of it working is Jayden McDaniels coming out of high school.

• 1:15:01Bill Simmons?

  Whoa.

• 1:15:01Speaker 02

  Was a kid who thought, Bill is getting very happy.

• 1:15:05Bill Simmons?

  Tell me more.

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  Jay McDaniels was a kid who basically thought he was Kevin Durant coming out of high school and played like he was just like, I'm just a dribble pull-up guy, a tall dribble pull-up guy. Something happened to him when he was in between college and the NBA, where someone got in his ear and was like, hey, man, you can make a lot more money if you do this. And it got through to him and he turned, just the switch flipped, and suddenly he's this defensive monster. Snack.

• 1:15:33Speaker 03

  I'm just saying, there are many paths to being successful if you have the right people around you. So I hope that's what's happened here.

• 1:15:38Bill Simmons?

  That's what I told House when, when I wanted House to be a competitive eater when he was in law school. And I was like, you make a lot more money eating. I know you can do this. He didn't listen to me. All right. So more winners and losers, just quickly. Dusty May, we mentioned, who gets this Dallas job, has Cooper flag, and then three of his kids get drafted in the top 12. That was pretty fucking cool. Like that. Um, okay. This is a combo, the Hawks and the Pelicans. Hawks as the winners, Pelicans as the losers, because they traded Derek Queen for Kingston Flemings, as it turns out.

• 1:16:17Bill Simmons?

  That is the final, um, final haul in that trade from a year ago. So I'll ask both of you, who would you rather have? Derek Queen? Maybe this would be a good Netflix poll. Derek Queen or Kingston Flemings?

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  That might be a closer call.

• 1:16:30Bill Simmons?

  Who would you rather have for the next 10 years?

• 1:16:34Speaker 03

  I, I was amazed by Derek Queen.

• 1:16:37Bill Simmons?

  So you would, you, you're pro Derek Queen?

• 1:16:40Speaker 03

  I think it's, the way it shook out, it's, it's now a closer call. It doesn't excuse the unprotected nature of the pick. There, there's no excusing that ever under any circumstances. But having seen Derek Queen play NBA basketball against NBA players, I know that he can play in the NBA. I know he's got, you know.

• 1:17:01Bill Simmons?

  I really liked him too. I don't, I think he's going to have to be on the right kind of team with the right kind of people around him. And that person is not Zion Williamson. But, uh, but I do think, it's, we'll see with Flemings. What do you think, Kyle?

• 1:17:16Speaker 03

  Queen was, I mean, they both have issues, right? I mean, when you weigh them, we get this because Kingston's a little small. Derek is like, is he a center? You got to put him next to like a stretch five to for it to really work. So there are a lot of kind of caveats to work through. I personally think.

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  I think I would lean towards Kingston right now, just because I think Kingston is going to be additive in that people are like pitting him against these other guys as like scoring guards. Kingston like is very, very fast, like getting off the ball. I think his shot's going to come around. He's a transition monster. I compared him to like Tyrese Maxey a little bit in transition with his speed.

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  But then, you know, I don't know. I'm still not sure if Queen is going to be like a playoff level guy. Like the defensive stuff just really concerns me. Is the shooting going to come around?

• 1:18:03Bill Simmons?

  Right. Could he be a good stats, bad team guy, basically?

• 1:18:06Speaker 02

  Can you imagine Queen playing in like any of the last two series? Like I just kind of feel like they'd go at him every single time, you know?

• 1:18:12Bill Simmons?

  I like him. The thing I do like about him is he's always excelled wherever he's been. He's one of those guys, which is like the best part of Cam Boozer too. Like wherever he's been, he's been on good teams, he's been the guy. They're putting together a little Netflix poll. We're going to have the, we're going to have the people decide. Flemings or Queen? This would be one of the only polls ever. The Hawks end up with Flemings. They took Zubie, one of my, at 23, who was one of my favorite. I thought he, I was hoping he would get to the Celtics. And they used their cap space to trade for Aaron Wiggins, basically got him for free. And I really like Aaron Wiggins. It wasn't his fault. He was on this completely loaded team. And they re-signed McCollum. I like where they're at. The one thing they were really missing was somebody like Fleming.

• 1:18:57Bill Simmons?

  Flemings, like, you know, a point guard who could guard other teams' point guards, who could push the pace, create a little offense.

• 1:19:06Bill Simmons?

  I like the pick. I thought that's who they were going to take and, and I still really like Burries. That was the only thing I was thinking was could they take him, maybe play him and McCollum together? But I get why they did what they did. So we do have results. Netflix audience, 67% for Derek Queen.

• 1:19:22Speaker 02

  There we go.

• 1:19:23Bill Simmons?

  33% for Flemings. Joe Dumars vindicated one year later after getting pillared on this podcast at Boro's.

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  How many of those people have seen kicks of Flemings play?

• 1:19:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, well, we'll see what that poll looks like in a year. Anyway, good night for the Hawks. Good night for the Clippers, who is another winner. They turned Zubots, who I voted for 13th in my NBA a couple of years ago, but last year was not playing like it. They turned him into Wogler and a 2029 pick. They, I thought Burry's made a little more sense, but Wogler had the higher upside. And it really seems like, Kyle, it feels like that 46-point game against Purdue was a transformative draft pick thing, even more than the final four. Like every time I saw Bellis on a show, he was talking about it like he watched a UFO land, like what this kid did against Purdue. And I watched all the highlights from it. It really was great. He was nine for 11 from three,

• 1:20:18Bill Simmons?

  but that's kind of the, that's the game you point to if you're like, hey, can, can I spend, can you send me 10 minutes on what this kid's like? And you'd send him the Purdue game and be like, this is, this is the best version of him, right?

• 1:20:30Speaker 02

  That was an example of a team that Purdue team was especially like not equipped to check a 6'6" ball screen savvy point guard who has like crazy triple pull up. Like he, he shot 40% on pull-up threes just in pick and roll on pretty high volume. So if you conceded that shot to him, he made it. And that, that, you know, Purdue had a kid, Oscar Clough, who was just kind of this like, he, he kind of looked like a dad in a men's league out there. He was a good player, but he just, he was not, not fleet of foot out there to guard a Keaton Wogler and he, they, he lit him up. So, um, yeah, but, but overall, man, I, I, I think this pick makes sense because I'm, I'm putting less pressure on him and Garland, like being on the floor all, you know, together all the time.

• 1:21:16Speaker 02

  I think you bring him along a little slow, let Wogler get the reps with the second unit. Let him play with the starters a little bit and be like the secondary kind of guy. Cause he's capable of that. Like he has a lot of spot up chops too. So he'll be a spacer for them until he's ready to kind of take more of the car keys.

• 1:21:31Bill Simmons?

  I mean, potentially three 20-point a game scores. I'll, here's the big test for Wogler. I'm gonna ask House. House, you're in town.

• 1:21:40Bill Simmons?

  And I have Clipper tickets. They're not, they're not playing anybody. It's not like Golden State or somebody that we would be like, of course, we're going. It's, it's like a middle of the road team. It's not Milwaukee either. It's, it's like, uh, it's not Brooklyn. Let's say it's like the Pistons. Well, you'd be excited to see the Pistons.

• 1:21:58Speaker 03

  Definitely, yeah.

• 1:21:59Bill Simmons?

  It's, it's like an eight or it's like the. Phoenix. Phoenix is in town and I'm like, we could go, we could drive down the game and it'd be like 45 minutes. This will be, we'll eat at the game and you get to see Keaton Wogler. Are you saying yes or no?

• 1:22:15Speaker 03

  Is that pulling you away from a good, from a good meal?

• 1:22:18Bill Simmons?

  Or we could just order food at my house and watch games on the three TVs. Does Keaton Wogler get you to get in the car and go 45 minutes to the Intuit Dome to go see him?

• 1:22:30Speaker 03

  The problem is I haven't.

• 1:22:31Bill Simmons?

  I have really good seats.

• 1:22:32Speaker 03

  I haven't been to the Intuit Dome yet, so I would definitely say, yeah, whenever the first time is that I'm there, that we can go to a game, I'm gonna go.

• 1:22:39Bill Simmons?

  You'll wanna go.

• 1:22:40Speaker 03

  It won't matter, but I do, I am interested in, in whatever this Clippers team ends up being, because they're in the midst of not quite, they're retooling. It's, it's interesting to me.

• 1:22:55Speaker 03

  And I love Wagner's IQ. The thing I was wondering about, where was he on your high school list? Because he's.

• 1:23:01Bill Simmons?

  Oh, he, he didn't exist.

• 1:23:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:23:03Bill Simmons?

  He didn't make the top 150.

• 1:23:05Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:23:05Bill Simmons?

  He had one of the great out of nowhere runs in the history of college basketball.

• 1:23:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. What about the Stanford kid, the, uh, the point guard? Didn't he also come out of nowhere?

• 1:23:16Bill Simmons?

  Uh, not, not like that. I mean, people knew who he was.

• 1:23:19Speaker 03

  Okay. Well, he was going to Harvard. He was supposed to go to Harvard, so I don't.

• 1:23:24Bill Simmons?

  The thing with Wagner, Wagner, I'll call him Wagner, like he's related to Franz Wagner. The thing with Wagner.

• 1:23:32Bill Simmons?

  If you're just going ceiling from the fifth pick on, he probably had the highest ceiling, right Kyle? Like that's somebody that, like he might be Shay Gildes Alexander for all we know. Cause if you, if you're talking about just watching, I actually went back and watched Shay's Kentucky, his year, like the 15 minute YouTube clip of Shay and it's like, you could see the pieces of it. You couldn't see the MVP version of it, but you could see the pieces and the footwork and the two-way game and he was a better two-way player than, than Wogler was. But Wogler offensively was way ahead of where Shay was as, at Kentucky, right?

• 1:24:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're, it's interesting because they're kind of inverted, like in the way that they approach, like Wogler is all like, he's just so methodical, like setting up ball screens to get to his shot and he can just burrow his way into the mid-range. And in college Shay was the opposite. He was just like, he was just uncheckable getting downhill. Like, and he was just a layup master. Well, a lot different than the, than the way he plays now. In terms of having upside, I mean, upside at this spot, the upside, I feel like kind of falls, fell off in terms of like the legitimate swings of they could be stars. It's only like two or three guys past, past five, uh, and Wog, I mean, including Wogler. So,

• 1:24:45Bill Simmons?

  Who are the other guys? A Cuff is on that list for you or no?

• 1:24:49Speaker 02

  Uh, I feel like I kind of know what A Cuff is. I don't know. I don't know where the levels are that we go that are just like,

• 1:24:54Bill Simmons?

  Is Brown on the list?

• 1:24:56Speaker 02

  Brown is, yeah, I think Brown is one of the guys. Another, a sneaky one is Daylon Swain, who the Bulls ended up with. I think he's like a sneaky upside guy.

• 1:25:05Bill Simmons?

  We have the Bulls coming up. Yeah. 15th pick.

• 1:25:08Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:25:10Bill Simmons?

  I, the Clippers had to do it. It's one of those things that if they had the eighth or ninth pick, it probably would have made more sense than we'd taken Burries. And that would have been a classic two-guard, but, uh, they had to take a swing. Loser, Steve Kerr, um, who's going to have to coach Yaxel and Draymond at the same time? What is this going to be like? Two of the most passionate guys we've had in the league in 10 years. Both winners, both super competitive and they might fight to the death. I don't know what's going to happen. What's going to happen Kyle?

• 1:25:39Speaker 02

  I kinda wonder what Yaxel is gonna look like in a system that is gonna require his attention to be divided a lot. We will see about that because he played on just a battering ram of a Michigan team and his job was to guard the ball most of the time. So he had everything that was important to him was in front of him. So I'll just be curious to see in the like, speed of the read react Golden State system while it's still there, you know, they're gonna have him probably pass this into some other era of a different style that I'm sure he'll define him. But in the short term, I'll be curious to see how turbulent his ability like keep up with the speed of what they do is because you could see some like, I don't wanna say Jordan pull, I'm not saying he's gonna like, give

• 1:26:23Speaker 02

  him a concussion for a punch, but, or to be, the opposite, the vets will bring him along and give him like guardrails that'll be good for him. I don't know. It's gonna be fascinating to watch.

• 1:26:33Bill Simmons?

  Well, he's almost the same age as some of the vets, so it's fine. He's gonna be 24 in December.

• 1:26:38Speaker 02

  He'll be older than Moses Moody.

• 1:26:40Bill Simmons?

  I 100% agreed with the pick. I thought they would have taken Morris there if they, but you know, Dallas jumped on him at nine. House, Draymond, Yaxle, Curry, Porzingis, and LeBron James. How far am I going? How far am I going in the West?

• 1:27:04Speaker 02

  Changes things. I think you can make it out of the play-in. I think you can make it out of the play-in.

• 1:27:12Bill Simmons?

  What if I changed Porzingis for Anthony Davis?

• 1:27:15Speaker 02

  Oh, no joke.

• 1:27:18Bill Simmons?

  Anthony Davis, Draymond, Yaxle, Curry, and LeBron. I just go big. I have size everywhere and I have two guys, Draymond and Yaxle who can guard perimeter guys.

• 1:27:28Speaker 02

  He made a face, like he'd take KP back.

• 1:27:30Bill Simmons?

  No, I would not. I would not. There's no, no scenario. I mean, Kyle, that has to be, that'd be one way to get in with Jalen Brown. Jalen Brown, love them. Be like, Jalen, we didn't really try to trade you and KP's coming back.

• 1:27:43Speaker 03

  So a three-way trade.

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  All's forgiven.

• 1:27:46Bill Simmons?

  House didn't seem that excited about LeBron and Yaxle and the Warriors with Anthony Davis. Didn't seem like a change your finals pick of San Antonio, OKC.

• 1:27:55Bill Simmons?

  Winner quickly, Chicago, they get Wilson at number four with a chip on his shoulder. I love Wilson. I just think, I'm completely all 100% in, I'm all in. And he's the first legit Bull star since Derrick Rose. You could tell me that Vucevic was a star or Jimmy Butler pre Miami. Fine, whatever. This, this kid has it. They'll probably build the team around him. I hope they keep Giddy. They'll be playing up and down and everybody's gonna love him. And then they get Swain at 15. Kyle, would you say this is your number one winner of the draft? Swain and Wilson together?

• 1:28:30Speaker 02

  I like it together. I had a funny moment where I sat down and I was like, huh, Caleb Wilson with this Bulls roster. And I started looking down the Bulls roster and I was like, ah, fuck it. I was just like, what am I even thinking about? I was like, well, you start trying to do the gymnastics of like.

• 1:28:45Bill Simmons?

  What if they had had Io and Kobe White on the team that they just could have brought back with their bird rights on top of Giddy? And Caleb Wilson probably would have.

• 1:28:53Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:28:54Bill Simmons?

  Maybe made more sense.

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  I got a wild one for you. I think, I think Daylon Swain could be swappable for Josh Giddy because they're similar place. Like I think he could be, he could end up being a better two-way player than Josh and do similar things, similar size, playmaker, athlete, and then he can play defense.

• 1:29:11Bill Simmons?

  So, well, to that point, every year there's the Kawhi, right? Where Kawhi in 2011, I sent House a clip today of when the Wizards, Jay Billis is at the desk. And he's like, I think Kawhi Leonard would be a great pick here at number six. He's, I think he's going to be a really good player, blah, blah, blah. Fits in with the Wizards. And then it goes to the podium and they're like, with the sixth pick, the Washington Wizards take Jan Vesely.

• 1:29:38Bill Simmons?

  It wasn't Kawhi Leonard, but every year there's the Kawhi Leonard of wow, this guy could just blank, he'll be awesome. So with Swain, isn't it, if this guy can just, he can just figure out how to shoot, this kid's gonna be awesome. Cause he rebounds and defends, like he runs the floor, does everything else, but the shot is why he wasn't a lottery pick. So what if he learns how to shoot, Kyle?

• 1:30:02Speaker 02

  He can score, he can really score. He's just got kind of a deliberate wind up shot. And I don't know if it's a rebuild, it's just, he got to the point where if you gave him time, it wasn't like Thompson Twins where it's just like, all right, let's just run the other way, this thing gonna happen. He, he can score, like, and he has touch. So it's kind of, you kind of can talk yourself into it happening. But somebody was asking me about like, who has the best handle in this class? And I was just like, Swain has some of the best dribble separation in the class with like a Corey, like he's, he's nasty. He can like, you'll watch him get low with the ball, but I can't tell if that dude's like 6'1". And then when he stands up, you're like, holy shit, he's huge. He's like 6'7 and a half and choose. So that's a great bet for Chicago.

• 1:30:47Bill Simmons?

  Uh, before we do our next winner loser, we have to wake up House a little bit because it's 12:30. So House, I ordered from John and Benny's. No, no, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna talk about food to get you excited.

• 1:30:55Speaker 02

  Okay, good.

• 1:30:56Bill Simmons?

  It's my wife's away. That means, that means the food delivery order for the solo, you really have nobody judging you or anything. I did John and Benny's. I got the chicken cutlets with the gem lettuce salad that they have with the spicy dressing. And then you know what else I did? I just got a pizza. Even though I don't eat pizza, I don't really need to eat bread. I got the Sunny Boy pizza, which is bacon and, and cheese and there's some like caramelized onions on it.

• 1:31:25Speaker 02

  You didn't ask for a gluten free crust or any of that bullshit, right?

• 1:31:28Bill Simmons?

  I did it. I did it. I gave the crust to the dogs. They were very grateful.

• 1:31:31Speaker 02

  You gave the crust to the dogs?

• 1:31:33Bill Simmons?

  I got a big plate. I cut up the chicken cutlet. I put it, put it in their spicy little salad. I put a little balsamic on it and, and I just chowed down and it was wonderful.

• 1:31:44Speaker 02

  These rare, special, unexpected where you're, you know, you're, cause you're married, you know, she's with your wife and you have your time.

• 1:31:52Bill Simmons?

  It's a negotiation.

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  For dinner, we're gonna do this together and J K M, you share, what are we gonna share together? Oh no. It's just like, when you get to the time where it's like, I'm gonna order for me. And I I'm gonna, I yeah, I'm gonna have a cheeseburger, one hot dog with a little cheese on it too.

• 1:32:08Bill Simmons?

  See, this is why I always win because I always play the only child card for this stuff. It's like, I don't want to share. You're an only child. And people just sleep at home.

• 1:32:16Speaker 02

  You do have that card, you son of a bitch.

• 1:32:18Bill Simmons?

  I do. I just say, I don't want to share. I do that with everyone who is friends with me knows like desserts. I don't want to share dessert. I don't want to share ice cream with you. I don't want to share pudding with you. I don't want to share sundae with you.

• 1:32:30Speaker 02

  I've never tried to share dessert with you.

• 1:32:31Bill Simmons?

  I don't want to share a piece of pie with you.

• 1:32:33Speaker 02

  I don't ask.

• 1:32:34Bill Simmons?

  I might grab the first bite, but I don't like sharing. I'm an only child. I'm not used to it.

• 1:32:38Speaker 02

  It's a great point.

• 1:32:39Bill Simmons?

  I don't, I don't know. House had multiple brothers. He has a sister.

• 1:32:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:42Bill Simmons?

  He's used to sharing food. Anyway, back to the draft. Winners and losers. So Sean Marks, I don't know whether to give him a winner or loser. I'll let House decide.

• 1:32:53Speaker 02

  Loser.

• 1:32:57Speaker 02

  I don't need any more information. You just said Sean Marks.

• 1:33:01Bill Simmons?

  They showed him in the draft room. They're celebrating like they just won the finals. The whole Nets draft room was celebrating and it was because they were taking Mikel Brown, who um, who missed 14 games last year and has a bad back. And the high fives around.

• 1:33:15Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 1:33:16Bill Simmons?

  And he's the, he's the guy out of all of these top 12 guys, the guy I was worried about the most. I might be wrong. I'm not saying he's gonna be a bust. I just have concerns with the injury prone stuff, durability and the fact that he's talking in interviews about, I was in so much pain with my back. Like, you're 19. Why do you have back problems? This, this makes me nervous, Kyle.

• 1:33:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, they just kind of slid it in there that they were like, uh, yeah, he played fewer games than Darren Peterson. And the Peterson thing, we were speculating, we still didn't totally know what it was. And we were like, ah, I think we're on the other side of this. It's not really, bad back is like, that's, that's not one that you want coming in. I've got like Michael Porter Jr. Came in and had the, what, the micro discectomy? I haven't had back surgery, but I think that was the procedure.

• 1:34:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:02Speaker 02

  I don't know if he's out of the woods in the back thing, but even if he was, if we're just talking about him as a player. Uh, my whole thing the whole time is just, he's super talent, man. I mean, like he's, he can, he pushes you to have like a high pickup point. He can shoot the shit out of the thing. He can really pass the ball with either hands. It's just, he's a little chaotic. Maybe he reigns that in in the half court. Like he gets it. He, he seems to drive without a plan a little much for my liking to the point of like, it's, it's a little bit of a LaMelo-esque chaos. In a way that's, that's, but LaMelo is also.

• 1:34:36Bill Simmons?

  You think Julius Randle and Michael Porter Jr. Will enjoy that or no?

• 1:34:41Speaker 02

  I'm not sa- it could, it could happen for him. He's, he really, he really does have a lot of talent. He has more, it makes sense for the Nets. If you're looking at the guys, they don't have anybody with that kind of upside on their roster right now.

• 1:34:52Bill Simmons?

  Every year Kyle gets super conflicted with one guy in the lottery. And this has been your guy for three months. You're just like, I, I.

• 1:35:00Speaker 02

  Oh, I thought you were saying my guy. Yeah.

• 1:35:02Bill Simmons?

  No, you get really conflicted because he is probably, if you're building the buildings of all of these guys, he is one of the biggest buildings. Cause his basement goes 10 floors down. But the ceiling goes pretty high too. We're up 20 floors the other way. I don't know. I'm, listen, House, I'm admittedly terrible at, at analyzing guys like this. Cause I gravitate away from these guys. They make me nervous. And I always am glass half empty on these guys instead of glass half full. These super talented, kind of chaotic. I'm not sure if you're durable. Like I, I just get worried. What, where are you on this?

• 1:35:38Speaker 03

  Exact same place. And, and here's the problem. Uh, I feel like we've earned the skepticism. Like the Nets had, was it five or six first round? It was five first round picks last season. We set the over under at one. Will one of those five picks?

• 1:35:57Bill Simmons?

  A year ago, we did this.

• 1:35:58Speaker 03

  A year ago, look like an, an actual NBA player.

• 1:36:03Bill Simmons?

  Rotation guy in April and May and June.

• 1:36:05Speaker 03

  Do, do we think that they got, got there? Do we think they got to one? Demond, that's it.

• 1:36:11Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Trauria is a 10th man?

• 1:36:14Speaker 03

  I mean, J K M, are we being too harsh?

• 1:36:16Speaker 02

  No one's rough. No one Danny Wolf. No one, uh, it was, uh, Drake Powell was the other one from North Carolina, the athletic, uh.

• 1:36:24Bill Simmons?

  Well, here's the thing. This is one of my favorite draft things where you, you do a draft last year.

• 1:36:30Bill Simmons?

  And it's like, well, we took point cards last year. We can't take Akuf.

• 1:36:36Bill Simmons?

  Are you sure? Cause Akuf's better than every point guard you have.

• 1:36:39Speaker 03

  Name one who can play.

• 1:36:41Bill Simmons?

  It's like when teams do this in the NFL with quarterbacks, like we can't take a quarterback. We took one last year. It's like, yeah, you took a shitty quarterback last year. You still need a quarterback. Just because you took quarterback last year doesn't need, you still need one. Uh, I just would have taken Akuf and I would have figured it out and tried to figure out what he looked like with them and, and just gone that way. That's, I think the, if you're the Nets, I'm not looking for upside.

• 1:37:10Bill Simmons?

  I kinda, I kinda just want somebody good. I've just lost the city, which I had lost anyway. I lost it 19 times over with this Knicks finals. And I thought Akuf would have at least solved a little bit of buzz problems. Now they're, you know, keeping their fingers crossed with Brown, who has the upside.

• 1:37:28Speaker 02

  Mikkel's bigger than Akuf and

• 1:37:31Bill Simmons?

  Sure.

• 1:37:31Speaker 02

  They're past him being good.

• 1:37:33Bill Simmons?

  Who is he? Who's your comp for him for if he's actually really good? Who is he?

• 1:37:38Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I've comped him to Anthony Simons and Keonte throughout because I've said, I'm like, I'm not sure that he's like a bona fide. Like I know I can build a team, a basketball team around. And Keonte worked towards earning a little more positivity and optimism on that front this past year. Not according to the Jazz because they were like, hey, we want to see you do it again. But I thought it was interesting that Mikkel compared himself to Anthony Simons. So I kind of feel like he's going to be, that's kind of what I expect him to be. Like this guy could go get 30, 40 on a given night. He's kind of our, he's, he's sort of adjacent to our superstar, but on any given night, he could look like a superstar. That's kind of what I expect him to be because he's super talented and defensively going to be a struggle, but the talent's there.

• 1:38:21Bill Simmons?

  How's did that make you feel better or worse?

• 1:38:23Speaker 03

  Absolutely terrible.

• 1:38:27Speaker 03

  Anthony Schreiber can't find a team. Poor guy like everybody. Well, we tried with Anthony for a little while and you know.

• 1:38:35Bill Simmons?

  So the injury, he's injured, pro, the defense might not be there and he's adjacent to my star.

• 1:38:41Speaker 03

  I tried to get not conflicted for a minute. Give me, just give me that. Let me have that.

• 1:38:46Bill 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. This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun, sometimes earlier than expected, sometimes after blowing a 3-1 series lead, but what if you went to Cancun with Expedia save up to 30% when you bundle and save, you can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness, though, hopefully your team doesn't go to Cancun, one, two, three Cancun, or if they

• 1:39:28Bill Simmons?

  do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save savings vary. Well, I'll give you a positive winner. We can, we can end on, uh, Charlotte gets Steinbach at 14 and they take Anderson at 18. They take two German guys. They just said, fuck it. We're double, double Germaning down. And guess what? There's another one tomorrow in the second round that they could take the guard who's the teammate on the young German team, right?

• 1:39:58Speaker 03

  Jack Cale, yeah.

• 1:39:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, people kind of like him. I wasn't, I wasn't that impressed with the thing.

• 1:40:03Speaker 03

  They should bring in Rondo while they're at it. I mean, uh,

• 1:40:07Bill Simmons?

  Not Rondo, Schruder.

• 1:40:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, Schruder hasn't played for sure. The German Rondo, yeah.

• 1:40:12Bill Simmons?

  So other than Khan having to learn German.

• 1:40:16Bill Simmons?

  I think both of those guys are playoff rotation guys. I like Anderson. I just, he was one of, another one of those guys I was hoping would miraculously fall to the Celtics where he's just, I know what he is. Like, he's gonna be able to create offense. I don't think he's one of your three or four best guys on a championship team or a high playoff team. But I think he could be the third guard on a really good team, and which is what he would be on this Charlotte team. So I like that. And then Steinbach. House, you would like Steinbach? Now, I'm not sure he'll ever be able to play defense successfully, ever.

• 1:40:48Bill Simmons?

  But he is a motherfucking rebounder. Holy shit. I really, he was one of the guys I probably spent the most time on, cuz he's definitely an NBA player, and he's definitely a rotation guy, and he might be a little flawed, but has a couple above-average skills, Kyle. Like, seems like pretty high IQ, played, you know, with adults overseas when he was like 15, 16, 17, just got the shit kicked out of him. And he is an awesome rebounder, like, awesome. So I don't know, I kinda like the pick for them at 14, even though I'm not sure if he's ever the fourth-best guy on a really good team.

• 1:41:25Speaker 02

  I think that he, I've, I've said that he's like the spiritual successor to Steven Adams, because you can watch him play, and he's just an absolute pain in the ass, tedious, like, annoys people with his ability to just get his hand on every ball. But the fit with this Charlotte team, it just makes so much sense, because you're basically just putting like a garbage disposal at the bottom of, like, he, he makes so much sense. I made this comparison that I, I used to, I love to shoot threes. I used to play pickup with this like 5'7" dude, who was like the best rebounder I've ever played with. His nickname was the Wolverine. His name, shout out to Kenny. But I would literally just shoot threes, and he would walk the ball back out to me at the top of the arc and hand it back to me. And I was joking with Barry, I was like, this is the equivalent of that for the Hornets.

• 1:42:10Speaker 02

  It's like, they've got these guys who wanna get shots up. Christian Anderson, 100% in line with that, one of the best pull-up shooters in the country this past year. Steinbach is just going to just inhale, every rebound that comes like him is like, like a rock near an event horizon at a black hole. It's just like it's going in the black hole like that's that's Steinbach is like.

• 1:42:30Speaker 03

  I haven't seen any of this guy. I haven't checked him out. I love this. This is.

• 1:42:34Bill Simmons?

  He would have been the guy we would have loved to have played pickup with where he's like moving toward where the rebound's gonna be as the guy's shooting it.

• 1:42:40Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:42:41Bill Simmons?

  He's just like, he's over there. That means the ball's probably gonna go a little long and maybe bounce here and I'm just gonna move here now and then I'm gonna tip it in like. He just, he's, he's gonna be a double figures rebound guy playing like 24 minutes a game and then probably will give up a bunch of shit on the other end.

• 1:42:57Speaker 03

  They need it though. They're dying for that. They, they, they need that size. They need that rebounding bolster.

• 1:43:03Bill Simmons?

  I wouldn't have liked them nine, 10, but I thought 14 was the right range. And the last team we didn't talk to, which I'll let you guys decide if they're a winner or loser, but OKC. Who had 12 and 17, didn't trade up and they took Mara who was being rumored to be going six to eight range at one point. I did this on my pod last week. The more I stared at it. The minutes per game just weren't there. Like he barely played at UCLA, played 23 minutes a game last year. I think he is who, what he is, which is like, he's coming off the bench. Maybe Luke Cornet crossed with Porzingis on the Celtic style as like a change the game type thing and giving you eight, nine minutes in a, in a half. I don't think he's.

• 1:43:44Bill Simmons?

  A starting center. Edie was different because Edie played big minutes at Purdue and, and showed the work. Now he already broke down. But I think for what OKC wants, Kyle, this guy comes in, he's certain matchups. Seven, eight minutes, some Hartenstein insurance, pretty good passer, really good hands. Seems like his teammates loved them. And I thought there was a chance he could fall to Charlotte, which I think would have been great for them. But I think for OKC at 12, if you're not getting Mores and you're not getting Yakso, this was the logical next pick, right?

• 1:44:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think it checks a lot of boxes. Um, you know, obviously there's that big guy in the West that this is akin to when Shaq was in the West.

• 1:44:27Bill Simmons?

  Six more fouls.

• 1:44:28Speaker 02

  Just started affecting roster construction in a way that we haven't really seen in a while. That'd be interesting study to do, like which guys caused the most ripple effect of roster construction. But Mara, yeah, the other thing too, is that the idea Mara kind of fits what I thought OKC might do with Edie a couple of years ago. I thought that it'd be interesting if they just took Edie and was like, we play this one way, but for 16 minutes a game, we're going to play in this other way. That is going to be brutal for you.

• 1:44:57Bill Simmons?

  We're fucking you up, yeah.

• 1:44:58Speaker 02

  And I, I think Mara, but also Mara adds, he adds the women's insurance, but he also adds, his passing adds another, he instantly would become one of their best passers, I think, like, and you could, you could play him with those movement shooters like McCain, who loves to play on and off ball. Get him to what you, uh, you got Isaiah Joe still, I forget his contract situation, but then Jalen Williams, like, I think he makes sense on that front too, if they, if they choose to keep him.

• 1:45:22Bill Simmons?

  You know what he just, what he just laid out has reminded me of in the mid eighties, when we had that Celtics Rockets finals and it was Hakeem and Sampson.

• 1:45:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:45:31Bill Simmons?

  And McHale, Parrish, Walton, Bird, and then everybody in the league was like, we gotta get bigger. Need centers. And then all of a sudden, there were these hilarious draft picks for like three straight years. John Conch, Concac, Joe Klein, Uve Blob.

• 1:45:45Speaker 02

  That was the era.

• 1:45:46Bill Simmons?

  People were just grabbing centers because it was like, oh, we need him, we need him, need him. I don't know if this was the version of that, but you like this pick too for them, right?

• 1:45:53Speaker 02

  Absolutely. For all the reasons, uh, J K M just laid out, but, but, uh, in addition, it's, it's, it's so consistent with the path that they're on because they have to flip out a couple of, of these, these guys that they, you know, they're at the end of the road.

• 1:46:09Bill Simmons?

  Hartenstein, yeah.

• 1:46:10Speaker 02

  It could be and, and maybe Dort, uh, and now we've got two viable starts and, and Mara both. Guys who slide in rookie contracts, not in a hurry. We don't have to like, they don't have to immediately contribute. They can get some minutes. They're, they're sitting on Topich and.

• 1:46:27Speaker 03

  And the kid from Georgetown, right?

• 1:46:29Bill Simmons?

  And those guys might be, they might be punting on those guys.

• 1:46:31Speaker 03

  Maybe so. Those guys never set the floor.

• 1:46:34Bill Simmons?

  Well, Sturts was, thanks to Kyle and Tate's prodding, I became more and more fascinated with Sturts. The minutes thing is like one of the craziest things I can ever remember in all the draft study.

• 1:46:45Speaker 03

  He's like an Alabama running back.

• 1:46:47Speaker 02

  The marathon man.

• 1:46:48Bill Simmons?

  He played over thirteen hundred minutes in college. It's like impossible.

• 1:46:52Speaker 03

  Nick Saban used to do to the running back, to the running backs in Alabama.

• 1:46:56Speaker 02

  Travis.

• 1:46:57Bill Simmons?

  Doesn't come out of games. I don't remember college basketball players, this being like part of the appeal is I don't come out like the way we would have centers forty years ago. Good shooter. You, you seem to think, Kyle, you thought he could be a little initiated in the offency.

• 1:47:12Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:12Bill Simmons?

  In the right system, right? Yeah.

• 1:47:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, he transferred up from Division Two. I think it was Northwest Missouri State and they just kicked ass and his coach Ben McCollum and they just leveled up together. Went to Drake, kicked ass, won in the tournament, leveled up to Iowa, kicked ass, and he just carried a gigantic pick and roll load. I just kind of feel like Sturts, when he gets in the NBA, is going to be like, you mean, somebody else could handle the ball for a little, like?

• 1:47:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, what am I gonna do?

• 1:47:40Speaker 02

  I could like catch and shoot it.

• 1:47:41Speaker 03

  And shoot it?

• 1:47:43Speaker 02

  That's okay?

• 1:47:44Speaker 03

  I love this.

• 1:47:44Speaker 02

  You know, I, I just think that, that that's going to be a nice breath of fresh air, but he fit, he grew up an Oklahoma City fan, if I'm not mistaken, he's a Midwest kid and

• 1:47:53Bill Simmons?

  Classic Preston.

• 1:47:55Speaker 02

  He fits their profile.

• 1:47:56Bill Simmons?

  This kid will love it here. He won't complain once. He has one of those haircuts from like the late fifties, not early fifties, late fifties.

• 1:48:04Speaker 02

  Real big chin haircut, yeah.

• 1:48:06Bill Simmons?

  He went to his uncle's, uncle's barber shop and he got like a little, but I thought that was a really nice one. It was right around, again, this goes back to the problem with talking about this draft. It was right around where he was supposed to go. You could call out the picks in real time as they were happening for the first, I don't know, fifteen, sixteen and, and probably be right most of the time. So yeah, so House, do you feel like a?

• 1:48:30Bill Simmons?

  Think Wemby's losing sweep over this Maripack or no?

• 1:48:32Speaker 02

  Absolutely not. He's like, oh, another Oklahoma City chump that I'm gonna put into my French fry machine and, and, and slice him up.

• 1:48:44Bill Simmons?

  He was like, you should have, should have gotten a PED's dealer for Chet Holmgren. Should drafted that because I'm just gonna run all over him again. Um, all right. So before we go on winners and losers, this is a day after the, uh, oh, wait, I had one more thing. What was your favorite pick after like last 12 picks of the draft, Kyle? Just for a team and matchup. Cause, uh, some people like the Lakers, that guy they got from Baylor.

• 1:49:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Carr is a good, he's awesome. He's a good fit with them because I think that that's the right, it's the right environment for him. They'll be able to bring him along slowly and he's going to get the types of shots that are going to be good for him. Luke is just gonna, you know, baby bird feed him the types of looks that'll be good for him. You know, I said, I like the acquaintance pick. Um, other than that, I mean, uh, Josh Jefferson is a good player. You know, that of course, that's another sort of dubious shooter that, uh, that Brooklyn picked up. Alex Caravan's a good add for, I just actually just now noticed that Sacramento is going to be, if you want to add two culture guys that are going to, you know, maybe start to shift some of the vibe in Sacramento. Caravan's another dude

• 1:49:53Speaker 02

  who, that's the last place I would have thought he would have ended up, but you know, guy played for UConn, one, and I'm really, really winning player. Um, so yeah, here we go.

• 1:50:02Bill Simmons?

  Maybe things are changing. House, where do you think Hugo would have gone in this draft? Hugo Gonzalez, I call him Hugo. Where do you think Hugo goes in the draft?

• 1:50:10Speaker 03

  Second round.

• 1:50:12Bill Simmons?

  House, where do you think Hugo would have gone? No, in all seriousness, where does he go? He's 20 years old.

• 1:50:20Speaker 03

  Which version of, if he had come into this draft as the player that he is right now?

• 1:50:24Bill Simmons?

  For a year, there's a new rule. He gets to reclassify and go back in the draft and get drafted by someone else.

• 1:50:30Speaker 03

  Uh, top 15. I don't know that I would.

• 1:50:34Bill Simmons?

  Oh, thanks, House. Top 15?

• 1:50:36Speaker 03

  I would have him much higher than, yeah, like.

• 1:50:39Speaker 02

  I think that's fair.

• 1:50:41Bill Simmons?

  I think he would have been around Yaxle, honestly. Listen.

• 1:50:44Speaker 03

  That's top 15.

• 1:50:45Bill Simmons?

  The national media is having, the, the national basketball fans having a lot of fun about Hugo potentially being the deal breaker for the honest thing.

• 1:50:53Speaker 02

  Is that what this is about?

• 1:50:54Speaker 03

  It is funny.

• 1:50:56Bill Simmons?

  I'm just telling you, they value him like he would have been in the top 12 of that draft.

• 1:51:00Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:51:01Bill Simmons?

  And the thing is, here's the thing, and I don't know if I said this strongly enough yesterday, like, they made one offer two weeks ago. And it was, you know, Jalen and two picks. Did it, was it a firm offer? Was it, we'd probably do this? I don't know what they said. They never made another offer. And I think the Bucks were waiting for them to circle back and they just, they were like, eh, I don't know. It almost made me wonder if they had buyer's remorse after they made the first offer. Where like a day later, like, fuck, why did we do that? And then Milwaukee's like, hey, still waiting on that next offer. And like, yeah, uh, maybe tomorrow. And they just like, never, they never made another offer. So I don't know how badly they wanted Giannis, but I'll tell you this, though, a day later, I'm, I'm, I'm actually really relieved that that didn't happen.

• 1:51:46Bill Simmons?

  Now, we have to figure out the Jalen Brown part, which I think is gonna be for an interesting ride this summer. How do you think it plays out, House?

• 1:51:54Speaker 03

  I think it's completely solvable. I, I don't know why. I think that, um, if they all say the right thing to do is to bring the team back together and we're gonna go in and we're, we're all together on this, uh, effort, then that's it. The, you know, Jalen can come in and they'll do a team meeting. Like, tho- those guys won a championship together. And I think that like, you know, it's business that's happening around them on the outside. But I think inside that locker room, uh, JB and, and, and Tatum, like, they, they carry weight. And if those two guys, that the most important thing is, are those two guys on the same page? Does it seem like whatever?

• 1:52:35Bill Simmons?

  They're both in France right now.

• 1:52:36Speaker 03

  So there we go. All right.

• 1:52:37Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if they're together. At all. Go find a bottle of Bordeaux together.

• 1:52:43Speaker 03

  Are you okay with that, Bill? I mean, they're in France. What if they're picking out clothes? Is that it was a problem with AJ? I'm just wondering.

• 1:52:49Bill Simmons?

  I just didn't know if AJ had to fly to France to get a suit.

• 1:52:54Bill Simmons?

  Now, the thing with those guys, I think a lot of the times the problems with the NBA is it's not the two guys. It's the people around each guy. That becomes a problem.

• 1:53:03Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:53:04Bill Simmons?

  And, you know, you have somebody like House in my life being like, I can't believe ESPN did that. It's fucking assholes. I'm like, yeah, they're fucking assholes.

• 1:53:14Speaker 03

  You just need me for that.

• 1:53:15Bill Simmons?

  No, I didn't. They actually were assholes. I actually didn't need House for that.

• 1:53:20Bill Simmons?

  But, yeah, I was thinking about the maddest I've ever been at somebody I worked with where I still had to do my job. But it was definitely after I got suspended for three weeks, two without pay. And then I had to go back and start writing my, uh, my column again and do Grantland Basketball Hour. And you know what? Like, I sucked it up and did my job, but that's what Jaylen Brown's gonna have to do because he's making 57 million a year. So I'm sure his feelings are hurt, but what's he gonna do? He's getting paid to play basketball and he was in a trade and he's gonna have to figure it out. Now, the bigger question for me is, do the Celtics think it's salvageable? And what happened over the last six weeks that made them think that they should pursue a trade with Jalen in it in the first place? So only they know that. Uh, we did have a last poll, House, for the Netflix audience.

• 1:54:04Speaker 03

  Listening.

• 1:54:06Bill Simmons?

  Who is the most likely to end up in my will? And the choices were Hugos, Con Knipple, or Joe House? And Con won 62%.

• 1:54:16Speaker 03

  Of course. I was hoping all three of us might make it. Why can't all of us get a little something?

• 1:54:22Speaker 02

  Cool. 33.33.

• 1:54:23Bill Simmons?

  Maybe, maybe that's how I'll split it up. I'll split it up by the results of Netflix poll.

• 1:54:27Speaker 03

  Feels fair.

• 1:54:28Bill Simmons?

  Listen, Con and I have to work on our German this summer. We're gonna have a very busy, busy summer.

• 1:54:33Speaker 03

  Put him in the car.

• 1:54:34Bill Simmons?

  Two German teammates. I wanted to be prepared.

• 1:54:36Speaker 03

  Drive him around LA, you know.

• 1:54:38Bill Simmons?

  He's gotta learn about sauerkraut. What are the, some of the good German food suggestions? Strudel?

• 1:54:43Speaker 03

  German food is the sausages and the, yeah, spätzle.

• 1:54:49Speaker 03

  It's like, it's very heavy. It's good fall food.

• 1:54:52Bill Simmons?

  Well, we've ordered, there's a good German place near us that we've ordered, Wursthaus.

• 1:54:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 1:54:59Bill Simmons?

  It's good, but you feel sick for like two hours after. That's why they have to drink the dark beer. Cause the key is to make yourself feel even worse.

• 1:55:06Speaker 03

  Sill your stomach.

• 1:55:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you, the food is heavy and it's like, let's, what can we add to this?

• 1:55:11Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm German. We're a brooding vice-driven people. We want to sit around and you know, that's what we want to do.

• 1:55:17Speaker 03

  What's your favorite German food?

• 1:55:19Bill Simmons?

  House, you're last in the poll. You're 18% right now.

• 1:55:22Speaker 02

  I don't have one.

• 1:55:23Bill Simmons?

  Ahead of you two at 20.

• 1:55:24Speaker 03

  I got cut out of the will. Sons of bitches.

• 1:55:28Bill Simmons?

  So I should have said that. I was gonna at least leave you some of the uncuts.

• 1:55:31Speaker 02

  Carpool con.

• 1:55:32Bill Simmons?

  Uncut sheets of my action in my attic. Um, all right, Kyle, any last thoughts?

• 1:55:39Speaker 02

  Oh man, I mean, we covered a lot there.

• 1:55:41Bill Simmons?

  I think that draft, I think that draft from a talent standpoint was an A and from an entertainment standpoint, probably a, a C minus.

• 1:55:49Speaker 02

  Little uneventful. Yeah. Wasn't a, yeah, we got the lake of argument. Be interesting to see what went on with that. I mean, I didn't get to monitor the social media as much as those writing as it went, but um, takeaway here, I mean, all, like we've said, all three, these top three teams could come away happy. I really think that's a distinct possibility. I don't know that we're going to have a secretary at Gap. We might, but I'd be surprised.

• 1:56:10Bill Simmons?

  House, last thoughts, other than AJ DeBansa, is that on your team?

• 1:56:13Speaker 03

  I want to find a young aspiring writer that we can do running diaries with, bring back the running diary, but I don't want to have anything to do with it by name. I don't want you to have anything to do with it and I want J K M there. There were amazing, amazing jokes to be made about many aspects of what we observed tonight.

• 1:56:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:33Speaker 03

  There were lots of things that we saw.

• 1:56:36Speaker 02

  Texts. Yeah.

• 1:56:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there was some texts.

• 1:56:38Speaker 03

  There was like the, the sitting down in the living room thing had a ton. There was some very interesting family dynamics. Uh, so there was, there was like, you know, unexpected relationships.

• 1:56:51Bill Simmons?

  Random aging cameos.

• 1:56:52Speaker 03

  That was, it was, I, I.

• 1:56:54Bill Simmons?

  There was the ESPN cameraman just honing in on the guys who hadn't gotten picked at. It's like, hey, it's filing and just.

• 1:57:01Speaker 03

  Get out of his face.

• 1:57:02Speaker 02

  That's a tradition though.

• 1:57:03Bill Simmons?

  Are you sad? Do you feel sad yet?

• 1:57:06Speaker 03

  Where the tears, show me the tears, kid.

• 1:57:09Bill Simmons?

  He's gonna add five people on the booth, which would have driven me crazy.

• 1:57:12Speaker 03

  See, that's, we need a, we need a burner diary. That's, that's my takeaway, because we can't have anything to do with it anymore. We can't make the jokes we used to make.

• 1:57:21Bill Simmons?

  I think you're right. Well, I'm sorry you lost in the pole house.

• 1:57:26Bill Simmons?

  Kyle, man, great to see you. Great work on the draft. I thought it was one of your best ones. Joe House, congrats on the whiz. Great as always. Thanks to everybody at Netflix. Thanks to Kahau and Eduardo and Jack and Chris as well for helping out with the live stream.

• 1:57:42Bill Simmons?

  Guess what? I'm not gonna have a podcast on Thursday, House. Do you know why?

• 1:57:47Speaker 03

  Are you going to Hawaii?

• 1:57:48Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm getting a colonoscopy, finally.

• 1:57:52Speaker 03

  Thank God.

• 1:57:54Bill Simmons?

  I'm doing it.

• 1:57:55Speaker 03

  You have no idea.

• 1:57:57Bill Simmons?

  I know.

• 1:57:58Speaker 03

  You're gonna be, you're gonna come out, when they wake you up, you're gonna be like, oh, no, no, no, no, just put me back, let me sleep for another hour.

• 1:58:05Bill Simmons?

  Give me more of the special.

• 1:58:07Speaker 03

  It's incredible. It's the best. I, I mean, if, if, if, I wish I had a colonoscopy on Thursday. Maybe I'll sign myself up for one. It's the best snap.

• 1:58:17Bill Simmons?

  That's the lesson at the end of this two hour podcast. Take care of yourself.

• 1:58:19Speaker 03

  Take care of yourself.

• 1:58:21Bill Simmons?

  I take care of myself in all these different ways and for whatever reason, this was the one thing I hadn't done. So I'm doing it on Thursday. No, uh, new rewatchables on Thursday, though. We have the Good Sun going up and then I'll be back on Sunday with a-

• 1:58:32Speaker 03

  The Good Sun and the Good Butthole.

• 1:58:33Bill Simmons?

  Brand new live show.

• 1:58:34Speaker 03

  Great job by you.

• 1:58:35Bill Simmons?

  Only way I will do a podcast before Sunday is if there's some sort of Jalen Brown trade. Even if it's right after the colonoscopy, I'm coming on. I don't care if I'm drugged up.

• 1:58:43Speaker 03

  That's the pod I want.

• 1:58:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, post-colonoscopy Jalen Brown trade pod.

• 1:58:48Speaker 03

  The drugs are good.

• 1:58:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. All right, Kyle, House, thank you. Thanks, everybody at Netflix, and I'll see you on Sunday.

• 1:59:00Bill Simmons?

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• 1:59:42Bill Simmons?

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