The NBA Mega-Redraftables (2012 and 2013 Combined) With J. Kyle Mann and Joe House. Plus: Portland vs. “El Cheapo” for the Blazers With Justin Verrier.

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by J. Kyle Mann and Joe House to have a mega redraft of the 2012 and 2013 NBA draft classes. Then, Justin Verrier joins the pod to break down the standoff between Trail Blazers owner Tom Dundon and the city of Portland. (0:00) Intro (2:36) NBA 2012 and 2013 mega redraft (01:33:52) Trail Blazers vs. Portland Host: Bill Simmons Guests: J. Kyle Mann, Joe House, and Justin Verrier Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo SAP GROW. AI cloud ERP for any size business. SUPER TROOPERS 3, only in theaters August 7. Get tickets MEOW! https://www.searchlightpictures.com/super-troopers-3#get-tickets 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

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by PayPal. The holiday rush is coming and you can get ahead of it with PayPal. Shop your favorite online stores with PayPal this season like eBay for collectibles, Fanatics for teen gear, Walmart for tech. Check out the flexibility to pay now or pay later and split your payments with Pay in four with no interest, no late fees. Shop now with PayPal. Paying for subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com slash paying for PayPal, Inc., NMLS 910457.

• 0:39Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network where I have new rewatchables coming on Monday. Kyle Brandt and I did Karate Kid 2. A way better movie than I think it gets credit for, but more importantly, the gateway for us being able to do Karate Kid 3 later in the year, which is the funniest movie of the 1980s whenever it came out. I think it was late 80s. Karate Kid 2, you can watch that Netflix. You can also watch Speed on Netflix in August. And that's important because the next rewatchables will be the re-speed. Speed was one of the first episodes we ever did on the rewatchables. We had four people and I think it was less than an hour, so we needed to redo this. We blew out Speed. It's the OG crew, me, Sean Finnis and Chris Ryan.

• 1:23Bill Simmons?

  So that's a week away and you can watch Speed anytime you want. Coming up on this podcast, it's evergreen content time. What the hell else is going on other than the baseball trade deadline? I have been watching a lot of Red Sox. I've been enjoying the Red Sox, but really nothing's going on. So it's the perfect time for the first time ever NBA redraftables. We combined two drafts and we had a mega draft of 2012 and 2013. That's with me and Jay Kyle Mann and Joe House. And then I brought in Justin Barrier for a very special one question mailbag segment about the Portland Trailblazers who are in flux all of a sudden in Portland. We're going to explain what's going on there and how El Chepo factors in to all this. That's all next.

• 2:07Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna take a break and our friends from Pearl Jam. This episode is brought to you by SAP. Hello, midsize business. We see your big ambitions, but how do you achieve the wins you want when your technology is holding you back? Hmm, I wonder. Well, how about SAP Grow? It's built to grow with your business no matter its size. With AI embedded at its core, working across every system, all ready to go from day one so you can hit the ground running. Bring it with SAP Grow, AI Cloud ERP for any size business.

• 3:09Bill Simmons?

  All right, we have done some redraftables on the Bill Simmons Podcast. We have done everything from 1997 through 2011. We did a couple other ones as well, 18. We did the COVID draft, 20. You can find a lot of these on the Book of Basketball Podcast as well. We have never combined two drafts. And Joe House is here and Kyle Mann is here and we are combining the 2012 and 2013 NBA drafts because both of them are terrible. And even when you combine them together, you get only six all NBA guys. You only get three guys who made my top 100 revised pyramid that nobody's seen but me and House. Only nine guys won a title, but four of them were KCP, Azili, Crowder and Snell.

• 3:54Bill Simmons?

  You have some iconic busts. You have two of the three worst drafts of the 21st century back to back. You have 14 guys who played a combined 20K minutes. You had 20 guys who started 400 plus games. And really, House, the only major thing of this was the last draft diary ever was 2012. And then I was on the broadcast in 2013.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Wow, that's right, 2013.

• 4:19Bill Simmons?

  And you were in the 2012 draft diary. You and Jacoby watch it with me. You were the peanut gallery. My mom came over halfway through the draft with meatballs and rigatoni and all this stuff.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  And the writing, like, can you chart the writing getting like sleepier?

• 4:35Bill Simmons?

  No, because I was smart enough not to eat until after I finished the diary. House was not. You can kind of see House dying during the diary. Yeah, House just started eating and that was it. Anyway, Kyle, why do drafts not work? What if you had to give one reason why we have a bad draft? Would you say it's just bad luck with talent? Is there a cluster theory that all of these guys are moving up the ladder and playing together and just not getting better because the other guys aren't that good? Is it situation? What is it in your opinion?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I honestly, it's probably just the wrong people were having sex 19 years prior at the, honestly, at the end of the day, you were talking about the guys. For as bad as it is, I mean, we have two guys by my count that made the NBA's top 75.

• 5:26Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  And then in other drafts, I mean, 09 had Harden and Curry. 84 had Hakeem, MJ Barkley, Stockton. 96 had Kobe Nash, Ray Allen, Iverson. So, I mean, it is kind of crazy that we got that. And then also just the incredible defensive talent that came into the league during these two drafts. I mean, with AD, with Draymond Green, with Rudy Gobert. So, you know, is it deep? Absolutely not. My first order of business was just huge cutting of the chaff of the field. I was like, all right, only these guys are draftable, period. And I just kind of went from there.

• 6:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I remember. So I did TV for the 2013 one and my favorite player was Oladipo who went second. But when you go through 2013, it's probably the bustiest other than the drug draft in 1986. It's the bustiest you're going to get. Anthony Bennett goes first, which if you go on YouTube, I screamed out whoa twice, not knowing my mic was on, but it was just so stupefying because they already had a power forward, they Tristan Thompson. And then they took Bennett who played the same position. You're going to play him at small forward too. He was, he had been in college for a year. It was nuts. He went first to Cleveland. Oladipo second Orlando. Joe House's Wizards took Otto Porter. Cody Zeller four to Charlotte.

• 6:49Bill Simmons?

  Alex Lynn five. Nerlens Noel dropped to six. He was supposed to go first, all the way down to New Orleans, got traded to Philly. Ben McLemore seven. Katavious Caldwell-Pope eight, who's the second best player I've mentioned. Trey Burke nine and then CJ McCollum 10. House, an all-timer, although you had Otto Porter stock for a while.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, he ended up being a good role player and he's still in the league, right? Isn't he a mentor on one of these teams or is he? Some capacity, I'm sure he's around the, he's not playing.

• 7:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't think he's playing. So that one, and then that one gets better later, which we'll cover. The other one was just your standard bad draft where Davis goes one to New Orleans, Kid Gocrest two to Charlotte, Bradley Beal three to Washington. And then it goes Dion Waiters, Thomas Robinson back to back. Dame Lillard six. Harrison Barnes, Terrence Ross, Andre Drummond, Austin Rivers, Myers Leonard, Jeremy Lamb. And you're like, oh, when are the good guys coming? Kendall Marshall, John Henson, Mo Harkless, Royce White, Tyler Zeller, Terrence Jones, Andre Nick, Andrew Nicholson? That's our top 19, Kyle. I don't know what our draft guide would have looked back then, but it really, really gruesome.

• 8:08Bill Simmons?

  And I remember the Celtics had 21 and 22. And I was rooting for Jared Selinger to fall to them at 21, which he did, but he had bad back issues. And then they took Fab Melo, the 22nd pick, who played a total of six games in the NBA. And was a center who averaged, yeah, and a center who averaged less than six rebounds a game in college. So, so these two drafts together, House, you remember it more for Giannis and AD and Dame or for all the busts?

• 8:39Speaker 01

  I mean, it's, it was, it's very busty. The true recollection for me going through this exercise of looking at the players or whatever, didn't feel like at the time, there was, I mean, Anthony Davis was humongous at, at the moment. And then he, he delivered, but otherwise it was just a lot of oddity. Upon reflection, I'm impressed by the defense out of these two classes combined. And that's the best sort of attribute out of all of it, in my humble opinion.

• 9:14Bill Simmons?

  And some three and D guys as well. It's right as the league's shifting too. We're not sure what we want.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 9:22Bill Simmons?

  Right. This is 2012, 13 Curry takes off in the 13 playoffs, basically. And during that season, then next year it goes even up a level. But this is right where, I mean, I gotta be honest, I love Thomas Robinson in that 2012 draft. To me, it was like, oh, he's a power forward banger who can shoot a little bit. But those type of guys just don't exist anymore, Kyle. These six, eight guys who can't really shoot. They're not great rebounders. It's like, what are they? But for some reason they made sense before this decade.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  I guess in one sense you could, you could say that the analytics movement, which was getting, it had begun, it was getting ready to really explode and be driven by the tectonic kind of shift of the Curry era kicking off, kind of in form. And I think analytics started to inform archetypes of players that we just would never get taken there. Like an energy big like a Thomas Robinson, just absolutely, there's no way. The analytics hate those types of players. I was going to bring up that the 20, I don't want to move on from the 2013 broadcast because you were right. You had a ton of wins on that broadcast.

• 10:28Bill Simmons?

  I did. I had a good, I had a good telecast.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  History, people should just re-watch it because it's entertaining. There's, you gotta scrub through because it's a long thing. But there were a couple of moments where there was a point in the draft, or I guess it was between six and 10. And the only thing on the board, similar to this year's draft, where it was like implied that you should take a guard at that spot. And you mentioned that all the teams in that, in that range all have guards, you know? It's like, well, I don't think that they, and Jay Billis comes at you and says like, well, if they're the best player available, don't you think that they should take, take them if they're a guard? And I cannot imagine a more perfect comedic behind the back alley pass to you at that moment than a chance to dunk on David Kahn, because you did not miss a beat. You were like, ah, that got David Kahn fired. There are just so many good moments in that broadcast.

• 11:17Bill Simmons?

  I mean, it was, it was such a train wreck as it was happening. And it was also David Stern's last draft, which was the other thing. But it was, you know, and Jalen and I did the interview stuff that year. We interviewed all those guys and that made us feel worse about the draft, not better. Joe House was very prominent during this 12, 13 range for a different reason.

• 11:40Bill Simmons?

  This is about a conspiracy bill. I don't know if we want to bring him in. You want to come in?

• 11:46Bill Simmons?

  There were some interesting lottery results all in a row here.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Now we're talking.

• 11:53Bill Simmons?

  The decision happens in 2010, after the draft, after 2010 draft. 2011 draft, which we covered Cleveland, who had lost LeBron.

• 12:06Bill Simmons?

  They got the number one pick. 2012, New Orleans, which was owned by the league. Lockout ends, they have to trade Chris Paul. They trade him to the Lakers and falls through. They have to do this Clippers deal instead, which.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Well, it didn't fall through.

• 12:25Bill Simmons?

  It's turned back to, he blocked his own people.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  For basketball reasons.

• 12:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, basketball.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  The legendary, he had, he had basketball reasons.

• 12:32Bill Simmons?

  So they take this Clippers thing, which people at the time felt like wasn't as good of a trade. I liked the Clippers trade a little more, but whatever. And then they're trying to sell the team and I, I'm pretty sure they sold it before the draft.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  They did. And then it was, it was to the Benson family. This is true. That's what happened.

• 12:51Bill Simmons?

  And then they got Anthony Davis.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  They, they did.

• 12:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  They got the number one pick in the, wait a minute. The number one pick in the draft.

• 13:00Bill Simmons?

  They did. It was just an amazing how it worked out. Meanwhile, Charlotte was like minus three and 63 in the lockout season. Like, I think that's about negative, negative wins. 2013, who wins the lottery?

• 13:17Bill Simmons?

  The Cleveland Cavaliers.

• 13:21Bill Simmons?

  2014, who wins the lottery?

• 13:26Bill Simmons?

  Cleveland Cavaliers.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  A lot of wins.

• 13:29Bill Simmons?

  Who goes back to Cleveland two weeks after 2014 draft? LeBron James. What do they do with the first pick that they just got, which was Andrew Wiggins? They traded for Kevin Love. I'm just saying, there was a lot of conspiracy talk on phone calls with House and I during this stretch. It's just felt like the result always favored what the league would have wanted. I think would be a way to.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  The best outcome for the league.

• 13:57Bill Simmons?

  Best outcome.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 13:58Bill Simmons?

  For the league over and over again. I would argue Anthony Davis going to Charlotte probably in 2012 probably would have been a better outcome than him going to New Orleans. And even if you look at the, the two that you, Washington had three. I think Davis going to Washington would have been better for you too, right? You end up with Bradley Beal, which was, I think for the most part, a really good pick, especially when you consider what this draft was, but.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  But Wall and Davis. Yeah, that's, that's, that's what would have been amazing, though. Two Kentucky guys.

• 14:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  You know, Wall came in in 2010 and then Davis shortly thereafter. And that was the run that propelled Washington into, you know, hey, we make, we're making the playoffs a handful of years in a row. That's neato.

• 14:48Bill Simmons?

  Kyle, another thing that I loved about looking back at these drafts, and we talked about it when we all did the, the post draft podcast on this feed after the 2026 draft. The era when teams just made terrible decisions with the draft. Like really horrible, where they were just, they had a power forward already. They would just double up with another one. They would take the wrong guard over a guard that goes, you know, four picks later, who's much better. They would take guys who clearly weren't ready for the NBA and put them in the worst possible city. I gotta say, going through all this stuff, it really made me nostalgic for an era when nobody knew what they were doing. Right? Could you feel that as you went through it?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Definitely, definitely. I mean, like Alex Lynn, there's some, there's some pretty painful ones. I, I noted too, that, you know, Cody Zeller, which he was okay, but I had this written down.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Let's see in 20, because I charted this for another project I did in 2011, 12 in the league. There were 68 guys in the league that were over 610 and weighed over 250 pounds. And by 22, 23, that number had dropped to 36. So the, so the, the type of bodies in the NBA were really starting to change because of the pace and the space movement. And you just, you're just not going to see a Zeller or that type of guy get taken in the top five. So, I mean, that's, that's part of it. But yeah, you, you just, you just don't see that anymore. And even Kate Gilchrist, I don't even know that he would, would go number two today just because of the shoot, the way the shooting issues are. It's just not as, it's like they just didn't see the movement coming at all, you know?

• 16:25Bill Simmons?

  I like Kid Gocrest heading into that draft and so did House. We thought he could be like this kind of monster defensive something. And it's like this, if he could ever learn how to sort of shoot, it was going to be a bonus. But I, I do feel like, now he had some injuries, he had some stuff happen. I think he had some bad luck, but I don't know. I, I thought that was either him or Beal was a really good argument for the two versus the three that year. But you mentioned the white guys and the, and the big guys. So in 2013, Zeller goes four, Len goes five and Noel goes six. And the Noel thing was a big deal at the time. And I talked about it when I did the telecast because he was going to go one and maybe, maybe two.

• 17:10Bill Simmons?

  It seemed inconceivable he's going to drop out. And after Phoenix passed him up for Len, it was like an official, what is going on? Like, is there some injury we don't know about? This ended up being the, Philly took Michael Carter Williams 11th and then traded Drew Holiday for the Noel pick and another pick with New Orleans and officially started the process, which is now, by the way, guys, done full circle. We are now at the end of the process with the LeBron signing. This is it. The first, first day of the process was 2013. The end of it was when they got LeBron. So that was weird. And then we had this Yanis element to the, to the draft, which I've talked about on a bunch of pods before that he, you know,

• 17:53Bill Simmons?

  he was, first of all, he was three inches shorter than he ended up being. He was 6'9" and just seemed like little T Mac-ish. A whiff of Kevin Durant, crazy athlete, but you're also watching these videos of him playing in, in, in Greece and these weird places. And he always seemed like five years older than everyone he was playing against. And I remember Fran Fraschella was the foreign draft pick analyst at that point. And was, was bullish on him, but nobody was like, this guy's going to be amazing. Milwaukee takes him and the rest is history. Not only was he immediately like, oh, there's something here, but then he grew. And once he grew to seven feet.

• 18:36Bill Simmons?

  So Kyle, if he's seven feet heading into this draft, is he the first pick? Is he the second pick? What is he?

• 18:46Speaker 01

  I don't know. I don't know if it's would. Would it be that much different really? I mean, was it that he I'm forgetting the timeline here. Was he? Did he come to the combine and he measured shorter than they had claimed?

• 18:56Bill Simmons?

  Oh, he was shorter. He was 6'9". And so the feeling was like he was going to be this perimeter, really athletic, like scoring, you know, and that's why all of these like best case scenario names are being thrown around, but nobody kind of really knew what he was. Didn't seem like he could shoot, but seemed like he had this up and down, crazy up and down. He was a good passer. He was athletic. So there was something there, which is when we did the draft, we thought he was going to be somewhere between 12 and like 16, which is where he ended up. But him growing was, I think, one of the biggest things. One guy I really liked in the draft is Ben McLemore, who just had all the prototypes, but was a classic, couldn't handle it off the court.

• 19:40Bill Simmons?

  And then Gobert was 27th House, one of your favorites, and came out of the stands to shake David Stern's hand, if my memory of that.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  I remember that. Yeah, that was really fun.

• 19:53Bill Simmons?

  It was kind of the era when all of a sudden guys started doing that if they weren't invited in the green room. And Denver gets him and immediately trades him to Utah for the 46 pick in cash.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  They didn't have him very high on their board.

• 20:08Bill Simmons?

  Tough one.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Apparently not.

• 20:10Bill Simmons?

  So that was the big one from Gobert was the big later guy from that draft. And then 2012, Draymond ended up being the guy who fell out of the first round. And that one was weird. I gotta be honest, that one was weird as it was happening. Cause we had watched him in college and he was just an excellent college player and was clearly something. Golden State, he falls to 35. It's in and Golden State takes him. They look like geniuses, right? Well, they passed him up at 30 and took Festus Ezeli.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  They didn't know. And even the stuff that he was known for in college, he didn't that. He reinvented himself in a way where it's just like perfect place, perfect time, and it just clicked. I mean, to he deserves all the credit for being a brilliant. We can get into that more later. But yeah, even the stuff that he he was a back to the basket, like crafty big in college, you know?

• 21:01Bill Simmons?

  And heavy. He had a lot of weight to him that he kind of shed. Yeah, look, this is the Patriots took Tom Brady in the sixth round. I was like, what a pick. They also passed on him in the fourth round and the fifth round.

• 21:14Bill Simmons?

  That Jay Crowder was the other one from that draft who went right before him at 34, which was another one where it was like, wow, that feels a little late. But that's what happens when you're taking Bob Mello. I remember at Grantland, we had Grantland that year for the 2012 draft. It's a lot of Perry Jones people at Grantland. We, we, we, he had a lot of stock and it was like crypto in 2019. It just completely fell apart. But that was when OKC took him. It was like, oh, that's an interesting one. But in retrospect, they could have easily just taken Draymond at they were picking 28th with, you know, coming off the finals. That would have been a fascinating pick. Any House, any other things you want to hit before we hit the the mega draft?

• 21:59Speaker 01

  No, I am glad that we combined these two drafts so that we can get to 10 good players.

• 22:06Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Can I ask a question? Or just a quick, a quick sliding doors thing? What happens if Cleveland doesn't screw up that pick? What if they? Cause on the broadcast, you suggested they take Oladipo. Oladipo has an all star peak at one point. What is that? What ripple effect does that have? Cause I'm like, they probably still include him in a trade for Kevin Love, right? I would imagine, because you know, Bennett ends up in that swap with Minnesota. And I'm just like, it probably ends up like a brighter timeline for Minnesota, I guess. But then they do. They get Carl Towns. I just was kind of like working through the because the fact that he wasn't, you know, a glowing prospect at that point made it easier to get off of him so quickly like they did.

• 22:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's, it's. So I'm going back and looking at the Cavs. So that would have been the 2013, 14 Cavs, the year that they got LeBron. I thought I was pretty adamant on every show and all the prep and on the telecast. I couldn't believe Oladipo wasn't the first pick. Cause to me, he only felt, he felt like the only sure thing in the draft. Like he, he was clearly he'd, he was good in college at Indiana. The team was good. He, he was a little castle-ish where it was like, I, I feel like he could, maybe there was, there's more there with him on the ball, but he was a good defensive guard, super athletic. They finished 33 and 49 the next year and got nothing from Bennett.

• 23:32Bill Simmons?

  So you could argue, maybe he would have knocked their pick.

• 23:36Bill Simmons?

  Like, like it wouldn't have been as good. Maybe their record's like a couple wins better. Then they don't get the number one pick, then they're not able to get Kevin Love. But that there is some whatever repercussions, right?

• 23:47Bill Simmons?

  That's, that would be the only thing I said. I thought it was weird. The Bennett thing was nuts. We, we thought Bennett was going to fall heading into the draft, like for real. We thought he was going to fall into the eight to 10 range, which was the reason I did the, the whoa thing. All right, we're going to take a break. During the break, our producers, Gahal and Eduardo, are, we figured out this number system because we're making this draft competitive. We're trying to win this draft. We're going to have people vote on social media. We're going to draft eight guys each from these two drafts and try to put together the best possible team. So this won't necessarily be a traditional redraft. There might be some, oh, I need a center. I gotta, I gotta take so and so here. So when we come back, we're going to do the mega draft.

• 24:33Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures. More than ever, America needs a laugh. Enter the Super Troopers to the rescue. The cult comedy classic returns in the most offensive installment yet with Super Troopers 3, a debaucherous bachelor party, an over the top wedding, a dangerous drug smuggling ring. All of them are threatening the troops' future. Fill your liter of cola and roll up to the multiplex with Super Troopers 3, only in theaters August 7th. Get tickets. Meow.

• 25:03Bill Simmons?

  All right, during the break, we figured out a convoluted way to figure out the draft order. Gahal, it's numbers. We shouted out numbers and miraculously I got the number one pick. House is second.

• 25:15Bill Simmons?

  Jay Kyle.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Weird how the draft order is favoring the hosts of the show.

• 25:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 25:23Bill Simmons?

  But you have snake, snake, you get three and four, Kyle, which is key for this draft. All right. So with the first pick of the 2012, 2013, two draft mega draft. Bill Simmons will select Giannis and Teta Kupo. One of the single most amazing draft stories in the history of the NBA, falls out of the lottery. Philly, who knows they're doing the process, passes on him at 11. And I think it was probably the right move back then. I think if he went 11, we would have been like, what the, he went 11? Jesus.

• 26:02Bill Simmons?

  OKC passes him in 12.

• 26:07Bill Simmons?

  Took Steven Adams instead.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Can you, can you, they had a chance to have Harden, Durant and Westbrook and Giannis.

• 26:14Bill Simmons?

  They still had Harden on the team. They end Westbrook.

• 26:19Bill Simmons?

  They could have just said fuck it.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  One of the greatest one ifs of all time.

• 26:22Bill Simmons?

  Well, they took Adams, which was, I think, the right pick, right? Cause they needed a one more big guy, but Dallas is at 13. Two years removed from winning the title. It was one of those things where the, the articles and stuff after were like, we really liked him. It's like, well, if you liked him, you'd have taken him. They end up trading, doing some convoluted trade, trading back.

• 26:51Bill Simmons?

  Utah's at 14. They pass on him. They take Shabazz Muhammad, which everybody should be fired for that. And Milwaukee takes him at 15. Now, what's interesting is Dallas took Olynyk at 13. Boston traded up

• 27:05Bill Simmons?

  to 13 for Kelly Olynyk and not Giannis, who they could have put with Kevin Garnett and the Paul Pierce and the Ray Allen team. So anyway, and you know, the rest, he's 10 all-star teams, 21 finals MVP, two time MVP, seven times top four, seven all MBAs.

• 27:29Bill Simmons?

  Has only made the conference finals twice, House. Traded to Miami last month.

• 27:40Bill Simmons?

  And then LeBron didn't sign with them.

• 27:45Bill Simmons?

  And Dan Lebatard tried to do a Fanatics conspiracy thing. That was the single most ridiculous thing I've watched on social media this month.

• 27:53Bill Simmons?

  I'm just saying. Okay, Michael Rubin sold the Sixers stake four years ago. Good try. Giannis first, you agree with that comment? Cause you don't have the second pick.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for reminding me of that. Yeah, Giannis probably the best handling big guy of all time, I would say. Best driving big guy of all time, I think is fair to say. Four players have had NBA seasons of over 30 points per game, over 10 rebounds, over five assists at over 60% true shooting, and he did it three consecutive seasons. Embiid is the other one. Yeah, you're just talking about a pretty incredible story about just kind of where he came from. His first rookie deal total was worth 8.6 million. And his current five year deal is at almost $230 million. So yeah, and he deserves it, man. I mean, he's just an incredible, he's an incredible player. When I was revisiting the stats, it was making me be like, man, I mean,

• 28:51Speaker 02

  it was, it definitely made me think like, I should probably go check this Miami thing out a little bit more on a granular level again, because god damn, he's good, man. I mean, it's, it's a simple thing to say, but it's the right thing to say.

• 29:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and you figure he'll have two more. And this was the case, as I was trying to talk myself if Boston got into him. Two more really high level seasons if he's healthy. And then after that, history will say he's going to drop. House, one of the things I was looking at, I was looking at my pyramid, which only you have seen the list,

• 29:19Bill Simmons?

  of the top 25 guys, which Giannis is one of them. And so many of those top 25 guys are just pedigree guys that we would have bet the ceiling of this was top 25, right? If you, if you go through the top 25, Kobe's the first one where if you had said in 96, this 17 year old kid coming out of high school, and you had just said, he is going to be one of the 12 best players of all time. That would have been insane. But he did have the pedigree. He was the number one guy in high school. But then you go through the rest of them. Moses, somebody like Moses was the single biggest high school recruit of the 1970s. Like, everybody was trying to go after him. He ended up going right to the ABA.

• 30:03Bill Simmons?

  Dirk?

• 30:05Bill Simmons?

  I would say is one, and Jokic is the other one. Is Jokic or Giannis more unbelievable to you? Jokic was the 37th pick in 2014. What's a more unbelievable, I can't believe this guy was a finals MVP and is now a top 25 story from you for when you remember them in the draft?

• 30:29Speaker 02

  It's Jokic. And the reason for that, part of the reason for that is, do you remember what he used to look like?

• 30:37Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Freak has always been a freak. And then freak got freakier because he got more muscular and he got taller. But yeah, there was nothing, when you looked at the Joker, to suggest that the career arc that we've all enjoyed. Some people claim that The Ringer enjoys it more than anybody else on planet earth, that there's a lot of Joker love, and I think it's well deserved.

• 31:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  We're weird for that.

• 31:02Bill Simmons?

  Sorry, like awesome basketball.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  But yeah. Just throwing a match on that one. The Joker feels a little less likely. That, that's, that's it.

• 31:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, even if I go through the top 30, you know, like Kawhi, who I think is a top 30 all time guy, and he fell to 15. And that one's a surprising one, because nobody saw the offensive side of him coming the way it did.

• 31:31Bill Simmons?

  But he was still a lot, like Jokic, I think is the right answer. But I think Giannis is second. Even I look at a guy like Barkley. You know, Barkley was a top five lottery pick, was the most famous cut from the 1984 Olympic team, was awesome in college, and was, the only question on him was, is he going to stay in shape? So, yeah, anyway, Giannis is.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  You mentioned, you mentioned something interesting though about the pedigree thing, because in 2012, Anthony Davis was coming off of one of the best American prospect years in history, where he comes out as the number one player, wins every player of the year award in college, gets a gold medal, goes number one. And if you'd said in the next decade, there's going to be a lanky power forward that dominates the NBA and gets, you know, gets an MVP and wins a title. He did end up getting one, but he, he didn't. Giannis had the career, I think, that we thought AD was going to have at the end of the day.

• 32:23Bill Simmons?

  I couldn't agree more. I think out of the last 15 years,

• 32:29Bill Simmons?

  I, I think the two guys I would have bet anything on were Davis and Cooper Flag.

• 32:35Bill Simmons?

  Like, just like, I know those guys are going to be good, but Davis, I remember House and I watching Kentucky that year, and we're just like, holy shit. This guy's like Mikhail crossed with, I don't even know what, but it just seemed like the only way things stopping him was going to be an injury. And if anything, I, I think it's, it's weird, because he's won a title. It's like mildly disappointing, he's not first on this list. I think he's a top 75 guy all time that had top 25 potential halves. And he never got there.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  That's fair and reasonable. I might as well just go ahead and take him right now, since we're talking about him. I am going to take him second overall on this draft. I'm not going out on a limb. He did arrive with the highest pedigree. We did love watching him immensely in college. He was definitely a can't miss. And yet, he's on his fourth team. Now, of course, this was a long time ago when he was drafted, but that, that is, that tells you something, right? Giannis, only one team for his, his career until this most recent trade. I do wonder if some number of years removed, just to finish the thought on Giannis, we'll look back and, and be like, why? Tell me again why Milwaukee had to trade Giannis? Can somebody explain to me why they felt like?

• 33:47Speaker 02

  Because the thing is, he's only 31, Giannis. Now, for sure, you've done the work, the legwork in terms of when do guys of this size tend, tend to fall off? When does, you know, and it's off of a cliff? But that kind of also applies to Anthony Davis potentially, and he's two years older. He's 33.

• 34:06Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  The thing that Davis has going for him, that makes him, it's a no brainer, obviously, for him to be number two. But the all defense stuff was really meaningful. I mean, that, that, that's for him to make that his calling card. Because when he arrived, I thought that the inside outside game was going to be the thing. I thought he might be a prolific scorer. He faced the basket and shot the ball in a way that, that was confident. And, you know, his, his three point shooting, I don't know if the numbers support this. I'm telling you, the eye test, his three point shooting early in his career was excellent, I thought. So, you know, easy pick for me at number two.

• 34:44Bill Simmons?

  I think during the 17, 18 season, when they made the playoffs and upset somebody, I think Portland. But I remember during that year on pods, and I can't remember if I was writing or not, there was like a moment when it seemed like he was becoming the best player in the league during the, basically post all star in 2018. It was like LeBron was in his last Cleveland year and was, he'd missed some games, and he was trying to push them to get traded. And then LeBron took that title back like, like a motherfucker in the playoffs. He was like, no, actually, I'm still the best guy in the league. But I don't ever, like, if you told me in 2012,

• 35:25Bill Simmons?

  Davis is only going to have two top five MVP finishes in his entire career, I would have assumed he had some dramatic major injury. Because he, it just seemed like he was so talented. It seemed inconceivable that he wasn't going to be an MVP, and he never made it. Highest he ever got, he was 2018, he was third in the MVP. And there was that other moment he had in the 2020 playoffs, when it felt like he was going to win finals MVP halfway through that series, right? And they were up 3-1, and I think it was game five. And it was like, if he kicked ass in that game, he was probably going to win finals MVP legitimately. But he wasn't good in that game, and LeBron ended up winning it and had a better series. But he never won defensive player of the year.

• 36:08Bill Simmons?

  His four year peak was 27-11. House, he's played 807 games and missed over 300.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  I mean, there's a reason we've called him every other Davis and it has been, you know,

• 36:22Bill Simmons?

  Now he's on your team.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Coincident with the playoffs. I welcome him with open arms.

• 36:27Bill Simmons?

  I do. This is a situational thing. Like sometimes when we, we all know people with, kids that we like and families that the kids, but and sometimes you, you're like, oh, man, I wish that kid didn't have that mom. I feel like that kid would have had a better chance. You're like, oh, man, that guy, that kid's dad sucks. And I do feel.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  You think that?

• 36:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there's sometimes you're like, ah, I'm not sure how much of a chance these parents are going to allow this kid.

• 36:56Bill Simmons?

  I do feel that way with NBA teams sometimes. Like Davis goes to New Orleans. What's the worst fucking team to go to to New Orleans in 2012? Like you're changing owners. They're owned by the football team. They had more weird injury, medical stuff than just about any team. And, you know, this is a good, put two drinks in barrier and barrier has some good stories about, New Orleans during that time. But yeah, I just feel like if you do his career 50 times, this isn't the worst version of it, but I don't think it's in the upper echelon of what I would have said. All right. Yanis one, Davis two, Kyle Man now on the clock. With two picks in a row, we know who the, the first pick's going to be, but I don't know who the second pick's going to be.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  You could probably know me, guess who it's going to be, but uh, my nerdy ass. Uh, my, my pick is going to, my first pick is going to be Damian Lillard.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Damian Lillard, top 75 all time guy. Um, I think in this era of dribble shooting that kind of changed basketball in the way that we were talking earlier. Was it just shooting? It was ball handler, shooting the ball, changing pick and roll coverages, changing the way bigs need to perform. Lillard just kind of has the misfortune of playing in the same era as Curry because he's just one of the best shooters of all time. He's a winner. Um, I, I'll, I'll go ahead and spoil. I, I kind of had this between these two classes. I had written down like the best moments and the worst moments. And the best moments, I mean, it's hard to argue against Dames. Uh, he's got two series game winners, you know, we, as we talked about before, you know, he put out the thunder and then he put out, uh, he, uh, blanking on it, but he's done it twice now. Um,

• 38:32Bill Simmons?

  It was the thunder twice.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  It, well, it was, uh, Chandler Parsons was guarding him on the first one. And I was thinking, well, that might've been the Grizzlies.

• 38:40Bill Simmons?

  Maybe it was the Rockets. Yeah. Never made a finals, never won a round three game. Western Conference Finals once got swept.

• 38:50Bill Simmons?

  All NBA first team once, second, fourth, third team twice, fourth MVP in 2018, five year peak house, 28, five and seven, 38% from three. I thought it was the right pick.

• 39:06Bill Simmons?

  He's also, there's a chance, and we're going to talk to Barry, or I'm going to talk to Barry later about the Trail Blazers. There's a chance he's Portland's last great player. Like if something bad happens to that franchise, this was their last thing.

• 39:21Bill Simmons?

  I'm just going to read you some highlights from my draft diary because I've got this about as wrong as you can get. I still feel like I had a winning percentage in the draft diary, but um, forgot to mention the Blazers picked Dame sixth.

• 39:35Bill Simmons?

  Because of the Gerald Wallace trade, which might've been the worst trade of the, of the 2010s, all things considered. Brooklyn trading a top three protected pick to Portland for Jared Wallace, who was about to become a free agent. And this was, I killed Billy King over and over again, and he deserved every bit of it. It's, it's like pound for pound, the worst trade of the decade. So they end up getting six. They have to give Damian Lillard that pick to the Blazers. And it, it's like one of the all time, of course, even if it had been a top 10 lottery protected, they're probably doing that. What are you guys doing? Um, but anyway,

• 40:15Bill Simmons?

  I wrote after the pick, we're watching highlights. It's me, House and Jacoby. And I wrote, these are jokes I had. What conference is Damian Lillard from again? Has any top 10 pick ever had more highlights that happened against white people? Is it Weber or Weber? Has anyone ever picked a backup point guard this high? Did they just pick Jared Bayless again? Or am I crazy? Are these highlights from division one games? These are all quotes that I wrote down that one of the three of us said. And then, uh, and then I wrote later, I was saying Broussard was saying how they needed someone to stretch the floor for lower, for Aldridge. And I said, lower can shoot. I might talk myself into this pick by midnight. At the, I need at least two more drinks.

• 40:58Bill Simmons?

  And then Austin Rivers got picked later and I wrote, I'd rather have a 20 year old Rivers than a 22 year old Damian Lillard. Tough, tough draft diary for me and Dame.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Everybody was excited about Austin Rivers pairing with AD though. I mean, to, to be fair, to be fair to you, I, I recall a lot of excitement about that combo.

• 41:19Bill Simmons?

  And I think, and Austin Rivers goes back to what I said about Davis before, like that's just, he went to the wrong franchise. That guy was the best player in high school. And I, I think you end up just, you go down a road and then New Orleans quit on him. And I don't know. I, I, I feel like his, there's another version of his career that's more interesting. But anyway, what did you think of Dame? Do you remember back, back then, Kyle? As a prospect?

• 41:42Speaker 01

  I was, I was working for Zappos.com back then. I just kind of, I was just some dude who liked to talk shit about basketball. I liked him. I mean, you'll hear stories about him that he had like one of the best workouts. The people acted like they saw Christ when they came away from that, that workout where they were like, this is, this guy has it. Um, yeah. I mean, he's, he's an interesting developmental story, you know, Weaver State. I guess he was Mountain West. I'm trying to remember what conference they're in. Anyway, yeah.

• 42:10Bill Simmons?

  I remember going to see him his rookie year and he was going against Chris Paul at his peak. And I had really good seats and Chris Paul just destroyed him for two and a half hours. Sounds like, ah.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  That's what Chris Paul did.

• 42:22Bill Simmons?

  I don't know about this Damian Lillard guy. Yeah. And then it's like, oh, he just went to Chris Paul college. And a couple of years later, he's flipping it on Chris Paul. All right. Now it gets exciting. So we, the, the top three went how we thought, but the fourth pick, there's some good options on the table. Who do you have?

• 42:38Speaker 01

  I'm taking Draymond Green. Yes, I knew you would.

• 42:42Bill Simmons?

  I had him on my board in the fourth spot as well. Okay. Make the case.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  Draymond Green is one of the more interesting, um, we were talking about like a player having a sober sense of who they are. I think he realized what he needed to be in the situation that he was in. Um, he's one of the best screeners. He's an incredible passer. He, he happened to play with, he's a high, high level processor on both ends of the floor. Um, he's been, he had one of the best defensive stretches for any player in the league, starting from like 14, 15 to 2019, the run that he put together. I think he might be one of the best post defenders of all time, one on one. Like he's really difficult to score on.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I just think Draymond's one of the smartest players, uh, one of, one of the smartest players that we've had in, in NBA history, honestly.

• 43:35Bill Simmons?

  I don't have him in my hundred for the pyramid house, but he came closer than the next guy who I think is going to get taken in this. Uh, I did write down the five best non-center defenders ever.

• 43:52Bill Simmons?

  Scottie Pippen house?

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 43:56Bill Simmons?

  Dennis Rodman?

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 44:00Bill Simmons?

  Kawhi Leonard?

• 44:02Speaker 01

  No argument.

• 44:04Bill Simmons?

  Andre Iguodala?

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Interesting. Okay.

• 44:08Bill Simmons?

  Draymond Green?

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Speaks for itself in my opinion.

• 44:12Bill Simmons?

  Would you put Gary, Gary Payton above any of those?

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Probably have, probably have the glove ahead of Iguodala.

• 44:22Bill Simmons?

  That's the spot. I think Draymond is, has to be one of the first four. And Steve Kerr has, it's been interesting. He's, he kind of dances around it because he's always been very pro Pippin. Like extolling his virtues all the time, talking about what an unbelievable defensive player, but he's had a couple of moments where he's like, I think Draymond's might be one of the best, the best defensive perimeter guy ever. He's in the conversation. So I think Kyle, I think that's the right pick. What were you going to say?

• 44:50Speaker 01

  These are, these are different species of defenders though. You're talking about Payton. He's point of attack guy. You're talking about Iguodala and Kawhi. Those are like assignment, switchable, like perimeter score matchup dudes. What's interesting about Draymond is he's not a rim protector, but he's a rim deterrent to a certain level that he doesn't really have to be because he doesn't block a ton of shots. He's like a deflection machine. He just plays middle linebacker better than like hardly any player that I've ever seen. Like he's so, he's so smart. I made a video about this one time. His timing, he could snuff out plays. He had a really incredible discipline about like, I'm going to stay completely still so that this guy doesn't know that I'm about to make a play on the ball.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  And then make a play on the ball at the last possible second. Like he's one of the best ever at that. So I'd say he's a little different to those guys. Just that he guards up the food chain a little more than, than the Pippins and the Iguodala types.

• 45:43Bill Simmons?

  No question. Made a second team, third team all NBA, 2017 defensive player of the year, five first team all defenses. In the playoffs, five year stretch, that incredible five year warrior stretch they had where they, he played 104 playoff games, got suspended famously for one of them. 13, 10 and seven, 3.2 stocks, 38 minutes a game. And, uh, I always thought the 25 game winning streak to start the year. I love winning streaks. As anyone who follows this podcast knows, I love the Miami 27 gamer. I love that 25-0. He, you need somebody like him on the team to win that many games in a row.

• 46:25Bill Simmons?

  He's just a maniac. He's an absolute competitive maniac and sometimes it tilts over the line. And I think it's had real repercussions for them. It had repercussions when he punched LeBron in the balls, did the flick up. It had repercussions when he punched Jordan Poole. It's had, he's gotten dumb technicals in games, but that's just how he's wired. I'm a huge historical Draymond defender. I think he's right on the cusp of being one of the 100 best guys. I couldn't get in there just because we've had almost 80 years of great players at this point, but when you think like, OKC passing on him, then Cleveland passed on him at 33 and 34. And when LeBron came back two years later, he could have already been on the team. So, all right. Kyle has Dame and Draymond. That's a pretty good start.

• 47:10Bill Simmons?

  I'll be really interested to see what House does here at, at five, because two of his least favorite players of the last 15 years are, are on the board.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  I'm dying.

• 47:17Bill Simmons?

  This is gonna be great. I'm so glad House is in this spot. What do you have, House?

• 47:23Speaker 01

  This is gonna come as a surprise in this sense. I actually have come around on this guy.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  What is getting ready to happen? I like Rudy Gobert. I'm a Rudy Gobert fan. I'm coming all, all the way around. Guess how many conference finals?

• 47:42Bill Simmons?

  This is like the Tony Romo DUI video all over again.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  You know the answer. He's played in two Western Conference Finals. You know who else only has two Western Conference Finals? Anthony Davis. Rudy Gobert, eight-time All-Defensive First Team member, four-time Defensive Player of the Year.

• 48:04Bill Simmons?

  Would you say he's the best defensive center of the Steph Curry era? I think you would.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes, I would. I would say that.

• 48:10Bill Simmons?

  I think, I think since, since joking Noah, he's been the best defensive center since.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  I think in a certain sense, Minnesota and Tim Connolly have been vindicated in terms of, you know, that the trade that they made and what it did in terms of propelling Anthony Edwards forward. I do think that there was a role that, that Gobert played there and he's the face of COVID. So of course I'm taking, he's the number one pick in the United States of America. Who announced COVID to America? Rudy fucking Gobert.

• 48:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we had the Rudy Gobert game. Yeah, you're right. Uh, one second team, two third team All-NBA's. In the playoffs, 96 games, he's averaging a 12.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Three third teams, three third teams.

• 48:55Bill Simmons?

  Three third teams.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  He's been All-NBA four times.

• 48:58Bill Simmons?

  In the playoffs, 12 and 10, one and a half blocks a game, 96 games, two conference finals.

• 49:06Bill Simmons?

  So your team right now has Anthony Davis with Rudy Gobert. So you're going size. Jeez.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:15Bill Simmons?

  Not great. What'd you think of that pick, Kyle?

• 49:18Speaker 01

  I mean, Gobert is one of the, he's a great elite

• 49:24Speaker 01

  rim protector for most situations. And I think just the thing that he's run up against in his playoff history is that when you're trying to paint a masterpiece, you just kind of need to iterate one step further than Rudy Gobert because he just is problematic. And AD doesn't have the same issues. Like he, he can't get played off the floor in the same way. He's offensively super challenged. Um, yeah, you mentioned, you mentioned just him as a teammate. He's run into that at different times over his career. I, I had the best moments and worst moments. We've missed, mentioned two of the worst moments for these two classes. Draymond punching Jordan Poole, Gobert touches all the mics right before COVID. The other one is Kelly Olynyk injures Kevin Love. That's the other one I had written down.

• 50:04Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  I rewatched that one. That was brutal. Um, so yeah, that's Gobert. I appreciate him, but I'm not, he wouldn't be somebody I would reach for.

• 50:15Bill Simmons?

  I am up with two picks.

• 50:18Bill Simmons?

  And they're two picks that I actually wrote, this is a great argument and didn't know who should go first. I'm not gonna cop out and just take them together.

• 50:31Bill Simmons?

  And now I'm wavering. Well, I'm gonna end up with both of them anyway. I'm gonna take Bradley Beal with the sixth pick.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 50:39Bill Simmons?

  Might be another, I wish he'd gone to a different franchise guy.

• 50:44Bill Simmons?

  I got to see a few of those Wizards Celtics 2017 playoff games and he didn't shoot well in that playoffs. But I really liked the competitive spirit he had. And I remember talking to House about that after. I think House, did you go to game seven? Did I bring you to that?

• 51:02Speaker 01

  No, I did not go to game seven in Boston.

• 51:04Bill Simmons?

  I just, I thought,

• 51:07Bill Simmons?

  I left that series thinking this guy has a chance to be pretty special. Like he was really comfortable in this game, in this atmosphere. And if anything, the Wizards, I thought, made the mistake, which I talked about at the time of like, the Celtics just weren't guarding John Wall. They were letting him shoot threes. And I actually thought if they had run stuff through Beal, they would have beaten us. That was also the Kelly Olynyk game, which we'll get to later, but um, that kind of turned out to be the peak for him as like a competitive player. He's never made it to round three. He's only played 49 playoff games. His individual peak, he averaged 31 a game and 20 and 21 combined. He's made almost 350 million a year. And uh, my friend Joe House during the draft diary said,

• 51:52Bill Simmons?

  when he got picked third, right player, right spot. It was a very un-Wizard-like pick. We needed a guy who could shoot at the basket and not at his teammates. Was a Joe House joke. Good joke. Really? That's a, that's a really good joke. I wrote, hey now, after I quoted you on the joke.

• 52:11Bill Simmons?

  Look, you pay these guys. Sometimes you know what's gonna happen. And I think that contract ended up being the worst thing that happened to him, unfortunately, but um, there's, feels like there should have been more here, Kyle.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  The arc of how this has gone down for him, you know, some of this has happened, I know, since I've been working at The Ringer where, you know, in the post-John Wall injury wake that we had, he put together a four-season stretch that was pretty incredible. You mentioned that, I mean, overall 27 points, over five assists, 1.3 steals, you know, 35.8% from three, gets to the line a ton. Where it was looking like, okay, this guy, we need to get him, find a way for him to play serious basketball. And he'd signed that huge contract and he had the no trade clause. He had a no trade clause in there as well, right? So that just drags on and on. And uh, it's, I just remember thinking about that. I'm like, this guy's developing and improving, but he's just doing, it's wasteful just because he's in such a bad

• 53:12Speaker 01

  situation. And then the injury stuff starts. So he's kind of had a sad arc. I mean, you know, he'll cry all the way to the bank.

• 53:18Bill Simmons?

  Except financially, yeah.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Wipe his tears with $100 bills, but it has been an odd arc for him.

• 53:23Bill Simmons?

  House, you watched him a lot. He really was like an absolutely high-level elite scorer for years. It's really hard to stop, really inside, outside. Yeah, like just could get 30 basically anytime he wanted. And I think could have been a scorer on a really good team. Just never had the right team. Um, I'm, I'm, I'm appreciate your restraint though, House. I thought you'd be a lot meaner right now.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  No, I, I mean, in terms of this exercise that, that we're doing, I have him lower because what was revealed in my own experience with him was that he couldn't drag winning basketball out of a situation.

• 54:03Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  You know, as soon as John Wall got hurt and you know, the franchise was in disarray because directionally, uh, the owner and the general manager were, were kind of stuck about what was the right thing to do.

• 54:17Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  So they gave him a once in a lifetime contract. We'll never see a contract like that again. The combination of

• 54:23Bill Simmons?

  It was a slow motion car crash. Yeah. We knew when it was happening. It was like,

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:28Bill Simmons?

  You have to do this, but you shouldn't do it, which we, we see in football sometimes too with the quarterbacks.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:33Bill Simmons?

  It's like, ah, I don't want to give this guy 50 million a year, but what am I gonna do?

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Is fine. The no trade is, will never be forgivable.

• 54:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  It will never be, there'll, there'll never be an explanation that makes sense.

• 54:48Bill Simmons?

  I'm taking Chris Middleton with the other pick. I almost took him six. 39th pick in 2012. Went to Milwaukee, played there for a while. His career, like if you go basketball reference, his career is a little better than I even realized that I was always a fan. 2021 NBA champ. He was the go-to scorer on that team. I know Giannis had more points, but when they needed baskets, they ran through Middleton. 2021 playoffs, Kyle, 24, 7 and 6 for Chris Middleton, 44% shooting. He averaged 20 a game for basically five years from 18 to 22 and was,

• 55:27Bill Simmons?

  you know, a good defensive player too, before his body started to break down. I just thought he was a winning player and he proved it because they won the finals with him. So I really did think about him over Beal, but um, I couldn't get there because of the talent of Beal. So anyway, that's

• 55:42Speaker 01

  If you swapped places, if you put Middleton, if you put Beal and Middleton situation, it does make you wonder. And he plays next to a Giannis, who, because he was the perfect archetype of player to play next. Giannis collapses the, you know, the defense and everybody's, you know, freaking out as he drives the ball. Middleton just had this incre, he was one of the best isolation pull-up scorers in the league for two or three years there, you know, and the injury started to catch up with him and age. But man, I think, I honestly feel like people forget kind of how nasty of a scoring bag he had.

• 56:13Bill Simmons?

  People forget, is this a Twitter video? Chris Middleton was a problem.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  You want a gold medal? That's another award I have. A Team USA selection tells you.

• 56:23Bill Simmons?

  I really liked this game. And the Celtics made the 22 finals partly because Middleton was injured in that playoff series. And that was probably the push over the top. All right. I already won the draft, so we're gonna take a break. I have Giannis, Bradley Beal, Chris Middleton. You guys aren't winning. It's over. Uh, we're gonna take a break. Come back with, uh, House has the

• 56:44Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up require compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 57:11Speaker 04

  Stay cozy and look cool with up to 60% off cold weather gear at Nordstrom Rack. Save on cashmere, outerwear, boots, and more from brands like Ugg, Vince, Kohan, and Hunter. Join the Nordy Club for free to unlock exclusive discounts, shop clearance and new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you Rack.

• 57:37Bill Simmons?

  Next pick. All right, House is on the clock. He has Anthony Davis and Rudy Gobert trying to figure out how to play them together. And.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Anthony Davis wants to be out of the pain anyway. I feel great about that.

• 57:51Bill Simmons?

  Are we going to the Patriot League for this next pick?

• 57:55Speaker 01

  You know, I gave that a nice, hard look, and that is one of the things on CJ McCollum's resume that does commend him. But surprisingly, the career of CJ McCollum will outpace the guy that I'm actually gonna take.

• 58:12Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  But the high of this guy, if this poor guy didn't get hurt.

• 58:19Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Was superior to any high that CJ McCollum experienced. And so I'm taking Victor Oladipo.

• 58:27Bill Simmons?

  It was gonna be a question of where he went.

• 58:30Bill Simmons?

  Underrated.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Two-time All-Star.

• 58:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, underrated injury what-if guy.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. The defense is the thing with him especially. Made All-Defensive First Team, led the league in steals, made one All-NBA Third Team, won Most Improved Player, All-Rookie First Team. So like, he came in with that, at that number one, I mean, number two overall pick in the draft, and I think he kind of validated it. Like, he showed us, he did lead a team in scoring in a playoff series. So it just was, you know, never promised, fulfilled because of the injury situation.

• 59:15Bill Simmons?

  2018, 23, 5 and 5, led the league in steals, 37% from 3. So he gets picked by Orlando, OKC ends up stealing him in the Ibaka trade, and then takes him with Sabonis and flips him for Paul George. And Oladipo goes to Indiana and becomes a star. I actually deep, I went on a rabbit hole with the Pacers-Cavs series from 2018. Do you guys remember this series? The round one?

• 59:40Speaker 01

  It went seven, didn't it? Seven games.

• 59:42Bill Simmons?

  Went seven. There's a game five that's on, the last five minutes of it are on YouTube. It's in Cleveland, series tied 2-2. They get a LeBron turnover with like 26 seconds left, and they call timeout, and it's basically Oladipo to win the game. Oladipo's at the top. They've been trapping him the whole fourth quarter, but they, it's just LeBron and Oladipo. He beats LeBron, goes to the basket, and LeBron fucking stuffs it off the, and blocks it, gets the ball. This was like, I think LeBron in that 2018 playoffs was the greatest version of him. Timeout, comes down, LeBron hits the game-winning three. Block, three, and then it goes to seven, and they hung around in seven too, but Cleveland won in

• 1:00:27Bill Simmons?

  seven. But he went toe-to-toe with LeBron in that whole series. I think he had 30 in game seven. But you left that series thinking like, what an incredible trade. They got Oladipo and Sabonis for Paul George. Like, that was an everybody-wins trade. But he made the All-Star team the next year, and then he got hurt, and had started having knee problems. They fucked up the surgery on it, and he was never, never the same. Where'd you have him, Kyle? Did you have him around here?

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  Tours Patellotin too, didn't he?

• 1:00:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, just, just because of the arc and the body of work. Yeah, I ended up with him at 13, but I'm kind of, I guess it's something about the, the spirit of this exercise is, are we, are we doing this like a Battle World-type scenario where the peak version of this person?

• 1:01:10Bill Simmons?

  It's whatever you want.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  Is on a team?

• 1:01:11Bill Simmons?

  No, you get, you get the career he had. You can't, it's the career that, the career he had, you're basically saying this is probably what would have happened. Now, in his case, bad luck with the injury, but, you know.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  The, what's interesting is, we were talking about like, how many guys are left from this class, like, still active? It's crazy, you go back like 2011, six guys still active. It was amazing to me as I was going back the years. You mentioned LeBron.

• 1:01:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  And I got to 2011, and I was like, Jesus Christ, we, we get to go all the way back, and LeBron is still, it just really hammered home. You were talking about all the different, and like, whether or not AD was the best player in the world. There's so many different years where we would argue about like, oh yeah, this guy's the best player in the world. It's like LeBron, it just further cemented it to me. It's just like, god damn, LeBron's unbelievable, man, like.

• 1:01:59Bill Simmons?

  He, he has so many, I'm formulating a LeBron zag case for, there, there is a case the career dwarfs the peak of Jordan. I personally would make it.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  Did you read what I wrote?

• 1:02:14Bill Simmons?

  No, I know. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  I've, I've had the same revelation recently, yeah.

• 1:02:19Bill Simmons?

  Cause you go through, and it's, there's just so many crazy games. I was looking through his advanced metrics, and there's just, there's years where he's just like, plus 21 on off, you know, like crazy, crazy shit, and a lot of playoff moments. I had so many playoff moments that I literally forgot about the 2018 Pacers series. Like, a block to save the game, and then a game-winning buzzer-beating three in the other end, and then happened in a row. Kyle, you have two picks.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  Well, let's see. I have good bookends here with Draymond and Lillard. I don't really know what we're gonna do with Giannis, if we're imagining these teams literally playing each other. Maybe Draymond can take that assignment. Um, I need some, I feel like I have to take CJ, though. I feel like.

• 1:03:08Bill Simmons?

  The reunion of Dame and CJ, they're back. I'm trying to trade them already. Patriots leaving the house.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  They had a good run. Here, here will be my argument for this, is that if you look at like, the way that CJ Dame played with Nurkic, you'd get a better defensive player than Nurkic at, at the same kind of fulcrum playmaker. You just, cause they talked about trading for Draymond at one point, right? Or he, he thought about going there. There was some conversation about that. Yeah, I think if you paired Lillard and CJ with Dame, that would be a good offensive start. I've got other questions to answer, but he's too good to pass up here for me. So I'll go ahead and, since House took Oladipo, I'll go ahead and take CJ.

• 1:03:50Bill Simmons?

  House, I was surprised with CJ, just steady 20 for like 13 years. He's 19.5 points a game, regular season, 20 in the playoffs. Like, that's, if he's on the court, he's getting 20, basically.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no All-Star appearances, no All-NBA teams, a Most Improved Player award, which is not nothing. But, you know, the, the, coming from the Patriot League, it's a hell of a career, plus, you know, the esteem that his peers hold him in, and what he did with the basketball, you know, the Players Association. And you can see him going from, you know, at these end-of-career moments. He was awesome in Washington. Not only was he good for the, the young guys, he was tremendously complimentary of the organization in a way that, that really, you know, built up excitement in Washington for what Washington was, was doing. CJ McCollum did that.

• 1:04:45Bill Simmons?

  I liked him as a playoff guy. I don't like him as a, should we have a second apron or not, vote. Cause, you know, he was involved in that second apron thing, which is really bad. Okay, so you took CJ McCollum with one pick, Kyle, man. Who's the other pick?

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  Oh, I'll go, but we can't take another non-shooter. I think I'm gonna go with Harrison Barnes with my pick.

• 1:05:15Bill Simmons?

  I had him next.

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:05:17Bill Simmons?

  Really solid career, Harrison Barnes. Right place, right time, too, in the cap spike, 2016, where the Warriors decide they're gonna go for Durant, and Dallas is scrambling, and they're like, we'll give you 90 million for four years, or whatever they gave up. I think it was a sign and trade, too. But, uh, but yeah, still around now on San Antonio, trying to get a ring. Can I read you what Joe, what Joe House said during the draft diary?

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:05:45Bill Simmons?

  Harrison Barnes gets taken seventh, so we make a bunch of, he's gotta be ecstatic, he didn't go to Sacramento jokes. This is what I wrote. "Jacoby and I both noticed that Golden State's starting five, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Barnes, David Lee, and Andrew Bogut, look sneaky good on paper, right until House says, quote, 'You left out the part that Curry and Bogut will get hurt. They're paying 25 million per year to Richard Jefferson and Andres B. Adrianz, and their coach was just involved in a sex extortion scandal with a stripper.'" That was Mark Jackson. And then I wrote, yeah, but still.

• 1:06:22Bill Simmons?

  So Haas, you were not a Golden State believer in 2012.

• 1:06:26Speaker 02

  I stand by it.

• 1:06:27Bill Simmons?

  Put it on your resume.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  I stand by it.

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  You stand by it. Okay.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Well, how about this? Did I know that that they were gonna acquire Steve Kerr and make him the head coach? Immediately on the heels?

• 1:06:40Bill Simmons?

  Haas, you didn't, you didn't believe. The record states for itself.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  I didn't believe in Mark Jackson. I can tell you that much.

• 1:06:46Bill Simmons?

  You have the next pick and I'm gonna guess you're not taking Andre Drummond.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  I, I kinda want to.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  Because pedigree wise, it, he, he's impactful, like two all-star appearances. Four time led the, the league in, in rebounding. He has an all NBA team. I was stunned looking at his resume.

• 1:07:09Bill Simmons?

  Four rebounding titles? Yeah, he's.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, four rebounding titles.

• 1:07:13Bill Simmons?

  I actually think he could be the next pick.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  I think, I mean, the problem is I'm immediately conceding I have the worst team in this. And then the reason is because the number two spot in this draft format that we have is a dead man's land.

• 1:07:26Bill Simmons?

  Here come the excuses.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  Cause you guys are getting two guys at a time.

• 1:07:30Bill Simmons?

  Here they go.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  And I, it makes no sense whatsoever for, for this team, except for Andre Drummond is a three-point shooter at this stage of his career. Pretty, look at man, he's standing in the corner knocking down threes. I'm taking, I'm taking Andre Drummond.

• 1:07:45Bill Simmons?

  He went ninth in.

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  I get his, yeah, go ahead.

• 1:07:48Bill Simmons?

  He went ninth in 2012 to Detroit.

• 1:07:52Bill Simmons?

  And he's going to House's team right now. And in my draft diary that I wrote, he was dropping a little bit and they showed him, it's really funny. They, the camera just stayed on him and he kinda looked at the camera and had this sad smile and all of us liked him after. Where he had this smile like, I'm a nice guy. Can't somebody draft me? Everybody likes him.

• 1:08:13Bill Simmons?

  And we were all kind of in on him. And then from my draft diary, Billis mentions that Drummond shot 29% on free throws last year. What? Jacoby yups with the mouthful of meatballs, mouthful of meatballs. I'm out on Drummond.

• 1:08:27Bill Simmons?

  How? 29% in college?

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  It's like.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  He.

• 1:08:32Bill Simmons?

  Yikes.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  He was on a UConn team that should have been a lot better that had Jeremy Lamb. That, that was, that was not a great sign, but um, yeah, I was gonna say, do we get the youthful athleticism of, of Andre Drummond with the sage wisdom of the corner threes? But then um, House, I, I was gonna say it's gonna be a crowded elevator. I mean, it's kind of a crowded phone booth you got going there with Rudy Gobert and you better hope AD's shooting development comes around under your watch.

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  I've got all three levels. Cause I, I got AD in the, in the mid-range. Gobert is there for offensive rebounding and Drummond's my corner three guy with Oladipo kick and shoot.

• 1:09:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, plus there's a lot of perimeter guys left. House still might be in this. I don't think House is done. I'm taking Kevius Caldwell-Pope with my pick. He went number eight in the 2013 draft.

• 1:09:22Bill Simmons?

  Two rings. 2020 Lakers, 2023 Nuggets. In those, the stats for him in those series, in the playoffs combined, 11 points a game, 38% from three and basically played like 32 minutes a game, played real minutes. So we know for a fact, this is a guy who can be the three and D guy on a championship team. Cause he did it twice. Six year stretch where he was 11 points a game for 39%. And somebody that I thought, I thought clutch in the ringers, Rich Paul did a masterful job just continuing to get him money and leveraging the Lakers and other people. But I know I can compete with him. And then I'm just gonna,

• 1:10:07Bill Simmons?

  do, can I do this? Hold on, let me, oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 1:10:18Bill Simmons?

  Can I do this?

• 1:10:22Bill Simmons?

  You know what? I, I need, yeah.

• 1:10:26Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna take Dennis Schroder here.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:10:30Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Only cause I need one more guard for my team. And there's a couple of swings left, but I have swings.

• 1:10:38Bill Simmons?

  Dennis Schroder, 17th pick in 2013. He's been on 11 teams. Did any of them ever end up liking the experience after the fact? We're gonna find out on mine. Uh, two OKC years, 17 points a game for them and pretty good shooting stats. That was kind of the peak for him. And a really great international guard. Somebody that anytime we were playing Germany internationally, he was always just terrifying. I've always kinda liked him. And even in the playoffs, he, he's annoying. Like he's got a lot of confidence and he's gonna fit in perfectly with my team. So Caldwell-Pope, Schroder. Two guys who have been in a lot of playoff games, House.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I don't mind Schroder at all. I thought that he was um, one of the, the more fearless guys on Cleveland in that playoff run just last year.

• 1:11:29Bill Simmons?

  Like. Yeah.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  Those, those um, Schroder, Struce minutes were kind of vital for them competitive wise. Cause those guys were like out there getting after it. Uh, and I, I always hold him in high regard for what he did for Germany. I'm not, I'm, I know it's kind of a silly thing, but he's a dog.

• 1:11:47Bill Simmons?

  We both like.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  He's a dog for Germany.

• 1:11:48Bill Simmons?

  We both care about that stuff. Your thoughts, Kyle, man?

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  I just love House being happy for Germany. I didn't expect that. Um, no, I mean Schroder, Schroder has like the, uh, the Rod Strickland, Robert Pack thing going on where you, the IMDB is just like, like it's a different, it's just like an anthology show where he leaves town at the end of every episode. It's like, that was fun.

• 1:12:10Bill Simmons?

  And then, and then somebody else talks himself into him. You're right. It's like, it's like the Ted McGinley thing. Even Sacramento was like, oh, he looked good on Detroit. Here's a weird contract and almost immediately they're trying to get out of it. All right, House, you're up again.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  I have absolutely no idea what to do here. Cause all that's left um, in terms of pedigree, guys that I like are all big guys and I, I can't, I can't take.

• 1:12:35Bill Simmons?

  What are you talking about? There's some other perimeter guys.

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  I know, but, but I mean,

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  in terms of who, who it should be and who I'm stepping over.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  I don't know. Do I really wanna do this?

• 1:12:49Bill Simmons?

  Do it. Do the dumbest thing possible. So you can definitely lose the draft.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  I think I know what's gonna happen, but yeah.

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  I mean, it's, it's all big guys.

• 1:13:02Bill Simmons?

  You're doing another big guy?

• 1:13:04Speaker 02

  No, I'm not. But I think that, that there's two or three big guys I have ahead of whom I'm about to take. I can't do that. There's no way.

• 1:13:16Bill Simmons?

  I didn't realize House was gonna take so much time trying to figure this out.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  This is hard.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  And I'm the indecisive one. Yeah, here we go.

• 1:13:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  Well, I, I, I put myself into a corner with this one.

• 1:13:27Bill Simmons?

  Because.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  You might as well lean into the bit.

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  It's the same guy. Like it's either Robert Covington or Jay Crowder. That's where I'm at. I have to choose between one of those two.

• 1:13:39Speaker 01

  That's not what I thought you were gonna say. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  I guess I'll take Crowder. I guess I'll take Crowder. That's where I'm gonna land.

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  You need a guy that can hit threes and can guard some wings and

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  there are some unanswered questions, but no, yeah, I, I like Jay Crowder. I mean, he's, he's got a crazy playoff. I had it written down here. He's 115 playoff games in 11 seasons and over 3,200 playoff minutes. That's, that's near the highest in the, in these two classes. He was just on competitive teams over and over and over again.

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  Another giant defensive impact guy too. Like I, I love the defense on my team so far. It's like, I have a great defensive team.

• 1:14:23Bill Simmons?

  So you took Crowder?

• 1:14:24Speaker 02

  I did. I took Crowder.

• 1:14:25Bill Simmons?

  I, listen, I had him close. We saw him in four seasons. Be a legitimate three and D guy for good teams. 2016, 17, Boston. Boston made the conference finals in 17. He was 14 and 5, 37% three-pointer. He could guard a bunch of different guys. I liked him when he was on the Celtics. And then he was on teams that lost the finals back to back years. Miami 2020, Suns 21 and played big minutes. He played 32 minutes a game for those teams, hit threes. And uh, you know, it was very similar to Caldwell-Pope. I thought him and Caldwell-Pope, I had trouble trying to figure out who to take between those guys. All right. Kyle, you have the, the, you'll have a starting five after this pick. So you're up next.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm gonna take Steven Adams.

• 1:15:14Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 1:15:15Speaker 02

  See, that's who I wanted to take, but it didn't make any sense for my team.

• 1:15:19Bill Simmons?

  I almost took him too.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  You should have, House, you should have just done it. Cause that would have just been hilarious. Your team would have been a rugby team that would have been not fun to play.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  Well, it's not too late. There are still some big guys that I like.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  No, I, I think if, with the shooters that I have, um, especially with Draymond and, and Steven Adams, it'll be a little interesting, but he's like one of the best offensive rebounders alive. So I, I think, I think he's gonna be a good fit with those, with those guards.

• 1:15:45Bill Simmons?

  17 through 20 was 13 and 9. Uh, somehow he's still only 33 years old. I don't, when he came into the league, when he was like 17. All right. So here are our starting fives now as we head toward the benches. Kyle has the uh, first pick of the next round. I have Yanis, Beal, Middleton, Caldwell-Pope and Schroder. It's a team that actually makes sense together. House has Gobert, Davis, Oladipo, Drummond and Crowder. So needs, needs, needs some more perimeter. And Kyle has Adams and Draymond, CJ and Dame and Barnes. So that looks like a basketball team. But this is a big pick right here. Who are you taking, Kyle?

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  Uh, I feel like I need a wing. So I am going to take, you took Jay Crowder.

• 1:16:36Bill Simmons?

  I really hope you take somebody that I don't wanna take when I'm up.

• 1:16:41Bill Simmons?

  There's a guy I just don't wanna end up with.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Uh, I, I think,

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  I'm picking between two dudes here.

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  I, based on this guy's peak, how good he was at his best.

• 1:16:56Bill Simmons?

  Do it.

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  I think I'm gonna take Robert Covington.

• 1:17:00Bill Simmons?

  Oh, wasn't expecting that.

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  I don't feel that bad about.

• 1:17:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's a pretty good pick.

• 1:17:05Speaker 02

  That he's gonna, I think defensively, I'm gonna have a pretty good team, too. Granted, he fell off a cliff, but at one point, but.

• 1:17:13Bill Simmons?

  Robert Covington somehow undrafted in 2013, even though we had a slew of busts. So he, I didn't remember this. He was fourth in the Defensive Player of the Year voting in 2016. Somehow didn't make an all defense team, but then made first all defense in 2017. And from 15 to 19 was 13 a game, 36% from three. And was a legit defensive guy. I remember when the Celtics played the Sixers in 18. That was kind of the unraveling of the Roko was a really big guy for like the basketball blog community and the advancement. And then we just left him open for the entire series in 18. And, and he couldn't make anything.

• 1:17:57Bill Simmons?

  And I thought that was where it was like, ah, we're sure this guy's good. He ends up being in the Jimmy Butler trade the next year. Never really got it back. But his peak is defensively, he was, he was a little Jada McDanielsy there for a couple of years.

• 1:18:11Speaker 02

  I, I'm having a little remorse as you were saying all that, but I think I,

• 1:18:18Speaker 02

  I still like him.

• 1:18:19Bill Simmons?

  There's not a lot left. House, please take the guy I don't want to take.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  Do we, do we, we're still going with this thing?

• 1:18:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we have more pit. We're taking eight each.

• 1:18:30Speaker 02

  Like there's 24 good players for these two, two drafts because you know, I'm not, I can't do it. I'm not gonna take that guy. It would be super funny, though.

• 1:18:42Bill Simmons?

  Anthony Bennett?

• 1:18:44Speaker 02

  Definitely not Anthony Bennett.

• 1:18:45Bill Simmons?

  Just take your guy out of Porter.

• 1:18:47Speaker 02

  I know. I just looked at it. The problem is that Covington presents better than, than Porter over the, the, the body of work.

• 1:18:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  And Porter's best trait is a high three point average.

• 1:19:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, 40% for his career. I was shocked by that.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  Very good.

• 1:19:08Speaker 02

  Those are the two I was picking between. Yeah. The leaving, leaving open thing made me feel queasy like I'd made a mistake, but yeah. He stuck around a long time. Um, what, I don't have it handy in front of me. Well, how many playoff games did he play in? It wasn't very many.

• 1:19:20Bill Simmons?

  Wasn't very many. Played 527 games total.

• 1:19:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that, that's, that's the issue.

• 1:19:26Bill Simmons?

  Had a really good one season on the Bulls after the Wizards traded him.

• 1:19:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:19:30Bill Simmons?

  And then it kind of died after that. Who are you taking, House?

• 1:19:33Speaker 02

  Otto Porter.

• 1:19:34Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's you, is your pick. You seem so begrudging about it. Okay. I think that was a fair pick.

• 1:19:45Bill Simmons?

  God, this sucks. I'm just not happy about this.

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  Crying on the yacht over here with your Yanis number one pick and come on.

• 1:19:56Bill Simmons?

  No, I just hate this guy. I don't hate him. Hate him. My sports hate him. Oh, man. God damn it.

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  I don't even know who you're, who, who it is. I don't even have a guess.

• 1:20:12Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna take Evan Fournier.

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay. I looked at him for a minute.

• 1:20:17Bill Simmons?

  Just.

• 1:20:17Speaker 02

  What's there to hate?

• 1:20:19Bill Simmons?

  He, he played 19 playoff games and won three in his entire career. He's three and 16 in the playoffs.

• 1:20:27Bill Simmons?

  Just was a classic from 17 to 21, 17 points a game, 37% from three. And another guy who, when you watched him internationally, seemed way more dangerous than he did in the NBA.

• 1:20:38Speaker 02

  Who was the Knicks GM that gave him that contract?

• 1:20:40Bill Simmons?

  The Nick, uh.

• 1:20:42Speaker 02

  Who was it?

• 1:20:44Bill Simmons?

  Can't remember.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  It was before Leon and, and.

• 1:20:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was whoever the.

• 1:20:47Speaker 02

  Was it Walsh?

• 1:20:48Bill Simmons?

  Scott Perry?

• 1:20:50Speaker 02

  Or Perry?

• 1:20:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was bad. Well, anyway, we're, we're only asking him for some six man stuff.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  I had, I had that written down, too. He, he had a few years in a row there where you look at the numbers. And if you didn't know about him, you know, I feel like, you know, years from now, we'll have to contextualize that for the younger generation. Like this 48 guy seems pretty good.

• 1:21:10Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, there's another guy who should go over this guy, but I'm gonna take only because I need, I need another big guy. I've seen him in big games. He killed Joe House's team once. Kelly Olynyk.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  He did do that.

• 1:21:25Bill Simmons?

  From 2015 to 23, he was a 10 and 5, 37% from three and 22 minutes a game. And he was basically the seventh man on a conference finalist in 2017. So you could win with him. I, my daughter, one of, one of her first favorite players, used to call him Father Kelly, thought he looked like a priest in a, in a kid's show. And then he tried to break Kevin Love's elbow for some reason in 2015, which was pretty weird. And probably changed the course of the finals, but um, I forgot that he signed with Miami as a free agent, too. Heat culture tried to step in on him.

• 1:22:05Bill Simmons?

  You don't remember this? Left the 2017 Celtics, Heat culture came flying in off top rope for him. Okay.

• 1:22:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. In fact, I had him on House of Carbs.

• 1:22:16Bill Simmons?

  You did?

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  When he was playing for, for Miami.

• 1:22:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Speaker 02

  And he was there. Oh no, it was just after he left Miami. He really liked playing for Spoh. He really likes playing for Spoh. He's like, that guy is smart.

• 1:22:31Bill Simmons?

  Everyone loves Spoh. All right, House, you're up again. You have Davis, Gobert, Oladipo, Drummond, Crowder, and Porter.

• 1:22:37Speaker 02

  Well, I have a couple of guys that have a tendency to miss some games. I have, I'm not gonna do it. Nope. I need, I need some front court fill in.

• 1:22:47Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:22:48Speaker 02

  And I'm looking at my list. The guy that's played the most games of anybody on here remaining is Jonas Valanciunas.

• 1:22:59Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:23:00Speaker 02

  Jonas Valanciunas.

• 1:23:01Bill Simmons?

  No, Jonas was in this. He's was, he was in the 11 draft. We don't get him.

• 1:23:05Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Damn.

• 1:23:07Bill Simmons?

  I knew, I fucking knew House was gonna cheat in this. It's like.

• 1:23:11Speaker 02

  No, you have him on this, this, uh, this warp list.

• 1:23:14Bill Simmons?

  I know, but he took a, he took a year. He was in the 11 draft.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  We, okay.

• 1:23:19Bill Simmons?

  He was drafted in the 11 draft we did.

• 1:23:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. I wanted that for you, that team, but, but yeah, can't do it. Um, okay, then I'll just take Patrick Beverley. That's fine. I have a certain. I don't think he counts either, does he?

• 1:23:33Bill Simmons?

  Doesn't count either.

• 1:23:33Speaker 02

  Wait. Oh, wait a minute. I need to look at who's in these drafts then.

• 1:23:37Bill Simmons?

  It was his first year. House, just take Tim Hardaway Jr.

• 1:23:41Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:23:42Bill Simmons?

  He's the best guy on the board.

• 1:23:43Speaker 02

  I'll take him.

• 1:23:44Bill Simmons?

  Another shooter for you.

• 1:23:46Speaker 02

  Weirdest team.

• 1:23:48Bill Simmons?

  Tim Hardaway Jr., career 14 points a game, 37% from three. Your team needed some shooting.

• 1:23:55Speaker 02

  He's there to help Miami now. He's the shooter for Miami.

• 1:23:59Bill Simmons?

  But how did he get to Miami?

• 1:24:02Bill Simmons?

  I'm just asking. Just asking. How did he get there? On a short deal? That's weird.

• 1:24:07Speaker 02

  Excited for the response to this.

• 1:24:09Bill Simmons?

  Calm in. You're up.

• 1:24:12Speaker 02

  Well, Tim Hardaway's off the board. I'm so crestfallen. I don't know if I can continue. Um.

• 1:24:18Bill Simmons?

  I have five draftable guys left, so this is perfect.

• 1:24:22Speaker 02

  Hmm. There's a sneaky one that we haven't mentioned that is on here. I don't think I'm gonna take him. I don't think I should take a big, uh, I should probably just go BPA here. I'll go with,

• 1:24:39Speaker 02

  I'm gonna go with a microwave guy. You would not have expected me to do this, I don't think. I'm gonna take Terrence Ross.

• 1:24:45Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you just stole him from me. I like that pick.

• 1:24:48Speaker 02

  Damn it. I thought that I was gonna get away with it. Terrence Ross, this is one of my awards. Uh, yeah, this is most likely to resurface with the social media clip was a problem.

• 1:25:00Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah. He, total heat check guy.

• 1:25:03Speaker 02

  That's true. And I'm, I actually, I actually started making the highlight reel, so I'm gonna put that out here soon. He had some, he, he was just a lather scorer, man. He could get going. I'm not gonna lean on him hard. Come in and score some points, you know? Spackle for me. That's all I need.

• 1:25:17Bill Simmons?

  He played 11 years and averaged 11 a game and was a good 36 points percentage from three. But I think is most famously was just thrown into every fake trade rumor for like four years. When he was in Toronto, it was always like, and Terrence Ross, and if they, and just always seemed to be floating around. His contract was, he was making 10 million a year for like five years. And his contract always fit with other contracts and, um, now this is the right time to take him. Who's your other pick?

• 1:25:48Speaker 02

  Uh, with my other pick?

• 1:25:50Bill Simmons?

  This is gonna be your last pick. You have Dame, Draymond, CJ, Barnes, Adams, Covington, and Terrence Ross. One more.

• 1:25:58Speaker 02

  I wanted to take Seth Curry.

• 1:26:00Bill Simmons?

  Do you have a Kentucky guy yet?

• 1:26:03Speaker 01

  No, I'm not that biased. If it's the right pick, it's the right pick. Nerlens.

• 1:26:09Bill Simmons?

  You're taking Nerlens?

• 1:26:11Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm saying you were talking about the, the draft footage. It was the Nerlens sad face draft footage was pretty, was pretty brutal during that broadcast.

• 1:26:20Bill Simmons?

  I was, I gotta say, I was not a fan heading into that draft. I didn't, even though I knew the talent was there, I didn't, I just don't like skinny big guys like that. And it didn't seem like he could shoot at all.

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  He was a shot blocker, not a rim protector. He just chased everything. Um, it's like Will Barton, I don't think so.

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  Uh, let's see, it's, it's a shit sandwich here. I'll, I'll take Mason Plumlee as my backup.

• 1:26:46Bill Simmons?

  Man, I want to.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  Thank God.

• 1:26:48Bill Simmons?

  I was gonna take him.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  No interest whatsoever.

• 1:26:51Bill Simmons?

  I was gonna have, cause then Kelly Olynyk would have had somebody to live with.

• 1:26:57Bill Simmons?

  Mason Plumlee. And I think we had both Plumleys were available in the mega draft. Cause they were in the, one was in 2012 and the other was in 2013. He was in 2013. Drafted by Brooklyn, first 10 years, nine and seven house, 23 minutes a game.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:14Bill Simmons?

  He would have fit in on your team. All right.

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 1:27:16Bill Simmons?

  House, your, your last pick is what?

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  Good. Seth Curry. I like the, um, character. I like his golf game. He's the worst Curry at golf. That makes me feel better. I know that he and I would get along great. His three point shooting percentage is effing phenomenal. I mean, the, the, this guy had, uh, uh, you know, a single elite skill.

• 1:27:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:40Speaker 01

  It was making mostly open three pointers.

• 1:27:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:43Speaker 01

  That's a really important role and he played it for, you know, he turned that into a lengthy career for himself. Seth Curry, I feel good about that as a last.

• 1:27:51Bill Simmons?

  Really good pick. Married to, uh, our beloved Kelly Curry.

• 1:27:54Speaker 01

  Beloved.

• 1:27:55Bill Simmons?

  Son-in-law of our beloved Doc Rivers.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  Beloved.

• 1:27:59Bill Simmons?

  Um, brother-in-law of Austin Rivers, who we also love. But yeah, that's, that's a bright spot for him. And, uh, honestly, I couldn't be happier because I like the team that I have. I was really hoping I could take this guy as the last pick. He's lived on beyond his basketball career in other ways. Um, on the rewatchables, we have a category named after him, the Dion Waiters for best heat check. Uh, he was a beloved Grantland guy and a beloved Ringer guy for a couple of years too. 13 points a game in eight years. He only played 419 games. And won a ring on the Lakers as a bench guy, Dion Waiters.

• 1:28:40Bill Simmons?

  I thought it would be great if he was the last pick in the draft and somehow this worked out. I wrote in my draft diary. Cleveland took him fourth. I wrote, they just had the explosive Syracuse guard, Dion Waiters setting themselves up for an easy. Anytime you could take the biggies six man of the year with the fourth pick in NBA draft, you have to do a joke. That was kind of it. He was always destined to be a six man. And, um, I still like his game.

• 1:29:07Bill Simmons?

  I, I actually think his career should have been better, Kyle. I like physical scoring guard. I remember when, when I was doing all the pods with KD, we, we talked about him for like five minutes. On one of the pods where I was like, cause he played with them in OKC. I was like, why isn't Dion Waiters, like, why aren't we talking about him as like an all-star? And I think he was one of those guys, all the other players really respected, but could just never put it together.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  There's like that Chucky Atkins award where you talk to other players and I'm dropping some random nineties names on this show, but like, you would, you'd listen to other players talk and they'd be like, yeah, Chuck could play. And you'll hear NBA players be like, Cam Reddish is another dude like that. And then they just don't stick for whatever reason. I, I feel like the ultimate culmination of all of this for the Ringer is if we could get some film director out there that, that listens to this show to put, Dion Waiters in a movie in one scene.

• 1:29:58Bill Simmons?

  To be the Dion Waiters?

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  Where he really goes for it. I think it might tear a, a hole in the space time continuum, but this is like, uh, it seems like a good idea to me.

• 1:30:07Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, that's a great idea. So the two guys that didn't get drafted that, um, I thought might were Jeremy Lamb and, and, uh, Will Barton.

• 1:30:18Bill Simmons?

  And Will Barton probably should have been drafted, but it was more fun to take Seth Curry.

• 1:30:22Speaker 01

  What about, uh, Aaron Baines, role player?

• 1:30:26Bill Simmons?

  Oh, interesting. Yeah. He, if we gone 10 man rosters. All right. Here are the final rosters. Kyle Mann, Dame, Draymond, McCollum, Barnes, Adams, Covington, Terrence Ross, Mason Plumlee. So you have, you have size, you have shooting. I guess you're turning the team around. The two, the two Portland guards. Covington as a shutdown guy. I kind of like that team. House has Anthony Davis and Gobert, Oladipo, Drummond, Jay Crowder, Otto Porter, Hardaway Jr. And Seth Curry. I think he's tanking for the 2014 draft.

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  I'm playing, I want to be in the relegation zone like, like Brooklyn. Oh, wait, they can't, they can't get the pick. All right. Go ahead.

• 1:31:10Bill Simmons?

  I have, I have.

• 1:31:12Speaker 01

  Go ahead, Bill.

• 1:31:13Bill Simmons?

  Giannis. My team is Giannis, Beal, Middleton, KCP, Schroder, Fournier, Olynyk, and then Dion Waiters. That's my eighth man. So we're gonna have to, we'll do a social media graphic. We're gonna open up to the people. And we'll have votes.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  My team could beat your team. I like, Jay Kyle Mann's team is the best team.

• 1:31:33Bill Simmons?

  It's a pretty good team.

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  And my team is definitely the worst.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  We'll see if people agree. I, I think we can get you guys. You're good. You're good. I have a very good defensive team.

• 1:31:45Bill Simmons?

  This is fun. I mean, how sad is it that we had two drafts together? And by the end of it, the last round was Plumlee, Seth Curry and Dion Waiters. Like we couldn't even get to 25 guys. Then Jeremy Lamb, we forgot to mention was the linchpin of the James Harden trade.

• 1:32:03Bill Simmons?

  It's Jeremy Lamb, Kevin Martin and the 12th pick, which turned out to be, uh, which turned out to be, did I screw that up before? Yeah. Harden was gone already. I screwed that up. When we were talking Kyle about the 2012 Thunder.

• 1:32:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, he was on the 12 team. He was traded in 13, right?

• 1:32:24Bill Simmons?

  Adams was in the, Adams was in the 12. I didn't screw that up then.

• 1:32:30Bill Simmons?

  No, Adams, I did screw that up. Adams was in the 13. Yeah. So they had already, they already made that trade because they made that trade in the 2000, after the 2012 finals.

• 1:32:43Speaker 01

  It was going into the 12, 13 season, they traded him.

• 1:32:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. That 12 pick was one of the things they got in Houston trade. So I'll clarify that. Um, all right. Any last thoughts, House?

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  No, I'm glad to be done with this.

• 1:32:56Bill Simmons?

  That's it. You didn't have a good time? Jesus Christ.

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  Huh?

• 1:33:00Bill Simmons?

  You didn't have fun?

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  What do you mean? No, I had a great time. I'm just saying, we got to a point in this draft, you just read the names off. Like what are we, are we, is it Cody Zeller time?

• 1:33:12Bill Simmons?

  Hey, honestly, it could have been.

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  We're just guys naming dudes.

• 1:33:16Bill Simmons?

  There was.

• 1:33:17Speaker 01

  It's right. Guys naming dudes.

• 1:33:19Bill Simmons?

  Dang, can't believe he didn't get taken.

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  I can, I can believe it.

• 1:33:23Bill Simmons?

  Michael Carter Williams won the rookie of the year, didn't get taken in a 24 pick draft.

• 1:33:27Speaker 01

  Incredible. I'd rather have Mo Harkless.

• 1:33:31Bill Simmons?

  Anthony, Mo Harkless didn't get taken. Anthony Roberson didn't get taken. Austin Rivers didn't get taken. John Henson.

• 1:33:39Speaker 01

  Mike Muscala.

• 1:33:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:42Speaker 01

  Tomas Santoransky. Yeah.

• 1:33:44Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Kid Gilchrist, a whole bunch of people. All right. Guys, a true pleasure. Thank you as always for being on the mega draft. We're gonna take a break, come back with, uh, Justin Barer right after.

• 1:33:55Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web. Like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies. 18 plus.

• 1:34:20Speaker 05

  So good, so good, so good.

• 1:34:22Speaker 04

  Stay cozy and look cool with up to 60% off cold weather gear at Nordstrom Rack. Save on cashmere, outerwear, boots, and more from brands like Ugg, Vince, Kohan, and Hunter. Join the Nordy Club for free to unlock exclusive discounts, shop clearance and new arrivals first and more. Plus buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you Rack.

• 1:34:49Bill Simmons?

  This mailbag is brought to you by ChatGPT, the Bill Simmons Podcast AI sponsor. Yeah, you heard me. ChatGPT helped me very recently sift through this Portland Trailblazers situation that we're about to talk about with, um, Justin Barrier. And I was gonna do a mailbag segment just all the way through for this, but I'm gonna read one Portland email. And then, uh, and then we'll talk to Barrier.

• 1:35:19Bill Simmons?

  This is from Fred. Huge kudos for continuing to call attention to Tom Dundon's extremely transparent plans to cheap out on the Blazers. Piss off the good people of Portland and eventually move them somewhere else. But there's a lingering big question for you. What happened to your regular use of El Cheapo? When referring to Dundon, this is one of the most elite nicknames we've ever had for a sports team owner. And every time you see, you made a laugh, why did you retire it? Did Dundon send you a cease and desist? Only it was a low budget lawyer mail, cease and desist printed on a square uh, of single ply Charmin. Uh, just keeps going, going. Uh, I did not retire El Cheapo. I actually forgot to keep calling him El Cheapo. So we're gonna bring Barrier in and I'm going to, um,

• 1:36:05Bill Simmons?

  to make a bunch of El Cheapo comments, but, um, so this was, this is a one question mailbag because we're covering, uh, the Blazers and El Cheapo. All right, Justin Barer is here. You can hear him on the Ringer NBA show. He pops on the Ringer website from time to time. We've been working together for a long time. And a couple of years ago, Verrier moved to Portland, Oregon. And I talked about on a mailbag recently, um, I'm really horrified by this Trailblazers situation. I'm not against relocation. If basketball just doesn't and hasn't worked in NBA city and if the history is messed up or

• 1:36:45Bill Simmons?

  there's real reasons to do it. Portland, I used to call them the soccer moms. It was the only team in town. They genuinely loved them. They won the 1977 title, which I think once you win a title, you should never have to leave. And they get this new owner, Tom Dundon, AKA El Cheapo, buys the team. Um, just had a lot of success with the Carolina Hurricanes, wins the Stanley Cup. At the same time, he is seemingly torpedoing his relationship with the city of Portland and trying to get out of a lease that ends basically right before the season would start in 2030. And we could talk about some ramifications. Um, before we get into anything, just give me the mood in Portland right now. Cause I'm, I know this is a big topic.

• 1:37:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, the Blazers are obviously a huge deal here, and I think there would be more excitement about the upcoming season if Dundon started to serve dead cat in the concessions, and that was the only option, because he has just taken what was a pretty good momentum going in off of last postseason, going into this season, where the team is really competitive. We'll see about long-term ceiling, but there is like clearly something brewing after a couple of years of just going through the tanking process, and all of that is gone to the point where like on a daily basis at this point, everyone is fearful that not only is this guy trying to screw them over, but also trying to do anything that he can get a good deal, and if he doesn't get it, he's gonna go wherever he can get it.

• 1:38:12Bill Simmons?

  And he's done all kinds of money-cutting stuff, which if we did case by case, some of it, it's like, all right, I, yeah, maybe coaches shouldn't make 30 million for five years and you fire them after one, but he zagged the other way. It's like, I'm gonna pay my coach for one year. We're not gonna have a lot of assistants. I'm gonna, I don't really wanna pay a lot for my broadcasters. Why do we have this many salespeople? And just goes through and just chops it, which is what he did in Carolina. The difference here is the arena and the language that he's been using. And the phrase first-class experience is the phrase we're using, where it seems like they're latching on to that as a way

• 1:38:56Bill Simmons?

  to get out of this. And there's a backstory with it where the Allen family that owned it, they gave the arena to the city of Portland. They sold it to them for $1. It's Portland owns the arena. It's allegedly not a state-of-the-art arena anymore. It's, you've been there a bunch of times. I haven't been there since 2010. You can see, if you see the arena itself, the suites are pretty high. I don't know. Do they need, do they that badly need a new arena? What's your take on that?

• 1:39:26Speaker 06

  I think it depends on who you talk to. If you're talking to NBA players and people throughout the league who are used to a certain metropolitan lifestyle and like just a sort of class of like new stuff going on, I do think it probably pales in comparison to that. I'm on the same mindset as you, probably. I actually think the zag in modern sports is actually to go something with a little bit more history and just like you could feel the weight of previous teams that have gone by, because they put new big screens in there last year.

• 1:39:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:58Speaker 06

  And certainly that that adds a little bit of luster to it, but like it's fine as an arena. I just don't know what people expect from an arena experience. You're going there to see the game, not to see all these flashing lights and these big screens there. But if you were to talk to people who are used to going to other arenas, they would say like, all right, it hasn't, hasn't been renovated since I think it was built originally, and it probably is behind sort of where things have been moving.

• 1:40:20Bill Simmons?

  Right. Mid 90s, there's a whole new wave of arenas that are better and more suite-friendly. I remember, am I, I think I remember this correctly, they built it so the seats are closer to the court because they don't have hockey. So it's, it's tight, and I like that there weren't, I just thought like you're surrounded by fans and the, because the suites are higher. I thought the experience itself of going there was great, but obviously, he's not gonna care about that. There's, there's been a lot of good stuff written about this, and I've tried to read as much of it as possible. Basically, can they relocate? And what are the rules to that? And would, could he just do it and basically be like, come sue me,

• 1:41:03Bill Simmons?

  like Al Davis, basically in the Raiders? The biggest thing that seems to be working against him is that that lease expires literally right before the 2030 season started, 2031. The lease expires on like October 11th, but you have to file for relocation before that if you're gonna switch teams. And there's all this stuff in the lease that's like, if you file for relocation, huge penalties, we can sue you, all this stuff. So he'd almost have to figure it out. And I remember Seattle and Oklahoma City were in a little bit of a situation somewhere where you have the limbo year in the arena, but everybody knows you're leaving. And if he's gonna leave, I think that would be one outcome. The other one is he could just be like, make up shit, just be like, we're moving, and then test

• 1:41:48Bill Simmons?

  the NBA, which nobody has done for a long time. Nobody's just been like, we're moving, this is my franchise, it's a free country, I'll do what I want. We haven't seen that in forever.

• 1:42:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's where I wonder where the NBA's position in all of this is. I don't think that they can come out publicly, because Adam Silver basically answers to the owners, they are basically his boss, and come out and basically undercut Dundon's leverage in negotiations and basically put out there that he's not going to let them go to Seattle or Vegas. I think the assumption is that those are off the market, but, and then the other options just don't seem all that attractive. But I don't think Silver can come out and say that. I'm curious how much soft power he's wielding behind the scenes, how much other owners are saying things to perhaps chill the situation. But in a weird way, I think the, the most optimism I feel is that Dundon has proven to be such a transparent,

• 1:42:43Speaker 06

  cutthroat maniac, because ultimately, he's looking for the best deal.

• 1:42:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:48Speaker 06

  And I think that Portland isn't in a position, they really don't have any leverage to not give him that. And so there's been a lot of bluster suggesting that they're gonna try to push back on certain things. You've seen in recent days, this first-class contingency that like that became a big sticking point. It was in the previous agreement, so it really doesn't hold much bearing on things going forward. As you mentioned, it's, it's part of the bridge agreement that they signed in 2024 under the Allen Ownership Trust in order to just get them to the next deal. But if anything, it seems like Dundon is just causing a stir over anything, because he just wants them to like be, commit to the deal that he thought that they had a handshake agreement with to begin with. And

• 1:43:33Speaker 06

  so it's tough to really reconcile, because on the one hand, your logic brain's like, well, Portland's gonna concede and give him $573 million to renovate an arena, that by the way, he said wasn't first-class, which is why he needed the renovations to begin with. But on the other hand, he keeps bringing up these nutso things just to throw them off like kilter and to just sort of make things messy and chaotic in order to get his way. And maybe his way is just to go out of town. So it's hard to really reconcile the logic of it and just his general approach to things.

• 1:44:04Bill Simmons?

  It's tough, because ultimately, he has the nuclear bomb card.

• 1:44:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:44:11Bill Simmons?

  If I leave, go look at Seattle. Seattle hasn't had a team since 2008. What is Portland if we don't have the Blazers? Right? This happened to the Whalers in, in the NHL, where the Whalers left Hartford, they moved to Carolina ironically, and then Hartford, it's like, well, now you have AAA baseball and you're kind of near ESPN, and that's, that's what Hartford is. Like, you need these teams, like they give you this credit. Look at what happened in OKC, just getting the Thunder, like it completely transformed that city. So Portland has that piece. They also have a ton of history. They've had the team since 1970. The greatest sports book of all time was written about the Trail Blazers. They've

• 1:44:51Bill Simmons?

  always had moments of relevancy. They made the finals in 1992. They had some, some fun stuff that happened, like during the Dame era, that's Brandon Roy, cup of coffee, maybe something happened. And pretty famously, a lot of bad luck with, you know, Bill Walton, Sam Bowie, Greg Oden, like they've been in, they've just been in the mix in all these ways. If I was a Blazer fan, I'd be really nervous, because there's two things that conspiracy bill has noted. One is that you said the word chaotic, which I think is a good way to frame it. He also hasn't said anything or done anything, like literally

• 1:45:33Bill Simmons?

  not one thing that would endear himself to anybody in this city. Right? It almost seems like he's, it's like watching like Marriage Story with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, where they just, both of them wanna break up and are just being as mean as possible to each other, except in this case, it's only him. He doesn't seem to care about perception repercussions of anything. And then I think you said the NBA had to stay quiet. I don't know if I agree, like I, I, like, where's Adam Silver being like, look, we don't want the team to move out of Portland. We've had a team there since 1970 and they have awesome fans. Like, that is not going to be an acceptable solution for me. He just hasn't said anything. And it's very similar to the Stern thing.

• 1:46:17Bill Simmons?

  Stern, you could see where he was thinking in the mid 2000s. And I was talking about it in the moment, writing about it. Where it felt like he almost wanted to make Seattle an example. Like, if you don't invest in, in your arena and your team, they might leave. That might be how this goes. Like, they kind of did that in Sacramento, too. They brought this, Vivek came in and committed to building a new arena, or else they would have left. And it just feels to me like a little bit of a hostage situation. How badly do you love your kid? Here's, here's what it will cost, or you might never see your kid again, right? Like, this is like really brutal stuff, I think.

• 1:46:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, one of my favorite things about sports is just kind of the, the relationship between the community and the sports team itself.

• 1:47:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:05Speaker 06

  Like, it's one thing if the Grizzlies are successful. It's another team, when that team embodies the spirit of the city and the grit and grind thing, and they're basically have this almost symbiotic nature where like, they're playing off of each other. Like, that's a special thing, and especially in modern times, where like, community is pretty fragmented at this point. There really only is internet sort of community and culture, and like, some of the particular quirks of, of food, and just the way dialect and everything else have almost been sanded down to like, you don't really have anything. Like, I honestly believe, and this might sound Pollyannaish, like, sports are really the only thing that we have left. And that matters everywhere. It matters particularly in Portland, where the Blazers are really the only game in town. No offense to like, the Timbers, or the Thorns, or the Fire, who just started playing this year.

• 1:47:48Speaker 06

  It's like, this is a Blazers town, and it courses through the vein of this city, especially when they're good. Like, Dame has a relationship with Portland, and like, I've never seen it before. It's more a small market Kobe than it is a typical superstar with your team. And Dundon has proven that he does not give a shit about any of this stuff. All the things that we all care about as sports fans, and his now customer base, and his consumer base, that he's going to have to, if he does decide to stay, try to get them to buy back into the team, when he's proven that he doesn't want anything to do with it. He's just pissed off all, everyone, and pissed over all of the history and everything that anybody cares about. And he brought the Whalers before. The first day after they ratified his agreement, he has the team in his possession.

• 1:48:33Speaker 06

  He goes down to LA to watch them play against the Clippers, his first game as the go-to owner. He's wearing a Whalers hat, which is just like a, such a fuck you symbol to everybody. He wasn't the one to move the Whalers, but anybody who knows, as you just laid out, that was such like a craven pull of, of a team from a city, and that got left in the dust and hasn't been able to recover ever since.

• 1:48:56Bill Simmons?

  I was asking around, trying to figure out, why would he even buy this team?

• 1:49:04Speaker 06

  Like, good question.

• 1:49:05Bill Simmons?

  Like, he's rich, right? He has a bunch of money, obviously is a competitive guy, and he's done, seems like a good job with the Hurricanes, which is a completely different league. All these leagues are different, right? The W, the challenges of owning a WNBA team versus an NBA team versus an NHL team. You're just dealing with completely different things. I don't understand why you would buy this team if you weren't buying into the community around the team and this city. It's basically like, it's like somebody buying a house on a street because he likes the street and not the house. It's like, ah, as soon as I move in, I'm knocking that thing down. But as you're buying, you're like, no, no, I love it. I love the, I love the upstairs. The backyard's great, but in the backyard, mind you're like, I'm gonna fucking take

• 1:49:49Bill Simmons?

  this thing down. And my fear for people in Portland is that he looked at what the expansion numbers would be, which everybody's saying between seven and eight. And he's like, ah, I could just steal Portland for 4.25, whatever it ended up being, and then I'll just move them somewhere else. And I think Kansas City is, I mentioned them a couple of weeks ago, and I think I was the first one to mention it. First of all, Kansas City, you can make an argument, they, they maybe should have a team. Like, they're, they've really grown, they have a state-of-the-art arena. They've hosted big events. I think the city's grown, they're in a part of the country that they don't really have,

• 1:50:32Bill Simmons?

  like, you know, I think they would help, they'd help with conference alignment, but I wouldn't, wouldn't be Portland. And what's dangerous about Kansas City is they'll take any team, right? Seattle, Portland's not moving to Seattle. Seattle doesn't want the Trail Blazers. They have a long rivalry and a history, and they know what it's like when you lose a team. I don't think they're gonna want that. They didn't really want Sacramento either. They want like, an expansion team. But I think Kansas City would be the one I'd be worried about, especially one of the minority owners is a St. Louis guy. Dundon's from Dallas, that's another thing that doesn't add up. You're from Dallas, you own Carolina, why are you buying the Trail Blazers? Right? So that conspiracy builder, there's just a lot to work with, with this, and none of it is really that good for the city.

• 1:51:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, it would almost be like if there were only 30 houses in existence, and you just wanted one of those houses, no matter where it was.

• 1:51:24Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:51:25Speaker 06

  And he's just decided that, like, I just want one of these, and I will take it wherever best suits my preferences.

• 1:51:30Bill Simmons?

  That was OKC, that's what they did to the Sonics. They were like, we're able to get in, and we'll move them back to, this is our master plan all along.

• 1:51:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, and it just like, really brings up a really chilling proposition for the NBA, where everything has gotten, the money has become so big now, where everything is bigger business than it even was when I first started covering the league almost 20 years ago.

• 1:51:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:52Speaker 06

  It just, it just feels like we're getting with, especially with all this VC money coming in, all the Saudi money slowly trickling into the league, and some of this other stuff happening, where it's just becoming more for profit nakedly, in a way that I wasn't really ever familiar with in sports. And it's almost like, what do you want from a franchise? Maybe Kansas City deserves a team, maybe Austin deserves a team. I know that they've been mentioned, I don't see how that would work with San Antonio being right there.

• 1:52:18Bill Simmons?

  Austin's not getting a team. I think the Spurs are more likely, they expand into Austin and play games there. They're not putting a team 75 miles from the Spurs.

• 1:52:27Speaker 06

  It makes no sense. And, and so like, I, I get that there might be slightly more attractive markets, but what does the NBA ultimately want? Portland has driven revenue when the team is good. These are like, diehard fans that support the team. This isn't somewhere like New Orleans, where I was for two years covering that team, where they had to try so hard just to drive interest, to get people out there. When the team is good in Portland, people show up.

• 1:52:50Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:52:50Speaker 06

  It matters here. And so like, maybe if Seattle is coming, they're just like, ah, we don't need two Pacific Northwest teams, that's the really only case I could make for it. Otherwise, this is a shining example of a small market franchise, and as we've seen with this new CBA coming in, Adam's whole position is like, I want to make it so everybody can win. How can you strip out a small market team and go to your other small market owners and say like, hey, this is for everybody. It's not for everybody. It's actually then just becomes about the biggest market and the biggest profit.

• 1:53:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I've had people ask me over the last couple of weeks, because they could tell I was kind of mad about this Portland thing, like, well, why don't you stick up for New Orleans the same way? And I think the difference is, we still don't have evidence that the NBA works in New Orleans. And you could blame the owners, you could blame the city, it's not a big enough market, whatever you want to say, but it's just never worked. And despite the fact that they have, you know, a good handful, I don't know how many thousand fans, I don't think this franchise has ever been successful there. And we're going back to the 70s, they moved there already. You covered the team, and we've talked about this on pods before together.

• 1:53:59Bill Simmons?

  There's no, nothing you can point to and be like, see, no, no, for those three years, that's when it was kicking ass. It's just never worked, and I'm not sure they should have an NBA team. I feel way differently about Portland. Even Memphis, you mentioned earlier, like, Memphis, if you're doing this over again, Memphis isn't getting a team. That team's in Nashville, that's just the way it's gonna go. But Memphis has proven that they can be a really awesome small market franchise, and that team is ingrained with that city in a really unique way. And I, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't, I wouldn't say they should move either. New Orleans would be the one I think you have to look at, unfortunately.

• 1:54:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, New Orleans has the pride, but it never really had the bones in basketball, or any of the, the success needed to drive any sort of energy in that city. There have been like flirtations with being a good team, but the best they've done is that team with Brandon Ingram, where they, they like, they challenged the Suns in the first round, and they were fun and scrappy and young, but then that quickly petered out. And so they've really never hit the, the stretch of success that they would need in order to get people engaged regularly. And so there have just been a lot of teases that haven't amounted to anything.

• 1:55:07Bill Simmons?

  Also, it's a football, it's pro and college football, is what they care about in New Orleans, which is fine.

• 1:55:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:55:12Bill Simmons?

  But.

• 1:55:12Speaker 06

  When I was there, like, LSU gymnastics sometimes would rate better than the Pelicans. It was brutal.

• 1:55:18Bill Simmons?

  Right. Portland, that, one thing I did hear was that, um, because I, one of the things I was fascinated by is like, why did they let this guy buy the team? Why, why let El Cheapo get in there? And apparently, they only had two offers. Because, um, because the price of these teams in general have gone up, and then the arena deal was dicey, and it's a smaller, smaller market, and then the city's definitely, you know, it's been a little topsy-turvy there for the last 10 years. And I just don't think they had a lot of people that wanted to buy in.

• 1:55:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, and that gets into the whole conspiracy theory about how much the real villain in the situation is really Jodie Allen, who took over for Paul Allen after he died because she was kind of the steward of the trust here. And there was an offer years ago from Phil Knight, obviously a local guy who wanted to invest in the area and is getting up in age. And as you've seen with Oregon, really wants to inject money into the area into the sports theme. It's really all he cares about seemingly. And it petered out quickly because the trust viewed it as a low ball and it was also leaked to media and they didn't like the approach that he took. And that was kind of the end of the story. Otherwise, it was just this most recent patch here where it was the Dundon Group and Raj Sports, which also owns,

• 1:56:34Speaker 06

  I believe, the thunder, excuse me, the thorns and the fire. And I think they're my only orders for the Kings as well. And they went with Dundon and you have to wonder if the bridge agreement lease, which didn't have any protections in it to keep the team in Portland, to make sure the next owners would still be in Portland, was set up so that someone could do exactly what Dundon is doing. And you have to start to wonder what was really in it for Jodie or the trust, because all that money is just going to go to charity. And so why did she set this up so that the team wouldn't just be here in

• 1:57:09Bill Simmons?

  Well, they obviously got, they got snookered a little bit, but this is so similar to me to Howard Schultz in Seattle in the mid 2000s when he just decided he had to sell the team and he was frustrated with the city and he sold it to this group that clearly was a dangerous threat to move it to Oklahoma City. And he said, fuck it, I'll do it anyway. I just want to get out of this. And he, when we did the Sonic Boom podcast, he was the secret villain of the Sonics leaving because he kind of knew what he was doing. It's like, if you're selling your house or your condo to somebody who's clearly going to knock down the house, you're going to have a moment where you're like, do it. How much do I love my house? Like, like this guy's going to come in and knock it down. Conspiracy Bill

• 1:57:53Bill Simmons?

  also enjoys the Dallas piece of this with Dundon and is wondering if there's any possibility at all of a franchise swap, which we have not had for a long time with Dallas and that whole situation, which has been terrible. Maybe it's, maybe he switches, somebody buys Portland and the Addison family ends up getting the Vegas expansion team. But I just, I just wonder if he bought this team partly as like a chess piece for some bigger move, whether it's moving it to Kansas City or St. Louis. I don't see, NBA in St. Louis makes zero sense to me. Apologies to people in St. Louis. Sorry, but I don't see it.

• 1:58:38Bill Simmons?

  But Dallas is, that's, that's the one that I'm like, huh. This guy's from Dallas. This is Dallas is also, why didn't he just buy Dallas?

• 1:58:49Speaker 06

  Well, does that mean that we in Portland get Cooper flagged? Because I could tell you the one thing

• 1:58:53Bill Simmons?

  Swap franchises?

• 1:58:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, because one thing that would energize the local economy would be the Great White Hope coming to Portland.

• 1:59:00Bill Simmons?

  Bill Walton 50 years later? Yeah, could see it's happening. Yeah. So only two people wanted the team, apparently. And, and the arena thing is the biggest obstacle. You mentioned something earlier, though, about the new types of owners that are coming into the league. And this is, this happened in soccer. Football's a little different because it's almost like, it seems like these super rich families are moving in because it's, but in basketball, you, if you have the most money, you could basically make this part of your arsenal. This is something the Fenway Sports Group did where they bought the Penguin, they had the Red Sox, they bought the Penguins, they bought Liverpool, and they're just kind

• 1:59:44Bill Simmons?

  of these rich stewards of the team. You saw the Premier League almost get upended by all the money came in of people who weren't like traditional owners. And what you said earlier, like, I do wonder, is that where we're heading in the NBA? People who they want to sit courtside and seem like a big shot, and they just had a shitload of money to spend, and they know the one thing that always goes up is the sports franchise. And is this just who we're looking at next 20 years? People that don't care about a connection to a city?

• 2:00:13Speaker 06

  It's also in direct contrast with what Silver is proclaiming he wants the league to be about, which is these small markets, we're putting in the second apron so that you don't have to spend over a certain limit. And that's the thing I don't really understand about this whole Dundon scenario, because they keep proclaiming like that they can't make money here. The, the area is dealing with economic struggles, which is very true and like not something that I think anyone here would dispute. But one, the team has always done reasonably well, considering its market size and the passion of its fan. And two, they're not spending money on the team. Like, they brought in John Morant in a cash neutral deal. They didn't spend their mid-level exception. He's not going above and beyond. They're not even at the tax. Like, it's not the first apron, the second

• 2:00:55Speaker 06

  apron. He's not even at the luxury tax at this point. And so, and so it's just like, his whole thing was coming into subprime money and like, that's his business. He's operating it more like someone that needs to really wring everything out of assets, which is why they went and swung the John Morant trade. They saw someone they can get for cheap, hopefully that he could turn into something down the road. This isn't like big money coming in and we're just going to muscle everybody around. If anything, there were real concerns and rumors about whether or not this guy actually had the money to buy into the first place, because I believe he had to sell a piece of his NHL franchise in order to do it. And so it's, it's just really all over the place. And I just don't know who this serves other than Dundon. All of this goes back to him getting what he

• 2:01:39Speaker 06

  wants and getting the best deal for himself. I don't see how anybody else, the NBA, Portland fans, Adam Silver, actually benefits for him being in this position.

• 2:01:51Bill Simmons?

  It's, it's, it's one of the most perplexing things about professional sports is when people buy a team and either don't take care of it, don't have the proper TLC, or don't seem like they seem like they care how they're perceived by the fan base. And the answer is what we said before, like, he probably thought this was a good asset, probably leveraged himself to buy it. And now is trying to wring out all the, all the fat costs so that he can try to make it more profitable. This is something somebody said to me when the media deal happened, that knows shit about like this, these rich guy circles is like, these teams are becoming so prohibitively expensive to purchase. And this person was

• 2:02:36Bill Simmons?

  telling me, I think we're going to see stuff we haven't seen in the league in a long time. Like the, almost like back to the 70s and 80s with some of the cost cutting and weird trades. And by the way, we've been seeing it. And I, I honestly don't think that's why the Celtics traded Jalen, because if you look at the money standpoint, it didn't save them money for two of the three years, right? It's just, they get out of that money in year three. But it was weird, you know? And, and the stuff with, with the Lakers, even what they just did and the stuff they put together, then the Wall Street Journal reports that Mark Walter definitely seemed like he had a stroke or who knows how serious it was two years ago. And people are wondering, and that's like a heavy leveraged team. I

• 2:03:21Bill Simmons?

  just, I don't know who's coming into the league. It's the weirdest time for owners since like the 70s, when basically you and I could have bought a team in the 70s. We'd be like, I met this guy at Dan Tannis. He has money. I think we could buy, I think we could buy the Clippers. But now it's, I don't know. I don't know who these owners are going to be. And then those are the guys who are on the committees. They're on the relocation committee. They're on the media committee. They're on the expansion committee. They're on the rules committee. And in the old days, they were people that really cared about the league and the sport. And I don't, are we still going to have that next generation of owners? I don't know.

• 2:03:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was like, it was stark when Para bought the Grizzlies originally, because that was like, one of the first instances of tech money really filtering in beyond the big markets. And I think people took note of that, like, oh, things are changing here. This isn't a mom and pop shop. But I think the Walter deal with the Lakers was like the clearest indication of a family run business, one of the last few we have in this league, feeding it to a guy who is just ungodly wealthy and also backed by other money where we have to really start to question the source of it. And that's the whole thing. Things have been nipping at the fringes of this for a very long time, just kind of under the shroud of darkness. And like, the league has like restrictions in place. And so that VC money can't be a certain percentage of this and all this other stuff. But it's clearly

• 2:04:43Speaker 06

  eating away at things. And I do have to wonder if we're reaching a tipping point where we have an owner coming in without the money in order to really perhaps do this, and then just completely strip mining it in order to run it as if it is a bare minimum proposition. And then complaining about not getting enough money to renovate an arena, or else he'll just go wherever he wants. Like, this is a pretty bad black eye for the NBA. And honestly, this is a pretty troubling stretch for the NBA, pretty much this entire year with the tanking and everything like that. Honestly, Adam Silver has been at a crossroads for a while. I think this is really the moment where we really figure out if he's long for this position and like, really what the rest of his legacy is going to be like. Because

• 2:05:26Speaker 06

  he came into this with a lot of fanfare by kicking out, kicking out Sterling and doing a couple of things that I think a lot of people celebrated, which were in retrospect, pretty easy wins. He's had a lot of big problems and frankly, I've disagreed with practically all of them. And this one, more than any of them.

• 2:05:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And it's, as a commissioner, the bigger legacy here is What do you stand for and who do you want to be? Right? Goodell in the NFL is pretty clear from day one. He's like, we are, you know, the most unstoppable business in America. And everything is going to be about profits. And if we have to add games and, you know, jeopardize our players, we're doing it. If it's 17 games, 18 games, we're going. And that's worked for him. And that's, at least we know who he is and what he cares about. Silver, the first five years, I really thought was more in the, I'm not Stern. I'm not like David Stern.

• 2:06:22Bill Simmons?

  I'm, I'm, I'm going to be more of a connector to the players and the owners and.

• 2:06:28Speaker 06

  Here's my phone number, Ben Simmons.

• 2:06:30Bill Simmons?

  Right. I'm going to go, I'm going to do, I did the phone conference thing with him in 2018. He was talking about, you know, really being concerned about the players' mental health. And, um, and lately, the last couple of years, it just seems like finance, revenue, money, finance driven is the job. And I don't know if that's the job. I think the job's a whole bunch of things. In this case, you should care about Portland, a team that's about to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the title. And, um, and a city, honestly, that kind of needs the team. You mentioned some of the stuff that's happened the last 10, 12 years. Like, uh, I don't know, this would, this would be a really bad one.

• 2:07:13Bill Simmons?

  And I, I don't have a good feeling about it. I don't have like an incredible amount of inside info, but I, everything that's happened, this doesn't feel like posturing to me. This feels like somebody who's already decided, I either want to get the team out of here or, or bend them over a barrel and get them to pay all this stuff to basically make me want to stay. And those are the two, those are his two moves and neither move is good for Portland.

• 2:07:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think the, the only case for optimism is that he's just like sort of a craven carpet bagger who only wants a good deal.

• 2:07:45Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:07:46Speaker 06

  I, I do think that the Portland will ultimately concede because I just don't see where they have any points of leverage. Cause as you mentioned, like, what is Portland without the Blazers at this point?

• 2:07:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they are.

• 2:07:58Speaker 06

  There's, there are companies just leaving left and right. Things just haven't been great. Downtown's kind of a ghost town. I still love Portland, it's why I moved here to begin with, but it just seems like that is going to be the inevitable case. And so if they do end up signing the 20 year lease, that will be something. I wonder like what the relationship with the city and the team will be from that point forward. And I also think that I'm most concerned about what pounds of flesh he picks up around, along the way, because it's one thing if in five years, they can be sued for going out. But if he managed to wrangle provisions in this next deal, let's say that they sign a 20 year lease, but there are outs and there's no longer a threat of litigation and he can leave in 15 years or 10 years, it's just easier for him.

• 2:08:40Speaker 06

  I am starting to worry that that is ultimately his long-term goal, because ultimately he just wants the best financial product. And if he does, doesn't think that's going to happen in Portland, then I think he's going to find his way in order to get that.

• 2:08:53Bill Simmons?

  And I hate to say it, but just fundamentally for your life, it doesn't make sense to own teams in Carolina and Portland. And be based in Dallas. That's, whereas like if you move the Blazers to a place like Kansas City, um, everything's a little closer to the stuff I care about. So I don't know, just, it feels like he bought the team because the price was, you're buying in four, four billions around a good price for just buying into the league with the media deal, with the expansion fees coming. You're buying up in a league that the arrow still seems to be pointing up and he just, he got in and probably fooled some people. We'll see how it goes.

• 2:09:36Bill Simmons?

  We're staying on this one because, and if you, if you go and you Google the stories about it, there's like new stories basically every two or three days of like some new revelation or something. We'll see how it goes. All right. What was your favorite move of the NBA move of the summer?

• 2:09:53Speaker 06

  Oof. Um, I mean LeBron for the minimum, probably.

• 2:09:57Bill Simmons?

  Not counting LeBron, not counting LeBron for $4 million. Everything that's happened, I haven't been like, whoa. It's more minor stuff, like the Clippers just getting really hotchamora for a two for 14. I was like, ah, solid deal. I like that one, but nothing like life altering.

• 2:10:14Speaker 06

  I mean, am I allowed to mention Jalen Brown going to the Sixers? That is also.

• 2:10:19Bill Simmons?

  It's a good trade.

• 2:10:19Speaker 06

  I would say that, I would say that what the Sixers did is pretty unimpeachable considering they paid virtually nothing.

• 2:10:24Bill Simmons?

  I agree.

• 2:10:25Speaker 06

  From last year, where we were wondering whether or not VJ and Maxey would just be cool together, like that would be a fun product to watch as we waited for Embiid to come back onto the court.

• 2:10:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:35Speaker 06

  To what could possibly be the best team in the Eastern Conference. So it probably checks that box.

• 2:10:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there's, there's been, it's really been more of like, I don't understand why that team is playing it this way. I don't understand what that team just did. Like, there's been way more of those than whoa, I see the vision. I liked what Atlanta did. I thought just kind of building around the fringes and bringing everybody back, but grabbing people from OKC. And now we're in the stage now as we head into, uh, into the Ides of August. What's the, what's the dog days of August? What do we say for August? Dog days of August? Ides of March?

• 2:11:09Speaker 06

  Ides of March.

• 2:11:10Bill Simmons?

  Um, we're now in Bennet and Matheran, Benedict Matheran, Peyton Watson territory. Update, Matheran's met with, so yeah, it's, it's time for the NBA to go away for a little bit. All right.

• 2:11:25Speaker 06

  Kaminga zone?

• 2:11:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Kaminga. Can we get Kaminga on the minimum? We'll see how it goes. All right, Barrier, we can listen to you on the Ringer NBA Show with the crew. How did, how'd the first year with Kyle Mango, new guy?

• 2:11:38Speaker 06

  It's pretty good.

• 2:11:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:39Speaker 06

  I, I thought everything worked out really well. Learned a lot about synergy stats that I never would have been able to uncover, but.

• 2:11:46Bill Simmons?

  Synergy stats.

• 2:11:47Speaker 06

  Kyle's right on it.

• 2:11:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. All right, sad everybody in Portland for us. Thanks for, thanks for coming on, Barrier.

• 2:11:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, thanks for having me.

• 2:11:54Bill Simmons?

  Today's mailbag, which we will have another good one next week, was brought to you by ChatGPT Work. ChatGPT Work helps you work even harder while ChatGPT works on your projects. You still call the plays, so you're always in control. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Try ChatGPT Work and ChatGPT today, available in plus and pro plans. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to House and Kyle and Barrier and Eduardo and Gahal. Don't forget, new rewatchable is coming on Monday, Karate Kid 2. 40th anniversary, by the way, forgot to mention that part as well. How has it been 40 years since we wondered what the hell was going on with Miyagi and

• 2:12:39Bill Simmons?

  Daniel-san for real, for the first time? That's it for the pod. I'm definitely going to have one midweek, so stay tuned for that. And, uh, and we'll slowly ease back into, we'll start doing some NFL. My prep's feeling really good. If you missed me, I'm Mina Kimes's podcast, that was fun. And I'll be back midweek with one more season.

• 2:13:17Bill Simmons?

  Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in DC, Kentucky or Wyoming. Get them a problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MYRESSET. Call 888-797777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8HOPENY or text HOPENY in New York. For Louisiana, call 877-770-7867.

• 2:13:54Speaker 07

  Go long. No, I'm not throwing a football with my favorite son, Charles. I'm talking to my new Duke Cannon Puck of Soap. It's triple mill to last longer and retain its shape down to the last nub. In fantasy football terms, you could say this long-lasting soap takes no bye weeks or that it's bench proof, or even that it's a surefire league championship winner. Duke Cannon Pucks of Soap are built for guys who want a hardworking, long-lasting soap. Catch one yourself at dukecannon.com or a Target store near you. Duke Cannon Pucks of Soap, triple mill to last longer.

• 2:14:24Speaker 04

  Hey, Bose here. On your next track, listen for the decisions. Distortion on the bass, the vocal right up front. Every choice deliberate. With Bose, you'll hear it all. Your music deserves Bose.